Tales of the Unexpected(32)

‘No.’

‘Are you a horse?’

‘No.’

‘Well – anyway, you’re an ass – ha, ha – so I think you qualify. I’ll be seeing you later.’

Oh, the agony of those days. To burn Foxley’s toast was a ‘beatable offence’. So was forgetting to take the mud off Foxley’s football boots. So was failing to hang up Foxley’s football clothes. So was rolling up Foxley’s brolly the wrong way round. So was banging the study door when Foxley was working. So was filling Foxley’s bath too hot for him. So was not cleaning the buttons properly on Foxley’s O.T.C. uniform. So was making those blue metal-polish smudges on the uniform itself. So was failing to shine the soles of Foxley’s shoes. So was leaving Foxley’s study untidy at any time. In fact, so far as Foxley was concerned, I was practically a beatable offence myself.

I glanced out of the window. My goodness, we were nearly there. I must have been dreaming away like this for quite a while, and I hadn’t even opened my Times. Foxley was still leaning back in the corner seat opposite me reading his Daily Mail, and through a cloud of blue smoke from his pipe I could see the top half of his face over the newspaper, the small bright eyes, the corrugated forehead, the wavy, slightly oily hair.

Looking at him now, after all that time, was a peculiar and rather exciting experience. I knew he was no longer dangerous, but the old memories were still there and I didn’t feel altogether comfortable in his presence. It was something like being inside the cage with a tame tiger.

What nonsense is this? I asked myself. Don’t be so stupid. My heavens, if you wanted to you could go ahead and tell him exactly what you thought of him and he couldn’t touch you. Hey – that was an idea!

Except that – well – after all, was it worth it? I was too old for that sort of thing now, and I wasn’t sure that I really felt much anger towards him anyway.

So what should I do? I couldn’t sit there staring at him like an idiot.

At that point, a little impish fancy began to take a hold of me. What I would like to do, I told myself, would be to lean across and tap him lightly on the knee and tell him who I was. Then I would watch his face. After that, I would begin talking about our schooldays together, making it just loud enough for the other people in the carriage to hear. I would remind him playfully of some of the things he used to do to me, and perhaps even describe the changing-room beatings so as to embarrass him a trifle. A bit of teasing and discomfort wouldn’t do him any harm. And it would do me an awful lot of good.

Suddenly he glanced up and caught me staring at him. It was the second time this had happened, and I noticed a flicker of irritation in his eyes.

All right, I told myself. Here we go. But keep it pleasant and sociable and polite. It’ll be much more effective that way, more embarrassing for him.

So I smiled at him and gave him a courteous little nod. Then, raising my voice, I said, ‘I do hope you’ll excuse me. I’d like to introduce myself.’ I was leaning forward watching him closely so as not to miss the reaction. ‘My name is Perkins – William Perkins – and I was at Repton in 1907.’

The others in the carriage were sitting very still, and I could sense that they were all listening and waiting to see what would happen next.

‘I’m glad to meet you,’ he said, lowering the paper to his lap. ‘Mine’s Fortescue – Jocelyn Fortescue. Eton, 1916.’





Skin


That year – 1946 – winter was a long time going. Although it was April, a freezing wind blew through the streets of the city, and overhead the snow clouds moved across the sky.

The old man who was called Drioli shuffled painfully along the sidewalk of the rue de Rivoli. He was cold and miserable, huddled up like a hedgehog in a filthy black coat, only his eyes and the top of his head visible above the turned-up collar.

The door of a café opened and the faint whiff of roasting chicken brought a pain of yearning to the top of his stomach. He moved on glancing without any interest at the things in the shop windows – perfume, silk ties and shirts, diamonds, porcelain, antique furniture, finely bound books. Then a picture gallery. He had always liked picture galleries. This one had a single canvas on display in the window. He stopped to look at it. He turned to go on. He checked, looked back; and now, suddenly, there came to him a slight uneasiness, a movement of the memory, a distant recollection of something, somewhere, he had seen before. He looked again. It was a landscape, a clump of trees leaning madly over to one side as if blown by a tremendous wind, the sky swirling and twisting all around. Attached to the frame there was a little plaque, and on this it said: CHAÏM SOUTINE (1894–1943).