The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [104]
“No, the thing about the boss, young Paul,” Geoff said, with a quick glance over his shoulder, “is he had a very bad war.”
“Oh, did he, right …,” said Paul, busying himself with the taps and then with the damp curtain of roller towel.
“Prisoner of war,” said Geoff. “He never talks about it, so for god’s sake don’t mention it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t, would I,” said Paul, “obviously.”
Geoff finished, jiggled, zipped up his wonderfully tight fly, and came over to the basins, where he looked at himself in the mirror with no sign of the dissatisfaction Paul had felt. He jutted his jaw, and turned his head both ways with a stroking hand. His roundish, full-lipped face was sharpened up by a pair of handsome sideburns, shaved forward at the bottom into dark points. “Sorry to say,” he said, “he’s a bit of a nervous wreck. Pathetic, really. He ought to have a much bigger branch than this. Brilliant brain, they say, but can’t take the strain. Feels he can’t go anywhere alone. There’s a word for it …”
“Yes. Agoraphobia?”
“That’s it. Hence the girls walking him home.” He ran the hot tap and the geyser flared up again. “At least he says that’s the reason …” Paul found he was looking at him in the mirror, one eyebrow raised, and he sniggered and coloured and looked down. He wasn’t nearly ready to joke about the other staff. He knew he had picked up on certain atmospheres between them, thought he glimpsed little histories; but any sort of sexual joke seemed to threaten him with exposure too. He knew he couldn’t bring them off. Geoff came up close to him to use the towel; he had a sharp five o’clock smell, smoke, bri-nylon and faded aftershave. “Well, mustn’t keep My Fair Lady waiting,” he said. He was walking out with a girl from the National Provincial, the rival bank across the square, a fact which the girls at the Midland seemed to think a bit off.
When Paul got back into the Public Space Mr. Keeping was just coming out of the Manager’s office. He held a light raincoat folded over his arm, and carried a dark brown trilby. Paul scanned him nervously for signs of his weakness, his war-time trauma. The dominant impression, of course, was his baldness, the great square blank of brow the home and symbol of that brilliant brain. Below it his features seemed rather small and provisional. He had dry, oddly rimless lips, and his smiles drew the corners of his mouth down with a confusing suggestion of distaste. When they were outside he stayed on the step to hear the successive muffled shocks of the door being locked and bolted from within. Then he settled his hat, with a forward tilt, low on his brows. At once he had a charming and even mischievous look. His guarded grey eyes, in the shadow of the brim, now seemed almost playful. And with a little bow, a little questioning hesitation—it was almost as though he expected Paul to take his arm—they set off up the broad slope of the marketplace, Paul instead earnestly gripping his briefcase, while Mr. Keeping, with his raincoat over his arm, had the air of a mildly curious visitor to the town.
Paul wished Geoff hadn’t told him about Mr. Keeping’s mental problems—and felt anxiously uncertain whether Mr. Keeping himself would expect him to know about them. Smiling vaguely, he took in nothing of the shops and people he was staring at with such apparent alertness. His sense of the walk as an opportunity to get in the Manager’s good books was undermined by his fear that he’d been singled out for some kind of correction or discomfiting pep-talk. He saw Hannah Gearing across the square climbing into the Shrivenham bus as if leaving him to his fate. “And how is your mother?” said Mr. Keeping.
“All right, thank you, sir,” said Paul. “She manages pretty well.”
“I hope she can manage without you for the week.”
“Well, my aunt lives