Роберт Эйкман: The Late Breakfasters (Faber Finds)

Griselda looked up at Doris’s photograph.

‘I didn’t mean Doris. Though she can look rather splendid, don’t you think?’

‘Very attractive.’

‘It’s only skin deep, though, or clothes deep. She lacks guts, little Doris.’

‘I rather liked her.’ This was not true, but Griselda disapproved of Kynaston’s comment.

‘Of course. Don’t misunderstand me. I adore Doris. She’s the sweetest girl in Hodley.’

‘How long have you lived in Hodley?’

‘Eighteen months. Ever since I left the Shephard’s Market Ballet. They chucked me, you know. After that I was done. You don’t get another shop when you’ve been chucked for the reason I was.’

Griselda thought enquiry was unnecessary.

‘I refused to go to bed with Frankie Litmus.’

‘Oh.’ Griselda took a resolute pull at the interminable coffee.

‘I’m not that way at all, believe it or not. And look what’s become of me in consequence! Let that be a lesson to you. Ditched in this pigstye teaching the lads of the village to caper. Have some more coffee? It’s actually Nescafй, as you doubtless perceive.’

‘No thank you.’ The vast mug was still more than half full.’

‘Pupils like you are rare. Do you mind if I make the most of you?’

‘I hope you will.’

‘We’ve got all day. Will you come for a picnic with me?’

‘I’m under orders to learn to dance.’

‘That won’t take you all day. By the way, why can’t you dance?’

There was something about him which enabled her to tell him.

‘I dislike being held.’

He rose dangling his empty mug.

‘Even by someone you’re fond of?’

‘I’ve never been fond enough of anyone.’

He considered. ‘In that case clearly, I must first win your confidence.’

She smiled.

‘More coffee?’

‘No thank you.’

‘Do you think the preparations for a picnic are the best or the worst part? Cutting the sandwiches. Filling the thermoses. Counting the knives.’

‘The worst part.’

‘In that case we’d better not set about it until later. I haven’t told you much about myself yet. That’ll fill the gap. Or better still I’ll read you some of my poems. I’ve given up serious dancing you know and am trying to establish myself as a poet.’ Griselda noticed it was the phrase Doris had employed the day before.

‘I shall be sent home if I don’t dance.’

‘If they are cruel to you at home, you can always come and live here. But more of that later. And, by the way, I’m coming to the Ball myself, you know.’

‘Mrs Hatch didn’t mention that.’

‘I’ll be able to keep an eye on you. And hands off you, so to speak. Other hands than mine, of course. Apropos of which—’ He began to read aloud.

‘ Disclaimer

Other loves than mine may kill you;

Other hates than mine fulfill you;

Other saints through grief atone you;

Other sinners crowd to stone you—’

He continued through the poem, then read several others. Griselda, a fair judge of verse, was not very much impressed by Kynaston’s poesy, but more than a little charmed by his excellent delivery. His attractive voice and skilful accentuation made far more emerge from the verses than had ever entered into them.

‘I won’t ask you what you think,’ he said at the end. ‘A poet I believe must heed only his inner voice.’

This, on the whole, was a relief.

‘May I say,’ enquired Griselda, ‘how very much I enjoyed the way you read?’

‘I was taught by Moissi,’ replied Kynaston. ‘And much good has it done me.’

‘That was before you took up dancing?’

‘I have many gifts,’ he answered, ‘but none of them has come to anything at all. I need a suitable woman to manage my life for me. Without that, even my poetry will be still another dreariness and misery.’

‘You’ve at least achieved publication. Many poets don’t.’

‘True. And against really passionate opposition by Herbert Read. Still, fewer than a hundred copies have sold. Well, well. Before we pack the picnic basket, will you help me with the washing up?’

There were not only the coffee adjuncts, but the remains of Kynaston’s breakfast and of another vague meal which had seemingly involved the consumption of some very fat ham or boiled bacon. Griselda hung her jacket on the door of the little kitchenette and applied herself, while Kynaston dried on a small, discoloured tea-cloth. The tiny room became hot and steamy.

When it was all over, Kynaston, from a box-like cupboard in the hall, produced a large wicker picnic-basket.

‘Now for the awful preliminaries.’

‘Must we have the basket? Are there going to be enough of us?’

‘If we don’t take the basket, the picnic will turn into a walk, and with you, I couldn’t stand that.’

From the dilapidated meat-safe he produced the knuckle end of a Bath chap, a bottle of French mustard, and half a stale loaf. ‘Better than no bread,’ he remarked. ‘Will you please do your very best with the ingredients provided? Here’s a knife. I’m going to pack the tinned apricots and the opener.’

Griselda began to make sandwiches. Kynaston hurried about packing the basket with heavy, and, in Griselda’s view, superfluous objects. ‘I’ll just get the stove for coffee,’ he said.

‘What does Doris do?’ enquired Griselda at one point, for something to say, and in the capricious and destructive spirit in which women ask such questions at such times.

‘Part time nursing,’ replied Kynaston, packing plates. ‘She’s no use at the bedside, but the clothes are good. Mostly, she’s waiting of course. Waiting for experience of the male. Shall I put in some bottles of beer?’

‘I dislike beer.’

‘You sound as if you dislike me too? Would you rather not come on the picnic? I can always go unaccompanied.’

‘I have to stay here until it is time for tea. You’re supposed to be teaching me dancing, which I don’t want to learn. We’d better use up the time somehow.’

‘Yes,’ he said, lining up the cutlery they were to take. ‘You’re at my mercy, aren’t you? I should so much prefer the situation to be reversed.’

After a round of complicated preparations, remarkably onerous in view of the smallness alike of the bungalow and of the undertaking before them, they at last found themselves on the doorstep.

‘Forgive me if I double-lock the front door,’ said Kynaston. Griselda reflected that the whole woodwork would yield like cardboard to any housebreaker.

They set out along the distractingly noisy main road through Hodley, carrying the ponderous basket between them. The traffic made conversation impossible, and the preservation of life, weighed down as they were, a matter calling for constant attention. After about a hundred yards Griselda wished she could change hands with their burden. After about a hundred and twenty-five yards she arranged with Kynaston to do so. After about a quarter of a mile Kynaston shouted: ‘Up there for the Woods. Up the steps to your left.’

Griselda was realizing that her left arm was by no means as strong as her right, and she transferred the basket once more as she struggled up the steps ahead of Kynaston. Hodley Woods, though a well-known beauty spot, were neither as extensive nor as dense as Griselda had expected from the descriptions she had often read of them in advertisements; but they appeared unpopulated, it being a time of the day and week when all but the anti-social were at work. The road now ran in a cutting which much diminished its uproar. The sun, moreover, had begun to shine, falsifying Mullet’s forecast; and among the undergrowth Griselda noticed a yellow-hammer.

‘Places like this are only beautiful when they’re near a town,’ remarked Kynaston.