by Jane Gardam
For where was Thomasina? She’d have to be there, old S-F and Herbert being such buddies long ago. Somebody or other godmother to Holly and all that.
So, she thought, I’ll be seeing Thomasina today, will I? Very interesting, I’ll stare her out. Stare her down. I can’t talk to her. Yes, someone said she was back from Egypt.
‘Any word of Thomasina, Hugo?’ she asked as he came from the phone.
‘No, it was some nutty fellow talking about potatoes. Had you got the potatoes and he hopes they weren’t a trouble.’
‘Oh. Oh yes. That’s Jack. Andrew’s brother.’
‘What, ringing from up there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bit extravagant this time in the morning, isn’t it? Are you all right? I said you were getting ready to go to a wedding, so he rang off. I thought I heard the child crying somewhere, but he didn’t seem to be noticing.’
Pammie said, ‘I shall have to ring. Not him. Andrew. To see if the baby’s all right.’
‘Dammit,’ said Hugo. ‘Damn and blast it, Pammie, it’s for Andrew to ring you, all you’ve done for him. Glad it’s all over and this place back to what it was.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Not that I didn’t like it,’ he said. ‘I rather liked the smell.’
‘Smell of the baby?’
‘Yes. Don’t they say it’s like new bread, a baby in a house? Pretty woman, the nurse.’
‘A lot of clutter,’ said Pammie. ‘I’m glad it’s over.’
‘Not picking up Thomasina, are we?’ he asked in the car. ‘Easy to do.’
‘Hugo—I’ve just asked you if you know where she is. Nobody’s seen her since she went off to Egypt with that man.’
‘Oh, jolly good,’ said Hugo. ‘I remember now there was a card from her yesterday, from the North somewhere. Northumberland. “Coming home by stages,” or something.’
‘It’s probably a week old. She’ll be home by now and we’ll see her today. I hope you’ll ignore her, Hugo. Don’t let me down by behaving as if nothing’s happened. We’ve all had Thomasina up to here and if she’s been in the North and “coming down by stages” you’d think she’d have looked in on her one and only grandchild on the way. I saw a woman just like Thomasina yesterday—as a matter of fact, now I think of it, in a Jaguar—when I was being taken back to the train and I thought for one moment, “It’s Thomasina—come to herself again and off to see the baby,” but of course it couldn’t have been.’
‘Why not?’ Hugo liked Thomasina. He hadn’t been able to keep up with tales of her rampages of bad behaviour and didn’t much care about them. He was one of the few people who had found Holly the lesser woman, both manipulative and rather thick.
‘Rather thick girl, Holly,’ he said now.
‘Pull yourself together, Hugo. Holly’s dead. You know she is, so don’t pretend you’re senile.’
‘That little Faith,’ he said, ‘looked like a better bet. Smiling away.’
‘Hardly, at two months,’ said Pammie, who had been reading a child-development book or two since the summer. ‘They don’t smile for a long time. It’s parental fantasy.’
‘Yes, she did,’ said Hugo. ‘Got hold of your finger like a vice. Tried to eat it. Put it right in her mouth and chewed. Grinned.’
‘Hope it wasn’t all nicotine, then. When was all this going on? I’m sure I hadn’t time to be tootling at the baby. What I’d like is a real rest now. Abroad. About three weeks in Cyprus.’
‘We might go to the North for a weekend maybe,’ he said, ‘when you’re not on the Bench. See the set-up there and how the child goes on. I’d rather like it.’
Pammie found then that she only wanted to go north again by herself. She couldn’t see Jack and Hugo getting on. There was absolutely nothing religious about Hugo and he’d be hostile to the Tibetans. Why ever do I want to go back, anyway? ‘I want to be shot of the lot of them and concentrate on the Ladies’ Cup,’ said Pammie. ‘Anyway, if that was Thomasina I saw, she won’t be there today. She couldn’t possibly get to Farnham by two o’clock.’
18
A substantial part of Surrey had been put on hold for the Seton-Fairley wedding, to which seven hundred people had been invited. The police had been augmented by special constables, cones had been seconded from several motorways and parking-meter attendants moved in little coveys about the main street, directing cars to the excellently organised car-parking facilities behind the church in the grounds of some organisation that the Seton-Fairleys nationally organised. Strings of penguined middle-class males threaded their way about the churchyard or stood in knots or hurtled wildly through the tombs looking busy and blasé at the same time. Most were pretty mellow after a luncheon laid on at the local, where some of the girls were still running about and squeaking in the queue for the Ladies. Dozens more were making their way to the church in the extraordinary overdressed condition that the occasion demanded—vast hats, tiny miniskirts, long floating velvets, leather, art-deco jewellery, odd waddly shoes with sequins or teetering Sunset Boulevard heels. Others, making quite another statement, had gone for sloppy silk sweaters and skirts and shoulder bags and greasy hair and were ex-girlfriends of the bridegroom. Their purpose in acceptance of the feast was to show him, and the bride, what the hell.
The bride’s family was still a quarter of a mile away, in a gleaming house and weedless garden, fortifying themselves with dry sherry and egg sandwiches. The marquee on the lawn for last night’s party was empty now, greenish light within, smelling of grass with only yesterday’s embattled flower arrangements standing on the last of the trestle tables and folded cloths. The bride was pretending to be bored, the bridesmaids being frisky or cool as the mood took them, the father feeling confident and not half bad-looking, pulling down the points of his silver-grey waistcoat before the mirror. The mother was being anonymous and unruffled. The grandfather in a wheelchair had closed his eyes and a step-grandmother, Madeleine, was walking in the garden.
Cars arrived and took people away. The bride’s car waited, beribboned. A little rain fell and everyone groaned. The sun came out and was greeted like the Holy Ghost. Everyone looked gorgeous. Gorgeous. From the front door you could hear the bells of the church coming in fits and starts on the breeze across the meadows.
On the bridegroom’s side hunting was the big motif, the pages being dressed in hunting pink and awful gobbling hallooing noises issuing from his guests arriving at the church, stepping out of cars, acknowledging one another among the gravestones. Talk was of cubbing. The bridegroom and best man, well known in hunting circles, which now of course included the saboteurs, were nearly struck by eggs as they walked up the church path and there was an exciting rumour that a demo had been planned for the middle of the service. The bride’s grandmother, seeing some saboteurs standing rather apart at the church gates, went across to them to make herself pleasant, thinking they were servants or village people. Some of them pressed pamphlets into her hand, which she clutched along with her service sheet.
As tall Fiona in taut cream satin, her colossal backside hidden by her great-grandmother’s veil, walked up the aisle, Madeleine found herself, during the first hymn, examining photographs of the bleeding gobbets of dead foxes in the mouths of hounds. She waited anxiously for her stepson to return to the pew after the handing over of the bride so that she could ask him to explain.
But her son was in his own world, smiling in the obligatory way at his wife as he stepped in beside her to the pew, the wife keeping her eyes forward, steady as the Queen. When his stepmother began to flap the fox photographs at him, he ignored her.
She turned then to the row behind and saw through the mass of hats and heads Thomasina and a tall man being hustled in late to a pew with some cousins, the last two seats in the church. ‘My dear, do look,’ she called, flapping the pamphlet. ‘Whatever can they be?’ A grandson on her right said,
‘It’s OK, Gran. Forget it,’ and tried to turn her round. ‘Oh dear, I hope I can,’ said Madeleine, quite loudly for such a gentle woman. She looked again at the photographs. ‘Quite awful. I hope you’ll come and have tea with me soon, my dear.’
People were either ignoring Madeleine or smiling kindly at her. One or two were saying, out of the corner of the mouth, ‘The grandmother. A bit gone.’
Thomasina managed but a glacial smile. Thomasina’s escort, who looked flushed and stern and not at all at his ease, gave Madeleine a piercing blue stare.
‘Good afternoon, Giles,’ said Madeleine. ‘How lovely, darling. Do you remember Egypt?’
The great concourse rose at this moment like a surging sea to sing “O Worship the King,” and close family were ushered from the front pews towards the vestry to sign the book, Madeleine now sitting beatifically still until someone came to fetch her and lead her off too. She stopped a couple of times on the way to shake hands with the choir and seemed uncertain what to do when she reached the altar, stopping again to smell some flowers.
‘Who is that beautiful woman? How does she know my name?’ asked the general.
‘Some sort of grandmother,’ said Thomasina. ‘Madeleine. Early Alzheimer’s. Or so they say. She’s been like it for years. They think she puts it on. Men still go mad for her.’
‘I only know the groom’s lot.’
‘But what did she mean about Egypt?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ He cleared his throat and stood yet straighter. Madeleine. The arthritis was no joke today.
‘Are you all right?’ she whispered in a wife-like voice which enraged him so that he could not reply but turned towards the happy couple, who were now swimming up the aisle with their train of relations behind them. He was relieved to see Goofo, the father of the groom, who gave him a quick and military nod as he passed.
Of the grandmother there was now no sign and he thought that she must have been kept back in the vestry, by some minder perhaps, or taken out by a back door. He did not know whether to be thankful or not.
But looking down he found Madeleine at his side in the pew, carrying a rose she had removed from the arrangement on the font and sliding a grey silk glove under his elbow.
‘I’ll come out with you, darling,’ she said. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Thomasina? Where are Herbert and beloved Holly? Oh—and isn’t there a dear babe?’
The sternness of the face of the general had established itself long before his arrival at the church. On reaching the porch and hearing the first hymn, he had said they should not go in but wait outside and mingle unobtrusively with the rest of the congregation afterwards during the photographs. Thomasina had paid no attention, but swept in. It was two-twenty. She had said they would be late and they were late and she was satisfied. He, who was never late, could not believe that it was he, Giles, who was tiptoeing so prominently down the aisle behind her. Nor could he believe that he had driven three hundred and seventy miles since breakfast after making love to this woman last night.
They had retired to their bedroom at The Priors Meadow Hotel after their long drive from Northumberland and the momentous conversation at the village teashop about Holly and her child. Thomasina, lovely in her country clothes, her hair wound on top of her head in a coil, hair left to begin to grow nonchalantly grey, which only a few women can get away with as an added attraction (‘Why should I care? I’m beautiful. I don’t need to attract men, for goodness’ sake’), was being the perfect companion. Giles knew they were being noticed at The Priors Meadow Hotel that evening as people who were probably somebody, and certainly from the South. He made himself especially courteous to the waitresses though they were not allowing themselves to be generous with their charms. Most of the other guests had already eaten fast and silently and gone off to their bedrooms to remove their shoes and watch their television set. It was a moorland hotel well known for its away-breaks for the middle-aged: dinner at seven, five enormous courses, and all over by ten to eight. The general and Thomasina, eating slowly, found the lights being put out in other parts of the dining-room until their own table held the one remaining lamp. A sturdy waitress, grim of aspect, stood by them with the cheese as they finished their pudding.
‘Are we slow?’ asked Thomasina. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘You’re all right.’ She insinuated the cheese between them on the cloth. ‘But we like to get cleared up. We’ve a way to go, all of us, to get home. It’s five miles over the top.’
‘We’ll hurry.’
‘Tek yer time. Put the cheese you don’t eat under the glass bell. It can stay till morning.’ She left them, turning off switches around the bar outside. ‘I’ll leave you the one to see your way,’ she shouted through.
‘It is ten minutes past eight,’ said Giles. ‘By God, I know what they mean about another country. I couldn’t put up with this. Do you know, when I was stationed at Catterick I went to a village hop and asked a girl to dance and she said, “Take my friend, I’m sweating.”’
‘There are bad manners everywhere,’ said Thomasina. ‘Andrew’s are perfect. They’re quite nice people up here, really, when you get to know them.’
‘We are, are we?’ said the waitress stamping by again in a gigantic turquoise padded coat. ‘Now, don’t forget your room key or you’ll be in trouble. There’s no one on at night but there’s a doctor’s phone number by the bed that you have to have by law and most folks coming here are old. I’m not bringing you any coffee; it’ll only keep you awake.’
‘My God,’ said Giles, beginning to undress in the anonymous flower-sprigged bedroom. ‘I’m beginning to feel like London again. I wish we could get off right after breakfast.’
‘I should be going to London tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Well, Farnham. It’s the Seton-Whatsits’ wedding. I accepted three months ago.’
He had slid beside her into the bed, had caught her hand, had hauled up his bony old frame on top of her and let it fall bonily down. His other hand was beginning to do daring things, and Thomasina, after the Scottish and Northumbrian nights when she had been inattentive or sleepy and very different from the way she’d been in the Valley of the Kings, was giving promise of renewed interest.
Tired, he thought. Well, she’s no chicken either. It’s a long time since she had any of this—utterly good woman that way, I’d think golf and so on. Until we met. Made for each other. Beautiful woman, still—‘Oh God, Thomasina, you smell wonderful.’
‘Couldn’t get my hair done in time, anyway.’
‘What?’ he said, falling back exhausted a while later, extremely happy. ‘Hair? Hair’s perfect.’
‘For the wedding. In Farnham. Seton-Fairley.’
On the edge of sleep, his head on her neat breasts, his chin on her ribcage, his moustache making the rough patch on her skin of which he was becoming rather proud, he sat up.
‘Seton-Fairley?’
‘School friend’s daughter. Herbert’s school friend’s daughter. Mad on hunting. Farnham. Must get up and wash.’
When she came back to the bedroom—she had put on the trousers of her silk pyjamas and seemed to have tidied her hair—‘Good God,’ he said, ‘I’m going!’
‘Where?’
‘To the Seton-Doings’s wedding. I think. She’s marrying my ADC’s boy.’
‘I can’t remember who she’s . . . But it’s Farnham Castle, two o’clock.’
‘I’m invited. I accepted. We’ll have to go.’
‘Darling—Farnham. We’re on the Yorkshire moors. Have you sent a present?’
‘Yes, of course. Tea knives.’
‘Well, that’s all right. They’ll never notice. I have too.’
‘What, tea knives?’
‘No. A wok.’
‘That’s not the point. I’m afraid, Thomasina, we’ll have to go. Perfectly possible. Five or six hours and we can leave here by eight
o’clock.’
‘What about clothes?’
‘Ah, clothes. Have you something?’
‘Well, I haven’t a hat.’
‘Tell you what, we’ll leave at seven and go round by the garrison and I can get my gear and we’ll find you a hat of Hilda’s.’
‘Hilda?’
‘My Hilda. My wife.’
Thomasina looked extremely thoughtful. ‘You mean,’ she said, ‘your wife’s clothes . . . ?’
He looked ashamed and said, ‘Difficult business, disposing. Never know what to do. Would welcome a bit of help on that, actually.’
He got out of bed and put on dressing gown and slippers.
‘Giles?’
‘Going down to see about the bill.’
‘There’s no one there. You know there isn’t. The lights were all put out.’
He took off the dressing gown and sat on the edge of the bed and thought. ‘I’ll get it first thing in the morning. Ask for it at seven. We can’t leave without breakfast. Now, don’t worry. We’ll make it. I can’t miss it. I was at Alamein with Goofo.’
‘Goofo,’ she said, and was silent for a long time.
Then as he was beginning to breathe in what sounded like sweet sleep she said, ‘Yes, of course we must go. It decides everything. You can’t just ignore a wedding you’ve accepted for. I know people do. The young, mostly. It’s a fashion. But we’re not . . . And I’ll be able to see Faith some other time. Any time. I could get the Teesside shuttle any day of the week; it’s a half hour flight.’
He woke at six and padded to the loo, pleased with himself that he could go through nowadays, though he was only just in time this morning. He stretched himself before the bedroom window on his way back. Glorious morning. Heather magnificent. Miles of it. Wonderful dawn. Mist in the valleys.
A smell of heaven floated in, gold October light, sharp clean air. As heady as spring, really. The baby could hardly suffer, being brought up here instead of Surrey. What was it she’d said?