Sugar and Other Stories Page 19

  What she actually thought was superstitious, akin to the promise of James’s unwritten letter, or the anticipated chocolate eclair. She thought, there’s safety in numbers. She thought, if I don’t go over there, there’ll be no one at hand when it’s my turn. She thought, Wolfgang’s something, even if I’m a fat old biddy. She thought, I’ve got my whistle, I’ve got that. She was surprised how much thinking she was doing. She could hear her heart all right, but its thud was purposeful and even, not choking all over the place. She said, come on, to Wolfgang, who streaked ahead, tangling with Elsie just as the young puppet was crouching almost at the blind woman’s side, peering up into her face.

  “Good afternoon,” said Mrs Sugden. “We’ve met before, I don’t know if you remember, I described my dog to you, a black and white border collie, he seems to get on with yours.”

  “Oh yes,” said the cool voice, from its distance in the dark. “Of course. Is he with you, your dog?”

  He had his sharp nose buried between Elsie’s buttocks.

  “He’s sniffing Elsie. You know.”

  “She’s a bit timid of male dogs. She’s not allowed to talk to them, of course, if she’s working.”

  “Perhaps I could walk with you a little,” said Mrs Sugden. “As we’re going the same way.”

  He was now a little behind, sauntering. They were two, side by side, and he was behind, going slowly. The dogs stood nose to tail and smelled each other’s natures.

  “I go as far as the end of the asphalt. I’d be grateful if you’d tell me when we reach it. It is my limit.”

  “Of course.”

  They went out along the strip of asphalt at the blind woman’s brisk pace. Mrs Sugden described things. Herself, to start with.

  “My name is Sugden. Marjorie Sugden. A retired schoolmistress.”

  “And mine is Eleanor Tillotson. A retired social worker.”

  He was still there. Did Miss or Mrs Tillotson have any idea of his presence, or its recurrence, or of his bizarre posturing? Mrs Sugden described things. The dogs. Now they’re running along ever so nicely, side by side. Your dog is such a lovely colour.

  “Like the froth on cappucino,” Miss Tillotson said.

  “A little bit creamier,” said Mrs Sugden, judiciously. “A bit more buttery, less thin in colour.”

  If Miss Tillotson wanted a visual description, it had to be just.

  “Not far to the end. I’ll turn back with you.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “I’m glad of the company. If you don’t mind.”

  “On the contrary. Days in retirement are very long. One can go a whole day without speaking to anyone but Elsie. Of course, when I had my work, it was different. There was a lot of travelling, visiting homes and interviewing. I like to be occupied.”

  “Oh, so do, so did I. Time now goes so fast in one way, but it goes nowhere, nothing is achieved.”

  “You keep yourself healthy. And Wolfgang. I can tell.”

  * * *

  The end of the asphalt was in sight. It was like the abrupt end of a pier, at the end of a harbour. Mrs Sugden thought of the blind woman and was astonished at her courage. She saw her striding out steadfast, treading this fine line between gales and invisible gulfs of infinitely worse fears than her own mean ones. Perhaps he would go on when they turned back together. Perhaps he would. If he did not, she would know what to think. What he did, was speak.

  “Excuse me, but have either of you two ladies got the correct time?”

  He stood in front of them as they turned, barring their way back. Gold curls, slightly damp or greasy, clustered on his forehead. His features were all exaggerated, like his movements. His mouth was large, and full of clefts and curves, firm though, not sagging, a violoncello of a mouth. His nose was full and snuffing, with curling nostrils and huge dark holes. The ledges were all strong and rounded — wide cheekbones, outstanding brows, long carved chin. His eyes were big, thick-lashed, pale blue. Miss Tillotson could not see any of this, she could not even know if he was black or white, only how tall he was, up there. It was she who told him the time, in her precise voice. Three forty-seven, she said. Mrs Sugden saw that she was reading this information with exact fingertips from a large watch without a glass.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I must be getting back. That’s a fine dog you have. I’ve been watching you.”

  “I know,” said Miss Tillotson.

  “She looks after you very well.”

  “She does,” said Miss Tillotson. She smiled. “She’s over-conscientious. She won’t leave me to run away and play.”

  “She’d attack anyone who tried to hurt you, though.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Miss Tillotson, with foolhardy scrupulousness, it seemed to Mrs Sugden. “She’s trained to guide me and stop me doing anything silly. She’s got a nice nature.”

  “Wolfgang hasn’t,” said Mrs Sugden. “That’s my dog. He’s got an uncertain temper. Collies often have, I’m told.”

  He smiled at her, with all his face, as though he read her thoughts. She took Miss Tillotson’s elbow, to reassure both of them. She felt Miss Tillotson stiffen with independence and then relax into acquiescence. He moved out of their way and fell into step beside Miss Tillotson, on the other side.

  Mrs Sugden, even in her fear, had partly looked forward to having a talk with the other woman, now one was broached, now the social distance had been got over. It was amazing that annoyance at his intrusiveness should co-exist with consciousness of the way he had mopped and mowed, of the flash of his hand.

  “I’ve often seen you,” he said. “You always come this way.”

  “The path is even here. I can let Elsie run.”

  “Oh, of course. You come every day?”

  “To let her have a run.”

  “Fantastic,” he said. “Just fantastic.”

  “And you?” said Miss Tillotson. “Are you in training, or something? I hear you go up and down.”

  “I keep fit, yes,” he said. “I’m unemployed, at the moment. I try to keep busy.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Oh, don’t be. I’d go mad in a shop or an office. I’m fine, this way, I get out and about, in the air. There was only one job I wanted.”

  “And what was that?”

  “I wanted to fly planes. I wanted to be up there. Always liked planes, from being ever such a small boy. But they won’t have me.”

  “Oh dear. Why not?”

  “Various reasons. Medical reasons. Nothing to worry about. They might change their mind. I was an air cadet, that was O.K. I’m working on them.”

  There was a silence. Miss Tillotson strode on, and Mrs Sugden trotted beside her, holding her elbow, and on the other side he padded, jogging on the spot more or less, slightly crab-like, his gaze fixed on Miss Tillotson.

  Mrs Sugden talked about Elsie. She could hardly carry on, in his young presence, the interesting talk that had been started about lack of occupation. She felt it was indelicate to ask, with him galumphing there, all the questions she would have liked to ask about how Miss Tillotson managed things like cooking and buses, though she wanted to know, and felt that Miss Tillotson did not mind answering. Let alone ask whether Miss Tillotson was afraid, and if not, why not, how not? So she ascertained that Elsie had half a pound of fresh meat a day, and some Vitalin dog bran, and two hours’ exercise as well as necessary journeys to the shops, and revealed that she felt she was not really fit to keep up with Wolfgang, but liked his company. She stopped short of saying she felt safe with him. It was their companion who raised safety.

  “Don’t you both worry,” he said, “about being out on your own? With all the goings-on we hear about? Aren’t you afraid?”

  “I feel all right with Wolfgang,” said Mrs Sugden miserably, wondering if she was condemning her bright dog, imagining a knife grating on his breast-bone.

  “In my position,” said Miss Tillotson, “you could be afraid of everything. Everything is haza
rdous, if you look at it in one way. So after a bit, it seems that you can only survive at all by not bothering about that sort of thing. So I don’t. There isn’t much I could do, if I was worried. Just live a little less, in a smaller circle. Which is the way my life could so easily have been contracted in any case. No, I’d rather come out in the air. So I do.”

  “I do admire you,” he said, all liquid emphasis. “I think you’re marvellous.”

  “Hardly,” said Miss Tillotson. “Just trying to live with a considerable disability.”

  Mrs Sugden’s mind was exercised about what would happen at the other end of the path, when the ways parted. She felt she should see Miss Tillotson home, to be sure, and that she wanted to be back within her own walls, and that he was teasing them both, smiling and concealing. She said, with more directness and warmth than she would have dared without this provocation, “I am very glad I spoke to you. It’s been very pleasant to have company. The dogs are enjoying the company too. I hope we can go on —”

  “Why don’t you come back for tea?” said Miss Tillotson. “That is, if you have nothing better to do.”

  “I should be delighted.”

  “Good. I live just off the Common. Through the underpass. In Bellevue Mansions.”

  He had moved away slightly. He was running along the very edge of the asphalt promontory, arms wide-spread and aslant, torso veering from one side to the other, a huge boy-aeroplane. There was even a faint engine-hum between those extravagant lips. Mrs Sugden wanted to seize the moment to hiss a warning which should alert without alarming, but there was no time, he was back. He said, “I’ll walk back with you. Just to make sure you’re all right.”

  “There’s no need. Mrs Sugden is coming to tea.”

  “I wish you’d ask me to tea.”

  “You said you must be getting back,” said Mrs Sugden. “When you asked the time, you said you must.”

  “Back where to? Where’ve I got to go to?”

  “You can come to tea, of course, if it would interest you,” said Miss Tillotson.

  “Oh, it would,” he said. “It would. It’d be really great, I mean it.”

  Too much.

  Mrs Sugden found time to marvel at the way Miss Tillotson managed the lift in her mansion block, call button, outer door, inner door, no hesitation, though they were all a little interlocked in the lift, eight dog-legs and his large splayed knees and swivelling shoulders. The flat was a surprise, very tastefully decorated with flame-coloured velvet chairs, reading lamps made of Chinese vases, glass-topped low tables on a dark Persian carpet, slightly hazed by cream dog hairs. There were mirrors in the hall and over the hearth in the drawing-room. There were pictures on the walls — a Chinese brush drawing of a cliff and waterfall, a print of Velasquez’ “Las Meninas”, with its complicated group of infantas and deformed dwarves, seen from behind the easel. There were bowls of spring flowers and a scented jasmine plant. Miss Tillotson switched on lights in the dark afternoon, and indicated chairs for them to sit in. Mrs Sugden wondered if she bothered to do this, in the dark alone. Or did she turn the light on for Elsie? There was a collection of silver-framed photographs on a little bureau.

  “Are these your family?” said Mrs Sugden.

  “Ah yes. The one in the wig is my barrister-brother, Clive. The two in gowns are my nieces, on graduation days. The baby is my grand-nephew, Maurice. The house is the family home in Somerset, where I grew up. Don’t you think the one of Elsie is a good likeness?’

  Over Mrs Sugden’s shoulder he breathed his hot breath misting the legal and academic faces.

  “It looks a recent one, of Elsie.”

  “Oh, no. You wouldn’t believe it, but Elsie’s nearly ten. She still looks girlish. I’ll give her — and your Wolfgang — some water, and make us all some tea. Do you like China or Indian, Mrs Sugden — or Earl Grey? And — I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

  “Me name’s Barry,” he said. “Call me Barry. I’ll have whatever you said last, Earl Grey I’ll have. With two of sugar. Thanks.”

  Mrs Sugden offered to help in the kitchen, but felt unable to persist, in case that might appear rude, a questioning of Miss Tillotson’s undoubted competence. So she sat where she had been told to sit, watching him roam amongst the pretty furniture in his incongruous shoes. One curious effect of Miss Tillotson’s blindness was that Mrs Sugden came to feel that she herself was invisible. Miss Tillotson turned a polite blank face with great accuracy almost as it would have been if she could truly have met Mrs Sugden’s eye, but not quite. Her sightless stare went somewhere to the side of Mrs Sugden’s head, to the blank wall. Mrs Sugden found herself quickly wiping her face of dismay and distress, suddenly remembering that he could see her. He picked things up: an inkwell, a small lacquered box, a paperweight.

  “She’s got some pretty good stuff here, wouldn’t you say? Some valuable knicknacks?”

  “I don’t know about value. It’s very pleasant. Very well designed.”

  “Someone must do it for her,” he said, Mrs Sugden thought brutally. “She can’t pick chairs and curtains, hunh? She got help. Mebbe from that brother and his wife. Yah. Mebbe from them. She gets around pretty neatly, wouldn’t you say? No nonsense. No feeling around. A bloody miracle.”

  “Oh yes,” said Mrs Sugden, repressively.

  Miss Tillotson returned with the teatray, which she placed accurately on a glass-topped low table. The teapot was ample and silver; the cups were very pretty, Crown Derby Mrs Sugden rather thought, and not entirely free of interior stains of stubborn tannin. Also the tray, a black Chinese lacquer, had been wiped in great visible streaks and smears. Miss Tillotson poured. She said, “Barry, would you be kind enough to give this to Mrs Sugden? Thank you. This is your own cup, with the two sugars. Help yourselves to biscuits.”

  She turned her dark questioning face to Barry. “Tell us about yourself. I used to have contacts, amongst employers. Maybe I can help.”

  Mrs Sugden was quite glad Miss Tillotson could not see what she herself categorized as the scornful leer that came over his face at this.

  “I shouldn’t think so. They don’t want to know. And I don’t want the sort of thing there is. You know, shifting packing cases, making trains of supermarket trolleys, YTS and all that crap.”

  “You can’t want to be unemployed, either,” said Miss Tillotson.

  “I dunno. I get out in the fresh air a lot. I get time to think. I get to have tea with nice ladies like you.”

  The two dogs came importantly into the room from the kitchen. Elsie went to Miss Tillotson’s side, and sat mildly pressed against her knee. Wolfgang prowled, uncertainly, investigating corners. Barry broke one of Miss Tillotson’s biscuits in half and held it out to him.

  “Here,” he said. “Nice dog. Come over here. What did you say his name was?”

  “Wolfgang.”

  “Sounds funny. Sort of fierce.”

  “It’s German. It was Mozart’s name. I don’t know why I thought of it. He doesn’t like biscuits.”

  “Oh no?” said Barry, as Wolfgang came up warily, and snatched. “Doesn’t he just. You just don’t indulge him. Good dog, old Wolfgang.”

  “People are always offering Elsie biscuits when I’m not looking,” said Miss Tillotson. “They make her fat. Please don’t give Elsie any biscuits, Barry.”

  “Of course not,” he said, watching Wolfgang lick crumbs from the carpet.

  It turned out to be a long teaparty. Most of the conversation was a dialogue between Barry and Miss Tillotson. He asked her all sorts of questions, very direct questions, questions Mrs Sugden would never have ventured on. He found out that Miss Tillotson had been blind since she was a small child, that she had worked with handicapped people most of her life, that she had studied Social Administration at London University. That she had a special little Braille machine for taking down notes of telephone conversations, that she lived alone, that Elsie was her fourth dog, that the death or retirement of a dog was something she
dreaded.

  “It’s terrible, very frightening, the period of adjustment to a new dog,” said Miss Tillotson. “I go away to a special centre, to get used to them, we walk the streets together. They can stop too soon, too far from the kerb, they can refuse to budge at all, they can do all sorts of things. They are nervous and over-conscientious and so am I. When we come home, it takes a long time to settle to old ways and routines. Routine is very important in my life.”

  “I think you are the most incredibly brave person I’ve ever met,” he said, throbbing like a sincere guitarist, cocking his head on one side. Miss Tillotson did not answer this, but asked for the cups back and took out the teatray. They could hear her steps in the hall, her confident turn onto the kitchen linoleum, the sound of taps and water. Barry leaned forward and said to Mrs Sugden, “If you moved a few things — chairs, tables, that sort of thing, the kettle in the kitchen, I bet, or biscuit-tins, she’d be all over the place, wouldn’t she, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself?”

  “Nobody would do such a thing.”

  “Oh they easily might, by accident. Easily. You could move that little table with the telephone, just to see what she’d do.”

  Mrs Sugden rejected various dangerous words: cruel, stupid, unkind, mean. She said, schoolmistressy, “That would be rather silly.”