by Jane Gardam
They looked at each other and started laughing again.
‘Funny world,’ said Emma. ‘Come on down and talk while I get lunch.’
‘Do I have to go home tonight, Emma? Can’t I come back after Jocasta’s play? Could I have Christmas here?’
‘Nope. I’m not a kidnapper.’
‘Please. I’ll help you with Thomasina. She’s my other granny. In a sense.’
‘We’ll see. We’ll see if she turns up. Or anyone. The sky’s heavy with snow. Look.’
At the foot of the hotel staircase the general was standing gravely. He strode a few paces forward, examined the pictures of stagecoaches and eighteenth-century travellers. He looked towards the staircase. He strode a few paces back. He examined the newspapers that were laid out upon a table. When Thomasina came down he leapt towards her, took her arm and led her into the empty dark coffee room.
‘Good morning, Giles.’
‘I have to speak to you.’
‘There’s nothing you need say. Nothing at all. Let’s not get embarrassing.’
‘Embarrassing?’
‘About sleeping arrangements.’
He looked bewildered. ‘Oh. Ha. Yes. Sleeping arrangements. No, it isn’t that. That has nothing to do with anything.’
‘I see.’
‘No. You don’t see. Well. Last night Madeleine was in a flap about a phone call she made home, and I straightened her out and sent her to bed. But I thought maybe I’d give old Puffy a ring myself, and I did. And he was dead.’
‘But . . .’
‘Bad business. Some sort of nonsense going on down there. I’ve just rung again. I asked to speak to Miss Banks, but she’s left. The young man there is very upset. She’s gone off on the London train, leaving her luggage. They’ve got Puffy away to a mortuary.’
‘Madeleine?’
‘I managed to stop her from telephoning. I haven’t told her. I told her he’d been taken ill. I’ll tell her he’s dead on the train.’
‘Train?’
‘Yes. We’ll go south on the Euston train from Lincoln if Pammie will drive us. Taxi to Waterloo, train down to Kent.’
‘Giles, it’s the day before Christmas Eve. It won’t be easy. She’s very old. I’m sure Pammie would lend you her car, and she and I could go on up north by train together.’
‘No. no. All fixed. Here she comes.’
Breakfast in the dining room was delicious. Madeleine kept saying so. She talked of other breakfasts. Paris before the war. With Winston Churchill at Chequers. With little Jackie Bouverie in New York (‘Sweet child and how she suffered’). She told the waitress that she was sure she knew her. Or her mother: Elsie Bacon who’d been parlour maid at Blackfriars Hall? No? So like her. She said goodbye at the desk with such an air of devotion to everyone that porters emerged and stood in a row for her to pass to the door (‘Giles, see to it, won’t you? Purse not about’). They were bowed into Pammie’s car. Thomasina had passed Pammie a note on the back of the breakfast menu. ‘Puffy’s dead. They’re off south again,’ and met Pammie’s outraged eyes.
On the platform Madeleine turned to Thomasina and kissed her.
‘I’m so sorry, Madeleine,’ said Thomasina. ‘I do hope that Puffy will soon . . . ’
They embraced.
‘I’m sad too,’ said Madeleine. ‘No. Not that Puffy’s dead, that’s wonderful for him—yes, of course I know he’s dead. Silly old Alfred’s like a glass of water. I don’t know how he was ever a general, you can read his face like a map. No, not sorry he’s dead and he had that excellent Alice with him. No. I’m just so sorry it’s Christmas. So inconvenient for the poor undertakers. And sorry—well, sorry (Yes, Miles, I’m coming), sorry, darling, for you.’
‘For me?’
‘For you. In a way. Though this is for the best. I do know that. You’ll not miss him. He’s so boring. Just right for me, though, because I can remember how sweet he was long ago. Such love untapped. The odd thing is that I didn’t want him then. I thought I did, but not deep down. Now I’m landed with him.’
‘Maddie, please.’ Giles was holding the carriage door, waving the gun case. There were shouts. The train was crowded for Christmas.
‘Goodbye, Giles,’ said Thomasina. ‘Glad you’re able to go with her. And first class. You’re having rather an expensive outing.’
‘Yes. Thomasina, I shan’t forget . . .’
‘No.’
‘The Mena House and the Texans. And that splendid place at Karnak.’
‘The Nile,’ she said, ‘and the man in the pink nightshirt who wanted to clean our shoes.’
He seemed puzzled by this. ‘Wasn’t that—?’ He looked towards Madeleine climbing aboard, smiling round the packed, carousing passengers. ‘I thought that was . . . Oh yes. Of course. Goodbye, Thomasina,’ and he heaved his lanky frame up the high step, turning to look back at her, stern and awkward.
He is ashamed and old, she thought. Whatever was I doing? Poor old wooden general . . .
‘The party shrinks,’ said Pammie. ‘We’ll be able to get a move on now. D’you want a tissue?’
‘No. I told you last night. It’s over.’
‘Thank your stars you’re not damaged in any way—or not more than you are. You can’t see straight after a death, or you’d never have gone near him.’
‘I don’t agree. I won’t say that.’
‘You were clinging to youth.’
‘For god’s sake—he’s seventy-two.’
‘To the old order?’
‘Well, maybe. Why not?’
‘It’s time you grew up.’
‘You say this? For heaven’s sake, what about the old man in the mountains?’
‘It’s what I’m telling you. One goes mad at these times. I’ll recover. I think.’
‘But maybe he won’t recover. Dear Jack. He’s very lovable.’
‘What—unbridled passion for fat Mrs. Jefford of Coombe? Come off it, Thomasina.’
‘He’s someone, Pammie. He’s reckless. He’s some sort of saint. I love Jack.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ve never met anyone like him, I’ll say that. But he’s married, you know. To Madame Gloom.’
When they were well on, past Worksop, past the Doncaster bypass, boiling along towards Wetherby and the Wolds, Pammie said, ‘There’s something I should like to have seen and now I never shall. I’d like to have seen how Madeleine would have made out with Jack. What he’d have thought of her.’
Thomasina said, after several more miles, ‘I think she would have tested his policy of universal love.’
‘Where do I turn off?’
‘Soon. Giles gave me directions. Oh good gracious!’
‘What now?’
‘His map says we’re going right up the top again, near that hotel he and I went to. It’s not the Faylesafe pile—it’s a school. “The Moors School.” It’ll be dormitories. It’s outrageous of that woman. We’ll go to The Priors.’
‘We might just look,’ said Pammie. ‘It’s getting dark. They’ll be expecting us. With any luck it’ll be all right even if it’s basic and it won’t be far to turn out again for this concert thing tomorrow.’
‘A Nativity play,’ said Thomasina, ‘and, let’s hope, a christening.’
‘Your granddaughter.’
‘Yes. Hope she’s thriving, I must say. So fearfully cold.’
‘Faith.’
‘Yes.’
‘Say it.’
‘Say what?’
‘Faith.’
‘Faith, then.’
‘Wasn’t there a girl called Faylesafe? Friend of Holly?’
‘Was there?’
‘At her school Emma Faylesafe? Didn’t you know the family?’
‘Yes. I suppose there was. Madeleine told us so. For hours.’
‘Say it, then. Who was she?’
‘Holly’s friend. At school. First term boarding. I think actually, Pammie, I’d quite like to go direct to The Priors, if you don’t mind.’
‘I do mind. I’m sick of people changing their mind about where they’re going in this car. It’s my car, I’m driving and I say where.’
‘Which is here,’ she said on the top of the moor. ‘I say! Wuthering Heights with school dinners. Gird up your loins, dear. What’s this?’
The front door opened and light stained the snow. Emma Faylesafe-as-was came out with her husband and children and Philip.
‘Quickly, quickly, in you come,’ she called. ‘You must be dead! Only two of you? Oh dear.’ She took Thomasina’s hands. ‘Come in, Holly’s ma.’
44
And it was not so dreadful after all up on the moors on Christmas Eve.
The snow was thick on the roads up from the coast and there was no hope of Dolly and Toots reaching The Priors on Christmas Day, but the freezing fog was nowhere to be seen and the wind had dropped. The heather stuck up through the snow like prickles through a blanket—a continent of midget forest trees. The lower fields lay on the hillsides like white handkerchiefs out to dry. After dawn the sky cleared and a great sun rose through queer dragging clouds. Their trailing tentacles stroked the horizon. It was going to be warmer.
Thomasina and Pammie awoke at the schoolhouse and wondered if they should ring Kent. Thomasina seemed not to care to. Emma said that she thought that surely the general would ring them up. Would he not?
Nobody knew.
So they sat over breakfast eating bacon in the dappled sunshine off the moor, Emma scrubbing potatoes and rolling them into the back of the stove for lunch, slashing up cabbages, stirring up stew. More coffee was produced. Someone was practising scales on a piano. The headmaster was in full voice, singing as he threw salt over the yard. Philip was busy somewhere with computers.
A wondrous lethargy settled upon Thomasina and Pammie. Emma talked, they listened. They watched her wading through a chaos of children about her feet, making a pudding at the far end of the kitchen table, taking tin measurefuls of flour from a sack in the corner, scattering it into the bowl from a height to get air into it. Flour hung in the sunlight. Some settled on Emma’s hair and powdered her cheek.
‘We’re to be there by four,’ she said. ‘The concert thing’s at five. Or so. I don’t think they really know—they’re like that. Phil wants to be early to find out what he’s meant to be doing. There’s some ceremony with the baby, isn’t there? I wonder if it’s Tibetan?’
‘It’s her christening,’ said Pammie, ‘and about time too.’
‘I think there’s to be some lovely Tibetan music. And then some carols. And then a supper. That Nick person’s been over to borrow plates. I’m afraid plates are sometimes as far as they get. I’ll take a big pie.’
‘I don’t suppose there’ll be many of us,’ said Thomasina. ‘The snow will stop everyone. I haven’t heard a word from Andrew. Are you all coming?’
‘We are,’ said Emma. ‘Each and every one. Great honour. Never asked before. I’m dying to see the Tibetans. And the baby.’
‘I should really be getting myself across there this morning,’ said Pammie. ‘I’m to try housekeeping for them, you know. I’ve been invited to be on the permanent staff,’
‘Oh,’ said Emma. ‘Well, I wonder. It’s pretty serious over there. But I’m not saying a word. I’m not very pious.’
‘I am religious,’ said Pammie, whose faith had returned during Jack’s telephone calls. Thomasina looked out of the window. ‘Jack and I hit it off rather well.’ She turned pink.
‘Yes. Everybody hits it off with Jack,’ said Emma. ‘He’s a saint. But they’re not the easiest. I suppose I shouldn’t say this, but somehow, with Holly about, I feel I can. Thomasina . . . ?’
But Thomasina had left the room to find Philip.
They set off in the school Land-Rover, wrapped up warm in the near dark, at about half past three. ‘I’ve a hip flask and some sleeping bags,’ said the headmaster, but it was decidedly warmer. Big loose flakes were starting to fall. They left the Land-Rover up at the Saxon cross to be on the safe side. There was already a minibus there and the Smike motorbike covered with a tarpaulin.
‘Afraid of not getting out again,’ said the headmaster. ‘They’ve brought them up. Well, nobody’ll steal them tonight. Did someone say the Tibetans are leaving at Christmas?’
‘Nobody can make them out,’ said Philip.
‘Are they nice people?’
‘Pema’s a bit weird. She’s boring about Faith and she can’t speak English. The rest are just normal, like us. The young ones. The men have gone away somewhere. Hi, Ernie.’
Ernie and Nick were walking out to the sheds.
‘Gi’s ’and, Philip.’
Philip ran across to them and into the studio.
Jocasta was sitting huddled small in a pew in the chapel. She wore a striking necklace of chunks of red amber, and when Thomasina and Pammie came in she turned, then crossed straight to them. She kissed Thomasina, smiled at Pammie and whispered, ‘Do sit down, or do you want to go in and get warm? Are the school people all here?’
‘Yes. I’ll go over to the solar and start helping,’ said Pammie.
‘All done,’ she said, ‘but do go in. I have to stay and see to the tableau.’ She smiled and said, ‘It’s wonderful that you’ve made it.’
‘Whatever’s happened?’ wondered Thomasina, and Pammie said, ‘She’s quite changed. Utterly different woman. Oh, whoever’s that?’
Out in the falling snow Pema, dressed in a great broadside of a coat that stood out around her like a hairy box, filled the doorway of her shed and stood watching them pass. Her face was broad and dark beneath a hat like a headdress atop her scarfed head. In her arms was a bundle of heavy cloths, scarlet and orange on white. On the baby’s head was a little woven cap, with ear-flaps; on her hands, red mittens decorated with amber beads. Her face was almost covered by her wrappings. She did not stir. A woven icon of an eye hung round her neck.
Thomasina saw only a glimpse of Faith’s own eyes, round and faraway, all that seemed alive in the doll-like swathe in the old woman’s arms.
Pema began to shout suddenly, on and on, very angry. A girl came up behind her and tried to pull her away, away inside and out of sight.
‘What’s she saying? What have we done?’
‘She’s telling you about us,’ said the girl.
‘What is she saying?’
Pema’s voice rose to a desolate wailing and she heaved herself backwards into the dark of the shed.
‘What was all that?’
‘She says about exile,’ said the girl, ‘about you knowing nothing here. She says about walking six hundred miles to Nepal below the Mother of Earth at sixteen thousand feet. She says the Chinese kill and beat and torture. She says eighty-seven thousand exiles left Tibet, two thousand seven hundred monasteries destroyed, a hundred thousand Chinese troops walked into our country. Her baby sisters died on the journey, her grandmother died. In India her little brother later died of sickness we did not have at home. She says you all have suffered nothing. She despises you and kisses the bone of her mother which she carried next to her heart.’
‘Well, I hope she doesn’t let it anywhere near the baby,’ said Pammie.
‘How extraordinary,’ said Thomasina. ‘I have absolutely nothing against Tibetans, I’m very sorry for them. I am very sorry. How could we know? But please, we should like to see Faith now. I suppose three hundred miles is nothing to travel, comparatively, but we’ve done it for our faith too, you know, in a sense. For Faith.’
But the Tibetans had shut their door.
‘Why aren’t the Tibetans joining us, and where’s Faith?’ Thomasina asked Jack. They were in the refecto
ry now, where everyone was drinking tea out of mugs. Some rather oily, whitish mince pies were about on trays and some small squares of cheese with sticks in them. Emma had brought crackers, and her pie was warming in the stove.
‘You must tell me what to do about supper,’ Pammie said.
‘Oh, supper,’ said Jocasta. ‘Are we all here?’
‘So sad about Toots and Dolly,’ said Thomasina, dredging up a normal remark. She felt all at once beyond hope, beyond care for anything, for anyone. That comatose bundle. That aged crone. Age and death. Deaths, deaths. Giles’s stiff leg following him up into the railway carriage. That idiot Madeleine. Dead Puffy. Everyone dying. Nothing left. What about Andrew? No word. I am the one should be dead, she thought. Why was it Holly? What use am I?
‘Has anyone heard from Andrew?’
Nobody had except Jocasta and she wasn’t saying. The letter had been the letter she had been expecting for some time so that when she had read it she had felt it was old, dug out from some antique trunk. ‘Dear Jocasta,’ it had said in his tiny writing, so small that it seemed to be trying to hide its meaning; close, neat, no crossings-out. A fair copy.
Dear Jocasta,
I think that you and I have decided both together that what happened between us has been a monumental mistake. I expect that by the time you read this I shall have received a similar letter from you.
When we last saw each other after Alice Banks had gone I saw your face as it looked up at Jack. I couldn’t decide what I’d seen at first. Something like utter despair of happiness in you ever again. Disillusion. And then I saw Jack, walking so trusting beside you. He touched your neck as you both went into the refectory. You looked up at him without happiness but with such familiarity. I saw you together as a woman with her husband.
The night before you had said, ‘Don’t leave me.’ That was when I realised that the only thing was for us to break off our life with each other.
I shall have to come at Christmas. Nothing will stop me. I know my duty to the child. But now it will be only as your brother-in-law.