I’m off. I can’t stand it any longer. I didn’t want to tell you this morning not to hurt your feelings. I called Ma weeks ago to send me some money to go home. It came yesterday. I’m sure this is best for both of us. Hope you will understand and no hard feelings. Bernie.
He read it twice trying to take it in. She’d gone? She’d gone. Just like that! She must have known she was going ever since she’d called her mother, whom she always claimed to have disliked, but she hadn’t said a word to him. He had the curious sensation of a surge of emotions without having the least idea what they were. She’d gone, without the slightest warning. Which meant in a way that she had lied to him, because only last night they had discussed what she would wear to his cousin Polly’s wedding (she liked him to take an interest in her clothes), but all the time she must have known that she would not be going to it. They were married, and she’d left him with just a note! Bloody awful cheek! He knew what he was feeling now. He was angry – at being made such a fool of, at her caring so little for him that she hadn’t been prepared to do anything to make the marriage work. She was a liar. She’d lied to him about her age – when they’d left America he saw her passport and she was more than ten years older than she’d said she was. He’d forgiven her for that because she’d been so pathetic about it.
He was wandering about the flat now, with the piece of paper screwed up in his hand. The kitchen sink was full of dirty cups and the remains of their supper from the night before. Her cup had a big lipstick mark on it. He picked it up and hurled it across the room where it hit the top of the gas stove and shattered. She’d never cared for him – he saw it now. Except for sex, she’d had no use for him. Obviously she’d thought she was on to a good thing in marrying him: she’d thought she’d have a big house and servants and any amount of money. Nothing he’d said to her about that had sunk in. She’d been all lovey-dovey with him, saying she’d go to the ends of the earth for him – and she hadn’t even tried to survive Tufnell Park. Then he had to sit down on the chair that had no springs because he found he was crying.
The rest of the evening was awful. He longed for someone to talk to – but the telephone had been cut off because he couldn’t pay the bill. He was hungry and tired and thirsty and there was nothing (of course!) in the flat to eat. He went wearily out to a pub and had a pint of bitter, but he couldn’t bear the other people talking and drinking and smoking and laughing as though nothing whatever had happened. He went to the fish-and-chip shop and got himself some food to take back to the flat. But the fish, deeply encased in greasy batter, nauseated him. He ate some of the chips, and then he went and lay on top of the unmade bed. It smelled of them, and this made him miserable. He got up and cleaned up the kitchen and some of the sitting room until he was so tired that he didn’t even care what the bed was like, fell upon it still clothed and passed out.
He woke up very late and remembered that he was alone. He had some faint stirrings of relief, but he banished them. He was an abandoned husband – relief was not in order. He got up and had a bath and shave, which made him feel much better. Then, just as he realized that he’d have to go out before breakfast because there wasn’t any and even the remains of the milk was off, the doorbell rang. They must have rung the wrong bell, he thought. Nobody had ever come to visit them. He went down to answer it.
He opened the door and there was Simon.
‘I got your address from Dad,’ he said. ‘I tried to ring you last night, but your phone doesn’t seem to be working.’
It was wonderful to see him, and the unexpectedness of it made it even better. He took him up to the flat and, without any preamble at all, told him what had happened.
Simon was extremely sympathetic. ‘Cor!’ he kept saying. ‘Poor old you. Bit mean of her to spring it on you like that. It sounds as though you may be better off without her. From what I gather from my friends, women tend to be unreliable – on one day and off the next, if you know what I mean.’
He was beautifully dressed in an old tweed suit with a spotted bow-tie and sky-blue socks. Teddy felt rather shabby in contrast.
‘I’ve come to London for Poll’s wedding, and there’s such a fuss going on about it at home that I wanted to get the hell out, and I hadn’t seen you for ages …’
‘I’m really glad to see you.’
When Simon discovered that he hadn’t had breakfast he suggested that they go out at once and have an early lunch. ‘I’ve borrowed Dad’s car,’ he said. ‘Where shall we go?’
They had lunch in a pub near Hampstead Heath and went out for a walk afterwards, and discussed their futures – which both felt were rather excitingly precarious. Simon had finished at Oxford – ‘Of course I don’t know how I’ve done yet’ – and was faced with impending National Service, which he spoke of with contemptuous boredom, but which, Teddy could detect, he was secretly dreading. He speculated more about Bernadine’s departure and supposed he would have to divorce her. ‘That’s the usual thing, I think,’ he said, in as worldly a manner as he could manage, but he felt both depressed and alarmed at the prospect. To begin with, he hadn’t a ghost of an idea how one set about it. It involved lawyers, he knew, and this was probably expensive, as almost everything nice or nasty seemed to be.
‘The thing is,’ Simon said – they were lying on a bank in front of a wood – ‘that you’d better be pretty careful not to get caught up with another woman too soon. Or at least don’t marry them if you do.’
‘You usually have to marry them in the end,’ he said. ‘Girls are keen on that sort of thing, I’ve found.’ He did not see the need to tell Simon that Bernie had so far been his only experience of girls – not counting the odd kiss after RAF dances. He was two years older, and tradition had it that therefore he knew more.
‘Is it actually worth it?’ Simon asked later, as they tramped back to the car.
‘What?’
‘Sex – with someone else. I nearly tried it once,’ he added carelessly, ‘but when it came to the point, it all seemed a bit – you know – complicated. I was afraid she might get the wrong idea about me.’
Somehow Teddy knew that this had not been the case, but he was fond of Simon, and he also knew, again from the RAF, that people told more lies about their conquests than anything else.
‘It can be marvellous,’ he said. ‘But, of course, you have to find the right person.’
‘Yes. And that could take ages,’ Simon agreed.
Then they gossiped about the family.
‘Polly’s tremendously happy. Only she’s suddenly got nervous about the actual wedding. You’re an usher like me, aren’t you?’
‘Yep.’
‘We could go to Moss Bros together to get our morning coats. Neville was going to be one as well, but he kept calling her Lady Fake and she’s had a row with him.’
They were both feeling hungry again so they found a tea-shop and had a fairly substantial tea, because the waitress kept offering them extra scones and cakes.
‘I expect she’s sex-starved,’ Simon said. ‘We’re the only men in the place.’
Then they went back to Teddy’s flat.
He asked Simon to come with him. He was beginning to dread returning there alone.
‘Course I will. Are you worried she might have changed her mind and come back?’
He hadn’t thought of that. But he realized then that he very much hoped she hadn’t.
And when he found that she hadn’t, that the flat was just as he had left it, he felt tremendous relief. Simon had stood them the lunch and the tea, so he said he would get fish and chips for supper, and Simon bought the beer.
‘Do you remember the camp that you and Christopher made without me, just before the war?’
‘And you had a fight with him? I do.’
‘I didn’t really want to fight him. I just hated the way he’d left me out.’
‘I didn’t really want to run away and live in the camp. It was just that he was so keen.’
‘Wha
t’s happened to him?’
‘Dad said he was living with his sister – you know, the one who married that poor bloke.’
‘It doesn’t sound like much of a life.’
‘I nearly forgot! There’s a bottle of whisky in the car. I brought it as a present for you. I’ll nip down and get it.’
They had had two large drinks each and everything felt very cosy.
‘What’s it like, working in the firm?’ Simon asked casually.
‘I think it’s going to be all right. When I stop being quite so menial. Why? Are you thinking of going in for it?’
Simon shook his head. ‘God, no! I don’t want to be a businessman.’
‘What do you want to do?’ he asked. He felt faintly nettled at Simon’s dismissal of his job.
‘Don’t know. Well, I do, in a way. I’d like to go into politics. I’d like to be a Member of Parliament. You know, change things.’
‘Get this government out? That kind of thing?’
‘Oh, no. I approve of this government. I’d be a Labour man.’
‘You mean, you’re in favour of all this nationalizing of everything?’
‘I am. But it’s not just that. I’m dead against the Tories. Do you know that the BMA have set up a fund to help doctors who don’t want to co-operate with the National Health Service? They say they want to modify proposals in the Bill, but really they don’t want the Bill at all. They’re Tory to a man.’
‘BMA?’ he repeated. ‘Oh – British Medical something or other.’
‘Association. Tories just seem to me against any kind of progress. They don’t care about the workers at all.’
‘But, surely, some Tories are workers. Look at me.’
‘Yes, but you know you’ll end up in an office bossing the real workers about. There are thousands of people who will work all their lives without a chance of that.’
‘You have to have workers as well as bosses. They couldn’t all be bosses, whatever you did.’
‘No, but you could give them a better deal. A share of the profits. That’s the point of nationalization. Everybody owns the railways. Everybody owns the coal mines.’
He went on in this vein for some time, and Teddy began by listening and then he didn’t, listen, and occupied himself getting a jug of water from the kitchen tap to add to their whisky. He began to wish that he had been to a university. There wasn’t anything he could talk about for such a long time with such an air of authority as Simon had. Well, he knew quite a bit about Hurricane fighters, but that wasn’t turning out to be much use in a peacetime world. And one day he would know a lot about timber – be like Dad.
When Simon had stopped talking about politics and accused him, but in a rather bleary way, of not being interested, they both had one more drink and got back to – he thought – the far more interesting subject of their own lives.
It started with talking about their fathers. He told Simon how ill his father had been, and he added that it seemed that Hugh and Dad were not getting on and said that he thought it was a bit unfair on his dad on top of his operation and all that.
‘I didn’t know. Of course I haven’t been around much, but Dad seems much happier to me. I think he’s finally got over Mum. Or perhaps he’s just so pleased about Poll.’
‘Whatever it is, if you got the chance, you might just mention to him that my dad would like to see him – I mean, not in the office, but on their own somewhere.’
‘Right. You’d think they’d be old enough to sort things out for themselves, though, wouldn’t you?’
‘Perhaps you just get too old to be able to.’
‘That would be like life. You spend all your youth being made to do horrible things, and then I suppose you get a few years when you can choose what you do before you get too old and weak to enjoy anything.’
‘And when you can choose, you choose wrong,’ he said. He was beginning to feel awful about Bernie again, and wondering where she was, and whether he ought to try and find out and go after her. He said some of this to Simon, who advised against doing anything.
‘She’s the one who’s gone,’ he said. ‘She’s not likely to change her mind. And you don’t even know if you want her to. Of course, I may be wrong,’ he added, but in tones that sounded as though he thought it unlikely, ‘but I think you’d be better off without her. Would you like me to stay the night here? I don’t think I could drive home anyway – I’m too tight.’
He said he would. He staggered to his feet and found some clean sheets, and Simon offered to make the bed with him but they simply couldn’t do it. The sheets went all over the place with each one pulling in the wrong direction, and they collapsed laughing.
‘Do you remember when we had that ghastly drink in the wood? And we drank to Strangeways major?’
‘And Bobby Riggs? I do. And we smoked a bit of one of the Brig’s cigars.’
‘You did. I was sick. And you said it was the fish we’d had for supper.’
‘I knew it wasn’t really,’ he said, ‘but you looked so awfully rotten, I wanted to cheer you up.’
‘And I want to cheer you up,’ Simon said, so affectionately that Teddy felt tears coming to his eyes.
‘You’ve been wizard,’ he said, ‘absolutely wizard. I think then are much easier to get on with than women,’ he said, when they had settled, head to tail, on the bed.
‘Oh, they are, old boy. Absolutely. They don’t fuss about the wrong things.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Oh, you know, weddings. And spiders. And what they look like all the time … How many women have you found who you could talk about nationalization to? Because, speaking for myself, I haven’t found one. Not – a single one. I say, this bed’s very rocky, isn’t it?’
‘Bernie wasn’t interested in fighter planes. I tried to interest her but she never was. What’s wrong with the bed?’
‘It seems to be waving about rather.’
‘It’s not me. You’re drunk – that’s what it is. I am, too,’ he added.
‘We’re both drunk. We drank the whole bottle, you know. Not counting the beer we drank while we were getting the beer for supper. We’d better get some sleep.’
‘It seems worse if I close my eyes.’
But Simon fell asleep very soon after that, because he didn’t notice the next thing that he, Teddy, said to him, and after thinking that perhaps he was going to lie there all night worrying about Bernie, his marriage being over and being on his own again, he didn’t remember any more either.
Jemima knew that it was because she felt – apart from very much else – a little bit tired, but somehow, for the last week or so, her life had seemed to be composed of stopping things, finishing them, casting them off, closing things down, shutting things up, in fact, making all the preparations for something completely different that had not yet begun. Yesterday she had cleared up the office. It was the kind of odd, old-fashioned room that did not respond to being cleared up. It simply looked emptier but resolutely the same, with its dark, panelled walls that were hung with dozens of faded photographs in narrow black frames, its vast mahogany partner’s desk, its long black chesterfield that was prickly with errant horsehair, and the enormous dining-room chairs (with arms – she supposed they were carvers), and its window that never seemed to be clear of London grime with a dark green blind that was always sticking half-way, and its once brilliant but now worn Turkish rug on the polished floor – it all seemed designed for a gloomy giant. She felt tiny in it – well, she was small, but she felt ridiculous. And even the things on the desk were dwarfed: the blotter, the silver-framed calendar that she had just set to Friday, 18 July, and his family photographs. There was one of each of his children when quite young: Simon, in shorts with a toy yacht on his knees, and Polly, who had got married last week, as a serious little girl in a sleeveless summer frock, and William, a toddler in a white linen hat, held by his mother on a lawn. She was wearing a rather shapeless flowered summer dress, and there mus
t have been a breeze, because tendrils of hair were escaping from the bun at the back of her neck. William looked as though he was trying to get away, and she was gazing at him with a kind of resigned affection. The larger one of her by herself was no longer there, she noticed.
There were also inkstands, wood samples, and trays for papers in various stages of completion. She had put all of these things straight, even symmetrically upon the desk, had answered the morning post when she could, clipped the letters for him to see and placed them in the middle of the blotter. She had felt strange doing these things because it was for the last time, and because nobody else in the office knew that this was so.
Then she had covered her typewriter in the small black office that was behind this room, collected her hat and her bag and slipped out. ‘Going early, are you?’ the office boy had said.
‘Yes. Mr Hugh’s not in today,’ she had replied. But why had she even bothered to say that? It wasn’t Alfie’s business.
She went home to pack up for the boys. Home was – had been for nearly seven years now – the bottom half of a house in Blomfield Road by the Regent’s Canal. She had chosen it because the rent was cheap, and because there was a large back garden for the boys. It had two bedrooms and a sitting room on the ground floor, and a dining room and a tiny kitchenette in the basement. It was damp, and difficult to keep warm, and some very strange people lived in the flat above, of whom she was slightly afraid, but it had been their home since soon after Ken had been killed.
She got home well before the boys were back from school, which was good because she could get their packing done far more peacefully without them. They were excited at the prospect of going away to camp for two weeks: the only thing that was worrying them was whether there would be an adequate supply of poplar leaves for their elephant hawk moth caterpillars. She got out the battered old leather case that had belonged to Ken. It no longer shut properly and had to have a leather strap round it. She’d done all their washing last weekend, so it was simply a matter of counting out enough of everything. Two vests each, two pairs of shorts, four shirts each and a pullover. They could travel in their sand shoes and just take sandals. Perhaps one pair of socks each? But she knew they wouldn’t wear them. They could travel in their macs – only they wouldn’t wear them either, and she’d have to beg them not to leave them behind in the train. Ration books would be required, and into them she pinned an address and telephone number in case she was needed. She finished the packing with their hats, bathing suits and a towel each. They could have the little case for their books, pen-knives, and any other clobber. Tom had a magnifying glass, with which he was mad keen to start a fire, and Henry would want to take his box Brownie camera. Then, of course, they would take Hoighty the grey monkey (Tom’s) and Sparker (Henry’s teddy). How the caterpillars were to travel, she didn’t know. What seemed so odd, she thought, was that they were not just going away from here for two weeks; they weren’t coming back here. They knew this and seemed simply excited by the prospect, but looking round their overfilled, untidy room that was so crowded by their possessions and interests, she felt a pang. It was the end of an era.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 195