by Jane Bailey
I stopped breathing. Daphne’s face dropped. She nudged Jack. He leant down to hear her say something. Everyone was looking at me, raising their glasses, some delighted, some looking confused. I couldn’t look at Arthur. I fixed my stare at the edge of the tablecloth in front of Daphne and Jack. I could tell Jack was shaking his head. There was a murmur or two. I wanted to run. Heart racing, hands sweating, the adrenaline had been provided in bucketfuls. Run. Run! Get out of there! I sat, quiet as a mouse except for my foolish thumping heart, gazing intently at the surface of that table: a white damask cloth with a bunch of fake flowers in a blue china vase.
‘Unfortunately Arthur’s wife can’t be here today, but ladies and gentlemen, raise your glasses to Arthur and Pippa!’
‘Arthur and Pippa!’ People were clapping.
And here’s the worst of it: I think I may even have clapped too.
For dignity’s sake, I sat out the rest of that short speech and then, without a backward glance, I ran out choking into the street, where the shop fronts were all distorted and the lamp posts were bent double and everything swam in my tears. I just kept running.
35
ARTHUR
Oh God. Well . . . Oh Christ . . . this is the worst thing . . . I can hardly bear to remember this . . . Of course, he announced to everyone that Pippa and I were married and expecting a baby, and he toasted us. He meant well – he’s a lovely man, Jack Heggarty. I’ve so much respect for the pair of them. But I could feel Dora sitting next to me like a stone. And people cheered and the speech went painfully on, and as it did I thought . . . well, what I thought was, he’s said it now, he’s said it for me. What more could I say to her? My throat was thick. There was nothing, nothing that I could possibly say to her to make it better. Nothing.
I know it sounds weak, but when she got up and left without looking at me, I didn’t even call after her. And people were chatting again by then, so I could have done – easily. I did start to get up, instinctively, to follow her, but then I caught Graham’s eye. He was standing by the door, where he had been all through the speech, and he gave me an emphatic thumbs up. People were coming up to me to congratulate me, and then, of course, as soon as they did that I felt trapped – everything was wrong, just wrong, and I had to find Dora urgently.
I edged my way out into the entrance hall and waited about by the ladies’ toilets. That, I thought, was where women went to hide and to cry and to collect themselves. But Graham came up and tapped me on the shoulder. ‘She’s gone. She took her jacket from the peg and ran outside. I don’t reckon she’ll be coming back. Was there something between—?’
I dashed out into the street and looked up and down it. Of course, she wasn’t anywhere in sight: I’d left it too late. I began to gasp for air. Paddington station. She’d be going back home. I started to run in the direction of the nearest tube station.
‘By the way,’ I vaguely heard Graham call out behind me, ‘congratulations, old chap!’
It was the longest, most sluggish journey I have ever taken! I’m not joking: the train stopped between stations near Holland Park for no apparent reason, and even people who looked to be in no hurry at all began to get fed up. It was just a nightmare. God knows how long we were stuck there, but I was sweating and my pulse was racing. I was so agitated; I swear I could’ve murdered someone. It’s a good job I didn’t get my hands on the train driver. And then at Notting Hill Gate I seemed to wait forever for the Circle Line train. Oh, just remembering it makes me feel . . . nauseous.
Anyway, I got into Paddington, and there was a train due to leave for Swansea, calling at Newport, which was where Dora would get off. I bought a platform ticket and ran alongside the waiting train, looking in every compartment, but couldn’t see her. What if she was in the toilet? I got on to the train and pushed my way past people in the corridors, checking all the toilets. They were all empty, of course, because you’re not supposed to use them at a station. The whistle blew, and I got off just in time to watch the wheels sigh into action and take the train slowly away from me. She wasn’t on it.
I asked the man at the ticket gate when the previous train for Wales had departed, and he told me an hour beforehand. She couldn’t have made that one, so I went to look at the timetable to see if she could have changed somewhere like Swindon or Bristol or . . . And then it struck me that she might have gone to Cheltenham. Of course! It was already term time, or about to be, for the training colleges. The bright, warm weather had lulled me into a sense of summer, but the new terms were beginning. I grew impatient with the timetable and raced back over to the man at the ticket gate. ‘Which platform for the Cheltenham train?’
‘Platform eight,’ he said laconically, as if mocking my urgency, ‘but you’ll have to wait for that one. Not due in for an hour. There was one just left, though it wasn’t direct. You had to change at Swindon.’
I remember practically crumbling in front of him. I must have been so melodramatic – not in character for me at all. I wandered back into the wide entrance area and slumped on to a bench. Though if I had found her, what could I have said?
JETSAM
36
DORA
Jenny was puzzled. She had been looking forward to my return so that I could tell her something exciting. She was realistic enough to know that I might not come back from London with my engagement restored, but she hoped for some passionate titbits. Finding me face down on the bed and convulsing with sobs was a let-down, but even more so because I couldn’t – wouldn’t – give her any explanation.
‘Please talk to me, Dora. It’s always better to talk.’
I wept silently into the candlewick bedcover, punctuating my wordlessness only with loud snotty snorts. Jenny patiently put her arm around me and I shrugged her off. She went down to the kitchen and made me a cup of tea with the best china, and when I wouldn’t drink it she knelt down by the bed and stroked my hair, murmuring softly, ‘Poor sweetheart . . . poor lamb . . . poor, poor Dora . . .’
Of course I told her eventually. I held back because I couldn’t bear to hear her run Arthur down. Just as I hadn’t been able to tell my mother everything because I feared so much that a bad account of Arthur would stick forever. But even as I spoke, I realized that this no longer mattered. There was never going to be a reconciliation. Never going to be a time when I introduced Jenny or my mother or anyone I knew to Arthur and craved their good opinion of him. Arthur was married and soon to be the father to another woman’s child. That was the end of it. It was a finality that terrified me and consoled me in equal measure. No more would I have either the balm or the indifferently cruel anguish of hope.
What a bastard. You’re well shot of him. He doesn’t know what’s good for him. More fool him. And so on. I endured these well-meaning platitudes for hours on end. I drank tea. I sat in my pyjamas with Jenny and ate toast with strawberry jam. Slowly my weeping subsided. My head ached and I was exhausted. She wouldn’t let me go to bed until she had asked about Ralph, and she fetched some of his whisky to help loosen my tongue.
‘Did you two do it?’
‘It?’ I said, disingenuously.
‘Come on, Dora. You’ve spent the whole summer in his château, for God’s sake. He must’ve tried it on.’
‘Château? His type have such a way of glorifying themselves, don’t they? Did he tell you he had a château?’
‘Jesus wept! Shut up, Dora. Did you or didn’t you?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Because I want to know. What was he like? Was he romantic? Manful? Passionate?’
I said nothing and picked at some bobbles on my winceyette pyjamas.
‘Did he woo you? Or did he hold you down and’ – she held on to my wrists and tried to look smouldering – ‘tie you to his four-poster and make free and passionate love to you without so much as a by-your-leave?’
‘Okay,’ I grinned. There seemed nothing to lose any more. ‘We became lovers. Happy?’
‘Not happy enough!
How? What happened?’
‘He wooed me, like you said.’
‘How? Are we talking flowers? Champagne? Offers to meet his family?’
‘Champagne, lavender fields, picnics . . .’ I warmed to my subject. My face had stopped aching, and the whisky warmed my cheeks. ‘He asked me to marry him when I left.’
‘Dora!’ Her voice was a bellow as low as a foghorn. ‘Dora!’
We stayed up very late as I told her what I could. ‘My God, Dora! You get me all sympathetic for you weeping over some twerp who’s cheated on you, and all the while you’ve just happened not to tell me you’ve been proposed to and could be the next Lady Rowanwood and rich as Croesus! Blimey, Dora, you really do take the biscuit!’ As the whisky set in, my tongue became looser and our shared humour raunchier, but I also remembered less.
The following morning I paid for my revelry. I was so hung-over that I became morose again. From the upstairs window, I watched people walk their dogs in the park opposite, listened to the band play something jolly in the bandstand and felt wretched. The morning after that, the first Monday of term, I could not get up. I lay in bed and felt sorry for myself. The day after was the same. When I did go in I was summoned by my tutor, a kindly faced spinster who terrified me with her generosity and the knowing understanding that she seemed to exude about matters of the heart, no doubt from a lover who never returned from the Great War, or who returned a broken man. She had guessed it was trouble with love, but I didn’t want to reveal myself in case I fell apart. I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear her sympathy.
I told her I was thinking of leaving the course. I didn’t think it was for me. She told me I was an exceptional student, and it would be a waste to throw it all away with only three terms to go. ‘You know,’ she said, her eyes filled with scary compassion, ‘I nearly gave up like you once. But it’s so important to have that qualification. You never know when you might be on your own. It gives you independence if you need it.’ I looked down at the edge of her desk, biting my lip to stop it from wobbling. ‘I’m not saying you will need it, of course. I expect you’ll get married and have children one day, but . . . well, until then, it will give you independence. You will never have to marry for money.’
When I got back, I went straight upstairs to our flat and took a long look at myself in the mirror. I put my hands to my cheeks. I looked worn out, but I was still here. I’d been through the wars, but I thought of my tutor. I saw her lover’s name chiselled into the memorial stone in the centre of her village. If she could do it, so could I. I pushed my shoulders back and flared my nostrils. What I saw, fortified by my tutor, was an independent woman.
And an independent woman I might have stayed, had Jenny not rushed in breathless with some news that made me giddy. ‘Dora! You’ll never guess who called round today! I told him you weren’t here, so he said he’d come back later – and he has!’
‘Who?’
‘He’s waiting in the front room downstairs – quick!’
I put some lipstick on hurriedly and pinched my cheeks. I hardly dared to hope . . . No, I did not hope. I went slowly down the stairs, trying to exude an air of calm, all the while my pulse pumping violently. I stood in the hallway, the pictures of Ralph beaming at me on all sides, and pushed open the door.
There, in an armchair opposite the door, sat an imposing figure: handsome, chestnut-haired and with eyes that sparkled when he saw me. He looked contrite, and his combined timidity and pleasure at seeing me softened me. ‘Dora!’ said Ralph, getting up. ‘I’m sorry I behaved badly. Please, please forgive me. I was just so scared of losing you.’
There was a little bead of sweat on his forehead, and I was moved by it. He looked like a giant puppy who had chewed a favourite slipper and wanted forgiveness. ‘Ralph!’ I said. I couldn’t think of anything else, so I said it again: ‘Ralph.’ In the context of his hangdog appearance, I thought it sounded a bit like a ‘woof’, and I gave a little smile.
He smiled back. He stood there smiling at me, and it was so unlike him to be this vulnerable and nervous that I wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. I half hoped Jenny was listening outside the door (as I was sure she was) in case he suddenly turned on me.
‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘No . . . The thing is . . . the thing is, I had to come and see my father anyway . . . at some point . . . soon . . . so I, I thought I’d do it now, while you’re here, and see if you’d like to meet him.’
He swallowed hard, and my heart went out to him. ‘I see.’
‘Please say you will, Dora. There’s no obligation on your part or anything. Just come and see my home. I know he’d love to meet you.’
‘Would he? Are you sure? I would’ve thought he’d find me quite a joke. I should think he has someone far better lined up for you.’
He approached me tentatively. ‘Dora! Please say you’ll come.’ He put his giant arms around me and all my hostility melted away. Yes, it was that easy. I was suddenly being rescued by the strong arms of a sailor in the mid-Atlantic. Just let go, that’s it; I’ve got you now!
Did I go with him to meet his father? Of course I went.
The first I saw of Ralph’s father was his shadow, a long pole of a thing stretching out across the grass diagonally from behind us as we made our way over the lawn towards the family pile. As it intercepted us and blocked out the low autumn sun, we looked up to see its owner.
‘Ralph!’ Again, the barking sound of his name but this time more convincingly canine.
‘Father! I’ve brought Dora to see you. Dora, this is my father.’
‘Richard Rowanwood.’ He held out a massive hand. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’ I saw him take in my appearance with a barely perceptible sweeping glance from head to foot. I wondered if my silk neckerchief was a step too far, if my wide-skirted dark green dress was too dressy for the occasion.
‘All good, I assure you,’ Ralph said, squeezing my hand.
‘Of course! Oh, Zorro! Pliny!’ He shouted at his hefty dogs, who had run over and laddered one of my stockings by jumping up at me. ‘Come on, then! Let’s go and have something to eat. I feel a crepuscular chill in the air.’
I had no idea what a crepuscular chill was, but it sounded mildly infectious, so I pulled my bolero tightly around me and followed the men swiftly to the house. When I say ‘house’, it wasn’t the sort of thing you or I would call a house. Not that you would call it a stately home, as such, but a manor house certainly, and grander than anything I had encountered before. There was a gravel drive at the front and steps up to a double oak front door spanned by a gothic arch. The deep-red autumnal creeper revealed patches of yellow stone that was dappled in lichen. An archway to the left of the house led into a quadrangle of stables, and a sister arch, to the right, into a walled garden. These things were pointed out to me as we approached the heavy front door, which was opened by a man in a bow tie who inclined his head to each of us as we went inside.
Ralph had driven me there in a very flashy dark red car, borrowed from his father, and had parked it inside the entrance gate so that we could walk up to the house and see it in all its glory. He had filled me in a little about his father – but only a little as, he said, he wanted me to ‘be myself’ with him. This was all very well, but I was at a distinct disadvantage. I knew nothing of Lord Rowanwood’s ways and manners – let alone his personality – whereas he seemed to have heard ‘all about me’. The first hurdle was the ‘snifter’ before dinner. Should I accept one? Was it snuff? Was it tobacco- or alcohol-based? Seeing my hesitation, Ralph said, ‘She’ll have a cocktail, I think, won’t you, Dora?’
I nodded and prepared myself for an evening of careful copying and acquiescence. However, after a cocktail and a generous glass of deep red claret at the dinner table later, I began to feel more relaxed. Lord Rowanwood – or Richard, as he asked me to call him – looked like a grey-haired, moustachioed version of Ralph. He was a huge, imposing man with two huge, imposing, smelly dogs who
slavered and farted by the fireplace while we ate. The dogs seemed more important to him than his sons – but for the fact they couldn’t produce heirs. Lady Rowanwood sat quietly opposite me: a well-groomed woman with a stiff platinum-blonde perm that made her head look like a scoop of vanilla ice cream. There were a few awkward questions from the father, asking whether I rode (by which he meant a horse) and where I was ‘finished’, both of which Ralph helped me with, but after that I managed pretty well on my own. I was, after all, an independent woman.
‘Are you interested in politics too, Dora?’ asked Richard.
I suspected it was a key question. ‘Not really.’
‘Excellent! That’s how a woman should be, I always say. Don’t clutter your mind up with things that don’t concern you. That way lies trouble.’