by Angela Huth
‘That would be lovely,’ said Prue. ‘I don’t mind what I do.’
‘And then one day, I suppose, we could go through all the clothes I had as a young girl, box them up and send them somewhere.’
‘That’d be good, too.’
As she turned into the drive, for Ivy’s sake she accelerated very slightly and was rewarded with a shout of delight. Then the old lady clamped a hand over her mouth, for a moment, cutting off the scream. ‘Oh, my goodness, Prue. Look who’s here! Isn’t that an astonishing coincidence? I was going to telephone Gerald today. He needs to meet a few bright young things. I have a notion his life is quite dull.’
A large car was parked by the house – not as large as the Humber or the Daimler, but sportier. There was no sign of the driver. Prue wished she’d been less economical with her mascara. She and Ivy got out of the car. Ivy called Gerald a couple of times, her voice scarcely audible over a sudden clatter of rooks in the high trees.
He appeared round the corner of the house and sauntered over to his aunt, apparently not noticing Prue. He wore the kind of clothes that Prue had only seen on the gentry in church on Sunday at Hallows Farm: sharply pressed trousers, beautiful tweed jacket, fine shirt with regimental tie, yellow silk handkerchief flopping from his top pocket. He drew on a cigarette whose smoke, even in the sharp air, indicated it was some kind of exotic brand. He waved it about in an amber holder, then held it above his head as he kissed his aunt.
‘Gerald, what a lovely surprise,’ she said. ‘I was about to ring you.’
‘Thought you wouldn’t mind if I dropped in. I’m not skiving.’ He smiled at his aunt. ‘I’m on my way to Salisbury Plain. Business, I promise.’
‘Now come and meet Prudence. She’s going to help me a few days a week. Prue, this is my nephew, Gerald Wickham.’
As Gerald did not move, Prue stepped towards him. They shook hands. His eyes, Prue noticed at once, slanted upwards from each side of his nose like two small wings. In repose, his mouth was severe, almost sneering, but when he smiled again, as he did shaking hands with Prue, it cracked his face making friendly, endearing wrinkles. She felt relieved.
The three of them went to the sitting room. Gerald sat on Prue’s sofa. Ivy fetched a glass ashtray and put it on the table beside him. Prue chose the chair opposite. She wished Gerald did not have his back to the light, and she herself was not so exposed to it. Ivy suggested Gerald stayed for lunch. He declined with apologies, said he could only stay for a short time.
‘Duty calls, I suppose,’ said Ivy. ‘I’ll just go and . . .’ She whipped out of the room, once again scarcely leaning on her cane.
Gerald crossed his legs, studying Prue with the intensity of a man looking at some rare object for which he might be persuaded to put in a bid. Prue noticed that his kneecap was a sharp little plate showing through the thick material of his trousers. Good sign, that. Meant he had good legs. Barry Two’s knees she had always found unappealing.
‘So what on earth are you doing here?’ he asked. His voice was a languorous drawl, something like Rudolph’s but minus the charm of the Southern accent.
‘I’m not really sure.’ Prue giggled. ‘I’m not sure your aunt knows, either. She said we’d see how it goes. See what comes up.’
‘I see.’ Gerald inhaled deeply. ‘What do you like doing? What kind of work?’
‘Looking after animals. I used to be a land girl. I love cows. I love ploughing, driving a tractor.’ She fluttered her eyelashes. ‘As a matter of a fact, I got pretty good at straight furrows.’
‘I bet you did.’ Gerald smiled very slightly. ‘Well, I’m afraid there are no cows here, no animals at all, though there will be again when I take over. Like everyone else, Ed and Ivy had to turn to arable during the war and still haven’t changed back. Still, I dare say we could find somewhere for you to do a bit of ploughing one day.’
Prue dismissed the thought that he was faintly sarcastic. She didn’t really care what he said or didn’t say. She was happy just to look at him. She loved his very shiny shoes, and the way he looked serious when he inhaled his cigarette. She would be quite happy as Mrs Gerald Wickham.
Gerald stirred her cogitations by asking her where she was living.
‘I’m lodging nearby with an old friend, Johnny. Just for a while, until I find somewhere. He’s a carpenter.’
‘A carpenter.’ It wasn’t a question. Gerald thought about Johnny’s profession for a long time in silence.
‘And a poet,’ said Prue, eventually, wondering whether this might inspire more approval.
‘A carpenter and a poet? What a combination. As a matter of fact, probably rather a good one.’ His eyes strayed about, avoiding Prue, as if he was thinking seriously about this, too.
‘Actually,’ said Prue, wishing she had never mentioned Johnny, ‘he’s going to do some work for your aunt. New stable doors.’
‘Good, good.’ At last Gerald looked at her. Aunt Ivy enjoys employing people. Though I really can’t imagine what she’ll find for you to do.’
‘I think she’d just like a bit of company.’
‘Well, you could learn a lot from her. She’s very clever, full of arcane knowledge.’
‘She’s already started me reading.’
‘Reading? Started you reading?’
‘Real books, I mean.’ Prue giggled. ‘Usually I just read magazines. Film-star gossip. I love Picture Post.’
‘Quite.’ Gerald stubbed out his cigarette, immediately reached for a gold case in his inside pocket and lit another.
Prue had a flash of all those evenings at The Larches when, before her pregnancy, Barry would go through the palaver of choosing a cigar from his less delicate gold case and lighting one after another. ‘In fact,’ she said, squirming slightly in the deep chair, her spirits rising as she felt she was making a little progress, ‘she lent me Great Expectations. I read the whole thing over the weekend, and I’m not a quick reader.’
‘Good,’ said Gerald, with less interest than she had expected. ‘You must carry on. You’ll have a good time. But it might be a little dull for you here. Don’t you ever feel like going to London?’
‘Not really. I’ve been just the once.’ Her spirits were rising fast for she had a boast that she bet even Gerald rather-snooty Wickham couldn’t match. ‘Few years ago the King and Queen gave a tea party at Buckingham Palace for land girls. I was one of the lucky ones chosen to go.’
‘Lucky you.’ Gerald’s eyes were drooping.
Was her news that boring? ‘I actually had the chance to curtsy to all of them. And at one moment I was so near to Princess Margaret I . . .’ Gerald’s eyes were now shut. Was he asleep? Rude bastard. Most men didn’t find her that dull.
He opened his eyes, kept looking at her as if to sum her up and store her away for some future decision. ‘The place I like,’ he began, in his languorous way, ‘is the Savoy.’
‘The what?’
‘It’s a grand hotel down by the river. Before the war it was absolute heaven. Lots of good nights there, masses of friends, a big band, dancing . . . I’ve often thought that if ever I get married that’s where I shall spend the first night of my honeymoon. Suite overlooking the river.’
‘What a good idea,’ said Prue, who could suddenly imagine both the suite and the first night in the unknown hotel, which probably had gold taps. Funny thing was, he might be looking at the very woman with whom he would be sharing that night with . . . It was all she could do not to mention this.
‘Would you like me to introduce you to the Savoy one day? Few weeks here, and you’ll be dying for a bit of fun.’
Prue stared at him, unable to answer. A night in London with this amazing, sleepy, curious man . . .
‘Would I like it?’ she whispered. ‘I’d be over the moon.’
‘Then we’ll make a plan,’ he said, got up and went to the window, where he lit another cigarette.
Johnny’s enthusiasm for the Old Rectory did not match Prue’s. ‘Usual sor
t of thing for an English village,’ he said. ‘Very average. But, yes, some good pieces of furniture. The whole place could do with a lick of paint.’
‘I like it as it is,’ said Prue ‘How about the stables?’
‘They’re wonderful. The old tack room is still full of saddles and bridles that look as if someone keeps polishing them. I shall enjoy doing the new doors. Thanks for that. Mrs Lamton suggested a huge fee. I didn’t argue.’ Johnny sat at the kitchen table, poured tea. He seemed happy.
‘I met her nephew, Gerald. Rather odd, rather nice. Almost middle-aged, I think.’ She paused. ‘Anyhow, he’s asked me to dinner at a place called the Savoy.’
‘The Savoy?’ Johnny slammed his hand on the table. A wave of tea slopped over the edge of his mug. ‘But that’s in London.’
‘I know it’s in London. Have you been there?’
Johnny dabbed at the spilt tea with his handkerchief. ‘Of course I’ve been to the Savoy.’
Prue knew he was lying. ‘I don’t know where you’ve been, what you’ve done. I just know you’ve led a much more sophisticated life than me.’
That seemed to please him. But then he frowned. ‘I can’t quite picture this planned evening,’ he said. ‘How do you get to London? Does this Gerald drive you? Going to London’d eat into the petrol coupons, all right. Train? Come back in the middle of the night – what?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t say. I don’t even know when it’s to be. Why are you so cross?’
‘I’m not cross.’
‘I mean, I’m only your lodger. We lead independent lives. So far, I haven’t been out at all, have I?’
‘I thought you were happy here.’
‘I am. But given a chance to go dancing somewhere posh, I can’t turn it down, can I?’
‘Suppose not.’ Johnny sighed. ‘But you be careful. Middle-aged men are good at flashing their money, inveigling young girls.’
‘What’s inveigling?’
‘Ensnaring, capturing.’ Suddenly he shouted. ‘Getting them into their beds.’
‘Oh, Johnny. Don’t be so stupid.’ She put a hand on his. He snatched it away. ‘You can’t deny me a few hours’ fun, can you? What do you think I am? A serial seducer?’
‘Yes,’ said Johnny. ‘Exactly. There’s scarcely a man in the world you don’t flirt with, imagine you could marry and be with happily ever after. It’s pathetic, your constant search for love, your self-delusion.’ He scraped back his chair, got up from the table. ‘Well, you go and enjoy yourself at the Savoy, a place so far above your station you won’t know what to do, but I don’t want to know about it, see? I’ll stay here with a nice bottle of vodka.’
‘Johnny!’ He sped out of the room, banging the door behind him.
His mysterious anger had little effect on Prue: she was too engaged imagining the evening with Gerald. The more she thought about him the more she saw that he was a real possibility. And when Johnny returned for supper he seemed to have forgotten about his previous rage and its cause. They had a perfectly normal evening: ginger beer, chicken talk and a few games of backgammon.
Over the next two weeks Prue found herself going to the Old Rectory most weekdays, always uncertain of what each might hold. Sometimes she went to the greenhouse with Ivy and helped with planting out seedlings. Once she trimmed a hedge, a job with which she felt more familiar, though Ag, as she told Ivy, would have done it much better. She ‘sorted out’ an address book, neatly writing names and addresses into a new leatherbound book, leaving out those with a line through them. ‘So many dead,’ as Ivy said.
They did, one rainy afternoon, go through the linen cupboard, as Ivy had suggested the day Prue arrived. A mutual reluctance about this job made them slow. They unfolded and refolded enormous initialled linen sheets, then wondered on which shelf to put them, while Ivy told stories of life under the Raj. Every day they had shortbread biscuits and a cup of coffee in the sitting room at lunchtime.
‘Alice uses up my entire ration of sugar and butter with all this shortbread,’ Ivy said, ‘but she knows I love it and I don’t like to discourage her. I’ve had to get used to sugarless porridge.’ When Prue suggested it would be easier to eat in the kitchen, Ivy looked mildly shocked. ‘I daresay, Prue, in this modern world, dining-room people will spend more of their lives in the kitchen. But I’m not one of them, thank goodness.’
‘So what do you do at night, alone here for supper?’ Prue asked.
‘Alice leaves me something in the oven and a place laid in the dining room. I light the candles, listen to a concert on the wireless. I reflect, I remember. What could be nicer?’
Never once, over their shortbread, did Ivy try to describe the nature of the job she had in mind for Prue. It soon became clear that, despite her enjoyment of solitude, someone just there, in the house, was all she really required. Always, shortbread finished, she struggled to think of something for Prue to do while she had her rest. Every day she came up with the same solution. ‘Why don’t you make yourself comfortable in here, Prue, carry on reading?’ Prue always agreed, for her afternoons with Dickens had become an extraordinary pleasure. Her aim was to read his entire works. Most days, mid-afternoon, she would hear Ivy come downstairs but not into the sitting room, as if by design she was leaving Prue to read, having no jobs for her. This arrangement became so satisfactory to both of them that it was never mentioned.
One day Prue asked if she might write a letter to Ag while Ivy slept. She was immediately offered ink, pen and as much writing paper as she wanted. Prue sat down at the huge leather-embossed desk, glancing from the brass inkstand, ‘given to us by the high commissioner in India’, to the silver dagger for opening envelopes and the pristine blotting-paper in the embossed blotter. Cripes, she thought. The cream writing paper, sharp-edged and thick, had the Old Rectory’s address engraved at the top. Prue ran a finger over the raised letters, marvelling. She dipped the pen into the depths of a bottle of Quink, and began her letter in royal blue. So engrossed did she become, trying to describe her new life to Ag, that she did not hear Ivy come into the room.
‘I’ve just had Gerald on the telephone,’ she said. ‘He suggested you might like to go through with the Savoy plan next Wednesday.’
There was a trace of something – anxiety? doubt? – in her voice. Prue could not be sure what it was.
‘Gosh, I thought he’d never ring,’ said Prue. ‘Wednesday would be fine.’
‘Gerald’s never very speedy in executing his plans,’ said Ivy, ‘but he gets there in the end.’ She pursed her lips, trapping a few remembered incidents.
‘What shall I wear?’ Prue’s thoughts had leapt immediately to the inadequate crowd of dresses squished into the musty cupboard in Johnny’s cupboard.
‘Oh, my dear girl, it has to be long, of course.’
‘Long? But I haven’t got a long dress. I’ve never had one.’
‘Then you’d better come with me.’ Prue followed her upstairs to a room she had never been into before: floor-to-ceiling cupboards on each wall. ‘My cupboard room,’ explained Ivy. ‘The collection of things I’ve never thrown away. I suppose it’ll all be sent to a sale when I’m dead.’
They spent the rest of the afternoon going through rails of clothes in all the colours of a peacock’s tail and rainbows: silk, velvet, crêpe-de-Chine, chiffon, sparkling buttons, fur collars, lace jabots. For each dress there was a story of some dance in Peking, an ambassadorial ceremony in Washington or Rome . . . Ivy held up hanger after hanger, letting a wisp of her past sway again a little as she held out the skirt, puffed up the sleeves. The clothes came with a faint smell of mothballs, and an even fainter waft of scent – ‘Mitsuko, always Mitsuko, Ed loved it,’ Ivy said. She was jumping from foot to foot, her voice high on memory.
The light began to dim. Purpureal sky appeared in the single window. They could hear the snarling of thunder. It began to rain. Well-spaced spots clattered against the glass. Quickly the light became so poor it was difficult to depict d
etail of fabric and embroidery, pleats and ruffles. Ivy thrust a long dress of Quink blue into Prue’s hands. Its stuff pulsed through her fingers, the softest velvet she had ever touched.
‘Try it, why not?’ Ivy went to the single piece of furniture in the room, a cheval glass, and tipped it so that it could accommodate what light there was from the window. ‘I do believe I was exactly your size when I wore this – early twenties, it must have been, a New Year’s Eve party in Derbyshire.’
‘You’re still so . . .’ Prue tried to appraise, but avoid cheekiness.
‘Well.’ Ivy lowered her voice modestly. ‘I have tried not to let myself go, as so many do.’
In the increasing dark Prue slipped off her clothes and poured the tunnel of soft darkness of the dress over her head. A moment later she was dipping and swaying in front of the mirror, unable to believe her own reflection as the long skirt, with a mere flip of encouragement, danced round her legs.
‘Perfect,’ said Ivy. ‘We need look no further. It’s too dark now – I can’t think why there’s no light in this room – but tomorrow I’ll find you a wrap, and some jewels. Perhaps Gerald will buy a gardenia for your hair, if you wouldn’t mind abandoning the bow just for one evening . . .’ She could not contain a small smile.
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Prue.
She drove back to the cottage through a thunderstorm and violent rain, wondering how to describe her afternoon. She began by telling Johnny that her date with Gerald was on Wednesday, and as she needed a long dress Ivy had lent her something.
‘Really,’ was all Johnny said. As he showed no interest in hearing details, Prue abandoned her plan of trying to tell him about London. She decided instead to keep it to herself: it would be something extraordinary to look forward to and then, with luck, to look back on.