In the end I began to feel stuck and panicky. I could see my youth fading away out of reach, and I saw a strangely empty future in front of me. What if Daniel should tire of me? Or get killed stunting in one of his rickety old planes? Daniel confessed that he’d had a native mistress in Ceylon, and sometimes I would look at him with all the adoring passion in my heart, and think, ‘Oh, when all’s said and done, I’m just another mistress.’
What happened in the end was that I went home to Edenderry for Christmas, to spend it with my father, and when I went shopping in Dublin I bumped into my teenage sweetheart. I found him sitting forlornly on a bench on the banks of the Liffey. We went and drank tea together, and it turned out that his situation was terribly sad. He had two children, but his wife had gone completely mad after the second, and fled to France, and laid her neck on a railway line outside Toulouse.
Fergus made it quite clear that his feelings for me would be easily revived, and one day I stood and looked at myself in the mirror. My hips were widening and my bosom was not as impudent as before. I still had my fine white skin and my girlish freckles, but I could see the bloom beginning to fade. Even my lips seemed less moist. I had one or two grey hairs amongst my brown curls, but I still had my big grey eyes that everyone commented upon, and which Daniel had loved so much. I knew that I had reached a crossroad and, that Easter, one morning after we had passed a very tender night, and after Daniel had gone to work, I left him a note to say that I was going back to Ireland, and that he would find the Morris in the car park at the station. I wept all the way from Nottingham to Dublin.
Fergus’s children were very sweet, and after a while they thought of me as their mother. Then I had two more of my own.
Fergus was a wonderful husband, and I did grow to love him very deeply, in a comfortable and comforting way. It made such a difference that I’d been besotted with him before. I could be a teenager again, and the clock could be wound back to where it had all started. I’ve had a very good life, in retrospect, and I don’t regret one moment of it. I think I really did belong in Ireland, despite being Anglo-Irish all at the wrong time.
When I left Daniel, it was obvious from his letters that it had thrown him into a deep slough. He wasn’t angry with me; he entirely understood why I had acted as I did.
He decided to find a new job abroad, in the hope of having one last new start with Rosie. I was sad to think of him wasting his life with her, but I know he was trying to be unselfish, thinking mainly of the children. However much he loved me, and I know that he did, she was always the ghost at his shoulder.
I still shudder with rage to think of the stunt she pulled on him.
One day I was in Dublin, just before the war, and I heard a motorcycle go by that sounded just like his, and a huge wave of regret and nostalgia overcame me. It was so painful that I went into a hotel to sit down for a while, gather my thoughts, and order myself some tea. I had the two rings he’d given me in a small box at the bottom of my handbag, and I took them out and put them on, feeling guilty because I had to remove Fergus’s first. Then I took out one of his letters, and read it.
We’d kept in touch, and his telephone number was on the header of his notepaper. Even though I was happy with my husband, I missed Daniel terribly, and I just wanted to hear his voice again. The line was dreadful and it was hard to talk, especially as it’s always obvious when the operator is eavesdropping. It was a conversation full of painful silence, and awful fumblings when a new penny has to be dropped in. He told me that he’d discovered that poor Archie had been reduced to taking work as a roadsweeper in Brighton, and then he asked, ‘Why did you call your son after me?’
I said, ‘He isn’t named after you. He’s just got the same name.’
He said, ‘Mary, I love you,’ and then the last penny was used up, and the bleeps cut in, and the line went dead.
Even after all those long years in Germany, he said, ‘Mary, I love you.’
32
Rosie (3)
I’ve often thought about the failure of my marriage to Daniel, and have sometimes even wondered if it really was killed off. After all, there was never a divorce, which is admittedly because I refused him one.
We did get off to a bad start, but then we had some glorious years in Ceylon, until I decided that we must come home. I don’t think he ever forgave me for that. I didn’t find out about his Tamil mistress until later, and he still doesn’t know that I know, but although I was angry, I did understand it. I didn’t want any more children, and he didn’t want to give up his carnal pleasures. The same thing seems to have happened to my own father and mother. A man has certain rights in marriage, and a woman has certain duties. But hasn’t that all been changing? I mean, a woman isn’t a chattel any more. I don’t think I should have had to cooperate if it went against the grain. Perhaps I just never had enough carnality of my own. That’s probably it. But it’s not my fault. I am as God made me. I’ve got my own nature. Ottilie and Sophie obviously have plenty of carnality, and God knows what Christabel gets up to, and God knows Daniel’s mother had some opinions on this subject.
But in the end it’s all about love, isn’t it? Your love changes as time goes by. I still loved Daniel. Every time he came home my heart jumped a little bit in my chest at the sound of his motorcycle or the turn of his key in the door, and when he kissed me on the cheek and said ‘hello, darling’ I knew that his heart still leapt a little bit as well, because I could see that little glint of desire in his eyes before they clouded over again with anger and resentment.
But too much had gone wrong. Bridges get burned, too many apologies have to be made, there are too many false new starts and rotten compromises, too many bad habits that re-establish themselves the moment your back is turned and you’ve taken your eye off the ball.
I don’t lack self-knowledge. In fact I know myself very well, and I don’t even like myself. I wouldn’t seek out my company if I was someone else. I do things that are selfish, and then find some justification for it in the Bible, or dress it up as something virtuous.
The very worst thing I did to Daniel happened at about the time that Christabel adopted her second child. It would have been in November of 1930. We got the letter from her on the same day that the papers were full of the news that a great many people had been injured by stampeding elephants at the Lord Mayor’s Show. It was not long after the R101 crashed and burned at Beauvais. We actually saw it flying over the house and it seemed wobbly and much too low, and my mother ran indoors to fetch her air rifle, because it brought back memories of the Zeppelins. We let her pop away at it. It couldn’t have been more harmless, and she was often quite normal (for her) after she’d had a little fit of barminess, so it was worth allowing her to let off steam.
For some reason Daniel had become terribly agitated. He’d found an even better job, with Brough’s, and although he often went to see his godchildren in Hexham, he was mostly going back and forth to Nottingham. He was only able to be with us at weekends and on holidays, because I was still refusing to move there with him. I had my mad mother to deal with, and I loved it at The Grampians. I liked to visit my father’s grave every day. I always took Mother with me, and we kept the grave tidy. I didn’t really see the point in moving to Nottingham, when my husband didn’t even like me any more and was always angry. He actually just wanted to be with the children, not with me, but children belong with their mothers, don’t they?
My mother was alone because the Honourable Mary had left, so I had to look after her in her dotage. It was at about the time that she left that Daniel stopped even mentioning us moving up to Nottingham. The whole issue slid away. I suppose he realised that I was intransigent and that my mother really did need me.
Daniel would come home and spend the whole weekend ignoring me, just playing with the children, setting up stumps on the lawn, taking them to zoos and organising little picnics, and when he left on
Sunday evenings Esther would cling to him and cry, and Bertie would just look angry and abandoned.
Once, when Daniel was infuriated, he told me that as the children’s legal guardian, he could take them from me at any time. I said, ‘How would you work and look after them at the same time?’ and he said, ‘Obviously I would have to hire a governess.’
I knew he wouldn’t, however. He knew that he couldn’t take the children, because they loved me too much, it would have been cruel. It would have been too cruel to me, as well. Daniel wasn’t a naturally cruel man. Esther used to say that she wanted to live with Daddy, but I never believed it. Daniel probably wouldn’t have been able to find a governess who would live in the same house as a solitary man, because she’d want to avoid getting a reputation. He knew he just had to carry on making the best of a bad job.
He once said to me, ‘How can you keep saying that children belong with their mothers, when you yourself very obviously preferred your father?’
I denied it. I don’t really see what else I could have done. I just knew that the children belonged with me, that’s all.
One weekend Daniel came home and Esther was on his knee, sucking her thumb even though she was ten, when he announced that he’d been offered a plum job in Tanganyika, setting up a pioneering coffee plantation, with a sideline in importing motorcycles. He also mentioned something about civil aviation. He told the children they’d see leopards and rhinoceros. He said he wanted the children and me to come too, and this would probably be our last chance to start again and set everything right.
I agreed. I had a sudden little fit of optimism, and I thought I could probably find someone to live with my mother. I wrote to the Honourable Mary, but never heard anything back, so I found someone at an agency.
What happened, and this was the worst thing I ever did to him, was that when we boarded the ship in Southampton, just a minute or two before the final klaxon, I sent Daniel to the cabin to fetch me a handkerchief, and then I took the children, one in each hand, and fled down the gangplank.
I remember Daniel dancing and shouting at the rail as the ship moved away, his face white with rage, and Esther waving to him and repeatedly asking, ‘Why is Daddy going without us?’
Daniel tore the handkerchief in two, held up one half in each hand, and then let go of them. The wind caught them and carried them over our heads, fluttering away like doves, over Southampton.
For a few days I wondered if Daniel would go on to Tanganyika, but he didn’t. He came back from Gibraltar, and demanded a divorce. I’ve never seen anyone so enraged, and I felt in danger of my life. Bertie was there, clinging to my legs, when Daniel was raging at me, shouting and stabbing the air with his finger, spittle flying, and I think it affected his feelings for his father forever afterwards, though he can’t possibly remember it. He was only four. A child of that age shouldn’t be subjected to the sight of his own mother being raged at. Daniel went upstairs and smashed the mirror and the windows in my bedroom with a chair, and then he threw the chair out and it broke in the driveway, and then he came down and kissed the children and drove away. He probably went to Partridge Green, as he’d had to give up his job and his lodgings in Nottingham.
Of course the whole family was on his side. Nobody understood what I’d done. I had very hurtful and unkind letters from Ottilie, Christabel and Sophie. All was now forever irreparable, and Daniel never stayed at The Grampians again. He booked lodgings nearby and would come and try to take the children out at weekends and holidays. He’d let me know when he was coming, and so I’d arrange for them to be somewhere else, or I’d say ‘They don’t want to see you’ or ‘They’re ill’ or ‘They’ve got a party they’re desperate to go to’.
One day Daniel turned up, and I saw him from the morning-room window. I sent Esther upstairs, and came to the door and talked to Daniel in the driveway. I said, ‘They’ve got influenza, so I put them to bed, and they’re really too ill to have visitors.’
Daniel said, ‘Then why is Esther waving to me from the window?’
I looked up, and Esther was waving to Daniel and blowing him kisses. I didn’t know what to say. She suddenly threw open the sash, scrambled out, stood for a horrifying moment on the sill, and jumped. My heart leapt into my throat, but Daniel caught her, and they both fell backwards onto the grass under the tree. Esther was laughing and kissing him all over his face.
Without a word to me, Daniel got out the little flying jacket, gauntlets and helmet that he kept in his sidecar, and put them on her. I didn’t see them for another week, until he brought her back.
I called the police but they weren’t interested. Apparently you can’t be kidnapped by your own father when he is the legal guardian.
Bertie was very sweet. All that week he stuck to me like a limpet, saying, ‘Don’t worry, Mummy, I’m here. I’ll look after you.’
Esther and Daniel had spent the time at the seaside, and she gave me a stick of rock when she came back, with a picture of Brighton Pavilion on the cellophane, and ‘A souvenir of Brighton’ all the way through it in red lettering. She said she’d been to Beachy Head, and her father had shown her the fulmars. For some months, she would run around the garden with her arms outspread, pretending to be a fulmar, and saying, ‘Look at me! Look at me! I’m flying!’
After that, Daniel never believed my excuses and would just push past me into the house, to check for himself, so I had to find people who would have them for the weekends.
33
Daniel Goes to See Archie
Puttering about the backstreets of Brighton, Daniel had immense difficulty in finding Archie’s lodgings. He was tired after his long ride, and had become extremely cold as a result of miscalculating the weather. When he had set out it had been warm and pleasant, but the wind had switched to the north-east and he felt sorely the lack of something like his good old Sidcot and flying gloves.
He had asked many people for directions and was finally appalled to find that Archie was living in a basement in a very poor corner indeed. Daniel stood before the building, looking at the wrecked guttering that hung from the eaves, the water stains on the unpointed brickwork, the rotting window frames, and the stunted buddleia growing out of the cracks in the walls. Ragged washing hung across the street from window to window, and he wondered at all the mutual agreements that must have been arrived at by the occupants of opposing buildings. A child of some eight years, with the soles flapping from his shoes, was holding a baby at the same time as kicking a football against the wall. The baby stared at nothing, its thumb in its mouth, as it was jolted about.
‘Is this where Archie Pitt lives?’ asked Daniel.
‘Archie? The old posher? You best tap on that window down there, mister, ’cause no one won’t come to the door.’
‘Thank you,’ said Daniel, adding, ‘Why don’t you get that ball stitched up? I’m sure a cobbler could do it in no time. If you keep kicking it about, the bladder’s going to burst.’
‘Can’t afford it, mister. Anyway, Dad’s at work, and anyway, he don’t know how to sew.’
‘And your mother?’
‘Buggered off.’
‘Oh,’ said Daniel. ‘I am sorry.’
‘We’re not.’
‘And what does your father do?’
‘On the bins, mister.’
‘And why aren’t you at school?’
The boy looked at him in astonishment, as if he were an idiot. ‘Someone’s got to hold the baby, mister!’
‘I’m sure you do it very well,’ said Daniel.
‘I’m the best,’ replied the boy. ‘I’ve got Gracie indoors as well. She’s three. Ain’t much use yet, but she will be.’
‘Will you keep an eye on my combination?’ asked Daniel. ‘I’ll give you a shilling.’
‘Cor, thanks, mister!’
Daniel went down the steps and tapped on the
basement window. After a few moments, the door beneath the steps opened, catching and scraping on the flags. Archie said, ‘Slack hinges – must do something about it.’ He held out his hand to shake Daniel’s. ‘We’re half French, remember?’ said Daniel, sidestepping the proffered hand, embracing him warmly, and patting him on the back.
‘Terribly British now, old fellow,’ said Archie. ‘Hardly remember a word of the old Froggy.’
Archie was thin and pallid. His grey moustache was brown from nicotine above the centre of his lips, and his formerly smart tweed suit was bare at the elbows and knees. He wore his regimental tie and a waistcoat, from which, Daniel noted, his fob watch no longer hung. His shoes were immaculately polished, as befitted an old military man, but the rest of him was shabby.
‘Do come in,’ said Archie. Daniel entered and surveyed the one room where Archie subsisted. There was a small round wooden table with four plain chairs, one of which was broken. There was no armchair or sofa, and the rug was thickly congealed with grime. There was a mousetrap in the corner, gripping the corpse of a desiccated mouse that had plainly been dead for several days. Against one wall was a truckle bed piled with old army blankets, but there was no pillow or sheet. Under the bed, Daniel could see the gleam of empty whisky bottles, stacked neatly in rows. The walls were papered with painted woodchip that sagged away at the juncture with the ceiling.
The worst thing was the smell. Damp plaster, rotting wood, mildew, urine. ‘Cup of tea?’ said Archie. ‘Only got one point, I’m afraid. Have to disconnect the fire.’
So Much Life Left Over Page 19