Maybe I could have resisted it. I could have gone on hugging myself with the knowledge of the joy they’d get when I was dead.
“If only we had known!”
“Life’s going to be so bare without her!”
“Oh, when you think of all the time we had her with us and of all the opportunities we wasted... !”
“Where has the enchantment gone... ?”
Oh, yes, I thought. Some firm assurance that I’d be present at my own funeral, perhaps as a gaily-coloured butterfly fluttering prettily around the graveside—maybe that would have been enough not only to encourage me to keep quiet for the time being but even to make me consider... !
No, that was just a pleasantry. (I do believe in pleasantries.) What, an early death—when nowadays there was so very much to live for!
But on the other hand how agonizing if you were truly able to hear the nice things people said about you at your funeral. To hear them while being well aware they weren’t justified and knowing that if you could only have heard them in advance you’d have done your utmost to make sure they were. One of the first real intimations of hell?
Anyway, thinking about it, if I were honestly going to participate in my own funeral I’d have no wish to be dependent on just the impact of surprise legacies.
(Besides, I wondered if the will would even have been read by then. And the bond of silence between solicitor and client was surely as binding as that between doctor and patient, priest and penitent, and few of us would want to go round canvassing on doorsteps: “Oh yes, just take it from me! I can’t exactly be specific about this and I most certainly wouldn’t want to start blowing my own trumpet but all the same... !”)
Oh no! How soul-destroying!
So I told them.
Roger and Celia.
Of course I did.
I’d invited them to dinner, not merely tea. It was to be a very special evening. And Thomas was to be there, safely asleep in his carrycot, not left at home with some stupid or indifferent babysitter. (And I’m certainly not alluding here to Mrs. Tiverton, who wasn’t—no, not by any means—indifferent!) It wouldn’t have seemed right for him to be excluded.
Next in line to the throne? Or at any rate to the succession? I felt unhappy even about excluding Mark Wymark but to exclude Thomas...
I bought caviar and duck and we had sauce à l’orange and green salad and homemade meringues and ice cream. I bought two bottles of wine and a magnum of champagne. (I already had some sherry in the house and an ancient bottle of liqueur.) Yes, I had been cocking a snook at Mr. Fitzroy: telling him, in my own small way, that heaven would provide—would provide abundantly. And that very afternoon, in fact, I had written him a note on more or less this subject.
Dear Mr. Fitzroy,
Thank you for all your recent letters and for your obvious eagerness to stay in touch. Appreciated! But please don’t worry about my overdraft; that really isn’t important and if you’re in the mood you can always send me a postcard when you go on holiday. But I don’t feel easy about your frittering away the bank’s resources: stationery and postage stamps aren’t free, you know! Besides—unless Horatio reads me the riot act or I’m feeling a soupçon skittish—I always toss away your envelopes unopened.
But you mustn’t repine, dear sir. I remain your obedient servant and I promise you I won’t forget.
And, indeed, hoping this will find you—as it leaves me—in the pink.
Yours sincerely,
R. Waring
Self-evidently I had known that my farewell wish was a smidgen over the top but somehow I hadn’t been able to resist it. I had always wanted to write to my bank manager— all of my bank managers—in just such an appropriate vein. But as a refinement I had lightly crossed out “pink” and substituted “red”—although I hadn’t really meant that: I bore the poor fellow no malice and felt sure he would appreciate the joke.
But what I did mean, of course, was my carefully considered postscript. I hoped he would work hard at that, God willing, and be encouraged to shake his sieve—yes, like the real forty-niner I felt sure he was at heart—to extract its precious nugget of pure gold.
“Oh, you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll ...”
I had only set my initials to that, however, and afterwards fretted he might simply dismiss it without paying it due attention. I might have to telephone him.
Let me put my arms around you. I’m so very glad I found you...
Anyway. Anyway! Returning to the dinner table...
I had decided I would hold back my announcement until we were eating our dessert. Roger had opened the champagne—and how we’d all laughed while we were hunting for the cork. “Finders keepers!” we had cried, competitively.
“Losers weepers!” I had thought—unavoidably—but it didn’t seem quite suitable to mention that.
It was Roger of course who found the cork.
We had all sat down again. “I shall take this home and treasure it!” he said. “Darling, shall we put it in the place of honour on the mantelpiece—on a little stand with an inscription?”
Celia laughed. “I think we ought to give it to Rachel. She wanted it too.”
“She doesn’t need it as a memory of her own loveliness.”
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” I raised my hands. “I don’t think you had better have champagne!”
I could feel my cheeks burning.
“Nor as a memory of a meal which—I honestly believe—has been the most sumptuous I have ever eaten,” he continued unashamedly.
“It is only the wine, Celia. He really doesn’t mean it.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” she answered with a smile. “Cooking was never one of my major strengths. You’ll see what I mean when you finally come to visit. I don’t enjoy it very much.”
But Roger ignored the pair of us. “My one regret,” he said, “is that we’re not all wearing evening dress.”
Possibly that was my own one regret. I’d been tempted—oh, how I’d been tempted!—while I was out spending all that money, while I was still in the mood for one last extravagant fling; one last ridiculously extravagant fling...
Perversely Roger wasn’t even in a suit and tie. He was wearing jeans with an open-neck shirt and sweater. “You see, I’ve taken you at your word,” he had said when they’d arrived. “Tonight I’m at my most relaxed.”
And I’d replied: “You feel you don’t have to impress me any more?”
“ Exactly!”
Now he said, “But if only we had known... !” (Ha!)
Well, at least Celia wasn’t wearing jeans and—like myself—looked a lot more comme il faut. “I must say, Rachel, you always do everything so beautifully. I take my hat off to you!”
“Is it a pretty one? Be careful if it is. I shall probably want to keep it.”
“And I do like this very sweet custom of yours of the extra place-setting. The unexpected guest. It’s almost biblical.”
“Well, now... ,” I began.
“It’s certainly hospitable.”
I raised my glass. “In fact,” I said, “I’d like to propose a toast. The forerunner of many! Let us first drink to the unexpected guest.”
“To the unexpected guest!” We all drank solemnly. To myself of course he was neither unexpected nor a guest; but obviously one never wants to spring things on people! One always aims to be subtle.
“In any case,” said Roger as though the question were still under discussion, “I mean to keep this cork.” I think he was a trifle tipsy.
“But I insist on having it,” I said. “I’ll tell you why. I’ve got a better memento for you to keep—not merely better, a lot bigger!”
I smiled at their air of mystification. “I only wish that Thomas was awake.”
“Then wake him!” exclaimed Roger and before either Celia or I could do more than halfheartedly protest he was beside the carrycot and had scooped up the baby—was already lifting him towards the ceiling! It was nearly as if he had some id
ea of what was to come.
“Oh, Roger!” cried Celia. “He’s not even properly awake. Only imagine! If it were you!”
“Yes, my friend.” I shook my finger at him sternly. “It could be a lesson you would profit from: we should make you walk a mile in another man’s bootees!”
And quite certainly, sitting next moment on his father’s lap, Thomas did look a little dazed. Dazed but—yes, we had to admit it—distinctly interested. Roger dipped his finger in champagne and put the tip of it into his firstborn’s mouth.
“Like father like son,” sighed Celia.
“Come on, Rachel,” he said. “We’re all agog. What can it possibly be?”
“Don’t be so impatient,” I said. “Actually it isn’t even for you. It’s for Tom.”
“What is?”
“This house.”
Well, now. You can imagine the hoo-ha: all the hugging and the kissing and the carrying on. The further pouring of champagne. The tears. The talk of fairy godmothers.
It was all so lovely. So exceedingly lovely.
“I don’t know what to say,” declared Roger, at last. “There doesn’t seem a thing one can say.”
I smiled at Celia. “For someone who couldn’t think of anything to say he doesn’t appear to have done too badly. But set my mind at rest. You don’t think he might be mildly disappointed the gift was for Thomas, not for him?”
Yet Roger answered for himself. “Rachel,” he said, his hand upon mine, “life is full of disappointments. One has to be brave.”
“Though that’s more easily said than done,” I replied, in the same light tone. “So much depends upon your constitution and the way you’ve slept the night before.”
“Agreed.”
“But in any case there’s a little something else I might have up my sleeve.”
“Something else?” They said it in unison. If you hadn’t known them it might have sounded... well, let’s simply call it eager.
(And I’d never wish to be judged on some of the impressions I realize I myself may give on occasion. Well, I ask you! Who would?)
“Nothing but a proposition,” I said. “I hesitate to call it a consolation prize.”
“My goodness! What?”
“Something I want the pair of you to think about both long and hard.”
I again looked quite severely at Roger. He was the one more likely to be impulsive. “Yes,” I repeated. “Both long and hard! Very long and very hard!”
“Go on,” said Celia quickly. “It isn’t kind of you to keep us in suspense.”
“Well, first, if it doesn’t seem bad-mannered of me... ?”
“Rachel, be as bad-mannered as you like!” suggested Roger.
“May I enquire, then, what rent you have to pay for your small flat?”
“A hundred and twelve pounds a month,” answered Celia, after a pause. “But why?”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve been considering. This house is rather large for just one person. And when I think of you two having to pay good money for a flat you don’t even like—and, Lord knows, hard-earned money you can ill afford—well, it seemed to me I simply had to mention it, that’s all.”
“Mention what, Rachel?”
“Why, the notion of your moving in with me! Hadn’t I made that clear?”
Paradoxically they seemed more surprised about this than about my previous revelation. There was a silence lasting several seconds. “Phew!” said Roger.
“But you mustn’t suppose I’m being purely altruistic. It would be very nice for me as well.”
I smiled and started to push back my chair. Roger jumped up immediately.
“Yet, as I say, I don’t want either of you to utter a single word before you’ve had a chance to sleep on it. For instance! Celia mightn’t at all like the idea of having to share the house with another woman. Someone, I mean, who isn’t precisely old and ugly. Well, I shall leave you to argue that one out between yourselves. Consider every angle. But for the moment—thank you, Roger dear, how lovely it is to receive these small attentions—if you’d like to go up into the sitting room I shall shortly join you there with coffee and Grand Marnier.”
40
However, despite my every attempt to preach caution, we hadn’t even finished our first cup of coffee before they gave their answer. If I had really meant it, they said, they genuinely couldn’t be more delighted. Overjoyed. Ecstatic. Their gratitude would know no bounds.
“Roger,” I remarked, “I think you’ve got French blood flowing through your veins!”
“Why?”
“Because the French also exaggerate.”
“Then—not a drop! I swear it!”
We drank to it: to his protested lack of French influence, to his innate abhorrence of exaggeration, to our approaching ménage à quatre. (“Well, for the moment, anyway,” I hinted coyly—delighted to discover that nowadays I could talk so very easily about these things.) Oh, it was going to be such fun.
“A commune!” I said. “‘All for one and one for all!’ We could name ourselves the Co-Optimists—like that old concert party in the... Well, many years before my time.”
“Why not the Musketeers?”
“We don’t want to fight. We want to entertain. To sing and dance beside the sea forever.”
“Naturally we must pay you,” said Celia.
“Naturally,” I smiled. “But only in laughter and in song.”
“Rachel,” declared Roger, “you can have no idea of what you’re letting yourself in for. The only place I dare to sing is in the bath.”
“Then you must bathe often,” I cried gaily, “and throw the casement wide.”
“We must obviously share the bills,” persisted Celia.
“We’ll have to see.”
“The whole point of a commune,” pointed out Roger, “lies in the sharing!”
I felt so happy.
“I shall teach Tommy the dangers of electricity,” I volunteered.
Tommy had gone back to sleep.
We finished the bottle of Grand Marnier.
“Rachel, do you remember? You were going to tell us the story of that portrait.”
“Yes.” I smiled at her. “I certainly hadn’t forgotten.”
“Well, then... ?”
There was a pause. I took a deep breath. “I’ve often thought, you know, that in my next life I shouldn’t mind returning as a cat.”
“But is this telling us about the picture?”
“Cats are such very comfortable creatures, aren’t they? Wherever they are, they can always make themselves at home.”
“In that case,” said Roger, “I’m surprised you haven’t got one.”
“Oh, I’m not really much of a cat lover. It’s silly, isn’t it: possibly I’d rather become one than own one?” For an instant I considered this. “Although Mrs. Pimm did tell me a cat story which I wouldn’t quite describe as promising.”
“We don’t want to hear it,” laughed Celia. “We want to hear about the portrait!”
“And so you shall, my dear, yes so you shall! But when I was a child I used to think I’d like to be a little red hen—imagine that! I had a picture on my wall of a sunlit garden on a drowsy hillside... half a dozen chickens roaming far and wide; I could sometimes hear their peaceful clucking, catch the smell of the eggs in the straw. If I woke in the middle of the night I could even get back to sleep by imagining myself curled up on a shelf in the coop. And I remember once saying to my father, ‘I wish I were a little red hen! I’d lay an egg and sit on it and keep it warm and be forever happy!’ And afterwards he called me his little red hen. I enjoyed that. Isn’t it ridiculous?”
“It sounds idyllic,” said Roger.
“Yes, it was.”
We were quiet for a moment; they must have thought I was lost in tender reminiscence. I played a prank on them. I laughed. I said quickly, “The cats—there were nine of them—turned out to be cannibalistic. And human-flesh eaters! There! I got that one in, d
idn’t I?” But they both looked slightly more disconcerted than entertained. “I warn you,” I told them. “From now on there’ll be lots of little japes like that. One thing you’ll find, I hope, is that I’m not... particularly... predictable!”
“Oh, I believe we’ve discovered that already.”
“Thank you, Roger.” I inclined my head. (Which suddenly reminded me about my dream. I felt both guilty and amused. But I decided not to tell them of it—not yet at any rate.) “Now then, Celia. Next time around, what would you like to come back as?”
“Well, candidly,” she replied, “I don’t think anything. This once is probably enough for me!”
“Oh, you poor thing... ” We laughed—she a shade uneasily, myself deriving a certain shameful pleasure from the insight I’d received.
“What about you, Roger?”
“Oh, I’m not fussy. Rockefeller—Vanderbilt—Onassis. King Midas... ”
“I don’t think they led very happy lives; not the last two, anyway.”
“I’d teach them how.”
“Did I tell you about Howard Hughes?”
“No. What about Howard Hughes?”
“In that case, whom did I tell? Oh, yes... perhaps it was in church. A nice, quiet, slightly stodgy congregation. But attentive. I preached them a sermon.”
“You did? You preached them a sermon?”
“Yes, but only a very short one. Yet did you realize there are foxes in Bristol and that at night they come right into the centre of the city? They scavenge from the rubbish bins. People sometimes feed them.”
“Yes,” said Roger, “we did realize that.”
Wish Her Safe At Home Page 19