by Jane Gardam
‘The marriage broke up after the War,’ said the doctor. We were sitting back after dinner in the housekeeper’s room among the Thomas Lawrences. ‘He was always on the move. Rose had no quarrel with him you know. She just grew—well, very taken with the place. It was—yes, possession. Greek idea—possession by local gods. The Romans were here you know. They brought a Greek legend or two with them.’
I said, ‘How odd, when I saw her I thought of the Greeks, though I hadn’t known what I meant. It was the way she moved—so old. And the way she held her hands out. Like—well, sort of like on the walls of Troy.’
‘Not Troy,’ said the Doctor. ‘More like hell, poor thing. She was quite gone. You know—these fells, all the little isolated houses, I’m not that sure how good for you they are, unless you’re farming folk.’
Millicent said rubbish.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I mean it. D’you remember C.S. Lewis’s hell? A place where people live in isolation unable to reach each other. Where the houses get further and further apart?’
‘Everyone reaches each other here,’ I said. ‘Surely?’
The doctor was looking at me. He said, ‘What was it you said?’
‘Everyone reaches each other—’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You said you saw her.’
‘Yes I did. I saw her on the way home from here, the night before she died. Then I saw her again the next day, the very afternoon. That’s what is so terrible. I must have seen her, just before she—did it. I must be the last person to have seen her alive.’
‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if that could be true.’ Gertie and Millicent were busy with coffee cups. They turned away.
‘“Could be true?” But it is certainly true. I know exactly when. She asked me the time that afternoon. I told her. It was just after three. She seemed very—bewildered about it. You called upon her hardly a quarter of an hour later. She’d hardly been back in the house a quarter of an hour.’
‘She’d been in it longer than that,’ he said. ‘When I found her she’d been dead for nearly three weeks. Maybe since hay-time.’
I went to Hong Kong.
THE TRIBUTE
Fanny Soane rang Mabel Ince and Mabel Ince rang old Lady Benson to say that poor Dench was dead.
‘Who?’ screamed Nelly Benson.
‘Dench.’
‘Dench?’
‘Yes. Poor darling Denchie.’
‘Thought she’d died years ago. Must have been a hundred.’
‘Nonsense, Nelly.’
‘She was old in the War.’
‘She was wonderful in the War.’
‘Wonderful means old. I’ve been wonderful for years.’
‘Nelly—’ Mabel was hoping to be brief. Calls cost money. She was ringing Kensington from Berkshire. Certainly after six o’clock, but still—
‘Nelly, I think we ought to do something. Put in a tribute—’
‘The Times has gone. No sense in a tribute. No tributes now. Nobody getting born. Getting married. Getting tributes. Or dying—more’s the pity.’
‘Well, Dench has died.’
‘In The Telegraph I suppose?’ . . .
‘Yes. Nelly—’
‘Sorry. Can’t go on. Too expensive.’
‘But Nelly, I’m the one who’s paying—’
But Kensington, like Dench, had died.
Dear Fanny, wrote Mabel next, I rang Old Nelly Benson but she’s daft as a brush and didn’t seem the least bit interested in poor dear Dench. What do you think? I’m quite ready to do something—just a short one. In The Telegraph which I suppose is the paper Dench would have wanted now The Times seems to have gone for good. Oh dear, I hope Dench went before The Times. D’you remember how she always read it, smiling? I don’t think she could have borne life without the Court Circular. ‘It rivets me,’ she used to say. ‘Rivets me.’ Though lately I gather she hadn’t been well and hadn’t been reading anything any more. The last Christmas card I had a year or so ago was very shaky. In fact I seem to remember there was only a signature and the little message was written in by some niece. Did you by the way get a sort of begging letter about Dench? That was from the niece too, but I didn’t keep the address. I always wished I could have done something. She wanted to get poor D. into a private nursing home. Did you do anything? I feel a bit dreadful about it and if we could do this tribute now I think I’d feel a bit better. Shall we ring round? There must be half a dozen families who would want to come in on it. I can think of three Denchie nannied myself.
Dear Mabel,
Oh my dear—I could have told you Nelly Benson is impossible now. Quite batty. She must be absolutely gaga not to want to go in with a tribute—or it’s kindness to think so—when one knows how much Denchie did for those awful children, and grandchildren too come to that, for simply years. She saw the famous Charlotte through virus pneumonia you know. Nelly just went off to Geneva to join Charles and left Dench to it. And it wasn’t as if Dench was ever paid or anything. At least I never paid her, did you? Just her keep. Well, you just couldn’t. She never asked. Poor as a church m. I’d guess. But being a gent—Dench I mean—one just fed her. She ‘came to stay’. To ‘stop’ as she called it, bless her.
Yes, I did get a letter from some niece and I meant to answer it and send a fiver or something but it was just before we went to Penang. I felt a bit awful when I remembered about it long afterwards—too late because I’d lost the address by then, too. I do rather hate that kind of letter. Embarrassing all round. You don’t feel you can possibly do enough and so you do nothing. Now of course like you we have just the Service pension. My dear, we need a whip round for ourselves now. Wish we had a niece!
Yes, of course I’ll go in with a tribute. If we get say three more people it won’t kill us. It’s about two pounds a line I think. Something like ‘In Memory of dear “Dench”, beloved Nannie and friend for many years of . . . ’ and names of families. Will you get in touch with the rest or shall I? I suppose it shouldn’t come to more than, say, 75p each?
The telephone rang in Berkshire and Mabel Ince heard a lot of muttering about tangled wires and then old Lady Benson.
‘I’ve had a letter. From some niece. Hello?’
‘Hello? Yes? Nelly? What niece?’
‘Old Dench’s . . . ’ peep, peep, peep, peep.
‘Nelly, are you in a phone box? Hello?’
‘Yes. It’s in the hall. To stop the lodgers. She wants to meet us . . . ’ peep, peep, peep.
‘Nelly, for goodness sake! Can’t you put in a ten?’
‘Hello. Tuppences are better. You get too long with a . . . ’ peep, peep, peep.
‘Hello?’
‘ . . . to meet us with some things old Dench left us. In her will. Wants to meet us . . . ’ peep, peep.
‘Can you write? Can’t you write about it, Nelly?’
‘ . . . on Thursday. Fortnum and Mason’s.’
‘Fortnum and—Nelly, would you write?’
‘I could write,’ peep, peep, peep.
‘Whether she’ll back out of it of course,’ said Mabel, ‘is another matter. She says she’s not been out of the house for years.’
It was Thursday morning—Thursday fortnight morning, for this was not precipitate. Mabel had set forth from Newbury by car leaving Humphrey with the television and a tray, and picked up Fanny Soane. Together they were now proceeding to Kensington and Nelly Benson. It was not as early in the morning as Mabel would have liked as she had lost time looking for Fanny’s house which, being in a maze of identical streets and in Raynes Park and not Wimbledon as she had been led to believe, had proved elusive. Fanny’s husband in a darned cardigan had seen them to the door as they left, waved perfunctorily and disappeared. His eyes, which as attaché in Tiflis had been interestingly hooded,
now had deep swags beneath them, suggesting gin. He was losing his hair. The tiny front garden Mabel noticed had been put down to Brussels sprouts, and an elephant’s foot, converted to a boot scraper, stood near the mat.
‘A far cry from the Lion Palace,’ said Fanny noticing Mabel noticing. ‘Sometimes I wonder why we didn’t Stay On—though when you read that funny little man—’
‘Funny little man?’
‘The one who wrote Staying On. The one who came out to India for five minutes and wrote all those huge books about us though goodness knows how. I never met a soul who knew him, did you?’
‘At least,’ said Mabel, ‘Dench never knew. What’s become of us all I mean. She was such a romantic. She talked about “love of country”, d’you remember? Actually used the words. And d’you remember how she stood for the Queen?’
‘Oh well, we all did that. We still do. Don’t you?’
‘Well—not to make it obvious. It depends where we are. And not like Dench did, to attention—quite eccentrically really as if it was almost a joke. Humphrey and I just sort of hesitate now, getting the coats from under the seat. We just stop talking for a moment.’
‘Like vicars wondering about Grace when you ask them to dinner.’
‘Do you ask vicars to dinner?’
‘No. Well I don’t know that we ever did. We don’t ask anybody to dinner now. Can’t afford it. Nobody asks us—we’re all in the same boat. I mean the people who ask us to dinner now are not the sort one knows. Spaghetti bolognese and cheesecake.’
The two women looked back on half a life-time of invitations—battlefields, of notes, menus, first guest lists, second guest lists all professionally conceived, negotiated, carried through. Jousts, tournaments, ritual murders—masked by smiles and decorations.
‘D’you remember the Bensons’ invitations?’
‘Lord yes—“gloves”! Bottom left-hand corner, “Gloves will be worn”. Poor Nelly.’
‘D’you remember Prague? The high ceilings? So beautiful. Somebody told me the other day why embassy ceilings are always so high. It’s to take the noise of the cocktail parties.’
‘I’d have thought Prague was older than cocktail parties.’
‘Nothing’s older than cocktail parties. Of one kind or another. Didn’t old Dench love cocktail parties? And Prague? I used to let her stand with the children just out of sight on the landing—the Ambassador was so good about Staff—and watch all the people. The children were such angels with Dench.’
‘And she had them so beautiful.’
‘Oh yes. My word she must have cost us something. I mean H.M. Government something. Those little dresses—always Harrods or The White House. The smocking always going round across the back. Round-toed shoes. Like little conkers!’
‘Oh—and the herring-bone tweeds! With the little velvet collars—Mabel, I’m going to cry. Dear old Dench. Didn’t she iron and press well?’
They picked up Lady Benson rather uncertainly at an address near Notting Hill, not at first recognising her. The house was dilapidated with dirty window panes, the upper floors partitioned down the middle of windows with plaster-board and covered with stickers saying ‘Capital Radio’ and ‘I Still Love Elvis’. A grubby-looking woman peered from a downstairs front room and turned out to be Lady Benson herself, ungloved. She appeared on the top step wearing bedroom slippers and carrying a leather shopping-bag. Her hair was extremely untidy and a smell of onions which hung about the hall accompanied her. There was still an imperial look to the eyes.
‘You’re not going to Harrods in bedroom slippers, Nelly!’
‘I thought it was Fortnum and Mason’s?’
‘No—we changed it. Harrods is less flashy. But you’d hardly go to Fortnums—’
‘They’re all I can get my feet into, except Wellingtons. I don’t go about much now. I have the house to run.’
Big flakes of plaster had come away from around the rainwater pipes. The desolate February garden was full of broken, purple edging-stones and dead hydrangeas.
‘I use my wellies for gardening,’ said Nellie Benson looking out suspiciously at the damp day. ‘I have a pair of Dr Scholl’s somewhere.’
Fanny said with fortitude that they would be better.
‘Come in,’ said Nelly.
‘It’s all right. We’ll be in the car.’ Mabel, who had dressed carefully in a powder blue suit and a hat of green-black feathers with a veil—bought once for the Queen’s Birthday in Dar-es-Salaam—got quickly into her car and looked into the distance. Heaving the shopping bag ahead of her, Nelly climbed in alongside and said, ‘I remember that hat. Always reminded me of a dead blackbird,’ and laughed at this all the way along Kensington High Street.
Fanny said, ‘I think perhaps we are out of the fourth form now, Nelly,’ and Mabel did not speak.
‘Where are you now?’ Nelly asked when she had stopped laughing. ‘What’s become of you, Mabel? I heard you’d had to sell the castle.’
‘Yes.’
‘Suppose old Humphrey lost his money.’
‘Oh Nelly, be quiet,’ said Fanny in the back.
‘Horses, I suppose. He always lost. I remember the Marsa Club in Malta. My word he flung it about. Where d’you live now?’
‘Newbury.’
‘Bit near the course, isn’t it?’
‘He watches on television,’ said Mabel, negotiating the Kensington traffic lights with knuckles of ice.
‘You can do that anywhere—watch the television. Unless you’re like me—can’t afford one. Where d’you live, Fanny?’
‘Wimbledon.’
‘Oh dear, that’s a pity. A long way from London. Further than Newbury in a sense.’ She began to laugh again.
‘We’re very comfortable.’
‘Do be quiet, Nelly. Fanny lives in a charming house in Fethney Road. Delicious red brick. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Norman Shaw. I thought all your little things looked lovely there, Fanny.’
‘Norman Shaw?’ said Nelly, ‘Wasn’t he A. D. C. Pankot? Terrible old pansy. Dench couldn’t bear him. Have you got any of his little things?’
‘Oh for goodness sake!’ said Fanny. ‘Don’t be so foul, Nelly. Mabel means the things we’ve all got—brasses and elephants’ feet, the things we’ve all got and can’t bear. I like Fethney Road. I don’t know the locals but there’s the Diplomatic Wives. I go to those in London.’
‘Dench would have approved of that. Poor Dench, she was never a Diplomatic Wife. Or any wife at all. I wonder why?’ said Mabel.
‘We were always wondering why. So pretty she must have been. Men loved her.’
‘Yes. I don’t think they ever got very far with her though.’
‘Not that she was a puritan—my word no. Just—withdrawn somehow. Deep down. Knew how to stop things going too far. My word she’d have been a marvellous Diplomatic Wife. Complete gent of course.’
‘Oh, complete.’
‘And knew her place.’
‘Oh yes, she knew her place.’
‘There had been some man once, you know. D’you remember? The children used to tease her. Mr. Santas-something-or-other. Some Argentine millionaire. Some widower—’
‘No. Not a widower. Very much married. Catholic. What was his name? The children used to call him Mr. Salteena.’
‘She didn’t like jokes about him. D’you suppose he existed?’
‘No idea. But it is funny she didn’t marry. D’you think she was a Lesbian? A lot of nannies are. Subconsciously of course,’ said worldly Mabel.
‘Certainly not,’ said Nelly, outraged. ‘Dench a subconscious!’
‘And she wasn’t a nannie either,’ said Fanny. ‘She was a gent. She was a romantic.’
‘She was damn useful,’ said Nelly. She eased her legs out of the car and felt for Hans Crescent with the Dr Scholl’s. �
�We’re lucky to find a parking place I suppose, but this is a good long way from Harrods.’
‘We’ll go in at door ten,’ said Mabel. ‘Past the children’s hairdressing and the rocking horse. Then through the children’s clothes to get to the lifts. In memory of Dench. She brought all my children here, Fanny, at one time or another.’
‘She brought all mine,’ said Fanny.
‘I dare say she brought mine,’ said Nelly, ‘though I can’t say I knew anything about it. I just handed the lot of them over to her. They were happier with her anyway. My place was with Charles.’ She waddled ahead.
Hatted and handbagged, not to say shopping-bagged, talking in piercing, old-fashioned Kensington voices, the three old women watched children pitching on the rocking horse, waiting for their hair to be cut. The ones with nannies all had dusky skins. The white ones were mostly with tired-looking mothers wearing anoraks and reading Cosmopolitan. The dusky ones wore herring-bone tweed, the white ones space-suits. White or dusky they all screamed a good deal.
‘What would Dench have thought of this!’ said Fanny.
‘She’d have borne it. Perhaps improved things.’
‘Oh, she’d not have gone to Arabs!’
‘Oh I don’t know. Look at Anna and the King of Siam.’
‘Dench didn’t care about money,’ said Mabel. ‘That was the really lovely thing about her.’
‘Yes,’ said Fanny, ‘Dench was cheap.’
Up in the lift the ladies rose, to the fourth floor and the big airy restaurant where they had booked a table. The head-waiter on seeing Lady Benson’s shoes found that the table was after all another table—one in a corner and rather behind a screen. Mabel’s long finger summoning him back took a little time to be regarded.
‘A young woman will be joining us. A Miss Dench.’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘Show her to this table, will you?’
‘Yes, madam. Sherry, madam, while you are waiting?’