What Was Rescued

by Jane Bailey

  ‘Arthur, Mummy,’ Pippa chipped in.

  ‘Arthur. How very traditional. I suppose you’ll have to do, Arthur. Make sure you do it soon.’ She looked at her wristwatch. ‘I’m off to bed. Goodnight, darling.’ She looked across at me. ‘You can call me Cynthia, but only in private.’

  Pippa heaved a sigh when she was gone. Her mother had not thought to ask me if I was prepared to marry Pippa, and I realized I had absolutely no say in the matter. My heart was pounding. I had been cross-examined on my manhood and survived. Why was it, then, that I felt it had just been taken away from me?

  Pippa said goodnight to me on the landing. ‘I do love you, you know,’ she said, and kissed me on the cheek.

  I lay in the cold guest bed and stared into the gloom. I lay on my right, I lay on my left, I threw out a pillow, I clawed at the sheets, and then I flung back the eiderdown. I listened to the silence; I sweated; I breathed heavily. I had the gnawing feeling that there was something I had meant to do – something important. And then, at about four in the morning, I remembered.

  I tiptoed down to the hallway cloakroom. Pippa’s coat was hanging next to mine, and I slipped a hand into the pocket and retrieved the letter. I don’t know why, but I had the feeling that a lot rested on that letter; and so it did. I opened the little sheet of Basildon Bond paper with trembling hands and had to close the cloakroom door so that I could turn on the light. My eyes blinked at the sudden glare. I looked down at the writing:

  Pippa,

  I know what you did.

  Dora

  I reread it, confused. This didn’t sound like the Dora I knew. This was an accusing Dora, a Dora accusing Pippa of sleeping with me, when in fact it was all my fault. If Dora blamed anyone, it should have been me. I didn’t like this underhand way of dealing with it. I couldn’t blame her, of course, but this wasn’t the girl I thought she was. This showed a little streak of spite. This wasn’t my Dora at all.

  22

  DORA

  The train journey seemed to go on forever. At first, there was a trace of familiarity in the grey stone buildings and endless telegraph posts. The cows in the fields looked the same as the cows in Gloucestershire, although Ralph insisted they mooed with a French accent. We passed through station after station, coming to a slow, screeching halt, and hearing urgent French voices and doors slamming. Each time I felt a growing distance from a world where things were certain and familiar. I was glad of Ralph’s company and felt a little shock of panic if he left me even for a minute or two.

  After Lyon, the landscape changed. There were fewer grey roofs and the meadows began to run out. The rooftops turned to a salmon pink and the houses were more often ochre-coloured or pale and rendered. The fields became increasingly parched, and the only green came in the form of vineyards and tall, dark trees. At Montélimar, Ralph reached overhead for our suitcases and ushered me on to the platform. I followed him into the windswept town, dazed at all the signs for nougat. There was a Bar Nougat, a Café Nougat and even an Hôtel Nougat.

  ‘We’ll stop here for a bite to eat,’ said Ralph. ‘It’s near the bus stop. There are buses every hour, and we’ve just missed one, so we can take our time.’

  We laughed as we entered a little restaurant called Le Restaurant Nougat, and he explained that the lavender in this region produced wonderful honey, and the almond trees were abundant, so Montélimar combined the two in its world-famous nougat. Ever since Paris I realized that being on foreign soil put Ralph very much in control. I could only look on in awe as he ordered tickets, put our luggage on the right train, chatted to Frenchmen or summoned waiters. Without him I was lost. I’m not sure if I was uncomfortable with this state of affairs straight away or if it was a discomfort that grew, but it would set the tone for the summer.

  By the time we boarded the bus for our final destination, I was already jittery with homesickness. The landscape now was utterly alien. The fields were pale and arid, stitched occasionally with neat rows of short, green vines. There was none of the softness of England. Everywhere there was row after row of dry, knobbly trees, bent over by the wind.

  We alighted at a village called Valréas, on an ancient, circular road with heavily pruned plane trees blocking out the intense afternoon sun. We went into a bar for some mineral water, and clusters of old men wearing berets looked up from their drinking or their cards to stare at us. I rested my eyes firmly on the bar, where two cool glasses of water arrived for us, but I could feel the eyes on my back. I had been aware of a strange way of speaking French on our bus journey, and now the heavily accented barman demanded ‘veng-senk’. To my astonishment, Ralph understood and handed him twenty-five francs. The men had begun to resume their banter and their card games, but as soon as I spoke to Ralph they looked up again with renewed interest. Some younger men in a far corner began to joke with the barman, and I knew they were talking about me. What was this strange place Ralph had brought me to? How did he understand them when they didn’t even speak proper French?

  As soon as we’d finished our drinks, one of the men in the bar walked over to us and said something to Ralph. We followed him out into the brightly dappled light and down a side street, where a sleepy-looking mule was waiting with its cart. I couldn’t imagine how the poor animal could pull a cart, three people and our heavy luggage, but it seemed quite content to saunter through the streets until we reached the open countryside, where the scorching sun was relentless. I wished I had brought a sunhat, and I watched with increasing agitation as the little mule dragged its head up and down with each step.

  Les Amandiers was nothing like the villa I had expected. I stood on the tinder-dry grass and looked at its flaking golden walls, its faded green shutters and curving pink roof tiles, several of which were piled up, broken, by the side of the house. The mule relieved itself on the road, and I asked Ralph if we couldn’t get it some water. This suggestion was met with a wave of the hand, and he and the cart-driver laughed as money was exchanged. I thought of all my excitement at the station in Cheltenham, and then at Victoria, and of the night in Paris, and the relentless fields and rooftops and small towns and slamming train doors and the miles and miles of telegraph wires slumped between post after post and all the vastness of the unfamiliar earth that stretched between this arid place and home. As the mule walked off, I felt as abandoned as the house, and the thought that I had carefully packed, in the suitcases at our feet, my best dress, high-heeled shoes and a new toilet bag that Our Mam had bought specially, brought a constriction to my throat.

  Despite the mule’s recent delivery, there was a sweet smell in the air. As we walked down the path towards the house, we kicked at wild thyme and rosemary. The brightness was so overwhelming that the cool darkness inside the front door came as a release. I had to blink several times before I made out a flagstone floor and a dark stone staircase. In front of us was a rectangle of light through which was the promise of a kitchen. I followed Ralph upstairs with the luggage and slumped down on a bed.

  ‘We will take a siesta if you like, dear Dora. But first we need some light refreshment and some exploring.’

  In the kitchen were a long oak table and a sink as old as the one my grandmother had back home. I noticed the curling flypapers hanging from the ceiling, each one plastered in fat insects.

  I must have looked bewildered when a young man appeared, because he said, in slightly accented English, ‘Don’t worry. We were supposed to move out by the summer, but Ralph says we can stay. Is that okay with you?’

  ‘Of course.’ I looked at Ralph for some clues.

  ‘Sylveng,’ said the man, holding out his hand.

  I took it and smiled. ‘Dora.’

  ‘This is Sylvain,’ said Ralph, pronouncing his name in correct French, as though the man’s own rendering of his name was inadequate. ‘He’s a carpenter, and I’m very envious. If only I’d done something useful with my life; I’d like to learn how to make things out of wood.’

  ‘There’s still time,’ sai
d Sylvain. ‘You are young.’ He pronounced this last word ‘yong’, and I warmed to him.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose I am.’

  ‘Et moi, je suis Claudine,’ chirped a voice from underneath the table. I looked down, and a girl of about eight emerged carrying a colander of strawberries. ‘Et je speak English.’

  ‘It’s true, she does,’ said Ralph. ‘She’s the daughter of Patsy, who runs the house for us.’

  ‘You have a housekeeper?’ I asked.

  ‘Aunt Bee does. We won’t really need a housekeeper for the long term, of course, but Bee is very attached to her, and she sort of comes with the house.’

  ‘Tu ne vas pas renvoyer maman?’ The little girl shot him a defiant look.

  ‘No, your maman is fine with us. And so are you, Claudine. What would we do without your strawberries?’

  Claudine smiled proudly and proceeded to chop off the heads of the strawberries with a massive knife she had selected from the knife rack. ‘I can bring you rabbits too,’ she said to me with great authority. ‘You stick with me and you’ll eat like a queen.’

  ‘I think I will stick with you, then,’ I said.

  For some reason, the sight of the little girl topping fruit, and of her smiling English mother coming in from the pantry with an armful of bread, and the smell of something aromatic roasting in the range, made me feel less homesick. I didn’t know what Ralph meant by not needing a housekeeper in the long term, or who he was referring to with ‘we’, but I allowed the scent of the roasting meat, the taste of the aperitif and the sound of Claudine humming ‘I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair’ to herself to ease my mind. If there was something about Ralph’s plans I needed to worry about, it would become clear soon enough.

  23

  ARTHUR

  Work was busier than ever. I was responsible for six new recruits, and if it hadn’t been for a colleague a couple of years older than me, I would have found it hard to keep my head above water. Len had a parallel role to mine, working on jet engines. He had a wife and a child, of whom he talked proudly, and there was another baby on the way. It had been Len who had suggested the area in which I bought my house, for he had bought one a year earlier just a few streets away.

  One lunchtime I broached the subject of Pippa with Len.

  ‘I thought you were seeing a little Welsh girl.’

  ‘I was. The thing is . . . well, I’m seeing Pippa now, and we’re going to be married next week.’

  ‘Next week? Fast work there, mate.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He gave me a knowing glance, which turned rapidly into a sympathetic one as he saw the truth in my face.

  ‘Do you . . . um, do you love her?’

  I hesitated. ‘Yes.’

  He put his hand out and patted my shoulder. ‘Anything I can do? Do you need a witness at the wedding?’

  I hadn’t thought of this. ‘Yes, please. That would be helpful.’ It was a relief to tell someone and to find Len – who was a good, upright human being – so non-judgemental and kind.

  ‘Maureen’s aunt has a house by the sea in Blackpool, if you want a short honeymoon.’

  We were married in a small gothic church with only the vicar, Pippa’s mother and Len present. Afterwards we went back to Ashleycroft Hall, where Cynthia had the perfect excuse for a ‘snifter’ and uncorked a bottle of champagne. Then we had salmon sandwiches and an hour of awkward conversation, Cynthia clearly finding Len impossible to grasp or impress or intimidate. I was mildly amused, and I was disappointed when he said he had to go. As Cynthia didn’t offer to drive him, Pippa and I walked with him back to the village to catch the bus, and the three of us waited in the pub, toasting the marriage and, following Pippa’s lead, allowing ourselves to laugh at Cynthia’s pomposity. When the bus came and we waved Len off, I saw for an instant the rescue ship that turned tail and left us in the ocean, adrift.

  Telling my parents about Pippa was not easy. Quite apart from the disappointment I was sure they would feel about Dora, I knew I would have to face their hurt at not being invited to the wedding. In the end I decided to visit them the week after we were married and to see them alone at first, to field their reaction. I left Pippa in Oxford Street with some of her London friends, while I took the tube as far south as it would go and then caught a bus to my parents’ house in Middlesex.

  My mother was not the sort of woman to cry, but I could see her eyes redden when she realized what had happened. She understood straight away that I would never have given Dora up lightly, and that something serious and shameful had occurred to make me sneak off and get married ‘on the sly’, as she called it.

  ‘Where did we go wrong?’ she asked the fireplace. ‘What did we do to you, Arthur?’

  ‘Mum, please . . . You’ve done nothing wrong. I slipped up, that’s all.’

  ‘Slipped up? Is that what you call it these days?’

  My father gave me an indecipherable glance, and the three of us sat for a moment, in the same three chairs we had sat in since Philip died, with the fourth chair empty, as it had been since then.

  ‘Your mother is disappointed, that’s all. She likes Dora a lot – we both do. She seemed such a perfect match for you. I’m sure we’ll get to like this – what is it? Pippa? – just as well, given time.’

  ‘Do you love her?’ asked my mother. This was the second time I had been asked the question in a week, and it was like a reprimand, reminding me that love, not lust, should have driven my decision to marry.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, with practised assertiveness, ‘I do.’

  Mum looked me in the eye then. ‘I thought you loved Dora? How can you be sure you love this woman?’

  I said nothing in reply but brushed some imaginary dust from my trousers.

  ‘I wondered why you hadn’t been in touch. I’ve been out of my mind with worry.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re all we’ve got left, Arthur. Since Philip . . . you’re all we’ve got.’

  Something in the way she said it made me feel like a remnant, something with which she would have to make do. It was a childish feeling, but Philip always brought back that gut sense of being displaced, of being second best. And worse, since his death, Philip was my perpetual burden of guilt. Philip would not have let them down. Philip would have married someone like Dora and made them proud. Hell, he probably would have married Dora.

  ‘And what does poor Dora make of all this?’

  I looked up at her.

  She must have seen my distress, because she softened then and poured me some tea. ‘Well, we’ll just have to make the best of it. I hope she’s worth it.’

  My father came rushing up alongside us in his lifeboat. ‘What’s she like, Pippa?’

  ‘She’s beautiful. I mean . . . she really is . . . beautiful.’

  ‘Are you going to introduce her to us?’

  ‘Of course. I’m going to pick her up from some friends in town right now.’ But even as I said it, I knew they would never take to Pippa as they had taken to Dora. This made me feel protective of my new wife, and I said, ‘Please be nice to her, won’t you?’

  I think my mother tried very hard. She must have sensed, with the confidence of that first ‘hello’ and the manicured hand she was given to shake, that this was someone outside her familiar orbit. She must have clocked Pippa’s slow sweep of the living room and the inscrutable half-smile on her face. I was relieved when Pippa refused tea, because she might have asked for ‘Darjeeling’.

  My father took her to his shed and showed her his ships in bottles, and she smiled, unlike Dora who had been thrilled by them. ‘How very clever of you,’ she said, ‘but what do you do with them?’ Then, as we were coming out of the shed she stung herself on a nettle, and my father apologized profusely. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘But I should sack your gardener.’ Poor Pippa, I don’t think she knew what she was doing, but she managed to save the day by simply being beautiful. I had told her beforehand that all she had to
do was smile. This she did, and winningly. I think they were so dazzled by her green eyes and her refined accent and the prospect of their grandchild inheriting her magnificence that they managed to forget that she was the sort of woman who slept with men outside wedlock.

  24

  DORA

  That first evening Ralph showed me the terrain. In the golden light things looked kinder. The bleached earth was now peachy, and the air was alive with the sound of cicadas, or les cigales, as I was to come to know them. It was a sound like none I’d heard before, and the relentless croaky purr they made was immediately exotic to me.

  As we climbed the fragrant wooded slope behind the house, I became aware of another aroma. To the smell of thyme and rosemary was now added a new scent, one that I warmed to with each passing step. At the top of the slope was, I now saw, a field of dramatically violet-blue lavender, great bushy rows extending as far as the eye could see. I breathed it in hungrily: a familiar, intoxicating smell but with a sweetness to it far removed from old clothes hanging in a wardrobe. We walked along a path until the trees no longer blocked the view down towards the house. I realized that Les Amandiers was larger and more sprawling than I had first thought. Newly built, it would have been a highly desirable residence. The main building was symmetrical, with a tall double door flanked on two floors by green shuttered windows. Although faded and peeling now, the green emphasized the pinkness of the roof and the yellowness of the stucco walls, so flaky that it looked as if they had been covered in wallpaper that someone had idly started to scratch off. There were several outhouses and sheds, outside which was a neglected car that belonged to Aunty Bee. Around the house were fig trees and almond trees. To the front of the house and to one side, I could see now that the land stretched out in rows of what appeared to be waist-high trees.

  ‘Those are vines,’ said Ralph. ‘They’ve been a bit neglected over the years, but I’m going to get them back in shape. There should still be some good grapes this autumn, though. Enough to make a bit of wine, anyway.’