It’s a decision which I rapidly regret. Of course, it’s not in any way binding and yet I discover that I’m obstinate. I make a compromise. I’ll go on writing but won’t actually post anything until I’ve received his next letter.
I write about five sides a day and my letter reaches thirty sides. Forty. Fifty. But then my average starts to fall. Dramatically. By then it’s hard to retain even a semblance of good cheer.
And every morning, yes, the closing of my door, the running downstairs, the sifting through the pile on the hall table, the philosophic shrug. Continual disappointment; continual slowing of that optimistic heartbeat. The same thing every evening, basically in reverse. Over the weeks, disappointment turning to deep anger. To disbelief. To desperation.
My attitude at work begins to change. At first my job enabled me to think of other things, to chat with colleagues, learn about the stock, try to be of service to my customers. But the women who are buying perfume—and, even more, the men who are buying it for them—are usually in a carefree mood. They haven’t heard about austerity. You see a lot of adoration.
One morning I set out as normal, having largely given up on hope, when suddenly I spot an envelope exactly like those which Matt used to send. I give an excited exclamation, rush forward—and find it’s from Australia. A convulsive sob bursts out of me just as Jane, in dressing gown and carrying Rex, emerges from her bedroom.
“Oh, Rosalind, my dear, whatever’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Late. Must dash. Goodbye.”
“Look in again one evening and have a little drink. I’d enjoy that.”
“Yes, all right.” I only want escape.
What follows is a time of nightmare. It’s the day I finally face up to things. It’s the day I finally say to myself: He isn’t going to write again. He’s going to marry Marjorie.
He isn’t going to write again, he’s going to marry Marjorie. (I’m on the tube.) He isn’t going to write again, he’s going to marry Marjorie.
But hasn’t got the guts to tell me.
Or maybe not the callousness. The cruelty. He’s aware I’ll get the message. It could be less upsetting for me, if this process can be gradual. Perhaps that’s the way he figures it.
In any case it’s over. I shall never see him again.
The whole day has a weird feeling of unbalance. Nothing seems quite real. I observe things at a distance, hear even my own voice as though it comes from someone else’s mouth. (You’d think that this might dull the pain.) Reality is only restored, briefly, when the afternoon culminates in a dropped bottle of scent, glass shattering as it hits the floor. After that I faint.
Well, anyway—thank God!—at least I don’t throw up.
“Four ounces of My Sin. I felt it slip, it happened in slow motion. We’ll reek of it for weeks.”
“But did they make you pay?”
“No, they’re good about those things.”
“Well, you’ve been there two months. More. They must know by now you’re not cack-handed.” The inevitable fumbling for a fresh cigarette. “Why were you crying that morning when you left?”
“I wasn’t crying. I was only—”
“And you don’t look half so bonny. I know I’m being inquisitive but has something happened? Between you and Matt?”
I hesitate—and shrug—and force a smile.
“I suppose you could say so. Something? Nothing? Either would be accurate.”
“And?”
“And it’s over.”
She pauses. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Then he’s a fool. Here—let me fill your glass. And you’ll be better off without him.” I’ve never asked about her ex-; wonder suddenly if she’s going to speak about him now. “But does the bastard know you’re pregnant?”
However, she soon realizes she’s on the wrong tack. I refuse to become one of those women a man feels it’s his duty to reclaim. Make an honest woman of.
So she contents herself with remarking on the fact I now wear a wedding ring.
“Oh, well,” I say. “Needs must, I suppose. Life is full of compromise.”
My tone encourages her. “Anyhow, who wants a man, when they can have a dear sweet precious pussycat? Isn’t that right, my pretty darling?” She sees me smile at both her own soppiness and that of her purring Siamese. “So what went wrong?” she asks quietly, after a pause.
I sigh. “Jane, it’s the usual story. Some very clichéd holiday romance. I’d fooled myself that it was more.”
“More? My perfect dream: one holiday romance per year. From which you’d run like mad the moment it threatened to get serious.”
“Well, anyway—as I think I told you last time—I realized from the start he was engaged. So by disappointing me, at least he hasn’t disappointed the girl who had the prior claim. You have to give him that.”
“No, not at all! I have to give him nothing. You mustn’t be a nauseating saint.”
“Oh, I didn’t say I don’t resent her. And I resent the fact it was Matt’s brother whom she loved; I mean if she loved anyone. Her transfer to Matt seemed wholly a matter of convenience. That’s what really gets me. I promise you I’m not a saint.”
“Still, love, it isn’t only her, is it? It’s—”
“Anyway, we’ll leave it there, shall we? I swear to you I’m over him.”
Her look is plainly sceptical but at any rate she doesn’t challenge me. “You may not believe this,” she says, “yet in the end you’ll find it’s better to be self-reliant.”
A little to her surprise I acquiesce. “Yes. Looking back I hate the way that everything depended so entirely on the smile or frown of just one person.” (And I even tell myself that I shall come to believe it, in time—for I can certainly sympathize with such a point of view.)
“Let’s drink a toast, then.” She considers. “Confusion to the fellow! He had no right to make you look so peaky.”
I also raise my glass. “And may he think about me now and then and know an instant of regret! The occasional, unexpected pang!”
But Jane gives a gasp of annoyance.
“Sweet Lord. Let me interpret. What was his second name?”
“Cassidy.”
She lifts her glass again; pauses, to indicate that here is the really serious toast, the truly definitive version.
“Sod Matthew Cassidy!” she says.
20
That’s all very well, but as I stand looking from the window of my room, I think: Sod you? No, not quite. And is it really true I’m over you?
But all the same. I’m certainly not going to mourn you, not any longer. We’ll make out, Thomas and I. And in a way it’ll be a comfort just to know that somewhere over there you’re still around, it isn’t quite as though you’re dead. (One day, even, when he’s old enough, Thomas may begin to feel curious, curious enough to want to come in search, and then the two of you could possibly become close…well, anyway, let’s hope!) But I only wish I had a photograph. I’m so afraid I’ll start to forget what you look like. And a faceless blur, I feel, wouldn’t be of great comfort.
Oh, what the hell…who needs comfort? We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay, won’t we, Tom? The human race hasn’t survived this long by whining and feeling sorry for itself. Agreed, my love?
I often talk to him like this. I don’t mean to Matt, I mean to the baby inside me: the baby who sometimes kicks quite hard now and who is very much a presence; at five months I have grown large—gratifyingly so. I’m aware that perhaps it’s not too different to Jane and her Siamese but already I see him as a confidant, a boon companion.
The following Sunday, for instance, I’m on Hampstead Heath, sitting on a bench watching a young woman go by with a pram. An older woman who is almost certainly her mum is walking alongside. I fold my hands complacently across my stomach.
“This time next year, my darling, that could be us: you and me and your gran. Your gran is going to be so proud. She’s already knitt
ed you some blankets. So from the start, my lad, only the very best. And definitely no stigma. People will say, ‘There goes that smashing boy Tom Cassidy, pity he never knew his dad—who died in the Pacific.’” (At work I’ve now told my colleagues it was because I couldn’t bear to talk about Matt’s death that I’d gone back to using my maiden name. Luckily, even during my earliest days at the store—and despite the poetic licence of my letters—I had continuously hugged him to myself and done whatever I could to hide my exuberance. These days, I wear my wedding ring and let them call me Cassidy. But obviously—as soon as I judge our son sufficiently grownup to know about such things—I’ll search for the gentlest and wisest possible means of telling him.) “It’s a shame, Tom, but it isn’t the end of the world. Especially not when you remember this. A boy’s best friend is always his mother.”
The two women with the pram pass my bench on their way back. The older woman smiles at me.
“Just like a girl’s is.”
A girl’s best friend is her mother.
When I was a child, the churchyard in Chesham was always one of my favourite haunts. Not only was it pretty—and peaceful—and private; I liked the old man who tended the graves, and the flowers that people left on them, and above all the names and the dates and the inscriptions. It was a place where I used to read my Violet Needhams and my Daphne du Mauriers, find sunshine and security, set off on wild adventures—from the age of eight, say, until the time my father died (when, following his funeral, I never wanted to return, not even, as so often happens on the screen, to linger at his graveside and talk to him of day-to-day events or matters of the heart). But now, on this cold and grey November afternoon, scarcely thirteen years later, it isn’t my father who is chiefly in my thoughts—although he is certainly there and at one point I remember him, on the evenings when I met him from the train, hurrying forward with his warm and eager smile, dropping his briefcase on the platform and lifting me high and then tossing me yet higher. When we got home, his greeting to his wife was invariably more sedate but just as loving. “Hello, my Sylvia…” I can still catch that precise inflection. “Hello, my Duncan,” she would say.
“Rosalind, your mother was one of the kindest people I ever met.” Mrs Morley walks beside me as we leave the churchyard.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“And how pleased she must have been to hear she was going to have a grandchild.”
“Yes.”
“If it’s a little girl will you be naming it after her?”
“Yes.” I can only bring myself to speak in monosyllables. My handkerchief is crumpled in my hand.
Her husband—I mean my mother’s—moves up purposefully to join us. To my dismay Mrs Morley, believing she’s being tactful, soon wanders off to leave the two of us together.
He’s tall and rangy, with a severe, not unattractive, face. “Well, then, I’ve been hoping to get you on your own. Perhaps now your mother’s gone we could try to be friends again, Roz. Like we were in the beginning.”
No, we were never friends.
“I can appreciate you should have been upset about it at the time—about that little incident when I’d been drinking more than was good for me and I didn’t know what I was doing. But it was all such a terrible misunderstanding. Why not come back where you belong and make a home here for your nipper?”
I simply turn and walk away. I don’t go back to the tea which a couple of neighbours have very kindly organized. I plead misery as my excuse and the two elderly ladies accept it with compassion. I couldn’t endure having to listen to more sympathetic platitudes or further fond remembrances. The dusty carriages and the anonymity of the Metropolitan Line are the only familiar things I feel that I can cope with.
The last time I saw my mother it had been with Matt.
“Goodbye, Matthew. This has been such a pleasure. God bless you. Good luck.”
I picture her standing on the pavement outside the Astoria. I can see Margaret Lockwood looking out over her shoulder. The film being shown is one I’d hoped that I might see with Matt: ‘I’ll Be Your Sweetheart’. But perhaps ‘Without Love’ was more appropriate.
“Goodbye, Rosalind. Goodbye, my darlings. You’re going to be so late. But, no, it doesn’t matter if you’re late, just so long as you get there in the end. Take care,” she says.
Four weeks later Christmas comes. I’m glad that none of my memories of spending Christmas with my mum is of very recent date.
On Boxing Day, Jane and I redecorate my room.
“This was the nicest present you could possibly have given me,” I say.
“No,” she replies, “it needed doing, anyway. It was a cheating sort of present.” Even while she’s on her knees to paint the skirting board, eyes half closed against the constant spiralling of smoke, Rex is draped like a fox fur round her shoulders.
“I wish everyone could cheat on me so gracefully. You’ve made my Christmas happier than I could ever have imagined.”
For it had hardly augured well, a few days back, when Congress had finally passed an act on behalf of the alien spouses of U.S. servicemen, expediting their admission into America.
“Thomas is going to love all this,” I say, as I look at the wallpaper rolls which we’d dashed out to buy, almost on impulse, late on Christmas Eve.
“I sincerely hope so. But, my dear, I’m sure it isn’t wise to keep on calling him Thomas. What problems if Thomas should turn out to be Thomasina!”
“Oh, Jane—he wouldn’t!”
“That’s precisely what I mean.”
I laugh at the way she’s risen to my bait. “No, please don’t worry. I would love Thomasina just as much. It’s only that somehow I know…”
“I wish you’d write and tell the father.”
“The sod? Can we be talking of the sod?”
“The sod has money and he ought to pay.”
“But I don’t want any part of his money. I don’t want any part of his money or his pity. If I can’t have his love—and obviously I can’t—the only part of him I want is Tom.”
“Pooh! You sound like the heroine of ‘Back Street’ or some Bette Davis weepy. Oh, bugger!” she says. “I can see there’s nothing for it but to place my trust in karma.”
It takes me a moment to work this out. “You’re talking of reincarnation?”
“And retribution. In his next life he’ll experience all the wretchedness he’s brought to you in this.”
I smile. “Oh, but have you thought? What if the buck stops here?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that in my last existence I might have been the man. That this is the justice I deserve, not Matt.”
“Huh!” She gives a sniff.
The room is finished by New Year—except for the curtains I am having made and the carpet I’m still looking for. Also I intend to buy one or two pieces of good furniture to replace some of the more shoddy items. Nothing to do with Jane, all these expensive acquisitions, but since I’ve heard from the solicitors that my mother’s left me over a thousand pounds I feel I can afford to be extravagant. Eventually I shall move out of Worsley Road and rent a self-contained flat and then the antique rocking chair and the Queen Anne chest of drawers, the carpet and the standard lamp, possibly the curtains too, will naturally come with me. This knowledge of the amount of my legacy relieves me of a lot of worry. Apart from anything else, it will see me comfortably through the period surrounding Tom’s birth, as well as give me two or three months at home before I need to find a woman to look after him. (And talking of the will, I don’t know how usual this is but I’ve instructed the solicitors to go to the flat themselves to obtain the pieces of jewellery and other keepsakes so carefully enumerated. Also the knitting.) Bless my mother, whom I was too self-absorbed to realize was even ill, let alone dying.
My baby is born at noon on the 12th February 1946. My waters had burst at night after a day of fairly frenzied activity: of giving not simply my own room but the bathroom and the lavato
ry and the stairs—the landing, the hallway and even the front steps—a really thorough clean. People had said that because he was my first baby he would most probably come late. But in fact he arrives bang on time.
Yes.
He.
Thomas.
Blond hair and blue eyes just like his daddy. Seven pounds three ounces. I only wish my mother could have seen him.
No, that isn’t the only thing I wish, of course not, not at all. I have to keep suppressing thoughts of…well, of where he might have been born and of the different set of circumstances under which he’d then have made his entry into this world, and of the different set of visitors who would then have been coming to see us in the hospital. (But here in Hampstead I have Jane, and the young Australian couple from the floor above me, and some of the girls from Bourne & Hollingsworth, and the curate from Downshire Hill, and they’re all of them so kind.) And it’s funny to think how, even in those far-off and unfamiliar surroundings, with a different home and nationality and future, Tom would have been exactly this same baby, this identical selfsame baby.
And his mother couldn’t have been any prouder of him in America than she already is right here in England.
On March 5th I write to Trixie.
“…so, Trixie, believe me, he really is beautiful—and not just in his looks either. But I won’t go on. Let me simply state that Thomas Duncan Cassidy is probably the best baby on earth, just about the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, and then I’ll take pity on you and shut up for the time being. I return to work in May. When that happens Jane will look after him during the day. There’s nobody I’d trust him to more willingly and she’s promised to cut down on both the Gordon’s and the Passing Cloud whenever she has the care of him, and also on her—occasionally—unguarded language! But what if I miss the moment when he starts to crawl or says his first word or pulls off some other equally momentous coup? He looked so pleased with himself this morning when he merely sneezed—a bit surprised for a second but then quite shamelessly proud, inviting me to join in with his full ten seconds of self-congratulation. I hate to think of everything like this I’m going to lose. But I suppose one has to work—although bother—what a nuisance—why? Before I do go back, however, what about that visit I suggested? At the moment there’s an empty room in the house—this would be a good time. Surely your aunt would let you get away? We could moan to our heart’s content about men in general and American men in particular and of course I’m dying for you to see Tom—though naturally he won’t be at his best and I shall never stop telling you how if you’d only come just one week earlier… So you can see I have lots of jolly treats in store for you. No, seriously. Jane says she can babysit whenever we want to get away—films, shows, shopping—anything—which is the one big advantage of bottle-fed babies! It will be wonderful to see you and we’ll have tremendous fun, just make it soon. In the meantime much love and look after yourself—God bless, Roz.”
Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart Page 12