The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

by Margaret Forster

  ‘Well,’ she said, brightly, ‘is Amy having a party?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alice, taking her cue, ‘ten altogether.’

  ‘My goodness, you’ll be busy with ten two-year-olds.’

  ‘They aren’t all two,’ Alice said, ‘there’s the boys next door, the younger ones, they’re six and seven, I think, but she adores them –’

  ‘I think I’ve seen them,’ Rose said, ‘has one got red hair, a bit chubby?’

  ‘That’s right, that’s Rory. Then there’s the Stewart girl, Sally, she’s four, isn’t she – or is it five?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rose, sniffing, ‘never have nothing to do with them though we hear them enough. They don’t have anything to do with the likes of us.’

  Alice hesitated. ‘And Sam at the end of the road, he’s five and a half.’

  ‘Him down the road?’ Rose asked. ‘Yes, I know him, friendly little kiddie, not like the mother.’

  Alice stayed quiet. Charlotte Driscoll along the road had told her, quite matter-of-fact, how unfriendly Mrs Pendlebury was. She had asked Alice, too sweetly, what the secret of her success was? How had Alice won Mrs P. over when everyone else had failed? Alice had blushed and stuttered she didn’t know. Questions like that were agony. Of course she knew, but Charlotte had not the patience to unravel it all. That was the point, as Mrs P. had divined – Charlotte and those like her were not interested in Mrs P., only in adding another scalp to their already crowded belt.

  There was a distinct silence, full of tea pouring and biscuit munching. Alice felt this was a test case if ever there was one. If she let Mrs P. get away with condemning Charlotte, if she didn’t tell her she also was at fault, then that was it. The level of her own friendship with Mrs P. would have been determined for all time. She would be stuck with a cardboard acquaintance when she had wanted to move towards reality and move Mrs P. with her. Breathing deeply she said, ‘How do you know she’s stuck up?’

  ‘Her on the corner? You only have to look at her.’

  ‘But she can’t help how she looks.’

  ‘You can’t help your features but you can help how you arrange them,’ Rose retorted. ‘Oh yes, certainly you can.’

  Alice stared at Mrs P.’s very crossly arranged features and the scowl that nearly always sat on them.

  ‘Well, you know how it is,’ she said. ‘Often I catch sight of myself in a shop window and I think who’s that bad-tempered girl and it’s only because I’ve been thinking hard about something or worrying.’

  ‘She hasn’t got anything to worry about.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Alice asked, quite sharply.

  ‘They’ve plenty of money, you can see that.’

  ‘But there are other things to worry about apart from money,’ Alice argued.

  ‘That voice,’ Rose said, ‘it goes through me hearing her call that child, real lady of the manor she is. The little boy asked me once if I wanted a lift in the car to do my shopping – do you want to come in my mummy’s car he said – and she said, she said not today darling another day. Oh yes, she wasn’t too shy to say that – not today darling or any other day, not likely. I’ve never looked at her since and don’t intend to.’

  ‘But what good does that do?’ Alice almost wailed with distress.

  ‘Good,’ said Rose, ‘who’s talking about good? I don’t want to do her good, I just want to keep her out of sight and mind, thank you very much.’

  ‘But then the world isn’t a very nice place.’ Alice didn’t care how prim she sounded. ‘It just gets worse and worse.’

  ‘It couldn’t get worse,’ Rose said. ‘It’s as bad as it can get. All you get on the news is robberies and violence. There’s nowhere safe any more. If it isn’t bombs it’s strikes. Most of those who strike are lazy good-for-nothings, they’ve never done a decent day’s work in their life, they don’t know what hard work is but then the State just encourages them. We had no social security or whatever it’s called in our day. If you didn’t work you starved and that was that.’

  ‘Surely you don’t think that was a good thing?’ Alice asked. She was getting so nervous she found it a struggle not to shout.

  ‘Work’s always a good thing,’ Rose said, sternly. ‘If more people worked the country wouldn’t be in the state it is.’

  Alice had never been so glad to hear Amy wake up. She rushed upstairs and brought her down and positively flung her into Mrs P.’s arms, then collapsed exhausted into a chair. It was horrible hearing Mrs P. rant on like that, dodging this way and that, punches to the belly, punches to the groin and no time to recover in between. Now, she was all smiles and laughs, all songs and jests as she bounced Amy up and down on her knee. Was it the same person? There were whole areas of discussion it would never be safe to touch on. She felt tired at the thought of all the careful treading that would have to be done, and for what?

  ‘I like to speak my mind,’ Rose said, suddenly, literally in the middle of ‘Baa-baa Black Sheep’, ‘and I like people to speak theirs.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ Alice said, weakly.

  The minute Rose went back next door Stanley said, ‘You’ve got a good colour. What’ve you been doing in there?’

  ‘Arguing,’ Rose announced.

  Stanley looked shocked.

  ‘You needn’t look so horrified,’ Rose said, ‘we didn’t come to blows.’ She smiled at her joke. ‘Yes, we have a good bit of give-and-take in there, I can tell you, we both say what we think.’

  ‘What was it about?’ Stanley asked.

  ‘Politics.’

  ‘How do you mean, politics?’

  ‘Politics – something you’ve always been too lazy to find out about. You needn’t look so dumbfounded.’

  Stanley decided to keep quiet. It was all too complicated. ‘As long as you enjoyed it,’ he said.

  ‘I did enjoy it, and I’m not ashamed to say so. It’s a good thing to give your views an airing.’

  ‘Be careful who you do it with that’s all,’ Stanley said. ‘People can take it differently from how you think. You don’t realize sometimes how you hurt people’s feelings.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Rose snapped.

  But afterwards, for the rest of the day and night, she worried. Had she been too hasty? She tried to remember how Alice had taken her frankness. She tried to see the expression on her face but couldn’t for the life of her picture it. That in itself made her anxious – she must have got carried away. How had it all begun? That Charlotte woman, her at the end of the road, that was how it had begun, she would be at the bottom of it. Well, she was unrepentant. She hated that woman and her sort. Alice was different. Come to think of it, she wasn’t sure where Alice fitted in. She wasn’t like that Charlotte or the Stewart woman, she’d seen that straight away even before they became friends, but she wasn’t like her and Stanley either, even allowing for age. Where did Alice belong, whose side was she on? Pondering about this sent Rose very successfully to sleep at two o’clock in the morning and she had a splendid sleep till eight. She woke up full of energy and knew at once that this was a day to have an Outing.

  It was a beautiful December morning with the finest of frosts covering the grass and the thinnest of mists masking a blue sky. By eleven it would be glorious. Rose rushed to get ready and lay the breakfast and get Stanley up and out. He grumbled all the time but she persevered with good humour and by ten-thirty they were standing on the doorstep, the front door shaking with the bang Rose had given it as it shut to.

  ‘Ooh, smell the air!’ she said.

  Stanley coughed and muttered, ‘Bit raw if you ask me.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t breathe properly,’ Rose said. ‘Come on, best foot forwards.’

  They nearly tripped over Amy, playing on the pavement in front of her gate with a tricycle. Naturally, they stopped and engaged in a long chat about Santa Claus and her birthday and so on and then when Rose said they’d better get on she said can Amy come with Pen and when Rose said not today da
rling she began to cry. That did it. Rose felt brutal. Somewhere, someone had done that to her – not today. How could Amy understand not today? Why not today? Rose laughed out loud – she loved to feel herself about to do something daring.

  ‘We’ll take her with us,’ she said to Stanley.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Stanley asked. ‘How can we take her if we don’t know where we’re going?’

  ‘We’ll go to the heath, to Kenwood,’ Rose said, ‘it’s just the place to be on a nice day like this.’

  ‘That means a bus.’

  ‘All right it means a bus,’ Rose said, impatient. ‘As if we haven’t been on a bus before.’

  ‘Bus, bus, bus!’ Amy shouted.

  ‘Yes, bus, bus, bus!’ Rose shouted, laughing. ‘Come on Stanley, ring that bell and we’ll get a coat for her and a pushchair.’

  Some twenty minutes later they stood in the High Street waiting for a bus, with Stanley holding the collapsed pushchair and Rose holding Amy’s hand. Rose was not quite as euphoric as before. She kept telling Stanley to be ready, to step on the bus the minute it stopped and lose no time. She would hand Amy to him and he had to sit her on the first available seat and sit down at once beside her. Amy was in the seventh heaven. Half of what she said, or tried to say, was lost in the roar of the traffic but Rose kept beaming and smiling and it seemed to satisfy her. The traffic was terrible. Faint pricklings of irritation that children should be subjected to all this noise and dirt threatened to spoil the glow Rose had enjoyed since she woke up, but she stamped them out. Amy was oblivious to the dust and screech of brakes. When the bus duly arrived she was as good as gold and hopped on neat as you please and did what she was told. There were no problems, and when they got to Highgate it was the terminus so there were no problems there either. The conductor even set the pram up for them and, what pleased Rose most of all, told Amy to hold Grannie’s hand while she got off the bus. She didn’t contradict him. Why should she? She’d never see him again, there was no harm done letting him think what he liked.

  Everyone thought the same, she could see they did. All along the front of Kenwood House when they wheeled Amy past people smiled and nodded. Amy was such an engaging little thing, so bright and perky, and Alice had her dressed just right. Rose approved, she liked the new things they had for children these days. Amy’s scarlet siren suit lined with some kind of white wool was exactly what was wanted, it kept her warm and snug and it didn’t matter how dirty she got it because it could be washed in a jiffy.

  Stanley was soon left behind. Amy trotted this way and that, forever changing direction like a yacht in a gale, and Rose trotted with her, alternately chasing and being chased. Every now and again she would remove some dirt from Amy’s hand, or check that she hadn’t cut herself during some minor fall, and these were the moments she liked best. Then, she was claiming Amy as hers. People watching saw Amy belonged to her, that she wasn’t an elderly woman on her own but responsible for a child, such a pretty child, and that felt good. Carting Stanley about with you was no source of pride. He was an encumbrance, like an umbrella on a sunny day, something you took because you were overcautious and cursed all the time when you didn’t need it. Amy was an asset. Rose felt, the child beside her, that she didn’t look so bad after all. She felt healthy and vigorous, ready for anything.

  They went into the café in the coach house and had coffee before they left. Rose was a little tense about taking Amy in. She would have preferred not to have a coffee and tried to persuade Stanley that neither of them needed a drink, especially a hot one, but Stanley would not be put off. He was dying for a hot drink. Typically, he did not care that satisfying his own wants might endanger Amy. She might pull the drink over – Rose could just see it happening. The minute Stanley put the two cups on the table together with Amy’s juice, she was on to him. He must sit well away from Amy and if he put his cup down on the saucer guard it with his hands. She herself drank the scalding liquid in three quick gulps and then pushed the empty cup and saucer away. Even empty cups were dangerous – they might get pulled over and break and the jagged ends could cut if Amy touched them. Amy showed no signs of breaking anything. She sat quite still and self-important, sipping her juice through a straw and breaking off every now and again to beam at Pen. Rose beamed back and relaxed a little. The chubby legs in their red wellingtons were kicking her as they swung backwards and forwards but she didn’t mind. Amy finished her drink and rubbed her eyes.

  ‘She’s tired,’ Rose said, concerned, ‘best be off.’

  ‘Half a mo,’ Stanley said, ‘I haven’t finished my coffee.’

  ‘Can’t help that,’ Rose said. ‘Come on, hurry up. When a child’s tired you can’t fret about coffee. Alice said to be back at twelve-thirty and back we must be. She has her dinner then and a nap.’

  ‘Wee wee,’ Amy said.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Rose said, ‘where are the toilets?’

  ‘Next door but one,’ Stanley said. ‘You take her and I’ll finish my drink.’

  There was no alternative. Rose took Amy’s hand and hurried her along and was grateful to find the lavatories without any difficulty. Getting Amy out of her siren suit was much harder. Rose soon lost her admiration for the garment as she struggled with the zip and pulled off the arms and then underneath there were tights and pants and it was all a lot of bother. At last the little bottom emerged, like a white nut from its casing, and onto the lavatory went Amy. She was so small, Rose had to hold her steady. The look of desperate concentration of the child’s face made her both laugh and cry. She was quick with her congratulations afterwards, telling her over and over again what a good girl she was. The minute Amy had finished, Rose realized she wanted to spend a penny herself, but she couldn’t, not with the child there watching. It wasn’t nice, she would feel embarrassed. Carefully, she explained to Amy that Pen wanted a wee-wee too and if Amy just stood outside the door and didn’t move Pen wouldn’t be a minute. Rose tried, while lifting her heavy coat and skirt with one hand, to keep the lavatory door shut with the other, but Amy thought it was a game and pushed hard against it. Rose was in such a hurry to finish that she emerged with her clothes all anyhow and a definite feeling of discomfort, but there was no time to put herself right. Amy had to be home by twelve-thirty.

  She was relieved, when they got outside, to see Stanley waiting outside the café.

  ‘You’ve been an age,’ he said, ‘been having trouble?’

  ‘No,’ said Rose. ‘Now come on, best foot forward before she falls asleep.’

  ‘Doesn’t look sleepy to me,’ Stanley said, and indeed Amy had revived – so much so that she refused to get in the pushchair.

  ‘I’ll go and get her a lolly,’ Stanley said, ‘that’ll persuade her.’

  ‘Indeed you will not,’ said Rose, ‘the very idea.’

  ‘Lolly?’ said Amy, hopefully.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ said Rose. ‘Go and get her an apple Stanley – they sell apples, I saw them.’

  Stanley got the apple but Amy took one look and hurled it away.

  ‘Now that was naughty,’ Rose said. A woman passing was heard to comment, ‘Poor little thing,’ and Rose flushed crimson.

  ‘I’ll carry her,’ Stanley volunteered.

  ‘You can’t carry her,’ Rose said.

  But he did. While she pushed the empty pushchair, feeling very foolish, Stanley carried her. Rose tightened her lips as she watched the little girl cuddle up against Stanley, shrieking with laughter as she examined at close quarters his funny hairy nostrils and flappy ears. He wiggled his eyebrows at her and she giggled fit to burst.

  ‘You’re spoiling her,’ Rose accused him, ‘she needs a firm hand. Put her down now.’

  ‘She’s all right,’ Stanley said.

  ‘You’ll be in bed tomorrow with a bad back,’ Rose warned, ‘and then it won’t be all right.’

  He carried her all the way to the bus stop and only relinquished her when they got on. Rose took hold of her
reluctantly, afraid she might not come, but Amy was just as happy to cuddle Rose as Stanley and immediately began playing with the buttons on Rose’s coat. She smelled slightly of cigarette smoke which annoyed Rose. Stanley shouldn’t smoke cigarettes if he was going to have anything to do with children. It wasn’t nice. She’d never let him smoke when Frank was little, not until he was old enough for his lungs to cope, for it was Rose’s considered opinion that babies’ lungs were easily damaged. She’d made him go out of their bed-sitting room on the rare occasion when he had a cigarette.

  They walked into Rawlinson Road in good order, Amy safely strapped in her chair, to Rose’s immense relief. People she’d never spoken to spoke to them as they made their way and she found herself smiling back graciously. Stanley had his hands on the pushchair too but she gradually edged them off. Two couldn’t push a pushchair comfortably, there wasn’t room on the handle for four hands. It made her feel very steady having that handle to hold onto – it felt solid under her grip and gave her confidence, like holding onto a banister when you were coming downstairs did. She found herself trying to remember what had happened to their pram after Ellen died. A big Silver Cross thing it had been, much too big for their room, much too expensive for their purse, but she had been determined her children should have the best pram, even if she couldn’t give them the best of anything else except love. It had taken up most of the space in their room and they had used it as a table, putting a board across the top and sitting on stools either side. She had kept it in immaculate condition. Often, when she read adverts put in by people trying to sell prams, she came across the phrase ‘immaculate condition’ and wondered if they knew what they were talking about. Her pram had gleamed. You could literally see your face in the navy blue side, and the chrome work glittered even without the sun on it. But it had become a coffin, that’s what. Ellen had died in it. She’d told Stanley to burn it. As they were nearing home she turned to Stanley and stood still and said very casually, ‘What did you do with our Ellen’s pram?’