Wish Her Safe At Home

by Stephen Benatar

  The topmost rooms had an air of Dickens. You almost expected to see Miss Havisham sitting solitary in the twilight, always the spinster in her wedding dress, swathed in cobwebs and depression.

  It was like a museum with no curator to disturb the dust. The larger exhibits up here comprised several chests of drawers, a mahogany wardrobe, two single divans, a harpsichord and a loom.

  “As I say,” remarked Mr. Wymark, “there are evidently a few good pieces.”

  I nodded. I didn’t remember the harpsichord but the loom was something I had seen. And perhaps my great-aunt had been standing close to it on one occasion as the tea was brought in. “Bridget, why must you cut such horribly thick slices?”

  “Ah, do you good, you know it will.”

  “Such doorsteps; no refinement. So utterly Irish!”

  “Excuse me for asking”—this wasn’t Bridget—“but are you in a position to spend money on all of this? It would probably cost you thousands, yet you’d quickly make it back. And by the way I know a handyman I’d be happy to recommend. Also, as it happens, when you do place the house on the market I know someone who—”

  “But I’ve no intention of placing it on the market.”

  He was clearly surprised. I was as well, probably more so. I seldom made snap decisions.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I was under the impression... ”

  And understandably. Before I’d seen the house it hadn’t occurred to me that I might want to keep it. My roots were in London; my friends too, such as they were, my work and my interests. The familiar might be tedious and unsatisfying. But it was comfortable; it was secure.

  “You mean then,” said Mr. Wymark, “you see it as a letting proposition?”

  “Good heavens, no. I mean that I intend to live here. Yes, really! There’s something about its atmosphere that’s... ” I fumbled for the right word. “Well, that’s practically seductive! Don’t say you haven’t felt it?”

  But he only answered dryly: “I’m afraid you haven’t seen the ground floor yet. Not properly.”

  I ignored this.

  “It’s odd: I’ve never regarded myself as being susceptible to atmosphere. But I think my great-aunt must have been more welcoming than I remember.”

  He said nothing.

  “Or perhaps it’s an impression that was left here earlier. Prior to 1944?”

  For in truth “welcoming” wasn’t an adjective I should have associated with Alicia. Those that sprang to mind were more like “long-suffering” or “melancholy”—except of course when she’d grown animated by thoughts of Bitter Sweet. Bridget had been the welcoming one.

  But at least nothing that Mrs. Pimm was later to tell me of screaming and cursing could radically alter my remembrance of powdered softness; of wistful gazing into dark corners; the fact that in the kitchen my life might once have been saved, the cake mixture had tasted good, there were stories of films to enthral me and of strapping young men impatient to marry me.

  No, it was merciful: the old ladies’ feudings weren’t going to leave any greater imprint on myself than they appeared to have left on the house. It was a shame it couldn’t invariably be like that; that last impressions were so often the ones which endured. How many of us would want to be remembered for what we finally became?

  It occurred to me suddenly that Bridget—on arriving in Bristol—would have been forty-seven: my own age at present. A sobering reflection.

  Plainly the pair had lived, slept and washed— and cooked—in one of the rooms on the ground floor. There was a grease-encrusted Primus between two camp beds; there was a ewer in a basin (the basin ringed with scum); there were long velvet curtains, originally wine-coloured, hanging at the windows. The nets were grey—almost dark grey—so rotten that at the merest touch they might disintegrate.

  I noticed that the Primus stove was called “The Good Companion.”

  And this was where the vegetation was, too: all those overgrown pot plants—or their successors—which had been such a feature of St. John’s Wood. Nearly a dozen. One of them, incredibly, showed signs of life.

  In contrast the other room was bare. Here, I was pointedly informed, had the refuse of many years amassed into something to rival the town tip; in the centre it had even touched the ceiling. And although the council had fumigated, although the rodent inspector had laid his poisons, still the air was fetid, the walls damp, discoloured—the paper hanging in places like the peeling skin of mushrooms.

  The solicitor smiled at me, affably. “Does any of this shed a different light?”

  “Not at all.”

  In the narrow back garden, little more than a wasteland with concrete by the door, there was a very nasty WC (they couldn’t have used that, surely?) and a couple of coal bunkers.

  Mr. Wymark was observing my reaction. It struck me quite abruptly that I didn’t like him—not only that I didn’t like him but that these days I didn’t appear to like anybody very much. Everywhere, it seemed, I sensed ulterior motives.

  I gave myself a little shake. When I was an old lady I should clearly have the most terrible persecution complex. I’d lock every door, window, drawer and cupboard, see double meanings in everything that people said, wonder why so-called friends didn’t write—or else wonder why they did; watch eagle-eyed the customer in front of me at the checkout to make sure she didn’t put my goods into her shopping bag; check and recheck my slip from the cash register—had the girl gone haywire or was there something about me which she didn’t like?

  No. No. No!

  I smiled.

  I looked at him afresh.

  He was a dark-haired, smoothly shaven, self-possessed young man who plainly meant the whole world nothing but good. I said, “Well, thank you for showing me all this, Mr. Wymark. You’ve been most kind. Now come and let me buy you a cup of coffee and a Chelsea bun.” In my own ears I sounded just like anybody’s favourite aunt.

  But he glanced at his watch, abstractedly mentioned another appointment and said that if I didn’t mind he would see me later at his office. Or could he drop me off somewhere?

  He waited while I gave water to that one surviving plant and spoke to it encouragingly. He seemed reinvigorated; it was as if I’d watered him at the same time, spoken to him in the same soft and persuasive style. “I can see you’ve got green fingers,” he said.

  “My mother would never have agreed with you!”

  “Anyway, I can certainly put you in touch with somebody who has: a fellow who’ll be able to work such wonders on your garden! A friend of mine... an undergraduate. Name of Allsop.”

  I thanked him and again told him he was kind. “And you seem to be wonderfully well-connected!”

  “I’ve lived in Bristol all my life.”

  “Have you indeed? So did you ever meet my great-aunt?” I had meant to ask him earlier. “And if so what did you think of her?”

  “Are you referring to when she made her will?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d have you know, Miss Waring, that at that time I wasn’t even born.”

  “Oh dear! Was it so very long ago? You make me feel quite ancient.”

  I added quickly:

  “But it’s not as if I’d gone completely mad. She might have had more recent dealings with your firm?”

  “Of course she might. But in fact she didn’t.”

  Then, with a feeling akin to sadness, I watched him drive away: this dark-haired, smoothly shaven, self-possessed young man who so plainly, it appeared, meant the whole world nothing but good.

  Yet he didn’t return my wave and I thought that for some reason he clearly hadn’t taken to me.

  4

  “I think I should like to have been somebody’s favourite aunt,” I said. “I think it might have been fun.” This, to the woman whose table at the teashop I had asked to share.

  She smiled, hesitated, finally remarked: “Well, perhaps it’s not too late.”

  “No brother, no sister, no husband—somehow I g
et the feeling it might be!”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Did you ever see Dear Brutus?”

  “ Dear Brutus? Yes! A lovely play.”

  “Wouldn’t it be fine if we all had second chances?”

  She nodded, now looking more relaxed. “Oh, I’d have gone to university and got myself an education!” I reflected that she probably needed one. “But otherwise I don’t think I’d have wished things very different.” She gave a meaningless laugh and started gathering up her novel and her magazine. Poor woman. What a lack of imagination. (And what a dull, appalling hat.) Yet I realized that I envied her.

  “What about you?” She said it as if she felt she had to. She was pulling on one of her gloves.

  I had a moment’s sudden unease upon the question of my own hat.

  “Me?” I had always considered it pointless engaging in a serious conversation unless you were prepared to give it your all. “Well, I suppose, chiefly, I wouldn’t have been so stupidly kind to my poor mother.”

  Yet it seemed I had embarrassed her. “Oh, but I’m sure your mother appreciated it! Indeed I’m certain she did. Ah, but there’s my bus! So sorry to rush off like this... ” She smiled back at me from the doorway and dashed into the street.

  I hadn’t noticed any bus.

  “No.” I shook my head. “She took it solely as her due. But that’s the old, old story. Nothing new under the sun, as they’ll always tell you.”

  Yet this was a happy day. Not one for letting in the glooms. I picked up my bill, totted up the figures.

  And, after all, it was hardly as though I’d ever won a beauty contest, was it? Therefore no real reason to suppose that—if I hadn’t been stuck at home—I’d have been whisked off by some gentleman like Mr. Darcy or Rhett Butler or Jervis Pendleton. No real reason at all.

  Or was there? I pulled on my own gloves with gay decisiveness. Yes, it seemed so important to be gay. In London I was seldom gay; at work, practically never. I sat at my table and pondered and grew increasingly elated. It was as if I’d received a revelation. Here in a tearoom along with the fruit scones and the jam doughnuts. I wasn’t even sure what had led up to it. Previously, of course, I had often discovered the secret of happiness: courage on one occasion, acceptance on another, gratitude on a third. But this time there was a rightness to it—a certainty, simplicity—which in the past mightn’t have seemed quite so all-embracing. Gaiety, I told myself. Vivacity. Positive thinking. I could have cheered. Still sitting at my table in the empty café I knew that concerning the house I had made the right decision. Bristol, merely a name to me before, was going to treat me well, provide me with a new start. London in my imagination had now become grey; maybe always had been? Bristol was in flaming Technicolor.

  They were as different to each other as Kansas from the Land of Oz.

  5

  My mother was such a silly person. I explained this to the woman from the teashop as we strolled around the park; not that I felt I needed to. My mother was always so concerned, I said, with what she considered correct behaviour.

  “And there’s something in particular which can still make my stomach clench.”

  “Oh, my!”

  “Yes! When I was a child she told me I should always decline a gift of money. And I don’t mean just from strangers but from relatives. And I can remember saying repeatedly, ‘No—no, thank you—I simply can’t accept it,’ but then, after a fair amount of coaxing, ‘Oh well, that’s extremely kind of you,’ and later to my mother, ‘Yes, I tried. I really did try.’”

  The woman with the hat made sympathetic noises.

  I went on.

  “On one occasion an elderly cousin of my father’s offered me something and got the customary response. So he simply gave a shrug and replaced the pound note in his wallet. ‘Very well, in that case, if you really don’t want it... ’ My disappointment must have showed. He pulled the wallet out again. ‘It isn’t that I don’t want it,’ I mumbled, with a burning face, ‘it’s just that... ’ ‘Just that what?’ he asked.

  “‘I was trying to be polite.’

  “‘Rachel, don’t try to be polite. Just try to be natural. Be a child.’

  “And another time (the two things are connected) my mother was in hospital one Easter and I was staying with the elderly couple who lived upstairs. Well, on the Sunday morning there wasn’t any egg beside my plate—of course, I hadn’t been expecting one—but what there was, was a packet of Ross’s Edinburgh Rock. When I took my seat I saw it and felt jubilant; you didn’t get so many sweets in those days. Yet I didn’t say anything because, again, I had been told never to assume that something was yours until you’d actually been given it. But after a while Mrs. Michaels, who was a funny little woman, spindly-legged, slightly hunchbacked, jumped up from the table with a small cry of distress and exclaimed to her husband as she went, ‘It was meant as a surprise. So why isn’t she pleased?’

  “Well, I sat there in shocked silence for a minute, gazing dully at the gift, and then I said quietly, ‘But I am. Very.’ Yet by then Mr. Michaels had gone after his wife and there was nobody left to hear.

  “There was nobody either—but this I was glad of—to see the silent tears which trickled down my cheeks.

  “And I didn’t know what to do with the rock. I carried all the dirty dishes to the sink and washed them and put away the cereal packet and the butter dish and the marmalade but in the end I just left that packet on the table. I couldn’t think what to say.”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, it simply disappeared and wasn’t spoken of again. I stayed with the Michaels for a further three days. It seemed a terribly long visit.”

  “How deeply unfortunate!” said the woman.

  “So, yes, my mother was a very silly person. Snobbish and small-minded and manipulative—and altogether altered from the time my father was alive. With him around, who knows, she might have gone on being the mother of my earliest recollections. With him around I can’t begin to tell you how different my own life would have been!”

  “No, I feel sure of it.”

  But I raised my hand with a commendably stoical gesture. “Oh, well. C’est la vie!”

  A duck—rude thing—displayed its bottom. Perhaps the lady from the teashop would have gained in interest if she had done the same. “Oh, there’s your bus!” I cried. “Be careful with your basket!” I watched her running to the park gates and dropping her library book, the Woman’s Weekly and a ball of lime-green wool. Her hat slipped down over her eyes. It suited her. It made her look more stylish.

  6

  Sylvia was angry ( extra angry) when I phoned to say I’d be spending the night in Bristol. “When the bloody hell did you decide that?”

  “Oh... about an hour ago.”

  So it was as well I’d had the forethought not to bring my toothbrush. My hand had hovered over it that morning (“Just in case,” I’d told myself, for it had then been nothing but the barest possibility) yet native cunning had prevailed. I had slipped a nightdress into my handbag, and a fresh pair of stockings and knickers, and left it at that.

  In the taxi though—since I was now a teenager again and on my way to Paris—the barest possibility had progressed from rank outsider to odds-on favourite. At Paddington I had asked for a weekend return.

  And, roughly eight-and-a-half hours later, I was hoping that Sylvia would soon be pacified by the cheerfulness of my manner. “Is it still drizzling up in town? Here, right from the word go, it’s been lovely! Quite lovely! Right from the moment I got off the train!”

  “Oh, my day is now complete,” she said. “Thank you so much.” She hung up.

  Well, I needn’t feel guilty, I told myself. She was only being Sylvia. I got my toothbrush and my tube of toothpaste at a local chemist’s. “Not too bad a winter so far,” said the grey-haired man behind the counter. We were now in the last days of March.

  “Oh, what a pessimist!” I exclaimed. “The winter’s over.”

  He la
ughed. “Yes, you’re right.”

  I questioned him about the town. “As a matter of fact I shall shortly be coming to live here.”

  “You won’t regret it. It’s a nice place.”

  I was glad to be discussing my plans. For one thing, it made them more official. Having just spoken to Sylvia—but naturally not having apprised her yet of my decision—I knew that back in London I might falter. I needed to have people to whom I had committed myself.

  “Then we’ll be seeing you perhaps?” remarked the chemist.

  “Certainly.”

  “Hope so, anyway.”

  As I walked along the street in the pale evening sunshine I pondered those last three words. Hope so, anyway. It seemed a strange thing to have said, a little unnecessary even, unless he’d truly meant it.

  I smiled. There was no doubt about it. This was a most delightful town.

  Then I quickened my pace and felt blissfully aware that spring had come. A charming red frock caught my eye in the window of a dress shop. I stood gazing at it for well over a minute, conscious both of my own reflection and that of the world behind me.

  Disappointingly, the shop was closed.

  Never mind. For dinner I chose some of the most expensive things on the menu. Now do be careful—I tried to sound a warning—yet it was a four-star hotel and I had a real feeling of being on holiday. Afterwards I again wandered round the city centre, cautious to keep only to its main thoroughfares, and came across a small arts cinema where they were showing A Streetcar Named Desire, one of my favourite pictures. All my life I had searched for pointers. Today I felt that everything was telling me how right I’d been: simply to trust my instincts.

  As usual (this was my third time of seeing it) I loved that bit where Blanche sings in her bath,