by Marie Joseph
It was around then that Martin mentioned casually that there was a good film on at the local cinema, and why didn’t they get the car out and go and see it together?
Jane’s face appeared from behind the curtain of hair and stared at him with myopic astonishment.
‘To the cinema! With you, Daddy?’ she said. ‘I’d be the laughing stock of all my friends. Surely you understand? And besides, I’m going with David.’
And Martin, who didn’t understand at all, went and sulked in front of the TV, and glared suspiciously at the boy with the Beatles hairdo who came to call for Jane.
One evening, one of the very few evenings when Jane wasn’t going out, Martin put a long-playing record on the record player. It was the soundtrack from South Pacific, and Martin remembered how the three of them had sat together in the darkness of the small cinema, and how the colour and the music and the singing of the star-crossed lovers had sent their emotions soaring upward.
‘That was the most marvellous film I have ever seen in my whole life,’ Jane had said, and had only come down to earth when confronted by a mixed grill in Lyons.
Now she groaned aloud. ‘You can’t possibly like that kind of music, can you?’ she said from the floor, where she was drying her hair and reading a magazine. ‘I expect it’s all right for people of your age, though,’ she said, and pitied them with her smile.
That was the year she stopped going to church, and Martin found it hard to believe that only three short years ago, at the confirmation service, she had walked down the aisle in her Guide uniform to kneel at the feet of the bishop to receive his blessing.
‘I mean, you’re entitled to what you believe,’ she conceded. ‘Just as I’m entitled to what I believe.’
‘And what do you believe?’ Martin asked quietly.
The spectacles, outsize now and black-rimmed, were pushed back into position by an impatient hand.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say there isn’t Something. Obviously there is, but all this going to church, well, it’s just for show now, admit it. I mean, if you want to pray, you can pray just as well as you walk down the road, or sit at your desk. Nigel says he doesn’t believe in anything that can’t be proved. I mean to say, well, the sun sets at the end of the day, but have you ever wondered why it sets?’
And Martin, who never had, shook his head.
It seemed that there was nothing Nigel didn’t know, and nothing he didn’t have a definite opinion about. As Jane approached eighteen, it seemed to Martin that the whole house reverberated to Nigel’s outspoken theories.
‘Jane won’t discuss anything with me nowadays.’ Martin told his wife. ‘Or, if she begins to, it isn’t long before I exasperate her by not agreeing with her; and not to agree with her is to be wrong.’
And his wife, who seemed to be in some sort of conspiracy with Jane, just smiled and went on sewing.
That was the winter when Nigel moved in with them. Figuratively speaking, of course. He had a home, or at least Martin assumed that he had a home, but every evening he would join them round the television, sharing the settee with Jane and disappearing into the kitchen with her to make coffee.
‘What are they doing?’ Martin said one night. ‘If they had to grind the coffee beans by hand, it wouldn’t take them any longer.’
His wife smiled her secretive little smile again. ‘When you’re in love, there is no such thing as time,’ she said. ‘I ought not to tell you, but Nigel is going to ask you, the minute he can pluck up his courage, if they can become engaged.’
Martin levered himself bolt upright in his chair.
‘Engaged! In love! At eighteen!’ he thundered, and was hushed into silence as the door opened and the coffee came in – half cold and milky, instead of strong and black, the way they knew he liked it.
Thoughtfully he sipped it. He wouldn’t look at Jane. He couldn’t. She was only a child. He tried to imagine her married, because engaged was only the beginning, wasn’t it? Married and held through the long night in that boy’s arms. He stared at him through narrowed eyes . . . How could a boy like that, not long out of college, take care of her? Where would they live? Did he know how easily she caught cold; that, left alone in the house, she would switch on every light and turn the radio up full strength? He would refuse. He had the right to refuse. Jane would listen to him . . .
His speech at the engagement party was noncommittal, but just enough, as everyone agreed. If he’d recited the first three verses of a poem, it wouldn’t have mattered to Jane. She was looking at Nigel from underneath thickly mascaraed eyelashes. Lost in love, lost in love for ever.
The wedding was to be in the summer, only three short months away. Apparently long engagements were something else that Nigel didn’t believe in.
‘We must be mad,’ Martin told his wife, and when she reminded him that she had only been eighteen and a half when they married, he reminded her coldly that at the time there had been a war on, which, of course, was different.
But nobody could see that, and sadly he went upstairs to the little room over the garage, the room always referred to as his study. He remembered the time when Jane had written a little card: DO NOT DISTERB. Even at fifteen, her spelling had been more imaginative than correct. He smiled. That was the winter when he had taken on extra marking of examination papers so that she could go to Switzerland with her form and learn to ski.
He turned the handle, opened the door, then stepped back, appalled. His desk had been pushed into a corner and was shrouded in a dustsheet. A bed, an ugly canvas camp bed, lolled against the wall. His room, his one oasis of privacy, was to be turned into a bedroom for the invading horde of relatives who had already been briefed by silver-edged invitation cards, dispatched by the dozen.
Those were the weeks when the telephone never stopped ringing; when they ate in the kitchen because the sewing machine was permanently at the ready on the edge of the dining-room table. The weeks when all the picture rails had dresses hanging from them, and hastily scribbled little lists were found in every corner of the house.
Then, one day, much to his surprise, Martin was actually asked for his opinion. He was asked for his opinion on the flat that Jane and Nigel had found at the top of one of a long row of identical Victorian houses.
In horrified silence he climbed with them up the three flights of narrow, brown, linoleum-covered stairs. He stared in disbelief round the room that would have to serve as a living-cum-dining-cum-bedroom. At the high and dirty ceiling, the narrow windows, the monstrosity of a mantelpiece. At the cupboard called a kitchen, and the bathroom with its stained, crouching bath.
He thought of Jane’s bedroom back at home, with its peach-pink walls, its white fitted wardrobes and big windows overlooking the lawn and the apple trees.
Well, they had asked for his opinion, and he would give it them. Without mincing his words he would tell them exactly what he thought. He turned round, opened his mouth to speak, and saw their faces.
They were holding hands, and it was obvious that to them the flat was a suite at the Savoy and Buckingham Palace rolled into one. So Martin said nothing at all.
From that day until the wedding he seemed to have no contact with Jane. She was a whirlwind that tore through the house and spent hours on the telephone, opened parcels, exclaiming with delight or groaning with dismay according to their contents. She laughed a great deal, but Martin watched her carefully.
He knew, or at least he had thought he knew, his Jane. He remembered vividly the day they had left her at the hospital for a tonsil operation, and how she had laughed all the way in the car; then, in the ward, he had had to unclench her tiny fingers, one by one, from his clasp.
He remembered the day of her eleven-plus examination when she had gone off skipping down the road to school, only to return at lunchtime a quivering bundle of nerves, pleading with them not to make her go back and take the second paper.
He recalled the way she talked in her sleep, and one night walked in her sleep, when O-lev
els were pending, and how he had made her a steaming cup of cocoa and sat on her bed and told her that examinations were nothing – nothing at all – compared to the real purpose of living. She had hugged him fiercely for a brief moment, her arms in a stranglehold around his neck.
‘What would I do without you, Daddy?’ she’d said, and for a moment he had known how God must feel – strong, all powerful and full of infinite wisdom.
Now Jane had grown up; she was self-assured, complete, and needed him no more.
The night before the wedding the house overflowed with relatives and friends, presents, brown paper and string, and Jane moved among them, laughing, excited, and yet calm and completely a ease.
Her dress, freed at last from its enveloping sheet, hung in lacy folds against the wall, and this time it was Martin who lay awake, muttering to himself.
Was this all there was to it? he asked himself, lying there in the darkness. Tomorrow she would belong to Nigel, and all the years of loving and sacrificing, of worry interspersed with joy, would vanish as if they had never been.
He pulled his wife close to him, and buried his head in the softness of her neck. Already she was half asleep, but she jerked away in startled indignation.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ she said, ‘don’t mess up my hair!’ So Martin lay obligingly still on his side of the bed, and willed himself into an uneasy sleep.
Jane didn’t come downstairs at all the next morning. She was to have her breakfast in bed, and a leisurely bath before she put on the long white dress.
There was a rota for the bathroom, and the guests, obedient and eager to comply, departed for the church in strict order, the women in smart silk dresses, fur stoles slipping from their shoulders; their husbands in borrowed morning suits with carnations in the buttonholes.
Suddenly the house was quiet, and he was alone in the sitting room, twirling his grey top in his hand, and staring at the drinks trolley. He wondered if the vicar would detect the smell of whisky on his breath, then rejected the idea as unworthy of the father of the bride.
The taxi was outside, its white ribbons fluttering gaily in the summer breeze, the chauffeur holding open the door for the bridesmaids, one yellow, one blue, and the mother of the bride.
Shrugging, Martin went into the hall. This was it . . .
His wife’s face appeared round the bend in the stairs, flushed and agitated underneath its pink-petalled hat, and the blue bridesmaid, almost in tears, brushed past him on her way to the kitchen for, of all things, a glass of water and the aspirin bottle. Down the stairs his wife stumbled on the high heels of her new crocodile shoes.
‘She’s just sitting there, not moving. She’s not ill; she just sits there. Oh Martin, you know how hopeless she can be when she’s scared. I thought she’d grown out of it.’ Her voice wobbled on the verge of lost control.
Calmly and quite deliberately Martin put his top hat and gloves down on the hall table. Calmly and quite deliberately he took the glass of water and the aspirin bottle from the blue bridesmaid and put them down, too. He patted his wife’s silk-clad shoulder.
‘The taxi is waiting, dear,’ he soothed. ‘Off you go. I’ll follow on with Jane. Just do as I say.’
He beckoned to the yellow bridesmaid, who, enjoying every minute of the drama, hovered halfway down the stairs. ‘Go along, too,’ he said. ‘I’ll look after Jane.’
He opened the front door and waved to the chauffeur, who responded by giving the thumbs-up sign.
His wife hesitated and bit her lip, but Martin gave her a gentle push and the yellow bridesmaid followed. Then, squaring his shoulders in their borrowed jacket, he went upstairs, and it was exactly as they had said.
Jane was sitting on the edge of her bed, the white dress billowing out around her, her face set in a stony mask, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears.
As he had done so many times before, Martin stretched out his hand and touched her hair.
‘Almost time to go, lovey,’ he said, and picked up the tiny glittering crown that was to hold her veil in place.
And then the tears spilled out, running in rivulets down the pale cheeks, and Martin sighed. When Jane cried she cried properly, abandoning herself to grief.
Firmly he took her by the elbows and pulled her to her feet. ‘Do you want to go down the aisle with swollen eyelids?’ he said sternly. ‘You know what a mess you look when you cry. Your nose turns red.’ Lightly he touched its tip. ‘It’s a little pink already.’
Jane gave a shuddering sob. ‘I can’t. I feel sick, just here.’ She put a trembling hand over a lacy midriff.
Martin took his new linen handkerchief, especially saved for the wedding, and carefully wiped her face. ‘It’s a long time since I did this.’ He grinned, and then he was serious again.
‘You love Nigel, don’t you, Jane? Because if you don’t it isn’t too late to stop all this, even now.’ His heart sank at the prospect, but his voice was quite steady.
Jane swallowed a sob. ‘I’ll always love him, and I want to marry him, but it’s all those people waiting to stare. Sometimes I think big weddings like this are for parents and their friends, and it wouldn’t really matter whether the two people involved turned up at all.’
Martin handed her the tiny sparkling coronet. ‘I’m sure there’s a lot in what you say, lovey, but we can’t go into it any further just now. Put this on and that curtain thing, and I’ll be downstairs waiting for you.’ At the door he turned, but Jane was already at her dressing table, peering short-sightedly into the mirror and, as far he could see, drawing an extra-black line round her eyes.
In the sitting room he leaned against the door in lightheaded relief. Who would be a father?
As the returning taxi pulled up at the gate, he poured a whisky – a small one, in deference to the vicar – and a thimbleful of sherry, and went into the hall.
And Jane was there . . . A Jane so beautiful, so serene in her white flowing dress, that he caught his breath.
‘All right?’ he whispered, and put the glass in her hand, but she shook her head.
‘What would I do without you, Daddy?’ she said, and a sudden shaft of sunlight set the little coronet sparkling in her hair.
And this time, as the chauffeur stood waiting, cap in hand, it was Martin’s turn, his heart brimming over with joy, to give the thumbs-up sign.
Love is a Girl with Stars in Her Eyes
KEITH REGRETTED THE whole thing the minute he stepped inside the impressive entrance to the tower block of flats in London’s Maida Vale.
There was a massive display of spring flowers on one corner of the reception desk, and the porter, silver-haired and tanned, looked very distinguished.
‘Miss Williams? Miss Megan Williams?’ he said, and without having to consult a list, he smiled. ‘Yes, she’s still with us, sir. Number twelve, seventeenth floor.’
Keith thanked him, walked to the lift and stepped inside.
Lifts were good places for communing with oneself, he decided as he was borne swiftly upwards. It was as if, just for a few moments, your thoughts suddenly clarified their message loud and clear.
And the message coming through was that he ought not to be here; that if Megan had wanted to get in touch with him again she could have done so. All she would have needed to do was to write to the bank, to their head office, and they would have sent the letter on to their Liverpool branch, where he was now.
It wasn’t as if she thought he might have given up his job with its chance of steady promotion and gone bumming around Europe with a haversack on his back. He wasn’t the bumming type, and she knew it.
That was what they had had their first big rows about: his steadiness and Lancashire common sense, and her wayward and romantic unpredictability.
‘How can you go on the stage?’ he’d shouted, sounding like Noel Coward’s Auntie Mabel. ‘You’ve been trained as a secretary. Do you imagine you can just give up your job and walk into a part at Drury Lane? There are hundred of girls who’ve stu
died drama, and worked in rep who are clamouring for their big chance. Thousands of them sitting in agents’ offices!’ he’d stormed.
‘OK, so you did three years at the Royal Ballet School until you grew too tall. OK, I know that dancing is in your blood, so when we’re married you can put up a barre in the sitting room and teach little girls how to point their toes. Get it out of your system that way. But go on the stage! You must be crazy!’
The lift had stopped, the doors had opened. He remembered how this time last year, the time of their loving, she was sharing a plates-on-knees kind of existence with two other girls.
There was rice with everything, tights hanging over the bath, and through the curtainless window a view of tangled ribbon lights and the Post Office Tower.
Now – well, who could tell? Megan was bound to have met someone else. Just to see her was to love her, and if she’d got involved with a flash stage crowd . . . He heard himself sounding just like his father, but couldn’t stop it. He remembered one of their last arguments.
‘The whiff of greasepaint, the lure of the boards!’ he’d shouted. ‘Oh, how corny can you get!’
‘You want me in the kitchen in a pinny!’ she’d cried, and he’d said that yes, he did, and she had actually hit him, beating at him with her fists. But the parting had been in sorrow – not in anger – making it final, with nothing more to be said.
The bell still sounded the same . . . Then suddenly the door opened and she was there.
A tall, smiling girl, her brown hair curled in an all-over ringlet style that she combed with a fork. The first time he’d seen her do that he’d laughed until his sides ached, then asked himself why it was so extraordinary. Megan was the kind of girl who could take fork-combed hair in her stride.