CHAPTER THREE: HOMECOMING
Conscience is a powerful force, and
sometimes it can be hard, very hard, for a man with a guilty conscience to face
the world again with equanimity. Colin returns to Richquick shrouded in the
bleakness of grey and defeated depression - but fortunately Twister and Wendy
appear to have gone, and their desks are neatly cleared.
He explores cautiously, and a fat, greasy
girl from a neighbouring Bat Group magazine leers at him, and volunteers that
they have in fact been gone some time, exiting in a cloud of mutual admiration.
"For all the world as though they had
plans," she simpers, and rolls her eyes. This sounds like a veiled
invitation, but Colin scowls. He has seen the girl many times before, and finds
her greasiness and her bulk quite repellent. She retreats, looking
disappointed, and he sighs in self pity, and lowers himself into place behind
his screen, to power up in a vague hope that labour will earn expiation. But
words evade him each time he tries to focus, fleeing from the grasp of his mind
like a myriad evascent shreds of gossamer blown away on a wind of distraction,
and his screen repeatedly melts away from serried lines of pale green copy into
the sweet, sickly-smelling sheen of the woman's cloak in the basement flat and
the hotness and sweat of flesh bearing down upon him, and he soon gives up in
despair.
Now Richquick's offices seem to grow closer
and stickier and ever more oppressive with each passing minute. Colin tries
chasing bits of paper around on his desk, but he has lost all heart for work.
Finally he decides to go home, and tidies up neatly before sidling out
surreptitiously past adjacent Bat Group magazine desks towards the lifts at the
end of the floor, hoping that nobody will notice or care.
But he need not worry. No eye follows him,
no stream of gossip swells to note his departure. Other Bat Group employees
have better ways of passing their time.
A voice does sing out, briefly, and perhaps
enticingly, as he passes Valerie
Sweetdream's office. But her call, if call it be, seems to echo as much of a
passing greeting as any invitation, and Colin keeps moving, afraid that
something in his eyes or his bearing may flag guilt if he pauses to talk.
Two girls from the advertising department
waiting for a lift on the landing beyond the Bat group offices eye him
curiously, but he presses on, opening a door at the end of the landing to take
the stairs down to street level, and then he is free, melting out into the damp
heat of a late London summer afternoon to flow anonymously into a stream of
homeward-bound commuters hurrying towards Queensway station.
The train bound for Baker Street is even
more humid. A mass of warm, sweating bodies crowds the airless Circle Line
carriage, too tired and dispirited to try and stake out any individual space,
men and women packed together in sexless discomfort, human sardines simmering
together in a moving can.
Colin feeels small trails of moisture
trickling down the side of his face, between his shoulderblades and under his
arms, and floats listlessly in the warm damp air, still enmeshed in a sad
contemplation of his waste and his folly, his mind playing prosecutor, and
judge, and jury, forbidding all defence. He begins to weep internally at his
weakness, and his tears swell his misery, and he despises himself for his
gutlessness.
The train stops, vomiting its load of
suffering humanity onto a platform, and he cannons blindly out into a brawny
man, who grunts and stares at him fiercely. Colin is forced to apologise, and
for a moment public shame mirrors his inner abasement. Then he is shuffling on,
along a tunnel packed with fellow commuters, and all the world is grey, and
weary, and worn.
The tunnel leads to another platform, and
another train, more crowded still, and he has to shove and struggle again, and
stand tight-pinned again between more bodies reeking of bad breath and tired
days, until finally a flood wall of hot sweaty flesh sweeps him out at
Waterloo, and a tightly packed escalator carries him slowly back from Hades to
the world of the living.
Waterloo station concourse is a milling
ant-heap of humanity, a lemming drive of commuters hurrying home. Colin grabs
an evening paper as he hurries to catch his suburban commuter train, and his
spirits lift a little as he spies a vacant seat and wedges himself into place.
He is cramped, but anything is better than standing, and he rests in grim
contentment as late arrivals pack tight into the passageway between the rows of
seats.
Then he reads, and the front page of his Evening
Standard is a gift. A man has brutally murdered his wife with a meat cleaver,
concealing chunks of her body in black plastic refuse sacks, and Colin's
imagination takes off into overdrive. He pictures Jane, on her knees, pleading
for mercy: he is raising an executioner's axe high above her, stripped to the
waist and masked, with only his eyes visible, glaring down at her implacably,
and she is weeping in abject terror as he sights to strike her midway between
her eyes. But his train lurches as he is gathering his strength for a death
blow, and he is jerked back to reality, and his triumph is just another dream.
So he reads on listlessly, a weary commuter
in a carriage of weary commuters, whilst other middle-aged men around him
daydream themselves from dull office workers into statesmen and stars, heroes
and millionaires, and a sprinkling of
women amongst them dreams of true love, and soon he is fast asleep, and his
sleep is totally dreamless.
He wakes again as his fellow commuters
began to spill out onto Windsor station platform, the end of the line, and sits
for a moment bleary-eyed, struggling to gather himself together. Then he is
back on his feet, filing out of his carriage to join a stream of tired,
perspiring humanity pressing out of the redbrick Victorian station building,
moving with almost robot determination.
Windsor is very nearly as hot and stuffy as
London. Colin trudges wearily past the Theatre Royal and up Windsor High
Street, past the towering bulk of the Castle garlanded with bright-dressed
camera-carrying Americans and Europeans and Japanese, to turn right at the
statue of Queen Victoria outside the castle gates - majestic monument to
imperial womanhood in pensive weatherbeaten metal - and trudge downhill again
along Peascod Street, conscious only of the heat, and his sweating, and his
painfully burning feet.
Now he wishes - as he mops at his brow, and
tries to ignore a myriad uncomfortable dampnesses multiplying afresh inside his
clothing - that he might be miraculously transmuted into something fishy in a
cooling river or sea.
But life is life, and humanity cannot
change at will. So he trudges on, bravely ignoring a temptation to divert for a
moment into a pub for a cooling pint, because Jane has given him strict instructions
to be home punctually, so that she may host an evening Church Guild meeting, a
conclave of likeminded, rightminded women planning a coming parish church fete.
His feet grow heavier and heavier as he
tramps mechanically along St Leonards Road, but he presses on bravely, until
finally, and quite exhaustedly, he arrives home at his bijou villa in a narrow side street, where a
cluster of trim middle class conversions highlights a scattering of unreconstructed
tenements.
The Vasts' cottage stands at the better end
of the street: a neat little box setting four upstairs rooms above four at
street level, with a tiny patch of iron-railinged flowerbed in front, and a
handkerchief of a garden behind. Jane is a perfectionist, and everything both
outside and inside the cottage has its order and place. The Vasts' drawingroom
at the front of the house is neat and formal: reserved for special occasions
and to showcase Jane's pair of matching Victorian button-back armchairs - a
present from Jack Wise, her father, a retired solicitor with a big house in
Beaconsfield - her interesting Victorian breakfront cabinet packed with a
pretty collection of china, and her one or two nice bits of silver picked up at
antique fairs. The Vast kitchen gleams with polished pine and fitted appliances,
whilst a family room at the back of the house centres on three comfortable
chairs gathered in a semi-circle around a large television and video.
The best bedroom is a nest, sunny in
primrose and pale green, whilst Sarah, Colin's sixteen year old daughter, has a
rather smaller room papered with posters of pop idols and littered with a
blizzard of discarded clothing. The cottage's third bedroom is barely more than
a boxroom, and serves as a combined dressingroom and office - rails of clothing
box round a filing cabinet and a chair and a small table with a computer where
Colin logs up unpaid overtime, and Sarah plays electronic games, and Jane keeps
Vast family accounts.
The cottage also boasts an upstairs
bathroom and a small groundfloor shower-room, together with a small shed at the
back of the house for storing tools and the like, because Jane is a practical
as well as a perfect woman, and likes turning Colin's hands to improvements.
Now Colin is home. He pushes wearily at the
small iron gate set in a fence designed to protect the Vasts’ small front
flower bed from marauding cats and dogs, and notices with anger that some
vindictive and uncaring animal has once again attempted to rape a hollyhock
that he has been nurturing carefully.
Then he raises his key wearily to open his
front door. But suddenly the door swings open, and Sarah is facing him, dressed
in her blue and white check school uniform, holding out her arms and grinning a
grimace of totally artificial welcome. He steps back instinctively.
"Daddee, my sweet, sweet Daddee."
Sarah lunges at him, her voice trilling shrilly. However Colin's retreat makes
her miss her target, and she cannons up against him, scrabbling wildly at the
front of his jacket. Her small green eyes harden suspiciously, and her trill
climbs half an octave into a shrill reproachful squeak. "Daddee, you don't
want your loving daughter to hug you in a loving welcoming hug."
Colin smiles wanly, and attempts to
disentangle himself. Sarah's eyes are gleaming with demand, and he is certain
that she is going to cause him pain.
"Daddee, I need some money." Her
squeak runs on into a breathless gabble. "St. Anne's is organising a trip
to the seaside, we'll be away a week, just think of the peace you'll enjoy,
we're going to take tents, and cook our own food, and all my friends are
going..."
She has a vicelike grip on his jacket, and stares
at him with an expression combining saccharine sweetness and pure avarice in
perfectly balanced parts.
"Please, Daddee, Mummy says she's sure
you've got some spare cash hidden away in your wallet."
She pats Colin clumsily in a bid to locate
his wealth, but he fends her off deftly.
"I'm sorry." He shakes his head
sorrowfully, filling his voice with all the sympathy and understanding he can
muster. "I've only got a couple of pounds."
"But I only need fifty quid. I'm sure
you've got that squirrelled away." Now Sarah's mouth trembles dangerously,
and her eyes begin to fill with tears. "Mum says she's sure you've got
fifty quid."
She looks at him from behind a damp curtain
of reproach, and her eyes are sharp to catch any wavering.
Colin reaches into his hip pocket, pulls
out his wallet and holds it out silently. He has long wondered whether Jane
explores his pockets, and now he is certain. But disillusion also brings a
sense of victory. It is far better to spend than be stripped.
Sarah combs through his wallet carefully,
and stares at her father suspiciously as she hands it back.
"You're sure you haven't hidden it
somewhere..." Her voice tails away accusingly.
Colin shakes his head silently.
For a moment she stares at him with an
expression of baffled fury, and then she turns away into the house, stamping
off grumpily.
Colin follows, quickening his pace in a bid
to reach the stairs before any further problems pounce. But unfortunately Jane
Vast emerges from the kitchen at the same moment and blocks his way, smiling a
very determined greeting.
"I told Sarah you'd help finance her
project..."
Her voice starts strongly, and then tails
away uncertainly as she notes a hardness in Colin's eyes.
Colin stops at the bottom of the stairs and
spreads his hands. "I can't, I'm broke."
"But..." For a moment Jane seems
about to press her attack, but she hesitates. "I thought you had
some..."
Colin holds out his wallet again, feeling
just a little triumphant, way down deep inside himself.
Jane glances at the wallet, and looks up, and
her eyes search his. She is deeply suspicious, but she is also on very tricky
ground, for she can hardly tell Colin that she has herself secretly counted his
money not long since. Her lips tighten into a thin angry line.
"I see." She is silent for a
moment, and then shrugs. It is clear that whilst she realises that she may have
lost a skirmish, she is in no way conceding defeat.
She looks at her watch, and her voice
becomes bossy. "Well, it's a good thing you're home early. You can watch
television with your daughter for half an hour, then I want you both to have an
early supper, so that I can clear the kitchen."
She stands blocking Colin's way until he
turns reluctantly away from the stairs. Sometimes, even quite often, Colin
wishes for a strength, and brutality, capable of enabling him to impose his own
will on life. But he is not a battling man, and he yields, and heads for the
Vasts' family room. For peace is always priceless, even it must sometimes be
bought with cowardice.