Honey’s mother, having watched her family depart, one by one, to various quarters of the globe, lived now in brassy-haired respectability in Surbiton with the faithful George Hackett who had stuck by her, and to whom, as far as Surbiton was concerned, she was married. Of her youngest daughter she was exceedingly proud, show business being to her the epitome of achievement, and she bored the neighbours frequently with stories of ‘my daughter on the West End stage’.
Honey leaned back in her chair and sipped her drink. Basil, pen poised over his blank notebook, looked at her expectantly.
“We’d better,” he said, “start with your childhood.”
“All right,” Honey said, and, holding her glass to her, closed her eyes.
“I was born in India,” she said. “My father was a Maharajah…”
Basil’s pen sped smoothly over the paper.
Nine
Vera, conspicuous as the ‘fat, white lady’ of the poem who walked through the fields in gloves, stalked up the village High Street towards the station in her elegant navy blue and white ensemble. Along the street, holiday-makers in shirts and shorts, sun-dresses and brightly flowered skirts, jostled her with their shopping baskets and bumped occasionally into her firmly corseted figure. That she had to walk to the station at all annoyed her, but Arthur had been too busy at the café to drive her there, and the local taxi was spending the morning in dock for some repairs to its chassis. There seemed no other means of transport. The High Street was uninteresting and the shops even more so. Vera glanced at them as she passed. ‘Footwear Repairs,’ with its dusty window of dusty old shoe trees, shoe brushes and cards of ‘segs’; the needlework and wool shop with its droopy matinee jackets, knitting patterns and traycloths to embroider; the baker’s window full of bath buns, congress tarts, battenburgs, jam tarts (red and yellow), macaroons, currant scones, flies and dead wasps lying on their backs; Barclay’s Bank; a firm of solicitors with quaint names; the showrooms of the South Eastern Gas Board with wash-boilers and tempting hire purchase terms; the hairdressers’ window with Alice-bands in assorted colours and faded showcards advertising old-fashioned hairstyles; the fishmongers (Local Plaice, 2/6); the ‘Bandbox’, with dowdy hats and dowdy dresses dowdily presented, royal blue and salmon pink, bottle green jumper suits; gift shops, toy shops, sweet shops, food shops. Vera’s heels click-clacked impatiently towards the station, and already her feet had begun to puff over the fronts of her navy and white shoes.
The train was dirty and empty, the business men having already gone, and it was a relief on arriving in London to take a taxi, of which there were rows and rows, to her own little world which was bounded by Curzon Street on the north, Piccadilly in the south, Bond Street in the east and Park Lane in the west. In this right little, tight little corner of London from which she made only rare excursions to Harrods and the Brompton Road, or sometimes as far north as Berners Street (by taxi) when she needed to choose fabrics, paint or wallpapers, Vera fed herself, shod herself, clothed, corseted and coiffed herself. It was Mayfair, her spiritual home, and indeed almost the only part of London she was familiar with, apart from the small area of Hampstead in which she lived. In New York, she had walked dutifully round the Metropolitan Museum of Art; in Spain she had skimmed through the Prado, and in Italy trotted wearily behind a guide round the galleries of the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace; she had never, however, been into the National Gallery, the Wallace Collection the Tate Gallery and it was doubtful if she knew where they were. She was interested in little beyond her body, her appearance, her wardrobe and her family but in these things she was happy. She did, of course, as was fashionable, go to the theatre, cinema premières and the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy; her opinions, however, together with those of her friends, came practically verbatim from the columns of criticism in the Sunday newspapers from which the ‘Veras’ may be said to obtain their higher education. None of them uttered before Kenneth Tynan or Dilys Powell; when they did, it was the one who had remembered the most of what she had read who delivered the weightiest opinion. They thought their discussions extremely intelligent, often bordering on the intellectual.
They did read, Vera and her friends, again, books prescribed by the Sunday papers; safe books by lady novelists who knew their customers and dutifully provided words to be cosily curled up with, heroines with whom the reader could identify herself, journeys into strange lands in which, because only the mind travelled, there was no discomfort, the odd, titillating foray into worlds of sex and vice, read with guilty, page-turning excitement, the comfortable ending, concluding sometimes with sadness, never with violence. They spoke, too, Vera and her friends, occasionally of Renoir, Modigliani Matisse, but only after their names had been exhumed for brief moments of sudden glory by the newspapers because their works had been bought or sold for some fantastic sum or were about to be exhibited in some gallery in Bond Street it was considered smart to visit. They were as familiar with the words Impressionist and Post-Impressionist as they were with the names of the salads in Fortnum’s, but if you asked them what they meant they faltered only for a moment then told you about last night at the Caprice, or the cruise they had booked for next spring, or their son’s examination successes. For they were not entirely stupid. They were quick-witted enough to charm each other and their husbands’ business friends with layers of sophistication passing for culture, with warm-hearted hospitality passing for friendship and with money, which was the mercury in the thermometer of their success, and which was life. These women, of whom Vera was one, who hunted, usually in pairs, in the purlieus of Mayfair, were not entirely to blame for their ignorance, their blinkered eyes, their painful, pitiful insularity. They were merely acting out their birthright. They had been nurtured in the lull of years between the two wars, richly and comfortably, to an early, satisfactory marriage. Their minds were tuned to wavebands of material comfort, to pleasantness, to success. Having crossed the first and most important hurdle, they bore their children quickly, reared them in the confines of ‘the best’ and expended their energies and resources on clothing themselves and their children, running their homes luxuriously and efficiently, and occasionally putting in a minimum of work on some charity committee, whose aims were quickly forgotten, over numerous luncheons, teas and coffee mornings. By the time they looked round from all this activity, if ever they did, their minds had inevitably closed against all that was fresh, intellectually stimulating or original. They would never thrill to the consummate performance of a virtuoso, feel weak before the brush-strokes of a master, shed tears over the wonders of the world. They were to be pitied, these matrons, but not too much. For they were happy and they did not know.
If the ‘Veras’ were to be pitied, what of the ‘Arthurs’, the half-worn husbands they trailed in their wake? The ‘Arthurs’, too, had only half completed their education through no fault of their own. They had passed straight from school to family business, often by way of commercial course, and scattered their dreams like rose-petals along the path to middle age. They lived in a world of money and of commerce, and relaxed in a world of money and of family. Money was the dominant factor, and in the pursuit of this they lost their figures, the carefreeness of youth and their hair. At the office they were bosses, snarling lions to be respected, at home they were subordinate, baring, only occasionally, their fangs when the demands made upon them grew too incessant. Unlike their wives, they made no effort to acquire a pseudo-culture, and contented themselves with the Financial Times and the occasional detective story. On the whole, they were more honest. They were good in business, and they knew and talked about it. With that they were satisfied. They pampered their wives and indulged their children, until the rare occasions when the bounds of reasonableness were passed and the parental foot was put irretrievably down. If the ‘Arthurs’ were content, for the most part, to walk behind the ‘Veras’ it was in docility rather than in submission, and there still existed the masterfulness, dormant but by no means dead, which had att
racted their wives in the first place, which was brought out on appropriate occasions and which had enabled Arthur Dexter to get Vera and his family to Whitecliffs. If the wives were to be pitied, the husbands were possibly to be praised. Through years of following, agreeing and paying, they had emerged, fattening and balding and occasionally irascible, but for the most part equable, sensible and still paying. They grumbled about changing into evening dress and going out when, after a day’s work, they preferred to sit comfortably by the fire, but they did it; they protested at having the Greens or the Smythes to dinner yet again, yet they played the host jovially and expansively; they complained about having the furniture re-upholstered so soon, but they provided the wherewithal. They gave in, agreed, smiled, submitted and acquiesced, for just so long until, like Arthur Dexter, they turned in their tracks and snarled. When they did this they could not be opposed. They were kings of the jungle; masters.
Vera, feeling weary after her journey, but happy to be among her own familiar shops, stepped out of the taxi on to the bright, hot pavement. She gave the driver a small tip above the fare and, looking down her nose, ignored his glare. She knew what was what and did not, despite her husband’s wealth, like to be ‘done’. She prided herself, together with the other ‘Veras’, on her knowledge of the value of things, her ability to find a bargain (albeit a costly one) and the fact that it was difficult to get the ‘better’ of her. She was, though, as were they all, the easiest person in the world to dupe. The model milliners, the tailors, the dressmakers had only to knock the odd guinea, with a semblance of grudgingness, off their already extortionate prices, to send Vera happily home to boast of her ‘bargain’. The furrier, as soon as she trod the plush carpet of his showroom, added ten guineas immediately to whatever he had to show in order to have the pleasure of removing it later in order to clinch the sale. He said it was because she was an ‘old customer’, a ‘special, favoured client’. He had a sick wife and a son at University. He had to live. Vera, he knew, would be back next year. He was one of her retinue: one of those from whom for Mrs Dexter there was always a ‘special price’. She was favoured, flattered, fussed, pampered, by those she imagined she cheated. To them it was a small price to pay. Vera Dexter and her friends fed their families, financed their holidays, bought their cars and paid for their daughter’s weddings. For this they could well afford to make her feel constantly, continuously, that she was the most important person in the world. In a way she was; she was their bread and butter, predictable, fashionable and with a well stocked, if not bottomless, purse.
“Darling, you’re not the teeniest bit brown,” Eve Gardner said making room at the tiny table in the restaurant where she had been waiting for Vera.
Vera hitched her skirt, took off her gloves and settled herself and her large, baby-calf handbag.
“It’s not exactly Cannes, dear.” Vera shuddered as she thought of Whitecliffs. “It’s so windy it’s impossible to sit on the beach.”
“You poor thing,” Eve said, but there was no sympathy in her voice as she studied the menu she knew by heart. “Is Arthur still peculiar?”
“Absolutely wrapped up in this café thing. I’ll have my usual.”
“What about the children? Two ‘health salads’, waitress, please; and coffee.”
“Rolls and butter?” the waitress asked, writing on her small pad.
Vera and Eve looked shocked and shook their heads.
“The children are happy,” Vera said, “although I think Vanessa misses Clifford. She sits up half the night writing to him, and can’t wait for the postman in the morning. I shan’t be sorry if she forgets about him at Whitecliffs. Not that she’ll find anyone else down there. Nobody goes there.”
Eve knew that she meant anyone who was anyone.
“I thought Clifford’s people were rather nice,” Eve, who only had sons, said.
“Charming,” Vera said; “I’ve known Bessie Stafford for years. But it’ll be years and years before the boy qualifies; he’s hardly begun. And even when he is qualified he won’t be earning enough to get married on; he’s going to specialise in something or other, Vanessa was telling me.”
“Does she want to marry him?”
“She hasn’t said so. But one has to think ahead. I haven’t encouraged it, but it’s obvious that Clifford thinks Van is wonderful and she he.”
The two middle-aged women smiled at each other with the thrill of a vicarious romance.
“They just rush into these things,” Vera said, “without thinking.”
“Didn’t we?”
Vera sat back to allow the waitress to put the salads on the table.
“No,” she said. “No, I don’t think somehow we did.”
There had been nothing ‘rushed into’ about her marriage to Arthur Dexter. Vera’s parents had known the Dexters for many years, and when Vera was nineteen she and Arthur had been deliberately placed next to each other at a dinner party carefully connived at by the two families. After the dinner, during which the two young people, acutely aware of the parts they were playing, scarcely spoke, Arthur had taken Vera into the garden and kissed her chastely. He found her proximity not unpleasant and Vera, whose very first kiss it was, nearly fainted from excitement. Two years later, after a suitable and sensible courtship, the young couple were suitably and sensibly married. After a rather miserable honeymoon in Torquay for which both of them, owing to their previously sheltered lives were unprepared, they returned home to set up a house and routine which was an exact replica of that of their parents. Then followed, quite unexpectedly, what were probably six of the happiest months of their lives. And they came, quite by accident, because of a book. Arthur had bought it in the Charing Cross Road, and they kept it, covered in brown paper at the bottom of the linen chest to which Vera had the keys. It explained to them, quite simply, many of the things that had puzzled them about marriage. They read it separately, each a little ashamed and hot-cheeked, but together in the darkness, they practised what they had read. To Vera, at twenty-two, with dark eyes in a pale face, very pretty, it was a miracle. As well as loving Arthur for his gentleness, his good sense and his fondness for her, she discovered that she adored him. From her usual rather quiet self, she became joyful, carefree, relaxed, happy and very much in love. Her day hinged on the moment when she heard his key in the door, and the nights were never long enough. To Arthur, his wife of a few months was wonderful, remarkable and eminently desirable. He congratulated himself on his choice of such a jewel among women. In his father’s business he worked happily and hard, and the two families who had fostered the union had every reason to congratulate themselves.
Their delight in each other seemed as though it could never end, only grow from strength to strength. It lasted for six months until Vera became pregnant with the twins. Even then it died a slow and lingering death. Arthur was patient, gentle. Until well after Victor and Vanessa were born he waited to recapture the old rapture he had known with his wife. The twins, however, despite the nurse they had engaged, seemed to absorb all Vera’s thoughts and energy. The attention she gave her husband was grudging, diffident. Her mind was in the nursery. When the twins were a year old Arthur, unhappy, had consulted a doctor about his wife’s changed attitude. A holiday was advised. From Arthur’s point of view the holiday was not a success. Although once or twice, beneath the Attic sky and partly assisted by the wine Vera had drunk at luncheon or at dinner, the old magic had been for a brief moment resurrected, it was soon forgotten. He had wooed her, pleaded with her, explained to her and finally got angry with her. Unable to relive in memory past delights, she looked blankly at him. She no longer understood.
At home things were no better. At night Vera had to cream her face, pin her hair, preserve her night’s rest for an early appointment, sleep off fatigue. What had once been a trembling joy to her, on the occasions she permitted it, became the final chore at the end of a long day, the inconsiderateness of a husband, the penalty to pay for a marriage that had given her h
er two beautiful children in whom the sun rose and set.
For many years, at varying intervals, Arthur continued in his attempt to storm the bastion, to fan the dying spark. He still loved Vera who had borne the twins of whom he was justly proud, and wished more than anything to prove it to her, tenderly, passionately. Finally, he gave up. He found his desires waning from unfulfilment, and bothered Vera only on the rare occasions when he felt he must and when she satisfied him in martyred fashion. As the years progressed, the hurt, the humiliation and the anger died. Arthur thought less and less often of how it might have been. Vera never thought of it at all.
We All Fall Down Page 9