Every Man for Himself - Beryl Bainbridge [14]
‘There is another impulse,’ I said. ‘Boredom. Which is never absent when you’re around.’
‘That isn’t an impulse,’ he retorted. ‘Merely a feeling.’
I didn’t like playing the boss-man, but with George, who was always so eager to merge into the crowd, it was unavoidable. And it did shut Ginsberg up.
Not that the girls turned a hair; judging by the serene manner in which she surveyed the room Wallis hadn’t even been listening. As for Molly Dodge, I doubt she could ever be put out of countenance. Right from a child she’d been sassy, unlike George, who was always a scaredy-cat and remained so. He’d been a weekly boarder at St Mark’s, which wasn’t usual – a delicate constitution was the excuse but we reckoned his father wanted to keep a bully rein on him – and on Friday nights he travelled the half-hour home on the family’s private train. The Dodges lived in Manchester-by-the-Sea, at Apple Trees, a colonial mansion on the North Shore, and sometimes George invited me along for the weekend. He and I weren’t great friends; it was just good to get away from school once in a while, and besides, George was needy and I felt I owed it to him seeing I was fortunate enough never to have been crushed by circumstances. In the fall it was misty along the shore and all through dinner one heard the melancholy wail of fog-horns and every damn time Molly would whisper, ‘Was that a fart, Morgan?’
Ginsberg kept refilling my glass. I’ll say this for him, blatherskite or not, he wasn’t a sulker, and after all, he’d only voiced what the rest of us felt. Most of our time was spent thinking what we might do with women if only we had the chance. There were houses we could go to, of course, but with girls of our own set there was never the slightest opportunity of trying out even a little of what we’d learnt, which rendered us incapable of behaving naturally in their company. In our best moments, mercifully dominant, we thought of them as sisters or mothers and treated them accordingly; in our worst they were always whores, white and compliant, though we hid such unworthy speculations behind a general attitude of soppy regard. It helped to know that our elders seemed to have got the hang of it, yet often I wondered where love showed up.
I was aware suddenly that Wallis was watching me, and without detachment. It was such an unusual state of affairs I lost composure and pretended to be deeply interested in the scene around me. A waiter was swerving in and out of the tables, holding aloft on the palm of one hand a great serving dish which glittered under the light; it was so heavy it spun him round and he swooped down and rose again like a juggler, at which I clapped my hands and shouted, ‘Well caught, sir.’ From the dais banked with palms came a whine of strings and the tinkle of a piano as the ship’s orchestra battled to be heard above the incessant sea-roar of conversation.
‘Morgan,’ said Wallis, and then fell silent, though she still looked at me.
‘Yes,’ I said, and waited. I did fancy, seeing she was hesitant, that she was about to make amends for having rebuked me so severely over that business of Kitty Webb’s jewels. She wouldn’t apologise, that wasn’t her way, but she possibly intended to soften her words. After all, vulgar was a pretty strong denouncement of something only meant as a joke.
‘That man,’ she said, at last. ‘Who is he?’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t ask,’ I said, deflated. ‘I merely laid him flat on the sidewalk, rang the bell of the nearest house and had the housekeeper send for a constable.’
‘I wasn’t—’ she began.