by Francis King
‘What’s, so strange, darling?’ Ma demanded in a steely voice. I knew that she was afraid that he would, as she often put it, ‘play up’.
‘To be back here. You know … so many of the people I knew are dead. Gone. Might never have been. Not just boys, beaks also.’ He gave a little shiver, then a choking laugh, which was almost a sob: ‘A goose must be walking over my grave.’
I was thinking, with surprise: How handsome he looks, how well dressed. His shoes, so often scuffed, had a high polish on them; his suit looked new; and with his shirt, his initials on its pocket, he was wearing a bow-tie. Suddenly I could understand what I had never before understood: how Ma had come to marry him. In contrast, Ma’s appearance, in a simple black suit, black court shoes, black pillar-box hat and pearl necklace and ear-rings, was a disappointment to me. Other boys’ mothers, in their flowered silks, fur stoles, cart-wheel hats, diamonds, looked so much more striking (a word of approval favoured by Ma herself). It was only later that I learned from the comments of other people that Ma had, in fact, been the most striking woman there. ‘That suit must have been Chanel,’ my housemaster’s wife told me. ‘Tremendously chic,’ was the comment of another mother, passed on to me by her son.
Still Dad was gazing around him as we walked towards the Chapel. Each year there was a service to commemorate the Founder; after that, there was a luncheon in each house for parents and their offspring. ‘ Oh, don’t be so moony,’ Ma hissed at him. Then she linked her arm in mine, making me sway along with her, with Dad behind us.
Mr Curry, dressed in a dark grey pin-stripe suit, all three buttons of which were fastened, a grey-and-white striped shirt with a white stiff collar, and a maroon tie fastened in a tight little knot, approached us at the door to the Chapel. He had never before smiled at me with such benevolence. Then, with a similar benevolence, he smiled at Ma. ‘You must be Mrs Frost. I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting you before, have I?’
Dad waited behind us. Mr Curry did not greet him, perhaps did not even notice him there, and Ma made no attempt to draw him in.
‘How is my little boy doing?’ she asked.
‘Not so little! He seems to be shooting up. Oh, sometimes he’s a bit dozy, but on the whole we’re pleased with him. At least he hasn’t got into any scrapes.’
Ma gave her clear, ringing laugh. ‘Unlike his mother!’
‘I’m sure you’ve never got into any scrapes, Mrs Frost. I just don’t believe it.’
‘Oh, yes, I’m afraid I have. Far too many in my day.’
After the heat outside, the Chapel was cool. Dad dropped to his knees and spent a long time praying. After his return from the community, Ma had told me: ‘ I’m afraid he’s got religion in rather a bad way.’ She now adjusted her little hat, tweaking at its veil, and then looked around her. ‘Who’s that boy over there?’ she eventually whispered. ‘By the pillar.’
‘Oh, that’s Cowley. The head boy.’
‘Very glamorous. He looks at least twenty. Is he a chum of yours?’
‘Of course not.’ I was overcome with embarrassment. Could anyone have heard her?
Dad, having risen from his knees, coughed and coughed again. I knew that cough so well. Strangely artificial, like the cough of someone who coughs not from compulsion but to attract attention, it always made me uneasy, since it signalled that all was not well with him.
When Cowley began to read the First Lesson, Ma leant towards me to whisper: ‘What a wonderful voice!
So deep … I love a deep voice.’ She had been fanning herself with the order of service, even though, after the summer heat outside, the Chapel struck me as chilly. Now she ceased to do so. Her lips parted, hands in lap, she leaned forward, listening intently.
Again Dad coughed and coughed again. He put a hand up to his mouth, then raised it to his head and began to stroke his greying hair. He might have been lovingly stroking a cat.
Mr Curry, who had taken Holy Orders, preached the sermon. It was on the theme that the key to the character of the sixteenth-century Founder was that he had been ‘every inch a gentleman’. What were the gentlemanly virtues? Mr Curry began to enumerate them.
Suddenly, with what was half a gasp and half a groan, Dad got to his feet and began frantically to push past the other people seated in our pew.
‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ he kept saying, so loudly that everyone in the Chapel must have heard him. Mr Curry paused, stared down, then resumed. The metal caps on Dad’s shoes rang out on the flags like anvil strokes. His noisy progress seemed to go on forever. Ma looked at me, then put a hand over mine. She gave a little smile. ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered. ‘The old claustrophobia – or do I mean agoraphobia? I never know the difference.’
When we emerged from the Chapel, Dad had vanished.
‘Oh, this is too bad!’ Ma exclaimed. ‘ I had a feeling that it would be a mistake to let him come with me. He really does have a knack for ruining a day.’
‘Perhaps he’s by the car.’
‘Oh, I doubt it.’
‘Well, let’s go and see.’
I had been right. There he was, squatting on the running-board, his knees all but touching his chin and his head in his hands.
‘You’ll get that suit filthy,’ Ma said, as we approached him.
He looked up. His eyes were bleak with despair. ‘Sorry. Just couldn’t take it.’
‘Well, never mind! But we’d better get over to this luncheon party. If I know anything about boys, there’ll be no food left unless we hurry.’
‘I’ll wait here.’
‘Nonsense! You’ll come along with us.’
‘No, I can’t, I can’t. The thought of all those people … I’ll just pass out. That’s all.’
‘Oh, don’t be so childish! … Oh very well! Do what you like! But what are you going to do with yourself?’
‘I’ll sit in the car.’
‘But you’ll come with us to the concert this afternoon, now won’t you?’
He groaned. ‘ No, no!’
Mother looked at me, shrugged her shoulders and once again adjusted the veil of the little hat. ‘Then where shall we meet you?’
‘Here. ‘I’ll be sitting in the car.’
‘But this is ridiculous! You can’t sit for the best part of the day in the car. You’ll be boiled alive in this heat.’
‘I’ll be sitting in the car,’ he repeated.
‘As you wish, as you wish.’ Ma opened her crocodile leather bag and took out the car keys. ‘ Here are the keys. Now don’t lose them. Don’t lose them!’ She might have been talking to me when I was still a child.
‘I won’t lose them.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
The luncheon was out in the garden of the house. It was only on such occasions that the boys ever entered it, since at other times it was reserved exclusively for the use of the housemaster, Mr Philby, his plump, placid wife and their boisterous twin girls. Often, bored with my prep, I would get up from my study desk and go to the window. Sometimes, Mrs Philby, a keen gardener, would be weeding there. More often, the seven-year-old twins would be playing some rowdy game, which involved a lot of chasing and wrestling and usually ended in tears for one or other or both of them.
May as always, became the centre of attention. She was so carefree, so self-possessed, so entertaining that no one present could have guessed at those squally moods when she would scream abuse at Dad, the daily or me, would retire to bed with a glass and a bottle of gin, or would hiss angrily down the telephone to some boyfriend who had neglected her or some woman friend who had disagreed with her. Many women were standing for a lack of anywhere to sit. But it was for Ma, so much younger-looking, that an elderly man, admiral grandfather of a classmate, at once tottered up to offer his chair.
‘That’s terribly kind of you,’ Ma said, ‘but I wouldn’t dream …’
‘No, no, dear lady!’ he cut in. ‘I wouldn’t dream of your standing for a moment longer.’
‘Let me get you something to eat and drink,’ the admiral volunteered.
‘Oh, my son will do that. Mervyn, be an angel … I saw some cold salmon and salad … And a glass of white wine.’
When I returned, riskily balancing a glass of white wine for her on one plate of salmon and a glass of lemonade for myself on another, she was talking not merely to the admiral but to three other men as well. Ho, ho, ho, the admiral was laughing, his previously red face now purple; and the others then all joined in, in more restrained fashion. ‘ Of course you know what Thelma Furness once said about the Prince …’ I myself knew, having already been told by Ma: Thelma Furness had told Ma that, in bed with the Prince of Wales, it was a case of an awfully little having to go an awfully long way. It amazed me that she should venture on something so risqué with a group of men totally unknown to her. But at the conclusion there was even more laughter.
Mother took the plate and glass from me, without a word of thanks. Then she peered up at me. ‘Oh, dear, I’ve shocked my little boy. Look how pink he’s gone!’
I went even pinker, as the others all guffawed.
It was then that Bob appeared. Since his parents were now back in India and since he had (as far as I could judge) no relatives remotely interested in him, he was one of the few boys to be all on their own on that day. As the adults all guffawed, so did he, thus making me notice him for the first time.
I scowled at him, and he then smiled back. ‘Introduce me.’
I continued to scowl.
‘I think your friend wants to meet me,’ Ma said.
Reluctantly I said: ‘This is Williams, Ma.’
Bob stepped boldly forward and extended a hand. As always, his trousers were at least an inch too short, so that between them and his scuffed shoes his woollen socks were visible. There was an ink smear on the side of his chin and a bristle of blond hair along his upper lip. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Frost,’ he said in a loud, bold voice. It was something that Ma had taught me never to say.
Ma took his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you too,’ she said, all too obviously mocking him with the repetition. Then she turned to me: ‘Have you told me about him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he the one whose parents are missionaries?’
‘That’s right.’ I was feeling more and more uncomfortable. I knew that she was capable of hurting Bob and I did not want him to be hurt.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever met a missionary outside the pages of Somerset Maugham. And he makes them sound so dreadful.’
Bob began to laugh. So far from being hurt, he was clearly delighted. ‘When my parents next come home, you must meet them,’ he said.
‘Are they going to come home soon?’
‘Not for at least three years.’
‘Oh, that’s a relief! I was afraid you were going to say that they were coming home next week.’
Again, instead of being annoyed or hurt as I had expected, Bob laughed in delight.
‘Aren’t you eating?’ Ma asked.
‘Later.’
‘I don’t imagine there’ll be any food left later.’ She picked a tomato-half out of her salad and held it out between thumb and forefinger. ‘ Eat this, at any rate, to stave off the pangs.’
Bob lowered his large, round head and took the piece of tomato between his teeth.
Now, clearly irritated by Bob’s interruption, the admiral said: ‘Where on earth did you get your hair cut like that?’
‘Do you like it? I cut it myself.’
‘No, I do not like it! I must say most of the boys here look far scruffier than in my day. We’d be beaten if we didn’t clean our shoes,’ he added, staring down at Bob’s scuffed ones.
Again Bob laughed.
Ma now lost interest in him. She did not speak to him, she did not glance at him, as she resumed her conversation with the men gathered around her.
‘You’d better get yourself something to eat,’ I told him. ‘I could do with more of this salmon myself.’
Bob seemed not to hear me, as he listened attentively to Ma’s badinage.
‘Bob!’
‘Oh, okay. But I don’t feel all that hungry.’
As we wove our way through the crowds to the long tables on which the food and drink were set out, he said: ‘She’s even better than her photograph. Super! I can’t imagine how she ever produced a twerp like you. In any case, she doesn’t look old enough.’
‘She’s over forty,’ I said. His enthusiasm had made me feel jealous.
‘I don’t believe it!’
‘Years over forty.’ Only later did I realise, with a pang of guilt, that I had been terribly disloyal to Ma. She was often telling me: ‘Now remember, darling, my age is an absolute secret between us!’
Bob was only half-way through his plate of food, when Mr Philby interrupted. ‘Oh, Williams, you’re on your own, aren’t you? I mean, you haven’t got anyone down, have you? I wonder if you can nip over to the assembly hall to help out with the chairs. They seem to be short-handed.’
Bob put down his plate with a grimace of annoyance. ‘Oh, fuck!’ he exclaimed, while Mr Philby was still in earshot. Startled, Mr Philby looked over his shoulder, almost returned to us, and then decided to move on.
When people began to trickle out of the garden, on their way to the concert, Ma said to me: ‘You won’t mind, will you darling, if I give this concert a miss? The admiral wants me to see the yacht he’s just bought. It’s anchored in the estuary.’
If he invited her to see the yacht, why did he not invite me to see it too? I felt chagrined.
‘Oh, all right,’ I muttered, trying to be offhand.
What time would they be back? she then asked the admiral, who answered: ‘Oh, not too late, not too late. Our crowd has to get back to London tonight.’
‘Well, so have I,’ Ma said. I noticed that it was ‘I’ not ‘we’, although Dad would be travelling back to London with her.
Eventually alone, I looked around for Bob, but I could nowhere see him. He must still be at work with the chairs. Disconsolate, I wandered out and began to trudge in the direction of the assembly hall, where the concert was to take place. Then, all at once, I thought of Dad, brooding alone in the car, with nothing to eat. I retraced my steps back into the garden, now deserted except for three waitresses and a single group of adults – a man in a hammock, two women, flushed with heat, on a bench – and a small boy, a newcomer that term to the school, lying out on the grass beside them.
I picked up one of the paper plates and surveyed what was left of the food. Poor Father! He was not going to have much of a meal. There was a scrawny chicken leg, some limp lettuce leaves at the bottom of a bowl, some potato salad, a crust of French bread.
‘Haven’t you had something to eat already?’ The voice was accusatory. I looked round. It was Mrs Philby, her face flushed and beads of sweat glistening along her upper lip, no doubt as much from the social strain of the occasion as from exertion and heat.
‘This is not for me, Mrs Philby. It’s for my father.’
She looked around the garden. ‘And which is your father?’
‘He’s not here. He’s sitting in the car. He has a migraine.’ I had remembered how often Ma used the excuse of a migraine for not doing what she did not want to do.
‘Oh. Oh, I’m sorry.’ She was sympathetic. ‘ I’m a terrible sufferer from migraine myself. Would he like two of the pills I take, do you think? Ergotamine. I find them marvellous.’
‘Oh, no, thank you. I think he has some pills of his own.’
Dad lay along the back seat of the car, his knees drawn up and his eyes shut. He looked completely relaxed and at peace after all his earlier turmoil. I opened the door. It seemed a shame to wake him. Then I said: ‘Dad,’ and repeated it more loudly, ‘Dad.’
With a cry of terror his legs shot down to the floor and hi
s torso shot up. ‘What … what the hell …?’ He squinted up at me, as though I were a thief. Then he gasped: ‘Oh, you!’
‘I’ve brought you some grub. It’s the best I could do. What was left.’
‘Well, that was very thoughtful of you, old chap. Very thoughtful.’
I handed him the paper plate. ‘There were strawberries and cream. But I couldn’t carry them as well. I could go back later for them,’ I added, not in the least wishing or intending to do so.
‘No, no. This is ample.’
To my surprise he began to eat with gusto.
Then he looked up: ‘What’s happened to your mother?’
At all costs, I must shield both her and, more important, him. ‘Oh, I think she met some people she knows. They wanted her to see their yacht.’
‘Why didn’t they want you to see it?’ Had he guessed that I was lying?
‘I don’t know.’
His meal over, I asked him: ‘What would you like to do now? You don’t want to sit here all afternoon, do you?’
To my amazement he said: ‘Why don’t we toddle along to this concert? it’s Keith Faulkner, isn’t it? I’ve always liked his voice.’
I looked at my watch. ‘It’ll already have started.’
‘Oh, that doesn’t matter, does it? We can creep in.’
Remembering the noise which he had made when quitting the Chapel, I was dubious. But I merely said: ‘Oh, all right.’
Surprisingly, he took a seat at the back of the hall with no noise at all. I sat down beside him.
Keith Faulkner was singing; and what he was singing was Wolf’s ‘Anakreons Grab’, then heard by me for the first time. My life, like a cavernous room, has been full of such echoes, ricocheting back and forth, back and forth. I often wonder if in other people’s lives the same thing happens.
After the concert, we returned to the car to wait for Ma’s return. For a while Dad was silent, his hands resting on the steering wheel and his gaze unfocused as he stared out ahead of him. Beside him, I was bored. I wished that he would say something. I wished that I had the energy and interest to say something myself.
Then he said: ‘I can never really do with Wolf. The one for me is Schumann, Robert Schumann. Always has been. You know, in the trenches we had this chap, Freddy Noakes, and he’d been training in Germany to become a Lieder singer. He would sing for us. I think he might eventually have become famous but … Well, he was one of the first to go. One of the things he sang was ‘‘Dichterliebe’’. Marvellous.’ For a moment he was silent; then he put his head on one side and softly began to sing: