Tea At Gunter's

by Pamela Haines

  In my mind’s eye, I filled in ‘Mrs Richard Ingleson’ on the label holder. We would begin again, I thought. Myself, metamorphosed by marriage: his friend, not his daughter. (For it had been all right, had it not, that dinner after the engagement, when we’d gone back to the house, and he’d sung ‘Oh Flo’ and ‘A dark girl dressed in blue’ and ‘When we went to Brighton’?)

  ‘Darling,’ Richard said in the evening. ‘You’ll stop the traffic with that.’

  ‘I tried to thank him,’ I said, ‘but he’s already left –’

  ‘When he’s back, though. Then, another dinner would be awfully nice, don’t you think?

  Fourth finger, left hand, sore now with the ring which had stuck obstinately, inflaming the skin. It was the day of Nell’s return and in the morning Alice Ingleson had a coffee party. Several concerned, elderly women tried to remove it for me (it was interesting, was it not, how much larger the modern gel’s hand was?); there were complicated and painful assays with string, but all without success.

  That afternoon I took it down to the family jewellers: it was recognized, removed, admired and promised for Saturday.

  I came out of the shop; the weather, still very hot had a September richness to it. Standing in the sun waiting to cross the street, I looked down at my finger: its bareness seemed odd, the sensation of lightness, of freedom, almost frightening.

  There was a break in the traffic. I was about to move when I saw coming towards me – blonde head, curls tossing, ungainly walk that was almost a waddle – Jennifer.

  She saw me; there was a piercing, delighted, ‘Lucy!’

  ‘You dark horse,’ she said over and over again, then: ‘how lovely to see you! I feel awful – I wrote you and I did mean to follow it up. You didn’t do anything about it either – you bad thing…’

  We stood there, blocking the pavement at the crossing. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘why don’t we have tea somewhere?’ She was on holiday: tomorrow they were all off to Whitby, the whole family, plus three cousins and two uncles.

  We sat in Fuller’s, and thirsty in the heat drank our way through three pots of tea. Our table looked down onto the street: it was next but one to the table I’d sat at that first time when Juliet had brought me to meet Richard and Quentin, all those years and years ago.

  ‘It’s so exciting’ Jennifer kept saying, ‘fancy you being the first of all of us to get married. I don’t think anyone else is honestly – I’ve looked carefully every day. What about Juliet though? Remember Juliet? Do you ever see her? And Marjorie, do you remember poor Marjorie? I saw her last week – at a gymkhana. She’s doing jolly well. She’s sort of second in command at some riding stables – the person’s quite old, and I think Marjorie’s meant to take over one day. She looked really happy, Lucy …’

  We tortured ourselves with memories of the White Rose: ‘Wasn’t it absolutely awful? And do you remember – that promise about shorthand? I used to worry for weeks after, Lucy. I thought she’d appear sort of from nowhere and ask, “Have you done your daily shorthand?” Awful, embarrassing, like constipation things. Have you done your daily duty? Honestly it was weeks and weeks before I felt free of that place …’

  After tea, we went window shopping. Had I got all my trousseau? Jennifer asked, and when I said I hadn’t begun: ‘Let’s start looking now.’ She’d like to buy me something for it too, ‘No, but really. I’ve lots saved up.’

  We went into the lingerie department of one of the big stores. There, the giggles began again. Jennifer pointed to a shapeless, pink sateen nightdress: ‘Can’t you just imagine Miss M in that? Why are they always that sort of pink? she’d look just like a salmon, Lucy … Then those knickers – e t b’s or directory something – didn’t she, aren’t you sure she had those on underneath? Lucy, if we’d only thought of that – we’d never have needed to be so scared. I mean …’ There was another burst of giggling; we were overcome with our silliness. An assistant asked coldly if she could help us? and Jennifer surprised her by buying me on the spot a blue and white petticoat, with three layers of frills and a wasp waist.

  On impulse, I asked her to be my bridesmaid. She’d love to, absolutely love to.

  At the corner of James Street we parted.

  ‘As soon as we’re back from Whitby you must bring him over -we’ll all get together. Lucy, it’s going to be such fun …’

  I walked back slowly through the Valley Gardens, then on over Harlow Moor; some of the leaves were turning already, reddish-gold. By the time I let myself into the Inglesons’ house it must have been nearly six. No one was about. Lying on the Benares brass dish in the hall was a yellow envelope: I looked at it idly, and was surprised to see my own name. I’d never had a telegram in my life: my first thought was, ‘Something has happened to my mother.’

  The absurdity of this made my hand shake as I tore open the envelope. Unfolding the form, I learnt that my father and Juliet had married, earlier that morning. They were leaving tonight for France.

  ‘Regret so sudden. Letter follows,’ my father said. They both sent their love.

  Chapter Twenty

  I sat, I don’t know for how long, on the upright chair in the hall. After a while, my arms clasped tightly I began to rock to and fro. I felt that my face had gone very stiff: when a little later Richard came back from work, I found it hard to speak.

  ‘Good God,’ he said, as he read the telegram. ‘Christ, what a thing.’ He had gone very white, ‘Look, darling – are you all right?’

  I have a memory of his holding me, of our standing in the hall: ‘Shock. It’s just that you’ve had a shock, darling. We – we’ll sort it out, in a bit. Find out more.’

  Then I was on the sofa in the drawing-room again, once more trying to sip brandy through stiff lips. There seemed to be a lot of talking going on round me; Bernard Ingleson, back home now was sitting in a chair: Richard was saying something to him in a low voice. Alice Ingleson, her hat still on was walking up and down the room in distracted busyness, talking all the while in a loud voice, tossing off remark after remark – many of them unfortunate. ‘My dear, I’m sorry,’ she kept saying. And at one point: ‘Richard, you were well out of it.’ Then realizing I suppose that this remark could have been better phrased, she added hastily: ‘Well, as they say up here so often – there’s nowt so queer as folk –’

  In a tight, strangled voice I burst out: ‘I’ve brought doom to this house – this is the second death. I’m a bad omen here –’

  ‘But darling,’ Richard said quickly, ‘no one’s died. God, I know it’s upsetting for you – but no one’s dead, darling.’ He looked puzzled: coming back across the room, sitting beside me again, his arm round my shoulders.

  ‘More brandy, I think,’ Bernard Ingleson suggested, reaching across for the decanter.

  An hour later, we sat in the dining-room. It was Mrs Johnson’s half day: Alice Ingleson had cooked the meal. We ate grouse shot by Bernard Ingleson and Cecil Barraclough. It tasted of nothing. My mouth was dry and ashy and sitting there, I had the familiar blank non-feeling I’d experienced after my mother’s death; but added to it now was a sensation of vivid, swirling nightmare.

  The telephone rang: Richard went out to answer it. Alice Ingleson, heaping my plate with summer pudding said: ‘Nell, I expect. Quentin said they might ring from Liverpool.’

  But Richard putting his head round the door said: ‘It’s Doris Hirst. Can she come over here – in about half an hour?’

  Back again, he was immediately concerned for me. They were all concerned. Wouldn’t I rather be out while she was there? Richard could easily drive me somewhere, sit with me somewhere; I’d only to say -

  ‘She sounds pretty agitated,’ he said. ‘She and Ronald have just got in. Apparently there was a letter in the afternoon post –’

  I looked at the bread on my plate, oozing deep crimson juice. Unable even to contemplate eating it: ‘No, no it’s all right,’ I said; I wanted to stay. I hoped, I think, against all reason, that when s
he came, she would somehow prove it all a mistake.

  But her entry, fifteen minutes later, dismissed this folly at once. We were drinking coffee in the drawing-room when, escorted by Bernard Ingleson, she bustled in, trailing agitation. Without looking about her, talking non-stop, she gave Richard and me only a nod as if she hadn’t really noticed we were there. Receiving a brandy:

  ‘Ronald wouldn’t come,’ she was saying. ‘He’s far too upset -she’s shocked him to the core, Bernard!’ Her voice, shriller than I remembered had a tremolo to it now: ‘And the deceit – that’s what her Daddy can’t get over.’ She sipped at the brandy: ‘Behind our backs – all of it. And he was a married man, a married man, Alice, when it began you know. The letter –’

  Richard, turning to me whispered: ‘Come on out, darling.’ But I shook my head, sitting there obstinately. Doris Hirst’s voice rose:

  ‘The age difference – it’s disgusting. Twenty-five years, Bernard. And what is he? A clerk – an insurance broker’s clerk! A nobody, for my Juliet –’

  To try and stop her, Alice Ingleson had come forward: she muttered something to her. Doris Hirst, reaching for her brandy said wildly:

  ‘Lucy, dear, I didn’t see you. I’m beside myself this evening. And Richard, dear –’ she put down her glass, wringing her hands. The action and the word ‘wring’ sent me back suddenly to the hotel cloakroom that evening in June when, all her rings laid on the sill, she’d talked of her naughty Juliet, while I, glowing, had waited to go back to Richard. My eye caught my own bare fourth finger.

  ‘How you must feel, dear,’ she was saying now, ‘what you must think.’ Overdoing it in her embarrassment: ‘You poor girl. The whole affair – I can’t think. And your poor mother. Barely two months since she passed on –’

  Richard had enclosed my ringless hand in his: he made now as if to pull me up from the sofa. ‘But two months dead’ I thought. It came back to me ‘But two months dead … the funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables …’, thumbing the glossary in my School Certificate Hamlet – Elizabeth underlining in red every bawdy reference. The baked meats had been plaster food for a doll’s house – of the kind I had once coveted. I’d seen them always as that. Bright pink hams, crimson jellies, beige cottage loaves all eternally fixed to their dishes; apt foods -never stale because never fresh, they would keep for the next ceremony. Another funeral, a wedding, a birth.

  She was fumbling in her handbag now. ‘I have the letter …’ Getting out her reading glasses, snapping shut their case. On her knee, I saw lying half a dozen sheets of big, sprawling writing:

  ‘Look here, Doris!’ said Richard urgently; he let go of my hand. Alice Ingleson who had been out for more coffee came back into the room. Suddenly Doris Hirst began to cry: little hysterical sobs, and Bernard Ingleson came forward, putting a friendly arm about her shoulders.

  ‘There, there,’ he said in a soothing voice. ‘Some more of the brandy.’ She finished it in a sobbing gulp. Almost choking, she went on:

  ‘They’re after her money. They’ve all been after her money. We wanted her married – you know that, Bernard,’ the reading glasses slipped forward on her nose; she pulled them off impatiently: ‘Ronald would have done anything for her, anything. He’d have got her any man she wanted. He was silly about her, was her Daddy.’ She got out a lace handkerchief and screwing it up, dabbed at her eyes. ‘She should have married Richard of course. I said at the time, “Why don’t you marry Richard? He loves you …”’

  Bernard Ingleson had poured her some more brandy. ‘The War,’ she said, ‘the War is the only explanation. It was the W.R.N.S. that changed her. There was a married man then –’

  I saw two pages of the letter slip to the floor. Outside, the front door banged loudly.

  ‘Hitler has a lot to answer for,’ she said, beginning to sob again. ‘Disturbing people – making them grow up unsettled, upsetting their lives.’

  ‘Look, we must go.’ Richard said, getting up: as he took my hand, the door of the room was flung open noisily.

  Nell, surprised, stood looking from one person to another:

  ‘Whatever is up? Richard, Lucy – what’s wrong?’

  For a second or two no one moved. As she stood there, Quentin’s blazer flung over her shoulders, her face flushed, questioning, there emanated from her such an aura of happiness that I was frightened. She had brought the scent of it into the room. Huddled on the sofa, I could feel coming from my every pore the sour smell of misery.

  Quickly, concisely, Alice Ingleson explained.

  ‘Oh God,’ Nell exclaimed, ‘poor Lucy!’ Coming across the room, she kissed me impulsively, the blazer slipping to the floor, then I heard her say to Richard: ‘Poor love. You must be pretty shook –’

  ‘Catch her,’ I thought Richard said: as suddenly overwhelmingly dizzy, I blacked out.

  When I came round, I was in the guest room. Only Nell was there.

  ‘Just lie still,’ she said. ‘Richard’ll be up in a moment. He’s gone to get you a drink – and to see what else he can hear. You fainted, and I’m not surprised. It was damn stupid keeping you in there -Richard’s in a bit of a state, of course – but the parents should have shown more sense …

  ‘You might as well get into bed,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep cave if you’re used to being modest.’ While I undressed, she talked, sitting sprawled in the armchair. She looked tired beneath her happiness.

  ‘I haven’t thanked you for cheering Q up. He’s a miserable old thing when I’m gone.’

  I’d begun to shiver: ‘I wasn’t very cheerful,’ I said. ‘In fact, honestly, I was rather weepy –’

  ‘What the hell. He enjoyed it anyway. He’s madly avuncular-though he’d die rather than admit it.’ She stretched luxuriously. Then:

  ‘Look, love,’ she said ‘do you want to talk about this drama? Because if you want to open your mouth and scream – call her any filthy names – just go ahead. I mean, I don’t know the story -but if she’s involved …’

  I shook my head. ‘I liked her,’ I began. ‘I never –’ Then hearing footsteps along the corridor, I stopped: Richard came into the room:

  ‘Gone,’ he said. ‘At last. Although she says she has more to say.’

  He’d brought me some hot milk: it looked revolting, steaming, a thin skin already formed; I remembered how my mother had hated the thick skin over the tapioca, when I’d visited her at the nursing home.

  ‘What did she say this time, though? Lucy’ll want to know -won’t you, love?’

  ‘Not that much really,’ he said; his voice which he must have meant to be easy, sounding thick, ‘she insisted on reading great chunks out of that letter –’ Putting the drink beside me he sat down on the bed; Nell getting up, came over and sat on the other side, and for a while we all talked.

  It was an odd conversation: everyone trying to preserve everyone else from hurt, fumbling for words, mis-aiming. And although the centre of their attention, I felt at the same time as if I were speaking to strangers – sometimes even, for a few terrible moments, strangers who’d been sent to plead my father’s, Juliet’s cause. Yet when I asked, timidly, for facts it was plain that they were both of them very angry indeed that I’d been told nothing, had been prepared in no way.

  ‘After all, he could have told you. Or warned you or something. Even if the Hirsts were kept in the dark –’

  I commented at one point, ‘Well – it’s a free world –’ feebly using an expression which belonged more properly to Elizabeth. (‘It’s a free world, isn’t it?’ she would say cockily: to bus conductors, librarians, cinema usherettes, park attendants –)

  ‘Not in this context, love, it isn’t,’ said Nell. She picked up the cup: ‘Drink that milk up, I should. He’s put brandy in it.’

  I didn’t expect to go to sleep after they’d left, and lightheaded with the brandy and not much to eat I lay between waking and sleeping: not wanting or daring to think.

  Richard – in what I
suspected had been an edited version – had given us more excerpts from Juliet’s letter. Much of it I already knew. I knew of course that they had met on the Pullman going up to London; but not that they had spent that evening together -and the next, and the next. He’d managed to get up to see her again too, only a few weeks later. (The weekend of the picnic, of course.)

  ‘Juliet’s words and Doris’s comments, they tended to get a bit mixed. But sometimes it was just obviously Juliet. A lot of waffle -stuff about the “impossibility of meeting up here”. Natural enough – and “You can’t expect me to explain – I just knew this was it.” Then she bloody well glossed over the real problem -what they’d been going to do about it all – and went straight onto the wedding. Which wasn’t in fact so awfully sudden. They’d had it all planned, this last month or so –’

  Nell had said slowly, ‘Hell, are you thinking what I’m thinking? That there’s a babe?’

  Richard reddened. ‘Well, Doris was on about that, too.’ He tried to mimic,’ “She assures me, Bernard, she assures me there’s no need to get married.” Her and her bloody euphemisms,’ he’d said angrily.

  ‘Let’s leave the subject. Lucy’s had enough.’

  Richard had asked tenderly: ‘Are you sure you’ll sleep, darling?’ And Nell had said, vigorously, that I’d have to do it alone. ‘Mother’s on the warpath.’

  Then for a second, as he’d held me in his arms, as my cheek brushed against his – rough with evening – I’d felt my skin suddenly shrivel with terror: his touch, the smell of his flesh, at once repugnant, frightening.

  Now, alone in the room, I trembled still. I thought I wished them both back again. Out on the landing I could hear Alice Ingleson arguing with Nell, and feared she might come in to me. Gradually the house grew quiet: doors being locked, windows rattling as they were opened – then silence. All I could hear was a steady, thumping sound. It was a while before I realized that it was my heart.