by Mary Wesley
‘Forty-eight years.’
‘Yes, forty-eight years! How can we be sure we really knew her before she married? Was there a Rose we did not know? Have we ever known her?’
‘Of course we know her. We knew her as children, as we grew up. We knew the men, such as they were, who might have married her. We knew everything she did. She confided in us, we were her friends. We knew she was a cold fish. Not for Rose the adventures and risks we took. Rose is conventional, she always was, she played safe, got herself married to Ned Peel and all this.’ Emily nodded back at the house behind them, waved her arm towards Ned’s acres. ‘Find me a better example of her breed and upbringing.’
‘But,’ said Nicholas, ‘with your crab story, you have been suggesting otherwise.’
‘It must be the exception, the slip which proves the rule,’ said Emily, feeling a little annoyed with her brother.
‘All the same.’ Nicholas was intrigued. ‘I would give a lot to get back into the house and go through her things. There might be a ribboned packet of letters, a precious clue which would lead to the discovery of the Rose who would steal crabs, a Rose who has conned us.’
‘If you went through the house with a fine comb,’ scoffed Emily, ‘you would find everything in order, in its place. Ned’s farm accounts perfect, their income tax paid. You would find bundles of receipts but no love letters.’ Now Emily wished she had not presented well known old Rose to her brother in a new and intriguing light; she feared her tale of the crabs had in a sense boomeranged. ‘We know Rose,’ she said with conviction, permitting the smallest note of patronage into her tone.
‘Maybe you are right.’ Nicholas stood up. ‘It’s getting chilly, shall we go home?’ Probably, he thought, knowing his sister as well as he knew himself, the crab story never took place. It’s more likely Emily saw the load of crabs herself, was tempted to help herself and attributed a non-existent act to Rose. It is the sort of story I make up myself.
‘Come on,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Time to go home.’
Emily took his hand, pulled herself up and walked with him hand-in-hand to their cars.
As they walked, it occurred to Nicholas that Rose had deliberately let the telephone ring all through lunch to put a stop to conversation.
3
‘WOULD IT BE POSSIBLE to have a sandwich in my room?’ Rose asked, handing back the pen she had borrowed to sign the register. ‘Or is it too late?’
The manager, who was also the owner of the hotel, flicked a quick glance at the book as he turned it back towards him, changing his mind as he did so as to which room to offer his guest.
‘Would a smoked salmon sandwich and a glass of wine be all right?’ (She looked exhausted.) ‘Half a bottle of Muscadet?’
‘Lovely.’
‘And a little fruit? Peaches, grapes? Brown bread or white? Coffee?’
‘Perfect. Brown, please, no coffee.’
‘I’ll lead the way.’ He picked up Rose’s bag. (Goodness, it looks tatty; I’ve been meaning to replace it for years.) ‘I will put you in a room on the ground floor. You look out on the creek and can step out into the garden. It has its own bathroom, of course.’
‘Thank you. I am quite tired.’ Rose followed the manager along the passage. ‘I shall enjoy the quiet.’
‘Would you like to be called in the morning?’
‘No,’ said Rose. ‘No, thank you. I wake.’ The trouble is, she thought, unpacking her few belongings, I don’t sleep.
She busied herself putting toothbrushes and sponge in the bathroom, laying her nightdress on the bed, keeping her thoughts at bay, as she had managed so successfully on the long drive from Slepe, a drive to nowhere in particular until at the end of the long afternoon she had seen the sign which said ‘Hotel’, and followed a winding lane down a wooded valley to arrive at this place, hitherto unknown to her.
She opened the window and looked out onto a lawn sloping down in the dusk to the water. A swan, its head tucked under its wing, drifted close to the bank; further out the cob swam placidly. Across the creek she could just make out the silhouette of a heron, immobile on a branch overhanging the water.
‘How long is she going to stay?’ asked a woman’s voice from further along the building, its tone of irritation amplified by the water. ‘I have just got that room ready for the Dutch couple who are booked for Tuesday.’
‘Then you will have to get it ready again, won’t you? She didn’t say.’
‘Why,’ a note of rising ire, ‘why did you not ask her?’
‘Hurry up with those sandwiches, don’t forget the lemon. I put her there because she looks the sort who will recommend us to her friends,’ the manager snarled.
Leaning out of the window Rose listened for a contemptuous snort, smiled.
‘With those clothes? With that shabby bag?’ asked the woman. ‘Why is she travelling alone?’ Her suspicion was almost tangible. One of them, Rose presumed the husband, banged the window down. Out on the creek, a coot cried and was answered. There was a knock on the door.
Rose drew away from the window. ‘Come in.’
‘Your sandwiches.’ She recognised the voice. ‘Is there anything else you would like?’ The woman wore good looks masked by an expression of martyrdom.
‘No, thank you. This looks delicious. I will put the tray outside the door when I have finished. Have you had a very busy season?’ The trick of making herself agreeable was automatic.
‘You can say that again,’ exclaimed the woman. (For two cents she will tell me how she hates her husband, how overworked and unappreciated she is.) ‘Shall I turn the bed down? Have you enough towels?’ The woman peered into the bathroom, assessing Rose’s toothbrushes and Greek sponge.
‘No, no thank you. It’s all lovely; thank you so much for all your trouble. Good night.’ Rose sat by the tray that held the sandwiches. She was suddenly ravenous and began to eat as the woman went out and closed the door.
Outside it was now dark. She finished eating, poured herself wine, went and stood by the window. Shafts of light illumined the grass, the angry voices were stilled, a secret cat crossed the beam of light and rejoined the night. I am travelling alone, thought Rose, and waited for memories of Ned to crowd into her mind, but all she felt was a surge of heretical pleasure at being properly alone for the first time since 1939.
Sipping her wine, she looked out at the water glittering blackly and savoured her pleasure. Her wine finished, she put the tray outside her door, locked it, switched the telephone by the bed to ‘Off, undressed, brushed her hair, went to the bathroom to clean her teeth and wash, smooth cream into her face, slide the nightdress over her head.
Ready for bed, she reached into the overnight bag for the picture she had taken off her bedroom wall and put it propped on the dressing table where she could see it from the bed. She got into bed, switched off the bedside light, pulled the bedclothes up to her chin, lay back, closed her eyes and courted composure. Then, remembering Nicholas and Emily’s expressions of pain as she let the telephone ring loud, intermittent, unanswered all through lunch, she began to laugh so that under her the bed shook. The probability was that all the messages would have been more or less identical, safe enough for the pricked ears of Nicholas and Emily. Yet one of the callers might have been Mylo. The risk of its not being Mylo had been so great that she had left the telephone unanswered.
4
‘HAVE YOU DEFINITELY MADE up your mind?’ Mylo held her against him, teasing her hair through his fingers, bending to nuzzle her neck. ‘Snuggle up close, then you won’t feel cold.’ He leaned back against the tree, feeling the bark rough against his spine. ‘Answer me, Rose.’
‘No, no, oh, Mylo.’ She put her arms round his neck, reaching up to him. ‘It’s so difficult, so hard.’ She pitied herself.
‘No, no, you won’t marry him, or no, no, you haven’t made up your mind?’ He pulled away from her, trying to see her eyes in the dark. ‘It’s not hard. You don’t love Ned Peel, you love
me. He’s an old man, you can’t …’
‘He’s only thirty-one.’
‘And you are eighteen. It makes me ill to think of him touching you; you can’t possibly marry him,’ said Mylo violently.
‘My father …’
‘Your father thinks you will be safe with him. I bet that’s what he says.’ (He would say: I want to die feeling that you are safe, that you are provided for. Were it not for this ‘cancer’ I would not press you to make a decision. I am anxious for you. There is going to be a war. Married to Ned, you will be safe and with my ‘cancer’ I cannot ensure you will be. And so on and on, with the repetition of the dreaded word in inverted commas, the stress on security.) ‘He knows the man,’ Mylo went on, ‘he has this house in the country, he knows he is well off, he will have informed himself, spoken with Ned of marriage settlements. Of course he has, I’ve heard of his kind. He knows Ned’s job, knows what he earns, knows the form. Has he any idea what being in bed with Ned will be like? Has he put himself in your shoes?’
Rose giggled. ‘I can’t see Father and Ned tucked up together.’
Mylo shook her. ‘Rose, stop it. You know you love me, me.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do.’
‘So what’s so difficult?’
‘It’s all difficult,’ weakly, for she was tired. Rose began to cry. Impossible to repeat her parents’ opinion of Mylo. (A nice boy, of course, but only nineteen, no prospects, no money, no family, no job, hasn’t even been to university, good looking in his way, speaks French. The speaking of French was somehow derogatory, louche, dangerous.) Their argument had gone on the whole evening, all through dinner in the restaurant and in the car driving out of London to the relatively quiet spot where they now stood on Wimbledon Common. She felt that all she wanted was to go to bed and sleep, forget her father, forget Ned Peel, even forget Mylo. ‘He is dying,’ she said, as she had said several times before, ‘he has cancer.’
‘I don’t believe he has cancer. I think he is using a rather unsubtle blackmail. I think your father is a snob. He is impressed by Ned Peel and his worldly goods. It’s a very old story. He’d like to boast about “my son-in-law, Ned Peel”, look him up in Who’s Who.’
‘He’d never say that.’
‘Not in so many words. It’s the elevation by implication …’
‘Anyway,’ Rose said bitterly, ‘he couldn’t say it, he’d be dead.’
A car passed along the road; the tears on Rose’s cheeks glittered in its headlights. The driver, a happy man, seeing the lovers, gave an appreciative toot on his horn.
‘I bet you he will live for years and years,’ said Mylo nastily, ‘the old fraud.’
‘Mylo!’
‘He will, like to bet?’
‘You are calling my father a liar.’ She swung away angrily.
‘I am. You wouldn’t be so angry if you didn’t know it’s true. Your father would absolutely panic that you would ruin your prospects—that’s how he’d put it—by marrying me. He knows I have no money, he’d think me far too young, nothing alarms a solicitor more than insecurity.’
‘Take me home.’ Rose walked to Mylo’s little car parked on the grass verge. ‘I’ve had enough of this, I shall do what I please. I do not belong to you; all you do is make me miserable. It’s terribly late and I promised I would be in by twelve. The aunt I am staying with is extra respectable and quite strict, she thinks late nights are immoral.’
‘One can also be immoral by day,’ said Mylo caustically, ‘not that you go in for it, silly little prude.’
Rose said nothing, biting back a mixture of hurtful and/or loving, joking retorts. How on earth, she asked herself, have we got ourselves into this misery?
Mylo drove back into London. He had said too much, gone too far. ‘I am off to France,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a job.’
Rose’s heart turned over.
‘I wanted it to be a surprise,’ said Mylo. ‘Now I shan’t see you again. I wanted to take you with me. We could have managed; it would have been fun.’ (It was unlikely he would be allowed to take Rose, but never mind.)
Rose sat beside Mylo saying nothing, feeling a void opening in the heart that for the whole year had overflowed with Mylo.
‘It’s pretty stupid,’ said Mylo conversationally, keeping his eyes on the road, ‘we haven’t even slept together. There has never been anywhere to go and I do so terribly want you …’ He gripped the wheel tightly. They were crossing Putney Bridge, a flock of gulls flew down river. ‘It’s all right, I shan’t drown myself or anything. It just seems so wasteful that I have never held you naked in my arms, never spent a whole night with you, never learned with you how to make love. We could have learned together.’ He guided the car into the King’s Road, past the World’s End. ‘World’s End,’ he said. ‘Well, our bit of World looks like ending. Where are you staying, I forgot to ask?’
‘Chester Street.’
‘I dare say Ned Peel knows how to book in for a night at an hotel with a girl without curling up with embarrassment in inexperienced agony. He is not nineteen, he’s an experienced man of thirty-one. It’s possible, though he doesn’t look the type, that he’s done it often. He really does look reliable and safe, one can see the charm he holds for your father. I dare say your respected Pa is absolutely right. Here’s your aunt’s street, what’s the number?’
The bitterness in Mylo’s voice was dry and crisp as the east wind.
‘Twenty-two. The green door, by the pillarbox, just here.’ Rose got out of the car. ‘It’s dreadfully late. I must creep in and not wake her. Good night.’ They did not kiss.
‘I’ll wait and see you safely indoors,’ he said.
‘I have a key.’
‘I’ll wait.’
Rose fumbled in her bag for the latchkey, put it in the lock, turned it, pushed the door. ‘I’m locked out,’ she said incredulously.
‘Ring the bell.’ Mylo watched her.
Both were astonished when the door suddenly flew open and Rose’s aunt let fly.
‘I hadn’t realised she was like that,’ said Rose presently, standing by the coffee stall at Hyde Park Corner sipping boiling tea from a china mug, still so shocked by her aunt’s invective that she had to hold the mug with both hands for fear of letting Mylo see how they shook. ‘What a surprise,’ she attempted a joke, ‘she slammed the door like an expert chucker-out.’
‘I thought whore, prostitute and tart all meant the same thing; her vocabulary isn’t exactly original,’ said Mylo. ‘Where did she get her ideas about sinful and loose-living youth?’
‘Father says she was unhappily married, distrusts men.’
‘Perhaps her husband had lots of outside sexual encounters. Where shall I take you now? What about Nicholas and Emily, aren’t they friends of yours? You could come with me to France, of course.’
‘No, I can’t go to them.’ Rose shied from the suggestion of the Thornbys, ignored the allusion to France.
‘They don’t seem the type to think I’d robbed you of your virginity in Park Lane.’
‘She didn’t say Park Lane, she said “dingy nightclub”. I said I’d rather not go to Nicholas and Emily’s.’
‘She implied every conceivable indecency, suggested things I’d never heard of.’ (As though there could ever be indecency between me and Rose.) ‘Don’t let’s think about her, she’s a nasty old woman,’ said Mylo.
Will she write or telephone my father? Rose wondered. He is so ill, it would be the last straw.
Mylo read her thoughts. ‘She won’t bother your father; that sort of person keeps the hatch on her sewer. More tea, my love?’ Rose shook her head. ‘I am staying with an aunt too, another sort of aunt, I’ll take you there. She will give us breakfast and lend you money to get home. Come along, it’s across the park, she lives in Bayswater.’
As they drove across the park, Mylo said quietly, ‘Rose, don’t rush into marriage with Ned. He’s a nice chap; I’m jealous, that’s all. There’s nothing really wr
ong with him, but you are only eighteen. Even if you don’t want me, you may find you want somebody else. There’s the whole world, Rose, all your life.’
Rose did not answer.
Mylo stopped the car by the Serpentine bridge. ‘Let’s be quiet a minute and watch the water.’
The park was empty at this early hour, nobody about, London as still as it ever is.
‘Shall we walk a little way?’ Mylo got out of the car and held out his hand to Rose.
They strolled by the water, watching the water fowl. Ducks cruised, coots paddled in desperate haste to reach the reeds, calling to each other with sharp querying cries.
Under the bridge Mylo stopped and kissed Rose gently.
‘I warn you, I shall have at least one more try before I give up,’ he said, ‘in any case even if we never meet again I am in your bones. It can’t be helped. I know it, and you would too if you were honest. We can’t escape. I will go to France. You may marry Ned. However unhappy we are, and I hope we won’t be, we shall always have each other. Tell you what,’ said Mylo, laughing now, ‘I will telephone from time to time all through our lives.’
‘All down the years?’ Rose mocked, yet felt a lift of spirit.
‘You never know,’ said Mylo. ‘But the first time will be soon, you won’t have long to wait.’
Rose was uncertain how to take this. ‘Is that a threat or a promise?’
Mylo grinned. ‘I shall marry too, perhaps find myself a beautiful girl, kinder than you.’
Rose drew in her breath.
‘You can’t have it all your own way,’ mocked Mylo. ‘I can’t delay my sex life indefinitely, can I?’
Rose did not answer.
‘Besides,’ said Mylo, walking her briskly back to his car, ‘there are more things than marriage to worry about. There will be a war soon; that will keep us busy.’
‘Ned is in the Territorials.’
‘Ned would be; his future role tidily arranged. My darling, do you realise what an utterly conventional life you are letting yourself in for?’
‘I may enjoy it.’ She was defensive.