“Well, Clara, I suppose … It’s been a gorgeous day, my darling. Many, many, many happy returns.”
“Yes, for all of us. But don’t start to say goodbye here. I’m coming with you to the station.”
As I watched their train moving out across the lighted river, long after it was possible to distinguish any waving hands at windows, I felt a continuation of this melancholy—this empathy with the emptiness of other people’s lives—which wasn’t altogether unpleasant. I walked back along the platform; and thought that, on the one adjoining, none of the hurrying footsteps, raised voices, door-slamming—jocularity, even—could disguise the air of general dissatisfaction, general disillusion. The only joyous individuals seemed to be those belonging to a group of carol singers in the main body of the station. So while the yearning was still on me to try to do something, however small, to alleviate this emptiness, I crossed the Strand and went into the Civil Service Stores—open late in this pre-festive period. I bought my mother a large bottle of the scent I knew she liked—not simply the toilet water but the actual perfume—and for my aunt I chose a smart leather handbag, into the purse of which, before I should forget, I dropped a sixpence. I paid for these purchases by cheque. I felt intensely happy again—just as I had done when we’d moved away from the lunch table with our cups of coffee. Glancing at my new watch I saw I had only four minutes in which to cross Trafalgar Square and reach Her Majesty’s—we’d arranged to meet in the foyer by seven, to have a drink at the downstairs bar. I started to run but decided I didn’t want to arrive looking flushed, sounding winded, appearing wholly unsophisticated. Preferable to be late.
Oliver would understand.
Well, come to that, if I’d arrived late and flushed and winded—and swinging my newly acquired carrier bag!—Oliver would still have understood.
The only time, to my knowledge, he had ever been disapproving of me, or downright cross, had been over that question of the flat.
So I began to run. He was probably there already. He always took good care to be punctual.
And it wasn’t fair to keep him waiting.
Just because he had a generous nature.
12
We didn’t spend Christmas in London, after all. I should have realized—of course I should! We drove down to Surrey on the Wednesday afternoon. This time there were to be no other guests, however, and the notion of being in such daunting proximity to Mrs Cambourne over four whole days—with only Oliver as buffer—certainly didn’t fill me with elation: four whole days during which any sign of reclusiveness, let alone enmity, either on her part or mine, would clearly be questioned by her son and cause him a great deal of distress.
No. I made up my mind that I should have to be extremely sweet to her. Whatever the cost.
But I began to think I’d have been better off in Folkestone. Except that, naturally, Oliver wouldn’t have been in Folkestone. It was all a bit disappointing.
In the car I felt glum.
“What’s the matter?” he inquired. “Missing James already?”
“Oh, most amusing! Where does he spend Christmas?”
“In Shropshire, with his parents. You should have asked.”
Even though I’d at least made the man a small gift, this rebuke was so well justified I preferred not to think about it. “Don’t try to kid me James has parents! You’ll tell me next he had a childhood.”
“What else is the matter, then?”
“If you must know, I was wondering whether I, too, should have gone home for Christmas.”
“Oh, damn and blast,” he said, “I was afraid that might be it. Again, I think, I’ve behaved badly. But I promise you there was a special reason I wanted us to be together—I mean, apart from the obvious one of just liking to be with you.”
“What special reason?”
“Surprise.”
“No—tell me.”
“It’s one of my greatest pleasures in life to give people surprises. Surely you wouldn’t wish to deprive me of it?”
He was always saying something of that sort—and meaning it, as well.
We arrived at the house much earlier than before.
And Mrs Cambourne could scarcely have been more affable. It was astonishing.
Indeed, by the time she went to bed I was prepared (almost) to admit I might have done her wrong. There was no summons to her room on this occasion, no sad, impassioned tête-à-tête. Such a summons wouldn’t have been necessary: more than once Oliver had left us for longish periods and there would have been every opportunity for hostilities to recommence. But instead I received polite inquiries after my mother’s health and reminiscences of a holiday in Folkestone when she herself had been a girl. I even wondered if there could have been a veiled apology about her saying to Oliver, twice, how extremely well he was looking.
Also, the bedroom I’d been given was the one next to his own; there was even a communicating door. So, all in all, I was glad I had bought her a decent present—although it was mainly with the aim of pleasing Oliver I’d done so.
I’d had much greater difficulty choosing what to get him. At first I’d thought of a signet ring but then he’d unwittingly foiled that by making a disparaging remark to do with men who wore signet rings.
Naturally, he already had a wallet and pen and all the other things a man might carry on him—plus, even, a silver medallion he always wore beneath his shirt or jumper; so I’d been pleased when in the window of an antique jeweller’s in the City I’d caught sight of some unusual cufflinks and following discreet inquiry had found he currently possessed only one pair … and not a very interesting pair at that. I’d also bought him a box of fudge, a couple of paperbacks, some soap, a tie, handkerchiefs, socks, and five or six other equally small items, each done up in one of three strikingly patterned papers, so as to make a colourful display at the foot of the bed on Christmas morning. I made a special point of staying awake until Oliver was asleep so that I could place them there.
It was worth it. It was a lot of fun, his opening of the presents.
But there wasn’t any mention of anything for me.
Some early morning tea arrived. I was sitting in my bathrobe, cross-legged on the end of the bed, more or less where the presents themselves had been. It was fortunate the maid had reached Oliver’s room first, because I’d totally—and uncharacteristically—forgotten to rumple the bedclothes in my own.
When we were dressed we went downstairs together. I was a little way ahead and slipped into the dining room an instant before he did. Our breakfast places were laid but there was nothing on the table of the kind I was looking for.
“I say, Oliver—haven’t you forgotten something?”
“Forgotten something?” He seemed puzzled. He looked down, made a rapid inventory. “Jumper, trousers, socks, shoes … I can distinctly remember that I brushed my hair. I know I had a good shave. Now what else could there possibly be?”
“You know: festive greetings, compliments of the season, peace on earth and goodwill to all men … Something along the lines of ‘I wonder what old Eeyore would like this year; there must be some little bit of junk lying around which nobody else would ever want…’”
“Oh, merry, merry Christmas, John! Hadn’t I wished you that before?”
“I do so much appreciate my cufflinks—exactly what I wanted—how clever of you to guess—and isn’t ‘reciprocity’ a difficult word to say quickly?”
“Yes, it is,” he replied, “but my mind’s quite easy on the question of the cufflinks. You know how much I appreciated them. And every other of your thoughtful gifts.”
There were no sounds in the passageway outside. I went up to him and put my arms about his waist. “You,” I said, “Mr Oliver Thornton Cambourne, R.A., are—infuriating! Perfectly infuriating. Do you realize that?”
“And you,” he said, “Mr John Nicholas Wilmot, G.L., are obviously going gaga.” After a moment he gently pulled away. “Come on—what you clearly need is a short stroll b
efore breakfast to help you think straight. This way.” And he really did start walking to the front door.
“You should have warned me. I’d have brought my sunhat.”
“That’s the trouble with all you Health and Strength aficionados: you want to wrap yourselves in cotton wool. Afraid of a little frost on the lawns or a bracing bite of country air.”
“Ah. Talking about wrapping things … And, incidentally, what does G.L. stand for?”
“Greatly Loved,” he called back. He was already striding briskly round the corner of the house. By the time I caught up he was starting to open the doors of the double garage.
“That’s the trouble with all you Lazy and Degenerate Layabouts. Your idea of a bit of exercise is simply to get in the car and pull the starter.”
I was joking, of course, but even then I hadn’t twigged. Oliver gave me a long sardonic stare. I stood there with my feet apart, my hands on my hips and stared right back at him. “Well, don’t just pretend to be a tree,” he suggested. “Why don’t you do something useful and help me with this door?”
Inside, next to his own car, stood another, which I hadn’t seen before.
“Happy Christmas!” he said. “Compliments of the Season! Peace on earth and goodwill to all men!”
“What?”
“Now you see why I didn’t put the Jag away when we got here yesterday. That’s a Jaguar too, in case you don’t yet know about these things. An XK 150. It came out last October. Drophead coupé—that means you can open the roof in fine weather. British Racing Green is all the rage at the moment but if you don’t want green you can have it sprayed whatever colour you’d like.”
I was scarcely listening.
“Oliver! Is that … mine?”
“Sorry it’s not done up in stunningly attractive paper. I went round all the shops and heard that Mr J Wilmot had hijacked every sheet.”
I started to cry—started actually to cry. “Oh, you idiot!” he said, and held me for the ten or twenty seconds this ridiculous fit lasted; he wiped my eyes on one of his new handkerchiefs.
I advanced towards the car in a state of numbness. I think it was nearly a surprise when, shyly reaching out to touch it, I felt the smooth metal underneath my fingers. I turned my head to gaze at Oliver. “Tell me that this isn’t a dream.”
“This isn’t a dream.”
“And it really is for me?”
He nodded, silently.
“I honestly think,” I said, slowly, “you must be a saint.”
“Yes, so do I. The trouble is, none of us ever found a more successful incognito.” He handed me the key. “Now why don’t you just try it on for size?”
I followed his suggestion. No driving seat of any other car could ever have felt so completely right.
“Does your mother know?” I asked him at last.
“Naturally.”
“But what did she say?”
He answered, “Didn’t you already remark on her enormously changed attitude?”
“Yet even so. She must have made some sort of comment.”
“Yes. ‘Tell him to be careful!’” He put on an old lady’s voice, wildly exaggerated.
I said, “Entirely what I’d have guessed! I can hear her saying it.” I was now running my hands sensually around the steering wheel. “Oh—and to think! I only gave you cufflinks.”
“Don’t be such a nitwit. I shall still be treasuring those cufflinks long after you’ve traded this in—for what will by then be the latest model.”
“You’re wrong, you know. You really are. I shan’t ever—ever—want to part with it!”
I may have spoken with greater vehemence than I’d intended. It made him laugh. “Well, I’m not going to cross swords with you. After all, only time can tell.”
“I can tell, too—tell you something that you don’t have to wait for. If giving surprises is honestly one of your greatest pleasures in life you must think you’ve been the happiest man on earth for these past ten minutes.”
I then remembered he’d used a very similar phrase following the opera; but this was scarcely the time to worry about originality.
“Yes, that’s so. Except … I don’t merely think it.”
“How, then, can a man of your intelligence be so oblivious to the competition?”
“All right, then, we’ll call it a draw. Which suits me. But now you know why I wanted to have you here for Christmas. Any other time and it mightn’t have felt quite the same.”
“I think it would always have felt quite the same. Though, anyway, I wouldn’t have wished to be anywhere else this Christmas—not if you weren’t there. However, there is one very minor snag.”
“No,” he said, “I’ll give you your first driving lesson this morning. And, yes, we do have an L-plate!”
Dear God, he seemed to have thought of everything. He’d taken out a provisional licence. He’d enrolled me for a course of lessons at a driving school. He’d also arranged for someone to drive his own car back to London so as to enable him to drive mine.
“By the way, I had to forge your signature. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Finally we went in to breakfast. Mrs Cambourne was having hers in bed, so I had to wait until our pre-lunch cocktails to double-check her reaction. There was none; at least none discernible. On my first trying to express to her my incredulous delight she serenely replied that, yes, Oliver had thought it was likely to give me pleasure—and then talked about the first car which he had ever owned and how much more real enjoyment he’d derived from that than from any other he’d possessed. From there the conversation moved on to what driving was like in the early days of the motor, before the Great War; the charm and beauty of all the veteran cars; the old crocks’ rally from London to Brighton; the film ‘Genevieve’. End of comment about the two-thousand-pound present her son had made me—and from a woman who had not so long before been on the point of writing me a cheque for that same amount, to entice me out of that same son’s life!
Also, she seemed sincerely grateful for the vase I’d chosen. She had a gift for me, too, three long-playing records which almost certainly Oliver would have selected on her behalf: one of Noël Coward in cabaret—another, from the soundtrack of ‘Oklahoma!’—and the third, taken from this current London production of ‘My Fair Lady’.
I was able to reassure her that, up until then, I hadn’t owned any of them—but how very pleased I was to realize I now did—and that honestly I’d been meaning to buy myself the third as a souvenir.
She no doubt thought I meant simply as a souvenir of the show … and naturally I didn’t enlighten her. I should have been surprised if she knew she was commemorating the occasion on which I’d first seen Oliver.
13
In the afternoon I had hoped to be taken out for a second lesson but Oliver wanted to go for a walk. Though we set off along the roads, we soon left them and took to the footpaths, ending up in a large and sombre pine wood, possibly the one the Sheldons had explored that morning seven weeks ago. The wood sprawled over a gently sloping hillside and standing at the edge of it we looked down across a valley in which there wasn’t the smallest sign of human occupation—I hadn’t realized that in the Home Counties there were still such vast areas of wilderness. “The world is very big,” I said, “and we are very small in the world.”
“Comforting or otherwise?” asked Oliver.
“Oh, otherwise. Definitely. I should like to be very big in the world. Wouldn’t you?”
I added: “Of course, you already are. Prints—if not paintings—hanging in countless homes across the globe!”
But he didn’t bother to answer. We stood and surveyed the great rolling landscape at our feet. There was still a remnant of pale sunshine, which must have boosted the loveliness.
“I could feel a bit fed up,” he said.
I was amazed. “What! You? The second happiest man on earth?”
He made a harsh, dismissive sound and gave a wan smile. “That,” he
said, “was this morning.”
“Well, it didn’t get much of a run! No real threat to ‘Chu Chin Chow’! Did your dinner give you indigestion?”
“No.”
“You’re sure you didn’t swallow a sixpence?”
“Threepenny bit,” he corrected me, mechanically.
“Well, there you are, then. That explains it.”
But all he said was: “Do you want to turn back yet or carry on?”
“I know: you’re piqued because I wouldn’t let you be the first happiest man on earth. Okay, I relinquish the title. Anyhow I wouldn’t want it, not unless you’re feeling the way you should, when standing here on top of the world!” As I said this I put my arm affectionately through his. “You see, I can make terrible puns, as well!”
He didn’t respond, but neither did he draw his arm away. “What’s the trouble, love? Surely you don’t have vertigo again?”
“A kind of vertigo, perhaps.”
“What kind?”
“The kind you get when you look behind you at all the years you’ve wasted, and look ahead and know the remainder of the way will surely be downhill.”
“But that’s ridiculous. You’re not even forty. You’re still on the very crest.”
“That’s what I mean. And do you realize something? By the time you’re forty I shall be sixty.”
“Though fantastically well-preserved, I have no doubt. Sylvia Renshaw won’t have stopped gawping at you on the tennis court.”
“Maybe not. But, somehow, I don’t find that tremendously reassuring.”
“And I thought life was supposed to begin at forty!”
I was speaking humorously but nevertheless was starting to feel angry (what, with that man who this morning had given me an XK 150?), possibly because I could now sense the walls of the prison threatening to close in—and where will you be in another twenty years?—possibly because I felt this hitherto perfect day stood in danger of becoming spoilt. Possibly because I always grew swiftly impatient of self-pity.
The Man on the Bridge Page 9