The Temptation of Jack Orkney: Collected Stories Volume Two

But meanwhile he took her out. She was careful often to be engaged elsewhere. She was careful always to be worth taking somewhere expensive. When he took her home, while she did not go so far as ‘nearly the whole way’, she went ‘everything but’; and she was glad she did not like him better, because otherwise she would have been lost. She knew quite well she did not really like him, although her mind was clouded by her response to his hands, his moustache, his clothes and his new car.

She knew, because meanwhile a relationship she understood very well, and regretted, had grown up with Tony. He, watching this duel between the well-matched pair, would grin and drop remarks at which Maureen coloured and turned coldly away. He often asked her out – but only for a ‘Dutch treat’ – expecting her to refuse. ‘How’s your savings account, Maureen? I can’t save, you girls get it all spent on you.’ Tony took out a good many girls: Maureen kept a count of them. She hated him; yet she liked him, and knew she did. She relied on him above all for the grinning, honest understanding of her: he did not approve of her, but perhaps (she felt in her heart) he was right? During this period she several times burst into tears when alone, without apparent reason; afterwards she felt that life had no flavour. Her future was narrowing down to Stanley; and at these times she viewed it through Tony Head’s eyes.

One night the firm had a party for the senior members of the staff. Stanley was senior, Maureen and Tony were not. Maureen knew that Stanley had previously asked another girl to go, and when he asked herself, was uncertain whether she could make it until the very last moment: particularly as his inviting her, a junior, meant that he was trying out on the senior members the idea of Maureen as a wife. But she acquitted herself very well. First, she was the best-looking woman in the room by far, and the best-dressed. Everyone looked at her and commented: they were used to her as a pretty typist; but tonight she was using all her will to make them look at her, to make her face and body reflect what they admired. She made no mistakes. When the party was over Stanley and two of the younger architects suggested they drive out to London airport for breakfast, and they did. The two other girls were middle-class. Maureen kept silent for the most part, smiling serenely. She had been to Italy, she remarked, when a plane rose to go to Italy. Yes, she had liked it, though she thought the Italians were too noisy; what she had enjoyed best was the Sistine Chapel and a boat trip on the Adriatic. She hadn’t cared for Venice much, it was beautiful, but the canals smelled, and there were far too many people; perhaps it would be better to go in winter? She said all this, having a right to it, and it came off. As she spoke she remembered Tony, who had once met her on her way to the National Gallery. ‘Getting yourself an education, Maureen? That’s right, it’ll pay off well, that will.’

She knew, thinking it all over afterwards, that the evening had been important for her with Stanley. Because of this, she did not go out with him for a week, she said she was busy talking to her cousin about the possibilities of a dress shop. She sat in her room thinking about Stanley, and when thoughts of Tony came into her mind, irritatedly pushed them away. If she could succeed with Stanley, why not with someone better? The two architects from that evening had eyed her all the following week: they did not, however, ask her out. She then found that both were engaged to marry the girls they had been with. It was bad luck: she was sure that otherwise they would have asked her out. How to meet more like them? Well, that was the trouble – the drive to the airport was a bit of a fluke; it was the first time she had actually met the seniors socially.

Meanwhile Stanley showed an impatience in his courtship – and for the first time. As for her, she was getting on for twenty-one, and all the girls she had grown up with were married and had their first or even their second babies.

She went out with Stanley to a dinner in the West End at an Italian restaurant. Afterwards they were both very passionate. Maureen, afterwards, was furious with herself: some borderline had been crossed (she supposed she still could be called a virgin?) and now decisions would have to be made.

Stanley was in love with her. She was in love with Stanley. A week later he proposed to her. It was done with a violent moaning intensity that she knew was due to his conflicts over marrying her. She was not good enough. He was not good enough. They were second-best for each other. They writhed and moaned and bit in the car, and agreed to marry. Her eight hundred pounds would make it easier to buy the house in a good suburb. He would formally meet her parents next Sunday.

‘So you’re engaged to Stanley Hunt?’ said Tony.

‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’

‘Caught him – good for you!’

‘He’s caught me, more like it!’

‘Have it your way.’

She was red and angry. He was serious.

‘Come and have a bite?’ he said. She went.

It was a small restaurant, full of office workers eating on luncheon vouchers. She ate fried plaice (’No chips, please’) and he ate steak-and-kidney pudding. He joked, watched her, watched her intently, said finally: ‘Can’t you do better than than?’ He meant, and she knew it, better in the sense she would use herself, in her heart: he meant nice. Like himself. But did that mean that Tony thought she was nice? Unlike Stanley? She did not think she was, she was moved to tears (concealed) that he did. ‘What’s wrong with him then?’ she demanded, casual. ‘What’s wrong with you? You need your head examined.’ He said it seriously, and they exchanged a long look. The two of them sat looking goodbye at each other: the extremely pretty girl at whom everyone in the room kept glancing and remarking on, and the good-looking, dark, rather fat young accountant who was brusque and solemn with disappointment in her. With love for her? Very likely.

She went home silent, thinking of Tony. When she thought of him she needed to cry. She also needed to hurt him.

But she told her parents she was engaged to Stanley, who would be an architect. They would have their own house, in (they thought) Hemel Hempstead. He owned a car. He was coming to tea on Sunday. Her mother forgot the dukes and the film producers before the announcement ended: her father listened judiciously, then congratulated her. He had been going to a football match on Sunday, but agreed, after persuasion, that this was a good-enough reason to stay home.

Her mother then began discussing, with deference to Maureen’s superior knowledge, how to manage next Sunday to best advantage. For four days she went on about it. But she was talking to herself. Her husband listened, said nothing. And Maureen listened, critically, like her father. Mrs Watson began clamouring for a definite opinion on what sort of cake to serve on Sunday. But Maureen had no opinion. She sat, quiet, looking at her mother, a largish ageing woman, her ex-fair hair dyed yellow, her flesh guttering. She was like an excited child, and it was not attractive. Stupid, stupid, stupid – that’s all you are, thought Maureen.

As for Maureen, if anyone had made the comparison, she was ‘sulking’ as she had before over being a model and having to be drilled out of her ‘voice’. She said nothing but: ‘It’ll be all right, Mum, don’t get so worked up.’ Which was true, because Stanley knew what to expect: he knew why he had not been invited to meet her parents until properly hooked. He would have done the same in her place. He was doing the same: she was going to meet his parents the week after. What Mrs Watson, Mr Watson, wore on Sunday; whether sandwiches or cake were served; whether there were fresh or artificial flowers – none of it matterd. The Watsons were part of the bargain: what he was paying in return for publicly owning the most covetable woman anywhere they were likely to be; and for the right to sleep with her after the public display.

Meanwhile Maureen said not a word. She sat on her bed looking at nothing in particular. Once or twice she examined her face in the mirror, and even put cream on it. And she cut out a dress, but put it aside.

On Sunday Mrs Watson laid tea for four, using her own judgment since Maureen was too deeply in love (so she told everyone) to notice such trifles. At four Stanley was expected, and at 3.55 Maureen descended to the living room. She wore: a faded pink dress from three summers before; her mother’s cretonne overall used for housework; and a piece of cloth tied round her hair that might very well have been a duster. At any rate, it was a faded grey. She had put on a pair of her mother’s old shoes. She could not be called plain; but she looked like her own faded elder sister, dressed for a hard day’s spring cleaning.

Her father, knowledgeable, said nothing: he lowered the paper, examined her, let out a short laugh, and lifted it again. Mrs Watson, understanding at last that this was a real crisis, burst into tears. Stanley arrived before Mrs Watson could stop herself crying. He nearly said to Mrs Watson: ‘I didn’t know Maureen had an older sister.’ Maureen sat listless at one end of the table; Mr Watson sat grinning at the other, and Mrs Watson sniffed and wiped her eyes between the two.

Maureen said: ‘Hello, Stanley, meet my father and mother.’ He shook their hands and stared at her. She did not meet his eyes: rather, the surface of her blue gaze met the furious, incredulous, hurt pounce of his glares at her. Maureen poured tea, offered him sandwiches and cake, and made conversation about the weather, and the prices of food, and the dangers of giving even good customers credit in the shop. He sat there, a well-set-up young man, with his brushed hair, his brushed moustache, his checked brown cloth jacket, and a face flaming with anger and affront. He said nothing, but Maureen talked on, her voice trailing and cool. At five o’clock, Mrs Watson again burst into tears, her whole body shaking, and Stanley brusquely left.

Mr Watson said: ‘Well, why did you lead him on, then?’ and turned on the television. Mrs Watson went to lie down. Maureen, in her own room, took off the various items of her disguise, and returned them to her mother’s room. ‘Don’t cry, Mum. What are you carrying on like that for? What’s the matter?’ Then she dressed extremely carefully in a new white linen suit, brown shoes, beige blouse. She did her hair and her face, and sat looking at herself. The last two hours (or week) hit her, and her stomach hurt so that she doubled up. She cried; but the tears smeared her makeup, and she stopped herself with the side of a fist against her mouth.

It now seemed to her that for the last week she had simply not been Maureen; she had been someone else. What had she done it for? Why? Then she knew it was for Tony: during all that ridiculous scene at the tea table, she had imagined Tony looking on, grinning, but understanding her.

She now wiped her face quite clear of tears, and went quietly out of the house so as not to disturb her father and mother. There was a telephone booth at the corner. She stepped calm and aloof along the street, her mouth held (as it always was) in an almost smile. Bert from the grocer’s shop said: ‘Hey, Maureen, that’s a smasher. Who’s it for?’ And she gave him the smile and the toss of her head that went with the street and said: ‘You, Bert, it’s all for you.’ She went to the telephone booth thinking of Tony. She felt as if he already knew what had happened. She would say: ‘Let’s go and dance, Tony.’ He would say: ‘Where shall I meet you?’ She dialled his number, and it rang and it rang. She stood holding the receiver, waiting. About ten minutes – more. Slowly she replaced it. He had let her down. He had been telling her, in words and without, to be something, to stay something, and now he did not care, he had let her down.

Maureen quietened herself and telephoned Stanley.

All right then, if that’s how you want it, she said to Tony.

Stanley answered, and she said amiably: ‘Hello.’

Silence. She could hear him breathing, fast. She could see his affronted face.

‘Well, aren’t you going to say anything?’ She tried to make this casual, but she could hear the fear in her voice. Oh yes, she could lose him and probably had. To hide the fear she said: ‘Can’t you take a joke, Stanley?’ and laughed.

‘A joke!’

She laughed. Not bad, it sounded all right.

‘I thought you’d gone off your nut, clean off your rocker …’He was breathing in and out, a rasping noise. She was reminded of his hot breathing down her neck and her arms. Her own breath quickened, even while she thought: I don’t like him, I really don’t like him at all … and she said softly: ‘Oh Stan, I was having a bit of a giggle, that’s all.’

Silence. Now, this was the crucial moment.

‘Oh Stan, can’t you see – I thought it was all just boring, that’s all it was.’ She laughed again.

He said: ‘Nice for your parents, I don’t think.’

‘Oh they don’t mind – they laughed after you’d left, though first they were cross.’ She added hastily, afraid he might think they were laughing at him: ‘They’re used to me, that’s all it is.’

Another long silence. With all her willpower she insisted that he should soften. But he said nothing, merely breathed in and out, into the receiver.

‘Stanley, it was only a joke, you aren’t really angry, are you, Stanley?’ The tears sounded in her voice now, and she judged it better that they should.

He said, after hesitation: ‘Well, Maureen, I just didn’t like it, I don’t like that kind of thing, that’s all.’ She allowed herself to go on crying, and after a while he said, forgiving her in a voice that was condescending and irritated: ‘Well, all right, all right, there’s no point in crying, is there?’

He was annoyed with himself for giving in, she knew that, because she would have been. He had given her up, thrown her over, during the last couple of hours: he was pleased, really, that something from outside had forced him to give her up. Now he could be free for the something better that would turn up – someone who would not strike terror into him by an extraordinary performance like this afternoon’s.

‘Let’s go off to the pictures, Stan …’

Even now, he hesitated. Then he said, quick and reluctant: ‘I’ll meet you at Leicester Square, outside the Odeon, at seven o’clock.’ He put down the receiver.

Usually he came to pick her up in the car from the corner of the street.

She stood smiling, the tears running down her face. She knew she was crying because of the loss of Tony, who had let her down. She walked back to her house to make up again, thinking that she was in Stanley’s power now: there was no balance between them, the advantage was all his.

Out of the Fountain (#ulink_a2f95d59-fb26-5b64-b05d-3b14ba11d264)

I could begin, There was once a man called Ephraim who lived in … but for me this story begins with a fog. Fog in Paris delayed a flight to London by a couple of hours, and so a group of travellers sat around a table drinking coffee and entertaining each other.

A woman from Texas joked that a week before she had thrown coins into the fountain in Rome for luck – and had been dogged by minor ill-fortune ever since. A Canadian said he had spent far too much money on a holiday and at the same fountain three days ago had been tempted to lift coins out with a magnet when no one was looking. Someone said that in a Berlin theatre last night there had been a scene where a girl flung money all about the stage in a magnificently scornful gesture. Which led us on to the large number of plays and novels there are where money is trampled on, burned, flung about or otherwise ritually scorned; which is odd, since such gestures never take place in life. Not at all, said a matron from New York – she had seen with her own eyes some Flower Children burning money on a side-walk to show their contempt for it; but for her part what it showed was that they must have rich parents. (This dates the story, or at least the fog.)

All the same, considering the role money plays in all our lives, it is odd how often authors cause characters to insult dollar bills, roubles, pound notes. Which enables audience, readers, to go home, or to shut the book, feeling cleansed of the stuff? Above it?