by Jane Gardam
‘Living up at Jack’s, you mean?’ said Toots. They gave each other a glance of understanding and agreement. ‘That Jocasta having us sit making cutouts,’ said Toots. ‘Like a snake she sits.’
‘I don’t see what snakes have to do with it.’
‘Where you going to set down this baby when they get themselves here?’ he asked her. ‘Clear a space now somewhere.’
‘We’ll put her on the end of the bed.’
‘Well, mind you sit yourself in the upright chair for him to pass her over to you. That other one’s far too low and you’ll drop her.’
‘He’s a doctor, Toots: he knows.’
‘I’m not going to hold her, mind. I’m not strong enough. I’m not well up in babies anyway. I’ll be standing back today.’
‘You know you’ll hold her, given the chance. You know you’ve always loved babies.’
‘Can’t stand them,’ he said. ‘Is that the gate?’
‘They can’t be here yet,’ said Dolly. ‘I’ll get your coffee and your pills. I might just put the dinner on. He may stay.’
‘By God, I should hope he does stay. Not seen him in a year and him widowed and a father and you say will he be staying for his dinner. By God, I’d not be suited if he didn’t stay on till after his tea. There’s no question about it. I’d take it very badly if he didn’t stay.’
‘Well, she may not settle, Toots. She may cry. She’s unlikely to be settled up here yet and there’s this gummy eye. He may want to get her home.’
‘What, to yon rural slum? She’d be better off here for cleanliness. Have you looked at Philip?’
Dolly pulled herself once more up the narrow staircase with the scarlet and blue turkey carpet and the polished brass stair rods and examined all she could see of Philip, which was a tuft of hair and a bundle of clothes. She had something for gummy eyes somewhere and began to rustle about in cupboards. She gathered up some glass baby bottles she had put out already and came step by step downstairs again with them. She submerged the bottles and ancient teats in boiling water for a good long sterilisation, then creaked upstairs again for the baby clothes she’d been gathering up from church bazaars for a year, ever since she’d heard that Holly was pregnant. They were in layers of tissue paper on top of her own lavender-smelling underwear. Very pretty. She came awkwardly down the stairs again clutching them with some old toys of Andrew’s: a plaster angel to hang over a bed, a mug painted with 1950s sprites, a bone teething ring with a bell on it and a stringy bit of blue ribbon old as the child’s father.
‘What’s that ket?’ asked Toots. ‘Hello, there’s the front door. They’re here.’
‘Never. I didn’t hear the gate. It can’t be.’
Nor was it. Only Jocasta came sliding into the room. They hadn’t even heard her enter the house. She said, ‘Hello, Toots—Dolly,’ and sat sweetly down on the bed with her hands folded, her feet not touching the floor. ‘You both look very smart. You must have got up early.’
‘Well!’ said Dolly. ‘Now then. How lovely!’ She always sounded pleased to see people, even if she disliked them. When she saw them in her house she forgot whether or not she disliked them. It was unconscious caution. The gods of hospitality were always on the watch. They could avenge, and Dolly was frightened by her old age. Judgement loomed. Across the room Toots sat on his throne looking ahead into the electric fire, moving his bad ankle up and down against the bar of his walking frame so that it squeaked rhythmically. He waited for Jocasta to wince.
‘Can’t I go and help him in with her?’ said Dolly. ‘With the carry-cot? I’ll go down to the gate.’
‘He couldn’t come,’ said Jocasta. ‘I’m on my own. He’s halfway. I left him at the hospital. She has this gummy eye. He sent me on to say he’s so sorry but she ought to be looked at straight away. I dropped them both there and I’ll pick him up on the way home.’
‘She’d to go to hospital? With a gummy eye?’ Dolly’s eyes were round.
‘They may not take her in. She’s had so much excitement, though, the last two days, Andrew thinks she shouldn’t be shown around yet.’
After twenty minutes, she left them as quietly as she had arrived and without going up to see Philip. ‘I’ll leave him for you, Dolly, may I? He loves it here.’
‘Well,’ said Toots, ‘that’s something anyway,’ and he took off the red silk tie and undid the collar stud.
24
They sat for some time waiting for the baked beans and a pot of tea, Madeleine touching the forks on the plastic table top, smiling at the salts and peppers. She looked around her once and bowed to someone with severe acne and dressed from head to foot in leathers at the next table. He had a huge hairless head. The open leather jacket showed a gold ring through one of his nipples. He pretended not to see her.
‘So sad,’ said Madeleine. ‘Chemotherapy. It’s not necessary to lose your hair now, you know, so long as you see to it that you have the right surgeon.’ Turning back to Thomasina she leaned over to her and tucked in a corner of her scarf-hat. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Just the tiniest bit astray.’
Thomasina’s hands flew to her head. She said, ‘Oh God, I know. It’s all I had. Giles and I were on holiday in Yorkshire this morning and we’d quite forgotten the wedding. I’d a dress that would do but no hat.’
‘It’s charming,’ said Madeleine. ‘But what about him? Had he the gear?’
The lad in leathers gave her a look and she said, ‘Gear, dear, yes. I’m not an antique.’ He rose and left the café.
‘We went to get it. To his house. In Berkshire. It’s been a long day. Actually . . . ’
‘Yes?’ Madeleine leaned forward with love.
‘Actually, when we got there he offered me a hat of his dead wife.’
‘Hilda’s! Oh my dear, I’m so sorry!’
‘It had a pheasant’s feather in it.’
‘Yes, it would. Oh my darling girl! So it’s over, then?’
Thomasina unwound the scarf and shook her hair. She said, ‘I’m sorry. I really can’t—I can’t remember you. I am sorry. Maybe we should have had some champagne and then I . . . ’
‘I wonder if it’s licensed here.’ Madeleine looked luminously at the girl behind the counter, who said, ‘You what?’
‘I don’t suppose you’re licensed? My friend needs a little brandy.’ The girl stared. ‘No—I’m afraid, quite hopeless,’ said Madeleine. ‘My dear, you are Thomasina Fox. I don’t know you really but I know of you. Through Pammie Jefford. Now, I have a hopeless memory these days but I’m sure she never told me you’d married dear old Giles.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘Dear child—well, I’m old enough to call you child—dear child, I’m so glad. I can talk more freely.’
But she stopped and looked gently round the restaurant, as forlorn a little place on a Saturday afternoon as you could find; the hard bread rolls, the gluey slabs of chrome-yellow flan behind glass, the bag-woman in the corner rustling through newspapers, the two girls all paintwork and thighs leaning their heads towards each other, talking in whispers, the sad young man with a book by the window. ‘I always think that Sarajevo must have been like this.’
The baked beans arrived. They looked quite good. The teapot followed. It had strings hanging out of it round the lid, each with a label saying there was a teabag on the other end. Madeleine asked for some real milk instead of the liquid in the plastic pots but the girl didn’t hear. Then Madeleine said, ‘But you were holidaying with Giles. Would you mind if I asked—is there anything now in the way of lovemaking?’
When Thomasina attacked the baked beans without a word Madeleine continued to sit serene. In a few moments she poured more tea for them both, dribbling it a bit into the thick saucers. She began to spear the orange beans singly and daintily with her fork.
At last Thomasina said, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t talk abo
ut my private life.’
‘Oh, that’s such a mistake,’ said Madeleine. ‘Oh, I so wish that I had had someone to tell me what a mistake that is. You have to have someone. But there—I expect you have Giles.’
‘I hardly know Giles.’
‘Yet you make love with him. You didn’t say no. I wonder what he’s like. I yearned to know once. I’d guess now he’d be pretty brisk, but that would be better than he was when he was young. He was absolutely terrified then of the whole idea. Not only of sex, but of love. And of course I was terrified too, and so well brought-up. I went to Karnak with him, you know, if you know where that is. It was wartime and I was a Fany (yes, isn’t it lewd?) and he asked me to go to the Winter Palace for the weekend. I was in such a fit, dear, about contraceptives. I had no idea what to expect. All I knew was from school. One of the big girls had told me that the Ancient Greeks used to use butter and of course you couldn’t get butter in the war and it would have seemed a frightful waste. So I just went and hoped for the best. But dear Giles, there was nothing like that at all. He kissed my hand on the Saturday night and we both went to our separate rooms. You wouldn’t believe it, would you, all the books you read, but that was quite usual then. Oh I burned, dear, in my bed. I left my room unlocked and a huge Egyptian man came in during the night in a long pink thing and asked to clean my shoes and there was no telephone and I said that I should have to scream and then the man went away. I think I was probably very lucky, although the Egyptians are very pleasant, polite people and it may have been no more than affection. I told Giles in the morning and he created a frightful fuss. Well, you know, I expect they all thought my room would be empty, though it would have been more flattering if they had thought Giles’s room would be empty and he’d be in with me. He was tremendously apologetic. I think he knew that he’d behaved badly. Very tamely. But, you see, neither of us knew the rules. They were in a state of flux in the Forties. Well, they probably always are. But oh my dear, so shy. That’s why he needed Hilda.’
‘What was Hilda like?’
‘She was like a gun, dear. She went boom. Boom, bang, smash. Tennis nets fainted at the sight of her.’ Madeleine leaned sideways in her chair. ‘Boom and smash,’ she repeated to the two whispering girls, nodding her head. ‘Boom, smash.’ The girls looked insulted and then hostile. Soon they, too, left the cafe.
‘Oh, Thomasina, Thomasina, do be careful. He’s probably more positive now but at heart he hasn’t changed at all. Even in appearance. I knew him. Recognised him after fifty years. That’s rare—even rarer in a woman, of course. But he has that wooden army face, you know, like the Duke of Wellington. The narrow army face not the plump one. Giles never drank. Just the same jaw as the Iron D—and, of course, I knew each plane of Giles’s face, each nostril, darling—thank God youth passes—and each finger and nail on his nice hands. His hands have changed, by the way—has he arthritis? Poor Giles. But it is such a good face, you know. Such a beautiful face that I’m afraid it may have made a barrier between you. We all of us, you know, want a man sometimes whom we don’t have to know too well and if he’s handsome it’s used as a substitute.’
‘My husband was like that,’ said Thomasina. ‘He was a surgeon.’
‘Oh yes, of course he was, poor man. But I expect you were a great help to him.’
‘I’ve nothing to do with medicine.’
‘No—I mean in calming him down. From all the excitement. A surgeon’s job must be so overheating. It makes them feverish—or sometimes ice-cold.’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Thomasina, ‘I don’t think I thought of that. I lived in a bit of a world of my own. It seemed to be what he wanted.’
‘He probably admired you no end,’ said Madeleine. ‘What work did you do?’
‘Oh—nothing. I was a very keen gardener.’
‘Ah, that’s what they say in Who’s Who if they don’t do anything at all.’
Thomasina blazed scarlet. ‘I am a very good and serious gardener.’ She closed her teeth over a forkful of beans, dragged the fork out empty and slammed it on her plate.
‘Darling—I’m so sorry. Children?’
‘What the hell d’you mean?’
‘You had some children, didn’t you? It’s more than I did. I’ve only steps. Barren as the fig.’
‘So was Giles,’ said Thomasina.
‘The poor fellow.’ Madeleine sat with an expression of true and profound grief. ‘I expect that was Mildred. They don’t have many, tennis players. I suppose the wires get twisted. Giles needed children.’
‘So what about you?’ asked angry Thomasina.
Madeleine only leaned across and touched her hand. ‘What about your daughter?’ she asked very clearly. ‘What about your daughter, Holly?’ She let her hand become a handcuff round Thomasina’s wrist. ‘Your daughter died the other day, I hear, and there is a baby. And I understand you will not see the baby. Why not?’
‘This is utterly none of your business.’
‘Yes it is. I see a shuttered woman turning to a clammed-up man to save her from the rest of her life and I know that she is laying up for herself nothing but another coat of varnish, like those unhappy quiches on the counter. Oh yes, my dear girl. You’ll both look your parts convincingly until you die. You’ll take each other down the last years like two beautiful illustrations out of the old England we all love and mourn. And you’ll go nowhere. Nowhere. Even the lovemaking will be dignified till it peters out altogether, which will be about three weeks after the wedding. It’s a bit dignified now, isn’t it? You haven’t said a thing about it. Is it not the sort of thing you could do to a comfortable de Souza march? Tum-te-tum? Tell me I’m wrong—that it’s between two who love each other and long to know each other and love each other more. You can’t. You know it is a barrier, the sex between you. Isn’t it?’
‘It is not,’ cried Thomasina, red in the face, almost weeping. ‘It’s pretty good. Very nice. Sleeping with Giles is the most exciting thing I’ve done in years. I don’t say so. Neither does he. D’you think we’re French or something? But we will do. We’re good at it. The first time was in a sandstorm.’
The café had fallen still. Even the bag-woman had stopped rustling. The young man by the window had laid down his book and taken off his reading glasses and the girl behind the counter had let the microwave ping unheeded.
‘And the granddaughter?’ Madeleine was in with a thrust as Thomasina began to cry. ‘This granddaughter?’
‘I’ve had enough,’ wept Thomasina. ‘I’ve had enough of motherhood. What the hell can you tell me about its pain! Do you not know, woman’—she stood up—‘my daughter is dead.’
The general and a boy and a girl, all in wedding clothes, stood in the doorway and the general was at Thomasina’s side as she turned to fling herself in his arms. Then she flung herself out of them again, making for the open door, and he went after her and held her from behind by the shoulders, looking round the assembled company with a mixture of terror at being found in such a place in such a way and valour in his determination that nothing would make him retreat from it.
The boy and girl slid down on either side of their seated step-grandmother and the girl looked over at Thomasina and said, ‘You mustn’t mind, Mrs. Fox. Honestly, she’s dreadful but it’s not her fault. She’s, you know, Alzheimer’s or something. It’s terribly sad. She says terrible things. But then she forgets them.’
The great car that Thomasina and Madeleine had arrived in stood at the café door again with the chauffeur picking his teeth inside it. He’d done a lot of weddings. They’d been saying a thousand bottles of champagne had gone into this one.
‘I’ll walk,’ wailed Thomasina. ‘Giles, let’s get away.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘We’ll go straight home.’
‘We’ll take her back to Puffy,’ said the girl. ‘Not that he’s much better. Come on, Gran darling.’
Madeleine looked around her, bowing separately to each customer, favouring the young man with the book with a caress on the cheek. ‘An intellectual,’ she said, and in the street, ‘Darlings, I’ve just been telling Mrs. Fox that this little place reminds me of Sarajevo. I don’t mean the awful Bosnian business, I mean the outbreak of war—The Great War, before even my time. The breaking of nations. The old world disappearing overnight throughout Europe when the silly driver of the emperor’s carriage got stuck in a back alley and there was the gunman who’d missed the first shot in the main street having a cup of coffee. Bang! Everything changed. The flower of all our countries gone.’ She paused. ‘But then, you know,’ she said, ‘not quite, for here are you, and here am I and there is the general and that nice woman Thomasina Woolf. She wrote The Waves, you know. And there have been other turning points. There are. All the time. All the time. Thank God.’
‘You got her?’ asked the grandson.
‘Yep,’ said his sister.
‘Come on, Gran darling. Home we go.’
PART TWO
25
At the beginning of December Jocasta sat in the workshops with the Tibetan women cutting paper and half-listening to them talk. The Tibetan men had disappeared. No one spoke of them. Under the coarse, hairy coat of the oldest woman, Pema, Faith lay sleeping. She seemed seldom to be in her cot. A little hammock had been rigged up for her in the visitors’ quarters and there she slept now at night. She was with them in the daytime, too, except when a health visitor announced a routine visit and then somehow she was always to be found in the main buildings with The Missus or Jocasta about. But she often became fretful there and was returned to Pema quickly. With Pema she never seemed to cry, passing her days in a sling under Pema’s bristly coat, almost hidden, like a chicken under the wings of a hen.