Though deep in her own worries Charlotte reacted to that. Penny had something about her which touched her. That vague statement about slop brought a picture to mind. Brittle, aloof Penny, so resentful of sentiment, being forced to endure an orgy of reminiscences, photographs, silver cups and school caps.
“He seems a sensible young man. He’s the sort you can’t imagine disliking anybody. If he says his mother-in-law’s bad for his wife, I should think she probably is.”
Penny put down her glass on the floor beside her and lit another cigarette.
“Mrs. Bettelheim says Mrs. Willis talks about her quite a lot. Mrs. Bettelheim seems to think that she’d like her mother to be here. She said—you know how bad her English is—‘It is with her as if she would wish her mother to be with her and yet not wish.’ She thinks somebody ought to prod Mr. Willis into having the woman up for a day, anyhow. Apparently she only lives in Brighton.” Penny’s eyes were on her lighter, which she was closing, but as she closed it she caught a quick flick of something in Charlotte’s face. Good God! Poor old Charlotte! What has Brighton ever done to her? She’s frightened of the place. Out loud she said, to give Charlotte time: “What hell living in Brighton.”
Charlotte saw that it was going to be difficult for Mr. Willis to get out of sending for Jenny’s mother. Five women, Mrs. Parks, Hannah, Mrs. Bettelheim, Penny and Mabel, were anxious about the girl. It was nonsense to struggle. Brighton and Hove were big places; sooner or later she must run into someone from there who recognised her and remembered the story. It was living in a pipe dream to suppose that over five years of war had affected people’s memories so that the past was rubbed out as though it had been gone over with an ink eraser. Still, there was no reason why she should be the person to suggest visitors from Brighton coming to the house. She got up and crossed to the window, making a show of rearranging the curtains.
“Mrs. Bettelheim must do what she thinks best. I’ve already spoken to Mr. Willis. I can’t do any more. Let her try.”
Penny looked with a warmth and affection, which would have amazed Charlotte had she seen it, at Charlotte’s back. Poor old thing! Must have buried a body on the beach or something. So this was what Mabel had been muttering about. “She’s got enough to worry her without her shopping.” Mabel’s hints had been floating in Penny’s mind since that morning when Mabel had made them. She had always liked her stepmother, but there had been something so self-sufficient about Charlotte that she had never been able to give her that extra affection, the flower of compassion. Charlotte had not appeared to need compassion. Since that day before the war when Penny had come from abroad to Peasefield with her father’s read and re-read letter, announcing his marriage, in her pocket, to find a stepmother cool, friendly, poised, waiting in the hall to welcome her, she had liked her. When she was middle-aged the Charlotte type was what she hoped to be. Since Mabel had made her mysterious statements Charlotte, in Penny’s eyes, had transubstantiated. She was no longer a creature secure, incapable of being ruffled; she was a woman with a secret worry. Penny’s heart warmed to secret worries. God, if any creature living ought to know what a secret worry was she ought! “It’s not the tenants,” Mabel had said. “Nothing in this house.” “There’s none so blind as them that won’t see.” “If you ask me, it’s all to do with where she goes every month.” Poor old Charlotte! Had she committed bigamy or something? Was she popping down to Brighton every month to pay off a blackmailing husband? Penny’s idea of silent solace never varied. She went to the tray of drinks.
“I’m mixing you a drink; it’s lousy drinking alone.”
Charlotte took those words exactly as Penny felt them. Penny murmured “Sherry or gin?” and Charlotte answered that she would have sherry because she liked it just as well, and that was the last bottle of gin and they didn’t know when they would get another, but between the two women there was an atmosphere; both knew that they had come within measurable distance of leaving their status of stepmother and stepdaughter who liked each other to becoming, by choice, friends. Charlotte felt a prickling sensation at the back of her eyes. Ridiculous to be emotional, but it would be wonderful if she and Penny were to come close enough to talk to each other as woman to woman. Perhaps Penny would find it easier to talk to an older woman than to her contemporaries. It would be a help to John if she could get at whatever it was that was wrecking the child’s life. Penny thought less constructively. She was a long way from imagining herself sharing her troubles with any one. She was miles from looking on Charlotte as a confidante, yet something in her had softened. It was almost as if, exhausted and lost, in the distance she saw a lighted window. She was not saying to herself, “There is a house and in that house will be a bed and food,” she was just accepting that there was a light.
Charlotte took her sherry back to the fire. Quite suddenly she knew that she could ask Penny about Mrs. Duke. It was miraculously simple. She found herself describing Hannah’s story and Penny rocking with laughter.
“Oh, God! Why did I go to bed early that night? Why didn’t I open my door and see all this? Can you imagine Hannah! She’s got a new winter hat; it’s black, very perched looking with a velvet bow and an awful piece of artificial amber on it, and she’d be wearing her black coat with that bit of tired skunk on the collar. I can just see her. ‘They looked very upset, m’Lady.’ My God! I bet they were upset. So’d I have been.”
“But what am I to do, Penny? If your father hears about it he’ll ask the Dukes to go.” She was going on to point out that John would hear of it sooner or later if Mrs. Duke and “the gentleman” continued to meet in the hall or in front of the gas man, but she was stopped by the expression on Penny’s face. Penny was always pale, but now what little colour she had went out of her cheeks, leaving her make-up standing out in sharp patches. Oh, dear, thought Charlotte, it’s much, much worse between her and Mr. Duke than I thought. She’s in love with him. Poor child! What extraordinary bad luck to lose your first husband in the war and then to love a man who is not only married but has a child. Penny, for all her queer behaviour, had extremely high standards. She was most unlikely to break up a home. It did not strike Charlotte how far she herself had accepted Penny’s standard rather than her own when she admitted an affair between Penny and Jeremy, which was only sleeping together; for that love was part of it had never entered her mind. Since Bill’s death she had seen Penny change from a rather irresponsible, amusing, self-possessed girl, into a creature brittle, hard, artificially gay. If such a thing were possible she would have described Penny as having a broken heart. In love with Mr. Duke! Well, that would account for a lot. That was probably why she was looking better; she was at least under the same roof with him. Charlotte had only a moment to think. She must say something which would make Penny know that she was her ally. It was immoral, of course, utterly deplorable, but she was not the keeper of Penny’s conscience; she was her stepmother; Penny had suffered enough; if she were snatching at happiness, that was her business.
“Obviously your father must not know. The Dukes are your friends and you and I must see they’re not turned out.” Charlotte was rewarded. Penny picked up her glass, drank the rest of her cocktail and went for a refill. Charlotte saw that she was pulling herself together. “But I’m afraid it’s you who’ve got to speak to Mrs. Duke. I think he looks charming and everybody adores the little girl, but I do not think she’s an easy woman to know.”
Penny came back with her drink.
“Actually she’s a bitch of the first water.” The remark tripped off Penny’s lips as if it were of no importance. To Charlotte it was a clear sign that an alliance had been formed. After all, the reason the Dukes were in the house, was officially Penny’s friendship with Mrs. Duke. Penny stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. “I’ll talk to her. It’s not so difficult really; she knows that my life isn’t exactly an uplift meeting.”
Charlotte sipped her sherry and hoped that Penny would
say some more. She felt a hundred. How different one generation was from another! Clearly, from what Penny had just said, Mrs. Duke knew what was going on between Penny and her husband. Could present-day morals have changed so far that Mrs. Duke didn’t mind? Penny clearly thought the subject of Freda Duke happily disposed of. Charlotte felt that the silence between them, which was cosy and friendly, could, if left too long, become strained. She said:
“Poor Hannah is missing her window-boxes. We’ve had another of those conversations which begins, ‘I’ve been with Sir John over thirty years, m’Lady . . . ’”
Penny took up the quotation, imitating Hannah’s voice.
“‘I said to the first Lady Nettel, poor dear, when she used to come to this house for the season . . .’” She broke off. “Why don’t you go in for pot plants? We always had them at Peasefield. All those chrysanthemums piled up in the hall and great things of cyclamen and stuff standing about all over the place.”
“My dear, you were not in the house after nineteen forty. We never had chrysanthemums piled up in the hall after the gardener was called up and we only had pot plants in the drawing-room that didn’t need heat from the green-houses.”
“I can’t think why you couldn’t get some pot plants, though. I’ve known Hannah since I was born. She used to be under housemaid and have the most bloody awful row every day with my nurse as to who was to carry up the nursery meals. She’s always been a person who needs to be interested in things. She’d plenty to do at Peasefield, but even then she was only a little ray of sunshine when somebody asked her to make twenty halos and twenty wings for a nativity play, or the Women’s Institute decided to do a bit of Shakespeare which needed chain mail, and they put Hannah on to knit it. If you were to spend two or three pounds on some pots of something you wouldn’t hear a moan from Hannah. Actually, she’s madly fond of flowers.” A door slammed in the distance. Penny raised her head. All animation dropped from her. Her face wore its guarded look. “There’s Father. We’ve said all we had to say, haven’t we? I’m telling Freda not to be low in the front hall and someone or other, but not you, will talk to Mr. Willis.” She got up as John came in. “Hallo, Dad.”
John’s face had lighted at sight of Penny. He gave her a kiss.
“How are you, my dear? I didn’t know you were here or I’d have come in.”
Penny moved towards the door.
“Just came up for a drink with Charlotte while my flat’s warming up. It’s revoltingly cold.”
“Nothing to what it will be by the time this damned government has nationalised everything. I was prepared to accept coal but electricity’s nonsense. They’ll go one step too far one day. When every man in the country’s out of work there’ll be a revolution.”
Penny laughed. Not, Charlotte noticed, the gay laughter which had rocked her when she had heard of Hannah’s front hall experience; it had a forced note.
“It’s much more fun for you having a government you hate. When the Conservatives were in, every time anything went wrong you felt you had to explain to the whole village that it was all part of a plan and would work out for the best in the end. Now, every time anything goes wrong, all you’ve got to do is to say, ‘Look what your government’s done.’ Lovely for you. You’re a very ungrateful old man.” She blew him a kiss and went out.
John sat down. He looked depressed. Charlotte was hurt for him. How wretched the position was between Penny and her father. The child was at her worst with him. She put up a firework display of meaningless laughter and chatter the moment John came near her. She said:
“Penny’s looking a lot better. Living here is agreeing with her. Mabel sees she eats something. I don’t believe the price would be prohibitive if you rode sometimes.”
John was accustomed to chasing after Charlotte’s unspoken changes of thought.
“She hasn’t ridden for years. Anyway, she’s got this queer job of hers.”
“There are Sunday mornings. I know you like to go to church with me, but once in a way wouldn’t matter, would it?”
John warmed his hands at the fire. In the flames he could see Penny hacking home beside him, head up, shoulders straight, heels well down; even from a small child she had been game, never admitted to being tired. In the holidays, when young Bill was home, the two of them practising for a gymkhana. Never off a horse, only got out of her riding kit for dinner. That old tabby of a governess, Miss Erridge, used to say she would never learn to wear clothes properly; all wrong, nobody could look better than Penny when she wanted to. It was natural, after she married Bill, she didn’t get home, anyway, pretty tied by that ambulance job of hers. In nineteen forty a bit too restless for the quiet of Peasefield; never said anything but the twice he’d seen her he’d suspected she was pretty near breaking, worrying over Bill. It had been a knock that she hadn’t come home when she was ordered to rest after that last bad London raid in ’41. Bill was in the Middle East by then, no hope of leave; often wondered why she chose Wales. He knew nothing about nervous breakdowns. Penny always had gone her own way. He had sometimes thought maybe she lost her nerve for riding and that was why she wouldn’t come home. It would have been a pill for her to admit that. Probably he ought to have stuck in his toes and gone down to Wales to look her up, but Penny wasn’t the sort of girl you did that to; when she said, “Leave me alone,” she meant it. Not a bad idea of Charlotte’s, though. He might try it.
“There used to be a place that hadn’t bad hacks. Might inquire.”
Charlotte picked up a jumper she was knitting. There was no need to say more; in fact, she had gone farther than usual; in mentioning riding she had hinted that she knew that relations between John and Penny were uneasy. The logs crackled as they burned; Charlotte’s needles made a companionable clicking. There was a comfortable silence between the two, both were warmed by the other’s affection but both deep in their private lives.
Penny telephoned to Paula. She asked if Heinrich were in and, if not, could she come up for a moment. Paula was shocking on the telephone. So many of her calls were from Heinrich to say he would be late, or was bringing guests. Heinrich was one of those who, when on the telephone, speak in a series of short barks. Paula did not know that Heinrich barked at every one, and supposed it was only to herself. The first small, sharp bark and she became befuddled. A befuddled Paula was a Paula sure to speak bad English and possibly even to sink to a word of German. Paula, with the memory of Germany engraved for ever on her heart, could not believe that any telephone conversation was not listened to. To her the police heard each word uttered, and could, if they so wished, telephone immediately to authority and say, “These Bettelheims, they cannot be naturalised, there is a wife who speaks German.” It took her quite a while to appreciate that it was Penny speaking, for she interrupted by repeating, “Who is that who speaks?” When at last she understood her voice softened and warmed.
“It is you . . .” She stopped abruptly, for she had been about to add “liebe Penny.” Penny explained slowly what she wanted. There was a pause. In it Paula wondered whether it were safe to risk being out. Heinrich had telephoned he would be late, but you never knew. The anger of Heinrich returning from work, even at an unexpected time, and not finding a waiting wife, was not to be faced. “It can only be for one moment. I will come down.”
Penny gave Paula a glass of sherry and repeated what Charlotte had said about being unable to tackle Jack Willis twice.
“So that’s that. It looks as though you’ll have to speak to him yourself.”
Paula forgot herself.
“Schrecklich!”
“Don’t explode at me in German. It’s your idea that Mrs. Willis has to be looked after; personally, I couldn’t care less. I only saw my stepmother to please you.”
Paula gazed at Penny, an unfathomable expression at the back of her eyes.
‘You do care, maybe not for her, but for the child.”
After a second Penny answered lightly:
“I don’t care about anything much, you know. I’m a selfish hag. Anyway, I’ve told you I tried, now it’s up to you.”
“Ach! That cannot be. Mr. Bettelheim is home when Mr. Willis is home. It is impossible. This you must do.”
Penny crossly stubbed out a cigarette.
“I’ll look such an ass. I don’t know her, it’ll seem such appalling nerve.”
Paula came over to Penny and patted her cheek.
“But you will see him. You telephone soon. He should be in.”
Jack was surprised to find himself in Penny’s flat. He vaguely knew that the Nettels had a daughter living on the ground floor, but Jenny and Willis’s new stores were all his life. When at home he gave himself to pleasing Jenny; as he left the house he gave himself to the stores. It was simple. Of course Jenny was going through a bad patch, but that would clear up after the kid was born. Sometimes he went in for a flight of fancy. It would be pretty wizard having a baby. He could not talk about it to Jenny but his choice was for a girl. A girl with Jenny’s eyes and hair. In his mind he called her Vera. He thought Vera a pretty decent sort of name, because when during the war Vera Lynn had sung over the wireless she had made him see Jenny, almost as if she were with him. He had a bit of a knock when Penny telephoned and asked him to pop down for a drink because Jenny said, “Her husband was killed flying.” He did hope Mrs. Dill didn’t want to talk to him about that. He wasn’t much good at that sort of thing; his only idea was to tell whoever was talking they better snap out of it.
Penny looked at the shy young man. Business type, she thought. She had met dozens like him when she had been to wherever Bill was stationed. He wouldn’t want gin, thank God, he would drink beer. She wasted no time.
“Everybody’s in an uproar about your wife. Seems in a state. Mrs. Bettelheim’s with her whenever she can be, and my father’s maids pop up and so does Mrs. Parks, but they all say she shouldn’t be alone until the baby hatches. Seems bloody interfering, but they probably know what they’re talking about.”
Grass in Piccadilly Page 15