The Spaces Between

By Catherine Boylan

Catherine has come to feel that we have hardly begun to understand the forces in us and around us, and our connections with them and with each other.

Underlying daily life, other forces exist. Intersecting work-life dramas, vibrant language, sea swimming, and the dunes and gardens of the sea, all held together by a tenuous thread, other means of communication and other presences take their place, alongside which relationships flourish or fail.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398457591

Catherine Boylan

Catherine studied English in Southampton. She worked as a secretary for the foreign office in London and Tunis before returning to Southampton to teach. Along the way there were jobs in a ballroom, a night club, a disco, cafés, hotels, and other diverse locations. Catherine has travelled in the British Isles and the Middle East.

Book preview

About the Author

Catherine studied English in Southampton. She worked as a secretary for the foreign office in London and Tunis before returning to Southampton to teach.

Along the way there were jobs in a ballroom, a night club, a disco, cafés, hotels, and other diverse locations.

Catherine has travelled in the British Isles and the Middle East.

Dedication

To the younger generation, that they may not lose their wonder.

Copyright Information ©

Catherine Boylan 2022

The right of Catherine Boylan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398457584 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398457591 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

Second Edition

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

20231002

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Mr. John Barlow, who has supported me throughout.

A good book, Maggie. One of the greatest pleasures in life. Matt.

An empty lighthouse, its solid walls still dazzling white.

Before it a deserted garden, its once tended furrows lined with rows of wild irises amid blown bladder wrack.

Part One

Last Night’s Witches (Zooming Home Late)

Dry as a tomb, your coloured lids

Shall not be latched while magic glides

Sage on the earth and sky;

There shall be corals in your beds,

There shall be serpents in your tides,

Till all our sea faiths die.

(From Where Once The Waters Of Your Face Dylan Thomas)

A grassy bank by a sea, like glass. A seal surfaces. Late January, the smell of hyacinths. From the windowsill, in the light of the fire, Henry and I look into darkness visible, the black softness of the sky, and examine the stars. Our dream togetherness, never to be realised.

Now, alone in the dark house, as I rise from sniffing the delicate blooms and go into the kitchen, a hot water bottle in my hand, I am aware of Father, not as I knew him in old age, but warm, optimistic and confident. Yes, this was the Daddy who had reassured me as a child nervous in bed, when he had talked of the faeries at the bottom of the garden. But even when young, before chronic depression and anxiety had taken firm hold, he had never been like this. But he had always understood my dream.

And the moist wind smells of new grass and spawn and the harsh smell of the daffodil, as, in unassailable joy, one treads the dream laden nights and days.

Today as I crossed the forecourt of the British Library to meet my friend, Ruth, early as always, I stopped to look up at the statue of Newton, after Blake. I had passed below without really contemplating the crouching figure many times over the years. My closer scrutiny revealed now something menacing about the thrusting dividers immediately above me. At the same time, there came into my mind Yeats’ words,

…the dawn / That has looked down / On that old queen measuring a town / With the pin of a brooch...

Does no-one believe, I wondered, might not Blake’s visions have been real? Might he not have seen the morning choirs of angels praising God, however the crouching figure divides and measures as it wills?

Ruth’s wisdom and kindness has guided and reassured me over these how many decades? In those far off, uncertain sixties years, we used to meet by the white lion at the bridge. Now we can afford a daintier bite to eat at the British Library. Through sheer hard work, determination and unswerving goodness, Ruth has become successful, you could almost say eminent. Many have benefited from her work. I, in my much more humble capacity, have tried to do what I can.

In those days I met her on the second of my getaways from home to find a life in London. Miss Palmer had accepted me after my third attempt at the shorthand and typing test for the Foreign Office typing pool, against her better judgement. She told me that there are some jobs some people are just not suited to. But it was what I had unwisely set my sights on, and seeing it was useless, she gave in.

I had been lucky enough to find a bedsit in a house where I had lived before, as I moved often during my years in London. My room, or tomb, at the top of the third flight of stairs, was the smallest I had ever seen, but I was glad to be back. Even now, in dreams, a vacancy is sometimes held for me in Nevern Road, Earls Court. Drifting from corridor to dim room in the grey light, in sleep I am half imprisoned, half liberated, and aware that, lingering in the family home, I have neglected to return to this unburdened space which has been kept open for me, and which might have been home to someone else.

As I was preparing for a post abroad, I had a trunk, and this I had to climb over when moving about. I lived in a constant state of semi apprehension, expecting a drunken brawl on the stairs, or a break in, or other unwelcome challenge, from the strange and unruly inmates of the house.

As the cleaner was not conscientious, and no cleaning equipment was provided for me, (it did not occur to me, in those days, to buy my own), I ate supper staring resolutely at the high grey square of window, and in the communal bathroom – I never wore my glasses.

But I have always liked these great, once white houses, with their sticky dropping plane trees, stone pots guarding stone steps, and damp chrysanthemums run wild, and I loved, too, the bathrooms overlooking them, full of sunlight on bare linoleum.

It was about this time of year, in the moist twilights, that I took to wandering in the evenings. One evening (it must have been spring, because I remember the beautiful people looked chilled in their softly blowing silks and satins), one evening, as night was falling, broken by the yellow and orange lights of windows, I wandered deeper among the tall white buildings, and lost myself in the chequered darkness.

Soon, as often happens in the city, the tone of the area changed abruptly. A row of ugly, gap toothed shops lined the pavement. Over one of these, a café, hung a sign painted in blue and white letters, The Phoenix. I saw through the smoky windows that the place was half empty, and found the courage to go in.

Close to the door a counter was piled high with food, and behind it stood a darkhaired waitress. I wedged myself into a chair at one of the tables and wondered what to have. Still wondering, I heard a step behind me. It was the waitress, and as I turned, she placed a cup of tea on the table in front of me with a clatter, followed by a piece of bread pudding on a plate.

I didn’t order this.

Don’t you want it then? She had no eyebrows at all, only silver painted lines where they should be. She made to take away the things. No, please leave it. Yes, I do want it.

Make up your mind. She flounced scornfully away on thick high heels which drew attention to the ladder in her tights.

As I sipped my tea, I wondered if I had ordered, and if, in my loneliness, I was reaching the stage where thought and action became blurred. I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked round. A young man was sitting at the table behind me. He wore a pink shirt and patterned tie. He leaned over the back of his chair to speak.

I couldn’t help overhearing you just now. He spoke with an almost nervous politeness. You know ...

He leaned nearer, but this brought him to such an awkward angle, he got up, saying, May I join you?, and took the chair I proffered opposite me.

You know, he said with an excited interest, that sort of thing happens to me. And then, Have you come far this evening? From Earls Court. It’s like going from one element to another, isn’t it?

From one element to another! This phrase was to recur to me years later, in relation to my new friend, in a way I could not have foreseen.

It’s strange, he went on, when there is something in your mind.

Here a juke box blasted into sound. The pounding rhythms defeated him, and he indicated that we should take a table farther back. Here it was dim and hot, but quieter. He sat deeply in his chair.

What a place,he said. I always thinkThe Phoenix is a good name for it. Mess and chaos every night, and in the morning, things start afresh. People were entering the café now, gathering in a space around the juke box. A mixed crowd, rather solemn, they swayed a little to the music, gradually working themselves into the excitement of the rhythm. This was a dancing place, not just a café.

The young man was not so young as I had thought. His pink shirt and paisley tie showed where his sympathies lay, but his hair had begun to recede, and there was a knowing glint in his eye. He contemplated the fresh coffee he had ordered, and sipped it. Then he leaned towards me again, speaking in a confidential tone.

Strange things happen, and people don’t see what lies behind them. He spoke with an energy which gave authority to his words, but what he said alarmed me. I made a move to go. Oh, are you going? he demanded. Don’t you want to hear what I have to tell you? I hesitated. I have a story to tell, you know, he went on. I suppose that makes me the narrator. He smiled, pleased with the idea, and added, Don’t you want to hear my gripping narration? His odd, staccato laugh did not conceal the urgency of his desire that I should stay. But the peal of his chuckles which fell about my ears somehow cheered me. I settled once more in my chair.

Look. He held out his hand, palm upwards, for me to examine. I bent over to look but recoiled involuntarily; the skin was scaly and cracked, and the fingers were webbed.

I sat quietly, not thinking now of leaving. Fascinated and horror struck, but unable to tear myself away, I waited for him to speak, eager and afraid. Whether or not he saw this he seemed, sure of his audience, to withdraw himself to some extent, and when he began, his manner, though still vigorous, was less abrupt, and he spoke as one whose spirit already inhabits other places and relives old adventures.

I had to speak to you particularly, he said, because you remind me of a young lady I used to know. She’s been on my mind quite a bit, lately. Yes, a good deal. He paused. Illuminated by the ultraviolet light, and separated from us by a haze of smoke and sound, the dancers moved in the middle of the room, swaying like leeches, seeming weightless, puppets bound by the rhythm, possessed by the music. Transformed from their earlier solemnity, they seemed to have entered another world in which their true beings found expression.

The point of the story,continued my new friend, or rather, the point of departure, so to speak, is this: my mother came from the sea. He watched with amusement as I started and drew back, searching in my mind how best to escape this odd fellow to whom my loneliness had made me vulnerable. I made a move to go, and his expression changed. Hastily he put out a hand to restrain me. You saw my hand, he protested. It’s true enough. Listen first, then see what you think. He eyed me anxiously and began to speak again hurriedly, eager that I should hear all.

Forgive me. I find it painful to tell about my leaving him, worked up as he was to his story. His story of shores and seas, and undersea peoples. And yet, at thirty, when I wrote it down, was I no more mature than when I heard it? That time seems now a world away, and the story the treasure chest of another’s thoughts. Did 1 believe in it then any more than he, or was it that it contained a truth which danced elusive, just out of reach, like a junior class at a games’ lesson? At any rate, the story, which was to continue in instalments for some time, remained a reality forming a shadowy and disturbing link between us.

I have forgotten nothing of his following me to the door of the café and out onto the pavement, nor of my agitated rush through the streets. As I turned the corner, I felt a tap on my elbow. The Cave, I heard him say. Armenian Street. I’ll meet you there at nine o’clock on Saturday. Yes. I said, without looking round, Alright. A week away, I thought, and I wouldn’t go. I was free of him at last.

But once in, I stood thoughtfully in my room, not admitting to myself my indecision. I was glad that I was spared the pang of regret I might have felt, had I definitely closed the door on him. A possibility, a contact, an avenue which I need never explore, leading off from the way of monotony and depression ...

From the bottom of my suitcase I took out a cloth bag of shells and seastones. Coloured pebbles veined white, mussels and barnacle encrusted oysters. The sink was stained, but clean. Piled in an ashtray, and held under the tap, the colours wakened. Pale violet, black, dull yellows. And a formless figure, I trod dances dictated by the tides, between walls of weed, moving with the unresting restfulness of eternal things under the sea.

Every evening, in spirit, I wandered to the shore. Sometimes there was a figure on the beach. I swam a little out and back. He plunged in and I swam again. The waves bore me gently in, hissing all the way down the darkening sand.

No, the closure of my mind was inadmissible. I did not refer to it to myself.

I did go, naturally. I even bought a new blouse and had to wait round the corner because I had arrived early. I waited thirty minutes, then went in.

It was a passable evening. Although The Cave was my local discotheque, it was my first visit there, and I felt rather conspicuous. The dancers seemed to know each other. There seemed almost an established pattern in the interchange of partners, and little was said. But I danced. And I went again on Tuesday, and the next Saturday. He wasn’t there, but I was committed.

More and more frequently, as the weeks wore on, I joined those young things, members of a set who scarcely spoke. We came to the sound of the rhythms pounding relentlessly through the summer evenings, scorching the dusty streets with waves of glittering sound, compelling us to come without enthusiasm.

With the nonchalance of those who dance all evening, most evenings, we turned off down the stone steps and through the studded door, as though the thought had just occurred to us as we were passing. And at the end we hurried away. We feared discovery in the common yellow glare, when the shadowy figures at the floor’s edge would become idlers on a dirty wall in a room rocked with sound.

There was a West Indian, syncopated lyric, with an unmentionable name, which haunts me still, though I remember only the rhythm, not the tune or the words, to which I first danced the close continental tango with Samy in that soundblasted, hip and stomach beaten darkness of the Cave. He, looking to his friends with his small, quick eyes, proud to have gained an English girl. I wondering at the smartness of his clothes, his fierce, shrewd eyes, and square, money making hands.

I don’t usually spell Samy with one m. It’s just that he spelt it that way.

The house in Nevern Road stood in one of those rows of tall, off white houses in Earl’s Court, turning off such and such gardens, houses in their second childhood, not ungracious in their want of paint and their tangled, dustbin lined gardens. No, dignified still, but relaxed, carefree, a little wild haired, a little abstract, not noticing their present disarray.

I kept a small notebook and pencil hanging from the outside knob of my door, in the hope of telephone messages. Caught up in the restless comings and goings of my days, I seldom looked at it, but the Italian boy in the room opposite seemed to find it amusing. One evening as I climbed heavily upstairs, I surprised him bent double, his head on a level with my keyhole. As he hurriedly straightened himself, he let the notebook drop from his hand. It swung wildly at the end of its string, and he caught it again. Do you ever look at this? he asked impudently, frowning critically, as he leafed it through. The pages were mostly blank. In thin pencil on the page opposite the back cover was written,

"I visited, but misfortunately you were not presnt.

I rendez vous at Ryans. Your luv Samy."

There was no date; the message on the notepad might have been weeks old. And it was a Thursday evening when it was pointed out to me, and I was leaving on Friday for a weekend visit to my parents. But on Sunday night, as I stepped out of the tube station at Earls Court, I thought I might just cross over to the opposite pavement and walk past Ryans on my way home.

It was a snacks and coffee bar, practically the only one along that stretch of Earls Court Road, and so a natural meeting place. My suitcase was heavy, and I rested it on the pavement to change hands just outside Ryans. The chairs and tables, in light varnished wood, were placed right up to the wide glass frontage, which was raised a foot or so above pavement level, so that customers could overlook the passers by.

Looking up from the handle of my case, I saw a pair of plump legs in pin striped trousers and two tone black and white shoes, firmly settled under the table closest to the window. It was Samy. He was sitting with a friend of complexion darker than his own, and he was eating the top whorl from an enormous dollop of cream, topping an elegant glass of chocolate. He had just dipped a slender, long handled spoon for a second mouthful when he noticed me. His recognition was immediate and casual. He waved the spoon at me, creased his small eyes and mouth into a grin, and pointed at my case, mouthing something I could not make out. His companion leaned over and they broke into a heated discussion which I would have thought a fierce argument, had I not been used to his manner.

I tried the case with my other hand, and, accustomed to such humiliation, began slowly to move on my way. But out of the corner of my eye I noticed a short figure get up from a table a little behind Samy and his friend, and begin moving towards the door in what seemed urgent haste. A moment later, someone was trying to take the handle of my case from me.

It was my friend of the Phoenix Café, the storyteller himself. He was smiling pleasantly. Will you allow me to help you with this? he asked, most politely. I’ve heard of cases being stolen that way, I laughed, really pleased to see him. But I would be grateful. It’s not far.

We walked on, and I could not resist a backward glance at Ryans. Samy and his companion were smoking quietly together. They seemed not to notice me at all.

I’ve been hoping to see you to apologise about the other night. You know, I don’t know your name.

Maggie, I said. I don’t know yours. Oscar, he said. Oscar Branswy. A good old Nordic name. Then,Which way? he asked breathlessly. Cross over down there, and turn left."

He walked me home, talking between breaths, about the area; the style of the houses, the change in their appearance, and so on. He seemed very knowledgeable.

At the steps to the front door, he put the case down heavily and looked up. Number seven. I’ll remember. Well, perhaps we could have a drink and a chat sometime. I hesitated, then asked him in. All my mother’s warnings, and all my apprehension about life in London flooded through me as we climbed the long stairs.

Quickly, we got over the difficulties of my small room. He sat on the bed and I on the edge of the trunk. In no time, he had again taken up the thread of his story.

Where did we get to? he began. Oh, yes, he said, leaning back on the bed and supporting his head on a cushion which he doubled over to support his neck. It was about Mother, and you took fright. Well, she was one of those creatures you read about in legends, who came ashore and married a human. That little escapade took place, it must have been about the sixth century, and the lands people called her,Marina. She’s always kept the name.

I have it all here, the story; his mixed heritage, his amphibian early life, the imminence of the time now when he must return to his mother and the sea. Something about a young girl with innocent eyes he had lost, and needed to replace, to return with him. The story, the preposterous, haunting story, has become part of my dream, the treasure chest of my thoughts. In those days, when the chest spilled over with jewels and gold, and the lid was as yet unfastened.

But I cannot enter again into that translucent world, into the watery visions of my adolescence, in my mid twenties though I was. I must remain in the realm of dreams.

Oscar showed no sign of tiring in the telling of his story, and, late as it was, I had no thought of stopping him. But he was interrupted by a tap at the door.

Are you there, dear? Telephone. Shall I say you’re coming? Long distance, I think.

It was the housekeeper, a pile of clean sheets over his arm. I thanked him and said I was just coming, excusing myself to Oscar, and asking him if he would mind waiting. Is that the time? Oscar said, looking at my little clock. I forgot, I have to meet someone. Still, I know where you live now. Don’t go till I come back, I called as I ran downstairs to the ’phone. I won’t be long.

But when I came back, he was gone.

Like a long, lonely stream,

I keep running towards a dream,

Moving on, moving on.

Like a branch on a tree,

I keep reaching to be free,

Moving on, moving on.

There’s a place in the sun

Where there’s hope for everyone

Where my poor restless heart’s gotta run.

There’s a place in the sun,

and before my life is done,

Gotta find me a place in the sun.

Stevie Wonder, Place in the Sun, popular song

One Sunday night a month or so later, on my return from another weekend visit to my parents, the housekeeper met me in the hall. He stood a little back from the open door, in shadow, pitifully slight in striped pyjamas, a pile of laundry neatly folded over one arm and a cigar nodding from the corner of his lips. Oh, hallo, dear. He faced me with an ashen grimace. Got some bad news, I’m afraid.

I guessed what was to come. I had taken the room in desperation as I needed somewhere to live, knowing that the previous tenant, a friend of the landlord, still had a right to come back, and might do so at any time.

The other one came on Saturday, dear. Says he wants to move in as soon as possible. I didn’t know he had a key. I thought he’d gone, but he came back later with his girlfriend. The pair of them spent the night in your room. Bloody cheek, dear, bloody cheek.

All the bitterness of his exile was in the words. He went out seldom, just for the odd packet of cigarettes, hurrying close to walls and fences there and back. Now he led the way up the perilous winding stairs to the room crowded storeys of his retreat.

There’s your sheets, dear. I told them it’s your right to stay till you find somewhere suitable. You take your time, dear.

I always felt that I was the only tenant who ever stopped to speak to the housekeeper. Once, he had come to my room and asked me to go the hospital with him about a complaint on which I will not elaborate. He didn’t like to go alone, he said. We sat nervously on the edge of the taxi seat, and in the hospital waiting room we made a bizarre couple. But mostly he had a comfortable presence. I have found a warmth and understanding in many homosexuals, and a breadth of vision which draws me instantly to them.

At the time of taking this room, a series of relinquished jobs had left me alone and out of work, trailing from agency to agency in wintriest London. The temporary shorthand typing jobs for which I offered myself, hiding my degree, I was not really able to do, and I was sent from place to place, office block to quaint old solicitor’s office, rickety building site to sombre hotel, alternating between the terror of my incapability and the unspeakable boredom of the work.

Now it was high summer and I had a steady job in preparation for a posting abroad, but with the prospect of nowhere to live, I was glad enough to find in my diary a scribbled address I had noted earlier from a shop window, offering accommodation for young ladies and gentlemen.

I did not bother to inspect. When I ’phoned and was told there was a vacancy, I packed straight away.

It was one of those blue and white roads in Chelsea whose old fashioned lamplights glow blood red in the evening, and whose gateposts are crowned with a careless raggle of flowers and grass. An Indian voice had answered my telephone enquiry, but when I arrived, the door, which had a peacock in its glass, was opened by a thin gentlemanly old Englishman in glasses, who inspected me carefully, and decided I would do. He told me there was a vacancy to share with a young Japanese lady.

Toshiko proved to be the most considerate and gracious of roommates. She taught me to cook rice, and chicken broth, which she flavoured with essence of seaweed, and other herbs whose names I have forgotten. She showered me with presents: a Japanese thimble, which is like a tiny ring, a small yellow saucepan with a lid, a bag of tiny buttons tied up with gold thread, saying she was a traveller and could not carry them. We are very simple, you and I, she smiled. One knife, one fork, one spoon.

That morning, in which there was just a moist hint of Autumn, Mr. B., the elderly housekeeper, led me past the flaccid chrysanthemum in a red pot by the front door, and over the blue and white tiled hall to my room. Toshiko flitted noiselessly behind the table in a shaft of sunlight. She gestured her delight at having me for a roommate, in a classic eastern pose, as on a willow pattern. Once the door was closed, she showed me a saucepan of rice keeping warm on the hob, which she had prepared for my arrival.

Yes, I was glad of the room and of Toshiko, though the charm of that house’s blue hall and large light rooms was cheering to the mind only. As summer drifted into autumn, I found that Jolly House, as my sister, Ellen, later called it, was cold, never properly cleaned, and that the water was heated by a boiler downstairs which was seldom hot. Round it in the makeshift kitchen we huddled in the cold evenings, English, French, Turkish, Scottish, and in our rooms we balanced on one foot to wash in the sink, the other tentatively dipped in tepid water, disappointed of warmth. Mr. B. collected the rent each week in time for Saturday, when a large Indian called. The jewelled wife and two smooth, brown little boys, smiling and silent, sat, or stood politely for want of comfortable chairs, in the housekeeper’s room.

It was a meagre room, except that it had the sun. Here and there he had scattered cards from his girls, now gone home to their various countries. From the first, it was obvious that he had fallen from higher things. I soon learned that for years he had been warden of an exclusive girls’ hostel not far away, (for the area was good). Now he hovered continually at the open door of his room, in view of the front door, seeing all who came or went. His room was barely heated, and on his narrow bed lay only one or two thin blankets. He had shared the rest among his favourites. For we were not far into Autumn before I found that we were all cold, even in bed, in that damp place.

A month or so later, I had been away for the weekend. On my return, I found that Toshiko had left. I had known that she was soon to become a nanny, for financial reasons. On the hob I found a saucepan of meat sauce, ready cooked, and a packet of spaghetti beside it ready for me to prepare. She knew and loved Italy, and I had already taken from her the recipe for spaghetti Bolognese, but had not yet tried it.

I expected, once I realised that she had gone, that her bed would be empty for a little while, and that my sister, Ellen, might sleep there when she visited me the following weekend. But the girlfriend of the bearded young man upstairs, Doug, a maker of bows and arrows, came down to tell me that a woman, a prostitute, she guessed, had been put in with me the day before.

The woman, whoever she was, had not come in by the time I went to bed. I woke uneasily several times during the night, but she never did come back. She had brought no luggage, but left a pair of roomy black satin knickers under the pillow.

There seemed no prospect of clean sheets from the housekeeper. So, the next evening, after wondering if anyone might call for the knickers, I decided to take them to the dustbins by the front gate. As I lifted the lid with one hand, two fingers of the other holding the waistband of the offending garment, I caught sight of the short, thickset figure of Oscar on the far pavement, walking with a purposeful step.

I waved, pleased to see him. A few weeks earlier, I had turned away a young London black man I had met at The Cave. He had danced before me, lithe and bright, a belt gleaming at his waist. I had liked and been attracted to him, but had been brought up to think it wrong for a white girl to go out with a black person. I could still see his sensitive eyes as I closed the door on him as he stood by the sticky dropping plane tree hanging over the stone steps. We might get to be quite good friends, he had said, leaning towards me, hardly able to believe my refusal. For weeks, I had been sunk in regret.

I would have welcomed a visit from Oscar at this distressing time, but he had not come. Then, one Friday night, I had been surprised to receive a phone call from the manageress of a restaurant where I had once worked on Saturdays. She asked if I would work the following Sunday. I was surprised, because the last time I had worked there, as a waitress, she had asked in a crisp accent which I could not trace, if I would move a little more quickly. I had gathered from what she left unsaid that my work was not wholly satisfactory. This was not news. I found it difficult to remember orders for meals I had never heard of, to shout the orders up through a hatch to Spanish cooks I never saw, and distribute the meals to the right customers.

It was an Eastern restaurant, well known to middle eastern visitors to London who were seeking their own kind of food, and it was one of a chain of coffee bars, eating places and night clubs. You would not have known that they belonged to a chain, but I did because it was the third one at which I had worked. The first was a coffee bar in South Kensington, where I had made coffee. I would have been content to stay there, although only part time. (My days were spent in the office.) But then I was asked to do two nights as a cloakroom attendant at a nightclub, a brick fronted building, whose red facade was broken only by two dome shaped windows at ground level, and a door.

I sat in the glare of the reception desk, Dracula like, but aware of my uncurled lashes and unpolished nails. I watched the cabaret assemble and the girls going upstairs to the belly dance. They lifted up their long diaphanous skirts and the bells on their bikini tops tinkled as they climbed. A red coated drummer made a pass which was not playful at one of the girls, and there was a slight swirl and a skirmish at the bend of the stairs that somehow made me catch my breath.

At the door stood Shashah, a short practical man of middle eastern origin, the manager and supervisor of all these restaurants, and beside him Simon, his handsome young assistant. But despite Simon’s dark glasses, his attractive accent and his charm, he had not quite the assurance of Shashah. There was something about the manager that suggested more than one saw, but one felt only a long acquaintance would reveal the nature of these depths. At any rate, he showed me kindness which I felt could only be real, but, to my annoyance, I was so nervous at this job that I could not speak naturally to the customers. In fact, I had spent most of the day at work in a state of nerves inexplicable to myself, with unpleasant results to my stomach. So, it was perhaps just as well that after two nights at the club, I was not required again.

So, on Sunday morning, after Mass, as I walked to the Essala, I thought that they must be desperate for help to have asked me to waitress again, and hoped that if Shashah appeared, as he usually did, standing quietly at the door with Simon smiling behind him, always in the sunglasses, I would not make a bad impression. I yearned to come up to Shashah’s expectations, somehow feeling that it was through him that I had got the job. But at the turn of the corner, I found myself doubting both his patronage, and my ability to justify it.

On reaching the Esssala, I was relieved to find that I was to be coffee waitress for the day. At this post I felt though I could not shine, I could cope.

We were not busy before lunch, and I had time to watch the beautiful people fluttering by on their way to a pop rally in Hyde Park. Playing continually on the juke box that Sunday was the pop version of the spiritual, Oh, Happy Day, and it is linked forever in my mind with a group of young Africans who strolled gracefully in, splendid in their purple shirts and cravats, with their deep voices and sensitive mouths.

Shashah did not come, but I looked up to see Simon, politely inclined, standing beside a middle eastern, black robed customer and his wife. They were so fat, they took up two places each at the table. And then, outside, over Simon’s head, I saw Samy, my partner of the Cave, (and some other places we had visited together.) I hoped he had forgotten a certain incident after an evening at a dance hall, and my green spotted dress.

Opposite the Essala, a wide road, paved with white stone, stretched straight ahead. There was no traffic at all, and it was in the middle of this road that Samy was leading a girl about. I can only say they were disporting themselves, walking here and there, talking and gesticulating. She was plump, and looked English, though I could not see her well, for she was not looking my way. He waved at me when she was not looking. Later, he tried to show me a letter he said was from her. He said she was a doctor’s daughter, and wished to marry him. But I would not look. Had I guessed that he, a Libyan, as I was to discover, would turn up in Algiers, where the ex patriot community was small, and I could not easily escape him, I would have come to my senses and broken with him earlier. On the pavement in Algiers, where I encountered him in a full length check London coat, at my hinting that I was not looking for a relationship, he snapped, It is Ramadan. I do not want. Previously he had asked if he might, Speak to my father.

I had one glance at her face. She looked rather serious, although she was clearly enjoying herself. But I saw no more, for I found myself being manoeuvred into a corner by a couple of American sailors. They were very drunk, and one, leaning right over me, kept asking, Scuze me, ma’ am, where can we find dancing and pretty girls? Dancing and pretty girls? I was about to call for Simon, (he pronounced his name the French way), but the manageress came to deal with the sailors, and I slipped behind the counter. And Samy and the girl were gone.

But then, outside, I saw Oscar, moving swiftly. I could almost hear the tapping of his brown leather boots as he hurried along on the far pavement. I ran to the door and waved, but he had already passed, and did not see me.

Now, seeing Oscar on the other side of the road, I stood by the dustbins of Jolly House, calling and waving. The firm booted footsteps halted as Oscar saw me and crossed to speak. At the same time, two blonde Swedish girls I knew by sight came through the gate and walked up to the house. They were evidently interested in my visitor, so when he said that he had been going to Ryans, and suggested that I walk up with him, I agreed.

Over coffee, I wondered if Oscar was waiting for me to mention, the story, but decided to leave it to him. I was aware of a change in his attitude. Men always turn out to be men in the end, I reminded myself, and what were his intentions? I sensed that, from now on, it was a seat in the communal hall, not my room, for Oscar.

Then, abruptly, he said, Can you bear to hear the rest of my story? Perhaps you’d rather not, just now. No, please. I’d be glad to hear it. And, eagerly, he began.

Again, forgive me. I remember every detail in all its dazzling clarity, its translucent watery colours. But I turn the pages and move on. From this distance of years, it all seems worse than childish, worth, but not worth relating. I feel the exasperation of the reader as he closes the book and casts it aside. But I must relate that, throughout all the telling that day there was an insistence, more urgent than ever, that a beautiful young being had been lost in the course of its unfolding, and that this being must be replaced.

At last, Oscar was quiet. When he spoke again, it was with the old alert, almost aggressive attentiveness, but with a less confidential, more open air. And so yours truly took up life on land again, and travelled a good deal. Yes, a good deal. And then I came to London and met you. Do you remember when I first met you, and you said you reminded me of a young lady I used to know?

I stared. In his story there had featured a lovely sea woman called Rocklace. It was evidently to her that Oscar referred. But I’m not beautiful, I protested, almost affronted by the exaggeration of the comparison. He smiled. I wasn’t thinking only of beauty. It’s in your eyes. Innocence. Could I call myself innocent, I wondered? Yes, it had all been in innocence. Desperation and innocence.

There are few dreamers like us these days, he went on, and we should make use of it. I wondered at his use of the word, We, and at his meaning, but he did not explain. I saw you and I thought.. What did you think? Oh, the usual lewd thoughts young men think, I suppose. Young? I thought. How long have you been in this country? I asked. Oh, some years, some years. Shall we go? He was getting up, but I asked, was he not nervous about going back, as he put it, and of finding the characters he had been telling me about. If he did arrive to face the reckoning at the end of his long, long ocean journey. He said that he would think about that when he met them, or just before, and that things might have changed after all this time. But I talk and talk, he went on, and afterwards, I feel that all the time, people have been thinking,What a fool that fellow is.

I assured him to the contrary. Not that I wouldn’t avoid it if I could, but there you are. I haven’t a choice. I can’t stay any longer. But, uncharacteristically, he looked straight at me, I must take someone with me, as I have been telling you. And it will have to be someone young, and handsome, or beautiful.

I’m not beautiful, I protested again. It’s in your eyes, he affirmed. Innocence has its own beauty.

It was early morning. A cold, dull light showed at the windows, and stale cups littered our table. We were alone in the café with the waitress, a Russian blonde who sat smoking behind the counter, her legs resting on a tall stool, and the manager counting money at the till.

And so, said Oscar, leading the way to the door, another precious night on land has passed. We went out into the grey street. A bird was singing somewhere. I love this time, I said. I feel it’s stolen, extra, somehow.

I realised that the story had made more impression on me than I had thought. My mind had received it as a sort of legend, a pattern of images through which there glimmered a meaning or a truth whose full brilliance or significance I was unable, as yet, to assimilate. The surface layers of my mind, that part which I let loose to see to monetary matters and battle among practical things, naturally that part doubted entirely. But my inmost being, that which I reserve as myself, was prepared to believe, if only in the existence of the fable in the imaginations of the two of us.

You must miss the sea, I said, shivering and glancing at the litter strewn about. Damp cigarette packets were trodden into the pavement, and coke tins rolled in the gutter. Two idlers, one with beads threaded into his hair, the other naked from the waist up, walked by, their steps not bouncy with the springy stride of youth, but heavy, set and uncompromising. The bare chested man, who was slightly bald, made a great leap at the lamp post and swung himself round by it, then walked silently on.

Well, I suppose I do, he said, but there’s advantages to being on land, too. Either you’re here or you’re there. I made no comment, but was surprised to find that the apparently detached quality of his answer made me feel unexpectedly alone.

Suddenly, I felt myself no longer a busy person, but a lost soul without occupation or purpose. I knew the feeling well, but that made it no less frightening. Unknowingly, I had warmed towards him, and found myself thrown to find him as unconcerned as I had thought myself.

I’m just beginning to enjoy myself,’ he added.You wouldn’t want to go back, then? I’ve no choice. The three hundred years I was allowed will be up in six months’ time. I’ll have to set out shortly, and stay down there, I don’t know how long. I’ve been thinking, though, that I might first spend some time around that island where Mother met Father. You mean, when she married him, and had you? Yes. I’m pretty sure I know which one it is and I could come ashore quite safely when I wanted to. There will be a few people living there still, probably older people, who know the ways of the sea." He saw my interest, and described the location of the island he had in mind, off the north west coast of Scotland.

That doesn’t alter the fact, though, he finished, that I have to find a young person as a replacement for the young creature who was lost on the way. Really? Really. I absolutely have to. And I’ve left it late. I examined his face, but could find no trace of suppressed humour, or withdrawal.

Do you mean, perhaps a young man? He laughed a short, mirthless laugh. I don’t know any young men. As we crossed the road, I was conscious that he had an air of waiting for something. I glanced sideways at him. He was calm, seeming almost detached. He was not looking at me, but I knew he was aware of my gaze.

I felt my steps falter. My throat went dry. I froze. I was unable to think.

He was leading the way to Jolly House, with me trying to step it out beside him. As we approached the open gate, he took from his pocket a neatly folded handkerchief. In the lamplight, it glowed a deep blue. That’s a nice handkerchief, I remarked lamely. He held it out to me. There you are, you can even have my silk handkerchief. Rather in awe, I took it, carefully putting it in my handbag. It was years after Mother’s death that I found it, where I had put it in the top drawer in the dark wood dressing table with the large round mirror before the big bay windows with the pretty curtains that Mother had made, at home, in her room. He held open the gate, and leaning over it as I passed through, said pleasantly, and without urgency, Think about it. If you’re willing to come with me, leave a note for me at Ryans. You know the manager, Paul. He will give it to me. When I hear from you we’ll arrange to meet at Ryans. You won’t need to bother about packing, he added, with a smile.

I was conscious of a rising panic, of fantastic visions, of unanswered questions, of fear and joy, exaltations and shuddering retreats. I was shivering. Don’t forget, he said, as he began to walk away, and I took out my keys. A solitary twig hung down from a tree beside the lamp post, and he reached up to pick a leaf, and then handed it to me over the gate, saying, And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun. (W. B. Yeats)

I didn’t leave the note. How could I? Such a story, and now this ridiculous request! It was too preposterous! I had been lucky to get away without becoming involved. And yet I did think about it, of course. Indecision to the point of turbulence had been the usual state of my mind for so long that I scarcely noticed it. The hesitation outside Ryans, and under the trailing twig by the lamp post by the gate of Jolly House, it was all within the regular state of my unquiet consciousness, made worse, of course, by self blame at having made the wrong decision. But there was the posting to Algiers to keep me more than busy.

I was disturbed to find that I found myself repeatedly imagining that I saw the short, stocky figure of Oscar hurrying along among the black mass of the rush hour, or a glance of calm, but searching intensity reflected, and catching the eye of my reflection in the grey depths of the tube window on the way to work. But it was never him. And then, two weeks after the deadline