He said: “Darling, we haven’t told Miss Waring the reason for our visit.”
“My goodness,” I exclaimed confusedly, “does there need to be a reason?”
“Well, now I realize not,” he answered. He grinned apologetically. “But anyway I was boasting to Celia about that garden we’d created—”
“You created.”
“No,” he contradicted firmly, “very much a team effort: you the brain, me the brawn. And I suddenly thought how much I’d like to see it again. And I’d like Celia to see it too; to appreciate my cleverness.”
“Our cleverness,” I cried merrily, aware of having scored a telling point.
“Yes, I swear it. Cross my heart.”
“But you’re saying you’ve only come to see the garden?”
I felt like a dreadful flirt but the flirtation came quite naturally, even here under the eyes of his smiling wife.
“The garden?” I said. “Not me?”
He bowed his head. He answered: “I’d forgotten how nice you were.”
It was one of those crushing moments when you’re wholly taken aback by simple sincerity and you can’t think what to say.
“Of course you may come and see it,” was all that I did say.
We sat out there for some while close together on the wrought-iron bench—Roger in the middle—and I was most terribly aware of the contact of our thighs.
“I remember you’re a student,” I said, my voice sounding wholly unnatural to myself, “but for the life of me I can’t remember what you’re studying.”
“Law.”
Had I never asked him? I didn’t think I had. How utterly remiss. “That must be very interesting.”
He nodded. “But another three years to go. That’s the hard part. I just can’t wait to get started.”
“Yes, it must be hard.” I leaned forward slightly, looked across him to his wife. “How ever do you manage?”
She replied easily, “Oh, we do manage. Somehow. Roger gardens of course during the spring and summer vacations.”
I smiled, not quite so easily. “What it is to be young,” I thought. But I hadn’t realized I was going to say it right out loud.
“Well, we’ve got our health,” she said. “And we’ve got Thomas. And we’ve got each other. Money doesn’t really seem all that important.”
Yes. And during the night it mightn’t seem important in the slightest.
I wondered if he wore pyjamas.
And I wondered how often... and how it... Sitting there in the balmy evening air I felt momentarily sick again with deprivation and jealousy and the bitterly recurring knowledge that I would never know now what it felt like, that one experience which above all others was alleged to be... Oh God, I thought. Oh God, oh God, oh God. For a second I was afraid I’d said all that aloud as well.
But the desperation of the moment passed. We talked some more about the garden. Celia said, “I think in time it will be beautiful. But—and this may sound blasphemous within my husband’s hearing—it’s the house I truly go for. It’s one of the loveliest I’ve seen. Not only that, it’s got such a wonderful atmosphere.”
“Ah? So you’ve really noticed?”
“Well, who could fail to?”
She had gone a long way towards making it more bearable, that retreating minute of desolation. I liked her. I liked her despite the gleam of loving pride whenever her eyes were resting on her husband.
“Then you must come and see me often.”
“We should love to,” she said. “And you must come and see us, too.” She added impulsively: “What about lunch on Sunday?”
But Roger broke in. “Darling, didn’t your parents say they might be driving over next Sunday with Ralph or someone?”
“Oh, damn—”
We left it in abeyance for the time being. In all honesty I was just as glad. Although extremely moved to have been asked, especially with so much warmth and spontaneity, I felt there was absolutely no rush. I should get a lot of enjoyment simply from thinking about it.
She made a face. “My parents want us to have young Thomas christened.” He was making happy little noises and sucking his thumb while drumming his heels on the plaid rug that I had brought out and arranged on the turf which his father had laid. (How I had liked the way his back muscles had rippled as he was lowering each section into place.) “We ourselves can’t see the urgency. But I suppose”—she laughed—“anything for the sake of a quiet life... ”
“You know, Celia, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more contented baby.”
“Would you like to hold him?”
20
For various reasons I passed a largely sleepless night. In the first place I had fevered, wakeful dreams of having—perhaps—God willing—almost acquired a new family. Roger and Celia Allsop wanted three more children; which on the one hand was a nice notion but on the other a horribly disturbing one. I tried to concentrate on the nice part though. I calculated that by the time I was seventy those four children would either be in their twenties or approaching them. By the time I was eighty they would probably have children of their own. What would they call me? Aunt? Aunty Rachel? I’d be such a sweet old lady. They’d come to me with all their troubles, things they couldn’t speak about at home. Aunty Rachel was such a sport! You could always rely on her. Her house was such a hive of activity as well, an ever-open door, people coming and going at all times, and everything such fun! Not merely that. She was always so generous. Dear old soul. Nobody quite like her.
My hectic imagination pictured birthday parties, mainly but not exclusively for the children: Christmases, merry traditional Christmases such as I had seldom known: for the most part it had been just my mother and me, or Sylvia and me. I saw myself doing a little song-and-dance routine, the centre of a clamorous admiring crowd,
Sometimes I think I’ve found my hero,
But it’s a queer romance;
Come on, big boy—ten cents a dance,
my pretty, twinkling feet still as pretty and twinkling as ever, my ankles just as slim, my footwear just as elegant. “Oh, I would never let any man drink champagne out of my slipper! No matter how he begged. Only think, my dears, of how—for ever after—it would squelch!” I would turn into such a character.
And there’d also be weddings. By then I wouldn’t mind the thought of weddings; I’d be able to flirt with all the handsome young men—and even, by then, with some of the older ones too—and there’d be nothing but sheer wickedness and pleasure and hilarity.
But at some time after four o’clock I fell into a different dream and in this dream Roger—naked—was coming up the stairs towards me. He was dark and didn’t look at all like Roger but I knew that it was he. I was waiting at the top of the staircase in a long white garden-party frock and I was aware without any feeling of surprise that I had changed as well: I was younger and more beautiful.
Yet the stairs seemed to go on forever—there must have been a hundred flights. It was as though I dwelt in some impossibly high tower, almost as unscalable on the inside as it was on the out. And I became afraid that he would take so long to reach me that all my loveliness would fade. I would not merely grow old but ancient.
Haggard...
The lovely dream became a nightmare—a nightmare directed by Hitchcock but without his penchant for romantic ends.
And when I awoke from it—although, thank heaven, not staying awake for long—I felt disoriented. Drugged. Drained. I tried, as an antidote, to recapture the way it had felt to hold Thomas in the garden.
Unsuccessfully. For some reason what I recaptured was the way it had felt, less than a year before, when my periods had stopped coming.
Useless. Unused.
Wasted.
I recaptured how—when the realization had finally sunk in—I had cried on and off all through one rainy Sunday afternoon. Sylvia had thought I was crazy.
* * *
But as if all that hadn’t been enough there was another the
me which had run through my restlessness: the book I was going to write: the idea of gradually getting to know another life—a fine, exemplary and altruistic life—of painstakingly removing coats of paint, layers of wallpaper, and working my way in... of feeling my way in, with a wonderful and enriching instinct for the creation of links. I visualized myself, here too, as being on the verge of a new relationship, one equally important in its very different way. Indeed, the two themes almost merged. It struck me at some point that, after all, the naked man on the stair might not have been Roger. It might have been Horatio. I was in that midworld between wakefulness and sleep where such a notion really didn’t seem enormously farfetched.
The face of the man had become a blur. Perhaps this was strange, since my own face remained so vividly in mind. It was the face of Scarlett O’Hara.
Of Vivien Leigh.
And when I finally awoke in the morning—having something as tangible as that to hold on to—it was the image of myself at the top of the stairs which I remembered best. Vivien Leigh in a low-cut white crinoline, with frills at the shoulders and a sash at the waist. Kittenish but strong.
21
When i finally awoke, although I now felt thoroughly refreshed and rejuvenated, I was also mildly annoyed that it was half-past-nine—and I had overslept by two hours.
But all the same I didn’t hurry. Things had to be done nicely; especially so from now on. My breakfast table with its single rose. My lightly boiled egg, my thin crisp toast, my little pot of real coffee. The housework, my warm and scented bath, the careful brushing of my hair. The application of my creams and makeup. None of it was wasted time.
Far from it indeed. Even while I dusted I looked about me for things that he might recognize, for segments of a shared experience.
There was the very shape of the rooms, for instance: the corners, the alcoves, positioning of the windows. The moulding on the ceilings— that he would have known, might have gazed at, as two centuries later I myself did, tracing its convolutions with attentive eyes. The mantelpieces— this in the sitting room, say. Yes, that was original. And the fireplace. Right here he might have stood, surely did stand, arms resting on the mantel as mine now did, one polished boot upon the andiron, eyes staring dreamily into the mesmerizing, picture-making flames . He had been twenty-one when first he came to this house. I saw the back of his tilted head, its thick healthily gleaming hair, his broad shoulders and narrow waist, the long sturdy legs, the shining leather boots. I imagined, underneath the fitted coat, the play of muscle down that lean back.
Or in 1781 would the fashion still have been for periwigs and shoes? I wasn’t sure. Yet details such as this could very easily be checked.
And whilst cracking the shell on my breakfast egg, I had known the chances were good he must often have eaten a boiled egg. His bread would have been coarser, his coffee from perhaps a different bean, but the taste of a softly boiled egg (mine was free-range, very fresh) must have been the same then as it was now.
So with practically everything I did I was preparing myself to see things and feel things—taste, smell, touch and hear them—as nearly as I could in the manner that he might have done. I loved every minute of it. It wasn’t just an exercise. Time travel, I decided, cried out to become a regular pastime. I should campaign for it. “Infinitely more liberating,” I would call from the rooftops, “than all this nonsense about the burning of your bras!”
It was almost twelve when I left home—though not to scale the rooftops. I had a short list of household things I had to buy. But first I went into a stationer’s.
There I looked at the ledgers, the account books, the minute books. How beautifully bound they were, how exquisitely tooled! None of the plain exercise books (no, again, “exercise” seemed completely wrong) came anywhere near the same standard. Yet there was one, the most expensive, which certainly gave off a nice feel. But was it thick enough? And weren’t the lines a shade too close? I replaced it with reluctance. It had to be just right.
I went to Smith’s. Once more I hesitated. I made a whistle-stop tour of the city. In the restaurant of a department store I ate a ham salad with a piece of French bread, drank a glass of orange juice, and reviewed the possibilities. In the end I went back to my starting point and bought the volume I had liked originally.
With that decision taken—no, with the book actually bought—I felt a great deal better.
It was a less agonizing matter, marginally, to find the best writing implement. I had thought about a dip pen, being the closest thing to a quill, but memories of how the nibs had so often scratched lumps out of my books at school—and left unsightly and infuriating blobs—directed me towards the ballpoints. I already had several but for this enterprise I wanted something new. And more costly.
I also bought a giant pad of scribbling paper—and a notebook for my handbag.
Then I went to the library, took out a book on Bath and one on Bristol, another on eighteenth-century social history and a fourth on costume. I was glad the woman with the glasses wasn’t there.
As I returned home, feeling thoroughly well satisfied with my purchases and borrowings, a light rain was falling. This was unimportant. The gardens would be refreshed and perhaps there’d be a rainbow. En route I popped into the grocer’s, bought quickly and extravagantly, without my usual comparison of quantities and prices, and didn’t even stop to count my change. When the assistant at the cheese counter complained about the weather I replied, “But aren’t you aware, you naughty and ungrateful man, that where you see clouds upon the hills you soon will see crowds of daffodils?” and even though we were nearer August than April I thought it seemed a jaunty, wise and almost witty thing to say, and indicative too of the springtime which had belatedly come tripping into my own heart. And the man said, “You’re spot on, madam. I only wish that more folks were a bit like you,” and I felt like a combination of Wordsworth, Al Jolson and Walter Huston, only luckier than all three of them, and then I remembered that Huston was connected with “September Song” not “April Showers” but this was also applicable in its own way and I found myself singing it for the remainder of my journey home, not loudly, yet evidently loudly enough to make one or two people glance at me in amused surprise. Well, let them, I thought.
And these few vintage years I’ll share with you.
These vintage years
I’ll share
With you.
And at the same time I was careful not to step on any of the cracks. “Bears,” I exclaimed merrily—being practically impossible to hoodwink and simultaneously doing one of my nifty little dances, nifty and artistic, “bears, look at me walking in just the squares!” I believe that on the second occasion somebody actually heard me—yes, and saw me, too! Oh, Lordy Moses!
I returned to the contemplation of my vintage years and of the way I was going to spend them.
Yet I forgot to look out for the rainbow. That was slightly negligent.
I was still singing, however, as for the second time that day I dusted the table beneath one of the windows in the sitting room. It was here I would sit to write my novel.
I took the book from its bag and placed it on the table; wondered if I should put back the cloth to protect a highly polished surface. But, no, the colours would clash: opposing shades of red. I minutely corrected the book’s angle; laid the new ballpoint pen beside it; brought over the Anglepoise and my Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary (I was so glad that I had Chambers!); also the scribbling pad and my four acquisitions from the library. Lastly, Mr. Wallace’s Life.
As an afterthought I fetched the tiny vase which I normally kept for my breakfast table and my supper tray and placed it carefully on a doily; tomorrow I would set a fresh pink rose in it.
“There!” I said as I stood back and surveyed the whole arrangement. “All for you!” I glanced humorously towards the fireplace. “I trust it meets with your approval, sir?”
I felt I ought to drop a curtsy but decided against it. No, rea
lly, that would be too absurd.
Yet then I laughed. Where was the harm in a small amount of absurdity? One had no wish to be solemn. Serious but not solemn. I had the feeling that Mr. Gavin, like Mr. Darcy, could possibly err on the side of sobriety. A little playfulness might be precisely what he needed.
I dropped him a rather graceful curtsy.
Irreverent yet full of fun.
And for the moment I thought of myself as Elizabeth Bennett not Anne Barnetby. I didn’t feel Miss Barnetby would ever have displayed such charming liveliness.
It was four o’clock. I had my cup of tea and petit beurre. I moved my armchair just a foot or so closer to the fireplace. They said that it was better for the carpet, to shift your furniture occasionally.
22
No television that night. No novel. No newspaper. I had embarked on my research.
Again I slept poorly. Today of all days I should like to have felt at my very best. But never mind: c’est la vie. No doubt there was a purpose. I got up earlier than usual. Broke with tradition and went to the market before breakfast to buy myself some flowers, especially my single pink rose. ( His single pink rose.) It was so lovely to be out in the freshness of the morn.
I had intended to be sitting at my “writing desk” by ten. But in fact I exceeded this modest ambition. I was seated about twenty minutes early; had already dropped the mantelpiece a graceful, laughing curtsy. Probably this would become my signature start to each day’s composition. A reminder of the need for levity.
But although ready for work so comfortably ahead of time I was up again and going for my hat and gloves before my watch said even ten o’clock.
This was not a bad omen. Nor, despite the fact I hadn’t yet thought up my truly perfect opening line, was it in any way an admission of failure.
No, I had suddenly decided that I needed one more thing. It was a signal of victory rather than of vanquishment.
Wish Her Safe At Home Page 8