I must have looked puzzled because:
‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said, his face working. ‘Last month, the month before last –’
There was a knock on the door; he started.
It was the housekeeper with a tray of coffee. Taking it shakily from her, ‘This is Mrs Johnson,’ I said.
She hadn’t heard the bell, she told us. We should have gone in the drawing-room; would we like to move in there now?
My father, looking hurriedly at his watch said that it wasn’t worth it. He’d be gone soon.
Then at once, after she’d left, his voice rather shaky, ‘We’d best get back to practical matters,’ he said, ‘I’ve not much time.’
I poured him a cup of coffee; although he didn’t take sugar he stirred the spoon roughly round the cup. ‘You’ll have to take my word for it, about the grave,’ he said, ‘It’d be a difficult business anyway – even with cremation; and for Catholics it’s not on, isn’t cremation. I’d a quick word with Father Casey last night.’
‘I see,’ I said.
He looked at his watch again: ‘I’ll deal with Ma Pickering. And anything else like that. Meantime – you’d best stop here – if it can be arranged.’
I said that I was sure it could.
‘Good.’ He stood up, drinking his coffee hastily, then rattled the cup down onto the tray, wiped his moustache. His face looked foxy – in its pallor almost that of a stranger – so that I wondered suddenly: what is he doing in this house?
‘I’ll ring later, when I’ve more arranged.’
I followed him out into the hall. We stood there awkwardly: I thought, imagined for one moment that he was going to kiss me: I moved forward. ‘Don’t give yourself the trouble,’ he said. ‘I’ll let myself out.’
Later that morning I tried to write to Gervase. It proved horribly difficult. Alice Ingleson, back again now, produced writing paper and an envelope – If I preferred, she could do it? But I sat at her desk with its bulging pigeon holes and struggled with the awkward phrases; my language came out formal and cold. Still shocked myself, I was setting about shocking someone else, and when I’d finished I felt drained.
After lunch, she insisted that I lie down upstairs. ‘Grief is exhausting,’ she said in a matter of fact tone, as if discussing the after effects of ‘flu. ‘If you can’t rest though, try and read something light.’ She handed me a pile of detective novels, pre-war Penguins with large print: ‘You won’t find anything suitable in Nell’s room.’
The idea was repugnant, terrifying: I couldn’t just lie there for the afternoon. But when I said: ‘I ought to go over to Bratherton really,’ remembering that I’d packed for two days only and that we’d just arranged, an hour or two ago, an indefinite stay, she answered firmly:
‘Richard’s seen to all that, my dear. He’ll drive you over this evening.’
She left shortly after for a sale of work, which she told me ended at six; I waited upstairs till she’d been gone a few minutes, then got up and leaving a note in the hall, set out for Bratherton.
A headache which had been growing all day hit me as I came out into the baked air. Then, in sight of the house, I wished I hadn’t come. I went in by the back way: on the quince tree growing up the wall, there were already half a dozen fruit, wooden, furry. Inside, lavender polish and scouring powder hung in the air; Mrs Pickering must have been in. There were no signs of my father having been about. Standing in the hall I shivered: my head was aching relentlessly now, fiery cramps at the base of my skull. Because it was the thing I feared most, I went straight upstairs to my mother’s room – pushing open the door, willing everything to be all right.
The window was shut and it was very hot; two flies buzzed angrily on the sill. Standing in front of the dressing-table I thought I had only to screw up my eyes and I would see her – dressing excitedly for Gunter’s, bending a little forward at the glass, pushing her hair under her hat, pulling on her gloves.
I felt dizzy and the room whirled: to recover I sat down on the edge of the bed. I thought that probably I should take the letters from the workbasket – now, at once, When I tried the drawer. I thought for a moment that she had locked it, but it was only a little sticky, and when I looked they were lying there the same as ever, right under the tangle of wools and silks, the odds and ends of material. I didn’t look at them at all, but carrying them into my room found a large envelope and crammed them into it. Too painful to read, impossible to destroy – they were to remain there for many years.
I was packing, when the doorbell rang. I leapt up terrified, rushed onto the landing. I didn’t for some reason think of Richard, so that when trembling I opened the door and saw him on the step, I couldn’t at first say anything.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he said at once, anxiously. ‘I found your note. I was through early today – There wasn’t much on and old Barraclough wanted to see the client I had booked.’ He looked at me closely:
‘You’re – not all right. You shouldn’t have come alone,’ he said reproachfully, ‘I’d have brought you over, darling.’
‘I’m ill,’ I said, realizing as I said it that it was true; not just unhappy, but ill.
He felt my forehead; his hand was damp, but cool and soothing and so large it banded my brow.
‘It might just be the weather,’ he said. ‘This damned heat is rather too much of a good thing –’
My legs and back were aching intolerably now. He made us some tea while I finished packing; we talked, carefully, about my father’s visit.
‘It’s good that you’re staying on. I mean, not just because it’s wonderful for me – but trying to cope here, mostly alone, it would be pretty difficult for you – don’t you think?’
I wondered if it mattered really very much where I stayed.
He held me in his arms: I felt nothing. I really am ill, I thought.
That evening my temperature was a hundred and two. The next day, a hundred and three. Semi-delirious, I lay in Nell’s bed, my mind full of images of decay.
My temperature stayed up. Several times a night I would wake up, my nightdress soaked through; I moved on to wearing Nell’s now, then old ones of Alice Ingleson’s. Their family doctor, sounding my chest, muttered asides about infections in hot weather, overstrained condition etcetera. Nell, back from spending the weekend with a school friend, insisted that I stay on in her room: ‘Unless you want to move out, love.’
The day of my mother’s funeral came and went; I had had to miss it of course. But a couple of nights later I dreamt that I’d been there after all. It was a confused scene – yet with all the curious rightness of dreams. My mother was there, which seemed quite natural; standing about, laughing and talking with everyone. She was dressed as for tea at Gunter’s, and looked very happy. Only Richard, who was standing quite alone, looked sad. I wanted to go over to him but I thought: I can do that later.
The coffin was standing in the middle of the room. ‘Don’t you want to look in it?’ said my mother; I turned away. ‘Silly,’ she said, laughing. ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of. It’s only Peter in there –’
I began to laugh too. Then everything became suddenly mixed up with my grandfather’s funeral; my laughter went on and on -a loud frightening sound; there seemed no way to stop it. When at last, I woke up, my hand was over my mouth.
Chapter Nineteen
I was up again; I felt very weak and didn’t want to do anything but sit about the house. I’d lost a lot of weight; and my ring slid off with ease now. I moved into the guest room. It was large and dark and even in the heat of the day, felt chill. ‘God, isn’t it depressing,’ said Nell, massing flowers round it; begonias, fuchsia, late over-blown roses.
The second day up, I mentioned something about Mr Jowett, and found to my surprise that while I’d been in bed, Alice Ingleson had wound up the job for me. ‘I hope you’re not going to be silly about money,’ she said briskly, handing me a cheque. Richard, when I mentioned it, see
med embarrassed. ‘God, she’s bossy – I should have told you she’d done it.’ Kissing me: ‘Would you like me to try and get it fixed up again?’
But I couldn’t have been bothered.
Surprised that I should have seemed surprised, Alice Ingleson explained that once Nell’s wedding was over I would find myself very busy. ‘Richard tells me you thought October?’
Oddly enough, her high-handed gesture hadn’t really upset me: it seemed that the energy even to feel angry was wanting. But the consequent blank in my days I found appalling.
At first it wasn’t too bad. There were things to do, even if they were unpleasant. Letters of condolence to answer, for instance; although I was shocked at how few: being the Duchess of Bratherton had obviously not been the way to win friends and influence people.
Gervase’s letter had come while I was in bed. ‘This is terrible, terrible,’ he wrote, ‘how are we to go on? What shall I do?’ And then, about the funeral: he was dreadfully sorry, but he couldn’t possibly attend. It was a terrible thing, but he couldn’t. In his shaky, spidery hand he added a postscript, a long involved explanation, about how the convent garden party was on just that day, and how the nuns counted on him, absolutely, to preside over ‘guess the weight of the cake’. It wouldn’t do at all to let them down … I did see, didn’t I?
‘Poor old chap,’ said Richard, who’d written to him while I was ill. I found it though, a very difficult letter to answer; for I, too, had been unable to face the funeral.
After the letters there were my mother’s effects to go through. Mrs Pickering, crying a lot of the time, helped me with these, so did Richard. My father had collected everything from the nursing home:
‘You’ll want this,’ he said, pushing the Memory Box towards me.
He seemed still very tense and edgy, and was smoking, not perhaps more than usual, but with greater ferocity. For the time being, he’d moved over to my grandmother’s. He thought, though, that he might go off for his holidays soon. ‘You’re right enough where you are, so I shan’t worry. I might spend it in Town – I’ve three weeks due.’ He was awkward with me – not so much irritated by me as uncomfortable, embarrassed in my presence. And weak, lank-haired, convalescent, I didn’t see how I could be anything but depressing company.
I was alone a lot in the house in Cornwall Road. After her one interfering gesture, Alice Ingleson seemed to have time for no more; apart from making a few polite inquiries as to how I was going to spend each day she showed little interest, and made no suggestions – other than recommending me to rest. ‘I hope you’re getting plenty of rest,’ she would say on her way out and then on her way in again; seemingly firmly convinced, like many people who are never still themselves, that rest was the remedy for everything.
As I’d suspected, Nell didn’t get on with her mother. They squabbled frequently – often noisily. ‘Girls, girls, Pax,’ Bernard Ingleson would say, raising his hand; removing himself with a dry comment from the scene.
When she was alone with me, Nell would often unburden herself. ‘Oh God,’ she would say, ‘I hope it won’t be like this for you.’ Once she said: ‘Mother’s excelling herself these days – all these ghastly decisions about nothing. God, it’s wearing. Richard’s bloody lucky; he never gets across her at all. Not that he’d give a damn anyway -I remember he used to sing to himself, hum, whenever she rowed him. God, it made her furious! But that was years and years ago – now, love, he just gets treated like a rather nice guest.’ She paused. ‘And you’ll be all right I think, honestly. She’s so damn thankful you’re not Juliet.’ Then she added: ‘Aren’t we all, though? The sort of unspeakable relief that it’s not going to be her walking down the aisle – and really it did look like it at one stage. He’s my own brother but he can be bloody stupid. I mean I’m fairly easy going, love, but she would have been hell. That stupid petty business of the dress. And God, Rome – you’ve no idea what that was like. Richard absolutely shattered and la belle dame just smiling away to herself. Murder. I expect like some flowers she blooms in the right climate but as far as I’m concerned, she’s tat.’
Another time she said: ‘It’s probably all my bloody fault, but if I can’t get away ,..’ Then she added, ‘I’m a virgin – would you believe it? And it’s hell. I can’t think why I’ve lost the religion and kept the rules. But there it is. I think though I’ll just have to go away again. Q says he’s seen the banquet laid out just once too often –’
Her talk, the aura of the wedding, my living in the same house with Richard, surely, I thought, they should arouse in me the most intolerable desire? But I felt nothing. It was as if I had died too.
Already the wedding had been put back to December. Almost daily Richard reassured me, telling me that soon, very soon, I would feel better. It was just a matter of time.
Meanwhile, he felt terribly guilty about the Gnome. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to try and get you a job? You must get awfully bored …’ But I said no; and he seemed relieved.
He was very understanding, almost too much so. We went out continually – whenever he was free. Sometimes Quentin and Nell joined us, but mostly we were alone. ‘It’s a chance to get to know each other.’ We went for drinks, for walks, to films, to the theatre, to horse shows, flower shows, to a pony something or other. We drove up into the Dales, went away for the weekend with friends, visited Robin Hood’s Bay because I had once said I’d like to, and met what seemed to be an unending stream of Ingleson acquaintances. I talked, and smiled, all with a curious feeling of deadness. Sometimes, I would get sudden attacks of terror, precisely because no one had noticed.
Then, sometimes, as he touched me, I would come alive for a while: little threads of memory: the picnic, the proposal, a remembered scent, feel; for a moment, I would believe that all was well.
My father, I saw little of. He told me that he’d postponed his holiday. Perhaps he would go abroad, France maybe; anyway it’d be September if he did. And he’d want me to keep an eye on my grandmother – who by the way, was really beginning to look up.
Nell had asked me to be a bridesmaid – to cheer me up, I supposed; she had already three or four of them and a couple of pages. ‘It’s your last chance, love,’ she said, ‘I should take it. You don’t want to get a useless yen when you’re a bulging matron…’ I couldn’t really imagine wanting to be either bridesmaid or bride but I had duly gone for a first fitting, pinned round in lemon tulle.
We were well into August now. For the last few weeks, I’d given barely a thought to Elizabeth. Once or twice, feeling guilty, I’d wanted to tell Richard about her, ask if we could see her, then feeling suddenly overwhelmingly tired I’d put it off for another day. She’d never answered either of my letters and now from worrying about her, I’d moved on to thinking that her silence must mean it had all been a false alarm.
Then one afternoon as I came back in from collecting some raffle money for Alice Ingleson, Mrs Johnson called out: ‘Lucy, you’ve a visitor’; and going into the drawing-room I saw her sitting there, legs sprawled over an armchair, discarded Fields and Country Lifes lying all about her.
‘You old beggar, Lu!’ she said, jumping up. Her colour wasn’t as high as usual and she was a bit fuller in the face, but otherwise it was the same old Elizabeth. She was wearing her old gaberdine mac, so that I couldn’t see if she’d filled out anywhere else.
I felt unbelievably glad to see her.
‘That was an awful thing, Lu,’ she said, ‘about your mam. I’ve only just heard. Dad got it from someone at work. Honest, I’m ever so sorry, Lu.’
She’d sat down again now: she gave a great stretch, then pushing her sandals off she began massaging her toes.
‘Now – about you,’ she said. ‘You beggar. You never let on. I never knew a thing about any wedding till I rang that place where you worked – and then I thought they were having me on -Yesterday it was. You are a one, Lu. Heck – sitting with me that time, and never letting on –’
She h
esitated a moment, then: ‘Hey,’ she said, frowning, ‘did she arrange it? Your mam, I mean. Was it, you know, a sort of family thing like?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Because I thought when I heard – well, it’s the sort of boy she’d have chosen. They do that in Spain, you know, Lu. I read it in Picture Post.’
She stood up again. ‘Give us a dekko, Lu,’ she said, taking hold of my ring. I tried to pull it off for her, but I must have fattened up again a little, because it wouldn’t come.
‘Heck, it’s big, isn’t it?’ she said admiringly. ‘Is it ruby?’ She prodded at it: ‘Go on with you, really, Lu! You of all people. What’d I say, about that hair?’
For a bit, she quizzed me: asking me my plans and not listening to the answers – the same as ever. It was strangely comforting. Then she sighed and gave a great yawn, showing her big white teeth.
‘Eh, but I’m empty,’ she said with a shudder. ‘Sort of sick like. Lu – you couldn’t get me some biscuits? And pop? If they’ve some pop –’
There was no one in the kitchen. I put some biscuits on a plate, but I couldn’t find any pop so I filled a glass from the soda syphon in the dining-room. When I came back in she was looking at the photograph of Richard which stood on the grand piano. It was very dated, and must have been taken just before he went in the Army.
‘Phew!’ she said, ‘he’s all right, Lu – not kidding. Reminds me a bit of Andrew – not much, but a bit. Andrew was more film star, like.’
She’d put the photograph back and was munching a biscuit wolfishly. She hadn’t said anything yet about herself. She wrinkled her nose up at the soda water: ‘What’s this?’ She tried a bit: ‘Does it settle you? I wouldn’t want to throw …’
She seemed the same, and yet not the same. I wanted to ask for her news but wasn’t sure where to begin. To get her started, I said:
‘Look – that row with your mother, that evening. I’d meant to stay –’
‘You’d have been daft,’ she said, with her mouth full of biscuit. She gulped down the rest of the soda water, pulling a face. ‘She gave me a real night of it after. Shouting – and calling me dirty this and that – it was like nothing, Lu.’ She belched loudly. ‘I scraped my eyes out. And then – when I thought she’d done – she had Dad come in and ask me for the name all over again. Then she went downstairs and she rang him up – rang George up, just like that. Turned midnight and all.’ She paused: ‘Only, she wouldn’t tell me what she’d said. And I was that bad by then, I’d have done anything, Lu – Even, you know, taken things. I’d my eye on the gin bottle at the hotel, only I didn’t know like how much it’d need … But then come the next Saturday, she had me up the doctor’s. You know – Dr Varley. I never felt so daft. The way she talked it was more like I’d been raped. “Just taken, Doctor,” she kept saying, “just taken”
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