‘I’m sure it’ll be all right to get it.’ In spite of their new relationship she felt a little tired for conversation just now, having had to listen that morning to Mrs Spanners’s method with mutton stew. She smiled at Nevil, and as she did so telephone rang again. He began to move away, but she raised her voice and called him back.
‘My daughter’s out,’ she said. ‘I wonder if you’d mind answering that. There’s a phone in the hall, and the side door will be open.’
He didn’t reply, but it appeared to please him to enter the house and to make his way to the hall. The journey would have taken her several minutes.
‘No, she’s out,’ Nevil’s voice said, and then: ‘Can’t say, I’m sure.’ There was a long pause and then he said, ‘O.K.’
Mrs Anstey smiled at him again as he entered the room. ‘All right?’ she said.
‘Doris,’ he said. ‘She said to say Doris rang.’
‘Oh yes.’
He nodded and went away. There was the explosion of his motor-cycle starting up as she returned to her book and when Julia returned twenty minutes later she passed the message on.
‘What on earth did you let Nevil answer the phone for?’
‘Because it takes me ages to get there.’
‘I wish you hadn’t.’
It astonished Mrs Anstey that her daughter should say that. If she had still been a child she’d have asked her quite sharply if she’d got out of bed on the wrong side that morning. Nothing more was said on the subject but later, when they were having supper, the telephone rang again. Mrs Anstey wanted to suggest that it should be ignored, but thought it wiser not to say so. She went on eating salad and risotto while Julia went to answer it.
‘I have asked you to leave me alone,’ she heard her daughter saying. ‘I don’t wish to receive telephone calls from you.’
When Julia returned to the dining-room they continued their meal in silence. Mrs Anstey had earlier tried to have a conversation about a programme she had heard on the wireless, but her efforts had met with no response. And then, just as they were finishing their meal, the ringing began again.
‘My God!’ Julia cried, unable to control herself.
But it wasn’t Doris. ‘I thought I’d better contact you,’ a terse voice began. ‘I can’t think who else there is, I’m sure. It’s Miss Purchase here. The Sundown Home, you know.’
‘Is something the matter, Miss Purchase?’
‘Mrs Tyte is being a nuisance about this grandchild she’s supposed to have.’
Julia closed her eyes. She wanted to shout into the telephone, she wanted to say that none of it was her business, that all she asked for was to be left in peace. She calmed herself. ‘She has a grandchild, yes.’
‘She wants it to be brought to see her.’
‘The child’s a girl, Miss Purchase.’
‘It doesn’t concern me what it is. Mrs Tyte’s got herself into a state is what I’m saying to you.’
‘I suppose she might naturally want to meet the child.’
‘She wouldn’t even know about it if that dreadful woman hadn’t poked her way in here, breaking the rules. This isn’t a comedy show, you know. We’re not holding a party at the Sundown, you know.’
‘Yes, I do know that, Miss Purchase.’
‘We cannot admit that woman again. The way she behaved you’d think the residents are here to be laughed at. And now Mrs Tyte insists that every word she said was true. I may add that for all her years here Mrs Tyte has had the most high-flown notion of her son. The old man has pulled his shutters down completely.’
‘Perhaps the child could visit her grandmother on her own.’
‘It is not permitted for any under-aged person to visit a resident unless accompanied by an adult or adults.’
‘Then what do you suggest, Miss Purchase?’
‘I know no one else to ring except yourself. If the child has to come here I will have to ask you to accompany her.’
‘I’m sorry. I cannot possibly do that.’
‘We are adamant that the woman shall in no circumstances be admitted through the hall door.’
‘I’m not even related to the child. I’ve only met her once.’
‘The old woman wishes to see this child once also. It isn’t much to request of you, Mrs Ferndale, I would have thought.’
‘I live miles from London, and I’ve never met Mrs Tyte in my life. I’d be a stranger to her.’
‘If that is how you feel, madam.’
‘Miss Purchase, there are considerable complications. I don’t want to go into them. Mrs Tyte’s son married me under false pretences. The marriage lasted no time at all, I am trying to recover from the unhappiness of it. I’m sorry but I cannot involve myself with Francis Tyte’s parents.’
‘I’ll tell the old lady how you feel, Mrs Ferndale. It’s simply that because of the fuss she’s making her husband won’t sit with her. And the other residents are quite rightly complaining. I doubt she’ll last through this, you know.’
Julia hesitated, about to say with even greater firmness that she could not accept responsibility for a problem that was not hers.
‘Very well, Miss Purchase,’ she said instead, ‘I will arrange to come to see Mrs Tyte and bring her grandchild with me.’
‘Yes, all right,’ Miss Purchase ungraciously replied, replacing the receiver.
In the dining-room Julia told her mother of this latest development and noticed, for the second time that day, that there appeared to be defiance in her voice. Mrs Anstey, deeming it wise only to nod, did so. She didn’t comment on Miss Purchase’s telephone call, but privately thought that by the sound of her Miss Purchase was one of those middle-aged women whom she most disliked, patronizing and unpleasant, like Mrs Spanners.
At midnight in the kitchen Julia finished typing a contract that had had to be drawn up between a newsagent in Old Street and the brewery which owned the public house next door to his premises. It concerned the use of, and liability relating to, a common passageway. It had taken her several hours, but she always found the occupation relaxing, which was something that was difficult to explain to her mother. She lifted the typewriter from the table and placed it in one of the wall cupboards, on a shelf beside sheafs of carbon and typing paper. She put the dog out for its run and tidied a few things on the dresser. She might have telephoned Henrietta and Katherine, asking to be put up for a night while she arranged the ordeal of taking the child to see an old woman in a home. But instead she had telephoned the Rembrandt Hotel, remembering its number because she had dialled it so often when Francis had stayed there. She didn’t know Doris Smith’s address, but tomorrow she would go to the shoe department about which she’d been told so much and she would try to explain. She would ask permission to make the visit with the child and when the visit was over she would talk to Doris Smith. It would be a different kind of conversation from the ones that had taken place on the telephone and in Swan House. Slowly and calmly they would talk about the girl called Susanna Music, and she would patiently explain that the girl must not be harmed.
She settled the dog down in its basket by the Rayburn, forcing affection into her voice as she said good night. She was glad she had been haunted by foreboding, and glad that she had become emotional in Father Lavin’s office. In her less tense mood she was even glad that Miss Purchase had made her request, for at least there was something she could now attempt to do, and doing anything was better than introspection. She’d got into a great muddle because of the drifting of her thoughts and her endeavours to come to terms with God. She’d wanted a miracle, of course: all the pain taken away, packaged explanations. She would settle now for practicalities, and an end.
The telephone rang as Julia passed through the hall on her way upstairs. For a moment she almost picked it up in the hope of making some arrangement to meet the following day. But she knew that at this hour of the night the woman would be too drunk to understand, and so she lifted the receiver and placed it on the table
. A kind of screaming came from it, which continued until she put a cushion on it.
13
Julia in Doris’s
On the day following Julia’s telephone call from Miss Purchase the Indian floor supervisor greeted Doris when she arrived in the shoe department by saying he was sorry. Unusually early for him to be present, he was bustling about in his shirtsleeves, examining a sheaf of invoices. He ceased this occupation in order to address her. His manner was uncharacteristically sombre.
‘We cannot but be sorry,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘Doris, this is naturally for your own good.’ A faint reminder of his normal cheerfulness flitted over his face. For only a moment his very white teeth gleamed. Blankly, Doris stared back at him.
‘I don’t know what you’re on about. What d’you mean, good?’
‘Doris, you can surely not expect us to believe that all is O.K.?’
‘I can’t sleep, if that’s what you’re saying to me.’ Her voice had an edge to it, reaching a shrillness it rarely acquired before evening. ‘I haven’t had a night’s sleep since my friend went.’
‘Doris, that is what we have deduced. But there is something else as well. It is that we desire to see you on an even keel again.’
There was concern all over his unhappy dark face. He was endeavoring to help her, as he had helped so many of the assistants on his floor over the years. He was endeavoring to break the bad news gently.
‘You’re giving me the sack,’ she said.
‘We desire you to sort out the problems, so that we shall let bygones be bygones. Doris, I have always understood your distress.’
She knew from the way he looked at her that they’d discovered she’d been taking bits and pieces to the secondhand place in Crawford Street. It had never been difficult if she arrived at the store early enough: when everyone was hurrying, in and out of the washrooms, all she’d had to do was to slip the things into her bag – socks, alarm clocks, ties, belts, oddments from the costume-jewellery counter, a pair of binoculars a week ago. Shoes, of course, were the easiest of all. She’d sold over fifty pairs of shoes in Crawford Street.
‘It is not forgotten,’ the floor supervisor reminded her, ‘that you have been with us twenty years, Doris. No customer has ever complained.’
‘My friend-’
‘Doris, you told me that about your friend. I am sorry. But what I must say to you now is make me a promise to return to us when you’re feeling better.’
‘I’m not ill. There’s nothing the matter with me.’
‘Doris, it is not an illness. You have a new leaf to turn over, that at the most is all. When this has been completed there will again be a home for you on my floor. That I happily promise you.’
Some hours later Julia arrived in the shoe department and asked for Doris. There was a delay and then the Indian was led up to her. Miss Smith, he said, was having time off because of personal problems. He led Julia to his small office and gave her the address of Doris’s flat. He said he hoped there was nothing the matter, and Julia reassured him. ‘Help her if you can,’ he urged, doing his best to smile.
In the sitting-room Joy turned the television off and explained that her mother wasn’t in. ‘Would you like some Maxwell House?’ she offered, surprised that a visitor had called. Her eyes passed over Julia’s coffee-coloured dress and the green silk scarf at her throat, and her shoes and her watch.
Julia declined the coffee. ‘Your grandmother wants to meet you, Joy.’
Joy blinked behind her spectacles. She didn’t want to meet any grandmother, she said.
‘She’s very old, and unhappy. It would cheer her up.’
‘She’s in a home.’
‘Yes.’
‘If I go there it’ll be embarrassing.’
‘Why, Joy?’
‘It’ll be like when we came to your place. She’ll be drunk.’
‘You don’t have to go there with your mother. That’s why I’ve come here: I can bring you.’
‘You?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right then.’
‘Would you like to write a note for your mother? If we set out now she’ll wonder where you are.’
Joy looked at her visitor in surprise. She left the room. In a corner, on a chair, Julia saw the table-mats which Doris had referred to. There was some green baize folded over the back of the chair, and a pile of coloured reproductions of Big Ben. From the pictures with which Doris had decorated the walls, jungle beasts stared ravenously, and Negresses smiled above their hanging breasts.
Joy returned with a piece of paper torn from a cereal packet, on which she’d attempted to scrawl the words ‘Gone out’. She put it on top of the television. Julia wanted to get out of the flat as quickly as she could, but nevertheless she hesitated.
‘Are you sure your mother won’t mind, Joy?’
‘She’s at the shoe department today, you know.’
‘She wasn’t well. They sent her home.’
‘You know what that means. She won’t get back all night.’
They walked to Fulham Road and took a taxi. On the way to the Sundown Home, while Joy outlined the plot of a film she’d seen the night before on television, Julia kept thinking about Doris and wondering where she was. She thought about Susanna Music as well.
There was a fuss when they arrived at the Sundown Home. Miss Purchase, who Julia had imagined would be smaller and thinner, answered the bell herself. Her whole face tightened when she saw them, a movement which began around the mouth. Visiting was on Sunday afternoons, she said.
‘Miss Purchase?’ Julia inquired. ‘I’m Julia Ferndale. We’ve been talking on the phone. This is Mrs Tyte’s granddaughter.’
‘I can’t have you here now.’
‘I’ve come a very long way, Miss Purchase. You asked me to bring this child.’
Not speaking, Miss Purchase held the door open. Julia and Joy passed through the tinted light of the hall, by the row of coats and the walking-sticks in the elephant’s foot. Miss Purchase led them into the cubbyhole under the stairs which served as her office. There was nothing to sit on.
‘It is against the rules,’ she said in a low voice. ‘If the other residents see you with the Tytes they’ll complain of unfairness. The best I can do is that you should see them in here. They won’t like standing, I can tell you that, but when people come at these outlandish times there’s bound to be discomfort. If the telephone rings please don’t answer it.’
She left the cubbyhole, in which only a dim light burned. On top of the grey filing-cabinet there was a china representation of Peter Pan, and for the first time since Julia had met her Joy seemed inclined to giggle, unable to take her eyes off the object, although to Julia it seemed a perfectly ordinary ornament. The telephone began to ring and after a minute or so a round, white-coated man came in and answered it, not paying the visitors any attention. ‘Yes, we did try to get you, Mrs Burchell,’ he said. ‘Father passed this morning. Yes, I’m sorry too, madam.’ He listened for a while as some instruction was given, whistling through his teeth, a hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. ‘Okey-doke, madam,’ he said eventually.
Miss Purchase returned with the Tytes, and the man in the white coat said he’d told Mrs Burchell that her father had passed. There wasn’t room in the cubbyhole for so many people and the elderly couple had to step back into the hall while the man in the white coat made his exit. It was a squash even without him, since Miss Purchase remained. Julia was so close to Mr Tyte that his breath, coming in sharp little puffs after the exertion of his journey from the dining-room, was warm on her cheek. Miss Purchase set the mood by speaking in a whisper. She placed her thin lips close to one of Mrs Tyte’s ears and said that the child in the cubbyhole was the child the old woman had expressed a desire to meet.
‘Francis’s?’ Mrs Tyte said.
‘My name is Julia Ferndale,’ Julia said, in a whisper also. ‘A friend of Francis’s.’
‘Is this the child?’ Mrs Tyte inquired, speaking normally.
‘Please keep your voices down,’ Miss Purchase reprimanded.
‘This is Joy,’ Julia whispered.
‘He hasn’t been to see us,’ Mr Tyte said, ‘for six years.’
Mrs Tyte was weeping. She’d stretched out a hand and seized one of Joy’s. She murmured between sobs that she’d just wanted to see her granddaughter. She’d never known she had a grandchild. ‘Joy,’ she said. ‘Joy.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Joy said.
Again Miss Purchase protested that the voices in the cubbyhole were too loud.
‘It’s nice to have a grandchild,’ Mrs Tyte said while her cheeks were dabbed at by Miss Purchase. ‘We just wanted to see her. Even only once, I said.’
‘Your son is well, Mrs Tyte,’ Julia said. ‘He’s abroad.’
‘We were never young with him.’
‘He isn’t dead, you know,’ Julia said to Mr Tyte.
‘I know he’s not dead, for God’s sake.’
‘Well, I think that’s all now,’ Miss Purchase said.
Somehow she swept Julia and Joy out of the cubbyhole, into the hall. The sound of Mrs Tyte’s weeping continued as Miss Purchase moved swiftly across the brown tiles and opened the hall door. ‘He’s the worst of the offenders,’ she vouchsafed as a form of farewell. ‘A really mischievous old man.’
‘Is Mrs Tyte all right? She seems very low.’
‘Anyone would be low in the circumstances,’ Miss Purchase retorted. ‘They’re more trouble than the rest of them put together, those two.’
‘Excuse me,’ Mr Tyte said, close behind Julia. ‘I’d welcome a private word.’
‘Now, now, we’ve had our private words,’ Miss Purchase began, but Mr Tyte had already seized Julia’s sleeve and had pulled her aside. ‘I didn’t catch your name,’ he said.
‘It’s Mrs Ferndale. Julia Ferndale.’
His manner was different now. He spoke quietly, with a measured note in his voice. ‘I want to tell you this, Mrs Ferndale,’ he said.
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