She parked outside her door, collected her handbag off the seat, and went indoors. The cramped hallway seemed deathly quiet. She looked for letters, forgetting that the postman had already passed, leaving none for her. She dropped her handbag at the foot of the stairs. The silence pressed upon her, a physical thing. Silence, stirred only by the slow ticking of the clock on the upstairs landing.
She went across the hall and into her sitting room, an apartment so small that there was room only for a sofa and a couple of armchairs and desk, with bookshelves over it. In the grate lay the dusty ashes of a fire, although she had not lit one for days.
She found a cigarette and lit it and stooped to switch on the television; she punched the buttons to change channels, was bored by everything, and switched it off. After the moment’s burst of meaningless voices, silence pressed in upon her again. It was only eight o’clock. She could not, reasonably, go to bed for at least two hours. She thought of pouring herself a drink, but already had had two with Eve and Gerald, and it was best to be careful with alcohol. Supper, then? But she felt no healthy pang of hunger, no inclination to eat.
A glass door stood open, leading out into her garden. She threw the half-smoked cigarette into the empty fireplace and went out of doors, stooping to pick up a pair of scissors from a wooden basket. Now, with the sun nearly gone, the lawn lay dark with long shadows. She crossed the grass towards her rosebed, began aimlessly to snip off a few dead heads.
A wayward briar became entangled in the hem of her dress, snagging the material. Impatient, angry, she jerked it free, but in her clumsiness caught her thumb on a jagged thorn.
She gave a little cry of pain, holding up her hand to inspect the damage. From the tiny agonizing wound blood swelled. A dot of blood, a bead, a trickle. She watched its progress, a miniature scarlet river, flowing down into the palm of her hand.
As though in sympathy, tears welled in her eyes, brimmed, overflowed. She stood there in the gloomy twilight, numbed by the misery of loneliness, bleeding, and weeping for herself.
* * *
The room that they had been given seemed, after Abigail Crescent, enormous. It had a pinkish, flower-patterned carpet, a fireplace, and two long windows, curtained in faded chintz, with tasselled ropes to hold them back. The brass bedstead was of a size to match, and the linen sheets and the pillowcases on the great, downy pillows were elaborately hemstitched and embroidered. There was a mahogany dressing table for Laura and a tall chest of drawers for Alec, and beyond an open door was their own bathroom. The bathroom had once been a dressing room, but conversion from one to another seemed to have been achieved simply by replacing the bed by a bath, so that it too was carpeted and had a fireplace and even one or two rather comfortable-looking chairs.
Laura lay in bed and waited for Alec. She had retired straight after dinner, suddenly overcome with physical exhaustion, but Alec had remained downstairs, in the dining room, drinking a glass of port with Gerald and putting the world to rights, with their chairs pushed back from the table and the air redolent with the scent of cigar smoke.
Laura found the house comfortingly reassuring. Wobbly after the operation, easily prone to tears and apprehensions, she had felt naturally nervous about coming on this long visit, being left by herself, abandoned to strangers. She had kept these fears to herself, in case Alec at the last moment changed his mind and decided to give up all thoughts of Glenshandra and the salmon that were waiting to be hooked out of the river, but as the long car journey progressed and they drew closer by the minute to their destination she had fallen silent.
She had been afraid that Tremenheere would be overwhelmingly grand; that the glittering Gerald would be frighteningly sophisticated; that she would find nothing to say to Eve; and that both Eve and Gerald would think her a dreary ninny and would curse the day they had let Alec talk them into this undertaking.
But it was going to be all right. Their genuinely delighted faces, their obvious fondness for Alec, the warmth of their welcome had dispelled Laura’s doubts and melted her shyness. Even the appearance of Lucy they had taken in their stride. And the house, far from being grand, was in fact rather shabby in the very nicest and most comfortable sort of way. Laura had been allowed, at once, to have a bath, which was what she needed more than anything in the world, and after that they had a glass of sherry in the drawing room and then moved into the dining room, which was panelled and candlelit, and hung with Victorian seascapes of great detail and charm, and dinner was grilled trout and a salad, and raspberries smothered in Cornish cream.
‘They’re our own raspberries,’ Eve had told her. ‘Tomorrow we’ll pick some more. Even if we don’t eat them all, we can put them in the freezer.’
Tomorrow. Tomorrow Alec would be gone.
She closed her eyes and moved her feet, which were beginning to get cramped because Lucy, under the quilt, was lying upon them. Her body, beneath the cool, smooth linen sheet, felt flat and insubstantial … denuded in some extraordinary way. The operation had left her in no sort of pain, but drained of energy and heavy with lassitude, and it was bliss to be, at last, in bed.
She was still awake when Alec came. He closed the door and came over to the bed to kiss her forehead. Then he turned back the quilt and lifted Lucy from her hiding place and put her in her basket by the fireplace. Lucy’s expression at this treatment was one of cold reproach, but she settled in her basket and stayed there. She knew when she was beaten.
He stood with his back to Laura and emptied his pockets, placing his keys, watch, small change, and wallet in a neat row on the top of the chest of drawers. He loosened his tie and pulled it off.
Watching him, Laura decided that security was lying in bed and watching your husband get ready to join you. She remembered, years ago, after some minor childhood illness, being allowed to sleep with her mother. Lying in her mother’s bed as she lay now and seeing, through eyes heavy with drowsiness, her mother brush her hair, cream her face, slip on her filmy nightgown.
Alec turned off the lights and got into bed beside her. Laura raised her head from the pillow, so that he could slip an arm beneath it. Now they were really together. He turned towards her, laying his other hand against her rib cage. His fingers moved slowly, caressing, comforting. Through the open windows the warm night air flowed in upon them, laden with mysterious scents and small unexplained country sounds.
He said, ‘You’re going to be all right.’
It was a statement of fact and not a question.
She said, ‘Yes.’
‘They love you. They think you’re charming.’ She could hear the smile in his voice.
‘It’s a lovely place. They’re lovely people.’
‘I’m beginning to wish I weren’t going to Scotland.’
‘Alec!’
‘Tremenheere always has this effect on me.’
To this remark, thought Laura, other women, other wives more sure of themselves, would say teasingly, Tremenheere! I hoped it was me that you didn’t want to leave. But she had neither the heart nor the courage to risk such coyness.
She said, ‘The moment you go through that gate, you’ll start looking forward to Glenshandra.’ The others would be there already, waiting for him. His old friends. He would be absorbed into his old, pre-Laura life, about which she knew too little and yet too much. Her eyes filled with tears. But this is what I want him to do. She said, doing her best to sound down-to-earth, ‘In magazines, they’re always telling you that being apart every now and then adds spice to a marriage.’
‘Sounds like a cookery recipe.’
The tears fell. ‘And ten days isn’t really very long.’
She wiped the tears away. Alec kissed her. ‘When I come back for you,’ he told her, ‘I shall expect to find you fat and sunburned and well again. Now, go to sleep.’
He had set an alarm, which rang at five thirty the following morning, shrilling them both awake. He got out of bed, and Laura lay, sleepily, while he bathed and shaved, and then she watc
hed him dress and put his few things into an overnight bag. When he was ready, she too got out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown. She lifted Lucy out of her basket, and they went out of the room and down the stairs. The old house and its occupants slept on. Alec unlocked the front door and they went out into the chill, misty dawn. Laura set Lucy down and stood, shivering, watching while he stowed his bag in the car, found a duster, and wiped the morning dew from his windscreen. He tossed the duster back into the car and turned to her.
‘Laura.’
She went to his side, was enfolded in his arms. Through his sweater, his shirt, she could hear the beating of his heart. She thought of him throughout the coming day, bombing his way north on the great motorways that led to Scotland.
She said, ‘Don’t have a crash.’
‘I’ll try not to.’
‘Stop for the night if you get too tired.’
‘I will.’
‘You’re too precious to lose.’
He smiled and kissed her, then let her go. He got into the car, fixed his seat belt, and slammed the door. He started the powerful engine. The next moment, he had gone, around the azaleas, through the gate, down the road through the village. She stood there, listening until there was nothing more to hear. Then she called to Lucy and went back indoors and up to their room. She was very cold, but when she got back into bed, it was lovely and warm because before they went downstairs Alec had switched on the electric blanket.
She slept until midday and awoke to find the room filled with bright noon sunshine. Out of bed, she went to the window and leaned out, her bare arms on the warm sill. The garden simmered in the heat of yet another good day. A man in overalls was working in one of the flowerbeds; the distant sea was a cup of blue.
She dressed and went downstairs, and made her way to the kitchen, whence came sounds and voices. There she found Eve, in an apron, stirring something on the Aga stove and a very old lady sitting at the kitchen table, podding peas. They both looked up as she appeared.
‘I’m sorry I’m so late.’
‘It doesn’t matter a bit, you were meant to sleep. Did Alec get off all right?’
‘Yes, at about quarter to six.’
‘Oh, Laura, this is May you didn’t meet her last night. May lives here with us.’
Laura and May shook hands. May’s hand felt cold from the peas and was knotted with arthritis.
‘How do you do?’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said May and went on with her podding.
‘Can I do something to help?’
‘You don’t have to. You’re meant to be having a rest.’
‘I shall feel quite purposeless if I’m not allowed to do something.’
‘In that case’—Eve left her saucepan and stooped to a cupboard to find a bowl—‘we’ll need more raspberries for this evening.’
‘Where do I pick them?’
‘I’ll show you.’
She led the way out into the courtyard and pointed out the door that gave on to the vegetable garden. ‘The canes are up at the far end, under a cage, because otherwise the birds eat all the fruit. And if you see somebody picking peas, it’ll be Drusilla. I said she could take some for herself.’
‘Who’s Drusilla?’
‘She lives there, in that cottage. She plays the flute. She’s got a baby called Joshua. I expect he’s up there with her. She looks a bit odd, but she’s quite harmless.’
The vegetable garden was very old, the various beds neatly squared off from one another by hedges of box. Inside the sheltering walls it was very hot; no breath of breeze stirred. The air smelled of box and mint and thyme and newly turned earth. Laura walked up the path. At the end of this stood an enormous old-fashioned pram, containing a large baby. He wore no sun hat and no clothes at all and was as brown as a berry. Nearby, veiled in the green of pea vines, his mother was hard at work.
Laura stopped to admire the baby. Drusilla, disturbed, looked up, and their eyes met over the top of the peas.
‘Hello,’ said Laura.
‘Hello.’ Drusilla laid down her basket and came to chat, folding her arms and propping a shoulder against a post.
‘What a nice baby.’
‘He’s called Joshua.’
‘I know. Eve told me. I’m Laura Haverstock.’
‘I’m Drusilla.’
Her accent was sensible North Country, which was somehow surprising, because her appearance was quite outlandish. She was a very small and thin girl—it was hard to believe that the lusty Joshua had sprung from such meagre roots—with pale eyes and a great deal of bushy tow-colored hair, which did not look as though it had ever seen a pair of scissors. In an attempt to keep it under some sort of control, Drusilla had bound her head with a length of braid. Above this, her hair bulged like a bathing cap; below it stuck out sideways, thick and dry and frizzy.
Her clothes were no more conventional than her hairstyle. She wore a low-necked black vest, beneath which her breasts were flat as a child’s. Over this, despite the heat, a velvet jacket, touched here and there with scraps of moth-eaten fur. Her skirt of heavy cotton was long and full, reaching nearly to her ankles. Her feet were bare and dirty.
To complete the bizarre assemblage of garments, Drusilla had added further adornment: a single dangling earring, set with blue stones; a string of beads around her neck and a silver chain or two. Bangles rattled on her thin wrists and there were many rings on her small and surprisingly elegant hands. You could see them playing a flute.
‘Eve told me I’d find you here. I’ve got to pick some raspberries for her.’
‘They’re over there. You came last night, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How long are you staying?’
‘About ten days, I think.’
‘Eve said you’d not been well.’
‘I was in hospital for a couple of days. Nothing very serious.’
‘You’ll get better here. It’s peaceful. It’s got good vibes. Don’t you think? Don’t you think it’s got good vibes?’
Laura said, yes, she did. She thought it had lovely vibes.
‘She’s a really nice person, Eve. She’s good. She lent me that pram, because I didn’t have one for Josh. Used to lug him around in an old grocery carton, and he weighs a bloody ton. Makes life a bit easier having a pram.’
‘Yes, it must.’
‘Well’—Drusilla heaved her shoulder from the support of the post—‘I must get on with my picking. We’re having peas for lunch today, aren’t we, my duck? Peas and macaroni. That’s what Josh loves. See you around.’
‘I hope so.’
Drusilla disappeared once more into the thicket of leaves, and Laura, carrying her bowl, went in search of raspberries.
* * *
That afternoon, they lay on deckchairs in the garden, which Eve arranged beneath the dappled shade of a mulberry tree, because it was too hot to sit out in the full sunshine. Gerald had gone to Falmouth for some meeting to do with a sailing club, and May, after the dishes were done, had taken herself off upstairs to her own rooms.
‘We could go to the beach,’ Eve had said, but after some discussion they had both agreed that it was too hot to get into the car and drive there, even with the lure of a swim at the end of the drive, and had settled for the garden. It was very pleasant, the air scented with roses and filled with birdsong.
Eve had brought her tapestry with her and was stitching industriously, but Laura was happy to be totally idle, simply watching Lucy, who, a small russet shape with pluming tail, was happily nosing through the borders and shrubberies after rabbit smells. Finally this delightful occupation palled, she came across the lawn and leaped lightly into Laura’s lap. Her fur, beneath Laura’s hands, felt velvety and warm.
‘She is a charming little animal,’ said Eve. ‘So well behaved. Have you had her long?’
‘About three years. She lived with me in my flat in Fulham and she used to come to the office with me and sleep under my
desk. She’s used to being well behaved.’
‘I don’t even know what you did before you married Alec.’
‘I worked for a publisher. I was with them for fifteen years. It sounds rather unenterprising, staying in one place for so long, but I was happy there, and I ended up as an editor.’
‘Why unenterprising?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Other girls seemed to do such adventurous things … like being cooks on yachts or hitchhiking to Australia. But I wasn’t ever a very adventurous person.’
They fell silent. It was very warm, even under the shade of the tree. Laura closed her eyes. Eve said, ‘I’ve started working seats for all the dining room chairs. I’ve only done two, and there are still eight to go. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be dead before I finish them.’
‘It’s such a lovely house. You’ve made it so pretty.’
‘I didn’t make it pretty. I just found it pretty.’
‘It must be big to run, though. Don’t you have any help?’
‘Oh, yes. We have a gardener who lives in the village, and his wife comes in most mornings and gives me a hand. And then there’s always May, although she’s getting a bit past it now.… She’s nearly eighty, you know. It’s extraordinary to think of a person actually remembering life before the First World War, at the turn of the century. But May has total recall about her childhood, remembers every detail. What she can’t remember is where she’s hidden Gerald’s socks or who it was who telephoned and left a message for me to ring them back. She lives with us because she was my nanny, and then she looked after Ivan.’
Ivan. Alec had told Laura a little about Ivan. Eve’s son, whom he had met at Eve and Gerald’s wedding, to which—by some slipup in his social planning—he had brought, not one girl, but two, neither of whom could stand the sight of the other. Ivan, who had trained as an architect, joined a firm in Cheltenham and seemed set for a good solid career, only to blot his copybook by getting engaged to some girl and then deciding to disengage himself. This would not have been so bad, Alec pointed out, if he had not waited until the wedding invitations had been sent out, all the wedding presents had come in, and an enormous marquee was about to be erected for the reception. Before the repercussions of this outrageous behaviour had even settled, Ivan had thrown up his job and come to live in Cornwall. Which did not make him sound a very reliable proposition.
Voices In Summer Page 11