Rose let the paper fall out of her hands. She was crying, her body shaking. The sun shone very brightly but it was a menacing brightness, hard, metallic. She wanted to run screaming from it. Stanley came out slopping tea all over a saucer.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘have a cup of tea.’ He was so unobservant, never seeing her tears. ‘You should wear sunglasses,’ he said, ‘that sun’s strong. What have you been doing with my paper? It’s all scrunched up.’
‘I was reading it.’
‘That makes a change. What were you reading?’
Rose jabbed a finger at the item. Stanley peered at it.
‘Oh that,’ he said, ‘I don’t read those bits. Nothing of interest there.’
‘Nothing of interest?’
‘No, not to me. You’ll always get silly people like that, not looking after themselves.’
‘She had arthritis, she couldn’t get about.’
‘Well, she should have looked after herself.’
‘But she didn’t know anybody, she hadn’t any family, nobody came near her.’
‘I expect it was her own fault. Look – it says – “refused offers of a ground-floor pensioner’s flat”. There you are, what did I tell you? Some people are just stubborn.’
‘Like me.’
‘You’re not stubborn. Anyway, you’re not living on your own in a third-floor flat with arthritis and you’ve got family and neighbours.’
‘Family? Frank’s in Australia, what good would that be?’
‘There’s Elsie.’
‘How often does she come? Every six weeks, like the sister-in-law in the paper.’
‘What are you getting at?’
He stared at her, belligerent, his lower lip sticking out. He didn’t like the way things were going, not at all. Here they were in the middle of a lovely summer day and this had to happen, a bolt out of the blue, as surprising as if it started to snow at this very minute. He scratched his head. What was needed was a diversion, something to take her mind off things before that hunted look claimed her face.
‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘we should have a day out while the weather lasts, a day by the seaside. We could go to Brighton, tomorrow, first thing, have our lunch and tea out and a walk on the pier?’
She shook her head, still crying, and he felt frightened. He wished Alice wasn’t away. There must be something the matter with Rose, something he didn’t know about, something serious.
‘I’m sending for the doctor,’ he said, but she at once cried harder and shook her head and got in such a state that he had to take that back.
‘Quiet then,’ he kept saying, ‘quiet then, or I will send for the doctor,’ and bit by bit he edged her into the house.
In bed, alone, Rose slept. The sun was still shining when she woke up. At first she was alarmed to be in bed with the sun shining but then she remembered. The sheets were cool and she felt comfortable. She had a strange feeling of lightness and distance, as though she wasn’t really inside herself, but on the outside looking in – strange, but not unpleasant. The drowsiness that made her eyes heavy was hard to fight but she felt it was dangerous and must be controlled and fought it hard. Eventually, she got out of bed, amazed to find she still had her clothes on, even her shoes. Stanley must have been in a right old panic. It made her smile to think about it but then memories of how she’d disgraced herself took the smile off her face. Stanley would want to know what had been the matter. He had a right to ask but she wasn’t going to be able to answer him. It would be no good appealing to any powers of intuition – Stanley had none – nor could she ask him to identify with her sense of the supernatural. The nearest she would be able to get would be to tell him she’d felt as if someone was walking over her grave. He would understand that, and put it down to the piece in the newspaper on top of feeling depressed. That would have to do. Digging deeper was in any case painful, but she knew that feeling, that state of terror, had nothing to do with newspaper stories or depression or tiredness. She’d had that feeling since she was seven and had learnt to live with it, until recently. It was only now that she was old that she couldn’t deal with it.
There had never been any telling when this vision of her own mortality would strike. If anything, she had it worst when she was happy. She remembered particularly the day Stanley had said he loved her and asked her to marry him and her happiness – such a physical ache of pleasure – had been pierced by a terror so acute that she had clung to him and cried. He had been amused. She couldn’t make him see how happiness was so near tragedy, she couldn’t tell him how afraid it made her. Then again, when Frank was born, the sweetness and relief mixed with misery until she crouched under the sheets and wept and wept. Stanley said she was morbid, that was all. Morbid? She knew what the word meant and she wasn’t, she wasn’t preoccupied with death, death had nothing to do with it. It was just happiness made her shiver. Not always, of course, just sometimes. Everything seemed pitiful. The only release she had ever found was a few times in – she found it hard to find words to use even to herself – in love-making. She often felt guilty and furtive when she came across references in newspapers or the occasional magazine that came her way to what they called the ecstasy of an orgasm. She tended to frown when she read them and made sure Stanley wasn’t about, but she knew that was what had happened to her. It was a horrible word, but that was when – when she was having one – that was when she felt at peace. Happy but at peace in one split second, the whole process – happiness, terror and then the most marvellous peace.
Well, that was a long year ago. She stood and looked at the single beds before going down. She couldn’t remember the last time they had made love but she recalled feeling ashamed that they still did whenever it was because it seemed indecent at their age. Her mind told her not to be so silly, but she couldn’t help feeling it wasn’t very nice beween people over fifty. She looked at Elsie and George, that was the trouble, and the idea revolted her, but then the idea of Elsie and George even when they were young had revolted her. Love-making was for young couples like Alice and Tony, begetting children, making love to some purpose. Anyway, it had faded out and they had both been quite happy about it. An arm round each other’s shoulder was enough, a kiss on the cheek sufficient, but she had never found any substitute for the peace.
She went next door into the spare room and stood at the window. Across the road two cars pulled up outside the house and the next minute the woman who lived there was standing at the open door smiling and her children were running down the path to greet the people getting out of the cars. Rose saw at least two of them were much older than she was – a really bent old lady who had to be levered out of the car and a white-haired old man who walked with two sticks. They were ushered into the house with great care and attention and everyone kissed each other and then the door closed. The lights started to go on all over the house and there were people at every window and then they all trooped downstairs and gathered round a table and the curtains were drawn. Rose thought the woman looked up at her as she drew them, but wasn’t sure.
Downstairs she was very civil to Stanley. She told him about the party across the road and what a lovely time they were all having and how nice it was to see a family gathering like that. Rose even went so far as to say that woman, whom she knew by sight but not name, had her good points if she could be so kind to older folk, and Stanley was quick to agree. But even while she was admiring the family scene Rose reflected that there was a lot of nonsense talked about families. They were always supposed to be happy but there was a lot wrong with the phrase one big happy family. Her family had been big. She’d had five sisters and three brothers and it had been far from a happy experience. She never talked about it, not even to Stanley. The memory of how cruel they had all been to her could still make her cry. She’d been the second youngest and nobody ever had a kind word for her, whatever they said about everyone loving each other and helping the little ones. Nobody helped her. She had to struggle to do everythin
g – struggle to get her boots on with all those buttons, struggle to get her clothes on and all the tapes tied, struggle to get enough to eat and a place in the bed she shared with four others. The only person who ever tried to help her or give her any affection was her grandmother who regularly wept tears for the state they were all in. Her mother never wept. She was tough and strong, working as hard as her father, and there was nothing motherly about her except the bearing of the children she resented. One by one they’d all left home and Rose had never heard from them since. She and little May went to live with Grandma when she was eight and May six and things had been better after that, but in many ways it was too late, she couldn’t seem to trust anyone. Until Stanley.
‘It might be a good idea, your idea,’ she said, pouring him a cup of tea.
‘What idea?’
‘Forgotten already have you? Just humouring me were you?’ – but she was laughing – ‘A day at the seaside, that’s what.’
‘Oh. Right. We’ll have a basin of that. There’s a 10.10 train from Waterloo if I remember rightly. How about that?’
They caught the 10.10 with ease. They both loved trains. Rose would trust a train anywhere and Stanley still had a small boy’s hankering after driving one. They each had a corner seat in a non-smoker – Rose couldn’t bear a smoke-filled carriage and Stanley managed to last that long without – and settled themselves nicely for the hour and a half that the journey took. Nobody bothered them. They each had a magazine and a bag of barley sugars, enough to make anybody happy. Rose sat swinging her legs – a fraction too short to touch the floor – with the magazine spread out on her lap and a sweet in her cheek. The countryside flashed past outside, the sun zipped in and out, and she felt content. There was nothing she liked better than a nice journey.
‘I like travelling I must say,’ she said to Stanley after a while. The ticket collector had just been and was most affable.
‘Can’t call this travelling. It’s just a dawdle. You wait till Australia, then you’ll be travelling.’
‘I dare say.’ Rose’s heart beat faster. That might be too much of a good thing. ‘How will we manage?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean, manage, there won’t be anything to manage, it’s all done for you these days. A cab to the airport and Bob’s your uncle, you’re in their hands then.’
‘There’ll be luggage.’
‘All taken care of. You have it weighed and a label put on it and then that’s that. All done by conveyor belt, untouched by human hand.’
Rose was impressed in spite of herself. Stanley might be slow but he was thorough. If he went into a thing you could depend on him to get it right. She sat and thought about what he had said and about Australia and she saw them in her mind’s eye leaving the house, locking it and leaving it.
‘We could give the key to Alice,’ she said. Stanley just grunted. ‘She could pop in now and again. What do you think? We’ve never given the key to anyone before.’
‘What about the nurse?’
‘I forgot.’ It was good to have the train window to look out of. ‘I don’t know about that. We shall have to see.’
‘You can’t keep them hanging about.’
‘Who’s keeping them hanging about? It’s up to her, isn’t it? Anyway, what did you mention that for? Let’s enjoy ourselves for goodness sake, for one day, surely we can enjoy ourselves for that long.’
They did, but the pressure was there. She wouldn’t forgive Stanley for that.
Chapter Fifteen
ALICE BROUGHT MRS PENDLEBURY some cups and saucers back from their holiday – large, grey stone ones with a darker grey swirling pattern on them. She didn’t take them in to her but waited until Wednesday morning to make the presentation. There were exclamations of ‘You shouldn’t have’, but they were finally accepted enthusiastically. Then Mrs P. in turn gave Alice a memento from Brighton, some pot-pourri in a little jar. Like children, they clutched their respective gifts to each other and wondered what to say and do next.
‘And how did Amy get on?’ Mrs P. asked.
‘Splendidly. Laura’s bringing her back this morning – in a few minutes I think, she said elevenish.’
‘Oh well then I’ll go, you don’t want me about, I’ll be off.’ There was a frenzied search for gloves.
‘But I do, I’ve been dying for you to meet my sister, she’s heard so much about you. Sit down, please.’
But Mrs P. would have gone in a panic if Laura hadn’t that minute rung the bell and then there was no way out. Rose stood grunting to herself as the voices in the hall mingled with Amy’s shrieks of joy and then, as she still stood immobile, Amy came running in and flung herself at her and the confusion helped her get over her fright. All the same, she was quick to go. Alice’s sister was smart – hair, clothes, make-up, everything. They couldn’t have been more different. She had such a haughty look about her too and a smile almost as meaningless as Charlotte’s. Alice asked her to stay and have coffee with them but she knew when she wasn’t wanted, knew when she was an embarrassment. Best to get out in that situation. Scarper, quick.
‘You’re early,’ Stanley said, which only made matters worse.
‘Are you still sitting there with that damned paper?’ she shouted at him. ‘Get moving – you know what the doctor said, not enough exercise. You can get down to the shop and get me a loaf.’
He went, after a tussle over who was paying for the bread, and she was left in possession of the house. She made a good deal of bustle tidying up, including sorting all the papers out. They should have salvage like they did in the war, she thought. It was a waste putting newspapers in the dustbin. Everything had its use then, even old newspapers, every scrap was significant, people cared for things. They cared for each other too. She knew it was wrong to find anything good about the war – Frank had always said she romanticized it but he knew nothing about it – yet it was true that it made people care. A common aim, that was it, all pulling together. It was your business, your duty to look after other people. After an alert had sounded everyone rushed into each other’s flats seeing that the old folk and babies were helped to the shelter. Nobody was left out. She and Stanley had regularly helped the elderly couple downstairs into the shelter, holding them under the elbows to keep them steady. Sometimes they didn’t hear the siren and then she or Stanley would knock on the door and get them up, even walking right into the bedroom if necessary without so much as a by-your-leave. It wasn’t interfering, not in those circumstances. Nobody thought you were being nosy. There was a lot to do in the raids, everyone had to help out in an area like theirs. They were all working people round there, all with jobs to do, not like this area they lived in now. Stanley gloated over how Rawlinson Road had come up but she sometimes wished it hadn’t. They were among the nobs now, not like in Stoke Newington in the old days. Perhaps they should never have moved, perhaps they should have stayed where they were, among people who knew them – except most of them were dead now, or moved away.
It was not surprising that with her mind running on such topics Rose’s eye should be drawn to the advertisement on the front page of one of Stanley’s newspapers. ‘Help the Aged’ it said and there was a picture of an old lady wearing a shawl and those old-fashioned gloves without fingers.
Mrs Macphail is 82. Her sight is failing and she suffers from angina. She has been living for twelve years by herself in one small room without heat of any kind and only a single gas ring to cook on. She is one of the lucky ones. Under our care she is now well looked after, but there are many more like her. Help us to help them.
There was an address to send money to.
Her fingers trembling, Rose tore the advertisement out and crumpled it up and then straightened it out again and reread it, and then systematically tore it into tiny strips, and using Stanley’s lighter she burnt it in the sink and then ran the ashes down the drain. She wasn’t crying, she was angry. They shouldn’t put things like that in the papers to upset people. What good did i
t do? None. And those old folk shouldn’t let themselves be used like that. She wouldn’t, never, no matter what happened.
The telephone rang while she was still clinging on to the taps watching gallons and gallons of water cascade down after a few flimsy ashes. It brought her to her senses. She turned the water off but not before she’d soaked a dishcloth and put it to her forehead to cool her down.
‘Hello,’ she shouted down the phone. It buzzed and crackled and she yelled hello again, ready to be furious with anyone or anything. Very faintly she heard a voice say, ‘Hello, Mum.’
‘Wrong number,’ she snapped, and had almost put the phone back down when ‘Frank’ drifted into her ear. She jammed the receiver back to her ear.
‘Frank – oh – I thought it was a wrong number – is everything all right, can you hear me?’
‘Yes, just. Now listen, Mum. I’ve got the tickets for you and Dad, to come out to us, bought them today. It’s October Ist for a month. I’ll be writing but I wanted you to know. Here’s Veronica.’ . . . ‘Mum? Hello – isn’t it exciting . . . all looking forward . . . Frank couldn’t wait . . . exciting . . . here’s Frank’ . . . ‘Mum? You’ll get your passports and everything won’t you . . . only three months . . . letter . . . good-bye.’
Had she said anything at all? Rose, still with the dishcloth pressed to her forehead, couldn’t remember. The water dripped down her face running down her neck and all she could think of was that she would have to change her jumper.
‘What’s up?’ Stanley said, coming in with the bread. She didn’t answer. She wanted to torment him, to channel her mixed-up emotions into something positive.
‘Hot are you?’ he said. ‘It is hot, roasting out there. Last summer all over again if you ask me. Not the weather for working.’
The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury Page 22