The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

by Margaret Forster

  They had lunch in the cafeteria at John Lewis. It meant queueing for a short while and being told which table to go to instead of choosing their own, which Rose hated, but there was no alternative. It was one o’clock and they were there and exhausted. Rose was nearly in tears and gulped tea with her chicken salad to console herself. She hid her unhappiness under an aggressive front, making bitter remarks about the quality of the goods in the shops and the inferiority of the assistants, but Stanley did not heed her. He was thinking. What they needed was some personal service.

  ‘The trouble is,’ he said, ‘these shops are too big. What are we doing in big shops? You want to try a small shop that specializes in your type and size.’

  ‘Nobody specializes in freaks,’ Rose said.

  ‘There must be small shops,’ Stanley said.

  ‘No,’ said Rose, ‘just boutiques. Nothing my sort.’

  ‘That can’t be true,’ Stanley remonstrated mildly enough but she burst out – ‘There aren’t any small shops these days’ – so he kept quiet. Better leave well alone. Perhaps at the next place they’d have some luck, and even if they didn’t it wouldn’t be long before they set off home to avoid the rush-hour Rose was terrified of. He’d tried to do his bit and been repulsed. She would have to suffer for her own stubbornness.

  It was a weary couple that Tony Oram passed on his way home that night. They were walking very slowly near the kerb edge down Rawlinson Road. She seemed to be staggering. If she hadn’t looked so fierce he would have stopped to ask if anything was the matter, or to offer to carry the large paper carrier-bag that seemed to burden the old man so heavily. As it was, he drew up his car and was in the house before they reached theirs, to avoid the drag of having to exchange pleasantries with them.

  Rose was relieved. The last thing she wanted to have to do was even say so much as good evening to a single soul. The ordeal over, she wanted to find sanctuary. Standing on the doorstep while Stanley fumbled about for his key such a longing overcame her to get in the house and never leave it that she whimpered with impatience. Every time she closed her eyes with exhaustion she saw hundreds and hundreds of people as they had walked past her, trapping her, in Oxford Street. None of them cared. They were all busy, all rushing, all trampling her down. The only sanity was inside her own front door minding her own business, or out in the garden playing with that child.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake hurry up!’ she shouted and banged her fists in Stanley’s back.

  Chapter Five

  THE POSTMAN DID not call often at No. 6 Rawlinson Road. Most mornings, he walked straight past, hardly troubled to check that he had indeed nothing for Mr and Mrs, or S. J. and R. B., Pendlebury. When he did have something to put through the letter-box it was usually a dull, buff envelope obviously containing either a bill or some kind of official information. Occasionally there was an airmail envelope, postmarked Australia, but they were few and far between. The postman actually did notice these airmail letters – the same man had been doing that street for ten years, to his own surprise – and if he had been on better terms with the Pendleburys he would have enjoyed giving them a bit of a rat-a-tat to herald the arrival of an important-looking letter. But he had only seen Him twice and Her never, so no special fanfare was called for.

  The Pendleburys had never had much mail so they were used to this situation. Not many people they knew wrote letters. Once Stanley had finished work there was little to communicate with anyone about. Nevertheless, Rose always listened for the flap of the front door letter-box going, and always went immediately to see what had arrived. Without exception she was always disappointed. Even the Australian letters – though she loved them – were an anti-climax. Sometimes, she had been standing at a front window when the postman went by and she had been astonished at the number of letters the people across the road got – they had to be positively shovelled through the large brass letter-box which looked in any case as though it had been purpose-built. She imagined what it must be like to have to gather up the letters in armfuls and sit down at a table and open them all.

  The letter-box at No. 6 was small and neat, painted the same pale yellow as the door. Behind it was a little box, like a bird’s nesting-box, into which any letters were meant to plop. They could then be withdrawn through the iron grille at the back – in all, a complicated procedure that would have annoyed most people. It had annoyed Frank, who took after his father in that he was rarely annoyed. During the last two years of his residence in the house there had even been talk of changing both the style and the size of the letter-box, but it had come to nothing. It was well down the list of things that needed doing, way after a garage and a new kitchen and new guttering. Since Frank’s big, bulky envelopes full of technical farming stuff no longer arrived there had been no problem.

  One morning in September, Rose heard the postman and the flap going and was instantly alert from the half slumber she fell into around dawn. It could not be a letter from Frank – even Veronica was not so punctilious as to reply within a month. She hoped not, anyway, for she had not begun to look forward to one yet. Some dreary handout she supposed, or a card saying Stanley’s new dentures were ready and would he please collect them. There was no point in going down at 7.30 specially to get whatever had come, but she undoubtedly felt parched. It had been another hot night, not a breath of air stirring the light net curtains. She needed a cup of tea.

  The letter was the invitation to Elsie’s daughter’s wedding. The fact that she had known it was coming did not spoil Rose’s pleasure one bit. It increased it, for there was no edge of apprehension about opening a strange-looking envelope that might contain anything. She made her cup of tea, then sat down to open the square, thick white envelope. Nice bold handwriting on the outside, not Dolores’ she knew. Dolores could hardly hold a pen, as Rose had contemptuously remarked to her husband many times. She was pretty enough in the same kind of flash way as her name, but she hadn’t stuck in at school and had ended up what they called a receptionist in a hotel. Elsie, her mother, seemed to think that was a good job, but Rose wasn’t taken in. Dolores had no qualifications, not like Frank. Stanley excused her on the grounds that she was a girl, but Rose said Ellen would have been made to get some.

  All mention of Ellen was banned. If her name slipped out, as it sometimes did, it was tacitly agreed that the culprit be excused, and no further word uttered for half an hour. Thoughts of Ellen were also banned but since they lurked in funny corners of one’s head, they were not so easily dealt with. Dolores always brought Ellen to mind which was natural since they had been born within a week of each other, Elsie’s first and only and Rose’s second. After it was all over – it – Elsie had said she hoped Rose would look upon her niece, her Dolores, as a daughter in Ellen’s place. She had urged Rose to have her as often as she liked – which years later Frank had made his mother see might, in the circumstances, have been rather courageous – but the offer had never been taken up. Rose had watched Dolores grow up from afar. There was no knowledge between them and no affection.

  The invitation was very impressive. No expense had been spared as far as size and thickness of paper and gold lettering went. Rose admired it unreservedly and made a mental note to tell Elsie so. Praise where praise is due, as Stanley could be relied upon to say. She envied her sister-in-law the satisfaction of sending out this kind of high-class card. Frank’s had been a shabby affair. He and Veronica had got married in a registry office and, from all accounts, had only two friends to a lunch afterwards. Once it was clear there had been no need to get married like that – and Rose had been terribly afraid there was need – it had been unforgivable. She quite saw she couldn’t have gone to the wedding but to have had some lovely pictures and a photo in the local paper and perhaps been sent snippets of the dress material – these would have been such comforts. There had been nothing to show Elsie and her husband George – nothing at all. It had choked Rose even to tell them. Now Elsie was having all this satisfaction. She knew ch
ildren weren’t competitions, but it was hard.

  It was a church wedding, of course. Rose was sure Elsie had kept going to St Anne’s in Highgate specially so Dolores could get married there, for they had moved to an area where the churches were not pretty places. Every other Sunday, Elsie had trailed over from Hackney to go to St Anne’s and now her years of devotion were repaid. St Anne’s would make a nice background for the photographs. Well, let her have her hour of glory. She was welcome to it. When it was over she would be left with nothing, like them, unless Dolores proved more devoted than she had ever seemed. She would need to be to bridge the distance between Edinburgh and London. Elsie couldn’t bear to talk about it, but she would have to face up to the unpleasant truth that she would hardly ever see her daughter, once married. She had said hopefully to Rose that once Alan was qualified they might move back south, but Rose had replied, rather cruelly, that pigs might fly.

  Now that she was up, Rose felt she might as well have her breakfast and listen to the wireless. She was snobbish about the wireless and at the same time forgetful. She was in the habit of putting it on and forgetting about it – just as Stanley did with his television – but, whereas she stormed and raged at him for the waste involved, she excused herself on the grounds that, since she had it on very low, no harm was done. That was how she put it on now – very low, a bare hum, enough to make her feel part of the busy world of outside news, and yet without it being an intrusion. She couldn’t hear a word that was being said but that didn’t worry her. It was all bad news. Nothing nice ever seemed to happen. It was all killing and violence and strikes. She only felt safe when she could hear music coming through and then she turned it up.

  It was such a lovely morning she decided to have breakfast in the garden: the idea excited her. She bustled about laying a tray and setting up the card table and a chair in a sunny spot. Only one spot was sunny at that time of the morning, down on the right near the japonica bush, where the sun just hit their garden as it rounded the end of the terrace. She felt worried about being so far away from the shelter of the house, but the earliness of the hour consoled her. Settled there, with her tea and toast and marmalade, she lifted her face to the sun and smiled. It was all so quiet and green. Dappled was the word, the day was dappled all round her. Her tiredness after the long night lifted. She could feel the sun warm the wrinkles on her face and persuaded herself some at least were ironed out. This was all she wanted to do, just sit somewhere quiet and green and not have to bother about anything.

  Rose clung desperately to her contentment as the first cloud of anxiety came up. A present for Dolores and Alan. She said the words to herself then squeezed her eyes tight in an effort to blot them out. A wedding present. It had to be faced. More shopping, more getting Stanley into a decent suit, more trailing about. And what to get? They would have everything, all young couples did these days. She and Stanley had had so little, they were glad of anything. Sheets. That was traditional – or a blanket, or crockery. Sheets would be best, but coloured or plain? Coloured, she supposed. But what colours? She jumped up and went into the house to pour another cup of tea. Quietly she said out loud, ‘Now stop it, my girl, just stop it.’ She knew she said it out loud. She was pleased with the firm tone she managed to adopt towards herself. It cheered her. That was the way.

  Her second cup of tea in her hand, Mrs Pendlebury did a tour of the garden. It was too early to think of playing with Amy. There was no noise at all from that garden, though on the other side she could hear clattering beginning. She patrolled up and down the lawn for a while and then drew her chair into a larger patch of sun that had appeared near the raspberries. As she did so she heard a voice say, ‘You’re sunbathing early today.’ She remained half bent, her hands still gripping the chair she had been about to set down, the back of her neck suddenly cold and clammy. Carefully, she released the chair, her free hand going up to her hair to tidy it. She almost ran back into the house, but with a great effort turned and faced the voice. Amy’s mother was peeping over the wall, her long dark hair tangled in raspberry canes. As though dazed, she heard herself say, ‘Yes,’ and then repeat it, ‘Ye-e-es.’ Her alarm grew as the girl’s face disappeared, though the voice continued, ‘Say hello to your friend, Amy,’ then back came the face with another beside it.

  ‘Amy’s here,’ Amy said, wriggling in her mother’s arms.

  ‘Yes, I know, Amy’s there,’ Rose said, slipping into the patter easily.

  ‘There,’ Alice said, ‘I told you your kind lady was there. Say good morning Mrs Pendlebury.’

  ‘No,’ Amy said and slipped from view to run shrieking round her own garden.

  ‘You have been kind to her,’ Alice said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Rose said, stiffening slightly. ‘Well, I’d best get on.’

  ‘I hope I haven’t kept you back.’

  Rose looked sharply at the girl. Her face was scarlet, her eyes worried.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said again. ‘It’s going to be another nice day.’

  ‘Hot.’

  ‘A bit muggy.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll have a storm later.’

  ‘We need the rain.’

  ‘Well, I’d best get on.’

  ‘And me.’

  They both nodded, and drew back from the wall. Rose deliberately stayed in the garden a few minutes longer before going in. Her heart had quietened down. She had said nothing she regretted. For a moment she had thought she was being patronized but had realized her mistake in time. The girl only wanted to be friendly and she had been friendly back. There was neither need nor likelihood of it going further.

  But it went further, gathering momentum with each day. Now that they knew each other it was surprising how often they met going in and out of their houses, and always they saluted each other and exchanged words. Rose felt a little awkward, partly because she did not always see Alice and Amy before they saw her and was genuinely taken aback by their greetings. Her eyes simply weren’t up to recognizing new shapes in a hurry. It was because of this slowness on the uptake, which she felt might give offence, that she was careful to be enthusiastic when she did see her neighbours. She always put down her shopping basket or her milk bottle and said, ‘How is Amy today?’ very cheerfully. The child’s babble in return delighted her. She sifted the sounds cleverly and soon came to recognize the key words so that after a month Alice was assuring her she was the only one who could understand what the child said.

  The only part of this new harmony that Mrs Pendlebury didn’t like was the questions. Amy couldn’t phrase proper questions but in her fashion she demanded to know Mrs Pendlebury’s name, where she was going, where she had been and so on. The inquiries were, easily evaded, but the day was not far off, she felt, when they could not be. Then what would she say? It wasn’t that she minded Amy knowing but she minded Alice. It was while she was anticipating this situation that another one arose she had not even thought about. Amy began to want to come into her house. She would strain and pull at her mother’s hand, jabbing her finger at Mrs Pendlebury’s door and making her meaning quite clear. Luckily, Alice was firm. ‘No, you can’t go in there, Mrs Pendlebury’s busy,’ she would say without the trace of a hint in her voice. ‘Yes, well, best get on,’ Mrs Pendlebury would say, but afterwards she wondered about it. Why not let Amy come in? Doubtless she’d be out again in a second, no harm done. But her mother might come too, and that was different.

  She supposed she’d been preparing herself for it for a long time but nevertheless Mrs Pendlebury took herself by surprise when one afternoon in early October, she peered over her garden wall and interrupted Amy’s screaming with ‘Hey, madam, what’s up with you today? I won’t let you come and see me if you scream like that.’ The screaming stopped. Amy came to the wall and stretched on tip-toe shouting, ‘Up! Up!’

  ‘Where’s your mummy then?’

  ‘Mummy house.’

  ‘Go and get mummy and ask her to come out. Go get mummy, Amy.’


  The child ran in shouting and soon reappeared with Alice, who was wearing an apron and rubber gloves covered with soap suds.

  ‘I knew you’d be busy,’ Mrs Pendlebury said, quickly, ‘so I thought she could come over to me for a few minutes, just for a minute or two, to give you a chance. That’s if she’ll come.’

  ‘Oh, she’ll come all right,’ Alice said, ‘but –’

  ‘Of course, if you’d rather not, if –’

  ‘No, no – here, Amy’ – and she lifted Amy on to the wall, unable to say what she wanted to say which was that such a habit once begun might prove impossible to break.

  Rose enveloped Amy in her arms to lift her down from the wall. Oh, the feel of her! The small fat tummy pressed into her chest and the soft arms rubbed her neck and the tiny toes curled into her waist. She felt intoxicated and longed to bury herself in this warm flesh and smell it and luxuriate in it, but Amy was all kicks and punches, longing to be free, so she set her down, keeping only the hand in hers and even the hand thrilled her. She ran to keep up rather than let it go. Amy made straight for the back door, though she had thought of them playing in the garden, and was inside before she could be stopped.