‘And how was Dolly?’ my mother would ask, when I got home, oddly flattered to have been offered a cup of strong black coffee, if nothing else. ‘How did she look?’ For she took a wistful but utterly selfless interest in Dolly’s health and appearance. Both were in excellent shape, as far as I could see. Dolly’s health was robust and pleasingly apparent in her clear dark eyes, the red flush under the olive skin, the pouter pigeon bosom, of which she was clearly proud, and the fine unspoilt hands on which she wore Hugo’s diamond ring and her platinum wedding ring. She had an agreeable faith in herself and in her attractions. So confident was she of what she would have called her charm that she refused to wear any make-up other than a thin and glistening thread of lipstick or to dye her hair which was rapidly going grey: the grey in fact softened the black and framed a face which contrived to look on the world with an eager and expectant expression. Once or twice I caught a hint of what she must have looked like as a girl, and I commended her silently for not clinging on to a semblance of youth. In fact, although Dolly claimed to have said goodbye to ‘all that’, she was still interested in men, but interested in them as consorts rather than as lovers. Though a robustly physical woman she still had something virginal about her; with a little encouragement, that of her mother, perhaps, she would have set out once again to have a good time. My own mother perceived this, and felt all the pathos of which Dolly seemed unaware. For this reason she played her part as an admirer, an adherent, without once demonstrating anything less than perfect good faith.
Dolly was an annexe of our own small family, a footnote, never part of the main text. We all felt this, Dolly included, but as Dolly considered herself to be more interesting than our largely uneventful and so united selves she was happy to accept us as peripheral to her world and to her interests. She descended on us more rarely than she had done when first making her way in what she clearly thought of as more superior company: when she did it was in a spirit of public service, as if to spread a little gossip and glamour into our colourless preoccupations. It was important to her to be admired, and my mother genuinely admired her, not, as Dolly thought, for her social brilliance, but for her uncompromising sense of reality. Thus is it possible to admire someone of whom one disapproves, for having gone further than the distance one is prepared to travel oneself; in such situations it is even possible to admire immodesty, vanity, ruthlessness. In this sense my mother loved Dolly, listened with forbearance to the stories in which some friend received her comeuppance, applauded Dolly’s munificence as she continually rose above some quite genuine snubs. In her heart my mother was too aware of her own good fortune to be other than sympathetic to those to whom a similar good fortune had been denied. Yet it must have jarred on her own honesty and humility to express unmitigated acceptance of Dolly’s bravado. She chose silence, or muted encouragement, which merely confirmed Dolly’s suspicions that my mother was dull, a limited bourgeoise with a bourgeois husband and no social life to speak of. As her own social life grew more resplendent the visits became more distanced; my mother telephoned her regularly, to be given an account of her invitations and her triumphs. Only at the end of these conversations did Dolly issue a peremptory, ‘And what about you? All well?’ ‘Oh, yes, dear,’ my mother would reply. ‘We are all quite well.’
But we were not. The first indication of a change in our fortunes was mysterious. One night my mother woke up to find the other half of the bed empty. ‘Paul?’ she queried. ‘Paul? Where are you?’ Receiving no answer she put on her dressing-gown and went into the drawing-room, where she found my father sitting in a chair in the dark.
‘What is it, darling? Have you got indigestion? Shall I make you a hot drink?’
For some reason she did not put on the light. She was no doubt intimidated by the fact that my father did not immediately answer her. In the face of his silence she chose to sit down, and for a silent five minutes they sat in the dark, with no sound but that of a late car on a wet road and no light but that of the faint glow which is always present above a sleeping city.
‘Perhaps the cheese?’ my mother said finally. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have had the cheese?’
She told me later that she half believed that this was the case. Or perhaps she chose to believe it. My father had given no hint to her of any malaise, and in view of his excellent general health she had no reason to suspect any. Although thin and slight they were moderately resistant, and never seemed to catch colds or be subject to passing infections. It seemed reasonable to her—and the emphasis at this stage was all on reason: fear came later—to suppose that he had eaten something unwise, no doubt at lunch, for she was meticulous in the preparation of food and careful with her menus. After a while he gave a great sigh, and then perhaps she felt the first flicker of anxiety, for he was an equable man and not given to public expressions of downheartedness.
‘Won’t you come back to bed, darling? You’ll catch cold sitting here.’
It was then that he said, ‘I am no longer comfortable.’ He did not address her by name, which was unusual. In the light of subsequent events this oracular statement took on something of the aura of a declaration and of a warning. At the time, however, my mother merely took his hand and led him back to bed.
In the morning he gave no hint that anything untoward had taken place. He ate the toast and drank the coffee that my mother put in front of him, greeted Miss Lawlor when she arrived, kissed me, and prepared to go to work as usual. In the light of this normality my mother decided to ignore the events of the previous night, that strange colloquy in the dark, and indeed it was easy to ignore, for in retrospect it took on something of the quality of a dream. It was even impossible to estimate how long it had lasted. Five minutes? Half an hour? The uneasiness caused by any episode which takes place in the middle of the night remained below the surface, and to all intents and purposes the day proceeded as it usually did. In the evening my father came home, and we all sat down to dinner. He ate sparingly, which was unusual; what was more unusual was the care with which he raised his fork to his lips, his look of preoccupation as he masticated and swallowed the food, rather as if he had not eaten for a long time and as if he were learning to eat again: his eyes were downcast, and he seemed to study his plate, as if he were unfamiliar with the pattern. When he laid down his fork it was with a hand which very slightly trembled.
Perhaps it was a week later that I became alerted to the situation, which was not yet a situation. I awoke to hear footsteps in the corridor that separated my bedroom from that of my parents. In a half doze I waited automatically to hear them come back, but in fact I heard a second set of footsteps, the lighter footsteps of my mother. I sat up in bed, and faced black silence. For a time, that incalculable time in the middle of the night, nothing happened. Then I heard what sounded like weeping, but whose I could not make out. I got up and ventured into the passage: empty. Then I made my way, still in the dark, to the drawing-room, where I found my parents sitting hand in hand, my father’s head resting on my mother’s shoulder.
Whatever had taken place was not apparently to be discussed, at least not between my parents and myself. I felt excluded from this mysterious sorrow, and chose to be indignant, impatient; thus does one disguise one’s apprehensions. For a short while it was possible to believe that my father had been ill and was now better. He looked no different. Only the meals we took together became fraught with tension, and we watched with imperfectly disguised anxiety as his trembling fork negotiated a fillet of fish and conveyed it with terrible care to his mouth, and how that same fork was laid down again with evident relief.
‘Perhaps a cup of tea?’ he would say cheerily, avoiding my mother’s sad eyes. ‘Tea is better than coffee in the evening. Put the kettle on, Jane.’
And again we would watch the tremulous fingers close round the handle of the cup. Both hands were used to guide the cup to his mouth. This evidence we could no longer ignore. My father’s table manners were delicate; in all matters of eating and d
rinking he insisted on correct usage. For him to hold his cup with both hands and even to drink noisily, with a kind of hunger he had not shown for his food, was an indication of how far he had departed from his normal self. When I see natural history programmes on television I am reminded of my father at that stage of his illness: the eagerness, the desperation of animals feeding and their alertness to danger are all reminiscent of his condition, glimpsed in that microsecond when, all unconscious of my eyes on him, he devoted all his living energies, what remained of them, to drinking the hot sweet liquid, while my mother turned away and wiped her eyes.
At last the doctor was called, the consultant alerted, and the whole dreadful business put in train. He was advised to enter hospital for what was known as treatment but what was in effect pain relief. The cancer, which he had concealed for so long, had reached his spine, and the consultant warned my mother that the pain might be severe. My father chose to be cheerful, although by now he was shaking and grey with the effort of appearing normal. Now that his illness was known he collapsed into it. His one thought was for my mother, whom he entrusted not to me but to Miss Lawlor. This was on the morning of the day on which he left home for good, my mother by his side. I remember the pitifully small suitcase she carried for him, and his arm through hers, for comfort.
Yet in the hospital he seemed to improve. His small room looked out on to the hospital garden, and when I went to see him, in the mornings, before those last days at school, his eyes, now huge, would be filled with the light from that window, as he pointed out to me, with childlike eagerness, a robin, or a sparrow, or occasionally a blackbird. The blackbirds, in particular, gave him pleasure. I would call in again in the late afternoon, after school, to take my mother home. She had of course been with him for most of the day. She was by now as thin as my father, but thin from grief, and I think I knew at that stage that she would not long survive him. I forced myself to be practical, gathered up the increasingly soiled pyjamas, and put them into a bag which I would later empty into the washing machine when my mother had gone to bed. In this way I spared her the worst manifestations of his illness, for he was peaceful in her company, one hand in hers, the other attached to a morphine drip. He seemed content to lie there with his hand in hers, his eyes filled with light and with longing. They did not speak much. Once he told her that he loved her, and once he mentioned John Pickering. For there would unfortunately be business to be carried out, and he knew that my mother would be too bereft to think clearly. Having made these two pronouncements he never spoke again. I would come upon them, in the darkening spring evening, so wordlessly close that I sensed their exaltation, as if they were twin spirits divested of earthly form, as if never could they have achieved such closeness while still imprisoned in their mortal bodies. For a time I feared that they would die together, and I felt coarse and practical as I collected the dirty washing. He died one night while my mother was profoundly asleep in a chair beside him. When I answered the telephone at home in the early morning, my mother’s voice said, ‘Our darling has left us.’ Then the receiver was gently replaced. I went to the hospital to collect her, still feeling clumsy and earth-bound. She let herself be led away quite peaceably, but seemed to have nothing to say. It was only when we got home and were faced with Miss Lawlor’s tears that she began to cry, but by then I had warned the doctor who came and gave her a sedative, so that she slept for the remainder of the day.
The rest of the time—for those days and nights which followed were somehow the only authentic time, in comparison with which my own activities became negligeable—was baroque, bizarre, oddly acceptable. The flat was intermittently filled with people who drifted in and out and seemed to congregate in the evenings. Some of these people I hardly knew; some were our friends and neighbours. People came from the bank, the doctor came, my friend Marigold came with her mother and father, even some of my grandmother’s surviving cronies came, making their way across London in their ancient fur coats, their sticks tapping their way along the pavement under a late spring sky of palest green. I was totally inadequate to this influx, although my mother seemed grateful for it. I had not prepared any refreshment, nor had Miss Lawlor, who was quite badly affected. My mother sat quite still in a corner of the sofa and tried to listen to what John Pickering was telling her. ‘Lean on me, Henrietta,’ he said. ‘I am the executor. Yours as well as Paul’s. Everything is in order. There is no need for you to worry about a thing.’ I could have told him that my mother would never worry about anything again, not even about myself, and I began to grow faint and weary with the task ahead of me. And then the door opened and in rushed Dolly, who took my mother in her arms and let her sob, and then ordered her to stop, and put her back on the sofa oddly comforted.
This was Dolly as I had rarely seen her, attentive to the task in hand. In that instant I saw her as a woman of infinite capacity, betrayed by meagre opportunities and perhaps too suspicious an attitude to the world in general. Had fortune favoured her with a more ample background she might not have looked on her acquaintances with such envy and scorn. Her strong passions were compromised by the limited nature of her objectives. My mother had seen this at an early stage; it was to Dolly’s advantage that she had never seen it at all. She needed a guide and had never found one; she needed a benevolent elder, who would watch over her and correct her. Tact would be needed for this task, for Dolly was not humble and tended to consider herself more intelligent than her contemporaries. What energies she had, and these were considerable, were devoted to consolidating her own position in the world, an undertaking which might involve many a volte-face. Although not consistent she was single-minded, and this single-mindedness conferred on her an iron confidence. It was her confidence that she brought with her into our crowded and desultory drawing-room on that strange evening, and my mother was grateful for it.
‘Now Jane, now Violet,’ said Dolly, divesting herself of her fur coat. ‘We need refreshments. Violet, make some coffee; make it strong.’ Nobody called Miss Lawlor Violet except my mother, but in these circumstances possibly none of us minded. ‘Take these, Jane, and put them on plates,’ she said, handing over two bags of what I assumed to be leftovers from one of her parties: cheese twists and petits fours and the tiny savoury pastries that Annie made so well. Suddenly I was hungry. I helped Miss Lawlor in the kitchen while Dolly held court in the drawing-room. When I went back with the trolley the atmosphere was quite convivial. Dolly was particularly gracious to John Pickering and the men from the bank. I have to admit that she behaved well. She appeared to think that any expression of grief was out of place in such a gathering, and of course people were relieved by such assurance. When conversation had become general, and cigarettes were being lighted, and ashtrays sought, she sat down on the sofa beside my mother.
‘Now Etty,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re going to be sensible. There’s no point in being anything else. I know what you’re feeling; I went through it all before you, when Hugo died. At least you’ve got the flat.’ I waited for her to say, and you’ve got Jane, but this did not take place. ‘And I’m sure you’re provided for.’ She paused for a moment, a look of returning rancour beginning to dawn. ‘Mr Pickering says you’ve nothing to worry about on the financial side. And of course you’ve money of your own, haven’t you?’
When contemplation of my mother’s good fortune became too much for her she turned to me.
‘Well, Jane, this has altered your plans, I dare say. You won’t be going to Cambridge now, I suppose?’
‘Oh, no,’ I said, for I had already told my headmistress of my decision.
‘But darling,’ protested my mother. ‘You must go. You’ve always wanted to go. And there’s no reason for you to stay here. I don’t want you to ruin your life.’
‘She won’t be ruining it,’ said Dolly promptly. ‘She can find herself a job and look after you. After all, she’s got to face the world some time. And you’ve protected her, Etty,’ she reproached my mother, who had begun to weep
again as she contemplated my ruined life. But although the decision had been mine, and had been freely made, and although I did not really resent Dolly’s intervention, I suddenly felt lonely, as if nobody wished me well, and very very tired. We were both tired, my mother and I, and I longed for us to be able to go to bed. It was Marigold’s mother who came to my rescue. ‘I think we should let these people get some sleep,’ she announced. She was a primary school teacher; her voice carried. Within five minutes the room had emptied. ‘Come along, Mrs Ferber,’ said Marigold’s mother, in her firm keen voice. She had resented Dolly’s intervention, and was protesting on my behalf. At the door she kissed me, and said, ‘If there’s anything you want, Jane …’ But I had heard this from so many people that it no longer meant anything. Perhaps it never had.
I put my mother to bed but once again she was estranged from me, bound up in her own silence and in contemplation of her so recent communion with my father. For as long as she dwelt on this she was euphoric. It was only when recalled to the real world, the world in which I unfortunately existed, that she became distressed. My task henceforth would be to spare her the sight of me, for as much as I decently could. I was seventeen, nearly eighteen; I was an adult, but it was then that I understood how children feel, and how they go on feeling all their lives. When I wrote my first book for children, designed to give comfort to any child who has lost a parent, it was with this insight in mind. The book enjoyed some success: I was hailed as a talented newcomer. But I remembered how the book had been written, and took little pleasure from it.
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