The Eloquence of Desire

Chapter 1 The tube rattled and shook. A punishing series of jerks swung George round into awkward, precarious positions as he clung onto a strap. The light bulb above his head flickered and swayed; the crossword clues jumped. Newspaper clutched in one hand, he took to watching his fellow commuters, observing their untroubled, ritualised state. At Chalk Farm, several seats were vacated; he squeezed past a man just about to deposit his mackintosh on the seat beside him. Their knees collided. They grunted apologies, acknowledgements; the other man resumed reading his paper. George lit a cigarette. Would he really miss this journey to and from work? Inconceivable to believe that this was the last time he would travel from a respectable job in the City. But he enjoyed this irksome form of travel: the daily struggle to find a seat, the jostling, the intimacy of strangers’ bodies - a constant source of jocular comments with the secretaries when he finally arrived at work. Besides, the journey gave him a feeling of belonging, of fitting into place. Now, he would be left to flail, aimless, purposeless, without status or recognition. Exactly in fact what Moorcroft had in mind when he made his decision, when he chose the penalty for his employee; one that would mean there was no risk of them meeting again. George thought of Moorcroft’s flattened tone, the anger held in, zipped up behind the doughy features. The plans for George’s future in the firm useless, discarded, his place taken by a nodding, cheerful young man. He watched the newly arrived commuters as they stepped into the carriage, pushed their way down the tube, the odours from their damp clothes mingling, giving off varying degrees of mustiness: London grime, or smoke from airless offices. A woman wearing a blue swing coat glanced along the carriage, casting around for an empty seat. Her pale skin, the searching green eyes, reminded him of Emma. Briefly, he felt his breath catch; he stood, clambered back over his neighbour and indicated for her to take his seat. And so his mind stayed with Emma when he knew he should be working out a strategy for telling Dorothy his news. But Emma was never far away; like the glitter balls in dance halls, she would slowly rotate in his memory, different facets reappearing, as the hues changed in her auburn hair. The tube had come above ground; it continued to roar along the track, as if desperate for this newly found fresh air. Finally, it stopped at Golders Green. George stepped out on the icy platform, buttoned his coat and started the walk home. But he took his time, ignoring the freezing temperature that was numbing the blood in his veins. When he stood with his hand on the gate latch, he could not stop his hands shaking. Studying the house, he tried to calculate Dorothy’s mood. There was a time when she would instinctively know when he was outside the house, the front door would open, a smile would welcome him in. He made his way up the path and stamping his feet on the doorstep, remained, fighting the impulse to turn and run. His fingers gripped and turned the key. No point in delaying further. He pushed the door open and stood on the mat, puddles forming at his feet. Not that he could be blamed for that, or the snow which he would soon be treading into the carpet. “Darling,” he said, when Dorothy appeared. “Sorry I’m a bit late.” “I was beginning to wonder…,” she began. She hung his coat and umbrella under the stairs, put his briefcase in the corner; everything as normal, routines maintained. Had she forgotten about his meeting with Moorcroft this afternoon? Or was this simply her way of coping? Bending forward he went to kiss her on the cheek. The pleasure he felt when she turned her face towards him gave him renewed strength; a hurdle had been cleared. He followed her into the sitting room, watching her skirt ripple round her legs as she walked quickly across the carpet. Standing with his back to her, he poured out two sherries. Suitable ways of telling her ran through his mind; he wondered whether the letter in his pocket had become sodden and illegible, the message completely destroyed. He should have planned this moment more efficiently, now he did not know how to tell her, had not considered how to soften the impact of his news. “What did Moorcroft say?” She was sitting on the leatherette sofa, her legs crossed neatly at the ankles, the toe of her black pump tapping the carpet. Absurd of him to think she had forgotten, even momentarily. She extracted a cigarette from a packet and stared at him expectantly. “You know that my firm has contacts all over the Far East?” She nodded, placed her lit cigarette in a glass ashtray, where it balanced uncertainly. She rolled the beads of her necklace between finger and thumb. The smoke rose in twirls from her cigarette; she watched it deliberately, studying the patterns with wide eyes, waiting. It appeared to George she had not made the connection, did not think this fact relevant to their future. He slid along the sofa towards her. “Moorcroft has found a new position for me in Malaya. A town called Ipoh. Export business.” Done, he had told her. His shoulders slackened. A hand was placed on her knee. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m truly sorry for…” She removed his hand and stood. “Malaya!” He could almost follow the trace of blood departing from her face. “Malaya,” she repeated. “Abroad. I’ve never been abroad before. No.” She retrieved her smouldering cigarette from the ashtray, inhaled deeply, started to cough, moved unsteadily to the bay window. “No,” she said again. Swallowing hard, George kept his eyes on the bars of the electric fire, glowing like the devil he felt was in him. All he could think of saying now was the repeated apology. “When? What about Susan?” She was standing over him now. “Can’t he get you something different? Here?” He shook his head, tried to touch her hand before it was snatched away. “I’ve got a letter.” The contents were memorised, but he extracted the letter from his pocket, unfolded the crumpled paper. “We have to leave quite soon. The boat departs on the tenth of January.” She stretched her hand out. He should have bought that box of Milk Tray, for once bypass his dislike for queues with dilly-dallying females, loitering, chatting to the shop-keepers. An attempt to sweeten the poison would have been worth the wait. He watched her face as she scrutinized the contents. Her hair was neatly tied in a blue chiffon scarf, the same colour as her eye shadow. A wisp of brown hair had escaped from the scarf and tumbled down a cheek. She started to shake as she discarded the letter beside her. But if he tried to comfort her, she was bound to push him away. Suddenly he realised how cold the house was. There was no fire in the grate, a wind was whining down the vacant chimney; it blew the letter back onto the floor again where it lay, the spidery handwriting uppermost, the imparted news laid bare. Moorcroft’s face returned to George, stubbornly remaining in his vision. “And do you have any choice in the matter?” Her voice was toneless, measured. “I could always turn it down. Try my luck back in Manchester.” “Start from the bottom again? Impossible. I won’t let you.” Her clenched fist landed on the arm of the sofa. Relief passed through him. What would he have done if she had agreed to that? Manchester. Rain, grey, descending in icy torrents; colourless offices in gaunt, humourless buildings. No, he could not have returned to Manchester. “Moorcroft is punishing us, George. Susan and me, for your actions. For your thoughtlessness, your selfishness... what you did. Does he realise that? It’s us he’s punishing. Not you.” Everything she said was true. His actions had disgusted, appalled everyone that now knew. Moorcroft had said as much a few hours earlier. He picked up the letter from the floor, folded it, replaced it in his pocket. He noticed how cold Dorothy looked; saw the tips of her fingers were pink. He asked her if he should light a fire. She stared at him. “What about Susan?” she asked again. “Her school, her friends? What plans do you have for her? Where will we live? What about all this, our furniture? My new settee?” Hands steady now, she poured herself another sherry. George waited expectantly, fiddling with the empty glass on his knee. No top-up was offered. A bauble on the Christmas tree caught the light as it turned. Fleetingly, his eyes strayed to it. “What will I tell my parents? Can you imagine Grace’s reaction?” She tugged at a strand of hair. So many questions. What else did he expect? But if there was a way of being transported back two years, of reliving the meeting with Emma, he would not be able to resist breaking the same rules. Only given a second chance, he would take more precautions, adhering to the principles of care, of secrecy. How many times had he relived the moment of discovery, reinvented the passing of events? And still he did not know how much Dorothy had told her family, her friends, the neighbours. It would not be like her to admit to her shame; for that is how she saw it, he knew that. Lifting the electric fire to one side, he poked at the ashes in the fire place. “When is Susan due back?” Uncertain whether to build a fire, he traced a circle in the fallen ashes. Though he longed to feel some warmth seep into him, bring some cheer into their home, he replaced the poker against the surround. “I’ll tell her.” Dorothy stood, moved away. “I’ll do all the explaining. She’s staying at a friend’s for tea after Guides. Not a word from you when she comes back. Not until I’ve spoken to her.” She was staring at a photo of Susan, taken the year before on Brighton Pier. George looked too, remembered the day he took it, the wind catching Susan’s dress, blowing it out like an inflated beach ball. She turned, so her back was to him and he wondered whether she was about to cry. Would she respond to a show of gentleness, the care he still felt for her? “All day I’ve been thinking about this meeting. I even caught myself praying this afternoon.” There were no tears in her voice; instead she gave a forced laugh. “I thought they’d give you a second chance, simply not promote you for a couple of years. Perhaps even a transfer to another office. But this? I never imagined this. I don’t want to go to Malaya. I like it here. Why can’t he give you another job here?” Her voice was rising. “Can you ask him for an alternative?” Best that she did not know how close he had got to joining the queues at the Labour Exchange, for that is how it might have been. He stared down at the rug and told her no, there was no point in that. “Moorcroft knew my father,” he said. “Said he was being lenient because of it.” She said nothing to this, but stared blankly at the Christmas tree. “I’ll get supper.” A waft of her perfume caught him unawares as she reached towards the table for her glass. He looked up at her; their eyes met for a second, before she straightened and left the room, her petticoat rustling beneath her woollen dress. The fireplace looked forlorn, abandoned, ash with dust forming a thin skin on the hearth. He shifted his eyes to The Times lying on the footstool, the crossword still empty, beckoning. Folding the news-paper carefully into four, he tucked it into his pocket and went through to the dining room. The hatch was closed and for a minute he hesitated, listening to Dorothy bustling in the kitchen, filling a saucepan with water, lighting the gas. He opened the hatch, peered through into the kitchen, watched her stir gravy on the stove, one hand resting on her hip. “We’ll have servants to do all that. An amah, a cook. You won’t have to lift a finger.” Surely, Dorothy would like that, at least. There was no reply. He sat down at the table. The smell of steak and kidney pie grew more intense with her footsteps as they neared the dining room. Ignoring his eyes which followed her every move, she settled the pie on the table, retrieved the plates from the hatch. “And boarding school’s not so bad. It can be quite enjoyable.” Perhaps the regime was not so cruel for girls. Involuntarily, his left eye started to twitch. “You told me it was awful, that you’ll never forget it. I remember you saying how the experience had affected you. Forever, you’d said.” She was staring at the pie. Steam curled gracefully towards the ceiling. “Do you think she’ll manage any better than you?” He recalled the terror of watching his own parents disappearing into a cloud of steam, the friendly chug altered to a mean hiss, as the train moved away, taking them to India. But that was before the war, such a long time ago. “It’s different now. Susan will be fine. She’ll like staying with Grace and Tom in the holidays,” George said. “Grace will think her prayers have been answered. At last an opportunity to have a child.” Dorothy’s tone was bitter, full of sarcasm. “A prime opportunity for her to mould her niece in her ways.” A deep sigh followed. “Couldn’t she come with us?” He did not answer. He was remembering standing in the corridor outside the dorm: mid-winter, no shirt, bare feet. He jolted as she repeated her question. “We’ll have to see.” Now was not the time to tell her of the drink with Jenkins, the information he had gleaned about Malaya, the reason he was late. The potatoes and peas on his plate were growing cold. He picked at the pastry for a while, then gave up. Rubbing his eye he looked across the table; Dorothy was staring at her untouched food, her hand turning the fork over and over. Desperately, he wanted to confide in her, tell her what he knew about Malaya. It would be cruel not to give her some inkling, at least impart a proportion of what he had learnt. But he had to allow her time, give her that at least. The initial outburst was only natural, but he knew that tomorrow she would want to know more details. The newspapers carried so little news of British outposts, preferring only to relay the good, the ceremonial events; or, when they chose to report on disturbances in the Empire, embellishing the stories with tales of British heroes. And why would she bother scouring the papers for news of a country in the South China Seas? Of the Emergency in Malaya, even he had known very little, before his chat with Jenkins. A disagreement between the natives, he remembered reading in The Times that was dealt with effectively by the British Army. Too many wars, Jenkins had said. The public are sick of them, scared of the Communists, terrified of an invasion. Best to keep them unaware of the reality of the Emergency. Dorothy collected the dinner plates. He touched her lightly on her arm, a token of their old bond. Her eyes closed briefly, before she returned to the kitchen. But she had not pushed his hand away, or lashed out at him, as she had a couple of weeks before. A gust of wind rattled the window; he got up and drew the curtain back, listened to cats howling, scrapping in the dark. His face stared back at him, from a blackness he could not penetrate. Adjusting his focus, he caught sight of the frozen lawn. The snow had stopped, the branches of the apple tree were motionless. Shadows, elongated, wandering in the wind, gave an unfamiliar, peculiar look to the garden. And the door to his shed creaked and moaned; the place where he used to sit on sunny Sunday afternoons, thinking of Emma, dreaming of touching her silky skin. Dorothy returned with the coffee. No pudding tonight; he was tired of the after-taste of tinned peaches anyway, cloying, like paper glue. “I hear there’s a magnificent array of tropical fruits in Malaya. You might like them.” He leaned across the table towards her. “You can learn to play bridge.” There was a time, he remembered, when Dorothy’s mouth would turn up, and dimples would form when he brought the cards out to play his tricks for Susan. A sigh dispelled the vision. “It could have been worse,” he said. Immediately, he regretted his futile remark. Picking her knife up, she played with it, running her finger along the cutting edge. “Have you forgotten why you’ve been sent there?” She dropped two sugar lumps into her coffee, her features rigid. In a curious way, her question was equivocal. The reason for his exile would never be far from his thoughts. He could not forget Emma, despite all his attempts to rid her from his conscience. Lately, he would attempt to remove the image of her face, he would try and replace her memory with a picture of Dorothy, her angular features, with brown eyes, deep and questioning. The front door burst open and Susan’s voice filled the emptiness between them. “Not a word to her,” Dorothy said, her voice low. “Understand?” She stood, gripped his wrist. Her face was devoid of colour. “Let me deal with this.” Turning to face the opening door, George watched his daughter as she entered the dining room, saw her smile slowly dim, as she looked first at Dorothy then at him.