Читать книгу Honey for the Ghost - Louis Golding - Страница 7

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Jim Gunning got out of the train at Wareham, to change for the local train that goes south to Corfe Castle and Swanage. It was February, well before the tourist time, so that there were not many people waiting on the platform, and most of these were country folk from round about.

Two women had got out of the London train, and were waiting to go on to Corfe, one middle-aged, the other quite young, possibly her daughter. They looked like anything but country folk, in their fur coats, and with that handsome white leather luggage around their knees. Jim Gunning was not an observant young man, and he had a great deal to occupy his thoughts, but when the elder woman suddenly broke down and blubbered, only two or three feet away from him, he stiffened with embarrassment.

It was worse for the girl, of course. “Poor kid!” he said to himself. Tears stood in her eyes, making them lustrous; they were like blue flowers with rain on them. She was too self-conscious to wipe the tears away. Her cheeks were pink, her lips full and bright red, though they seemed to have no stuff slapped on them. It was only her clothes that looked “posh” and Londonish, he noted. She herself was like a firm, bright apple in a country orchard.

“I wonder what the old party’s moaning about?” he asked himself resentfully. He disliked scenes, even if he was not tied up in them. If a drunken couple quarrelled or made tipsy love in the Underground, he would find it hard not to get into another carriage at the next station. “I suppose the young ’un’s her daughter. Nice-looking kid!” Was the girl going to get married, he speculated, and her ma was kicking up a fuss about losing her? Or perhaps somebody had died, their old man, or the girl’s kid brother? But there was no trace of mourning in their get-up. Ah well! Jim shrugged his shoulders. He was not curious by nature.

The woman got the crying fit down, the local train came chugging in from its siding, the passengers bestowed themselves into their seats. The two “posh” women got into a first-class carriage.

“I hope it turns out all right for them,” Jim summed up. That was the end of them. He settled down into his own thoughts, and they were not bright.

But it was not the end of the two women. They, too, like Jim, got out at Corfe station. The porter came up and took in hand the white leather luggage. Jim took down his fibre suit-case and looked round. He had been informed there would be a man waiting with a car to take him to the sanatorium. Yes, this must be him, the man with the chauffeur’s cap and dark blue coat, who had just come on to the platform. The man paused a moment and looked round, then came up to Jim.

“Are you for Barnham Sanatorium?” he asked. “Name of Gunning?” He pronounced it Gooning, he came from Lancashire, probably.

“Yes.” Jim felt a prick of resentment at this public enunciation of his destination.

“One moment ... sir.” There was a moment’s hesitation over the “sir,” as if between ex-Service man and ex-Service man “mate” would have been seemlier. The two women were advancing towards the wagon. The chauffeur addressed the younger one. “Miss Turvey?” he asked. The young woman nodded. The older one bit her lip. “This way, please!” he requested. The porter went ahead with his load through the barrier. Then the driver turned to Jim again.

“I’ll take your bag, sir!” he said, and put his hand forward. He had accepted the “sir” now. This was Civvy Street.

“That’s all right,” growled Jim. He was not a bloody crock. He could put that driver in a sack, big as he was, and carry him like a rabbit. He lifted his case, and the group moved out through the barrier, into the booking-hall, and so out to the railway approach, where a station wagon was drawn up. The porter stowed the luggage away, the driver opened the door for his passengers. Jim stood aside, while the young woman got in.

“Thank you!” smiled the young one, then the smile swiftly went out of her face again. The elder woman inclined her head remotely. There are two sorts of cloth caps, the one associated with men of leisure on moorlands and the windy decks of ships, the other with worksheds and delivery vans. Jim wore the less elegant sort. The greatcoat, too, was manifestly dyed khaki, and lower ranks. The elder woman got into the wagon, the shoulder averted from Jim, and it remained so.

“The poor old dame,” Jim was saying to himself. “She’s got enough on her mind. She’s a patient, too, eh? That’s what she was moaning about.” But even as the words formed in his mind, a second thought bit at him. “Don’t be a fool! It’s the young one who’s the patient. The bloke came and asked for Miss, not Mrs. Miss. You get that?” He reflected a moment. “It can’t be the young one!” he countered. “Look at her! Sound as an apple! Looks a bit depressed. Of course she does, with the old woman going to howl again any minute! Of course it’s not the young one!”

But the debate did not last long, and there was no heart in it. Of course it was the young woman. A deep gloom took possession of him. He looked beyond the briar-rose-pink cheek of the girl out through the window. It was winter still, anyhow February; you never know where you are with February. (He was quite a connoisseur of the months, for you are brought into very close contact with them on a bicycle, even when your gyrations normally do not exceed the “Nag’s Head” in Holloway and Baker Street Station.)

The grass that ran up the little conical hills and ran down again, was green as baize, like early summer in Regent’s Park. With all those pools gathered in the low places, it was March and April, when the gutters fill and overflow. The trees were December, bare as telegraph-posts. That must be the Corfe Castle he had heard tell about, vast and ruinous and grey under the grey sky.

The two women were saying something to each other, something about a dog. Yes. That hind leg was getting less stiff, wasn’t it, mummy? Ever since those injections, said the mother. It’s really running up and down all those stairs—that’s what brought it on. I wonder, darling, would they let you keep a dog there, you know, at the place?

Then suddenly Jim knew he was simmering with anger. His fist itched to smash a window in. It was a racket, all this! Another of those rackets! Like Parliament! Like the Borough Council! Like the sale of tickets for the Cup Final at Wembley. (In the world of the Jim Gunnings, there is a lively and persistent sense of racketry in high places everywhere. It may not be wholly unfounded.)

This sanatorium business was a racket, too. They had a living to make, the specialists in London, the doctors and nurses and orderlies in sanatoriums. The girl was just as ill as he was! She had had a cold or something, and it was dragging on, it was difficult to get rid of. Something ought to be done about it, mucking up people’s lives in this way. He’d give this place a month, he wouldn’t stand for it a day longer!

His mind flashed back to Sal. He’d promised her three months. All right, he’d put up with it for three months, then pack up kit and back to Holloway. He’d get so drunk that night, he’d not know which was the floor, which the ceiling. Sal, too. She’d be cock-eyed. Do her good. As for the old woman, she could take out the tin tub, fill it with gin, and have a bath in it.

And Dickie ... what could you buy for Dickie next day, when you got over it? A train, an almost full-sized train, large enough for Dickie himself to ride in the tender behind the engine? How about that?

At that moment the young lady coughed; it was a thin whistling cough, at once mournful and strangely triumphant, as if there could be no thought of resistance to it. It went on for a minute or two, and ended when it had dislodged some stuff from below the base of the throat. The girl opened her white leather handbag, removed and unstoppered a blue bottle with great deftness, spat into it, and replaced it. There was a click as she closed the clasp of the handbag. The two women stared before them, as if the tiny episode had not taken place. But they did not talk any more about the dog in the house with all those stairs. They were quite silent.

Jim’s anger had gone out of him like the water from a jug with a crack in it. He was aware of a deep pity for the poor bright-lipped girl.

“Poor kid!” he said to himself. “That’s not a good cough, is it?”

And he was aware, too, of a bewilderment thumping against his forehead, as if a small sand-bag were being swung against it to and fro, rhythmically, dully, straight between the temples.

“What’s it got to do with me, I ask you?” he wanted to know. “What am I in this bus for? Why am I going to that place? That girl—she’s different!”