The little girl cried. No doubt she felt frightened and defenceless, for her mother had been sharp with her. The woman herself was close to tears. In fact the two of them received a lot more comfort than I did.
And it was the first time I had worn it. It was ruined.
“Are you all right?” somebody asked me. “These little accidents will happen, won’t they?”
“Yes, thank you,” I replied. “I’m perfectly all right.” I added with a wryness she would plainly not appreciate: “I’ve had my little bit of fuss.”
I noticed that the vicar was carefully keeping his distance. How very typical! In times of joy some people had the Archbishop of Canterbury. In times of stress others didn’t even get the vicar of St. Michael’s.
So much, then, for the vicar. What about the victim? Oh, well, at any rate the victim didn’t cry until she had left the church hall, had walked at least three hundred yards and turned at least three corners. The victim didn’t cry until she had got maybe a quarter of the way home, with the damp cloth clammy against her legs and most of the passersby pretending very hard they hadn’t noticed. (But she heard one toddler say, “Has that lady done a poo and is that why she is looking sad?”) The lower half of the summer-blue sky now showed a spiky dark cloud the size of a Frisbee. You’d have thought it an experience not to be recovered from for days and days.
But here was the unexpected epilogue.
(It shouldn’t have felt unexpected.)
The tears stopped the very moment I reached home—literally, as soon as I had opened my front door. The cloud just shifted; blew off to the horizon.
For haven’t I said it before: this was a kind house, its presiding spirit so expert in the art of healing? How blest was I to have Horatio; how astonishing that, even momentarily, I could have forgotten him. Already as I hurried up the stairs I was humming. My tuneful reminder of God’s message. Oh, you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll...
Because, as you might expect with God, his message didn’t need to be limited to merely one melody.
Oh, no—good heavens, no!
25
The best thing about the Royal Wedding day, apart from my work on the book, was undoubtedly The Sound of Music. For the first time I was struck by the line: “like a lark who is learning to pray.” It seemed suddenly so applicable, was almost certainly a message. We all need such gentle nods of encouragement.
Afterwards, on ITV, there was another film. Normally I enjoyed the pictures starring Jean Arthur but this one was extremely feeble; I didn’t watch for long. Its title was about the only thing I liked. The Lady Takes a Chance.
Poor Miss Eversley, though. I felt a little shifty. I hadn’t phoned her. I hadn’t bought her any jigsaw. Of course it seemed she hadn’t particularly wanted these attentions. So perhaps it was all right. But whatever happened I must never become a person who didn’t keep her word. Larks who were learning to pray must always be straightforward, free of cant. Creatures to rely on.
Me, especially. Because the thing was, you see, I should never be short of inspiration. I had the perfect example right in front of me.
Over the fireplace.
So if I couldn’t win through... well, then, who could? Sometimes I felt utterly convinced I had been singled out for glory.
But not always. Far more often I felt I simply didn’t stand a chance—even if nowadays I wouldn’t allow this thought to get me down. I was the mirror image of the Wandering Jew. I was that other poor lost soul, equally desperate and equally remorseful, lone voyager on board The Flying Dutchman.
A charmed life that carried a curse? Or a cursed life that carried a charm?
In short, I knew neither what sort of person I really was, nor how well I fitted in.
Nor, indeed, if I had any true hope of ever finding that place in heaven which, since my schooldays, I had always hankered for.
* * *
And all through the following weeks he grew...though not quite with that astounding fluidity which had been attendant on his birth; and at the same time, obviously, the novel grew.
It was clearly going to be a long one. Before I was done I should need to buy perhaps another two of those thick and impressive-looking volumes.
But this didn’t dismay me. Not at all. Indeed, I was so far from being in any hurry to finish I thought I might eventually have to ration myself. Even now, with “The End” still maybe years into the future, I didn’t know what I would do when it finally arrived.
And I wasn’t after critical or popular acclaim. If it were given, that would be pleasant of course—and not simply on my own account either. But we weren’t impatient for it. Even unpublished the three volumes would still be there as testaments to our existence, would still look immensely distinguished on our mantelshelf, would still provide a constant and a concrete proof of how things were. A proof for posterity. I thought posterity should hear of why I had been placed upon this earth and of the paragon I had been placed here for.
In any case the journey was what counted. Always. I knew for sure that now and forever my life was his—and his, mine—as inextricably entwined as Boswell’s and Dr. Johnson’s.
Only more so.
Consequently, when he went swimming naked in the creek with other boys his own age, I was there as well, enjoying it just as much as they. And when he scrapped, his hurts were my hurts, his victories my victories. (I wondered if he heard my voice, a faint and distant echo calling out to him across the centuries, loyally supporting him?) My tears fell like his when he saw beggars dying in the streets or heard about the injustice of the lawcourts or the misery inflicted by the press gangs. My entreaties were added to his when he pleaded with his father for money, with his mother for items of clothing, with Nancy for articles of food: to pass on to the homeless, the crippled, the drunk, the desperate. I had a headache to match his own when he worried over his Latin verbs or his algebraic formulas, or when the sad wife-ridden Mr. Tole got one of his periodic bouts of choler and none of his pupils could ever do anything right. But then also my joy was surely as great as his when he first heard Mr. Handel’s music and his heart leapt up in exultation; the experience just as revelatory—for I on my own had never much enjoyed “good” music. This was now incomprehensible. I wondered at my blindness or, more properly, my deafness (one of our silly little jokes; we were gathering quite a store of them) and more especially, more guiltily, at my monumental selfishness. From the beginning it should have occurred to me to play the music of Handel and Mozart and Gluck and Haydn... these last two names hadn’t come to me immediately, any more than those of earlier composers like Purcell, Byrd and Scarlatti. Even stating it at its lowest it would have seemed a sensible thing to do when one thought about creating the right atmosphere. (Unnecessary, unnecessary.) While from every other point of view...
For the first time in my life I felt ashamed to own no classical music. I couldn’t afford to buy all the records I now wanted, for although I wasn’t worried by the state of my finances I was at least being sensible, but fortunately the main public library included an excellent record section. And no sooner had it occurred to me, so belatedly, than I rushed straight over, breathless, without even my scarf or gloves, and brought away as many records as I was allowed. (They almost sent me home for my stylus; I said a little prayer; for this occasion they waived the rule.) And, from then on, the eighteenth-century house was filled with eighteenth-century music. Or earlier.
* * *
But not exclusively.
“I am coming more and more to appreciate your music,” I would say, “and I realize that a great deal of this present century’s is rubbish; but all the same it won’t do you any harm to get to hear some of the best of it... ”
And playfully hectoring him in this fashion (oh, how I nagged the poor fellow!—“I feel sure that Mr. Tole would sympathize with you!”) I would then put on Jack Buchanan or Gypsy or just for old times’ sake (a tribute, I had thought when I sent off for it, a tribute both
to an over-painted maiden aunt and to an undervalued piece of childhood) a selection from Bitter Sweet.
“I believe...
The more you love a man,
The more you give your trust,
The more you’re bound to lose... ”
Or even (but not from Bitter Sweet ):
“I really must go...
But, baby, it’s cold outside.
This evening has been
So very nice...”
And although I half expected it I never once saw him wince. I was pleased. Education should always be a two-way process. We had so many lovely things to impart to one another.
I would often dance a little, too—despite my initial self-consciousness. Usually to the strains of some slow and dreamy waltz. (I could never have done this if I’d kept even a quarter of Aunt Alicia’s furniture.) But before long I grew relaxed and then could easily imagine I was being propelled around the floor by a partner who had a strong arm half-encompassing my waist and a cool hand tenderly enclosing my own. I could imagine that on each occasion he held me just a little more closely.
There were times when afterwards I wasn’t so completely sure I had imagined it.
26
The Allsops came back—though not nearly so quickly as I had expected. This didn’t matter. I’d had other things to occupy my mind and the thought that temporarily they might have forgotten me had caused me little heartache. Yet when I again saw them standing on my doorstep I felt pleased.
“What can you think of us?” asked Celia. “Saying you must come round and then not getting in touch for almost three weeks.”
For almost five.
“What nonsense!” I exclaimed. “You’re young. You’ve got your own lives to lead. I don’t expect—”
“Oh, it isn’t that,” said Roger. “But we’ve all been down with summer colds and there seems to have been one damned thing after another and what with all my studies and that wretched job of mine... ”
He looked more golden and Viking-like than ever.
“Well, I’m sure you know how it is,” he ended, with a grimace of utterly irresistible charm.
“Oh, I do, I do. There’s nothing to explain.”
“Just so long as you don’t believe we’re insincere,” added Celia. “We really couldn’t bear that—could we, darling?”
She looked at him devotedly, that same old look of doting admiration, but now I didn’t find it so disturbing. Not quite. When I realized this I felt yet happier. I no longer had any reason to envy a soul.
“No, I would willingly plunge a dagger into my heart,” he confided, “rather than think you believed that.”
“Oh, a little drastic—surely?”
“In fact, madam, it’s all your fault,” he declared cheerfully, the penitent stepping with ease into the shoes of the accuser. “If like sensible people you only had a phone—”
“Oh, that’s unfair,” I broke in, with matching gaiety. “The Post Office keeps promising they’re going to connect me. I want to be connected. Should I go down on my knees and pray to be connected?”
For an instant he himself went down on his knees, his hands imploringly uplifted, like Jolson about to give us Mammy. “Connect me with the human race! Oh, please connect me with the human race! Somebody—somewhere—must surely want to hear from me!”
“Yes. Sylvia,” I smiled. Yet my heart sank. She would be here with me on Friday.
“Who is Sylvia?”
He quickly added, “What is she, that all our swains commend her?”
“The friend I was sharing a flat with before I came to Bristol.”
But somehow it seemed disloyal to mention my having doubts about all our swains, or even any of our swains, commending her. I still remembered certain lines of the passage, however—it was another which we’d learnt at school—and I wanted both Roger and Horatio (we were naturally, by this time, up in the sitting room) to know I could quote bits of Shakespeare that weren’t boringly familiar to thousands. Therefore I threw open my arms and cried, “Is she kind as she is fair? Oh, bother—something, something, something! Then to Sylvia let us sing.”
“That would be charming,” he said as he got up, “but I’m afraid that singing to anyone mightn’t accomplish very much; mightn’t actually get you connected. Unless of course you went straight to the fountainhead—no intermediaries—addressed your plaintive song to Buzby. But failing that it would be quicker to become a doctor. Or even, if you must, a solicitor. Or an architect. Or a clergyman.”
“Don’t listen to him, Miss Waring. Darling, I think it’s possible you’re being offensive.”
“Oh, not at all.” I denied it with a laugh. “Only absurd. And anyway... ”
I was about to point out that although I mightn’t have a telephone I certainly did have a letterbox—but just stopped myself in time. I didn’t want to make anything out of their not having been in touch; it was they who were shaping it into a drama.
“And anyway—enough of all this nonsense. Let’s talk about important things. How’s my little Thomas? May I hold him, Celia?” (So far, upon greeting them, I had only kissed his cheek.) “And then I’ll pop down and put the kettle on.”
“How is your little Thomas?” repeated Roger. “He’s just about as good and sweet and angelic as... well, I don’t know... as his father always is.”
“No longer, then, the noisiest little thing in the whole of the southwest?”
“He never really was.”
“He’s certainly growing heavier.”
“Oh, he’s going to be so big and strong and bonny. Aren’t you, Tom? Just like your old dad. Disgustingly healthy. Never a single day’s illness from one year to the next.”
“No summer colds?” I queried.
For a moment he actually looked as if I’d caught him out. “Oh, summer colds don’t really count!” Then he laughed and gently prodded his son’s tummy. “Do you mind if I take my jacket off, Miss Waring? This is the warmest day in weeks!”
“Oh, please...”
I added, perhaps a little outrageously, “After all, don’t forget I’ve seen you not only without a jacket but even without a shirt!”
He grinned. “I had forgotten.”
Though I didn’t altogether believe him I let it go. “I hope it wasn’t simply for my sake—again!—that you came here in a suit and tie?”
He seemed about to deny it but then spread his hands. “I think one should always pay one’s friends the courtesy of trying to look one’s best.”
“And I feel honoured by that courtesy, I really do. Especially as I’m surprised to find anyone of your generation still viewing the world like that. Yet all the same, Roger, next time... ”
“No,” said Celia, “next time you’re coming to us, no question!”
“Besides,” enquired Roger, “why do you say someone of my generation? That makes it sound... I don’t know... as though we come from different planets, as though you’re either Abraham or Methuselah. I honestly don’t see it that way. Nor does Celia.”
“Not at all.”
“That’s very sweet of you both, but... ” But what? “How long is a generation?”
“Oh... ” He shrugged. “Isn’t it about twenty-five years?”
I spoke quickly. “Well, in that case we don’t even belong to different generations let alone planets. Nothing like.”
“Who said we did?”
“But the fact remains that I call you Roger and Celia; you call me Miss Waring.”
“What was that, Rachel?” He bent towards me, frowning. We all laughed.
“I didn’t even realize that you knew my first name.”
“Ah. And I bet there are other things you never realized about us.”
“I’m sure there are.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s utterly the wrong cue. You’re meant to say, ‘Like what?’”
“Oh, your daddy!” I said to the baby in my arms, giving him a merry shake, which made him chuckle. “
Oh, your funny old daddy!” But of course I did exactly as Roger asked.
“Like, for instance, the fact that we very much want you—if you would—we’d really be so very happy if... No, you tell her, Celia.”
“No, you, darling.”
“Well, if you’d consent to be that little tyke’s godmother... ”
27
Here it was, then: the true start of that other road which—like a spool of yellow ribbon—would soon unwind across the whole of this beautiful poppy-filled landscape. When (at long last) I went to put the kettle on I half danced down the stairs—in the hall holding Roger’s jacket out in front of me, a sort of scarecrow partner from the land of Oz, en route to a coat hanger and a coat peg. Celia called down the stairs: “May I come and give you a hand?” “No, you stay there with Tom.” Her presence would have spoilt it all.
I hung up—I smoothed out—his jacket. I filled the kettle.
“Dancing in the dark,
With a new love;
I’m dancing in the dark,
Here with you, love... ”
“Caught you!” said Roger. “Caught you red-handed. Or red-footed. And what a pretty voice you have.”
“Oh, you villain.”
“I wish you wouldn’t stop.”
“Well, surely you wouldn’t expect me to carry on in front of an audience?”
“I’ll tell you one thing. You’re certainly not Abraham. Nor Methuselah.”
“Twenty-one,” I said. “Twenty-one, key of the door, never been twenty-one before.”
“Really? As much as that? You surprise me.”
“Sycophant.”
“And that makes us exactly the same age.” He became practical. “Now tell me what I can do.”
It was fun. He got out the milk jug and the sugar bowl and the silver tongs, though I could have done it all a bit quicker myself, and he shook some more sugar lumps out of the packet and he filled the jug and he sliced a lemon and he went off jauntily across the road.. to buy a selection of jauntily coloured cakes. “But I insist, Roger, you take this!” “And I insist, Rachel, I do nothing of the kind!” While he was gone I went to see if he’d taken his jacket and finding that he hadn’t I slipped two pounds into the breast pocket. I buried my nose for a moment in the brown tweed.
Wish Her Safe At Home Page 11