Cuckoo

by Anne Piper

  “For me?”

  “Your Prue has pinched my husband.”

  “But, Mary, that is no news to me, and certainly not bad news. I have seen it coming for weeks, but all my attempts to distract Prue were useless.”

  “You saw it coming?”

  “But of course. Did you never see him looking at her so hungrily, and she soft and doting?”

  “Her eyes always do look rather soft with her short sight. I didn’t notice anything suspicious.”

  “My poor little Mary. Sit down, it has been a nuit blanche for you too. I’m so sorry that I have not been able to prevent this catastrophe. Believe me, I have tried. They are leaving you?”

  “Yes. I told them to. I don’t know what I am going to do.” My voice shook a little and he took my hand. “You are not without friends,” he said, “at last there is a way I can help you. By chance my mother goes tomorrow to visit her sister in Lucerne. You shall all come to stay with me until I leave for Paris at the end of September, and then I will drive you to Calais.”

  Armed with such a pleasant disposal of my immediate future, I faced Tom bravely when he returned in the evening.

  “Where’s Prue?” I asked.

  “I left her in Geneva. We’ve got places on the train to Paris tonight.”

  “Sleepers?”

  “No, of course not at this late date. Third-class sitting up.”

  “That’ll be a fine start to your honeymoon.”

  “Mary — what a mean thing to say.”

  “I am mean. Are you taking all your luggage, or leaving the heavy stuff to me?”

  “Well — I had thought,” he looked wildly round the bedroom assessing the contents of his drawers.

  “Well — think again,” I said. “I’d like every single thing belonging to you or Prue out of here when you go. Your suitcases are in the bathroom.”

  It was hard not to lift a finger to help him, particularly as I could hear him being so futile upstairs, pacing up and down, dropping things and swearing. I ate my supper in the kitchen with a Marjorie Allingham propped against the water jug to take my mind off Tom.

  About half-past eight he staggered down with the first consignment.

  “Two more ready upstairs,” he remarked from the kitchen doorway. “I suppose your husband can’t expect to be treated as well as a burglar?”

  I cut him some bread and cheese, and made a cup of Nescafé.

  “Mary, I’m rather worried about what’s going to happen to you.”

  “Oh, you are? I expect the judge will allow me a large lump of alimony.”

  “I didn’t mean then — but now, how will you get home?”

  “The question didn’t worry you much last night.”

  “Oh last night —” He dismissed last night as an emotional aberration. “I wondered if Liz would come out to take you back.”

  “I already cabled her, and she’s coming, but we aren’t going back to England. Not yet anyway, we’re all moving over to stay with Jean-Pierre.”

  “With Jean-Pierre? But, Mary, the fellow simply isn’t to be trusted,” Tom assured me solemnly. “Why, Prue told me he actually suggested —”

  “Yes, Tom, do go on,” I begged him sweetly and rejoiced to see him blush.

  Part V

  THE CUCKOO

  CHAPTER I

  Claire came to Victoria to see me off. Heaven knows why, perhaps to make sure she was really rid of me. I could think of nothing to say. We walked up and down the platform putting every possible luggage, barrow, and stout couple, between us. She paralyses me, my feet swell when I’m with her and my hands grow out three inches at the end. Now she was mentally shredding up my dirndl skirt, she could see it blowing over my head on the boat, she knew my knickers too well. All my underwear upsets her. I burst out talking to stop her thinking.

  “When will you go away, Claire?”

  “All September. Can you do your own cooking for a fortnight?”

  “I expect I’ll manage.”

  “You’ve remembered your key?”

  “Yes.”

  We circled a Polytechnic tour.

  “Send me a card to say you’ve arrived.”

  “Yes, Claire.”

  “And give Mary my love.”

  “And Tom?”

  “And Tom of course. And don’t forget Mary is paying you to do some work out there.”

  “Oh, Claire.”

  I bumped into a knobbly pair of climbing boots sprouting from a rucksack, in my rage, and one of my plaits started slipping. Claire laughed when I caught up with her, as I tried to pin it back into place. She stretched out her odious, long cool fingers and fixed it for me in a second.

  “Courage, my child,” she said lightly. “Have you your passport? I think it’s time you joined those other gay schoolteachers in your compartment.”

  She picked her way, slender, cat-like, ahead of me. I hated her grey suit, hated her easy movements, as I stumbled after her, in my flat sandals I should have kept for the lake. She held the carriage door open for me, smiling with her slanting dark eyes. She gave one last annihilating glance at my luggage done up with rope, and finished off with a string bag, but she made, thank goodness, no attempt to kiss me.

  “Have a good time,” she said. “I won’t wait till the train goes.”

  “Goodbye, Claire. I hope you have a good holiday too.”

  “Thank you.”

  I watched her out of sight, sleek and neat, putting the fuddled travellers to shame. And I did not have to see her again for more than two months. My eyes swam with tears of joy. I took off my glasses and scrubbed my face with a hankie.

  “Hot, isn’t it?” remarked the lady opposite.

  “Very.”

  I pulled out Orlando quickly in case anyone else should speak to me, and putting my glasses back on, began to read with a studious expression, as the train moved off.

  Tom and Susan met me at Geneva. I did not know them for a minute, they were both so brown.

  “It can’t be true,” I kept saying, meaning me there, and the wide clean streets, and Abroad and the taxi so fast on the wrong side of the road, and then the lake and the mountains behind and a rushing mile of roses by the water.

  A short drive led off the main road to the house. Tom helped me out to stand by big stone tubs of blue hydrangeas while he paid the taxi.

  “This way, Prue, quick.” Susan dragged at my hand and pulled me through the house on to a wide verandah. A wilderness of hay straggled down hill to the lake, and I could see Mary’s fat little body in a tight red bathing-dress lying in the sun.

  I called out to her and she ran to meet me. I was so happy I could scarcely breathe. Mary was smiling all over in her round way. The sun had bleached her lovely hair very pale, and if it hadn’t been for me she’d have been all thin and sad now. It made me feel big, and noble to think I’d saved her marriage, and she would never even know how near it came to breaking. We sat down so that I didn’t have to tower over her any more. I was going to do so much for her now, I planned it all in my head. She showed me her kitchen where you could see the mountains from the sink, and upstairs Tom had a map giving all the names. Then it was tea-time under a big cherry-tree, and afterwards Tom offered to teach me to swim.

  I was ashamed to undo my bath towel and show them my white skin, but when we reached the water’s edge I forgot about myself. Straight in our eyes the light, slanted down across two rows of dark and pale blue hills. Through the clear, clean water every stone was neatly seen, and on it, between two swans swam five illuminated cygnets, their brown woolly backs silvered in the sun. The children bathed too, but Tom kindly took a lot of trouble with me. I’m afraid it will be no good. I shall never learn.

  And as if I wasn’t already happy enough to die, Mary’s artist friend Jean-Pierre offered next day to get me real dark glasses to see through, and whisked me into Geneva from shop to shop in an enormous rich car, buying me a dress and nylon knickers, a nightdress and a dream of a house-coat. />
  That second night I washed my hair and hung it all loose round my shoulders with only a ribbon. I think Mary and Tom were quite surprised to see me floating in, graceful and grown-up and without my glasses. Oh, clothes are magic. I’m sure I could be always clever and good if I was well-dressed.

  I got up wildly early next morning before even the children were awake, and ran down the garden to the long grass near the water. I slipped off my dressing-gown and lay in the shivery dew to let the sun beat on the whole length of my back. When I rolled over my breasts were dripping wet and criss-crossed with red grass marks. I wondered if I’d get consumption like the Empire ladies who fitted on their dresses wet, so I waited till the sun had dried off my front before I got up. I wouldn’t mind rheumatism in the back nearly so much. Then I went in and borrowed Tom’s razor to make my legs slim and smooth.

  There wasn’t much sunburn to show for my hard work at first, but I kept on at it for days and days, and I could see myself getting browner and browner, and fatter too. Mary is a lovely cook, and so much butter. After a couple of weeks I felt so alive I could hardly keep myself inside my skin, a sort of excited feeling every time I woke, as if every day were Christmas.

  One morning I lay there in the grass with my eyes shut and I suddenly knew I wasn’t alone. At first I saw only black and orange because of the sun, but gradually I made out with horror that Tom sat with his back against a tree only a yard or so away looking at me and smiling. I sat up, reaching wildly for my bath towel.

  “Gosh, Tom,” I said, “how awful.”

  “It’s all right, Prue my sweet, don’t worry, you looked lovely lying there, a naked Sleeping Beauty.” I tried to wrap the bath towel round me. Tom drew it gently from me.

  “Not yet, please. Am I the first man to tell you what a beautiful, smooth young body you have?”

  “Yes,” I could not look at him. I watched an enormous snail climbing up a frail stem of grass, so that Tom’s arms were around me even before I realised he had moved.

  “Shy young Prue,” he murmured and his lips touched my face lightly, lightly till he reached my mouth firm and hard.

  I kissed him back, and then I tried rather feebly to push him away.

  “Oh, Tom,” I said, “what are you doing? What about Mary?”

  “What about her?”

  “You’re married to her. You oughtn’t to be doing this to me.”

  “My darling, there’s so much you don’t understand about Mary and me. I’ll try and tell you some time, but not now.” He helped me to my feet and arranged the bath towel round me. “Now run along up to the house and get dressed and don’t worry about anything, there’s a good girl.”

  It was all very well telling me not to worry, but what could I do else? Nobody had ever kissed me before, and now the first one was a married man. I was half in a torment of delight to think anyone should want to kiss me at all, and half in an awful state of dread that Mary would find out and be unhappy. I did so wish Liz was there to advise me.

  Mary looked at me once or twice during breakfast.

  “You feeling all right, Prue?”

  “Yes thank you, Mary. A bit asleep still.” I couldn’t look at either her or Tom. Tom just sat there calmly reading a newspaper as if he had never been near the garden.

  And then Jean-Pierre brought me a bottle of “Shocking.” It couldn’t have come on a more appropriate day. I put on far too much to emphasise my feelings and how wicked I was, but Mary and Jean-Pierre were nearly knocked backwards, and I had to go in and wash my hair to try and get it out. I didn’t answer when I heard Mary calling; then suddenly Tom shouted for me so I rushed out of the bathroom to find he was going in the boat.

  I left my hair loose, hoping I looked like a mermaid.

  As Tom moved steadily away from the shore I sat opposite him between the children and looked and looked at his face as if I had never seen it before. After a few minutes I put on my dark glasses so he could not see the intensity of my stare.

  He has almost yellow eyes, yellow green eyes and a sort of brown birth-mark on the left-hand side of his face, but quite small. His nose is small too, for a man, but his mouth is large. The top half of his face with his high forehead has more dignity than the lower end, his chin is a little too rounded. He has big strong square hands and a broad chest with a lot of hair on it. I didn’t think I liked men to have hairy chests, but now of course I do. He had taken off his shirt to row, so I could see the movement of all his muscles.

  “Well, what does it add up to?” He asked me suddenly, resting on his oars. I felt very pink.

  “The view from here is lovely,” I said, hastily waving an arm at the mountains one side and the long gardens to the water’s edge we were leaving behind us. “How interesting that every house has its own flag-pole, and look how the water reflections flicker up in the lime trees.”

  “Very interesting,” Tom said laughing at me. “And what can you see, Caro?”

  “Boats and boats and boats.”

  “And fishes,” said Susan, peering down into the clear water.

  “I’ll see if I can catch you one,” Tom said. He shipped the oars, and he had bathing trunks under his trousers. “Hold on tight,” he called and he dived in.

  I put an arm round each child as the boat rocked. Tom circled the boat pretending to be a porpoise and catch fish. The children were delighted, then he swam up to Caro’s side and hung on panting with his hair plastered out flat, looking rather awful. Suddenly he put his mouth down and nipped my fingers holding the boat. I squealed with surprise as much as pain.

  “Tom,” Caro said sternly. “You mustn’t do that. It’s very naughty to bite people. Poor Prue, did it hurt?”

  She lifted my hand gently, and together we studied the marks of Tom’s teeth. My heart was flapping about like a landed fish, but I hope I seemed calm. We pulled Tom into the boat and I looked away from him all the time going home.

  I didn’t know what to think, and I didn’t know what to feel. I shut myself in my room in the afternoon pretending I had a headache and trying to sort myself out. Was Tom in love with me or just teasing me, or what? Did he treat all the women he wasn’t married to the same way? I’m pretty sure he used to kiss Claire, in spite of all my efforts to protect Mary. Now was my chance to protect Mary properly, by being very haughty and superior to Tom, but instead I was just longing for a chance to touch him again. He had put his arm round me for a moment helping me out of the boat. There would be my swimming lesson after tea. If only I could write and ask Liz what he could have meant about him and Mary. Perhaps she isn’t fond of him anyway, and then it wouldn’t matter.

  “Your lovely hair,” Tom said as we walked up the path from the lake the children scrambling ahead. “Why don’t you always wear it loose instead of in that schoolmistressy plait round your head?”

  “Oh, Tom, it would get in the way so, think of washing up through this lot.”

  Then at lunch he was so ordinary, complaining the meat was overcooked, swotting wildly at wasps, ignoring me altogether, that I couldn’t believe this morning, this wonderful morning had ever happened.

  “Prue dear,” Mary called through my door. “Are you feeling well enough to go for the milk?”

  “Of course, Mary.” I fastened my sandals and looked a minute at my face, nothing had changed in it, even my guilty lips were no larger, though at breakfast I had thought Mary must see they had swollen. Caro joined me at the bottom of the stairs carrying the milk can, and as we turned out of the drive Tom caught up with us.

  “Thought a little walk would do me good,” he explained. Then he talked to me — all the way he talked to me — treating me as a sensible intelligent person about the University and students and Botany and all sorts of interesting things. He never talked to Claire or Mary like that. I don’t think either of them would have listened, except in a sort of “Yes dear,” way. I tried to ask him questions that would show I understood.

  “Tom, you’ve passed the shop,” Car
o called from behind us. We turned back startled to see her leaning against a door jangling the can. Tom looked all round the village as if he had never seen it before. “I’d forgotten about the milk,” he said.

  “But, Tom, that’s what you came for,” Caro was shocked. And going home we walked right past the drive gates, and again Caro had to call us. “What is the matter with you two?” she asked.

  “What indeed?” said Tom softly, staring at me.

  And then the day when Jean-Pierre offered to teach Tom to drive his car, I went to Hermance with them after tea.

  Tom stopped the car by two lime trees as high as the church tower, with gothic branches arched over a cross. He pulled me back as I was walking into the church. “Put your glasses on, darling,” he said and read out that women going in without hats invite “de terribles châtiments de Dieu.”

  “It’s the only Roman Catholic village near here,” Jean-Pierre explained. So I sat down to wait for them at the foot of the cross and leant back looking up and up into seas of lime leaves till I closed my eyes from dizziness. Tom took my hand and helped me to my feet. He makes even the smallest touch exciting, my every separate finger came alive and I hid my hand in the folds of my dress to stop it shaking.

  “Let’s all squeeze in the front now and you drive,” he said to Jean-Pierre.

  They put me in the middle. Tom had his arm along the back of the seat, as good as around me. I couldn’t hear anything Jean-Pierre said. The rushing wild wind of a fast open car, and Tom leaning round me, made me so frantic with joy I thought I’d break, and then Tom put his mouth to my ear and whispered, “I love you,” so I knew I must have broken, gone mad or be dreaming.

  But when I turned to him, with my eyes as wide as soup-plates, I saw that he really had said it, and I looked away again quick at the vines, at the big barns, at a monkey-puzzle with a yellow rose growing up it — at anything but Tom’s face. I didn’t know it hurt so much to be in love.

  CHAPTER II

  Mary kept on throwing us together — Prue, could you clean out the boat house, get Tom to help you; Tom, if you’re going to buy cigarettes take Prue and Caro with you and walk back the long way; Tom, come and hold the ladder for Prue while she’s hanging these curtains. On and on — she might have been a match-making mother to one of us.