by Nina Bawden
Clara showed Charles into a big, light room, full of windows. There was a high, carved bed with a lace cover, bookcases, broad, leather-topped desk with a Georgian silver inkstand. The general effect was not cluttered but pleasantly haphazard. She said, ‘The bath and loo are through that door there. It’s tiny, but you have it to yourself.’ She paused, her speech was full of pauses in which her lips moved, struggled, as if to draw words out of the air. She said, ‘This used to be Johnny’s room.’
There were silver cups, photographs. One, of a boy in a cricket cap, stood on the table by the bed. ‘That’s Julian,’ Clara said. ‘They were terrific friends, always.’
Charles looked at the young, bland face and thought that he would have disliked Cloutsham even then—there was something to dislike, not much but enough: a faint coldness in the eyes, a slightly peevish moulding to the mouth. ‘What does he do?’ he asked.
She said vaguely. ‘I’m not sure. It always seems to be something different. Lately he’s been abroad. I suppose he’d call himself a company director.’
‘It’s a convenient term.’
‘Yes.’ She gave him an uncertain smile and beckoned him to the window. ‘I’ve always loved this view,’ she said.
Below the window was a garden with peach trees against old walls and beyond, a small wood and a red-roofed farm. It was a lyrical but domestic beauty, a ‘lovely view’and Charles admired it with the polite indifference of the habitual town dweller. The country had never attracted him; when he was homesick, in America, it had been for his England, for wet, urban streets at twilight, for lines of washing snapping in small gardens, not for green lawns or the consoling privacy of acres.
He said, ‘It’s different from London.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘South-west.’ He thought there was no point in being more specific. To her, as to Johnny, the suburbs would be places you drove through on your way to somewhere else. She would know people lived in the rabbit-hutch houses and shopped at the neon-lit Parades, but only in the way she knew China was inhabited. In fact China would be more real to her: she might know someone who had been there.
‘I’ve got a flat in Battersea,’ she said, surprising him. ‘It’s poky, but it looks over the park and it’s convenient for the school.’
‘Do you teach?’ He glanced at her with faint curiosity. She didn’t attract him, she was too thin, too tautly strung, too tall—at least an inch taller than he was. She stood beside him, drooping slightly forward, hugging her elbows as if to minimize her eccentric height. Charles noticed her hands, rough on the yellow silk. They were big, bony hands, hard and strong with square, bitten nails.
She shook her head. ‘I do a bit of typing—it’s a school for deaf children. It’s terribly little, really.’ She spoke shamefacedly as if acknowledging some debt that he might have expected her to pay more fully.
Charles murmured something about it being useful work.
‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘But the awful thing is that quite often I find myself loathing it. The children are so pathetic—their lives are so terribly drab, so grey. Sometimes I can’t bear it.’
Charles said dryly, ‘You can always come home to Fitchet at week-ends.’
She looked surprised, faintly hurt at his tone and he changed the subject quickly, feeling he had been unkind. ‘I’m sorry your grandfather is so ill. What did Mr. Cloutsham mean—about hoping he’d make it?’
She glanced at him with startled eyes, trapped, suddenly, in one of her restless silences. The fair skin of her forehead puckered like silk and her mouth worked, trembled, as if on a wisp of air. Charles pitied her terrible nervousness but somehow it reproached him. He felt as if he had unintentionally blundered onto private ground.
She said in a low, nervous voice, ‘Grandfather made the estate over to Lester to avoid death duties. You have to do it five years before you die. He’s got another two months to go.’ She looked squarely at Charles. He guessed that however much it embarrassed her, she would never shirk an issue. ‘It sounds dreadfully sordid, doesn’t it?’ She gave an unconvincing little laugh. ‘But it is important. To Johnny particularly. It’s only the estate that’s entailed, you see—the house and a few farms. Grandfather means to provide for Johnny but if he shouldn’t—shouldn’t make it, as Julian put it, the money would have to go in death duties. I don’t pretend to know exactly how it works. I only know that if it happened, Johnny would be quite poor.’
‘Poverty is relative, surely?’ Though he was curiously shocked, Charles found he could not take this revelation very seriously. If rich people said they were poor, it usually meant they couldn’t afford this year’s Bentley.
‘Well … yes. But if you’ve always expected … You see, Johnny won’t get a penny.’ The dull colour burned up suddenly under her skin and she said passionately, ‘Oh—it is sordid—horrible—to think of the poor old man. He minds far more than anyone else, far, far more than Johnny. He only sees his grandfather in pain. But Grandfather won’t have drugs in case they shorten his life. Last night, the nurse gave him an injection to make him sleep and he cried like a baby.…’ Her voice faltered, there were tears in her eyes.
Charles said grimly, ‘It’s only poor people who can afford to be unrealistic about money.’
For a moment he was irritated with her: she was one of those boring, over-cultivated women who greet every painful discovery—the inescapable facts of life and death that the majority of people have to live with all the time—with privileged little cries of shocked sensibility. Then she turned to him and suddenly smiled, a full, generous smile—Johnny’s smile—and said, ‘I’m so sorry. This is terribly boring for you. Charles—I may call you Charles?—I’m so pleased, so absolutely delighted that you could come.’
If there was an element of patronage in this burst of speech, of the gracious hostess changing the subject to put an uncouthguest at ease, it could only be detected, Charles felt, by someone unreasonably wary and small-minded. What came across to him, evaporating his irritation like dew, was an almost magically unqualified warmth, an innocent invitation as if to some children’s party.
Johnny came back, full of apologies, in time for a game of tennis before dinner. There was a lawn court, rather unkempt, at the back of the house. They played doubles, Johnny with Julian Cloutsham, Charles with Johnny’s wife, Mary. Charles had not played since before he went to America; the heat and the sudden exercise tired him quickly, and after the first set he sat with his partner watching the two other men play singles.
It was a hard but good-humoured and apparently effortless game; there was a springy jauntiness about all their movements as if they both exercised regularly in clean, bright air. They must have played together a lot: neither of them was ever taken aback by an unusual stroke and from time to time they shouted brief, elliptical phrases at each other, a kind of shorthand speech evolved through years of easy intimacy. Charles thought they made a handsome couple and felt a stupid twist of jealousy—the simple, almost childish jealousy that springs from the discovery that your old friend has other friends he has known longer and better than you.
He looked at the girl next to him, Johnny’s wife, who had been ‘longing to meet him’. She was a slender, small-breasted girl who sat very still, brown hands still in the white lap of her dress, watching her son Martin beat the nettles at the side of the court for balls. There was an air of solemn, young composure about her that reminded Charles of his girl students; she had not said very much but when she had spoken it was softly and flatly and somehow determinedly as if she had long ago made up her mind on most things and was not likely to change it.
Charles said, his eyes on the boy, ‘He’s like Johnny, isn’t he?’
She pushed back a wisp of dark hair and said, ‘Do you think so?’ with an air of faint perturbation as if this did not altogether please her.
‘It wasn’t a considered statement,’ he said. ‘I thought it was the right thing to say.’
S
he laughed. It turned her into a very pretty girl. ‘I never understood why people should think that.’
Charles began to say something ponderously funny—he had a rather elephantine sense of humour that he recognized and tended to exaggerate—and then saw that the game had stopped. The two men were standing at the far end of the court talking to Clara. After a moment, Johnny left with her and they began to walk rapidly back to the house. Just before they turned the corner, Johnny began to run.
Cloutsham released the net and strolled towards them.
Mary said, ‘What did Clara want?’ The laughter had gone from her face, she looked pale and rather tense.
‘Granpa wants to see Johnny.’ He regarded her with a consciously grave expression like a man who always hires the right look for solemn occasions. ‘Apparently he’s not so good. He had a bit of a tantrum when Lester went to see him—ordered him out of the room.’
Mary said in a soft, shocked voice, ‘Oh—no.’ Cloutsham put his arm round her shoulders and patted her affectionately. ‘Don’t worry about it dear,’ he said. He looked at Charles. His voice was friendlier than it had been earlier, his interest marked.
‘I say—I didn’t know your name was Fraenkel.’
‘It isn’t. It was my mother’s name. We took it when we came to England because my father’s surname was unpronounceable. When my mother died, I shortened it.’ Charles explained stiffly and a little defiantly: this was something he was queerly ashamed of.
‘Any relation of Joseph Fraenkel? The shipowner?’ The question was casual but he looked at Charles with sharp curiosity.
‘He’s my uncle.’
Cloutsham grinned amiably at the reluctance in Charles’s voice. ‘That’s not something I’d want to hide, if I were you.’ His arm was still round Mary’s shoulders. He said, ‘I suppose we’d better get back.’
They strolled slowly towards the house. Martin hopped ahead, first on one bird-thin leg, then on the other. As he hopped he sang, a light, tuneless, private song.
Cloutsham said to Mary, ‘Have you seen old Frederick lately?’
She answered vaguely, as if her thoughts were a long way away. ‘He comes round most weeks, when he has the time. He works most evenings at his boys’club in Stepney.’
‘He’s a parson, isn’t he?’
‘No. A probation officer. He didn’t go into the Church.’
‘Oh, of course. I’d forgotten. We did have lunch once, a couple of years ago. Not a bad chap, old Fred, but a bit worthy. Everyone enjoys being virtuous, but there’s a limit.’ He laughed as if picturing a grim, deedy world, full of humourless self-deceivers, pleasant enough to belong to but denied to him by his ironic, unwinged honesty. ‘Fred takes himself far too seriously.’
‘Isn’t that a good thing?’
Cloutsham laughed again. ‘Yes—if you say so. I wasn’t criticizing, just catching up on my friends. I’ve been away some time, y’know. How does Johnny like working for Lester?’
She twisted away from his arm and said coldly, ‘All right, I think.’
Cloutsham looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Don’t palm me off. Honestly, sweetie, I really want to know. How long do you think he’ll go on, working for that amiable old Mogul. Lester likes his pound of flesh and Johnny’s not exactly prepared to toe the line, is he?’
She said impatiently, ‘They get on all right. Lester’s not a kind of ogre. He’s quite—benevolent.’
‘Oh, certainly. If I was a really worthy charity or a Mission to the Heathen, there’s no one I’d rather have on the board. But his relationship with Johnny isn’t quite so straight forward is it? Rightful heir and the old man’s darling?’ He chuckled, ‘Do they get on all right? I thought one of the reasons I was asked down this week-end was to keep the peace—so they could talk to me and not to each other.’ He glanced sideways at Charles and suddenly grinned like a mischievous boy who knows he has said something improper. ‘Seriously, though—what happens when Granpa dies? Lester’s got a son of his own, hasn’t he? All good things come to an end, y’know.’
She answered with a spurt of anger, sharp as a match flare.
‘Johnny got this job on his own merits. You talk as if he were some sort of remittance man.’ She blazed at him with angry grey eyes, her small breasts rose and fell with a quick, excited nervousness beneath the stuff of her white dress.
‘For Heaven’s sake,’ Cloutsham said. He took off his sunglasses and widened his eyes helplessly at Charles.
Charles smiled. He imagined they must have quarrelled earlier. Their relationship must be close enough for that or Cloutsham would not have baited her in quite the way he had—his teasing had that distantly barbed, cruel quality some men show to women they are sexually attracted by but know they have no chance with. It was something she would hardly understand; she seemed quite absurdly young. When Cloutsham walked on, still laughing, to catch up the little boy and hump him, piggy-back, into the house, she glared after him, her lower lip caught fractionally between her teeth like a mutinous little girl.
Charles said soothingly, ‘He was only playing the fool. It’s about the last thing anyone could say about Johnny, after all.’
‘Is it? Johnny has no money of his own, you know. Grandfather has always made him an allowance. And if…’
‘I know,’ he said quickly. ‘Clara told me. It’s very distressing for you all.’ She looked so unhappy that he wanted to comfort her. ‘But Johnny will be all right, you don’t really have to worry, do you? Even if the worst happens—his uncle could hardly cut him off with a shilling.’
She was frowningly silent for a moment, looking at him as if measuring the extent of his illusion. Then she said with an ironic lift in her soft, level voice, ‘Oh, but he could. Julian was right about that.’ She hesitated, looking down and away from him, and then said quickly and with a sudden, trenchant bitterness, ‘Johnny can’t see it, of course. He never could see anything like that, but Lester dislikes him. Sometimes I think—he hates him.’
Charles felt a cold uneasiness. ‘Aren’t you being a bit over-dramatic?’ he said.
They met Johnny in the hall. His face glimmered palely in the dusk. Mary said, ‘How’s Grandfather?’ and he answered, after a brief, hesitant glance at Charles, ‘He’s had another stroke. Not a bad one. He got upset—it was very sudden.’
‘Is he conscious?’
‘He was, for a little. He knew me, I think.’ He paused and went on, bringing out the words with difficulty as if they hurt him. ‘The awful thing is—one feels so little. When I was sitting there I felt nothing. No more than a kind of boredom. Like waiting for a train to start.’
‘Darling, I’m so terribly sorry.’ She went up to him as if to touch him and then stopped, uncertainly. He smiled sadly at her, widening his eyes as if they were hurting him and rubbed at them with his forefinger.
She said gently, ‘You’ll make them sore.’
‘Sorry. It’s an irritating habit.’
She said, ‘Oh,’ rather blankly, and then she did take his hand but lightly and nervously as if she were afraid of a rebuff. He blinked at her lovingly enough but they seemed Charles thought, almost more like a brother and sister than man and wife. It was as if a curtain hung between them, fine enough to admit the daylight of ordinary affection but filtering off the midday glare of stronger passion or grief.
Charles murmured a few stilted words of sympathy that sounded inadequate as they were bound to do and said that of course he would catch the next train back to London.
‘No, don’t do that,’ Johnny said. ‘He’s had these attacks before—there’s nothing anyone can do. Except wait.’ He halted and looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m terribly sorry—I do see it’s absolutely wretched for you.’ The apology was genuine; he was really ashamed of inflicting a family worry on an outsider.
Mary said swiftly, ‘Do stay. It would make everything much easier.’ It sounded heartfelt; she looked shyly at her husband who said, ‘Mary finds family gatherings a bit of a strai
n.’
She laughed a little confusedly as if denying this and admitting it at the same time. ‘You must admit—it’s not always easy to talk. Too many things are sacred.’
Johnny smiled at her. He put one hand on her shoulder, one hand on Charles’s and gently propelled them up the stairs. He said to Charles, ‘Julian has a good name for my Aunt Florence. He calles her the Recessive Gene.’
Charles laughed politely though he didn’t think it very funny. He remembered that Johnny had always wanted his friends to like each other: if they wouldn’t show their paces when he introduced them, Johnny would repeat their stories for them, their bons mots. Johnny prized his friends above rubies but he wanted everyone to admire their glitter—like a king displaying the splendour of his court. It was a naively endearing quality, only occasionally exasperating. Mary apparently found it exasperating now, because she said, ‘Julian always talks smartly about people. There’s no need to repeat what he says.’
She spoke with a stern, heavily disapproving air that was funny and touching, Charles thought, because it didn’t belong to her: it belonged to some pinched-mouth, middle-aged woman overheard on a bus. For a moment he wondered if it had been a joke; then he noticed that her hand, trailing lightly on the banisters, was trembling a little.
In the drawing-room after dinner, shaded lamps bloomed with a delicate light on hands, coffee cups, brandy glasses, leaving faces in shadow. Charles had a pleasant sensation of being marooned on a floating island of warmth and ease from which the rest of the world seemed remote, a land-line distantly glimpsed across a shadowy sea. Dinner had been a slow, comfortable meal. No one had said very much about the old man lying ill upstairs but there had been no strained attempt to avoid the subject either: conversation was naturally muted but perfectly easy and Charles realized when the meal was over that he had half-expected to be bored and had not been. As a result, he was in an uncritical, bland mood in which he felt disposed to like everyone, even Johnny’s Aunt Florence, the Recessive Gene. The silly joke remained in his head with the thumping insistence of a popular song and with the same kind of depressing aptness. She was a short, flat-chested woman with a long, long chin and an air of being spiritually involved elsewhere. Her left hand played incessantly with a necklace of painted shells that looked as if it had been bought at some charity bazaar. When they were introduced, she gave Charles the chilly tips of her fingers and said, ‘So glad …’ in a light, choking voice as if she suffered some constriction of the vocal chords. He had decided, at dinner, that she was neither rude, nor grande dame, merely painfully shy, like Clara. He was annoyed when Cloutsham sat beside him, brandy glass held fondly to his waistcoat and said, ‘I see you got stuck with Florrie. That was lousy luck.’