Patricia and Malise

by Susanna Johnston

  ‘Walked the dog? I wondered when you were going to notice that Digger is no more.’

  ‘Apologies. What became of him?’

  ‘Choked on a bit of cheese we think. Alyson let a chunk drop and Digger wolfed it down. Nothing we could do to save him. Poor old hound. Alyson was cut up but wouldn’t hear of getting another one.’

  Malise sympathized with Alyson when next they met.

  ‘Commiserations on the loss of Digger. ‘I’d be happy, ahem, to acquire a replacement.’

  ‘Thank you dear – but no thank you. Not at our age. Not fair on an animal they say.’

  Christian’s slight artfulness, as first displayed some years after becoming a school boarder, had grown stronger – had almost developed into cunning. This was accompanied by lack of fear for his brother. He left the trophy exactly where it had been placed and offered no reply to Malise’s taunt.

  Alyson had a stiff hip, (it comforted her a little to remember that, by marriage, she was a Mc Hip) and her husband was more bowed and withdrawn than before.

  The house had become dusty and rank during years of war shortages. A cupboard under the stairs was stuffed with dark, floppy gas masks. Around the place were odd, spiky lumps of shrapnel (called ‘shwapnel’ by Christian who had picked them up in the farm yard). Although the farm was rural, it was not far from London and doodlebugs had flown overhead. Fields nearby were topsy turvy with bomb crates and many of the windows showed traces of brownish, sticky paper – plastered over panes to prevent glass from shattering. Ills of war showed all around.

  Alyson got Christian to open a bottle of wine to celebrate Malise’s return.

  ‘To the gallant Captain’, she said ‘We are proud of you and, they say, it’s brave lads like you who have fought to free us all.’

  It was summer and the garden had been neglected. Not that Christian hadn’t struggled with the vegetable plot. The old gardener had died and the place was unkempt.

  Malise had no plan. He did not want to stay at home, sharing a room with his less than besotted brother. He formed the idea of going to London when things were settled. An income had filtered through to him from a family trust. It would provide enough, if frugal (which he certainly was) for him to manage without earning.

  Many of his leisure hours were spent in writing to old school contemporaries; some from the army too. He wrote neatly in italics and hoped to hook up in a shared flat somewhere central if possible.

  There was enough money for him to buy good shoes, a dinner jacket, a smart suit and a second hand car.

  As the family gloated over his safe return, he planned his escape.

  One morning Alyson said ‘I’m going to drive along to Samstead. There’s a bit of petrol in the Harvest Gold. It will be lovely to see a wedding. None of us have been asked which is disappointing as it’s local. Too many relatives, I expect. They say that everyone has chipped in with clothing coupons to help with the bride’s frock.’

  ‘Whose wedding is it?’ Malise asked. Normally he took no interest in Alyson’s words.

  ‘The Willis girl. Dawn, I believe her name is. Marrying a lad from Essex. Not far off.’

  ‘I’ll drive you’ he said. Alyson was amazed. Amazed and thrilled. Perhaps he viewed her as a second mother after all. Perhaps the war had softened him towards her.

  They drove slowly and not at all far. Church bells rang and the sun brightened as Dawn and her father stepped from the bridal car to walk the path towards an old flint church. Malise, alongside Alyson, watched from the lane – Malise suffocating an inner wince at the memory of his last and only encounter with the, now top-hatted Mr Willis. They did not see much of the bride as she was surrounded by bridesmaids and fussing females.

  ‘Shall we go home dear? The service is sure to last an hour at least.’

  Malise, who wore a bright blue open shirt, chosen to match his eyes, wanted to stay and see the group leave the church after the ceremony. He wished to witness Dawn’s triumphant exit as a married woman – groom at her side. He might just catch her eye. Disturb her in some small way before she set off on her honeymoon.

  He suggested taking a walk. It was a fine day and, although Alyson had trouble with her hip and needed the support of a stick, she was pleased that the handsome Captain wished to spend an hour walking with her – so she put up no argument.

  They walked, extremely slowly, through the village, past thatched cottages, their gardens alive with honeysuckle and roses.

  They were once again outside the church where a sprinkling of people gathered to rejoice with the happy couple. Bells rang again. Pauses for photographs. Clusters of bridesmaids in the porch.

  Down the path came Dawn in bridal white on the arm of her husband. Malise stepped near to the spot that they planned to pass. He drew his handsome head high out of and above the blue shirt and stared her in both eyes. He noticed her startle as she smiled to the waiting watchers. He turned to Alyson, much pleased with Dawn’s unprepared look. Keep the bridegroom on his toes.

  ‘Pretty bride’ he said.

  ‘Yes. They say she was a little on the fast side. I daresay her people are pleased she has found a nice young man.’

  12

  Life was dingy at home. Malise became increasingly irritated by the way the farmhouse was run. Packets of pills stood unashamedly propped by the clock on the mantel piece. Nescafé, newly popular, alongside crumpled brown paper bags, lay on the chest in the hall. Little method. Skimpily sliced ham, tinned spam and, most often, a baked potato with a dab of margarine topping it, for lunch. Toasted cheese (Alyson called it Welsh Rarebit) for supper. Seldom wine. Sometimes cider. Food was rationed and bought at the Co-operative Store.

  Malise, with occasional trips to London on bleak trains to Liverpool Street Station, did as little as possible to help but advised on detail as Christian worked, a little half-heartedly, on the farm and in the garden.

  The loss of Christian’s admiration and praise puzzled and disturbed Malise. The younger man had taken to answering back. Not only answering back but to asking peculiar questions.

  ‘So Malise. Do you see yourself taking a wife?’

  ‘A wife. Whose?’ Malise still enjoyed a stately joke.

  ‘Your own I mean. After all. You are the wight age. I need to know because, if you never have childwen, I daresay the farm will go to me. That’s if you die first of course.’

  Malise was dumbfounded by Christian’s attitude and began to wonder whether to look for a suitable bride in London. All the same, whatever Christian’s new views, the idea of sharing his life was unimaginable.

  Advice had been given on clothes by a distant cousin to whom Malise had written and who worked at the House of Lords. In reply to his letter the cousin had suggested Lobb’s in St James’s Street for shoes. That or Ticker in Jermyn Street. He had also recommended a tailor called Lesley & Roberts in Savile Row.

  On day trips to London Malise visited the shoemaker and had a ‘last’ made of his feet – a sort of model in wood. He was pleased by the skill that went into it but appalled by the expense. Nonetheless he ordered two pairs of shoes – one black and one brown. Suits (one dark, one tweed) were fitted. Also a dinner jacket. He was jubilant.

  Most of the letters had remained unanswered but one showed promise. It came from a man who had been a year or two younger than Malise at school and who he remembered as being one of the many who had hero-worshipped him. He was called Alex James and now had a job in the city and rented a flat in Pimlico. At the moment he shared with another school friend and they were looking for a third.

  13

  Much time was taken up with preparation. Malise poured, meticulously, over money matters and found that it was possible (out of income) to pay for the new clothes and his share of rent and food in the Pimlico flat. He would have to look for some form of employment – even if unpaid.

  During these long days, the loss of Christian’s besottedness was his chief bugbear. He had never deciphered a warning but had belie
ved the brotherly love to be indissoluble; unshakeable. Both men were shut to reason. His thoughts sometimes told him that Christian held a hammer over his head; threatened him in a loutish way. He knew Christian to have always been a misfit, lonely, doing heaven knew what with boy scouts, but, whatever else, eternally rapturous as disciple.

  Now Christian was supposing himself to be responsible for the possible future of the family line – however remote from the centre of ducal power. Leader of the McHips. Hip Hip Hooray. It was outrageous. Malise had always outshone and destabilised his brother into weakness.

  After more dreary months at the farm he was all set for Pimlico. Not long before his departure he had seen, with Christian who had needed persuasion when it came to accompanying him, an Ealing Studio comedy. Passport to Pimlico. Christian had pronounced it ‘tewwibly funny.’ Malise had enjoyed it too – even if uneasy in Christian’s reluctant company – and considered his viewing of it fortuitous, what with his decision to move to the area.

  After agonising negotiations, he bought himself a dark green, second hand Lagonda and tinkered with it as lovingly as he had done with his motorbike at school. He christened it ‘Ruggles’ – a tribute to the family responsible for the ‘hop’ where Dawn had responded with such liveliness to his kilt. Hop. Hip. Mc Hip.

  Before departure he packed all his expensive clothing. He also heaped a rustic basket full with withered apples from Alyson’s stored rack.

  14

  He arrived at the Pimlico ground floor flat, unloaded his car and thrust the apples at one of his future sharers and asked for the basket to be returned. Alex was surprised. He had in store several tins of peaches in syrup and they seemed to be adequate for supper parties. He did not appear to remember having had a crush on Malise at school and Malise certainly would not have remembered him had they met elsewhere.

  He looked at his room and approved. Uninteresting, but possibly answering his needs. Almost to his liking. A small room with a small bed. Small bed. Hmm.

  As it happened he stayed in that small room for several years.

  He managed to persuade his cousin at the House of Lords to allow him to run, although without payment, a few errands. Thus he was able to say, looking mysterious, that he had something to do with the Upper House.

  After that first journey he drove the car back and left it at the farm.

  Every month or so he returned home – always by train. It meant travelling by underground to Liverpool Street Station . He disliked the journey because almost everyone smoked and it was cloudy and stank. Tobacco had, although unacceptable anywhere, struck him as less seedy when smoked in Italy.

  He did, however, enjoy some of the advertisements. One in particular. There was a wispy picture of a girl in bridal dress looking happy and prepared for her wedding day. Under it was written ‘… and Berlei sheets will do the rest.’ He knew, full well, that unless he found an heiress with quarterings, he was not destined to ‘do the rest.’ The realisation, since Christian’s defection, made him a trifle uneasy.

  Christian always met him at the station and asked, but showing no enthusiasm, ‘So. How is the big, bad city?’

  Christian’s life had improved. He was free of thraldom to Malise , the choir was reformed and senior scouts provided him with unsteady excitements.

  Malise, irked, decided to try returning to his old masterly ways. Shock tactics. Possibly turn the clock back.

  ‘So Cwissy. Now you seem to think you are worthy to gather up the cwumbs.’

  ‘Cwumbs. That’s about it. I’ll give you cwumbs.’

  No headway.

  Alyson was lamer. The father more bent.

  Apart from sporadic unease when brooding over Christian, these were happy times for Malise. He saw little of his London flat mates and found them easy to share with. Occasionally he ate in with one or other of them. Each had a regular girlfriend and sometimes brought one home for supper. Meals always ended with tinned peaches – sometimes brandy added and sometimes a tube of condensed milk. Malise liked coming in to find one or other of the courting couples on the small sofa in the sitting room. It amused him to see if he could disturb the girl into some sort of interest in him before, politely, retiring to his room to read about the Etruscans in whose history he had become doggedly intrigued. He never managed breaking a romance up, though. He felt it was because he did not try hard enough. He disliked sharing a bathroom in which he did a lot of gargling and screwed tops onto tooth-paste tubes (this reminded him of his mother and then, uneasily, of Christian when pinned to the floor) left on the basin by the others – before walking to the House of Lords in search of errands. Sometimes there were none but one of the secretaries was pretty. Solitude was necessary to him and he walked a great deal in London, scheming as he went.

  There was a network afoot in the social world and Malise managed to get himself on to some vital lists. Debutante balls were revitalised and, with his looks and his being associated, however spuriously, with The House of Lords, hostesses showed an interest in him. A redoubtable lady called Jennifer worked for the Tatlermagazine and helped debutantes’ mothers when compiling lists for coming-out dances.

  There were no black marks against his name, even though his advancing age might have told against him. Some of the boys had NSIT next to their names – warning girls that they were not safe in taxis should they offer a lift home after a dance. Malise had never been in a taxi, nor did he plan to break the habit, safe in it or not. A small part of him disapproved of the loss of war time equality – as smart London revived to distance itself from the memory of servantless days – but he knew where he rightfully belonged.

  Before each dance there was always a dinner party – held in the house or flat of a debutante’s mother and/or father – depending on their situations in marriage.

  There were usually about ten guests, gender matched, at these dinners and many of the young men were recruited by Jennifer from an army camp at Windsor. Malise was older than the average young man. Conversation could be sticky. Young men were expected to ask the young ladies they had been seated next to at dinner to dance when they arrived at the ball.

  Often these balls took place at hotels. The Savoy River Room, The Hyde Park Hotel, Claridge’s. Malise was always wary for fear of being expected to escort a girl home. Not that he didn’t often fancy one. He liked to walk back to Pimlico – often in breezy contentment after having made a conquest.

  More often than not, they danced to the music of Tommy Kinsman’s band. Kinsman was a lively, short, spirited bandleader. Some of the plainer girls got to know him well and often, noisily, plucked, when needed, a partner from his troupe.

  One evening, at The Hyde Park Hotel, Malise danced with a beautiful girl. She did not match up to Dawn’s lack of restraint on the floor but, after they had danced close to the strains of ‘ Mountain Greenery’ she was not to be the same for years to come. Her knees were weak and her eyes enormous. Malise clasped her round the waist and pressed his cheek to hers. He had to bend a bit as he was tall. She did not quite have an orgasm as had Dawn – and he did not wear a kilt. Nonetheless she was unsettled.

  When the beauty drifted away to powder her nose – her eyes showing him that, before minutes were up, she would be back in his arms for the next dance, he nipped down the stairs and was away. The band struck up with ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ as the girl made frantic searches for her partner. He had been doing no more than keeping his hand, or whatever, in.

  Although he lacked ease of manner, Malise was invited to many of these parties. He tended to give courtly bows and to force jokes. These traits held him up with the more sophisticated girls. Some even pronounced him ‘creepy.’ He was unable to talk naturally. His words were composed, resulting in a failed air of spontaneity.

  On free evenings, he sometimes went to the cinema. He never met with a friend or relation; never invited a young lady to dine with him although he occasionally gave thought to the one who had swooned in his arms at The Hyde Park Ho
tel.

  In spite of being conceited in some areas, he was aware of being a misfit, pedantic, stiff and lacking in feeling. He feared being seen as a cardboard character for his attempts at mixing were awkward. He did have a scholarly side and wished that he hadn’t been in love with a motorcycle when at school.

  When not doing his slight job, he spent many hours at the British Museum reading about Etruscans and, in other spare time, redeveloping his anti-clericalism.

  He stuck to his budget and convinced himself that he was not at his imaginary best without eight hours of sleep each night.

  15

  He was well over thirty by the time he knew that he had to make a change. Visits to the farm, with Christian silent and semi-hostile, became less and less appealing; visits to the British Museum Etruscan department, more and more so.

  There he poured over funerary practices, language, customs and engravings of rock-cut chamber tombs.

  He tired of, and knew that he was bad at, social life. Hostesses tumbled to the fact that he was never likely to marry their daughters. He did hear, twice by letter, from his ‘conquest’ at The Hyde Park Hotel but did not reply. She must have winkled out his address with the help of Jennifer who still worked for the Tatlermagazine.

  With a friendly, youngish Italian man, Giovanni, who worked at the museum, he heard of a small flat that he might be able to rent in Volterra. The Italian man’s aunt was no longer able to live alone there and the flat was about to become empty. Malise thought he would be able to survive on his income and yearned to buy fresh comestibles (as he called food) from local markets.

  That part of Italy had been dreadfully short of provisions during the war but, or so he had heard, quantity and quality had flooded back.

  His mind was filled with cheeses, figs, salami, grapes and peaches. Not tinned ones in syrup. He pictured himself walking to the Etruscan Museum – might even land a small job there. Money posed a possible problem but ways could be found. Exchange was tricky. Basil, bars and Bolognese sauce. Cappuccinos and carafes. He planned to drive Ruggles there. Petrol? Proscuitto, Parmesan and Prosecco. Not that he drank much in the way of alcohol. Moderation. Sticking his neck above his collar, he strained in front of the looking glass – rehearsing absurd words aloud.