‘Ah,’ he said with satisfaction, having reached the cinder patch and finding the deck-chairs empty. It was impossible to read the Daily Telegraph on a cedar seat, as well she knew. Within two or three minutes the ghastly Purchase female would be bearing down upon them, making smacking noises with her lips. Safe as houses you were behind the shed.
Slowly they eased themselves into the chairs, she taking longer over it than he. The rubber ferrules of their sticks didn’t skate about on the gritty surface, which was why the deck-chairs had been placed there. A year ago, when they’d been on the crazy paving outside the back door, old Mrs Love had met her death.
With a continuing air of satisfaction Mr Tyte withdrew the Daily Telegraph from beneath his jacket and unfolded it. His eye moved to the top left-hand corner of the front page, to the first word of a headline about peace talks in the Middle East. He read unhurriedly, passing from the headline to the displayed paragraph beneath and then to the more condensed print which followed it. The news of the peace talks was continued on page five, he was advised, but he did not turn to page five, preferring to arrive there in his own time and in his own way. Instead he involved himself with a car workers’ dispute.
His wife, with closed eyes and the sun on her withered cheeks, thought about their only child, who was to her what the Daily Telegraph was to her husband. Last night he had been on the television again, smoking the pipe in the advertisement. She’d told the newcomer, Mrs Uprichard. She’d pointed at him, and added that quite often he was on the screen for longer. It was impossible not to feel pleasure, impossible not to say to Mrs Uprichard that the other advertisement, in which he was at a flower-show with his pipe, was better. She’d told Mrs Uprichard that as far as she knew he didn’t really smoke a pipe, that it was all an act. In real life she’d never seen Francis smoking anything, not even a cigarette.
Still warmed by the sun, she remembered the moment of his birth, a voice telling her she’d had a boy, and then the child’s cry. She remembered holding him for the first time in her arms, cooing into his shrivelled face. Years before that they’d given up hope. She’d had four miscarriages when she was younger and then, to her astonishment and to Henry’s too, she’d found herself pregnant again, at forty-four. She’d spent more than seven months just lying down, never believing for a moment that disaster would be avoided, what with the age she was and her past unhappy history. Yet miraculously the child had been born, and 14 Rowena Avenue had immediately become a different kind of house.
But the sadness, she often thought now, was that she and Henry had never been young with their child. Even older than she was, Henry had been fifty-six at the time of the birth, and although they’d naturally done everything they could to make Number 14 a happy home for a growing boy they couldn’t change the fact that Francis was a child of middle age. Not that it had seemed a disadvantage at the time. At the time there’d been companionship and affection, Francis learning to make pastry in the kitchen, playing with Meccano in the sitting-room while Henry read Coral Island to him. There’d been their Sunday walks on Ealing Common, all three of them together, Francis flying his kite on a windy day. Yet often since, she had wondered if to a boy growing up they’d seemed as old as they were now. He’d come into their lives like a gift, but a boy growing up couldn’t be expected to appreciate that.
She opened her eyes and glanced at the portion of bald head that protruded above the newspaper. Henry had not risen high in the Midland Bank. His hope had been that his son might somehow compensate for that, but. Francis had entered a world about which they knew nothing, emphasizing the gap that separated them.
Her eyelids drooped again. ‘He hasn’t been, not for ages,’ she had whispered to Miss Purchase in the dining-room a week ago, and Miss Purchase had tightened her lips, which was a habit she had. Henry said it was six years since Francis had been, but Henry might have got it wrong the way he sometimes did these days. Henry didn’t care any more; he never wanted to mention Francis; he walked out of the television lounge whenever Francis appeared. Perhaps a father couldn’t help feeling disappointment in the circumstances. After all, she wasn’t always able to help it herself when the years of childhood kept coming back at her, Rowena Avenue and all it had meant. She hadn’t been able to help it when he’d first stopped talking to them, not sharing things any more. But that was so very long ago, as she often, even now, tried to remind Henry. Time altered circumstances and there still was time to come, enough of it for Francis to be the famous actor he’d set out to be. When that happened she knew he would visit them again and Henry would at last understand how these things were, how a boy could have pride.
Of all that Mrs Tyte was certain, and in the meantime Francis was there on the television for Miss Purchase and everyone else to see: the baby that had so marvellously been born to her, a little thing stumbling across rooms, her most precious possession for year after year. It would be lovely when he came again, when all three of them remembered Rowena Avenue and the walks they’d gone on over Ealing Common, how he’d loved the soggy toast beneath baked beans and had made her a windmill that worked.
‘Oh God, let him,’ she murmured, mouthing the words softly so that her husband would not hear them. ‘Oh God, please.’
He waved as the train crept out of Cheltenham station. Julia waved also, and turned away before the last few coaches began to disappear from sight. Slowly she drove back to Stone St Martin, stopping for petrol at the Red Robin filling station. She called in at Warboys, Smith and Toogood to deliver a batch of typing and to collect some more. ‘Thanks, Janet,’ she said to the new girl in the outer office, and minutes later she turned into the cobbled courtyard in front of Swan House.
‘It’s nice, you know,’ her mother said on the lawn, referring to Martin chuzzlewit, which Julia carried for her while they made together the slow journey to the wicker chair beneath the tulip tree on the river bank. ‘I’ve never read it before.’
‘I think I read it at St Mildred’s.’
Mrs Anstey, who had worried in the night over the anxiety that had begun to afflict her, did not mention it because it was so silly. And Julia had no way of knowing that the bedroom occupied by her fiancé had earlier been alive with people she’d never heard of, with the Massmith sisters and the Kilvert-Dunnes, with a doctor and a doctor’s wife and a saleswoman of shoes called Doris Smith, with a dressmaker in Folkestone and a debt-collector who had lodged at 14 Rowena Avenue. She had no way of knowing that, just for fun, the jewellery which strictly speaking was still her mother’s had that morning adorned an adolescent murderess. Like pieces from a forgotten jigsaw puzzle, the elements of a pattern were scattered, lost in a confusion that Julia wasn’t even aware of.
‘Shall Francis be back before the wedding?’ Mrs Anstey inquired, at last reaching her destination.
Julia shook her head. It wouldn’t be worth his while to come for a weekend since rehearsals took place on Saturdays, as on other days. No, they wouldn’t see Francis again before the wedding.
She went away to start on her typing, and Mrs Anstey tried to settle down to her book, telling herself yet again not to be so silly.
3
Constance Kent’s
The drill-hall reflected its primary purpose. Signs of the Territorial Army were everywhere, a wooden horse in a corner, basket-ball stands, charts on the walls depicting guns, a guide to the naming of parts. In another corner there was a beer barrel.
But for the next three weeks the hall was to be put to a use that had nothing to do with the Territorial Army, and signs of that were present also. The floor was marked with lengths of yellow adhesive tape, the ground plan of Road-Hill House, near Bath. On a wall hung a huge blown-up photograph of the house’s exterior, four-square in its Victorian splendour, a semi-circle of gravel where the carriages turned, steps rising to a hall door set among pillars. Two trestle-tables had been drawn together and surrounded with chairs. Actors and actresses stood about with plastic cups of tea or coffee. A beard
ed production assistant bustled, a girl chewed gum.
The director of the piece, a youth in his early twenties, was attired in what appeared to be the garb of a plumber but which closer examination revealed to be a fashionable variation of such workman’s clothing: his dungarees were of fawn corduroy, his shirt of red and blue lumberjack checks. He wore boots that were unusual, being silver-coloured; and beneath each arm-pit, in a shade of fawn that matched his dungarees, were sewn-on patches, appearing to symbolize a labourer’s excretion of sweat. His hair was profuse, a halo of pale-brown curls that contrasted sharply with the shaven head of the man who had written the script of the Constance Kent story. The director was small, much given to talk and laughter; the scriptwriter was lanky, resembling a length of wire. He wore a black leather jacket and was clipped of speech, a man who did not smile.
Susanna Music, who was to play the part of Constance Kent, knew she didn’t look like her. She’d been shown a drawing of the girl, aged sixteen, which was the age she’d been when she’d murdered her infant half-brother; as well, there was a photograph taken five years later, revealing eyes like currants in a square, unpretty face, and hair severely drawn back from a central parting. This hair had been red, Susanna Music’s was black and trailed loosely down her back. She was small, and Constance Kent had not been small; Susanna’s arms and legs were like a child’s, her body narrow. Her eyes were the same deep blue as the plain linen dress she wore.
It was an important day for her. The playing of Constance Kent was the opportunity she had been waiting for ever since she’d left her drama school. Had she had a choice she would have preferred Rosalind or Juliet with whom to be given her chance. Inevitably there was something repellent about a girl who had hacked a baby to death, but there was of course something interesting as well.
‘My name’s Francis Tyte,’ a voice said, and Susanna turned away from her examination of the blown-up photograph of Road-Hill House. She thought at once that Francis Tyte was attractive. He was smiling at her. The grey of his suit matched his shirt and the tweed of his tie. Somewhere before she’d seen that lean face; as she returned his smile she realized it was in a series of television commercials for pipe tobacco.
‘Susanna Music,’ she said.
‘You have quite a part to play, Susanna.’ His voice was gentle but what he said caused her to feel nervous all over again, making her even blush.
‘She isn’t easy,’ she agreed, as nonchalantly as she could.
‘She’s fascinating, Susanna.’
She asked him what his own part was and he replied he was a gardener who hadn’t existed, who had been written into the script because in one particular place a voyeur was necessary. ‘I don’t say much,’ he added.
‘I’ve seen you in those ads.’
He smiled again, not commenting on that. ‘She’ll make you famous, Susanna,’ he said, and went away.
An actress, with a man’s jacket thrown casually around her shoulders, entered the drill-hall. She caused a lull in various conversations because she was a famous image, a well-known visitor in the nation’s sitting-rooms. Her tawny hair was carefully untidy; in a peach-like face a shapely mouth pouted. ‘Taxis!’ she whispered loudly and with a huskiness. ‘My God, the taxis!’
The director buzzed about her like a freshly wound-up toy, gushing and chattering. His bearded assistant hurried everyone to the trestle-tables, including a make-up girl, a wardrobe girl, and the girl chewing gum. When they were all seated, with scripts open in front of them, the director rapidly labelled everyone with a name. The peach-faced actress gave a little sideways bow of her head when hers was mentioned, a special gesture known to television viewers.
‘Without being crass,’ the director began, with smiles and stabbing gestures, ‘we’re into a conflict situation where Constance is concerned.’ He drew attention to the photographs on the wall and while all the heads in the drill-hall turned towards it he again repeated that they were into a conflict situation.
The eyes of the actors and actresses examined pillars and steps, the mass of windows, the parapet that bounded the roof, with urns at each corner. ‘Without being simplistic,’ the director hurried on, ‘there’s a stench of lechery beneath the scent of lovely English roses.’ He added that he did not like the colour green and preferred, where possible, not to have it in any of his productions. That might sound extravagant, he pointed out, since the countryside played such a part in the Constance Kent story, but it was surprising what could be done with faded shades of blue and brown, for instance. ‘O.K.?’ he said.
The girl chewing gum started a stop-watch. Voices began to read the dialogue from the script, and slowly a household flickered into life: the blustering Samuel Kent, inspector of factories, his second wife, the nursemaid Elizabeth Gough, the gardeners and the servants, a crippled groom. The children of the household, with the exception of Constance Kent herself, were silent in this interpretation of the past. They played no part in the scenes of passion, they were asked no questions by policemen. The mother of Constance Kent, reputed to be mad, was replaced in her husband’s bed by the household’s governess; soon afterwards she miserably died. The governess, hating Constance, became her stepmother, and in her lonely unhappiness Constance wandered the roads of the neighbourhood, her buttoned black shoes endlessly covered with dust. She carried flowers from the hedgerows back to Road-Hill House and named them for the other children: foxglove, cowslip, mother-of-thyme. The other children loved her for her patience, for her humility and her calmness. She read to them and taught them games.
In the early morning she stood among the pillars, by the hall door. Her hands hung loosely, her eyes fixed on a step that was still damp from its six-o’clock scrubbing. A dog-cart was drawn up on the gravel, the horse’s head held by the crippled groom.
‘Your mother’s been complaining,’ her father said. ‘You make it difficult for her.’
She didn’t reply. The horse was impatient on the gravel, the groom muttered threats and then cajoled it.
‘It isn’t easy with the servants sometimes,’ her father said. ‘I would have thought you’d lend support to your mother, Constance.’
She would have hated it, Susanna guessed, when he called his wife her mother. He did it because he didn’t care, because it didn’t matter to him that her mother was dead. His wife had difficulties with the servants because she was little more than a servant herself. She liked their company and after an hour or two’s gossip with them found it hard to change roles, to be peremptory and issue orders.
‘Why don’t you answer me? Do we ask too much of you, Constance, your mother and I? Please answer me that.’
‘You do not ask too much, Father.’
Then you will kindly obey me when I request you to assist your mother.’ He spoke in a low voice so that the groom could not eavesdrop.
‘Yes, Father.’
‘You’re sometimes no comfort to me, Constance.’
He went away. His boots crunched on the gravel, a sound which caused the horse excitedly to throw back its head. Still standing by a pillar, she watched the dog-cart draw away. She listened to the gallop of hooves until she could hear them no longer. She might have stood there longer, for there was nothing she had to do.
‘My dear, you’re plain today,’ her father’s wife remarked, hours later that morning. ‘You do need rouge, you know.’
In a chilly room Constance’s chair was drawn up to a fire that would not blaze. Her needle’s progress was slow as she stitched the hem of a bed-cover, the white candlewick spread over her knees. Each stitch was difficult because the thimble was too large. It was the household thimble; her stepmother had thrown away the ones that fitted her, the ones her mother had left behind. ‘Pasty,’ her stepmother said.
Her stepmother disliked her company because she was different from the maids. She didn’t shriek and giggle, she didn’t repeat the comments the butcher’s man made when he sat for ten minutes in the kitchen, drinking tea. ‘You need
to colour up,’ her stepmother said.
In the orchard she picked plums into a shallow basket and saw her father with Elizabeth Gough. They lay in the long grass, her father’s hands lifting off the nursemaid’s clothes and then unbuttoning his own. After that they were like animals.
She ran away, hurrying on the dustiest of her roads. The clouds moved beautifully across a pale sky. The flowers looked different in the hedgerows now, their colours brighter, rich with a life she hadn’t seen in them before. Somewhere she’d find a life of her own, she’d be a servant in an inn; somewhere she’d find a place to hide.
They locked her in a cellar that smelt of drains. They might forget her. Here she might die, with only the memory of her father like an animal and Elizabeth Gough’s hair all wild among the grass, and the white naked limbs of both of them. She could not destroy her father, she could not silence the mockery of her stepmother’s tongue, nor exorcize the sin of Elizabeth Gough. Their arms would beat her off, her father would coarsely laugh at her.
‘Yes, I am guilty,’ she said, and the clergyman inclined his head and said she’d feel the better for saying so. A doctor spoke and there were questions. A magistrate nodded, the butcher’s delivery man gave evidence. ‘Yes, I am guilty,’ she said again.
In the drill-hall there was a silence after Susanna Music repeated those words. ‘Great,’ the director then exclaimed, jerking his mop of hair interrogatively at the girl chewing gum.
‘Twenty-two minutes out,’ she reported.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ said the director.
More tea was produced, with petit beurre biscuits. The actors and actresses remained seated while the wardrobe girl and the make-up girl had a word with those playing parts that required more than the usual attentions. The actor who was Constance Kent’s father held Susanna in conversation. He was a heavy man, with broken front teeth in a face that reminded her of meat. A mane of greyish hair hung from a balding dome. He didn’t talk about the drama they were all involved in, but about a part he’d just been offered in a film. ‘Concerning computers,’ he said. ‘The world’s computers suddenly going wrong. I play Sir Edgar Keane.’
Other People's Worlds Page 5