Bilgewater (15 page)

“I hope it won't be too much of a bore, darling.”

“Oh no. I expect I'll get through.”

“He's a good-looking boy.”

“Hmmmm.”

“He's probably out of his mind in love with you.”

“D'you think so?” (Nonchalant.)

“Oh,
clearly
.”

We laugh. “
Poor
Jack Rose,” she says. “You must let him down lightly.”

I leaned my head on the window considering these mothers who never were. I was probably going a little mad again, I thought. I didn't really like either of these women at all. Or either of the daughters. It was just—I thought of the profiles again, the smooth-running car, the clothes. The Marigold profile turned slowly to the Grace profile. “I wish I were Grace,” I thought. I wish I were with the sort of people Grace is used to. I wish I were sophisticated and cool.

“Cool,” I thought and shivered. I was cool enough anyway today. I was absolutely frozen in the bus—except down my right-hand side where this great warm weight was. I looked round—the conductor was coming for tickets. The woman next to me was the woman I'd seen stuck in the kiosk in the pier, the woman so fat that when she fell down she couldn't get up again.

She swelled and bulged all over the seat and wheezed and heaved about. On her knee was a great big dirty-looking bag with a zip-fastener on it and she was burrowing about in it. She took out a great meat sandwich and began to eat it, putting it down on the zip as she felt down in her pocket for her purse as the conductor paused beside us.

“Marston Bungalow,” I said and got my ticket.

“Marston Bungalow,” said she.

Y
ou going to Marston Bungalow then?” she said, taking an ample bite of the sandwich. “It's a good way but it's worth it when you get there. There's grand places round about. D'you live round there?”

“No.”

“Visiting?”

“Yes.”

“I been visiting. Down Marske way. I been visiting me daughter. She works on the pier. It's a nice little job but it's a bit slow. You been to the pier?”

“Er—yes.”

“Lovely dances. There was a real class dance there one Saturday night. Evening dress. Mind you I like ordinary dances best. Eeeeh—laugh. They're that wild. Sometimes you'd think they'd knock the whole place down. And drink—eeh, dear me. There was some of them—at that class dance, too—that drunk they broke off a whole great bit of the pier and threw it int' sea. Thc police'll be after them my daughter says. Oh she sees a bit of life in the kiosk now and then. I sit with her sometimes but it gets close. Sometimes I go to the Bingo. Do you go to the Bingo?”

“No.”

“D'you live there, then—Marske way? Warrenby way?”

“Yes.”

“And you've never been to the Bingo. Eeeh dear! How long you staying at Marston Bungalow?”

“I'm not staying. I'm going on.”

“That's nice. Where to?”

“I'm going to a doctor's.”

“Oh dear,” she looked very interested. “Would you like a sandwich?” Another sandwich with beef flapping out of the bread emerged.

“Oh—no thanks.”

She munched.

“In trouble?”

“Trouble?”

“Seeing a doctor.”

“Oh—oh no.”

“I just wondered.”

“You just seemed,” she said after some time, “a bit worried like, it seemed to me. A bit upset.” Into her bag went her not very clean hand again and came out holding a huge banana. “If you
was
in trouble,” she said, “you just come and see me. I'm not that far from Marston Bungalow. I'm at Marston Hall. You can't miss it. I'm Mrs. Deering.”

I thought not in a million years, not for fire, flood, pestilence or famine would I go near such a person as you ever, ever, ever. Turning away from her I pretended to look out of the window and when we got to Marston Bungalow I let her ease her way sideways down the bus, scream a greeting or two to one and another about her, blare out a goodbye to the conductor, stand and wave to me vaguely on the pavement. Then I got out.

 

I caught another bus to Middlesbrough and another one to Ironstoneside West. It was very easy. By the time I had negotiated that last bus I was feeling more alert and pleased with life. The passengers were all “men at the works” or shopping ladies and made cracks among themselves in loud, hard Teesside voices. They tried to draw me into the talk and laugh, too, and I wished I could have joined in very much but not being used to it I couldn't. I kept on blushing and pretending to read a book. “Ironstoneside Road,” called the girl. “Here's yer stop, luv,” and out I got, frozen stiff but feeling that time and the hour wears out the longest day and whatever they were like the Roses couldn't actually destroy me.

 

“It is
exactly
by the bus stop. Exactly,” father had told me Mrs. Rose's voice had said on the phone. “Tell her when she gets out in front of her is number 16. It is just
there
.”

Funny thing was that it wasn't.

Number 16 was there but it wasn't a doctor's. There was no doubt about that at all. It was a dentist's—a very definite dentist's. Over the front door—it was a detached house with a semi-circular asphalt drive—was a big white glass cube, the sort that lights up at night and had
DENTIST
printed on it in black letters.

I wondered what to do. I looked at the houses on either side behind their semi-circular drives but they didn't say anything about being doctors. I walked back and looked at the first one. Number 16 all right. I went up the drive. There were two brown plaques one on each side of the door. One said Janice Rose, B.D.S. (Lond.) and the other Humphrey Rose, B.D.S. (Lond.). On each side of the door there was also a brass bell. Above the door were two windows side by side with a joint black balcony, all curlicues. The house was made of white lavatory brick and on either side of the front door was an identical mustard-coloured conifer. Two ever-mustards. The symmetry of everything was so marked that one felt there was a mirror about somewhere, a very cheap, clear mirror without powers of enhancement and there was a deadness and silence over the house that added to the unreality. I had never seen a building that struck such a chill.

Perhaps, I thought as I climbed the steps and stood wondering which bell to press, it is something in the atmosphere. When you think of it, all the people standing here on these steps, hundreds and hundreds of them, every half hour, six days a week, sweating and praying, “Oh God please don't let there be anything the matter. It's quite stopped hurting now. Please let it only be a scrape and polish”—it's bound to make a difference to a place.

But I'm supposed to be a mathematician, I thought. Why do I suppose anything of the sort. Atmosphere! Really! And anyway, what about all of them coming out. It's quite nice seeing people springing out of a dentist's, all smiles. It's over! Another six months. Whoopee!

Dentists are among the benefactors, the restorers to sanity, they're marvellous people, dentists. You keep your dentist for years. You travel miles to get back to him again. Uncle Edmund got in an awful fit when his died in the Isle of Wight. Like homing salmon they are, patients of dentists following almost unfelt tingles, twinges, and pangs, crossing oceans, crossing mountains, up the rapids, dentistwards.

There's nothing
wrong
with dentists. It was just that I'd been thinking of this country house.

I pressed the bell—Mrs. Rose's—and a girl in a white coat, nipped in at the waist with a stiff belt, appeared with a pad and pencil and half-moon eye-brows and said, “Yes?”

“I'm Marigold Green.”

“Green?” She consulted the pad, “We haven't got you down. Is it
Mr.
Rose?”

“No. It's—” I felt myself going heavy and solid and glowery. “It's Jack Rose.”

“
Jack
Rose. I'm afraid there's some mistake. Just a minute.” She shut the door firmly and then came back with a second appointments book. “Could I come in?” I asked. “It's a bit cold.” She didn't look very keen but I picked up my suitcase and stomped by. “I'm sorry,” she said in a high voice which tried to sound a bit better than Ironstoneside, “you'll have to wait. There's some mistake.”

Just then, like one of those weather toys gone wrong, a door on the left of the hall and a door on the right flew open and two dentists sprang out, each holding a silver spike and dressed in long white coats and masks like gangsters.

The female dentist just stared.

They were very authoritative people. The surgery behind the female dentist was silent but from behind the male dentist came a scuffling, spitting sound.

A great question mark hung on the air.

“There are no more appointments today,” said the male dentist firmly.

“I'm Marigold Green,” I said back.

“Oh God! I'd forgotten,” said the female dentist. “Hang on.” She disappeared. The male dentist said, “See to this will you, Phyllis,” and disappeared, too. The receptionist and I stood looking at each other with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

I had arrived at the Roses and it was not going to be much fun.

B
ehind Mrs. Rose's surgery there was a waiting room and behind this along the back of the house a sitting room and there I was led and left and stood with my suitcase beside me for what seemed a great time. Then, at last, there was a faint clicking of doors and a released sort of voice saying thank you and goodbye, the shutting of the half-glazed Victorian vestibule door and then Mrs. Rose was upon me, drying her hands vigorously on a very clean towel.

“Sorry about that,” she said briskly, getting the towel well down into the cuticles. “Silly of me. Thought you were coming with Jack.”

“Oh—I thought father had said—”

“He did. He did. I was mixing you up.”

She was a biggish woman and there was something of Jack about her manner. Her face was not at all like his—pop eyes, yellow perm, round pouting lips rather spluttery—but something in the set of the shoulders suggested that she would make a useful three-quarter. “Glad to see you,” she said. “Glad you could make it. Play golf?”

“Oh—er. No I don't.”

“Pity. Thinking of what to do with you tomorrow.”

“Oh—er—that's all right.”

“What do you usually do on Sundays?”

(Church. Chess. Talk to Paula. Read. Stroke the cats.) “Oh, nothing much.”

“Oh. Well. Never mind.” She looked quickly round for a clock. “Quarter to six. Jack home soon. Like to go up?”

“Er—up?”

“Unpack? Then drink or something?”

(
Had
she known my mother? Could she have known my mother?)

“Oh—yes. I'd like to unpack.”

We both looked unhopefully at the small bag at my feet. It wouldn't take long.

Then the door bunt open and in came the male dentist. He was without his uniform and had presumably finished with his towel because he advanced on me with big pink dry hands. “Hello there,” he cried. “Sorry for the welcome. Mind on other things. Nasty wisdom job. Flaps infected. Two more to come out Monday. Interesting roots. What about a dry martini?”

“Er—hum—her—” I said.

“Marianne—it is Marianne isn't it?—is just going to unpack,” said Mrs. Rose. “I'm going to change.” (So they did change, just like Dorset.) “I'll take you up shall I? Or can you find your way? Left hand side over the front door.”

“Oh—yes. Of course. I'll find it,” I said and scurried out.

“
That's
fine,” said Mrs. Rose.

I went out and stood in the hall. The half-moon eye-brows had gone and both surgery doors were shut. On the hall table was a box for the Dentists' Benevolent Fund. On the walls were many large framed notices saying how well Mr. and Mrs. Rose had done at college. On a shelf up near the ceiling were ranged about half a million silver cups saying how well Mr. and Mrs. Rose had done at tennis, hockey, rugger, lacrosse, running, and swimming, and two huge oars showed how good Mr. Rose had been at rowing. The carpet was of very good quality and covered every bit of the floor and the stair-carpets and wallpapers and landing curtains were tremendously thick and all absolutely colourless—or perhaps fawn mixed faintly with grey. The hall-stand had a little metal tray in the bottom to catch drips from patients' umbrellas and at the foot of the stairs there was a gigantic and terrible china tree trunk with china lichens on it and growing out of it was a fearsome and watchful leather-leaved plant. It looked as if it had been put there to tangle with patients who tried to escape, and I passed it by respectfully as I made for the upstairs. And as I did so I heard from behind from the two relaxing dentists a bark of a laugh. “God knows,” I heard Mr. Rose say. “Cheer up. You'll go straight to heaven for inviting her. Jack and the other one'll be here soon.”

“The other one?” Who was the other one—oh heavens! Was there going to be somebody else? Why ever had I come? Why
ever
had I come? Who could it be? I thought through the First XV and felt sure most of them would be going home for Half Term. They had all had more than enough of each other, as father said, by Half Term to want to go visiting each other. Must be someone without a decent home, I thought. I wondered if it was Terrapin. I wondered what I'd feel if it was Terrapin—with all the rumours of his dreadful background, it just might be. He was supposed to be terribly poor. I thought of many small events—Jack Rose's hand jerking back Terrapin's obscenity at the dormitory window long ago, Jack Rose laughing at Terrapin at the Boys' Entrance door and telling him that I, Bilgewater, was no longer a child and could read James Joyce. No—it wouldn't be Terrapin. He'd not get an invitation here.