Geoffrey, Rosamund was well aware, found it all rather boring; but he was an affectionate and dutiful son and was only too delighted that Rosamund was able to get on so well with his rather thorny and opinionated mother, and apparently to share her interests. So he roamed contentedly enough about the room, looking at a book here, a magazine there; and Rosamund, sitting in consultation with her mother-in-law over the letter, was aware of his slow, familiar movements as a part of the peculiar peace of this room, this house. In her mind, the decipherment of Linear B would be for ever simply a part of this gentle, shining drawing room, with its small fire crackling, its fire-irons bright gold with daily rubbing, and every mahogany surface polished, speckless; gleaming from Jessie’s lifelong care.
At four o’clock exactly, Jessie knocked discreetly on the door, and wheeled in the trolley of tea-things. ‘Thank you, Madam,’ she murmured, as she set the final cup in position beside her mistress and turned to go: and ‘Thank you, Jessie,’ replied Mrs Fielding, clearly and formally. It occurred to Rosamund that within this rigid, formalised relationship there flowed, perhaps, a warmth, a closeness, far deeper and more binding than many that flourish so demonstratively in the outside world.
The Palace of Minos was forthwith abandoned for the time being. Mrs Fielding’s upbringing made talking shop at mealtimes out of the question: so while she poured out from the silver teapot, and handed round the lovely, delicate survivors of the old Rockingham tea service, the talk became general; that is to say, it concentrated on News about the Family. They got Peter over first, and quickly. Rosamund always found it rather a strain to think of something both new and vaguely creditable to say about him every fortnight or so; and as soon as possible she got the old lady switched onto Cousin Etty and the Boys—the Boys being by now middle aged and elderly men, in and out of hospital, and with daughters getting married, that sort of thing. It so happened that Rosamund had never met any of that branch of the family; and so Cousin Etty and the Boys had joined Linear B in her imagination as the gentle concomitants to an endless vista of tranquil old-world teatimes. They had become as one with the hand-made lace cloth; with the silver sugar-basin and sugar-tongs; with the home-made jam in cut glass dishes; everything softly shining; everything perfect of its kind.
Before they left, Rosamund found time to slip into the kitchen and talk to Jessie for a few minutes. As always on Sunday evenings, Jessie was using her free time after tea to write a letter to one or other of her nieces in Australia. Already, for her, it was a cosy winter’s night. She had the curtains closely drawn against the September sunset, a thick green cloth spread over the scrubbed wooden table, and in the background the Aga cooker murmured softly, as the old kitchen range had done long ago. This was Jessie’s sitting room, and she would have chosen no other. Every pot and pan, every cup and plate, stood dry and shining in its appointed place; every working surface lay scrubbed and clean, ready and inviting for tomorrow’s tasks. On the top shelf of the dresser stood photographs of all Jessie’s nieces’ weddings, together with the shells and ornaments they had sent her from the other side of the world; and in the drawers below were collected a lifetime’s store of magazines, newspaper cuttings, old letters; and also more utilitarian oddments like string, stamps, and sewing materials, any one of which she could have laid her hands on in the dark, even one of the newspaper cuttings.
For a second, Rosamund stood in the doorway, gazing at the familiar scene, a vision of changeless, absolute security, which had no counterpart anywhere else in her experience. Only Jessie’s glasses, familiar sight though they were, created a very slightly jarring note. She only wore them for this special task, just once a week, and so they still looked a little like fancy dress on her; just as the very ordinary paraphernalia of letter writing—ink, writing-pad, blotting paper—managed to look, in this setting, a little bit like stage properties: not quite a part of the whole.
But in the next moment Jessie had noticed her visitor in the doorway, had removed the glasses, and looked like herself again. They went through the tiny, unchanging ritual of Jessie’s making a move as if to stand up respectfully, and Rosamund hastily urging her to remain seated, sitting down herself at the opposite side of the table, and asking after the niece who had most recently had something happen to her. This time, it was the one whose husband had recently been put on night shift, which unsettled his stomach.
‘A raw beaten-up egg in milk, that’s what he should have, first thing when he gets in of a morning,’ said Jessie firmly, and with an absolute certainty which must surely carry its healing sureness across eight thousand miles of troubled lands and heaving waters. ‘I’m just telling her, she should keep him to that for a couple—three—weeks, and then work him along to a nice brown egg lightly boiled…. They can get lovely eggs out there, you know, Miss Rosamund. Real, big, new-laid eggs.’
‘Miss Rosamund’ was perhaps not the most suitable title for a married woman of eighteen years’ standing; but long, long ago Jessie had decided, quietly, and entirely on her own, after months of uneasily not addressing Rosamund at all, that ‘Madam’ simply couldn’t be paired with ‘Master Geoffrey’; that an address of manifest incorrectness was the only solution; and ‘Miss Rosamund’ it had been ever since.
‘See here,’ continued Jessie, sliding a stiff, glittering square of cardboard from an envelope. ‘She’s sent me my birthday present ever so early this year. I suppose the posts and all, she wanted to be sure…. Pretty, isn’t it?’
She handed Rosamund a rather over-ornate calendar, covered with blue and silver flowers interwoven with blue and silver good wishes and worthy sentiments.
‘But I wouldn’t use it,’ went on Jessie carefully. ‘I’m going to put it away all nice, perhaps it’ll come in another time. I wouldn’t want to change my old one, that’s the truth….’
‘Change what?’ Geoffrey had at that moment entered the kitchen, and was beaming on the two of them: ‘What are you two girls gossipping about now?’
Although he seemed to be laughing at them, Rosamund knew that he loved the way she fitted into his old home—fitted better, in a way, than he did himself: loved to find her chattering like this with old Jessie in the kitchen.
‘It’s Jessie’s calendar,’ she explained. ‘Her niece has just sent her a new one, but she’d rather go on just fitting the new set of dates into the dear old cottage one, wouldn’t you, Jessie?’
They all glanced up at the wall, where the painted plywood shape of a cottage hung, with painted curtains to its windows, painted hollyhocks along its base, and its front door designed as a gap in which date and month could be inserted. It had hung there, over the table, ever since Rosamund could remember, and the little verse, painted in ornate, faded letters under the eaves, was by now so familiar that she was hardly aware of it any more. But this evening, her attention freshly drawn to it, she read it consciously and attentively for the first time in years:
‘Lord, make it mine
To feel, amid the city’s jar
That there abides a Peace of Thine
Man did not make, and cannot mar.’
Jessie’s calendar. Jessie’s prayer. In the course of her quiet, ordered life, lived apparently in such unchanging calm, had even she felt at times the tumult, the longing for peace? Had there been times, over the long years, when unguessed at tempests had torn and battered at her secret soul; when turmoils and despairs unspoken had hammered behind her starched apron and her neat black dress? Had she at those moments read and re-read the lines on her little wooden cottage, and found the peace they promised?
With a rush of love, Rosamund was aware of Geoffrey reading the words too, carefully and attentively as she was herself, without mockery or condescension. A tender, happy smile played about his mouth: he, too, must be thinking these same thoughts about the faithful old servant of his childhood.
He spoke softly:
‘It reminds one of Lindy doesn’t it? She’s peaceful in that way. No matter what’s going on aroun
d her—traffic—parties—noise—she still remains at peace, tranquil within herself.’
Rosamund could have torn the calendar from the wall and flung it at him. She could have thrown herself on the floor in a passion of rage and weeping. She could, after recovering the power of speech, have bombarded him with furious argument. Lindy isn’t tranquil, she could have screamed: she’s a bundle of nerves: she’s all tensed up, all the time, with the strain of pretending to be calm and gay. I know it…. I sense it….
But instead she smiled, keeping her eyes fixed on the aging, multicoloured letters, which now seemed to her to be written in fresh, bright blood.
‘Yes, there aren’t many people like that, are there,’ she replied evenly: and a moment later they heard Lindy’s car crunching on the gravel. It was time for her to drive them home.
CHAPTER VIII
Even as a surgeon, trained over the long years to almost superhuman skill and sensitivity, may examine the patient beneath his hands for the almost imperceptible symptoms of a deadly disease, so did Rosamund, all her faculties sharpened by fury, examine Lindy’s face, her posture, the whole of her demeanour, for tiny, miniscule symptoms of some huge, corroding tension; or at least of common or garden impatience.
For Lindy had explained, in arranging to call for them at seven, that she wanted to be home by eight; and yet here she was, at twenty past seven, still smilingly and charmingly listening to Mrs Fielding’s impassioned defence of Evans and all his works in the Palace of Minos. As kindly and cleverly as ever Rosamund herself could have done, she was encouraging the old lady with tactful interventions, of a sort which indicated her interest without betraying her ignorance. Never once did Lindy’s eyes flicker towards the clock; never for one second did she let her interest seem to flag, as a preliminary to ending the conversation. How relaxed she looked, damn her, one arm resting lightly along the arm of the chair, the other lying loosely in her lap. Rosamund watched, sharp-eyed as a weasel, for those white, well-manicured fingers to start fiddling with something; picking at the braid on the armchair, perhaps; pleating up a bus ticket; anything at all to indicate some tiny degree of inner tension.
But it was no use. And in the end it was Geoffrey who had to remind them that time was getting on.
‘Oh, what a shame! Yes—I suppose we should be going really…. It’s been so interesting, Mrs Fielding, I really don’t know how to tear myself away….’
So it was on the cordial farewells between his mother and Lindy that Geoffrey beamed this time, as he usually did on his mother and Rosamund.
‘You must come again, my dear, I would be so pleased if you would!’ exclaimed Mrs Fielding to Lindy, as she showed them all to the door. ‘Do bring her again, Geoffrey, won’t you?’
‘It’s a case of her bringing us at the moment,’ laughed Geoffrey. ‘She’s introduced a car into our lives, you know, Mother, and we’re really quite bitten! Next thing you’ll know, we’ll be driving up to your door in our own Rolls and taking you for drives. How would you like that?’
‘It would depend how you drove,’ said his mother cautiously. ‘I’ve never felt you were one of Nature’s mechanical geniuses, Geoffrey. Particularly since the time you told me I was only imagining that noise in the geyser, and it blew up the same night!’
‘Oh, Mother, I didn’t say you were imagining it! I said——’
‘Well, never mind, dear,’ interrupted Mrs Fielding annoyingly. ‘You haven’t even got a car yet, have you, so there’s no need to argue. Goodbye, dears. See you all again soon, I hope. When you can next spare the time.’
She stood waving in the lighted doorway while Lindy edged and backed them into position, and then swept the car slowly, gracefully, out into the dusky road. Down under the great trees, under the gathering hosts of stars, and out into the streams of cars in the main road.
The traffic was even worse now than it had been this afternoon. People must have seized on this last warm basking sunshine of the season to swarm in thousands to the coast; and now here they all were swarming back, tired, irritable, scowling narrow-eyed at the bumper just ahead. As the slow crawl came at last to a total stop some of them began hooting, with sharp, poignant hopelessness, to somebody or something; perhaps to unhearing Hermes, god of travellers, long vanished from the earth, and who can blame him?
And what god can I pray to, wondered Rosamund, running her mind over such classical deities as she could remember. Which was the goddess whose special task it was to watch over bad-tempered wives cooped up in a five-foot box with Another Woman of angelic good-humour, of unruffled calm? Oh, dear goddess, whoever you are, prayed Rosamund, show me how to make her annoyed and upset without it being in the least bit my fault. If you would just do that for me, I think I really would sacrifice a sheep to you, or whatever it was you wanted. At least, I would if I thought it would fit into my oven, but I’m sure it wouldn’t, it’s bad enough with the turkey at Christmas. Besides, the butcher would think I was mad, asking for a whole sheep…. It’s no wonder the Olympians have deserted the earth, with everything so complicated….
‘Get a move on, sister!’ yelled the man in the car behind them, sticking his head through his window. He sounded very cross and unreasonable, and pinched his hooter spitefully as he spoke. Lindy leaned out and threw him an enchanting smile:
‘So sorry, Pal,’ she called. ‘But I can’t do a thing. We’re all in the same boat, aren’t we?’
The scowl left the man’s face. He grinned apologetically. Geoffrey looked at Lindy with delight.
‘There can’t be another driver on the whole road who could have achieved that!’ he declared admiringly. ‘This is the most rotten luck for you, I must say,’ he went on, gesturing at the glittering shambles of standing cars in every direction. ‘I’m terribly sorry we’ve let you in for this. There isn’t a hope of being back by eight, I’m afraid, it’s practically that now. Was it something very important?’
‘Oh, only our party,’ said Lindy lightly. ‘I was going to do the food and things, but it doesn’t matter. I daresay everyone’ll be late, anyway. You will for one, that’s quite certain! And so will Rosie!’
‘I didn’t know we’d been asked.’ Rosamund could hear that Geoffrey was smiling in the darkness. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘Oh, well, you know me!’ said Lindy. ‘I only thought of it this morning, and I just rang everyone up straight away. I meant to ask you when we started out this afternoon, but it went right out of my head. So I’m asking you now. Will you come to my party, on Sunday the 13th of September, at 8.0 p.m. or as soon after as the hostess happens to turn up? No. On second thoughts, let’s start it on the dot! Eight p.m. prompt is on the invitation card now!’
She took her hands off the wheel, reached into the glove compartment and drew out a small square bottle and three plastic mugs.
‘Vodka,’ she explained. ‘To get the party going! Will you divide it out, Geoff? There’s only a teeny drop, but still, we might as well enjoy ourselves while we sit here. Nothing’s going to move for hours yet. So here goes, boys and girls! The party’s begun!’
You could, if you didn’t mind how nagging and mean-spirited you sounded, have pointed out to Lindy that she shouldn’t drink while she was driving. But by the time it had been divided into three, the vodka filled less than half an inch at the bottom of each mug; that amount couldn’t possibly affect anyone, least of all a driver as confident as Lindy. And anyway, Rosamund knew very well that rather than make such a wet-blanketing sort of protest in her husband’s hearing, she would willingly have sat by and watched Lindy drinking a pint of the stuff: yes, and would have accepted her fate in the ensuing pile-up without so much as an ‘I told you so!’
I’m just a criminal; a plain criminal! thought Rosamund, shocked at herself as she realised that, just to save her own selfish pride, she would without a qualm have condemned half a dozen people to death or disablement.
But it was silly to agonise like this: Lindy wasn’t drinkin
g a pint of vodka. And all that giggling with Geoffrey didn’t mean she was drunk at all; it was simply that she had thrown out the daring proposal that they should invite the irascible driver of the car behind to join them in this little celebration.
‘Poor man, I feel so sorry for him, all alone in his car, eaten up with impatience, and no one to swear at! I’m sure he’d love it—and it is a party, isn’t it?’
‘But, my dear Lindy, suppose it all starts moving suddenly, then where will he be? I’m sure we could all be arrested, or something!’ Geoffrey sounded as if he was half laughing, half shocked, and wholly intrigued.
‘Oh, nonsense! I tell you, nothing’s going to move for hours yet. I always think that these real, outsize jams could be made a wonderful social occasion, if only people would be a bit more enterprising. You could have debates, lectures, parties….’
In the end, of course, they didn’t invite the man in the car behind: but they went on giggling about the possibility of it, like school-children, till Rosamund could have screamed. And her distress was not only for the here-and-now situation. She also knew, with that deadly stir of intuition that clutches at the spirit, that this, for Lindy and Geoffrey, was going to be one of those memories. One of those times that they could look back on even after forty years, and still say: ‘You remember that man in the car …?’ Every time Vodka might be mentioned from now on, Geoffrey’s glance would meet Lindy’s in swift, mutual recollection. The memories he shared with Rosamund were already, perhaps, becoming shadowy, tiresome; something to remember with an effort, like a cousin’s birthday….
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