Ten Tales Tall and True

Homeward Bound

This thirty-year-old college lecturer is big, stout, handsome, with the innocent baby face of a man used to being served by women, the sulky underlip of one who has never been served as much as he wants. It is Sunday afternoon. He compares the dial of his wristwatch with that of a small ornate clock under a glass dome on his mantelpiece. Both indicate 2.49. He sighs and looks critically round the apartment like a mechanic surveying a machine that has stopped working for him. Walls are pale grey, woodwork white, the moss-green fitted carpet harmonizes (not too obviously) with his immaculate dark-green sweater. A large low bed lacks foot and headboard, has big blue cushions strewn on it, and derives an air of invitation from a nearby coffee table on which lie a board supporting cold roast chicken, oatcakes, pat of butter, knife, salt-cellar; a salver of apples, peaches, grapes; a dish of small bright cakes and sweets. A few stones in the marble fireplace look nothing like coal, but bright flames among them give the air warmth which would make undressing easy, without making clothed people sweat. Through an oriel window a view of sunlit treetops can be blotted out (when wished) by smoothly running floor-length curtains, curtains with the light tone of his finely creased flannel trousers. Yet he sighs again, not feeling truly at home. Maybe an apple will help. He goes determinedly to the table but hesitates to disturb his arrangement of the fruit. A bell chimes softly. Smiling with relief he leaves the room, crosses a small lobby, opens the front door and says, “Vlasta.”

A bitterly sobbing woman runs in past him. He looks out into the corridor, sees nobody else, closes the door.

Returning to the main room he stands watching the woman and thoughtfully rubbing his chin. She crouches on an easy chair, handbag on lap, sobbing into handkerchief. She is bony and fortyish with wild black hair flowing over the shoulders of her fur coat, a long black skirt and histrionic earrings. The sobs lessen. He tiptoes to the coffee table, lifts and places it softly near her right elbow, selects an apple and sits on a chaise-longue facing her. Cautiously he bites the apple. Her sobbing stops. She removes mirror from handbag and blots off tears, taking care not to damage make-up. He says softly, “I’m glad you came. Eat something. It sometimes helps.”

She says hoarsely, “You are always so sweet to me, Alan.”

She restores mirror and hanky to handbag, tears a wing from the chicken, bites, swallows and says, “Half an hour ago I threw out Arnold. He did not want to go. I had to call the police. He was drunk and violent. He cracked my tortoise, Alan.”

“You were right to call the police.”

“He was sweet to begin with — just like you. And then he went bad on me. Eventually they all go bad on me — except you.”

She bites and swallows more chicken.

Then looks around and says, “Are you expecting someone?”

He smiles sadly, says, “Expecting someone? I only wish I was.”

“But this food! … And the room. You did not always keep it so spick and span.”

“I do nowadays. I’ve become a real old woman since you left me, Vlasta, hoovering the carpet, dusting the clock — I’ve even grown cranky about food. I don’t eat regular meals any longer. I keep plates of fruit and cold chicken beside me and have a nibble whenever I feel like it.”

“How odd! But have you no little girlfriend? No mistress?”

With a harsh laugh Alan throws the apple core into a brass coal-scuttle he uses as a waste basket and says, “None! None! I know plenty of women. I’ve invited some of them up here, and they’ve come. A few stayed the night. But (I don’t know why) they all bored me. After you they were all so insipid.”

“I knew it!” cries Vlasta exultantly, “Yes I knew it! When I left you I told myself, You are destroying this man. You have taught him all he knows and now that you leave him his confidence will vanish also. In fact you are castrating him! But I had to do it. You were sweet but… oh so deadly dull. No imagination. And so I had to leave.”

“It was agony,” he assures her.

“I knew. I was sorry for you but I needed excitement. I will take my coat off, this room is far too warm, how can you bear it?”

She stands and flings her chicken bone into the scuttle. But Alan has risen first. Slipping behind her he helps remove the coat murmuring, “Perhaps you’ll remove more before you leave.”

“What a fool you are Alan — you still know nothing about women. It was four years ago, not last week we ceased to be lovers. I came here for peace, not erotic excitement. In the last three hours I have had more excitement than many of the bourgeoisie experience in a lifetime.”

“Sorry!” murmurs Alan, and carries coat to bed. He lays it there then sits on bedfoot, right elbow on knee, right hand supporting chin like Rodin’s Thinker.

“I am a dreadful woman, I destroy men!” says Vlasta, yawning and stretching her arms, “Arnold kept shouting that while the policemen dragged him away.”

“Please sit beside me. I’m very lonely.”

She sits beside him saying, “Think of Mick McTeague, old before his time and drinking like a fish.”

“He was a sixty-year-old alcoholic when you first met him.”

“He’s worse now. Last week I saw Angus pushing his baby in a pram in the park, a slave to a woman too foolish to understand him.”

“He seems perfectly happy to me,” says Alan, looking at her, “We play snooker sometimes.” She laughs aloud at his naivety.

“Oh Alan have you forgotten everything I taught you? Beneath the calmest of lives all sorts of dreadful things are happening: spiritual rapes, murders, incests, tortures, suicides. And the calmer the surface the worse what is hidden beneath.”

Her perfume fills his nostrils, her body is an inch away, with real excitement he declares, “I love the way you turn life into an adventure, an exciting, idiotic adventure.”

“IDIOTIC?” she cries, glaring.

“No no no no!” he explains hastily, “That was a slip of the tongue, a device by which my conventional bourgeois hypocricy attempted to defend itself.”

“Hm!” she says, only slightly placated, “I see you remember some of the things I taught you.”

She sits beside him again, yawns and says, “Ahoo I am very tired. It is exhausting work, explaining life to thick policemen.”

She lies back on the bed with her face upward and eyes closed.

A minute passes in silence. He stealthily pulls off his shoes, lies beside her and unfastens the top button of her blouse. Without opening her eyes she says in a small voice, “I told you I was in no mood.”

“Sorry.”

He sighs and resumes the Rodin’s Thinker pose. After a while she says lazily, “I love you for being so easily discouraged.”

He looks hopefully round. Her eyes are open, she is smiling, then laughing and sitting up and embracing him.

“Oh Alan, I can refuse you nothing! You are like an ugly old comfortable sofa I must always fall back upon.”

“Always at your service!” he assures her. They stand, he pulls off his sweater, she starts removing her blouse and a bell chimes.

The doorbell chimes. He stands as if paralysed and whispers, “Fuck.”

She cries, “You WERE expecting someone!”

“No. Nonsense. Ignore it. Please speak more quietly Vlasta!”

The bell chimes.

“Do you tell me you do not know who is there?”

“I swear it.”

“Then go to the door and send them away,” cries Vlasta, rapidly fastening her blouse, “Or I will!” The bell chimes. She strides to the lobby, he dodges before her and stands with his back to the front door hissing, “Be sensible Vlasta.”

“Open that door or I will scream!”

Through clenched teeth he mutters, “Listen! This might be, just might be, a young woman I greatly admire and respect. She must not be upset, you hear? She must not be upset!”

The bell chimes. Vlasta smiles coolly, folds her arms, says, “So open the door.”

He does. A stout man wearing a raincoat and trilby hat stands outside. He says, “Scottish Power. Can I read your meter sir?”

“Yes,” says Alan. He opens a cupboard (Vlasta has strolled back to the main room) and the man directs a torch beam on the dials of a squat black box.

“Sorry I’m late Alan,” says a small pretty girl of perhaps eighteen who strolls in.

“Hullo,” says Alan. She goes into the big room and Alan hears her say brightly, “Hullo — my name is Lillian Piper.”

He hears Vlasta say, “You are one of his students of course.”

“Yes!”

“What a coward he is.”

“In Australia,” says the stout man writing figures on a pad, “All meters have dials which can be read from outside the main door. I wish we had that system here sir.”

“Yes. Goodbye,” says Alan shutting the stout man out. Then he sighs and joins the ladies.

Vlasta (grim faced, arms folded, legs astride) stands in the middle of the room. Lillian stands near the fire looking thoughtfully at the rumpled bed-cover and his sweater on the floor beside it. “Lillian,” says Alan, “This is Vlasta — Vlasta Tchernik, old friend I haven’t seen for years. She called unexpectedly ten or twenty minutes ago.”

“He was seducing me when the meter man called,” explains Vlasta, “He had my blouse off.”

“Is that true?” Lillian asks him.

“Yes.”

“Oh Alan.”

Lillian sits down on a chaise-longue, Alan on the easy chair. They seem equally depressed. Vlasta, glaring from one to the other, feels excluded, awaits an opening.

At last Alan tells Lillian, “I wish you had come when you said you would. I’d given you up.”

“I was only forty minutes late! I’ve been very punctual till now.”

“I know. So I thought… since you didn’t even phone… that you’d suddenly tired of me.”

“Why did you think that? We got on so well the last time we met… Didn’t we?”

“Oh I enjoyed myself. But did you?”

“Of course! I told you so.”

“Maybe you were just being polite. A lot of women are polite at those times. After I’d waited fifteen minutes I thought, She was being polite when she said she enjoyed herself last time. And after twenty minutes I thought, She’s not coming. She’s met someone more interesting.”

Lillian stares at him.

“He has NO self-confidence!” cries Vlasta triumphantly, “He is a weakling, a coward, a liar, a cheat, and DULL! Oh so deadly dull.”

“Nonsense,” says Lillian, but without much force,

“He says very clever things sometimes.”

“Can you give me an example?”

Lillian thinks hard and eventually says, “We went a walk last Sunday and he said, The countryside looks very green today but I suppose that’s what it’s there for.”

“He was quoting me,” says Vlasta with satisfaction, “And I got it from a book.”

“Were you quoting her?” Lillian asks Alan. He nods. She sighs then tells Vlasta that cleverness isn’t important — that Alan says very sweet sincere things which matter a lot more.

“Oho!” cries Vlasta, inhaling deeply like a war-horse scenting blood, “This really interests me — tell me about these sweet sincere things.” She strides to the chaise-longue and sits beside Lillian.

“Would either of you like a glass of sherry?” asks Alan loudly. He has gone to the fireplace, unstoppered a heavy cut-glass decanter and now tilts it enquiringly above a row of frail glasses on the mantelpiece. The ladies ignore him. He fills a glass, swigs it, then fills and swigs a second. Vlasta says, “Tell me just one of his sweet tender remarks.”

“I’d rather not,” says Lillian shortly.

“Then I will tell one to you. Let me think… yes. When you get in bed together, does he stretch himself and say in a tone of oh such heartfelt gratitude Thank God I’m home again?”

Lillian is too depressed to speak but nods once or twice. Vlasta notices Alan swallow a third sherry and says, “You are trying to give yourself Dutch courage.”

“I’m trying to anaesthetize myself,” he tells her sulkily. Lillian goes to him saying, “Give me the sherry Alan.”

She reaches for the decanter. He gives it to her. She drops it to smash on the hearth tiles and says, “You don’t deserve anaesthetic,” and wanders away from him, clenching her hands and trying not to weep. He stares aghast saying, “Lillian! Lillian!” then sighs, kneels, takes a brass-handled shovel and broom from a stand of fire-irons and starts sweeping up the mess.

But Vlasta is more impressed than he is. She cries, “That was magnificent! You are wonderful, little Lillian! People think I am very fierce and violent because I always tell the truth, but believe me I am too timid to smash furniture.”

Lillian asks harshly, “What other sweet things did he say to you?”

“Stop!” cries Alan. He pitches broom, shovel, broken glass into the scuttle and says firmly, “Leave us, Vlasta, we’re as miserable as you could want us to be.”

He is head and neck taller than Lillian, half a head taller than Vlasta, and for the first time today his bulk suggests dignity. But Vlasta says, “I enjoy myself! I shall not leave,” and answers his stare with a hard bright smile, so he says quietly to Lillian, “Lillian I have been stupid, very stupid. Maybe in a week or two you’ll be able to forgive me, or even sooner, I hope so. I hope so. But this is an indecent situation. Please clear out before she hurts you any more.”

“She didn’t hurt me,” says Lillian, “You did. And I have no intention of being hurt any more. Vlasta! Thank God I’m home again. What other things did he say?”

“I get no pleasure from this conversation!” says Alan loudly, “You two may, I do not. Vivisect me all you like — behind my back. I’m going to my mother’s house. Feel free to use the kitchen if you want a cup of tea. The front door will lock itself when you leave. Have a nice day.”

By now he is in the lobby taking a coat from the cupboard. He hears Lillian say, “He’s very house-proud, isn’t he? How much do you think this cost?”

“Oh a great deal of money,” says Vlasta. “Will you smash it too?”

Through the doorway he sees Lillian standing with her hand on the glass dome over his clock. He drops the coat and goes to her with arms outstretched like a fast sleepwalker saying, “Lillian, no! That has a Mudge pirouette triple escapement oh please please don’t jar the movement!”

Lillian retreats from the clock but grabs a slender clay ornament from the top of a book-case. She holds it straight above her head like a flagstaff saying, “What about this?”

“That is a terracotta by Shanks!” cries Alan in an agony of dread, “By Archibald Shanks, for God’s sake be careful Lillian!”

“Strange how much he cares about things being hurt and how little about feelings being hurt,” says Vlasta. Alan tries to master the situation with college lecturer’s logic.

“In the first place I haven’t tried to hurt people’s feelings, I’ve simply tried to, to, to enjoy myself. In the second place of course things are more important than feelings. Everybody recovers from hurt feelings, if they aren’t children, but damage a well-made clock or ceramic and a certain piece of human labour and skill and talent leaves the world for ever. Please Lillian — put that figurine down.”

“Smash it!” hisses Vlasta.

Lillian has never before had two adult people so interested in what she will do next. It makes her playful. She has also been slightly impressed by the last part of Alan’s speech. The figurine, though too simplified to suggest a personality, is obviously female. Lillian cradles it in her arms, pats the head and says, “Don’t worry little statue, I won’t hurt you if your owner acts like a sensible boy and doesn’t run away to his mummy whenever life gets tough for him. Sit down Alan. What were you going to say about him Vlasta?” She sits beside Vlasta on the sofa. Alan, after a pause, slumps down in the easy chair, notices the chicken, wrenches off a leg and tries to comfort himself by chewing it.

“Have you noticed,” says Vlasta, “How he always plans his seductions with food nearby? Obviously sex and eating are very mixed up inside his brain. I have not worked out what that means yet, but something nasty anyway.”

Alan stares haggardly at the bone in his hand then lays it down.

“Then again,” says Vlasta, “He is not a very passionate lover physically.”

“Isn’t he?” asks Lillian, surprised.

“Oh I do not say that he gives us no pleasure but he depends upon words too much. He keeps whispering these little monologues, erotic fantasies, you know what I mean?” — Lillian nods; Alan sticks his fingers in his ears — “He can get you very excited by mixing this into his foreplay but when he nears the climax he just lies back and leaves all the work to the woman. Eventually this becomes dull. How long have you known him?”

“A fortnight.”

Vlasta looks at Alan and shouts, “Take your fingers out of your ears!”

Lillian holds out the figurine by its feet at the angle of a Nazi salute. Vlasta shouts, “Remember the talent and skill which made this statue! Will you see them leave the world forever because you are ashamed of hearing a few simple facts?”

Alan withdraws fingers from ears and covers his face with them. The women contemplate him for a minute, then Vlasta says, “What monologues has he used on you?”

“The king and queen one.”

“That is new to me.”

“He pretends we are a king and queen making love on top of a tower in the sunlight. There is a little city below with red roofs and a harbour with sailing ships going in and out. The sailors on the sea and farmers on the hills round about can see us from miles away. They’re very glad we’re doing that.”

“Very poetic! Yet the scene is strangely familiar — Ah, I remember now! It is a picture in a book I lent him, Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy. But have you never had to be Miss Blandish?”

Alan stands up looking dazed and walks, snapping fingers, to the bed, on which he flings himself flat with face pressed deep into coverlet. The women arise and follow him, Lillian with the figurine still cradled in her arms. They sit primly on the foot of the bed with Alan’s heels between them.

“No,” says Lillian, “I have never had to be Miss Blandish.”

“He would have made you that eventually. No Orchids for Miss Blandish was a sadistic American thriller which made a great impression on him when he was ten or eleven. It is a pity Britain has no respectable state-inspected brothels, male adolescents here get initiated into sex through books and films which leave them with very strange ideas. Alan is such a milksop that I expected his intimate fantasies to be masochistic — no such luck! I had to be Miss Blandish while he raved like a madman in a phoney Chicago accent. Does that connect with his feelings for food? Yes of course! Too little breast feeding in infancy has made him an oral sadist. At the same time his clinging attitude to objects is a transference from the oral to the anal retention syndrome.”

Alan, without moving, emits a small but sincere scream.

“End of round two,” says Vlasta happily, “Enemy flat on canvas.”

But Lillian is not happy. She lays the figurine carefully on the floor and says sadly, “You know, when he spoke to me at these times I used to feel so special…”

“And now you know you have been to bed with a second-hand record player.”

Speaking with difficulty Alan turns his head sideways and says, “If I — sometimes — said the same thing to both of you — it was only because you both — sometimes — made me feel the same way.”

“How many women have made you feel the same way?” demands Vlasta, then sees Lillian is sobbing. Vlasta places a hand on her shoulder and says hoarsely, “Yes weep, weep little Lillian. I wept when I came here. YOU have not wept yet!” she tells Alan accusingly.

“And I’m not going to,” he declares, sitting up and wriggling down to the bed-foot on Lillian’s side. He hesitates then says awkwardly, “Lillian, I haven’t had time to tell you this before but I love you. I love you.”

He looks at Vlasta and says, “I don’t love you at all. Not one bit. But since you don’t love me either I don’t know why you’re so keen to crush me.”

“You deserve to be crushed, Alan,” says Lillian in a sad remote voice. He wriggles close to her pleading: “I honestly don’t think so! I’ve been selfish, greedy, stupid and I told Vlasta a lot of lies but I never tried to hurt anyone — not even for fun. My main fault was trying to please too many people at the same time, and believe me it would never have happened if only you had been punctual Lillian…”

In order to see her face he stands up and shatters the figurine under foot. The women also stand and look down at the fragments.

Slowly he kneels, lifts the two biggest fragments and holds them unbelievingly at eye-level. He places them carefully on the floor again, his mouth turning down sharply at the corners, then lies flat again on the bed. Lillian sits beside him, supporting herself with an arm across his body. She says sadly, “I’m sorry that happened, Alan.”

“Are you sympathizing?” cries Vlasta scornfully.

“I’m afraid so. He’s crying, you see.”

“You do not think these tears are real?”

Lillian touches his cheek with a fingertip, licks the tip, touches the cheek again and holds out her finger to Vlasta saying, “Yes, they are. Taste one.” Vlasta sits down too, presses Lillian’s hand to her lips, keeps it there. Vlasta says, “What beautiful fingers you have — soft and small and shapely.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I’m more than a little butch, you know. How else could I have given myself to a thing like THAT?”

But Lillian is tired of this game and pulls her fingers away.

And leans closer to Alan, lays her hand gently on his neck and murmurs, “I’m sure Archibald Shanks has made hundreds of little statues. You can always get another.”

In a muffled voice he says, “’Snot just that. I’ve ruined everything between you and me, you and me.

Lillian says, “I don’t hate you, Alan,” and snuggles closer. Vlasta, watching them, feels excluded again, but knows anger and denunciation will exclude her even more. She also feels a softening toward Alan. Is it pity? No, it is certainly not pity, she has no pity for men and enjoys destroying them, especially smart manipulators like Alan. But when you have knocked such a man down, and don’t want to go away and be lonely, what can you do but help set him up again, like a skittle?

“I too cannot exactly hate you Alan,” she says, snuggling close to his other side. And he, with heartfelt gratitude, thanks God he is home again.