Josephine went back to breakfast like a dreamer. Twice her father had to ask for the pepper, and the third time she gave him the salt, although she knew he did not take it with kippers.
She did not tell her parents about Billy. They might try to stop her seeing him again. Her mother from shame and her father from pique, they had put the Moores out of their life five years ago. Once, when they saw Mrs Moore hovering over the grocery counter in Whiteleys, just as she used to hover along the shelves at the Corner Stores, Mrs Abinger had taken Jo quickly through to the other end of the shop, out of sight behind the trunks.
She must tell someone, so she told Pauline, who was not as impressed as she should have been. Her limited imagination could never raise much interest in anything she had not experienced herself. She had never sailed in a racing dinghy with a cadet from Dartmouth, therefore she could not visualize it. It meant nothing to her.
It meant all the excitement in the world to Jo; she never stopped visualizing it all morning, and could not give her mind to pressing wild flowers in Pauline’s botany book. Surely sailing with Billy was more important than vetch and campion, or Mrs Gray’s cross stitch fire-screen or even the golf match for which Mr Gray was sand-papering his clubs on the veranda? Although they did not seem to think so, Josephine knew that it was, and for the first time since she had known them, she felt herself superior.
When the Grays trooped upstairs to wash for lunch and to change their shoes and socks, which they always did whether they had been on the beach or not, Jo went back to the promenade. Her parents had been spending the morning in deck-chairs in preparation for the afternoon’s ordeal on the golf links, but Mrs Abinger’s rest had been ruined because George had made her move every time he saw the ticket collector coming.
She walked very slowly up the hill. Jo tried to urge her on. ‘We’ll be late, Mum, and they’ll go off in the car without us. They said not to be late. Oh Mum, do buck up; you are a worry to me.’ She pulled at her arm.
‘Let me alone, dearie. I’m better on my own.’ Jo kept running ahead and then running back, like a dog making rings round a too staid master. Mr Abinger, who had called in at the Black Boy, overtook them before they had reached Clarence Lodge. He too tried to hustle his wife, not because he wanted to get to the golf club, but because he wanted his lunch. Between them, they had her in a sweltering flurry by the time they reached the boarding house. Maisie was pounding the gong, and they would not let Mrs Abinger go upstairs for a wash and a tidy. She had to go into the dining-room fumbling with her hairpins and imagined that Miss Lorrimer, with her cool Eton crop and piqué collar was wondering what Clarence Lodge was coming to when people came to meals in such a state.
Mrs Abinger could hardly eat any lunch, which was curried mutton and suet hat on one of the hottest days in August. Josephine could always eat, however excited she was. What with the golf match and Billy, she could have sung aloud at the fullness of life. She was finished long before her father, who could not stop eating cheese and biscuits. Every time she thought that he was finished at last, the knobbly hand would reach out again for ‘just one more of those square fellows’.
Really, thought Mrs Abinger, you could have fried an egg on the back seat of the Morris to-day. If she had not been glad to sit down after being run down the hill by Jo, she would have jumped up again as the leather burned through her black silk dress to her legs and stuck to them. It made her sweat simply to see Mr Gray in his thick plus fours and the green socks with tabs below the knee. He was in tremendous form, and sang out-of-date dance tunes all the way to the Club until she thought her head would split open. George was wearing the cinnamon sports jacket which he had been exhilarated into buying at the local outfitters and would not admit was a mistake. Mrs Gray was wearing lemon yellow, with a matching bandeau worn low on the forehead like Lenglen. Pauline was wearing her school gingham, which Mrs Abinger thought too skimpy for a girl with her overdeveloped figure. The same dress looked quite different on Jo, who would always be slight, Mrs Abinger knew, because of her Nerves.
It was a wonder she had not been brought down with one of her Heads long ago in this weather. By the time they arrived, Mrs Abinger’s own head felt quite stupid, and she stumbled as she followed them out to the course. Without Mrs Gray’s hand on her arm, she would have staggered right on to the first tee, where Mr Gray was bending and stretching his knees like a policeman, and practising his swing, shading his eyes to gaze after an imaginary ball, much farther than he could possibly have hit it.
Mrs Gray now took it upon herself to shepherd Mrs Abinger about and instruct her in the principles of the game. Mrs Abinger would rather have been left alone without knowing what it was all about, but she said: ‘Fancy!’ and ‘Well I never’, because it was kind of Mrs Gray to take trouble, and saved her thinking of conversation.
Pauline was caddying for her father, anticipating each club, very much the dutiful daughter, as she handed it to him handle first, like a knife, or removed her shadow, or stood by the flag when he was on the edge of the green as if she knew he could sink a twelve yards’ putt. Sometimes he could. He was playing well, with a solemn face and a tread that dented the turf so heavily that it did not spring up again until quite a while after he had passed.
Josephine’s association with the Grays had made her aware of the importance of golf. Although she was slightly bored, she followed along quite happily, chewing grass and thinking about Billy every time she glimpsed the sea through a dip in the cliffs.
Mr Abinger, watching critically from under the peak of his cap, had started by saying ‘Well played, sir!’ to show that he knew. Having said it once for an air shot and been glared at by Mr Gray’s opponent, he retired into the background and turned himself into a subversive element, criticizing the players audibly in terms of bowls.
‘Too much English,’ he grumbled as Mr Gray pulled a drive. ‘Centre your wood, sir.’
Mrs Abinger wished she could get to him to tell him to lower his voice, but it was all she could do to blunder along, trying to take in what Mrs Gray was telling her. It seemed to her that she had never walked so far in her life. Half-way round, she plucked up the courage to say she would like to go back and wait in the shade, but they would not let her. They said it was as far now to go back as to finish the course, and she would not find the way without obstructing the other players.
‘Jo can come with me then, and show me the way,’ she suggested.
‘Oh no, Mum,’ said Jo. ‘I want to see the match. You can’t go back now.’
‘Well, I’ll just sit here and rest a bit,’ Mrs Abinger said, and collapsed against the back of a bunker. ‘I’ll follow you on.’
‘You must get up, Mum,’ Jo insisted, looking round to see what other people were thinking of this stout dishevelled woman, sprawling on the grass as if she would never get up again. ‘Everyone’s looking at you.’
Mrs Abinger felt too dizzy and exhausted to care what anyone thought of her. She only wanted to lay her head down somewhere in the cool. But Jo would not let her. She stood sternly in front of her, ordering her on.
‘You must come on; you’ll be hit if you stay there. And it’s just getting exciting. Don’t you want to see Mr Gray win?’ She tried to explain about all square at the turn. Where the child picked up all this knowledge was a mystery to Mrs Abinger, who neither could, nor wanted to understand.
They pulled her up, and she tottered on, trying to reckon how far there was to go. The flag on the clubhouse roof, a fluttering message of hope, advanced and receded in a haze, as Mr Abinger’s figure had done on the sands at the picnic. She began to hate Mr Gray for taking so long over every stroke. He shimmered before her eyes as he straddled on the tee, waggling his club behind the ball until she thought she would scream if he did not hit it. She could barely be polite to Mrs Gray, although she kept reminding herself that she must be, for Jo’s sake. She would lose Jo her friends, panting and perspiring like this, falling in and out of bunkers and needing two
people to help her over a plank laid across a ditch.
The sun beat down remorselessly on the flat, treeless course. It must be miles round, and to think that people played golf for pleasure! George had more sense with his bowls. She thought with longing of the cool lawn in Avondale Park, with the seats in the shade and the unhurried old men in panama hats. She closed her eyes against the glare and the bowling green swam on her lids like a mirage.
Opening them, she looked round for George. She wanted his arm, but he had got tired of seeing other people do something he could not do himself, and wandered away. He had deserted her.
How she stuck it out, she never knew. She kept her eyes on the ground and concentrated on no more than putting one foot in front of the other. With each step, her feet seemed more difficult to lift. She felt like a clock, and her feet were the weights on the end of inadequate chains. Just when she had decided she could not go another yard, even if it meant sitting down in her tracks and staying there until the birds came and covered her with leaves, she heard a sudden thin clatter of applause. Looking up, she saw that they were back in front of the clubhouse.
She had almost forgotten that she was following a competition. She had no idea who had won, but Jo was dancing beside her and saying: ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Mum?’ so it must be Mr Gray. Yes, there he was, trying to pass it off modestly, flanked by Mrs Gray and Pauline, smug-mouthed, as if they had known it all the time. There was his opponent, a round man like a tennis ball, in white trousers and a white shirt, being over-sporting, and trying to look as if he had not wanted to win.
There was George, sauntering out of the clubhouse as if he owned the place.
‘You do look rough, old girl,’ he said helpfully. ‘Never mind, there’s a good spread laid out. Bridge rolls and fancy cakes – ’
‘Don’t dear,’ she gasped. ‘I feel a little sick already.’
Then Jo had to come and say: ‘Mum, there’s éclairs! Come on, they’re all going in.’
‘Would you like to – er, wash?’ asked Mrs Gray.
Mrs Abinger shook her head. She could hardly speak, let alone get up from the bench on which she had cast herself, full in the sun, but she could get no farther.
Jo took her hand. ‘Come on, Mum.’
‘No, dear, I’ll just sit here for a bit.’
‘You won’t get any tea,’ said George. ‘What’s the matter with you? You’re behaving as if you were tiddly. What will Jo’s teetotal friends say? Come on. I know what these sporting folk are with their victuals.’ He pronounced it as it was spelt. ‘Jo and I won’t get any tea either if we don’t go in soon.’
That settled it. She must get up if it killed her. He took her other hand, and as they pulled, she made a great effort to rise, fell back on the edge of the bench, slipped to the ground, and lay there like a beached whale, with her black silk dress rucked up, her mouth askew and her eyes staring.
She could not close them. She could not move at all, yet she was perfectly conscious. That was the most terrible part; she knew she was making a fool of herself, but she could do nothing about it. She could only lie there and see Jo screaming, and George wax-white and shrunken with fright, his clumsy hands hanging helplessly, and all the Grays come to stand in a line and stare at her as if she were a fish in an aquarium.
The Golf Club had not had such a sensation for years. Mrs Abinger’s attack was quickly over, but their discussion of it would go on for days, and perhaps be taken up again next year.
Something clicked, and she could move again, jerkily, although her eyes still would not stay shut against the throbbing glare. They flew open as she sat on the grass, propped against the bench like a doll. The young doctor with the salmon-pink holiday face, looking very unmedical in grey flannels and aer-tex shirt, said that she could be moved. He looked round to see who was to take her home.
George, whom shock had dumbed for a while, was voluble now from reaction, passing from group to group, theorizing about his wife’s health to people who were not listening. The Grays were backing away. They did not want to take Mrs Abinger home. They had not had their tea, and Mr Gray had not received his egg-cup sized replica of the championship trophy. In any case, they wanted no part in this crisis; it caught them out of their depth. Sure of themselves when all was humdrum, they were at a loss to offer help or even sympathy in an emergency. They could only stand and stare.
The young doctor took the Abingers home himself. Josephine cried in the car, and Mrs Abinger cried too, abandonedly, great tears rolling down her shaking cheeks. ‘Just an old nuisance,’ she kept moaning. ‘Just a burden to you all.’
‘Oh stop it, Ellie,’ George said, cross now in the backwash of his concern. ‘It’s over now. Don’t keep on.’
‘No, no,’ she sobbed. ‘Just a silly old fool – an old nuisance, I ought to be in my box.’
‘Oh come off it, Ma. Pull yourself together,’ the young doctor said over his shoulder. He treated her like one of the old dears in his out-patients’ clinic, because she was behaving like one. George did not like this. He did not like any doctors, and this one less than most.
At Clarence Lodge, Mrs Abinger created a minor scene, which brought guests to their doors and Maisie and cook from the kitchen. She realized on the stairs that George and Josephine had not had their tea, and refused to mount another step until she had seen them go off to the café for welsh rarebit.
‘All right, all right,’ said George, pushing her from behind. ‘We’ll get you to bed first.’
‘I’m all right,’ she argued. ‘You go off. I don’t need you. I won’t be a burden to you.’ She held back, and he laid his weight against her while the young doctor pulled from above, like furniture removers with a recalcitrant piano.
‘But you know you like welsh rarebit!’ she protested loudly all the way up.
‘Well really!’ murmured Miss Lorrimer, closing her bedroom door with a reproachful click as they passed.
They got her on to her bed and her eyes closed thankfully at last. George and Jo crept out of the room and Mrs Abinger lay there fully dressed, flat on her back with her toes turned up, mumbling herself into sleep, telling the pink-faced doctor over and over again: ‘You know you like welsh rarebit.’
There was no question about whether the landlady of Clarence Lodge catered for people who were going to be ill and want meals in their room. She did not. The young doctor said that Mrs Abinger was well enough to travel, and ought to go home and see her own doctor.
All the way home, Jo sat staring out of the window, as if she would never see England again. She knew she would never see Billy again. She had wanted to give Pauline a message for him, but the Grays had not enquired for Mrs Abinger, and Jo could not bring herself to seek them out. She had a feeling inside her that she would never see any of them again either.
She never did. Mrs Abinger’s doctor told her bluntly that if she did not give up most of her work in the shop, she would have a proper stroke – a serious one. He told George too, and scared him deliberately, realizing that Mrs Abinger had been called upon to do too much before, and might easily be again.
She was not allowed downstairs at first, and George was lost, utterly lost. For something to do, he reopened the shop in a half-hearted way, but it did not take him long to discover that you could not gaily shut up a grocery and go off on holiday without paying for it when you came back. Stocks of everything were low. What margarine there was had turned to rancid oil in the case, and mice had eaten right through the old wire cheese cover and depredated a twenty-pound Cheddar. A beer bottle had blown its cork while they were away, and made a sticky, stinking morass in the corner.
He spent most of the first day going up and down stairs to ask Mrs Abinger where she had put things. It did not occur to him that she had been going up and down like this all her married life, and by the evening, he had an enormous grievance as well as a backache. The rapier-thin rasher knife had disappeared, and he had been hacking at a side of bacon with any weapon that cam
e to hand. It hung now reproaching him like a mutilated corpse, as he revolved helplessly in the store-room with an order paper in his hand and a pencil behind his ear.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ he confessed to Jo. ‘We seem to need everything. Your mother used to do all this; she never let me touch the ordering. I believe she’s been letting us get too low, that’s what it is, and now I’m left to hold the baby. How am I expected to manage?’ He slumped. His long starched apron seemed to stand up on its own. His holiday jauntiness had already evaporated, but had not yet been replaced by the bolstering officialdom of his London activities.
Jo was sitting on a packing case with a broom between her knees, too tired to make herself start clearing the place up. Herbert Merriman, the delivery man, was not yet back at work and she had been taking the orders round herself on a clanking man’s bicycle with faulty brakes and no free wheel.
She looked up, her neck, freckled by sun, rising slender and fragile from the enveloping folds of Mrs Abinger’s blue overall. ‘Never mind, Dad,’ she smiled encouragingly at him. They had drawn closer in their trouble and anxiety than ever before in their lives. ‘We’ll manage somehow. I’ll help you like anything – do as much as Mum did. I’ll work like a nigger till I go back to school, honest.’
‘Until you go back to school,’ he echoed heavily. ‘Yes, and what then? How am I to manage then, left to take the whole weight of it on my shoulders?’
‘You were saying at Seacombe you ought to have an assistant. Why don’t you, Dad?’
‘What I said at Seacombe in the first abandon of unaccustomed liberty,’ he said solemnly, ‘must be counted as so much irresponsible talk. Please don’t fling it in my teeth now. You’ve seen the accounts books; I thought you were supposed to be a mathematical scholar. An assistant on our present turnover! Why, we can hardly but afford old Merriman, and he’s cheaper than most, with his C3 ver-tye-go.’
She knew it had to come. She must have known it all along, although she would not face it. Her tears had not all been for her mother. Some must have been for herself, and for all the things she knew in her heart she was going to lose. For the life in which she had gloried for two years, and for the future that had been dangled before her, to be snatched away in those catastrophic moments at the Seacombe Golf Club.
Joy and Josephine Page 19