by Anne Piper
The bell is ringing. It can’t be true. “Boum, Boum, tout dans mon cœur fait boum,” he is coming my darling, my leopard, my love.
“Oh — it’s you Allan. Hullo. Good evening — come in, won’t you? Just a minute. I’ll stop the gramophone.”
“My word. It sounded like a party coming up the stairs. What’s going on?”
“Nothing, just cheering myself up.”
“All alone for once? I say what a bit of luck for me. I just dropped in to see if you’d come to the theatre next week. You’re not expecting anyone? You look so sort of dressed up and gay.”
“Oh no. No one at all, no one in the whole wide world. Sit down make yourself comfortable, join me in a glass of gin.
“Claire, you’re so lovely tonight. There’s something special about you. I can’t get over my luck coming in just on the off-chance, and finding you looking so sort of, well beautiful. Claire —”
“No, no, sit down again. Don’t start anything like that. I’m mad tonight, but not that mad. I’m a cat, did you know? A long-clawed secretive pussy. You must not touch me, I might scratch. Drink up your gin like a good boy. Tell me about your prospects.”
“My prospects?”
“Yes, yes your charming old cousin; and all that dainty green and white money, and how soon you’ll be a deputy-deputy-district-commissioner.”
“Claire what are you talking about? I don’t work in Rhodesia.”
“Not in Rhodesia? Funny, that must have been somebody else. Have another drink and tell me about the jungles in Whitehall then, I hear there are tigers there too.”
“Claire, how much did you have to drink before I came? I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Not much, look. I can turn round and round without falling down. I’m a top, a non-stop top. I burn with an invisible sun within me. Did you know there was no cavity in your body to contain your soul? Doesn’t that worry you? Perhaps you would answer the door bell which is ringing and ringing. Can’t you hear it too? Or is it all in my head?”
“Why good evening, Tom, what a pleasant surprise. Quite a party we are having here, Allan and I. Have some gin, the bottle is nearly empty! Isn’t it hot in here. Shall I open the window? Neither of you feel hot? It’s freezing outside? Why how strange. But of course you’ve just come in, Tom there’s snow on your coat, let me brush it, and on your poor hat too. No snow on your hair?
“That’s funny, but I suppose you kept your hat on outside. Now you must take them both off. Take everything off. Make yourself at home, you funny old Russian. Don’t look so sad, this is Happiness Hall. What’s your excuse? I mean what did you just drop in for? Allan has tickets for the theatre. Can you go one better than that?
“Now Allan’s gone to make coffee, so you are several laps behind.”
“Oh, darling, stop, stop, for goodness sake. You know why I came. Never mind, there’ll be other evenings.”
“Lots of other happy evenings with Prue round the whist table, with Mary round the baby’s cradle. Oh, Tom.”
“Hush darling, hush. Keep still there now, don’t shiver so.”
“The demon drink hath me betrayed.”
“There are worse demons than drink for you and me. Now sit down quietly, Allan’s coming back; we’ll discuss the Fuel Crisis like good citizens.”
“I say, Claire, I hope I’ve made it strong enough.”
“It looks all right. Black or white, Tom?”
“Black, please. When are you letting us have some more coal, Allan?”
“I don’t know, old man. The position’s pretty serious, you know.”
“Government falling?”
“Shouldn’t be surprised. People feel the cold quicker than anything.”
They both sat there clucking away and looking grim, and not including the little woman in such man’s talk, though it’s bread and butter to the little woman in her office. Perhaps they were right as I had my mind on Tom’s mouth.
*
Tom went first. He stuck it till ten o’clock, but when he saw that Allan would stay him out if it took till four in the morning, he left.
“Well, Allan,” I said, “I’m going to send you home too. I’ve got a splitting headache, and I think the only thing to do is go to bed.”
“I’m so sorry, Claire. Why didn’t you say before?”
“I didn’t want to break up a happy evening. Prue’ll be back any time now.”
The flat was suddenly very quiet when they had gone. A wireless below and a distant cistern sealed me in with my silence. I kicked the fire till the coal broke and blazed, and began mechanically to tidy up and rearrange the cushions. I removed Prue’s red beret from the recesses of an armchair. Tom said children used to go out in red woollen hats and laugh. I can’t imagine Prue laughing in the snow. She imposes sombreness even on this ridiculous tasselled hat. I smoothed the piece of paper crumpled up inside it and found a badly typed poem. I recognised the broken “s” on my typewriter and wished for the hundredth time that she would ask me before borrowing things. I began to read the poem.
When I was ten and lived at home
I sat astride our churchyard wall
To see the people in the rain
Stumping down the muddy lane
To pay their annual Easter call
On all the sad and sodden dead
Who this one Sunday of the year
Lie with garlands on their heads
And grin to see each other thus
With bowler hats of narcissus.
Every week, and twice a week
I used to take my mother flowers;
I laid them on her grass cool breast
And watched there many wasted hours,
Nor stirred her green and quiet rest.
What a morbid creature she is. I wonder if she really sat there as a child gloating over Katharine’s grave. That awful old woman would have encouraged anything. And what does she mean “When I was ten and lived at home”? Isn’t she at home now? Home is where the heart is — no, I must admit she’s not at home here. But surely she could be, she needn’t hanker after a cosy cemetery in Sussex. It’s not as if I beat her.
I looked up to see her in the doorway, a scarf round her head, her eyes glaring through her glasses, giving a good impersonation of a 1910 motorist.
“How dare you read my poetry without asking, Claire?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was so private. You shouldn’t leave it lying about.”
“Poetry’s always private.” She snatched it from me and went out without another word, slamming the door. Dear me, dear me. I always feel I could like her more if she tempered her gloom with graciousness. Poor Katharine, I hope your rest is indeed green and quiet, and that you are not hovering distracted round your ungainly daughter.
*
How soon after that was I ill? I cannot remember day from day in that winter of timeless cold. I came home early and went to bed, grateful for the moments when the shivers gave place to a cheerful burning. Prue was standing over me, she must have come in quietly for once.
“Claire — what’s the matter? You look awful.”
“I feel awful. I expect I’ve only got ’flu. You’d better go away and not catch it.” I closed my eyes again and retreated into my private sandy desert.
But she was back before I had time to breathe, with two hot-water bottles and a thermometer.
“You do know how to boil a kettle then?”
“Oh, Claire —” She forced me up to swallow aspirins and a hot drink. She bothered me with a doctor, and more blankets, and a curious dangling bed-jacket. She came in three times a day to take my temperature and twice a day to sponge me down.
“Anyone would think,” I grumbled, “that I had pneumonia.”
“You nearly did,” she answered briskly. “Shut your mouth, please,” and the sponge went round it.
“I think I’d like some lipstick again.”
“Good. You must be better.”
“Did an
yone call?” I asked, meaning Tom.
“No one,” she said firmly, and I was in her hands. I had heard the door bell often enough, but there were plenty of other things it could be. Besides really, now I came to look at myself in the mirror Prue handed me, yellow and haggard and fifty-ish, with my hair straggling — perhaps it was as well.
“Why Prue, you’re dusting!” She paused blushing.
“Just tidying up a bit before the doctor comes.”
“What’s happened to Mrs. Grant?”
“She’s got ’flu too. She sent young Jim round a week ago.”
“Don’t say I’ve been here a week? Surely someone must have rung up?”
“Yes, Allan did. He sent those flowers. I told him you weren’t well enough to see anyone.”
“Oh. You took a lot on yourself, didn’t you?”
“He’s coming to tea this afternoon.”
“What’s happened to the College of Music all this time?”
“I got Liz to come here while I went to my piano lessons, otherwise I stayed at home. There wasn’t anything very important to miss. Liz is here now, if you’d like to see her.” Liz came in, small and neat, her golden head shining. What a delicious niece for somebody. Or a delicious piece. “Good morning, Claire. I’m glad you’re better.”
“Thank you. I seem to have been worse than I thought. I didn’t realise I was so much trouble to you all. Good of you to baby-sit while Prue went out.”
“It wasn’t any trouble. You slept all the time. At least I looked at you twice, and you had your eyes shut.”
*
So Allan came to tea, which made me feel poorly again at once. He tiptoed in with a bunch of grapes the size of his head and a new Vogue, fetched a chair so that he need not sit on my feet, and spoke to me in what was so nearly a whisper that I had to lean out of bed to catch any of it. Prue brought in a tea-tray complete with dainty tray-cloth and the silver tea-pot (polished) and two of the best cups.
‘'Thank you, Prue.” My voice came out so faint that she looked at me sharply.
“I don’t think you’d better stay long, Allan, as you’re her first visitor.”
“No, no Prue, of course not. Wouldn’t dream of it. I’ll go as soon as I’ve drunk my tea. We don’t want a relapse, do we?”
And to me when Prue had crashed into the kitchen to have her own tea, “Did you notice the sun is out?”
“I saw the snow melting from the roofs opposite, but I didn’t know whether to believe that yellow light on the floor was sunshine or not.”
“Yes, it’s quite true. We’ll have you out and about again in no time now the frost has broken. I’m thinking of buying a car. What do you say?”
“I expect it would be very useful for you, Allan, if you can get any extra petrol.”
“I was really wondering whether you thought you would like me to have a car?”
“Well — it’s always nice if one’s friends have cars. But I shall be very busy for a while when I go back to work.”
“Oh — yes — I suppose you will. Well, I think I’ll buy it anyway, and then perhaps in the summer you may like to come out with me in it on Sundays?”
“Don’t let’s think about the summer yet. It’s so far away and we’ve only just begun to have the spring.”
Prue put her head round the door. “Time to go, Allan,” and then tactfully withdrew, so that I had helplessly to suffer his careful embrace.
“Get well soon, my darling,” he muttered. “How I wish you would let me look after you.”
“I’m in very good hands, Allan; Prue is a reformed character.”
“Good,” he said doubtfully. “Well, I’ll be back tomorrow if I may.”
“Perhaps the day after. I think I’ll just rest tomorrow.”
“Prue,” I said next morning, “will you plug the ’phone in here again, please. I’d like to ring some of my friends.”
I waited till I heard her go shopping and then dialled Tom’s lab number. It took some minutes to get hold of him and I had time to reflect on the folly of my action — “Men always hate to be rung, my dear.”
I was just about to replace the receiver when I heard him at the other end.
“Hullo, Tom,” I said. “Claire here. I’m thinking of giving a little party next week and wondering if you and Mary could come.”
“Claire, my dear. But are you better? I heard from Liz you were ill and allowed no callers, and Prue refused to put me through when I rang up. She said you were asleep.”
“She seems to have been a little over-officious. She never told me.”
“Good Lord — but I asked her particularly to let me know as soon as you felt well enough to see anyone. I wish I’d written to you instead.”
“I wish you had. Why not come round this afternoon?”
“Of course I will — four-ish I expect.”
Prue dusted my room again. I felt quite worried about her.
“Prue really, you must go back to work. I’m perfectly able to look after myself now. Haven’t you anything you ought to do this afternoon?”
“If you think you could manage, I might go and practise with a quintet I’m in.”
“Of course I can manage. You’ve made everything look so clean and tidy.”
So I was alone when Tom came. I crept out after Prue left and stood the front door ajar. I must have dozed off again because the first thing I knew he was sitting on the pillow stroking the back of my neck. I moved luxuriously and did not immediately open my eyes. Health and strength stirred in my backbone.
“Lovely,” I said.
“So you are.”
“Tom, I’m so glad you came.”
“I’d have come sooner, darling, if I’d known that little bitch was censoring your messages.”
“She probably had the best intentions and thought you would send my temperature up.”
“Do I?”
“Do you what?”
“Send it up.”
“Of course not. Can’t you feel how cold I am?”
“No. No. I can’t say your shoulders are cold anyway. Did you know the sun was shining?”
“That’s exactly what Allan said.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. I don’t think it was shining so well then. Today I can feel it through the blankets.”
“It’s not the sun that’s so hot.”
“Tom —”
“Darling — is there any more need to talk?”
“But, Tom, I’ve been ill. I’m still very weak.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh darling please — not today. Soon, very soon, but not today.”
“My poor sweet, weren’t you brought up on Hemingway? Don’t you know there’s nothing more tempting, more intoxicating than a rumpled sick-bed?”
“Oh, don’t make me laugh so. It was he who was in bed. She was full of vigour, a great horse of a nurse.”
“Well — I hope if I was in bed, you would come and seduce me.”
“Darling — you’re impossible — no, don’t.”
The front door banged with a familiar thump, three strides and Prue was in the doorway. Tom, with his legs crossed, sat on the chair beside me reading extracts from Vogue.
“Did you realise how far down your hemlines were going, Claire? Hullo, Prue, good afternoon. Will you be a kind girl and bring us a cup of tea?”
“Hullo, Tom. Claire never said you were coming.”
“She didn’t know till I rang the bell.”
“But she shouldn’t have got out to answer it. Claire, why didn’t you let it ring?”
“I felt lonely and thought it might be something nice. It was too. Tom’s cheered me up a lot. Don’t worry, Prue, I’m sure I’m no worse for my excursion to the front door. I put on my slippers and my dressing-gown before I went.”
She looked black and dubious, and left the door wide open as she retired to the kitchen.
“How’s the baby, Tom?” she called.
“Thriving,�
� shouted the proud father, taking his mouth off mine. I buried my face in the pillow hysterically.
“I’m sorry, Tom, I quite forgot to ask after your family. Somehow one rather tends to overlook the fact that you have one. Are they all well?”
“Thank you, Claire, in excellent health. Mary is back from hospital. The monthly nurse has left and she is happily receiving daily visits from her lover. Our two girls are in the hands of a delightful Dane, who alas leaves us all too soon.”
“Do youu mean Mary or the monthly nurse has a lover?”
“I doubt if the nurse has one, but Mary certainly has.”
“But Tom — how extraordinary.”
“What’s so extraordinary about that? If your unfortunate niece hadn’t come in ten minutes ago, I should have a mistress by now.”
“Oh you — I imagine you are seldom without, but it seems odd for Mary.”
“As I told you once before we’ve been married eight years, we have our own friends and interests.”
“Some of them are mutual. At least I imagine the children are yours?”
“I believe so, Mary says they are.”
Prue came back with the dirtiest tray, no tray cloth, the cracked brown tea-pot usually kept for Mrs. Grant and three doorsteps thickly spread with marg and apricot jam. She balanced the tray on my dressing table and came up to the bed.
“Claire uses that chair as a table, if you wouldn’t mind moving over to the fire, Tom.”
“Do I? My table would be more convenient as a table. The chair is too low.”
That baffled her for a minute, but she staged a good comeback by stuffing me into the revolting bed-jacket that belonged to her grandmother. The mangy swans-down tickled my nose and I sneezed. Tom roared with laughter.
“There you are, Claire, you’re sneezing already,” Prue said. “I expect it was very draughty at the front door.”
She glared at Tom as she handed him one of the strongest cups of tea I’ve ever seen.
“Prue,” I said, “what happened to your quintet?”
“The cello never turned up.”
“Cellos are very unreliable … I remember once when I was an undergraduate —” Tom launched into a story of great length and even greater boredom. Prue stuck it out bravely only stopping him for a moment in mid-flow while she fetched some mending.