‘Did you? What?’
‘Well, you know – about the marriage.’
‘But that’s what it was about.’
‘I didn’t mean Nora’s. I meant yours.’ She had gone rather pink. ‘Silly of me. I just sort of hoped—’
‘Oh, darling, I’ve told you, she’ll never do that.’ He put his arms round her and gave her a hug. Whenever he made the future impossible for her, he found he could be indulgent about the present.
She had made a large, rather watery rabbit stew, and while they ate it, he told her about Nora’s fiancé.
‘Does that mean that they won’t be able to have any children?’
‘I’m afraid so. It apparently means that they won’t be able to have anything.’
‘Do you mean he won’t be able to sleep with her?’
‘That’s about it.’
‘Oh, how awful for her!’ She thought for a moment. ‘She must be an amazing person.’ After that she enquired tenderly after Nora and was intensely interested in her wedding.
During the following year, he became aware somehow that Jessica’s affair had waned and eventually finished. His feelings about her were confused. There was an immense relief when one day she referred with perceptible disparagement to ‘poor Mercedes’, Clutterworth’s wife. What was poor about her? he had asked. Oh, she seemed constantly to have to put up with students and girls in choirs falling in love with her husband. ‘It must be a frightful bore for her.’
Aha, he thought. He’s deserted her. It was a moment of triumph. But the triumph did not last or, rather, it quickly became adulterated with other, less celebratory feelings. If Jessica had been left, as from her listless manner he thought most probable, ought he not to re-establish himself with her? But if he did that, what was he to do about Veronica? Supposing he left Veronica and resumed married life with Jessica who then found someone else? Or supposing she didn’t get anyone else and he tried to live with her and, well, it turned out like the last time? What would he do then? She would most certainly despise him if he proved impotent. In the end, he decided to do nothing, except to go to London more often to keep an eye on things up there.
Some months later, Jessica had announced that she and Villy had decided to sell the Rydal house in St John’s Wood, and that she was going to rent a much smaller one with her share of the proceeds. She had found one, she said, in Chelsea.
Life with Veronica in Oxford continued ostensibly to be the same, but as his confidence gradually came back about Jessica, he found less pleasure in Veronica’s adulation – sometimes it was even slightly irritating. She was so young! he thought, but the inference of this had become different. Whereas it had been balm to his vanity that someone so youthful should find him attractive, now he found her youth something that required his patience. She was so predictable! It was as though he knew what she thought and felt and was going to say about everything, which made everything not quite worth talking about. Poor little thing! She could not help any of it: she was slipping back into being his daughter.
Throughout that year, he consoled himself with the idea that the end of the war would bring about every kind of change – for the better. His job would come to an end, which would make a natural severance of his Oxford life. He would go home and Jessica would be unable to stray because he would always be there. Indeed, he would take her back to Frensham and they would settle down to a stable and sedate country life …
None of this had come to pass. He was, in fact, moved to London by the War Office, a curious job that took place, rather surprisingly, in Wormwood Scrubs. This entailed, of course, some unhappy scenes with Veronica. ‘Couldn’t you come back at weekends?’ ‘Couldn’t you ask for me to be moved?’ But he could not, or would not, do either of these things. It was time to say goodbye, he felt, and set about it as carefully and kindly as he was able. Of course she wept, he had known she would do that. (He spent one sleepless night holding her in his arms on her narrow bed while she sobbed and slept and woke again to cry.) He explained, again and again, that he could not leave his wife. He would always love her – Veronica – but as there was no future for them, it was essential that she start her own life when she would, he was sure, find someone and be very happy with him.
A few days later, when he returned from a night in London, where he had told Jessica about his new work, with the intention of packing up his things to move from the Oxford flat, he found Veronica lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, unconscious. She had cut the veins in both wrists, but had not, most fortunately, been efficient about it. Nonetheless, he experienced moments of panic and horror on a scale that reminded him of the First World War. She lay face downwards, and at first he thought she was dead, but when he managed to lower himself on to one knee (his other refused to bend) and, pulled at her shoulder until he had turned her over, he realized that she was still breathing. Her face was a frightening grey-white colour; one wrist was clotted with drying blood, but from the other it was still weakly pumping out. He bound the wrist tightly with his handkerchief and rang for an ambulance. Then he fetched a couple of blankets from her bed and waited. He felt like a murderer: if she died he would be responsible. Those minutes, until the ambulance then arrived, were the worst in his life.
They were wonderfully professional and reassuring. In no time at all they had put her on a stretcher, had undone his bandage and fixed a tourniquet. ‘She’ll be all right, sir. She hasn’t lost all that much blood. It always looks more than it is. You can come along with us, if you like.’ He went. In the ambulance they said that they would have to inform the police, who would want a statement from him. ‘She’s your wife, is she?’ He said no.
In the hospital she was wheeled away and he was put in a small room where he sat and worried about what on earth the police would ask him. Of course it would all come out, that he had been living with her. They would discover that he was married and they would assume that she was his mistress. Her parents would have to be told, Jessica would find out and he would probably be sacked from his job. Had she meant him to find her? Of course she must have meant that, but whether she knew that he would find her in time was uncertain. He always returned from London on the same morning train, and almost always went first to the flat before going in to work. He began to think that she had simply meant to give him an awful fright, had not meant actually to kill herself. He began to feel a dull anger with her. By one stupid, irresponsible act she had mucked everything up. Then the really awful thought occurred that, if she hadn’t meant him to find her in time, she might do it all over again. This made him feel utterly trapped, and unable to think at all clearly.
The police came, and he made his statement. He stuck to the truth about the fact connected with finding her. What else could he do? But when he was asked if he could think of any reasons why she might do such a thing, he became ingenious. They went away with the idea, if not the actual knowledge, that she was highly strung and impressionable, had conceived feelings for him that he had been unable to reciprocate, but that in view of the disparity in their ages, he had tried to be paternal and patient with her. He had had absolutely no idea that she would do such a thing. ‘She always knew that I was married,’ he had said. He explained that the War Office was moving him to London, and added that he supposed that this had upset her more than he had realized. He implied, as delicately and in as many ways as he could think of, that she was not and never had been his mistress, but he wasn’t sure they believed him.
They finally let him go home. She was sleeping, quite comfortable, they said. He could see her later in the evening if he liked.
He got back to the flat with its bloodstained floor and a sixpage letter she had written to him laid upon his bed. He had a stiff whisky and spent half an hour mopping up the blasted lino before he read it.
But even after reading the letter twice, he was no clearer about what her intentions had been. You could say that she wouldn’t have written it if she hadn’t meant to kill herself; o
n the other hand, if she had simply meant to frighten, or blackmail him into doing what she wanted, she would still have written a letter because she would have wanted him to think she was serious. Well, in either case, it hadn’t worked, he thought grimly. All he wanted now, was out. His feelings for her, whatever they had once been, had now diminished to a sense of angry responsibility. He poured himself another whisky. The shock had worn off, and what he described to himself as enlightened self-interest took over.
He took her car and went to work, where he requested an interview with his boss to whom he gave a brief – and, he felt, fair – description of the situation. Anstruther was a man with an incisive mind and a distaste for emotion of any kind. He was briskly sympathetic. ‘Nasty situation. Hysteria, I suppose. Bit unwise to set up with her, wasn’t it? Have you got hold of her parents? I should advise that, because the police or the hospital are likely to and it might be better if you got there first.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, I’d better.’
‘Not pregnant or anything, is she?’
‘No. Nothing like that.’ He explained again, without delicacy, why she couldn’t be.
At this, Anstruther became incredulously impatient, said that he had no wish to go into details, and would take Raymond’s word for it.
‘I’ll arrange for Miss Watson to have extended leave, and perhaps you would arrange for her parents to fetch her. We don’t want any more trouble. When do you start in London? Next week? Well, you’d better take a few days yourself.’
He said something about not wanting to upset his wife.
‘Naturally not.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
He rang the parents, got the mother, and told her the most emollient version he could muster. Veronica had been overworking; he was afraid she had become a little too fond of him, in spite of her knowing that he was married with four children, and when she had learned that he was being sent elsewhere for work, she had done this foolish and unfortunate thing. She was going to be perfectly all right, he repeated (he had begun the conversation by saying that), but her boss thought it best if she had a long leave at home. Would they come and fetch her as soon as possible?
Mrs Watson seemed unable to take things in. ‘I can’t understand it,’ she kept saying. ‘Veronica’s such a sensible girl. Cut herself. With a knife? I can’t understand it!’
He said how sorry he was, and repeated Anstruther’s verdict of hysteria. Mrs Watson said that they would both come to Oxford the next day. That was that.
He went back to the flat in her car and packed up. He decided to leave no trace of his having lived there so this took some time. He dismantled his bed leaving it with its bare striped mattress, took his socks and shirt off the washing line in the kitchen, leaving her pink fluffy jumper that always got up his nose hanging on the line. He even went through her chest of drawers, discovering a small bundle of notes he had written to her. These he burned, together with her letter. By now he was feeling quite fugitive: the thought of going to see her in hospital unnerved him. He was afraid of what she might say – of what people might hear her say. ‘After all, I never went to bed with her,’ he kept saying to himself. By the time he had packed and called a cab, the whole thing was beginning to feel hardly his fault.
He didn’t go and see her.
Thereafter, when he thought of ‘the episode’, as he came to call it, he was subject to unease, a certain amount of guilt which he became adept at rationalizing. A large number of the staff at Woodstock had engaged upon extra-marital activities – there were rumours of pregnancies, abortions, even an eventual remarriage or two. He had not behaved differently from any of them, except that he had behaved better. It had been just his bad luck to land up with someone who had refused to take him at face value, who had insisted upon reading more into the affair than was ever there. He heard on the grapevine that she had gone home and had not returned, had been discharged. He went back to London and to Jessica with whom he resumed an (almost) chaste marriage. Sex with each other did not seem rewarding or to enliven either of them. He decided that it was because of his job, which took a lot out of him, and the awful little house that she had insisted upon them living in: a doll’s house, no room to turn round. It would be different – and better – when the war came to an end and they got back to Frensham.
The war did come to an end, but the visit to Frensham had been discouraging, to put it mildly. Nora had sent John, the old man who had always worked in the garden – a gardener’s boy in Aunt Lena’s day – to meet him at the station. He seemed to have aged about twenty years since Raymond had last seen him, and now shuffled in a rheumaticky way and seemed not to hear much that was said to him. ‘You’ll find the place changed,’ he remarked more than once during the short journey.
He did indeed. From the moment they arrived on the gravel sweep before the house, it was dear that changes had occurred. The lawn below was now a tract of frozen mud, punctuated by the shabby spikes of Brussels sprouts. The Virginia creeper that had so charmingly clothed the front façade was gone, and the mellow brick had been covered with some frightful yellow paint. The stained glass in the waisted front door had gone, and in its place was some white opaque stuff commonly used, he thought, in bathrooms.
Inside was worse. He stood in the hall staring at the dark green linoleum that now covered the floor and the bright yellow painted walls where Aunt Lena’s Morris willow-pattern paper had always been. Odours of Jeyes fluid, Irish stew, carbolic soap and paraffin reached him.
Nora appeared. She wore a dark blue overall and tennis shoes with ankle socks, her sturdy legs were otherwise bare. ‘Hello, Dad. I do hope you aren’t expecting tea because it’s over. But supper is at half past six so you haven’t got long to wait. We have it all together, because it takes a long time to get some of the chaps to bed. I’ll take you up to your room, and then you can come and talk to Richard.’
‘I can find my way to my room.’
‘Can you? Oh, fine. It’s at the very top, the little attic on the right.’
Wordlessly, he picked up his case and limped upstairs. Attic? Why on earth did he have to sleep in an attic? It was where the servants had slept, two in a room. A large chromium-plated stair rail had been installed on the wall side of the staircase. Nora had certainly been taking liberties with the place: he would wait till they were having drinks and then find out what on earth she thought she’d been up to.
His attic contained the maid’s furniture. A small battered chest of drawers, an iron bedstead and the old black-out blinds that had not been removed. It was icy cold up there – next to the roof, it would be. He had imagined tea in front of the drawing room fire with Nora and Richard. This did not seem unreasonable at half past four. He left his suitcase on the bed and limped downstairs in search of the bathroom. This, too, had been substantially altered, with a heightened seat for the lavatory and steps into the bath that also contained a seat. A row of bedpans filled with some milky substance were ranged on the window shelf.
Nora was standing in the hall. ‘I was afraid you’d got lost.’
How could he get lost in his own house, he thought testily, but he decided to wait until they were settled with a drink before tackling her.
This proved far more difficult than he thought. She didn’t settle anywhere, she rushed about the place either because someone came and asked for her or simply, he thought, because she imagined herself wanted. For half an hour before dinner he sat with Richard in what had been the morning room, now described by Nora as ‘our own little haven’. The room was stuffy, and smelled strongly of the paraffin stove that flickered sulkily, emitting the minimum of warmth.
‘Why don’t you have a fire? There’s a perfectly good fireplace.’
‘Nora says it’s too much for the staff. It’s awfully difficult to get people at all. She says.’
Richard sat in his wheelchair. He wore an open-necked flannel shirt with a heavy cardigan, the empty sleeves pinned neatly to the s
ides. A tray placed over the arms of his chair contained a Bakelite mug with a straw in it. Every now and then he bent his head to suck his gin and tonic. ‘Sorry there’s no ice,’ he said. ‘Still, a gin and tonic is something of a treat, I can tell you.’
‘Is it still difficult to get gin in the country?’
‘I don’t think it’s difficult. I think it is considered not to be affordable.’
‘Oh.’
‘While you’re up’ – he wasn’t – ‘I wonder if you’d give me a refill? Before the boss gets back?’
He did as he was asked, and refreshed his own glass.
‘If I was in control,’ Richard said, when he’d had another suck, ‘there’d be unlimited gin. But there you are. I’m not known for my control. Over anything.’
A silence, while Raymond felt ripples of uncomfortable pity that somehow pre-empted his being able to think of anything to say.
‘Still,’ Richard said, ‘I suppose we’re a good deal luckier than the other poor blighters. Don’t mention the gin to them. Because, unless their relatives visit them, they don’t get a drop.’
There was another short silence.
‘I wonder whether you’d be so good as to get the packet of fags which you should find behind that dictionary behind you on the bookshelf and light me one? Have one yourself if you feel inclined. Only be quick about it, before she gets back.’
He found the nearly empty packet and a box of matches beside it and lit the cigarette, which he placed between Richard’s lips. He inhaled deeply twice and then indicated that he wanted it taken out.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 161