An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [7]
When Bunny removed his mackintosh the belt swung out and tipped over the milk jug on the table nearest to the hat stand. The pink cloth was so boldly starched the milk wobbled in a tight globule beside the sugar bowl. Bunny didn’t notice. The occupants of the table, three elderly ladies hung with damp fox furs, apologised.
Stella said she needed to keep her coat on.
‘You’re drenched,’ protested Meredith.
‘It’s not important,’ she said. Dressing that morning neither she nor Lily had bargained on her frock being seen. It was her best frock, her party frock, but the velvet attracted the dust. Time enough to buy new clothes, Lily had said, when and if she got the job.
As Meredith advanced between the tables a little shiver of excitement disturbed the room. The women, the afternoon shoppers, recognised him. There was a hitching of veils, a snapping of handbags as they slipped out powder compacts and began to titivate; pretending not to notice, they were all eyes. The manageress made a point of coming over to explain there had been a run on confectioneries. She boasted she was in control of two Eccles cakes. Mr Potter had only to say the word and they were his. ‘How very kind,’ he murmured.
‘I’m not hungry,’ said Stella, and stared into the distance as though she glimpsed things not visible to other people. Almost immediately she adjusted her lips into a half smile; often when she thought she was looking soulful Uncle Vernon accused her of sullenness. She felt ill at ease and put it down to Meredith’s monocle. One eye monstrously enlarged, he was studying the wall beyond her left shoulder. She tried to say something, but her tongue wouldn’t move. It was disconcerting to be struck dumb. Ever since she could remember she had chatted to Lily’s lodgers. Most of them had spoken dully of their homes, of the twin beds with matching valances; the sort of vegetables that grew best on their allotments. They had flourished hazy snapshots of wives with plucked eyebrows, of small children in striped bathing costumes messing about in rock pools. A few, in drink, had overstepped the mark and attempted to kiss her; one had succeeded, in the hall when she was pulling the dead leaves off the aspidistra. Though she had made a face and afterwards scrubbed her mouth on the roller towel, she hadn’t minded. None of them had ignored her.
‘How can I shut my eyes to it?’ moaned Bunny. ‘Disloyalty is unforgivable.’
‘I don’t agree,’ said Meredith. ‘There are worse things. Malice, for instance.’ The monocle jumped from the bone of his brow and bounced against his shirt front.
‘I know a man,’ Stella said, ‘who never closes his eyes. He can’t, not even when he’s asleep. His aeroplane crash-landed in Holland and his face caught fire. They peeled skin from his shoulders to fashion new eyelids, but they didn’t work.’ She opened her own eyes wide and stopped blinking.
‘How interesting,’ said Meredith.
‘When his sweetheart came to visit him she threw him over and omitted to return the ring. Afterwards she sent him a letter saying she knew she was a bad lot but she was afraid the eyelids would get passed on to the children. He says the worst thing is people thinking he looks fierce when most days he’s weeping inside.’
‘Oh hell,’ Bunny said. Scales of Eccles cake drifted from his shocked mouth.
Meredith appeared to be listening, but Stella could tell his mind was wandering. She had the curious feeling she reminded him of someone else, someone he couldn’t put a name to. Earlier she had thought him insipid: his complexion too fair, his expression too bland. He had taken so little notice of her that she suspected he was perceptive only about himself. Now, in the slight flaring of his nostrils, the distainful slant of his head, she saw that he judged her naive. But for the discoloration of those tapering, nicotine-stained fingers drumming the tablecloth, she might have been afraid of him.
For a moment she considered giving way to another fit of coughing; instead she began to tell him about Lily and Uncle Vernon and the Aber House Hotel. She had nothing