The Man Who Understood Women

by Rosemary Friedman

  As her arms were large and fleshy so too was her body, losing its battle with the best in corsetry, and her legs, tree trunks only less graceful, overflowing at their termini her fine-quality shoes.

  This mountain, then, this over-liberal dollop of humanity in its faintly ridiculous, unambiguously costly petalled hat, was the image of herself with which Mrs Pettigrew’s mirror faithfully presented her. It was also the likeness reflected, frequently with derision, in the eyes of those who beheld her.

  That it was not the private vision of herself perceived by Mrs Pettigrew’s inner eye was beside the point. She was not a stupid woman and she was well aware that if within she felt like ten ballerinas, each more ethereal than the next, and had the beauty of Garbo and Dietrich and Bergman rolled breathtakingly into one, it was of no avail. It was the outward appearance that counted and about that she could do nothing.

  Not that she hadn’t tried. They never told her, of course, with their hands outstretched and their obsequious leers in the slimming clinics and the beauty parlours, at the hairdressers and at the spas, that hers was a hopeless case. They were not so foolish, but then neither was Mrs Pettigrew.

  On some days it was not so bad. There were times when Mrs Pettigrew was able to console herself with her fabulous house, its priceless treasures and impeccable staff. Times when she listened to the coos of admiration and adulation emitted by the so-called friends with whom she was surrounded and pretended to herself quite successfully that they meant it. There were days when she found herself quite tolerable to live with. This was not one of them.

  A discreet tap on the door of the bedroom was followed by the announcement that the car was ready.

  Mrs Pettigrew took a last despairing look in the mirror and with a final adjustment of her mink tie she made her way downstairs noticing with some irritation as she did so, a wilted dahlia and a strand of cotton on the Aubusson about which she would have to speak.

  Mills, inclined from the waist, head slightly to one side, held open the door of the car neatly inscribed with the Pettigrew crest, and remarked upon the splendour of the day as if she personally were responsible.

  Mrs Pettigrew agreed that it was warm again and, puffing slightly, sank her own upholstery into that of the car and directed him to the Park Hotel.

  Under the competent leather-gloved hands of Mills, the car, whose engine was the quietest in the world, scrunched ever so lightly over the gravel drive and floated like a shiny black swan out into the main road.

  Mrs Pettigrew was unimpressed. She looked at the summer-green plane trees lining the avenue of houses, each vaster than the next, and thought exactly how it was going to be.

  She would arrive on time. She always did. And would be greeted with tremendous effusion by the Functions Committee members whose sighs of relief at her appearance would be almost audible. How nice of her to come, they’d say, how well she looked. One of the more inspired would in all probability admire her hat. What else about her was there to admire other, of course, than her chequebook, which they would all be praying she had remembered to bring.

  After a glass of indifferent sherry, which always seemed to go directly to her feet increasing their swell, she would, from her seat of honour at the top table, be lunched, wined, cosseted, mollycoddled and fawned upon until they were finally forced to leave her in peace in order to listen to the speeches. After the speeches, impassioned, indifferent or downright incompetent, would come the appeal. After the appeal they would turn expectantly, hands outstretched to catch the fruits of their eloquence, to Mrs Pettigrew.

  Had they known that Mrs Pettigrew was quite unmoved by their oratory they would have been deeply shocked. Had they in their innocence been present in the Pettigrew dining room at breakfast time they would have been even more horrified. It was not the scene that would have surprised them, the Pettigrews were sitting very nicely before their silver-topped jar of Dundee marmalade and their Queen Anne coffee pot, it was the conversation.

  On this particular morning Isaiah Pettigrew had been in an exceptionally ‘bonhomous’ mood. Not that he was ever down-hearted, not for long at any rate. The fact that Pettigrew’s plate glass covered the windows of two-thirds of the houses in the country was more than enough to keep him happy. Unlike his wife, the fact that he was fat and not particularly prepossessing did not bother him in the slightest. But then, of course, he was a man.

  ‘What is it today, dear?’ Isaiah asked from behind the pages of the pink newspaper in whose columns he noted daily and with satisfaction the outward evidence of his many commercial successes.

  ‘The Bancroft Home,’ Mabel said, hoping he would not emerge from his paper and notice the quantity of butter she was spreading on her toast.

  ‘That was poor old Harry’s effort, wasn’t it?’ Isaiah said. ‘What are they: deaf, blind or incurable?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ Mabel said. ‘Pass the marmalade.’

  ‘Fifty?’ Isaiah asked, pushing the jar across the highly polished tabletop. ‘Fifty guineas should be more than enough.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Mabel said removing the lid. ‘Did you remember to ask Ackroyd about the compost?’

  In this way the contribution that the Bancroft Home was that day to receive from the purse of Mrs Pettigrew was arbitrarily decided. Lest it be thought that the attitude of either Mabel or her husband to those less fortunate than themselves was one of callousness, it must be remembered that on practically every weekday Mrs Pettigrew was ‘guest of honour’ at some luncheon or another and she coped uncomplainingly, in addition, with a formidable programme of coffee mornings, bring-and-buy sales and bazaars, all of which made deep inroads upon her purse.

  Mr Pettigrew himself dealt with an equally full diary of similar but more masculine activities and in this way between them they disposed philanthropically each year of a large slice of the Pettigrew income. That they were unable to identify themselves personally with each and every cause was hardly surprising. That the extent of their generosity was determined before their attendance at the various functions was only reasonable, too. The Pettigrew Charitable Trust had to be stretched in an infinite number of directions.

  Had the Chairman of the Functions Committee of the Friends of the Bancroft Home known all this she would very likely not have been in such a tizzy. As it was she stood in the foyer of the Park Hotel glancing at her watch every few minutes, waiting for a glimpse of Mrs Pettigrew’s Rolls.

  If only she played her cards right, she thought, Mrs Pettigrew would be moved to donate an outstanding sum and others at the luncheon, holding tight to their purse strings, would be shamed or inspired into following suit. If only she got on the right side of Mrs Pettigrew her period of office as Chairman of the Functions Committee would go down in history. No one would forget Drusilla Fenwick; her name would be on their lips for years. Had Drusilla Fenwick known Mrs Pettigrew a little more intimately, she could have saved herself much worry and doubt concerning her arrival. If Mrs Pettigrew promised to be at the Park Hotel on a certain day at a certain time, there, in the absence of Riots, Strikes, Civil Commotions, War, Invasion, Acts of Enemy Hostility or any similar upheavals beloved by insurance companies, she would be.

  At exactly twelve-fifteen, therefore, on the agreed day, Mrs Pettigrew was handed into the swing doors of the Park Hotel by Mills and extracted from the scarcely large enough compartment, when they had completed their semi-circuit, by Mrs Fenwick.

  Mrs Fenwick whose blood pressure dropped slowly but several degrees with relief, led Mrs Pettigrew firmly into the room where the reception was being held and now the charade with which Mrs Pettigrew was so familiar began.

  Like bees round a honeypot, in their carefully selected headgear, they surrounded her.

  How well she looked, the Vice-Chairman said. ‘What a delightful hat,’ the Hon. Sec. enthused. ‘Something to drink,’ the Treasurer insisted, and ‘How is Mr Pettigrew keeping?’ one of the more enterprising Committee members wanted to know.

 
Mrs Pettigrew smiled, she knew they had their jobs to do, accepted the drink, answered their questions and let it all flow over her head. It was a trick she had acquired early on in her public life and one that was very useful.

  Almost before she was aware of it she found herself sitting at the top table in the private room where they were to lunch, between the Chairman and the Vice-Chairman, having been applauded as she entered.

  Out of a sea of three hundred faces Mrs Pettigrew was able to distinguish several that she knew. She smiled amicably at those who sought her eye, her mind on other things. Wedged between Mrs Fenwick and her faithful helper, the wedging due rather to Mrs Pettigrew’s proportions than those of the other two ladies, Mrs Pettigrew was plied with lunch. And she was also plied with endless bright chatter, but since she dealt with this with only a small portion of her mind it did not weary her.

  After years of practice she was now adept at simulating attention to things that did not interest her. She was even able to interpolate yes and no in exactly the right places in a conversation she scarcely heard.

  When Mrs Fenwick turned briefly to the representative from the Bancroft Home, who sat on her other side and excused her inattention with the sotto voce confidence that they were working on a whacking cheque from Mrs Pettigrew, Mrs Pettigrew, as if every word had not been audible, applied herself diligently to her dessert. She had no illusions about herself or any of them in their smart hats. There was nothing that she hadn’t heard before.

  The coffee dispensed – a tiny cup, Mrs Pettigrew could have drunk three – the Chairman rapped importantly upon the table with her gavel and informed the assembled ladies that the time for idle chatter was at an end and the serious part of the luncheon was about to begin.

  One thing that Mrs Pettigrew never objected to on this and similar occasions was the speeches. It meant that her immediate neighbours would stop talking for a while and leave her in peace. That she was free to doze, provided, of course, that she did so attentively and with her eyes open. To slip off her shoes and to digest her meal.

  At every reference to ‘our dear Mrs Pettigrew’ or our Honoured Guest’, Mrs Pettigrew smiled and inclined her head in acknowledgement. Her torpor was never deep enough to cause her to miss a cue. She was too old a hand.

  By the bursts of enthusiastic applause, in which of course she participated, Mrs Pettigrew was able to pinpoint the beginning and end of every speech and to assess the progress of the luncheon. The function, like most things, had a shape, and with no reference to the diamond-studded watch embedded in her wrist Mrs Pettigrew was able to assess its every contour.

  When, out of the mists, she heard the words ‘… and now, ladies, I am sure that not a single one among you can fail to be moved by the splendid work the Bancroft Home is doing …’ Mrs Pettigrew knew that it was time to wake up and feel surreptitiously beneath the table for her shoes.

  In a very few minutes she would be invited to start the ball rolling with her contribution to the Bancroft Home, would whisper ‘fifty guineas’ in the ear of the Chairman, the amount agreed by herself and Isaiah at breakfast, would be loudly applauded, thanked publically and finally released.

  Mrs Pettigrew winced as her oedematous feet forced their way into the shoes that only an hour ago had not really been too uncomfortable.

  Mrs Fenwick, standing before the microphone, smiled encouragingly at Mrs Pettigrew, and Mrs Pettigrew smiled back indicating that she was prepared to do that which was expected of her.

  Mrs Fenwick turned once more to her audience from whom wafted drifts of idle smoke. ‘Before we call upon our Guest of Honour,’ Mrs Fenwick said, ‘to start the ball rolling with the gift she has so graciously consented to make to the Bancroft Home, we have a little surprise for you. One of the girls who has been brought up in the Home is here today to offer a token of appreciation and, incidentally, a sample of the fine work done in the Home, to Mrs Pettigrew.

  Mrs Fenwick looked towards the door. The incomplete silence granted to Mrs Fenwick became complete as they too twisted their heads to look towards the door. Mrs Pettigrew, from her seat of vantage, patted her moist upper lip with her table napkin and, watching expectantly too, waited.

  The door immediately opposite Mrs Pettigrew opened, and into the room, up the gangway, slowly, came the most beautiful girl she had ever seen. She was no more than sixteen, tall, slim as a reed, walked like a princess and had honey-coloured hair cascading right down her back. She held a bouquet of apricot roses as fine as any that Ackroyd had ever produced, and she was the embodiment of everything that all her life Mrs Pettigrew had ever wanted to look like but never for one single moment had.

  Her progress towards Mrs Pettigrew was painfully, laboriously slow. It wasn’t, however, until she extended a milk-white arm and an artist’s dream of a slim hand to feel for the edge of the table that Mrs Pettigrew realised that the girl was blind. With almost more of a shock she realised, too, that the apricot roses were artificial. The girl, chin lifted, extended them to her, dropping a straight-backed curtsey as she did so.

  Mrs Pettigrew, with the kind of tenderness with which she could have held a newborn baby, took the flowers. Her eyes on the girl’s grey, unseeing ones, she was quite unable to speak.

  Amid a thunder of applause the girl turned, and as slowly as she had come, one foot carefully in front of the other, made her way to the door. Until she had gone from the room Mrs Pettigrew kept her eyes riveted on the slim waist.

  Mrs Fenwick was holding up her hand for silence. ‘And now,’ she said when she had obtained it, except for the occasional small snuffle into the odd handkerchief, ‘I will at this point call upon our dear Mrs Pettigrew to make the first donation to our new drive for the maintenance and improvement of the Bancroft Home.’

  She looked nervously, expectantly, at Mrs Pettigrew who was gazing fatly down at the apricot roses and fingering them delicately with her short plump fingers.

  ‘One hundred guineas,’ said Mrs Pettigrew.

  Taormina

  1962

  ‘Taormina?’ Iris said, threading her needle with blue wool. ‘Surely, darling, that’s a place, not a person.’

  ‘This is a person,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘It’s like calling somebody Bexhill or – or Clacton.’

  Jonathan perched on the stone coping of the terrace and looked down at his mother who was squinting at her tapestry.

  ‘I’d like to explain about Taormina.’

  Iris decided on the right-hand corner as being as good a place as any to begin and inserted the needle.

  ‘I shouldn’t bother, darling. We survived the others, no doubt we shall survive Taormina.’

  ‘Taormina’s different.’

  ‘I’m sure she is, darling. So were Bo-Peep and Mary Grey and Samantha what’s ’ername, and Joanna, and the one with freckles, and who was that extraordinary creature with the orange hair your father couldn’t stand?’

  ‘Diana.’

  ‘That’s right. Diana.’

  Jonathan dismissed them all impatiently with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Mother, this is serious …’

  Iris was holding the tapestry at arm’s length and looking at it over the top of her glasses.

  ‘I do believe they’ve sent me the wrong blue,’ she said slowly. ‘They have, you know. Look at this!’

  Jonathan sighed and jumped down on to the black-and-white tiles.

  ‘That blue is not the same as this, is it?’

  ‘More or less. No one will notice.’

  ‘That’s beside the point. Aren’t they the absolute end. You can’t rely on anyone.’

  ‘About the weekend,’ Jonathan said, leaning now against the balustrade and looking out on to the garden.

  ‘I’ve asked the Watsons for Saturday. Serena Watson’s been driving me mad for weeks trying to find out when you’d be down. One mustn’t be harsh. I suppose if I had three daughters, each plainer than the next, although I must say the youngest one’s improved tremen
dously lately … Jonathan!’

  Iris took off her glasses and watched him in his dirty white plimsolls walk down the steps and on to the lawn.

  How much taller was he going to get? Surely he must now have stopped growing. How old was he? Twenty-four, nearly twenty-five. He dragged his feet along the grass, leaving marks in the dew, for it was still early, and slumped on to the wooden seat facing the pond. Adonis, Iris thought, looking at his profile, the personification of careless youth: slim, no fat, cleanly outlined features, the flop of the fair hair. The age had an insouciance about it, a sort of unconscious splendour employed arrogantly, extravagantly, by those who were unaware of its ephemeral nature. No wonder the girls were mad about him. He hadn’t even to speak, just to lean, he was always leaning, against the lintel in a crowded room … and they’d be round him like butterflies, gazing up at him, eager …

  Iris put on her glasses again and turned her attention to her tapestry. She had every reason to be content.

  Taormina arrived on the six-ten. She wore blue jeans and sandals attached to her feet by a single thong between her toes whose nails were scarlet. From the window Iris watched Jonathan help her down from the shooting brake and kiss her. She came no higher than his shoulder. The embrace was a long one, and when they’d parted they stood with linked hands, gazing at each other. Such capacity to love, Iris thought, such vulnerability. No one can help them. They have to grow their own shells.

  ‘This is Taormina,’ Jonathan said at the dinner table. ‘My parents.’

  She had changed into a silk cheongsam and very high-heeled white shoes. Her small, oval face was animated, only the grey eyes were wary, watching Iris and Miles.

  ‘There’s one thing about Jonathan,’ Miles said, taking her hand in his, ‘he has exquisite taste.’

  Iris watched her turn to caress Jonathan for a moment with her eyes and Jonathan, equally volubly, return the love, and thought next month it will be Dawn or Sandra or Pollyanna – how they delude themselves.