But Marisa was gushing on.‘Oh, what a shame! I do wish you’d seen me. Tell you what, I’ll ask Reginald to take my picture. He’s a very good photographer. Then you’ll have a picture of me to show your friends. Really, stopping the traffic! I think it was the best thing ever to happen to me in my life.’
‘Better than when you met Daddy?’
Marisa was nineteen when she met Toby Dare. It was at a party at the Ritz hotel, given for lonely servicemen on leave, seeking lively company to take out on the town.
‘Your father looked wonderful in air-force blue. Tall, you know, and terribly well spoken. Terribly.’
Toby’s cut-glass accent had convinced Marisa (correctly) that he was endowed with family money. Speedily, she had swept the unsuspecting Toby off his size thirteen feet.
‘Only fly in the ointment was when he took me to the country pile to meet his parents. They asked about my people. Who are your PEOPLE? I felt I should have a whole nation of loyal subjects lining the streets yelling, God bless you, Marisa. In the end I said that my mother died when I was very young (true) and that my father was a missionary.’
However many times Marisa told this story, it still made Eugenie laugh. Marisa’s father lived abroad because he was, in truth, a Remittance Man. This was the name given to someone who had run up such colossal gambling and drinking debts that, to avoid public disgrace, the family paid for him to go abroad, and stay there. Kenya was stuffed with these bad boys, clustered shamelessly together in an amoral herd that would later become known as White Mischief.
As a wedding present, Toby’s parents gave the happy couple the spacious apartment in Marylebone.
‘We were married at St. Margaret’s, Westminster,’ Marisa reminisced. ‘The church for society weddings. I looked ravishing. I had my hair pulled back quite severely, but of course I’ve got the cheekbones for it. To soften the effect I wore a white lace mantilla. Clothes were rationed, but all brides got extra coupons. I looked absolutely ravishing, I really did.’
Eugenie had to take her word for it, because there were no photographs. Returning to his dark-room after the ceremony, the photographer had been blown up by an unexploded bomb.
‘No point in crying over it,’ Marisa said bravely. ‘It was just a hazard of being a wartime bride. We just had to Keep Calm and Carry On.’
A year after the wedding, Eugenie was born. She had been horrified to learn that she was born at home, in the marital bed. Why not a safe, antiseptic hospital?
‘But darling, all the hospitals were full of wounded soldiers.’
‘The war ended in 1945. I was born in 1946.’
‘Of course, I would have preferred a private hospital for my confinement, but we all had to make sacrifices. You don’t know how easy life is for you, Eugenie. You can’t imagine what it was like for us Service wives, with our husbands away at the Front.’
After Eugenie was born, Marisa abandoned Toby, having first persuaded him to sign over the Marylebone apartment to her.
‘But what happened to him?’ Eugenie asked. ‘Wasn’t he interested in me?’
‘Not particularly. Men aren’t interested in babies. And you weren’t pretty. You looked like a parboiled potato. And then I realised you were going to inherit your father’s hair. Well!’
Marisa had olive skin, black hair and dark flashing eyes. Eugenie was glad she’d inherited none of that.
‘And of course, you weren’t a boy.’
‘You could have had another baby. You could have had a boy.’
‘Please! I couldn’t have gone through all that again. I just couldn’t. Anyway, Toby’s PEOPLE realised they weren’t going to get the son and heir through me, so they lost interest and produced some childhood sweetheart of Toby’s, who they considered more suitable.’
To facilitate Marisa’s speedy removal from the marital scene, the family settled on her what Marisa admitted was a ‘very decent’ amount of money. Enough for her to live on independently, instead of it being known that dear Toby’s unsuitable ex-wife was sullying the Dare family name by going out to work.
‘You shouldn’t wear separates,’ Marisa said, from her station at the kitchen door. She watched Eugenie dumping two slices of cheese between two doorsteps of Hovis. ‘You’ve got a sway back. Blouses will never tuck in properly with you. Anyway, I’ll phone Reginald and tell him to come and take my photo. You must have one to show your friends. Not that I know who your friends are. You never bring anyone home. They must wonder if I exist.’
‘They’ll see you at the school sports day. And I hope you’re not going to stride around looking like you’re about to gore a bull.’
‘Of course not. I’m planning to wear my cream linen.’
Cream linen! ‘Sit on the grass and it’ll stain.’
‘I shan’t be sitting on the grass. Reginald will bring a rug.’
‘Reg! You’re not thinking of bringing him?’
‘Of course. I must have an escort. And he’s très sportive. He’s looking forward to the Fathers’ race.’
‘But Reg is not my father!’
Marisa sighed. ‘I do wish, Eugenie, you would learn to call him Reginald. Show some respect.’
Respect? How could you respect a florid man who wore brown suits and Hush Puppies and smoked a pipe?
He turned up to school sports day wearing white flannels and a short-sleeved checked shirt. To Eugenie’s fury, he won the Fathers’ race. Eugenie, in her regulation navy wrap-round skirt and white Aertex gym shirt, won the hurdles.
As her mother girlishly clasped her at the finishing line, Eugenie planted sweaty hands on the cream linen ensemble and thought about the Death Notice she had been planning ever since her mother had said, in front of a roomful of guests, ‘Poor, dear Eugenie. I keep hoping she’ll grow out of it, but I fear, I really fear, she’ll always be gauche. You’ll just have to forgive her.’
Eugenie’s Death Notice for her mother was to read:
Marisa Dare
My new address is Marylebone Cemetery, London, NWl
Visitors welcome. Lilies aren’t.
After sports day, to Eugenie’s relief Marisa did not bring Reg and his smelly pipe back to Marylebone. Instead, they disappeared to what Marisa always refererred to as his ‘Rooms, in Central London.’ What this meant, Eugenie knew, was that Reg holed up in digs above a newsagent’s in Baker Street.
For heaven’s sake. Baker Street. One of the most boring streets in London, Eugenie decided. No interesting shops, no lively cafes – not even a milk-bar – and Baker Street’s only claim to fame was that a fictional detective was supposed to have lived at Number 122b.
Marisa returned on the Saturday morning, immediately changed from her creased cream linen into a flowing silk houserobe and said to Eugenie,
‘Reginald and I have been discussing your future. Reginald was amazed you are already sixteen. Of course, I know I don’t look old enough to have a sixteen-year-old but –‘
‘I’ve already had a talk with the careers mistress,’ Eugenie cut in.
It had hardly been a particularly promising meeting. The careers mistress had begun by running through what some of Eugenie’s classmates were going to do in the future.
Librarian, Teacher, Nurse, Teacher, Physiotherapist, Teacher.
‘You’re a good all-rounder, Eugenie, but the difficulty is that there doesn’t seem to be anything you’re outstanding at. Is there anything you particularly enjoy?’
Eugenie thought, and thought, and said finally, ‘I quite like hurdling.’
‘Well, yes, athletics is healthy as a hobby,’ the careers mistress said carefully, not wanting word to get back to the games mistress that she’d implied that hurdling was on a par with outdoor tiddley-winks.
‘Since you won’t be going to university or training college, Eugenie, I think the best thing is for you to leave at seventeen and get some secretarial training. You won’t need an impressive CV for that.’
Eugenie knew that many of her friends we
re already working towards their college entrance forms. School orchestra, choir, canteen monitor, milk monitor, blackboard monitor…
What a bore. They were constantly shooting up their hands and volunteering for chores like baking scones for sports day, and clearing up the field afterwards.
The careers mistress pulled a blue application form towards her. ‘Let’s fill this in together.’
Marisa clapped her hands when Eugenie told her she was going to secretarial school. ‘What a good idea! A trade. I wish I’d had the chance to train for something.’
‘Well why didn’t you train for something?’
‘But darling, it was wartime. I was a nursing auxiliary. My job was to help the nurses.’
‘You mean you rolled bandages.’
Half way through Eugenie’s year at secretarial school, Marisa announced that Reginald was taking her travelling.
‘You mean you’re getting married?’
‘Eugenie, call me old-fashioned, but I could never marry again. Toby was my husband, and will always be so, in my heart.’
Aha! So the bounder Reg hasn’t asked you, Eugenie gloated. Good thing too, because she knew, she just knew, that at the wedding Reg would wear two-tone shoes and go round slapping all the uncles on the back, calling them ‘old bean.’
‘You’ll be comfortable enough here in the apartment, Eugenie. Just send all the bills to my accountant, and he’ll deal with everything. And of course, I’ll provide a generous allowance for you. And if you need a lawyer, you go to Patric Ryan. He’s in the City. Always busy, but just mention my name.’
‘Why would I need a lawyer?’
‘Well…you never know what might happen. You might get drunk and be arrested and need someone to keep your name out of the papers.’
Eugenie didn’t bother contesting this latest bout of Marisa madness. She had a more important matter to get straight. Her eyes raked the sitting room. Flocked wallpaper in a muddy print. Chinz on the sofa. A different chintz for curtains that were more suitable for an English country house.
‘You have to have curtains long enough so they trail a bit on the floor. It’s the proper way. My ghastly mother-in-law told me. When you were little I said but when she starts walking, she might trip on all that curtain on the floor, and she looked amazed. She said if Eugenie grows up with it, she’ll be used to it, and Toby had never once tripped over the curtains.’
There were three elegantly long windows at which Marisa kept the curtains half drawn. It didn’t matter if the sunlight faded them. ‘Faded curtains are the correct thing. New curtains are vulgar. Guess who told me that?’
Eugenie was beginning to wonder if Marisa and Toby’s mother had ever discussed anything but curtains.
With Marisa regarding light as the enemy, it wasn’t surprising that she told her daughter,
‘Always try to sit with your back to the light, darling. It’s more flattering. And never sit under a standard lamp. It’s just not friendly being lit from above. You’ll look like a ghoul.’
‘The thing is,’ Eugenie said, ‘When you go off travelling with Reg, would you mind if I change things a bit in the apartment? Some different cushions –‘
‘Darling! Of course I’d be delighted for you to make your own little nest. How marvellous. What fun. You enjoy yourself and do whatever you like. Reginald and I probably won’t be back for years and years. We might even settle somewhere. You might even be married by then! Anyway, I’ll open an account for you at John Lewis. They’re marvellous on furnishings and things. They’ll get you anything you need, and deliver.’
The weekend before the great departure, every inch of the Marylebone sitting room was covered with Marisa’s luggage. Hat boxes, leather suitcases, beauty cases and a huge zinc trunk.
Eugenie winced at the weight of one of the beauty cases. ‘What have you got in here?’
‘My Royal Jelly. A year’s supply. Marvellous stuff. Made by queen bees.’
Eugenie kicked the zinc trunk. ‘What’s in there?’
‘My cocktail dresses.’
‘What? All of them?’
‘Of course, darling. I just don’t know who I’m going to meet. I can’t possibly be seen in the same frock twice. I’ve got the most fabulous flamenco dress. Red. Reginald says we must start off in Seville. After that, the world’s our oyster. Oh, I can’t wait!’
Reg’s source of income had always been a mystery. ‘Import, export,’ Marisa had said, vaguely.
‘He’s probably a spy,’ Eugenie’s girlfriend, the future librarian told Eugenie. ‘Spies often use Import/Export as a cover.’ Her entrance essay for college had been titled, ‘Espionage. Who’s Spying on Whom?’
At last, Eugenie stood on the front steps watching the caretaker and Reg shifting Marisa’s cargo into a maroon Bedford van. Marisa had announced that Reg had been so clever, converting the front seats into, ‘luxury fit for a queen, darling.’
Peering into the Bedford van at the dark blue and orange plush seats, Eugenie suspected Reg had found them on a Baker Street pavement, chucked out from the local Odeon. Eugenie waved the happy couple a winsomely wistful farewell, then turned and ran upstairs. From the apartment, she rang a charity she’d discovered, providing shelter for the homeless.
‘I’ve got rather a lot for you. Curtains, even. Have you got a big truck, and a few strong men? Yes, there’s a lift. No, I don’t want any money. Just happy to help.’
She put down the phone, rushed across to the windows, and tore down the curtains, allowing the sunlight to stream in. The bright light also revealed what Marisa had probably been anxious to conceal. The flocked wallpaper between the windows was blotched with damp and starting to peel. That would explain the faintly mossy smell which Marisa blamed on the people upstairs. ‘They’re Irish. What can you expect? They all live in bogs, don’t they?’
But the carpet had fared worst. It wasn’t just stained, it looked as if someone had trampled in the remains of a Chinese take-away.
The men from the homeless shelter were not at all put out by the state of the carpet. ‘Don’t worry, love. It’s warm, that’s the main thing. Sometimes we don’t have enough beds, see. So they have to doss down on the floor.’
Eugenie urged them towards her mother’s bed, the dreaded bed she’d been born in. She tipped the men and gaily waved the truck, and a lifetime of memories, goodbye.
The caretaker knew of a reliable decorator, who tore off all the flocked wallpaper, dealt with the damp and painted the sitting room walls pale cream. Eugenie chose primrose for her bedroom and Marisa’s old bedroom, which she turned into a study. She found a sturdy, second-hand oak desk and a wooden filing cabinet with brass handles. The decorator fixed some shelves and Eugenie spent a quiet Sunday contentedly arranging her books.
In John Lewis’s curtain department she arranged for them to make new sitting room curtains in soft, antique rose. She chose a carpet of the same colour. She bought two sofas, to be covered in eau de nil glazed chintz.
Her old schoolfriend, the future librarian, came round to view and said of the study, ‘It’s huge. You could fit a Put-u-Up in here in case, you know, someone needed to stay overnight.’
The future librarian was now living inconveniently way out, in Basingstoke.
‘Oh no,’ Eugenie said firmly. ‘I’m not having anyone staying.’
‘But this study. What’s it for?’
‘It’s where I shall write my novel.’
‘You’re seventeen. Aren’t you a little young?’
‘Of course. I can’t write it yet. I’ve got to finish at Secretarial, and then get a job. Secretarial has a department that deals with that. And then I shall seek life experience. I know I need that. But I can make notes, observe people, keep a journal. And I’ll need a typewriter. I’m going to buy an Adler. I’ve tried all the machines at the school, and Adler suits me best. And then when I’m ready, everything will be ready, and I’ll start my novel. What a great day! To write in my journal, Started Novel.�
��
‘You might not. You might meet someone special. Fall in love.’
‘Well he’ll just have to fit in. He can’t live here. I don’t want anyone here.’
That said, when she was twenty-three she met David Plantagenet. And because some lout had thrown beer over her dress, Eugenie took David home with her.
On the advice of the secretarial school, Eugenie spent two years temping, to broaden her office experience. What this meant was that along with her shorthand and typing, she used filing skills she didn’t know she possessed. In every office she was sent to, the filing system was in a mess. Eugenie was set to work sorting it out. When she’d finished, the permanent girls who hadn’t been bothered, were overcome with gratitude.
‘You’re so clever!’ they trilled.
And you’re so dim, Eugenie thought. There’s nothing clever about knowing that filing is all about ABC…XYZ. And there’s nothing clever about you giving me, a complete stranger, access to so much confidential information. She worked in banks, in police stations, a private clinic and an exclusive mens’ club in St. James’s. Quietly filing away, she was in a constant state of ‘well I never.’ She knew which famous star was overdrawn at the bank, which famous star was coming up in court for shoplifting, not to mention all the face lifts and gambling debts.
Her first proper job was in an advertising agency. Eugenie had kept in touch with her old friends from school, who were impressed.
‘Sounds more fun than struggling with the Dewey system,’ said the future librarian. ‘Mind you, Dewey’s very cunning. Means you can track down any book just by following the right sequence of numbers. I wish men were stamped with Dewey numbers.’
The girl who had wanted to be a physiotherapist had given it up because it was too physical. She had switched to something called Town Planning. Eugenie had visions of her deciding where cathedrals should spring up, and hospitals positioned. It was disappointing to learn that Town Planning was to a large extent about traffic flow, along with the pros and cons of one-way streets.
‘An advertising agency!’ the Town Planner enthused. ‘Oh Eugenie, you’ll be in a hive of creative brilliance.’
In Bed with Mr. Plantagenet Page 3