by Anne Piper
“I’m glad we understand each other so well.”
“Do we? — Claire —” He caught my wrist.
“For goodness sake look out — I’ll be pouring boiling water over both of us.”
“No, but, Claire —”
Prue appeared in the doorway, “I say, Claire could you make enough coffee for Lena and me too?”
“Yes, if you will take a tray and collect up your supper so that there’s space in the sitting-room to walk about — oh, and Prue —”
“Yes, Claire?”
“Could you turn the concert down just a little?”
“All right, there’s only one more movement, anyway.” She went.
“Oh hell,” Tom said, “have we got to sit in there with them?”
“Well, darling, we can scarcely spend the evening in my bedroom with your wife’s sister’s best friend next door all ready to spread the good news.”
“Say it again.”
“Say what again?”
“Darling — you called me darling.”
“Idiot — I call everyone darling — doesn’t mean a thing.” I led the way into the sitting-room and we picked our way over the girls’ legs to the fire. With a desolating shriek the symphony wore itself finally to bits.
“Gosh, that’s terrific,” said Prue, slamming the score shut. “I’d like to have it right through all over again now while I’m getting the hang of it.” Luckily they couldn’t hear her in the Albert Hall.
“He took the last movement a bit slow,” put in Lena.
Prue kicked my low coffee table tentatively. I endured, with some restraint, three kicks before objecting mildly, not so much for the sake of the table as the coffee. It’s hell being an aunt.
“What a pretty black-and-white cat,” Tom said. “What’s her name?”
“It’s a he, Minou. I have all the appurtenances of a spinster.”
“Or a witch.”
“Prue,” I said hopefully, “don’t you and Lena like playing piano duets?”
“Lena’s a cellist. And besides it’s much too cold to sit in my bedroom.” She gave the table another kick.
“What about a game of bridge?” suggested Tom.
“I can only play whist,” said Prue.
“Well whist then.” Tom smiled in a jolly avuncular way.
“All right, but I don’t think Claire wants to play.”
“Of course I do, Prue, that would be delightful. Nothing I like more than a gay game of cards.”
I poured out a couple of stiff whiskies.
Really, what a terrible ending to a good dinner to sit round playing whist with teenagers. I lost a shilling to Tom too.
CHAPTER II
Another bitter, bitter morning, but Sunday. The same greyness filters through my curtains. How astonishing it would be to wake one day to the sun. I switch on my fire and hurry back into bed. There is complete quiet in the flat. One thing Prue and I seem to agree on is late rising. It is too cold to put my hands out and read, so I try to sleep again; but I have somehow let the frost into my bed. I miss Allan most on Sundays, he was so often here at the week-ends, and he always made the coffee and brought in the papers. Not the sort of little attention one could expect from Prue. It’s no good, I’m shivering, and no longer sleepy at all. I shall have to get up.
I need a new dressing-gown. Allan would have given me a new dressing-gown. He even offered me a fur coat, but there’s something so vulgar about selling oneself to a fur coat, more ladylike to give way genteelly to a dressing-gown. Oh hell, I don’t get either this winter anyway. I’ve sold my solitude for a niece. What have I done to deserve Prue? And how long, O Sigismund Freud, how long can I expect to be visited with this particular affliction? Aren’t middle age, old age, false teeth, falling hair, failing sight and charms, enough to pay off a bachelor girl, without throwing in a spotty niece? Shall we be together still, twenty years from now?
Stub my toe on the gas cooker, Prue has had a midnight snack by the crumby look of the kitchen table. Hease don’t ever put the bread away, don’t put the top on the jam, dear Prue, whatever you do, always use a jammy knife on the butter, and please, please, take far more than your share of the butter ration. After all it’s years now since I stopped growing. Really I hardly need to eat at all. A few vitamin pills and monkey glands will keep the old aunt spry for some time to come.
I should never have gone to bed early last night. It’s ruined my temper for the day. In God’s name, what can the child have been doing in the sitting-room after I left? Surely Liz and she didn’t come to blows? Need all the cushions be on the floor, the coffee-table overturned, the poker in the middle of the hearth-rug? Shall I find Liz’s corpse rolled under the sofa? No, only three gramophone records and a mug that once had cocoa in it.
Oh Minou, Minou, it’s no good lying down in front of those cold ashes, come back in the kitchen and I’ll light the gas cooker and then we’ll both put our heads in it. Milk for you and coffee for me, and we’ll take a fresh grip on the day. I think I’ll ring Allan and ask him to give me lunch, no I suppose I can’t, I’ll have to stay and cook for Prue. I’ll get him to come here, that would be better than nothing.
“That you, Allan? Claire here. Did I wake you? … How can you have been up for hours in this weather … ? Anyway what about coming round here to lunch? No, I can’t. Prue’s here, you remember? My niece who lives with me … See you about one then.”
Now for the fire. Out of the way, Minou. I do think it’s clever of them to make stones look so like coal. It’s a pity I don’t have a kitchen path to edge with them. They’d be pretty there. Telephone — now what.
“Hullo … yes Claire speaking. Oh, good-morning, Tom. Very well thank you. How are you? A thrice-blest father, well isn’t that nice for you — what is it? A great big boy for a change? Well done. Thank you for letting me know … Today? Nothing particular, why? Well, I suppose you could. I’ve got someone else coming. Oh, no one you know — yes, a man — Prue’s here too of course — not at all, make the numbers even — See you about one then.”
That’s better.
“Oh hullo, Prue — you’re up early.”
“It’s half-past ten. What did Tom say?”
“He says Mary went into hospital last night and had an enormous boy this morning. Twenty pounds or something.”
“Surely not? I don’t think they are ever more than ten.”
“Oh, perhaps he said ten then. I wasn’t really listening. He asked if he could come round and lunch with us. Mrs. Williams has taken the little girls away.”
“Is Liz coming too?”
“He didn’t say anything about Liz. I expect she was still asleep. She must have left here pretty late last night.”
“Yes, we were talking.”
“So, I see.”
“I’d like breakfast. Have you made any?”
“There’s coffee on the cooker.”
*
Allan arrived early. I took him back into my room as I was still busy on my face. He looked round wistfully.
“Oh, Claire,” he said. “I do miss you so much. Couldn’t you possibly come to my flat?”
He stood behind me at the dressing-table and put his hands on my shoulders. “Hease think again about marrying me, darling, I’m sure you wouldn’t regret it. I’d take such care of you.”
I looked in the glass at his stupid, pleading face so close to mine, and knew that I should regret it all too soon.
“Sorry, darling. I don’t want to marry you, or indeed anyone. It’s time you cast about for a nice young girl because I know you’re mad to be married, and hear those tiny, trampling feet.”
“I don’t want a nice young girl. I want you, Claire.” But he said it like a sulky child.
“Come on. Let’s have some gin and forget about it.”
“Claire, you’re so cruel, you know I can’t forget about it,” but he followed me obediently into the sitting-room. Prue was curled up on the sofa with what was I’m sure a
good book. She didn’t look pleased to see us. She wore three sweaters, one white, one red, one blue. Bits of each colour protruded at wrists and neck.
“I thought you said Tom was coming to lunch?” she remarked.
“He is,” I said. “And so is Allan. Isn’t it nice for us? This is Allan.”
“How do you do,” Prue said grudgingly.
“Prue, be an angel and keep an eye on the potatoes for me.”
“Oh, all right.”
“Dear me,” Allan said when she had slammed her way into the kitchen, “is she always as friendly as that?”
“Sometimes she doesn’t say anything at all for hours on end.”
“Darling, you must get her out somehow.”
The bell rang at last. I checked an impulse to run to the front door, put my glass down carefully and went to let Tom in. He seemed taller than ever.
Prue appeared again behind me, “Something funny’s happening to the Yorkshire pudding,” she said. “I think you’d better go.”
“Give Tom a drink,” I called as she led him into the sitting-room. You would think, or wouldn’t you, that a shy young niece would be glad to stay in the kitchen, glad to finish the cooking, glad to oblige a kind old aunt?
But no. Ah well, sharper than a serpent’s tooth is not this carving-knife, “Tom, you’re a father, could you possibly do something about the carving-knife for me?”
But a little bluff in the kitchen, insisting on doorsteps and oil, reveals that Mary usually sharpens the home knife. Allan is delighted to display his accomplishments as Handyman and Head of Household, and we sit down to eat with a knife so keen that I am afraid to touch it, and Allan has to carve as well. Allan two up so far.
But Tom keeps me laughing almost the whole way through the meal, and insists on making the coffee, so by two o’clock they are about all square. Prue and Allan are busy out-sulking each other, neither of them will leave, or contribute, they drive Tom and me to peaks of hilarity we should never reach without a disapproving audience.
“I should like to go to the Marx brothers.” Tom picks up the Sunday paper. “But of course they aren’t on anywhere. There must be some jolly thing we could do now.”
“Too cold,” from Allan, moving his chair closer to the fire.
“There’s nothing worth going to,” from Prue, who opens my desk and cleverly catches the whole confusion of her sewing things.
“I hope we shan’t be reduced to whist again,” I say anxiously.
“What about the crossword?” Tom waves the paper. “Do you do the Sunday Times one, Claire?”
“I do,” Prue puts in quickly. “Claire’s not much good at them.” She moves over into the chair next to Tom, and I am forced to talk to Allan about his prospects in the Ministry of Fuel. The subject I feel has not been raised accidently. Even his poor old cousin who is going to die and make him ever so rich suddenly jumps into the conversation.
Allan, you fool, I want to scream at him, if I was marrying for money I’d have married George or Geoffrey years ago. Surely you know how bored I am with you now? But you can’t really expect me to tell you in cold blood. Can’t you see the way I’m sitting, with only a quarter of my mind on you, and all the rest of me listening for Tom, and how quickly I turn when he does say anything to me? Of course I’d come to you if I was in love with you. You must see that this business of Prue in the flat is only a face-saving excuse — saving your face, I mean, but if you keep on whining about your money I shan’t even want to save your poor eager face. For God’s sake don’t look so hangdog, you bring out the bully in me.
“Shall I put the kettle on, Claire?” asks Tom.
“I will,” says Allan. “I know where everything is.” He is out of the room before Tom has even left his chair. Tom raises his eyebrows at me.
“Old friend, Claire?”
“Very old,” I reply gloomily. Prue takes her nose from the crossword to look at us in a puzzled way.
“What did you say, Claire?”
“Nothing worth repeating.”
*
The ugly day was near enough dead to draw my scarlet curtains. I could feel Tom watching me at the window. I stood a moment looking out at old black branches and hard grey snow, hating it all. When I turned, their heads were together again under the lamp.
“I’ll fetch my Shakespeare,” Prue said, bounding up and shedding her sewing across the room. “We must be able to find that Coriolanus quote.”
Tom moved quickly too, as Prue slammed the door he was beside me, I let the curtain fall to behind us and we stood in a quiet cold life of our own. I pretended to go on looking out, shivering a little with more than snow.
“What a dirty white world it is,” Tom said. “When our parents were children they put on red woollen hats and laughed in the snow. You can’t imagine a London child laughing in that lot. His face would crack.”
He spoke lightly, but I could feel his thoughts in my hair before his gentle fingers lay on the back of my neck. So gentle that for a minute I pretended I did not notice, till they moved on up to fit my skull.
“I’ve found it,” shouted Prue in the room. “Why, what on earth are you two doing, playing sardines in there?”
“It is not for you, my child,” said Tom taking my hand and leading me back to the fire, “to question the sudden whims of your elders who were comparing unfavourably the landscape from the window with Breughel’s Massacre of the Innocents.”
“Really?”
“Really, Prue,” said Tom, not batting an eyelid, “you mustn’t ask people direct questions. They don’t like it. You must learn to approach life subtly, catch it unawares from behind, rather than crushing the rose on the head with a croquet mallet.”
“I suppose you and Claire were busy catching the rose unawares from behind?” She was almost crying.
“Oh, Prue,” I said. Why must the child be so hopeless? Don’t they learn tact and deception in school any more? She was churning us all up into quite a scene for nothing.
“Come on, Prue,” Tom said, “calm down and let’s have a look at Coriolanus, I’m sure I don’t know what all this is about.”
Thank goodness Allan came in at that moment carrying the tea. He could be trusted to notice nothing wrong. Not even the radiance round my head, the dark singing of my blood, the lightness of my flesh. I was in love and each hair at the back alive and standing on end, but all I said was, “What about sugar, Allan? I think Tom takes it.”
I sat down suddenly, and could not look at Tom.
Such a rush of honey to the bones as I never knew before.
I’ve lived unharmed too long, I have grown no armour for arrows; I’m in poor training for this race, please leave me alone, please go away, Tom. Let me put my head in the sand, and just be a hard invulnerable ageing good-time girl again. I never asked to feel, I don’t like it, it hurts. I can’t even bear to see him touch Prue’s hand as he takes the pencil from her.
“What good toast you’ve made, Allan. More tea, Prue? Been much ’flu in your department, Tom?”
I am sitting a foot above my chair but nobody sees. I am lying on the ceiling and nobody looks at me. I’m in love. Oh hell, oh help. Why now? Why not ten years ago with a dear old Don, or ten years hence with a beautiful unkind boy? Why now with a tall, untidy, thoroughly tied-up, part-time Don Juan?
He’s going, Tom’s going, he’s looking for his hat, he’s off to the hospital to visit his loving wife, he’s tickled pink about his son. We’ve passed the day very pleasantly for him. He may be back, he may not.
“It’s been nice for us having you, Tom. Yes, do please come again any time. Prue and I are often at home in the evenings. Oh yes, both of us would be delighted to see you.”
I must hold my hand to my mouth in case I scream. I want to fling my arms around him, cling to him, do all sorts of undignified and unmaidenly things. Oh Tom, don’t go, not just like that as if you’d been having tea with one of your own aunts instead of Prue’s. I know you can’t kiss
me with Prue leaning against the grandfather clock, (the vast clock that she insisted on bringing with her in spite of the size of the flat) but couldn’t you look volumes like they do in books, or clasp my hand in a meaning way? — something to give me a reason to get up tomorrow morning. I shall die if you don’t. My legs are dying under me, and you are just waving as you go downstairs, and we are waving too.
“Bye-bye, Tom — love to Mary and tell Liz I’ll be round about seven tomorrow evening.”
Oh Tom, did you hear that? Prue’s going to your house at seven tomorrow to see Liz. Tom, did you understand? I shall be alone here, I shall be waiting for you. I shall always be waiting.
“Bye-bye, Prue, bye, Claire. See you soon.”
My knuckles are marked where I’ve bitten them. Do they belong to me? I cannot feel them. The pain is in my chest, no — my stomach. I suppose the pain is in my heart. My heart is so big it stretches from my neck to my thighs. I am all heart, all hurt.
“Why, Allan, are you going too? Can’t you stay a little?”
“No. I’m afraid I must be pushing along, promised to drop in for drinks in Gloucester Road. Come in again soon if I may.”
“Of course. Prue and I are here together most evenings.”
*
But not tonight — not lovely Monday night. I lie in the bath melting the office out of me, big wool evening shirt and high black sweater. Earrings? no earrings. Wide white belt for a still slim waist. Hullo, Minou, you and I are cats together. Come and walk in my secret world, come and dance while Charles Trenet sings. II a de la joie, did you know Minou? Up on your hind paws forward and back, “Hop, hop, monte plus vite.” Poor little pussy, come in my arms then, your legs are too short for dancing. I have long fine legs for dancing, and for other things. I love myself, I love Tom, does Tom love me? Will he come?
It is half-past-seven now. I shall have just one glass of gin. Just one glass to make me very amusing. Have a little gin, whisker-face? Look lick your paw, nasty isn’t it? Not good for gentlemen pussies. Poor gentleman, what a sad life you lead. Shall I get you a pretty little black wife? Would you like that? A black one or a white one?