Virginia Fly is Drowning

by Angela Huth

  Virginia’s spirits rose. She hugged the professor’s knee. ‘Please let’s do that.’ Water from their own well, perhaps. Thick, thick walls and real fires. Those views. Snowed up Christmas. Books, walks, sun, music, peace. Pictures again, pleasing pictures.

  ‘Very well, we will set about it. On our honeymoon we will drive around looking till we find something.’ The professor, rewarded by her reaction, was finding it hard to control his voice.

  ‘That would be really lovely. I shall look forward to that.’ Virginia’s eyes came near to shining. The professor kneaded one of her ears and felt the blush rising on her cheek.

  ‘You look quite happy. Are you happy?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You don’t want to change your mind?’

  ‘Sometimes you are quite absurd, Professor.’

  ‘Oh, Virginia Fly.’ He felt old man’s tears pricking at his eyes. They sat in silence for a while.

  Then Mrs Fly returned and began calling them. Determined to keep their new plan from her, lest it should be in some way undermined by her inevitable doubts, they went down to join her for tea.

  But later that week, alone in the staff-room during a free period before lunch, Virginia abandoned correcting English essays and wrote her first letter to the professor. She wrote fast and easily, her hand firm, pinpricks of sweat on her nose.

  My Dearest Dear Professor – Please think of the other morning when you asked me to marry you as a dream which didn’t really happen. Because I can’t ever marry you. Your affection swayed me when I was low: I am fond of you and I enjoy being with you and you seemed – forgive my cruelty here – to be something I could clutch to. I said yes hardly knowing what I was doing. It was wrong of me, unforgivable of me, and I ask you if you can forgive me. But I cannot marry you because you see I don’t love you in the way that I should love someone with whom I’m going to spend the rest of my life. You don’t fill me with a terrible passion that is impossible to live without. I don’t feel sick and dizzy in your presence. I don’t miss you enough when you’re not there. I don’t feel you are my whole life. You don’t shake my foundations. I have a million doubts. There, clumsy as ever, I am. Hurting, surely, but only in order to make you believe that I’m serious, to make you believe it will be a disaster for both of us if we go through with it.

  I am sorry. Yours, Virginia Fly.

  With a calm determination she sealed the envelope, addressed it, stamped it. She would walk to the village now and post it, to make sure it arrived in the morning. But on her way down the passage the bell rang. She was on lunch duty. There was no time. She put her letter in the bag.

  At lunch she was aware of feeling sick. The noise of clattering plates and a couple of hundred high voices jarred on her ears with a freshness which reminded her of the first time she had dined in this echoing hall nine years ago. The lump of semolina with its eye of strawberry jam blurred before her eyes.

  ‘Miss Fly, are you all right?’ Damn the child.

  ‘Fine, thank you.’ Send the letter, and there would be years and years more semolina, wouldn’t there?

  As soon as grace was over, she slipped round to the dustbins at the back door, tore the letter into innumerable small pieces, and threw it away.

  For Mrs Thompson, Virginia’s engagement was the culmination of the happiest spring she could remember since Bill died. As other people fester on regret at some past action in their lives, Mrs Thompson daily thrived on self-congratulation: writing to Virginia Fly had been the most rewarding gesture she had made in years. True, it hadn’t turned out quite as she had expected: it was Mrs Fly who had become her great friend rather than Virginia. But that was only to be expected, due to the generation gap. Still, she was very fond of Virginia: she was such a nice, quiet, sensible girl, with something of a humorous eye. The kind of daughter she would have liked to have had herself. The kind of girl you could understand – not like most of the younger generation to-day, with their scruffy clothes and funny moods. The kind of girl who needed a bit of protection and advice as to the ways of this wicked world – Mrs Thompson could help her there, and would see to it as far as she could that Virginia came to no harm. It was a pity that the Ulick Brand plan hadn’t worked out: he had seemed such a nice, well-off young man. Mrs Thompson would have liked to have taken credit for the match. Still, the professor was probably altogether more suitable. Older men were steadier. More trustworthy. Less energy to go gallivanting about. In all, a better bet. Besides, as Mrs Thompson joked to Virginia with amazing regularity, she quite fancied the professor herself. That lovely thick grey hair and those sensitive hands (she always noticed hands). You could tell he was a wonderful pianist.

  If anything, Virginia’s engagement brought Mrs Thompson and Mrs Fly even closer together. There was so much to discuss, so much about which to give their invaluable advice. They found in each other a reflection of their own enthusiasm: they found the warmth of agreement and the pleasure of mutual, rosy tinted reminiscence. Indulging in these things meant the necessity of being together a great deal: Mrs Thompson came down to Acacia Avenue most weekends now, often staying on for Monday night and only, with reluctance, dragging herself back to London on Tuesday to keep her date with Mrs Baxter. Mrs Fly would have been delighted for her to stay the whole week.

  In fact, at this happy time, Mrs Thompson had only one real problem: Mrs Baxter.

  Mrs Baxter was jealous. Bright green, and it showed. Mrs Thompson, for her part, had done her best. No matter how great the wrench of leaving Acacia Avenue, she had always turned up on their regular Tuesday night. What’s more, she had kept nothing from Mrs Baxter. She’d told her everything: she even persuaded Mrs Fly to send her an invitation to the wedding. Mrs Baxter took this in quite the wrong way.

  ‘Huh! Expect me to go troll-olling along to the wedding of some fancy people I don’t even know, do you? You can keep your charity to yourself.’

  It was no good explaining. Mrs Baxter didn’t want any explanations. She also didn’t ever want to hear another word about the Flys, and made this clear to Mrs Thompson in no uncertain terms.

  Mrs Thompson, as she later told Mrs Fly – who was very sympathetic about the whole situation – was very hurt. But, for old time’s sake, she resolved to curb her tongue. For several weeks, as the result of a superhuman effort, she managed not to mention any one of them.

  But the strain told upon her and, some Tuesday nights, when she and Mrs Baxter parted, she found herself in tears of frustration. It would have been so nice to ask Mrs Baxter’s opinion about her new wedding hat, her dress, the colour of her bag and shoes … Friends, she reflected, sometimes asked too much of you. Still, she shouldn’t complain. At least she had friends. For the first time for years she thanked God for her blessings, and when she rose from her knees she gave a little skip of pleasure. The day after to-morrow was Friday again, and meant another Surrey weekend.

  One night, about six weeks before the end of term, Virginia had a dream about her black-moustached seducer. She woke trembling, sweating, weak and cold. Having thought he had left her for ever, his return terrified her. She lay writhing in the damp twisted sheets, watching the full moon cut into diamonds by the panes of her lattice window. She thought of the touch of the man’s hand on her body, soothing her neck, cupping each breast in turn, and she stifled a scream in the pillow. Some time later, finally exhausted by frustrated desire, she succumbed to common sense, a defence she had always instilled into herself so hard throughout her life that it escaped her only momentarily in moments of crisis.

  She got out of bed, put on her dressing-gown and lit the bedside lamp. She would write, finally, to the professor. Marriage, without the kind of passion she had just experienced, was not possible. There was no further choice. She would begin to wait once more. After all, she was used to waiting.

  Dear Professor, My Dear Professor, she wrote in the red marking pen that happened to be beside her bed, I am dreadfully sorry but we cannot cannot cannot go throug
h with it. It would not be fair to either of us, especially to you. With all my heart I want to love you totally, but I can’t. I want us to be delirious and wild and passionate – but we aren’t like that, are we? We are marvellous friends and I know people tell you friendship is the best basis for marriage, but I do believe you must start with something else as well or even the friendship won’t survive. It’s a little different for you. You had, a long time ago, a perfect kind of love. You have had time to recover a bit, and I will be something different – secure and nice and friendly for your old age. But you see I never had that first bit. I have tried to love people, but it has always been fantasy, never the real thing. And I believe that must come to everyone at least once in a lifetime, even if one has to wait till one is fifty. Therefore I am afraid. What happens if I marry you, feeling like I do, settle for our compromise, and in years to come I fall in love with someone? Oh God, dear professor, that would be dreadful. Neither of us could ever want that to happen. Here, trembling and feeling very cold again, she got up to shut the window. The sky was filling with summer dawn, veins of mercury in the clouds, the ugly lawn silvered with dew, the birds already alert and full of song.

  ‘Virginia Fly, you’re a fool,’ she said out loud.

  So please forgive me if I go from your life, which would be better than the possibility of destroying it. I can’t tell you all this because I am a moral coward. I wish I could have written it better. With love and affection, Virginia Fly.

  After that, Virginia slept till the sun was high and it was breakfast time.

  Getting dressed, the perfection of the morning made itself felt even in her unimaginative room, and brightened the dull Surrey view outside. She couldn’t help thinking of Wales: there, such a morning wouldn’t be wasted. She would collect a warm egg for the professor’s breakfast while he stoked up the fire, and then sit in the mountain sun all day with books she’d never had time to read.

  Once more, Virginia found herself going down to the boiler. The shreds of her second letter to the professor, which she hadn’t bothered to re-read, were devoured in a moment. The despair of the night was past. This morning she was all common sense.

  The Wedding Day was the bright light on Mrs Fly’s horizon. She found the joy of anticipation almost unbearable, and certainly something she couldn’t keep to herself. Every morning Mr Fly and Virginia were subjected to new thoughts on the matter.

  ‘Oh Ginny, before I forget to tell you – I was awake most of the night thinking about it, I can’t think why it didn’t come to us before – I’ve had a brainwave.’ Mr Fly, controlling a sigh, picked up his paper. Mrs Fly tapped at her egg with a minuscule silver spoon. ‘Ted, I think you should listen to this. I think you should take an interest. It’s not every day your daughter gets married.’ Mr Fly continued to read his paper.

  ‘I am listening,’ he said.

  ‘I shall want your advice to prove it.’ His wife took her first tiny sip of yolk. ‘Well, it’s this. Bridesmaids. On the subject of bridesmaids. Had you thought about them, Ginny?’

  ‘Only that I wouldn’t have any.’

  ‘In the normal way I would agree with you, not having any young relations. But how about my brainwave? I thought: why not have all the girls in your class? There are twelve of them, aren’t there? Imagine, they’d make quite a little train.’

  Mr Fly spluttered, trying to suppress a laugh.

  ‘Do be serious, Ted,’ snapped his wife. ‘You don’t seem to be taking this wedding at all seriously. Now listen to this. I’ve got it all worked out. Twelve little bridesmaids, most of them quite pretty as far as I can remember from Speech Day. Wouldn’t they look a sight? In lime, I thought. Lime would be lovely in July. And it’s not a normal bridesmaid colour, is it? Lime Kate Greenaway dresses with little posies of stephanotis and gardenias, and bonnets on their heads trimmed with the same flowers. What do you think?’

  There was a long pause. Then:

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ said Mr Fly, getting up. ‘I thought ordering the champagne was to be my only responsibility.’ He went to the door. This irritated his wife.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Work.’

  ‘But you haven’t finished your toast.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But you usually do.’

  ‘This morning, I don’t want to.’ For the first time that she could recall in forty years her husband slammed the door. She gave a small shudder.

  ‘Oh dear, I don’t know what’s the matter with him.’

  ‘You can’t expect him to be interested in dress-making details,’ said Virginia. ‘Besides, the wedding has been the sole topic of conversation for six weeks now. Couldn’t we talk about something to interest Father, for once? No wonder he’s resentful.’

  Mrs Fly sniffed.

  ‘I can see whose side you’re on,’ she said. Deflated, she scooped up the small threads of egg yolk which, in spite of all her careful management, had dribbled down the side of the shell. ‘Well, what do you think about my idea?’

  ‘No,’ said Virginia, firmly. ‘Absolutely no. I’m sorry, but I hate lime and twelve schoolchildren bridesmaids would be totally absurd.’

  Rarely did Virginia speak so sharply to her mother. Mrs Fly’s eyes brimmed with tears.

  ‘I don’t think you can realise, Ginny,’ she said, her voice a-quiver, ‘exactly what a wedding means to the bride’s mother.’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Virginia, still hard. ‘And I don’t think you realise that the trappings are not the important part. If the professor and I had our way, we’d be married in a Northern registry office with no one, no relations there.’ Mrs Fly stood up quickly, grasping the edges of the table cloth with her shaky hands.

  ‘You can’t mean what you’re saying, child,’ she shouted. ‘After all these years of saying your prayers and you don’t want to be married before God? You can’t mean it –’

  ‘I do,’ Virginia shouted back, sickened by her mother’s tears. ‘You’d better go and tell Mrs Thompson, and see what she has to say about it.’

  Virginia left the room, slamming the door like her father. She always reacted badly to scenes. Her hands were shaking by now, and she was sweating under the arms. At this moment, she realised, she and her mother had never been farther apart.

  Not far along the road she was stopped by her father in his mini shooting brake.

  ‘Ginny? I’ll give you a lift.’

  ‘Father! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Just driving around, you know. Filling in time. I made myself a trifle early.’ He winked. When she was in the car he said: ‘I’m sorry I went off like that. I just thought if I heard another word about bridesmaids’ dresses … Your mother’s a little overwrought. I don’t blame her, of course.’ He smiled. ‘Do you happen to know if Mrs Thompson is coming down again this weekend?’

  ‘I believe she is.’ Virginia watched her father’s face. A muscle clenched in his neck. He spoke tightly.

  ‘I have a feeling, once you’ve gone, Ginny, she’ll be down most weekends. Still, that man near Hastings, you know, the one I got the lawn mower from, he’s become quite a friend of mine. He’s asked me over any time. Said I could go any time I liked, and he’ll take me gliding. I quite fancy a bit of floating about the skies. Maybe I’ll go over there on Saturday.’ This was the first time he had mentioned either his new friendship or his new hobby.

  ‘That will be nice,’ said Virginia, pleased: and then suddenly, all in a rush, ‘and you will come to us any time you like won’t you? To London or Wales? Any time Mrs Thompson overdoes it?’ Mr Fly laughed.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to inflict myself upon you, Ginny.’

  ‘You’d never be doing that.’

  ‘Well, I dare say, average traffic, I could make it up to you in no time at all.’

  He left her near the school. Driving off, sitting very upright, hands clasped on the wheel cautiously as a learner, he decided not to take the risk of waving. Virginia watched till
his carefully polished car was out of sight. She wondered about his old age.

  Speech Day was on the last day of term. The professor, having been invited by the headmistress herself, agreed to come, after much persuasion. He made an effort for the occasion: pressed suit, clean shirt, and new tie. Remarkably distinguished, he looked, Virginia thought with pride.

  As was the case of all members of staff who left after years of hard and devoted service, effulgent tributes were paid to Virginia. She sat, disbelieving, as words of praise were sent forth in short, trembling speeches by girls with sweating hands. The headmistress wished her well in her marriage and hoped she would come back and visit the school often. A girl from her own class, curtsying, suddenly nervous, presented her with a huge bunch of yellow roses. Finally, the whole school gave three cheers for Miss Fly. Down below, in the hall, the professor laughed and clapped in the front row, proud of her. She muttered thanks, and smiled till her face ached. ‘I’m overwhelmed, what can I say?’ It was all insanity.

  A violent chord on the piano lopped off the emotion of the moment. The whole school stood, paused, then crashed into ‘Jerusalem’. Then they marched out, familiar thud of feet, last time in the familiar hall, all those beautiful straight backs, on the platform Miss Graham’s petticoat showing as usual …

  ‘It’s a wonder you’re not bloody crying at it all,’ whispered Mr Bluett, making her smile a proper smile at last.

  Later, she took the professor to her classroom. There he was a triumph. He met every pupil, shook each one by the hand, examined and commented on twenty-four paintings of his own wedding. The children presented him and Virginia with their present, wrapped in paper painted by themselves. A carriage clock, long saved for. The professor’s delight enchanted them: they crowded round him, touching him, calling for his attention, getting to know as quickly as they could the man who was taking their teacher away.

  All the farewells over, the professor picked up Virginia’s small case. In it she had put the things that had accumulated in her desk over the years. She unpinned and packed the wedding paintings; she took the clay ashtrays, pressed butterflies and flowers that her pupils, on various private occasions, had given her during the term. Finally, she rubbed out the end of term notices from the blackboard, and they left the empty classroom.