An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [53]
10
Three days before Christmas Vernon was brushing down the front steps when he saw Meredith crossing the end of the street. He would have ducked inside – he was in his working clothes with not even a stud to his shirt – but Meredith was already calling out a greeting and advancing towards him.
They shook hands. ‘My dear man,’ said Meredith. ‘Not bad news, I hope.’
‘Just the wireless,’ Vernon said, taking a polishing cloth from his pocket and dabbing at his eyes. They listened as from the cellar below came the strains of a deep male voice singing a sentimental ballad. ‘It’s to do with the low notes. They always set me off. I first noticed it in the army when music was compulsory.’
Meredith nodded in sympathy. They both gazed thoughtfully along the wide, grey street lined with blackened houses to where the unfinished transept of the rose-pink cathedral smudged the high white sky. ‘Over the dark still silence,’ quavered Vernon, singing along with the wireless, and was seized with a bout of coughing.
‘That reminds me,’ said Meredith. ‘Is young Stella bronchial by any chance?’
‘She is and she isn’t,’ Vernon said. ‘I mean she’s got the usual amount of congestion, but in her case its aggravated by temperament, if you follow me.’
‘I merely ask because last night she was unable to hold the torch steady. It was just before Peter enters and the night lights blow out. I take it you’ve seen the play?’
‘What night lights?’ asked Vernon.
‘In the nursery scene. Fortunately the coughing didn’t really matter so far as Tinkerbell was concerned . . . the light is supposed to flash erratically . . . but the noise was rather off-putting. Bunny’s put a supply of cough drops in the prompt corner. I just wondered if there was anything radically wrong . . .’
‘There’s nothing wrong with her lungs, if that’s what you mean,’ Vernon said. ‘We’ve had her X-rayed and she’s sound as a bell.’
‘That’s all right then,’ said Meredith.
‘I’d better reimburse you for the sweets,’ Vernon insisted, in a tight unfriendly voice. Clearly something other than the bass notes on the wireless niggled him.
In the end Meredith was forced to accept the threepence thrust into his palm. Taken aback, he mentioned the football match to be fought on New Year’s Day between the Repertory company and the pantomime cast of Treasure Island appearing at the Empire.
‘I haven’t got the wind,’ said Vernon. ‘My kicking days are over.’ Meredith explained it was touch-line supporters they were after rather than players. A charabanc would be leaving from Williamson Square at ten o’clock. ‘Do come,’ he urged. ‘It would be lovely to have you with us.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Vernon, and he stumped up the steps with his polishing cloth and rubbed vigorously at the lion’s-head knocker of the door.
He waited until Meredith had turned the corner before going downstairs to put on his Sunday overcoat. Though all but one of the travellers had decamped for Christmas, he didn’t care to be seen improperly dressed in the hall. He ran back upstairs to telephone Harcourt.
‘I shouldn’t have insisted on him taking the threepence, should I?’ he said.
‘It depends on his tone of voice,’ said Harcourt. ‘Was he annoyed or genuinely anxious?’
‘You didn’t see her, did you?’ accused Vernon. ‘You never got there . . .’
‘We were given a refund,’ protested Harcourt. ‘I can hardly be blamed if the production was cancelled.’
‘The board of governors have noticed her,’ said Vernon. ‘She’s been singled out.’
‘There you are then. There’s nothing to worry about.’
‘All the same,’ said Vernon. ‘Life has a nasty habit of repeating itself.’ He stood with his shoulder pressed against the wall, his gaze fixed on the fanlight. Just then the boom of the one o’clock gun echoed across the river; the glass flushed crimson as the neon sign flashed above the door. He thought of the flares bursting like orange plums in the soot-black night, illuminating the trucks, the humped tanks, the upflung arms of waking men shielding their eyes from the glare. He said, ‘I may have mentioned I saw service in the desert