‘Yes,’ said Edward, putting down his spoon.
‘Is that when you saved Edward’s life?’ asked Sophie.
Mrs Featherston stared at her disembowelled grapefruit.
The Captain looked shifty. ‘No, no, earlier. Pulled him out, just pulled him out in time. Nothing more.’
Sophie knew about the war at sea. She had absorbed naval histories over William’s shoulder, had studied photographs of ships blown up, of lone merchant ships which couldn’t keep up and had to be left behind while the rest of the convoy steamed away over the horizon. Men were sliced in half, blown apart like their ships or drowned in their thousands like seabirds in oil.
‘Yes, great days,’ said the Captain, choking at the memory. ‘Amazing luck getting another crack at my age.’ He stowed the last of his juice. He had eaten his cherry first.
Sophie watched the Commodore. His face was lit by the straight flames of two tall candles as he sat listening to the old man who had had a good war and saved his life as well. His face was still, not a joke in sight. She had always suspected there were two Commodores. His ‘Ha ha’s at the bar and his ‘ladies for taking’ were a shield, a carapace to hide the better half. She had always suspected this, ever since she first saw him. She drew a deep breath. Her heart expanded.
The Commodore leaned forward. ‘What’s happened to the Stubbs?’ His head gestured to an oil painting of a horse which hung on the wall. The Captain clasped the arms of his chair. ‘Told you he’d spot it, didn’t I, Lettie?’
There seemed little wrong with the horse, except its attenuated shape and the weird swooping curve of its neck.
The Captain, his cheekbones gleaming in the soft light, turned to Sophie. He gave a quick wave at the horse. ‘Edward thought “Cracker” should be cleaned. We weren’t too keen, were we, Lettie?’ Mrs Featherston’s napkin scrubbed her lips, either in agreement or dissent. ‘Had a man up. Beefy sort of a cove from those people in town. Drove one of those …’ His hands now indicated length: ‘cigar cars.’ Stood at the door over there, way over there, and said, “That’s not a Stubbs.”’ The Captain sniffed. ‘I didn’t say if you can spot a non-Stubbs from fifteen feet you shouldn’t be in a tin-pot little auctioneering business down there between the oil tanks and the marshalling yards. Didn’t say that. Thought it, though. He did come nearer, of course, eventually, crawled all over the poor boy with his eyeglass, gave me a ludicrous price for cleaning him and left. Glad to see the back of him.’
The Commodore was still puzzled. ‘But why did you remove the Stubbs tally?’
‘He said it wasn’t.’
‘But he may not be right. Probably isn’t. Jumped up little … Why take his word?’
The Captain’s voice was shy. ‘Difficult to say. Couldn’t have the poor boy …’
‘Flying false colours?’ The Captain inspected Sophie. He shut the eye with the faster ripening cataract and stared at her face, misty but appealing in the soft light. He nodded. ‘Yes.’
The Commodore tried again. ‘But it’s not false colours!’
‘Might be.’ He turned to Sophie again. ‘One of my forebears was a stallion groom for some old baron. His widow didn’t want the painting apparently. Nice isn’t he, old “Cracker”? But think about it. Would you give your Stubbs to your stallion groom, Mrs Flynn?’
Nice man. ‘But it wasn’t then, was it?’ she said. ‘It was just a good painting of a horse your ancestor loved by a man called Stubbs. There hadn’t been time for it to have become a Stubbs, if you see what I mean.’
Mrs Featherston touched her hair. ‘No,’ she said.
‘I do. I do.’ The Captain jigged happily in his chair. ‘A thought, definitely a thought. You may well be right, my dear.’
The Commodore lifted his palms in defeat. He smiled at Sophie across the deep pools of light.
Mrs Featherston wound herself upright and inched round the table collecting discards. Sophie leaped up, the Commodore raised one hand and patted the air.
‘No, no, m’dear,’ said the Captain. ‘We try to have two people sitting at the same time. Damn difficult to achieve.’
Sophie sat. The workers returned, the Commodore wheeling a squeaking trolley with dishes. Mrs Featherston served the casserole, peering at dismembered chicken legs before flinging them onto plates. They munched chicken chasseur beneath the wild-eyed stare of the archaic horse.
‘What’s this business of Kennedy increasing the number of advisers in Vietnam?’ said the Captain tackling a leg. ‘What’s an adviser? You know, Edward?’
Edward chewed for a moment. ‘One who advises.’
The Captain was unimpressed. ‘Hhh. Increased to sixteen thousand last year I read. That’s a lot of advice. Who asked for them?’
Edward looked him in the eye. ‘The South Vietnamese. Diem.’
‘Is he any good?’
‘Who else is there?’
‘Mmmn. Tricky, the Americans. Tricky lot. Never know which way they’re going to jump. Not entirely. As for their Intelligence.’
The Commodore’s glance was sharp.
‘And what about this Nhu fellow?’ The Captain shook his head. ‘You know Truman was determined to keep out of South-East Asia at all costs.’
‘So is Kennedy, from a fighting war.’
The Captain smacked his tongue against his front teeth. ‘God, I hope so. Look at the French. Bogged down completely.’ He gave another quick sniff. ‘Sixteen thousand,’ he said sadly. He was silent for a moment. ‘Looks like UK investment down here’s going up,’ he said switching tracks. ‘That’s something for them, I suppose.’
Sophie stirred slightly on her chair. Them. Down here. ‘Our birth rate’s up again,’ she said firmly.
‘They always say that,’ said Mrs Featherston, gloomily peering and flinging onto the Commodore’s plate once more.
‘Oh well, Lettie and I’ll be under the sod soon,’ said the Captain, obviously unconcerned at the prospect. There was a tiny pause as three of them remembered Rose, but not the Captain. Or if he did he had the sense to carry on like the Commodore after ‘lurden is bight’. It is the only way.
They ate their baked custard and returned to the drawing room, Mrs Featherston gliding and touching as before, the Captain soft-shoe shuffling in the rear.
The Commodore carried the coffee tray, navigating with care past a top-heavy vase of agapanthus, daisies and dead hydrangeas which teetered on a small chest with a brass handle missing. Mrs Featherston raised her hands for the tray, her face serious, sacramental, a queen accepting her orb.
She made conversation. Children? Did Sophie have any? Yes, two. Rebecca and Christopher. ‘Ah,’ said her hostess.
The Captain jumped. ‘What? What?’
‘Mrs Flynn has two children,’ said his wife.
‘Oh.’ The Captain shuffled himself into his chair and tossed a cushion onto the floor. It lay within the circle of light from the lamp, a deep square of apricot flooded with gold. ‘Yes,’ he said, and leaned back.
They talked once more about the visit of the friendly Asian power. About the Queen’s visit next year. About the approaching visit of a Cat class cruiser which would be flying the flag of Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Tower who the Captain thought might be a son of Tommy Tower who was his Captain in HMS Something before the war. And wasn’t there an Australian frigate due soon?
‘Yes,’ said the Commodore. ‘Yes, quite soon.’
Silence drifted across the room. The Commodore excused himself and departed, his shadow dancing beside him on the wall. The door clunked.
Sophie smiled. The Captain stared at the ceiling. ‘Yes,’ he said again.
Mrs Featherston picked a thread from her wool jersey, made a half-hearted attempt to throw it on the fire and failed. Her frock was soft and draped, designed to soften sharp-angled age. The scent of the daisies was strong and not pleasant.
‘You have a lot of papers,’ said Sophie in desperation, nodding at the table in the middle of the room.
&nb
sp; Mrs Featherston agreed.
‘Are they all English?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh.’ The piles of papers heaved slightly before her eyes: the Daily Telegraphy the Spectator, the Sunday Times, the Financial Times. Country bloody Life. ‘There’s a lot of reading in them,’ she said. She heard herself saying it. Dear God in heaven.
‘We like to keep in touch.’
‘Of course.’ But it is a puzzle, is it not. Not the keeping in touch which is understandable, but the creating of an enclave where everything including the brand of mustard and the things you put on your toast at breakfast, the different things you put on your toast at teatime and the papers you read and the thoughts you think are not the thoughts of here. It has been going on for a long time, this enclave-building, sometimes against almost insuperable odds and in life-threatening situations this fear of going troppo has persisted.
Sophie saw herself discussing these thoughts with the Commodore on the drive home across the harbour, saw the streams of coloured lights jigging on the water. Heard his voice and smiled yet again.
Mrs Featherston smiled a faintly puzzled one back and closed her eyes.
The Captain’s were already shut. He slept like the small hairless animal he was. He made snuffling noises. His mouth was open, his head back. His wife’s sleep was more tidy. They were both dead to the world.
Sophie was bored. Where was the Commodore? He had now been gone for ten minutes which seemed a long time.
She picked up the topmost Country Life which had a yuletide-log gathering scene on the cover. She moved with care. The tedium is more obvious if you’re caught in mid-snatch.
She read about wassail and the customs of the yule log, but her heart was unstirred. Her eyes kept returning to a small stuffed head (chamois? springbok? wildebeest?) which hung in a shadowy corner of the room. Even in the dim light the hair was soft and fluffy, the expression resigned as an early St Sebastian’s. Nobody presumably, however keen on the killing, would want stuffed terror on the wall.
Sophie studied the Houses for Sale. She checked out a fully refurbished Regency house in the Vale of Aylesbury and an important Grade II Georgian country house in Sunningdale, Berkshire. The Country Life bird of the week was a crossbill. A snaggletoothed ivory fish on the opposite page had a voracious appetite.
Fifteen minutes now, which was ridiculous. The Captain’s head had slipped forward, his wife’s still rested against her cushion. Her profile was pleasing; aquiline nose, closed mouth. The Captain gave a small bark, an old dog dreaming. Sophie returned Country Life to the table and tiptoed from the room. The Commodore might be flat on the floor in the cloakroom. She ran across skiddy rugs, her heels clattering. The door was not locked. She was in another type of air lock, an ante-room to the lavatory which smelled of rubber boots and coats, both of which were present. There was a small handbasin with brown soap and a nailbrush. The face in the mirror above was troubled. She rattled the door. ‘Edward. Are you in there?’
She rattled the handle again and flung the inner door open. Her image of slumped collapse was so vivid that the empty gleaming space was a surprise. She leaned against the wall, confronted by fading ships’ photographs of rows of men with folded arms staring straight ahead through seventy years. There was also a sepia photograph of either a very large water rat or a low-slung dog.
Her faint panic had gone and about time too. Obviously, for reasons known to himself but not her, the Commodore, after pumping ship (William), had gone elsewhere. It is absurd tracking down a fellow guest in someone else’s house but she was saved by a thought. The Captain and Mrs Featherston seem a little tired and perhaps they should slip away? Sophie wished to slip away very much indeed, to be together and alone. She left the lavatory. Nothing. Not a sound. She headed in the direction of the kitchen through a long narrow room lined with wooden cupboards and an old-fashioned safe with trickling water. Three pewter meat-covers hung on one wall. There was a wooden slide into the dining room and a closed door. For some reason she knocked. ‘Come in,’ called Edward.
His pinstriped jacket hung over one chair, a checked gingham apron frilled about his waist, his hands were immersed in soapy water. He placed a clean plate in a wooden drying rack by his left shoulder and smiled. ‘Hullo,’ he said.
Her inept shyness disappeared, the chill of Mrs Featherston’s reception was irrelevant. She picked up another tea towel. ‘Hullo.’
The Commodore was busy with a pot scrubber on the base of the casserole. His bald patch was an inch in diameter.
She took the casserole dish from his warm soapy hand. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Drain it a minute.’ She smiled, turned it upside down, watched it slide on the ancient brown salami terazzo. Domesticity in the desired is endearing.
‘I thought I’d come out for a few minutes. Break the back of it for Lettie.’
All by himself, scraping and scrubbing in this bleak outpost of the Empire.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she said again.
‘No, no, I wanted you to enjoy yourself.’
‘They’re asleep,’ she said, polishing a long-stemmed glass and longing for the Renault. The round wooden clock above the stove was ticking their lives away in finite bites. This life, she had learnt at Sunday school, was as the flight of a bird across a window, a brief glimpse, a moment of transition compared with aeons of life hereafter. Her love for Edward deepened. This good man had demonstrated unselfishness and caring for others in the here and now when there was so little left.
He turned to her, suds dripping, eyes shining. ‘Both of them?’
She moved nearer. ‘Yes.’
‘Poor Sophie,’ he murmured, wringing his white crochet dishcloth and shaking it. They were close together as Mrs Featherston entered. They leaped apart. Mrs Featherston was not pleased. She was displeased and said so, punting up a more admissible reason for her displeasure. ‘I would have thought, Edward, that you of all people would have known …’ She glanced at Sophie. ‘… I dislike guests coming into my kitchen. It’s so …’ Words failed her.
The Commodore charmed her with shared memories and recognition of the customs of his country and the quaintness of some. ‘I promise I won’t do it again,’ he said.
Mrs Featherston touched his shoulder briefly. ‘I’ll forgive you this time.’ They left her stark kitchen to its quiet defeated gloom and faint whiff of compost bucket.
Captain Featherston was stamping himself into wakefulness as they re-entered. He stomped one canvas shoe, then the other, scrubbed them on the wrinkled rug beneath his feet and slammed his pink hands on his knees. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘There you are.’
Sophie’s thanks were over-effusive. The Captain’s farewell was as exuberant as his welcome, his face and hands still shone. Mrs Featherston’s was cool.
They swept out the circular drive and drove towards the bridge.
‘Whacko,’ said Sophie.
His smile was beautiful. ‘What?’
‘I like it here.’
The car sped past solid well-treed houses.
Edward took her hand and placed it on his thigh. It lay at rest, oddly separate from her but at ease. ‘Dearest Sophie,’ he murmured.
‘Tell me about Sufism,’ she said as they swept past the Herne Bay Baths. The night was still, cloudless, a full moon was sailing above North Head where the tunnels are. The kaleidoscope reflections glinted on the harbour as she had known they would.
‘I don’t know much,’ said the Commodore and told her.
They crossed the bridge at a glide, sailing away from the ridiculous confusions she had extracted from an evening of pleasure.
Edward turned towards Takapuna instead of Devonport. Sophie did not comment on this error. He pulled the car to a halt at the end of a blind road facing Takapuna Beach. Small waves slapped the sand; Rangitoto was a black cut-out against dark sky. ‘Darling,’ he said.
Sophie, who was aware of betrayal, turned to him. Snatching and grabbing i
n their fierce joy they reached for each other, their mouths busy as their hands. ‘My darling, my sweetest love.’ The moon shone.
Her breasts were covered by his bent head. ‘Christ, we can’t stay here,’ he muttered as two shadows slipped past the car, ‘the whole of Philomel’ll be rooting down there.’
She did not laugh. It was not a joke. After some time he leaned back. ‘What are we going to do?’
Indecisions, guilt, irrelevancies would have to wait. ‘We’ll go home now,’ she said, ‘and later we’ll have to get away somewhere.’
‘Home?’
‘Mine. Ours.’
His voice was desperate. ‘We can’t.’ This man was not using her for an easy lay (William). She knew he was not. She would go to the stake for this belief but that is easy to say is it not. Her legs navigated the gear lever as she leaned across to kiss the shape of his mouth. His cheek was rough, he had not had a second shave this evening. ‘Would you do that,’ he said, ‘go away somewhere?’
Her hand was in his hair. ‘If I can get someone to mind the children.’ It was now stroking his face, lingering on the cheekbone which was not shiny at all, exploring the dip beneath, tracing the mouth with one finger.
‘You would?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where? Where would be safe?’
Nowhere.
‘I’ll think of somewhere,’ she said. ‘Up north. The hot pools.’
‘I’ll park the car along the road,’ he said on the Gasworks straight. ‘Wait till I see the babysitter leave. That’s her old Hillman, isn’t it? The red one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll walk back.’
‘Good.’ How simple life is when you plan ahead. ‘Good,’ she said again.
Lou had also gone to sleep. Her mouth was open, her legs spread wide, her snore a muted whistling. Her crocheted squares lay beside her splayed bare feet which were tipped with silver. When she has enough ecru squares she will crochet them together to form a double bedspread beneath which she and Evan will lie for ever. It is tomorrow’s heirloom today. Lou has sixty-five squares already. She counts them every day. She can understand misers, she says. And squirrels.
All the Nice Girls Page 7