Virginia Fly is Drowning

by Angela Huth

  The kitchen was a small balloon of warmth – a faded, chipped room, but cosy. It had an armchair, a budgerigar, and the television on the dresser. Rita spent most of her time here these days. She could never like the front room with its three-piece suite and wedding pictures and brass coal scuttle. She only used it for parties, and she didn’t have many of those, now.

  Bending down over the oven, she took out her vegetable stew, a little brown round the edges, but bubbling and smelling good. She laid herself a place at the tablespoon, fork and knitted table mat – because she liked to keep up her standards, alone or not. Then, on a sudden whim, she went to one of the cupboards and took out a half-bottle of whisky. Normally, she never drank at home. But to-night she felt she needed it.

  She drank half the glass and immediately felt better, instantly warmer. Her lost appetite came back, and she dug hungrily into the stew.

  For a while the quiet in the room was only interrupted by the gentle supping noises she made, sucking up the gravy. But then it began to rain, and she could hear the icy tinkle of drops hitting the window pane, and the sad yowl of the lodger’s cat outside.

  Oh, Ethelberta, she thought. I must let her in. He’s not fit to have an animal, Jo. She didn’t really mean this: Jo was all over his cat, gave him every consideration. It was just that the words ‘he’s not fit to have an animal, Jo,’ went through her head, noisy as the rain, unordered.

  She went to the back door and opened it. The cat streaked in on a squall of wind and a blast of rain, its black coat wetly matted and dull.

  ‘Go on Ethelberta, off with you! What were you doing out there?’ Ethelberta needed no encouragement to vanish. She flashed across the linoleum floor, out of the other door, and up the stairs.

  Left to herself again, Rita sat down at the table once more, finished off the stew, conscious that she was making a pig of herself and would never get thin this way, then pushed back her empty plate. She finished the whisky, and glanced above her at the lightshade. It was a pretty gingham thing, like Miss Muffet’s bonnet. She’d made it years ago, and now it was burnt on one side, discoloured and limp. She’d been meaning to make a new one for ages. All of a sudden, staring up at it, tears began to run thickly down her cheeks. She gave a great sniff, and patted her eyes with her paper napkin, which came away from them streaked with blue and black.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter now, you silly old fool?’ she asked herself, out loud. ‘This is no way to carry on.’ And then, half despising herself, she went to the television and turned it on.

  It was that man – what was his name? – Geoffrey Wysdom. She recognised the voice before the picture came on. Well, he would do her good, no doubt. He always talked to people a good deal worse off than her, at any rate, and if he did so to-night that would make her count her blessings. She sniffed, and watched.

  There was a close up on the screen of a girl with a thin, pale face and round dark eyes. She had a quiet but firm voice, and seemed not to be looking at Geoffrey Wysdom, but at something beyond.

  ‘I’ll be in a large field, breast-high in buttercups,’ she was saying. ‘It’ll be summer. In the distance I’ll see this beautiful young herdsman, very brown and thin, guiding a herd of cows. He’ll leave them all and come over to me. Neither of us will speak, and he’ll lash at the buttercups a bit with his stick, in a titillating sort of way …’ A smile flickered round her mouth, tearing at Mrs Thompson’s heart. Entranced, she rested her head in her hands, and watched the rest of the programme without sniffing once. When it was over, she cried again, but this time with elation.

  Inspiration had come to her. It sometimes did, at opportune moments, and this was one of them. There she was, self-pitying old fool, she told herself, with a comparatively good life on her hands. How could she indulge in the self-pity of this evening, when out there in Surrey there was this tragic young girl, still a virgin at thirty-one, who needed help, and friends, and men. It wasn’t only the old who were indigent. Well, she, Rita Thompson, woman of the world, would stretch out a hand to Virginia Fly, virgin. Here was a chance for them both.

  Flushed, partly by the thought of her new project, and partly by the whisky, Mrs Thompson took out her writing pad. She would have to think carefully. It would be no easy matter, this letter. Writing scripts for pantomimes was a piece of cake in comparison. She took up her pen.

  Dear Miss Virginia Fly, she began.

  Mrs Fly took the opportunity of the television programme to ask in a considerable bunch of neighbours. She began preparing for her party several days before necessary, and ended up with far too many plates of small biscuits with smaller coloured things on top of them. Mr Fly had been prevailed upon to buy a lot of cheap red wine which Mrs Fly warmed and spiced, to welcome her friends as they came in from the coldness of the night.

  Virginia disapproved of the whole idea of the party. Left on her own, she wouldn’t have watched the programme at all. In retrospect the event was obnoxious to her, and she regretted ever having agreed to do it. But having made her mistake there was nothing she could do but brave the consequences. She only agreed to attend the party because when she had suggested going out her mother became so hurt, indignant and offended that facing the party seemed more bearable than putting up with days of martyrdom.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Ginny,’ said Mrs Fly, peevishly, ‘we’ll be the stars of the evening. It’ll be our night. It’s not every day anyone from Acacia Avenue is on television.’

  And the people of Acacia Avenue did, in fact, treat Virginia as a star. A couple of them brought autograph books. A middle-aged married man, who had never before given her so much as a glance, nudged her hard in the ribs and inquired what was the price of fame? When the mulled wine came in they all drank her health and future success on the box, as they called it. Virginia hated every moment of the proceedings. It also began to occur to her that her mother had not told anybody what the programme was about. She took her chance to ask. Mrs Fly, her normal colour already heightened by her sense of occasion, blushed a deeper salmon.

  ‘Well, I told them it was a serious programme, dear. Not one of those stupid quiz games.’

  ‘But what did you tell them it was about?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. People and their problems, I think I said. They’d all heard of Geoffrey Wysdom, of course. They know the kind of programme he does.’

  ‘But this particular programme isn’t about problems. It’s about various attitudes of mind to different ways of life before marriage.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think I said that, exactly. I said it was something to do with not getting married very young, I think. Now, don’t bother me, dear. You can see I’ve got things to do. Pass round the Twiglets, would you?’

  Virginia turned away, sickened. She drank two glasses of wine very fast to cloud her senses. Then, with relief, she found that the humour of the situation began to appeal to her. The neighbours imagined they were here for a good party. They were all smiles, all asking obvious questions about was it frightening, and how did it feel to be famous? They imagined she was going to answer a few questions about being a spinster, or something. Very interesting. Virginia wondered how their countenances would have changed in an hour’s time. What appropriate remarks they could find to make then.

  The programme began. A girl who had just had a back-street abortion was interviewed, followed by a girl whose fiancé had managed to hold out till a few weeks before the wedding, then raped her and left her. She was in tears throughout the interview.

  ‘A very serious programme, Ruth,’ said one of the neighbours, who felt happier watching Tom Jones.

  ‘Very serious,’ admitted Mrs Fly, ‘but very worthwhile.’

  Virginia came on to the screen. Mrs Fly gave a muted groan of ecstasy and motherly pride.

  ‘What a good likeness,’ she said. ‘Ted, isn’t it?’

  Mr Fly grunted something in reply. The rest of the audience remained in dumbfounded silence.

  Virginia watched the i
nterview up to the point when Geoffrey Wysdom asked her how it felt to be a virgin in this day and age? She watched her small, calculated smile before she answered that question, then got up to leave the room.

  ‘Where are you going?’ hissed Mrs Fly, anxious that no one should miss the moment when she herself would appear on the screen.

  ‘Out.’

  ‘But you can’t. Not at this time of night. Besides, people will know you, now.’

  Ignoring this remark, Virginia closed the door on the television spectacular, knowing her mother would not follow her at so crucial a moment. She put on her coat, went outside, and began to walk down the deserted Acacia Avenue. It was very cold, a little frosty. But her only concern was to walk until the programme was over, the neighbours had stopped twittering about her virginity, and had gone home.

  By now she could no longer think whether she had done right or wrong, had made a fool of herself or a heroine. The only thing she knew positively was that her smile had been endearing, and there was a fair chance of it captivating someone, somewhere.

  And if it didn’t, well, never mind. It was only a couple of days till Charlie arrived. Only a couple of days until her whole life changed.

  Professor Hans Meiselheim’s flat was the ground floor of a Georgian house in Hampstead. He had lived in it for twenty years, and as the rent had only gone up minimally in that time and the landlady, who lived upstairs, was a particularly agreeable and uninterfering woman, he had no thoughts of ever leaving it.

  It consisted of a small bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, and a very large, high-ceilinged sitting-room whose deep windows overlooked the Heath. It was a comfortable, cluttered room: Regency striped wallpaper in two shades of red on the walls, dull maroon velvet curtains whose edges were faded by the sun to the colour of vin rosé; a few sagging sofas and chairs, books and records piled everywhere, a wood fire, and, among a collection of cacti on the mantelpiece, a solitary photograph of a fair-haired woman and young child walking in an Alpine landscape. This was Christabel, his wife, and Gretta, his daughter, killed together in an air crash twenty years ago.

  On the evening of Virginia’s television programme the professor, as usual, was at his desk making notes for a lecture he was to give the next day. The desk was a shadowy litter of papers that had accumulated over the years, and the professor’s notebook itself was scarcely lit by the weak bulb under a thick old parchment lampshade. The professor was bent low over his notes, conscious of the scratching of his pen, the thud of rain on the window, and the occasional spitting of the fire.

  He came at last to the end of his work and gave a deep, audible sigh. Pushing himself back from his desk he stood up, stretched, scratched under each arm, and went to stretch out his hands in front of the fire. The white joints of his knuckles cracked as he moved each finger.

  It was now time for his customary whisky and soda, and had he followed the normal pattern of his evenings, he would then have gone to the small kitchen, cut himself a hunk of cold meat from Sunday’s joint, taken a baked potato out of the oven, added pickles and a lump of cheese to the plate, and had his supper in front of the fire. But this evening he felt an unaccountable restlessness. Neither cold lamb nor Cheddar cheese appealed to him. What he needed, he felt, was a cigar and some Tchaikovsky. He put on a record, lit himself a cigar, poured a neat whisky, and returned to the mantelpiece.

  There, he realised, he had done a foolish thing. Tchaikovsky and a strong drink, when faced with the picture of Christabel, could induce in him melancholy thoughts. He had often thought of throwing the picture away. In fact he had often gone so far as to throw it away, untorn, and then retrieved it next day from the wastepaper basket. He had burned everything else many years ago – all Christabel’s letters in her schoolgirl hand, her curl of white-blonde hair, her diaries, her pressed flowers, all the sheet-music he had marked for her during the years he was her tutor. But the photograph had survived twenty years of his indecision, and he knew he would never be able to part with it now, foolish though it may be to keep it.

  He had taken it only six months before Christabel and Gretta died. It was a Sunday afternoon, in the mountains near Salzburg. Christabel’s face was flushed from a morning of sun and exercise, and Gretta kept interrupting the walk to roll down through the long emerald grass, so that Hans had to run after her and climb back up the mountainside with her on his shoulders. They had had a picnic lunch of salami and goat’s cheese and wine, and caught the bus back to Salzburg – in those days they were much too poor to own a car – at dusk.

  Six months later Hans, who had struggled for five years to live on the meagre earnings from his piano teaching, and occasional sales of his compositions, learned he had won a competition set in London for writing an orchestral suite. He was invited over to conduct a public performance of his work. With his winnings he bought air tickets for his wife and daughter so that they should be with him on the great night. They flew over. Christabel shared his triumph. Well-known musicians shook him by the hand, and complimented Christabel on her beauty. With one accord the critics claimed him to be a great potential talent. As a result, he was offered various jobs in England, all of which seemed preferable to his old life in Salzburg. It was necessary for him to stay on in London for a few days to sort things out. But he couldn’t afford for Christabel and Gretta to stay with him. He took them to the airport, where they were photographed kissing each other good-bye – a remarkably handsome young couple, as the papers said, and on the way back the aeroplane crashed. All aboard dead.

  Hans turned down all the offers of jobs, but stayed in London. He never returned to Salzburg, and wrote no more music.

  His fingers now played on his thigh, following the notes of the piano concerto that sang through the room, and he hummed a little, slightly out of tune.

  This is ridiculous, he thought, the words loud in his head as the music. Ridiculous. I will ask Mrs Beveridge to join me in a drink. That will dispel the depression.

  At the thought of a drink with his landlady in her small, rickety kitchen with its dripping tap and snoring poodle, the frown disappeared from the professor’s brow, and he poured a second drink as strong as his own.

  Mrs Beveridge was sitting at her kitchen table filling in her pools coupons. The room smelt of curry.

  ‘Oh, hallo, professor. How’s things?’ She smiled nicely at him and stretched out her hand for the drink. ‘Here’s to. Been to any good concerts, lately?’ She had asked him precisely the same question only yesterday morning, when they had met at the front door collecting the papers: but it was her custom always to start conversations with him like that. It was the one subject that got him going. That and Austria, and she couldn’t for the life of her think what to ask about Austria just at this very moment.

  ‘No. Not for one month, two months I think it is now.’ Not since he and Virginia had been to the terrible Mozart woman.

  ‘Well, I expect it’s the wrong time of year.’

  The professor sat himself opposite Mrs Beveridge at the kitchen table.

  ‘Funnily enough,’ Mrs Beveridge was saying, ‘I was just going to take myself next door to watch Geoffrey Wysdom’s programme. You know. Like to join me?’

  ‘That would be a pleasure.’ On many occasions he had come up to Mrs Beveridge to watch a televised concert and she had sat quietly by him supplying cups of tea. It would only be the polite and kind thing to do to join her in her kind of programme.

  ‘Soon as we’ve finished the hard stuff I can put on the kettle.’

  She was bustling about, moving the small electric fire from the kitchen to her uncomfortable sitting-room with its upright sofa and musty smell of old material. They sat side by side in the dark watching the television. The professor felt a small flicker of indigestion rise in his chest. He heard, but did not take in, the mumblings of the interviews. His eyelids lowered gently over his eyes.

  Then Virginia came on to the screen. Surely it was Virginia? He made no movement, just waited for her
voice. Yes, it was her. Virginia Fly. The man with the hushed voice said so. Virginia Fly, he said. And then she smiled, a small, touching, lost smile. A stab of pain went through the professor’s chest.

  ‘My God.’ He clapped his hand to his head.

  ‘What is it, dear?’ Mrs Beveridge shuffled round in the dark to see his face. Lit only by the picture on the screen, she could see that it was twisted with pain.

  ‘That is a friend of mine,’ he said. ‘A friend of mine

  ‘Oh? How interesting. I expect they found her, you know, when they went out into the street with a camera.’

  ‘No. It’s nothing like that,’ he heard himself snap. For the first time in twenty years Mrs Beveridge irritated him.

  They both listened in silence to the interview. Then the professor, asking Mrs Beveridge to excuse him, quickly left the room.

  He hurried back to his own flat, turned on just one dim light, and sat down at the piano. He played a few notes, and then his hands slid into his lap.

  ‘My child,’ he said out loud. ‘My child, what have you done?’

  He stood up and went to the desk. He felt a little unsteady. The whisky must have been stronger than usual. He fiddled with a piece of clean writing paper and his pen. Then the solution came to him. He believed in the remedial values of positive action. He picked up his pen and concentrated on the steadiness of his hand.

  My Dear Virginia, he wrote, To-night I listened to you on the television, and I saw you smile…

  Chapter 4

  Charles Whitmore Oakhampton Jr. arrived at London Airport on a Friday. It was a nasty February afternoon, grey, with a slanting bitter wind that whipped his ears as he descended the steps to the tarmac. He thought, simply, gee: what a beginning. Perhaps he should have waited for the spring after all. But he had been postponing the trip for so many years. He was glad at last to have taken the bull by the horns, and as his father had told him, if you could love England in February, you could love it any time.