She went in, knowing how it would be. The hall clock ticked slowly. Toby heard her coming; his claws clicked across the polished floor of the kitchen and he appeared in the doorway, not barking because he always knew when it was family. He came to greet her, searched for James, found no James, returned with dignity to his bed.
It was cool indoors. The house was old and thick-walled, and the furniture was old too, so that it smelt old, but in a pleasant way, like a well-kept antique shop. It was very quiet. When Toby had settled once more, there was only the clock and a tap dripping from the kitchen and the hum of the refrigerator.
She thought, I could make tea, although it’s only half-past three. I could get the washing in and iron it. I could go upstairs to James’s room and pick up his clothes. She saw them, the jeans worn and crumpled, bent to his shape; the grey socks, the disreputable sandals, the Superman T-shirt that was his favourite garment. He had worn them this morning; they had gone to the beach for a final swim, abandoning the dishes, the dusting, the bed-making. Afterwards she had cooked his favourite lunch, chops and baked beans, and eaten it with him, and the clock had ticked away their last moments together.
She dropped her bag, went through the cool hall, out across the sitting room, through the French windows, and down the two stone steps that led to the lawn. There was a sagging deck chair and she sank into it in a sort of exhausted apathy that was beyond time or reason. The sun was in her eyes, and she put up her arm to shut away the glare and at once sounds closed in, demanding attention. The children were being let out of the village school; the church clock, always a little slow, chimed the half hour. A car came down the road, turned into the gate, and ground up the gravel drive to the second front door on the other side of Veronica’s house.
She thought, idly, The Professor’s home.
* * *
She had been widowed now for two years. As a married woman she had lived in London, in a roomy flat near the Albert Hall, but after the death of her husband and on the advice of Frank Kirdy, their lawyer, who was also their best friend, she had returned to the village and to the house where she had lived as a child. It seemed a natural and a sensible thing to do. The children loved the country and the beach and the sea; she was surrounded by neighbours and people she had known all her life.
There had, however, been one or two objections.
“But the house, Frank, it’s so big. Far too big for me and two children.”
“But it would divide perfectly easily, and you could let the other side.”
“But the garden…”
“You could divide the garden, too. Plant a hedge. You’d still have two good-sized lawns.”
“But who would come and live there?”
“We’ll look around. There’s bound to be someone.”
There was, too. Professor Rydale.
“Who’s Professor Rydale?” she asked.
“I was at Oxford with him,” said Frank. “He’s an archaeologist, amongst other things. A professor at Brookbridge University.”
“But if he’s at Brookbridge, why does he want to come to Cornwall to live?”
“He’s taking a year’s sabbatical. He has to write a book. Don’t look so agonised, Veronica, he’s a bachelor and perfectly self-contained. No doubt some homely female will come in from the village and take care of him, and you won’t even know he’s there.”
“But what if I don’t like him?”
“My dear, people are exasperated by Marcus Rydale, amused by him, and informed by him, but he is impossible to dislike.”
“Well…” Reluctantly, she had agreed. “All right.”
* * *
And so the house was duly divided, and the lawn discreetly sliced in two, and the Professor informed that he could move in when he pleased. After a little, Veronica received an illegible and unstamped postcard which, when deciphered, announced that she was to expect him on Sunday. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday came and went. On Wednesday, in the middle of lunch, the Professor arrived, driving a sports car that looked as though it had been stuck together with Sellotape. He wore spectacles, a tweed hat, and a sagging tweed suit, but offered neither apologies nor explanations.
Veronica, already amused and exasperated, gave him his keys. The children, fascinated, hung around longing to be asked in to help him unpack, but he faded away as unexpectedly as he arrived and was scarcely seen again. Within two days Mrs. Thomas, the postman’s wife, was coming and going, keeping house for him, baking him pastries and large sustaining fruit cakes. Before the week was out they had almost forgotten his existence. He settled down, cosy as a squirrel, and in all the months that were to pass, Veronica was only reminded of his presence when his typewriter started tapping at odd hours in the middle of the night, or his little car went roaring out of the gate and up the road to the village, to disappear on strange errands that sometimes lasted two or three days.
But every now and then he appeared to make contact with the children. Sally fell off her bicycle, and by some chance he was driving by and stopped to pick her out of the ditch, straighten the buckled front wheel, and lend her a handkerchief for her bleeding knee.
“He was nice, Mummy, honestly, he was so nice, and he pretended not to see that I was bawling, don’t you think that was tactful?”
Veronica wanted to thank him, but she did not set eyes on him again for three weeks, and by then she was sure he would have forgotten the incident altogether. But another time James came in for supper bearing a device of chestnut branch and string and a bundle of lethally sharpened twigs.
“What have you got there?”
“It’s a bow and arrows.”
“It looks deadly. Where did you get it?”
“I met the Professor. He made it for me. You see, you have to keep the string loose when you’re not using it, and then when you want to use it, you bend the stick a bit and loop the string on … there! See? Isn’t it super. It shoots for miles.”
“You mustn’t point it at anyone,” said Veronica nervously.
“I wouldn’t anyway, even if I knew someone I hated enough,” he said. “I ought to make a target.” James snapped at the string. It made a satisfactory twang, like playing a harp.
“Well, I hope you said thank you,” said his mother.
“Of course I did. You know, he’s terribly nice. Couldn’t you ask him in for a drink or supper or something?”
“Oh, James, he’d hate that. He’s working, he doesn’t want to be disturbed. I think it would embarrass him terribly.”
“Yes, perhaps it would.” He twanged the bow again, and took it upstairs to the safety of his bedroom.
* * *
From inside the house, from the Professor’s half, came the sound of a window being shut. Then he opened the French windows of his sitting room—which had been the dining room in the days when the house was undivided—and came out into the garden. The next moment, his bespectacled head appeared over the top of the fence, and he said, “I wonder if you’d like a cup of tea?”
For a mad moment Veronica thought he was talking to someone else. She looked round frantically to see who it could be. But there was no one else. He was talking to her. He was asking her to have a cup of tea, but if he had suggested that they waltz together, then and there, around the lawn, she could not have been more astounded. She stared at him. He wore no hat and she noticed that the breeze made his dark hair stand up in a coxcomb, just as James’s did.
He tried again. “I’ve just made a fresh pot. I could bring it out here.”
She jerked herself out of her bad manners. “Oh, I am sorry … it was such a surprise. Yes, I’d love one…” She began, awkwardly, to scramble out of the deck chair, but he stopped her.
“No, don’t move. You look so peaceful. I’ll bring it round.”
She sank back into the chair. The Professor disappeared. Veronica took stock of this startling new situation. She found that she was smiling, at herself, at him, at the absurdity of it all. She pulled her skirt
down over her knees and tried to compose herself. She wondered what on earth they were going to talk about.
When he returned, easing himself from his own garden into hers by way of a narrow gap at the bottom of the fence, she saw that he was remarkably organised. She had expected a mug of tea, no more, but he carried a laden tray, and had slung a thick rug, like a Scottish plaid, over one shoulder. He laid the tray down on the grass beside Veronica, spread the rug and sat himself down on it, his long, angular body folding up like a jackknife. He wore old corduroys that someone had tried to mend at the knee and there was a button missing at the collar of his checked shirt, but he looked in no way pathetic … more like a cheerful gypsy. She found herself wondering how he managed to stay so tanned and lean when he appeared to spend so much of his time indoors.
“There,” he said, safely settled. “Now you must pour.”
The china didn’t match, but he had forgotten nothing, and there was even some of one of Mrs. Thomas’s fruit cakes for them to eat.
She said, “It looks splendid. I don’t usually bother with tea—when I’m on my own, that is.”
“The children have gone.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes…” She occupied herself with the tea pot. “I’ve just put James on the train.”
“Does he have far to go?”
“No. Only Carmouth. Do you take sugar?”
“Yes, lots. At least four spoonfuls.”
“You’d better put it in yourself.” She handed him his cup and he ladled sugar copiously. She said, “I never thanked you for making him the bow and arrows.”
“I thought you’d be angry … giving him such a dangerous toy.”
“He’s very sensible.”
“I know. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”
“And…” She turned her teacup in her hand. It had roses on it and looked as though it had once belonged to an elderly female relation. “You rescued Sally the day she fell off her bike, too. I should have made a point of thanking you for that … but somehow I never seemed to see you.”
“Sally thanked me herself. And she took to me.”
“I’m glad.”
“It’s quiet without them.”
“Oh, dear, do they make so much noise?”
“Only a little, and I like it. It’s sort of company when I’m working.”
“They don’t disturb or distract you?”
“I said I like it.” Thoughtfully, he cut himself a chunk of cake. He took a mouthful and ate it, and then said, abruptly, “He seems so small. James, I mean. Such a small chap. Do you have to send him away to school?”
“No, I don’t suppose I have to.”
“Wouldn’t it be more fun for you both if he stayed?”
She said, “Yes it would.”
“But he has to go?”
Veronica looked at him then, and wondered why she was not offended by his persistence; why she knew that his questions stemmed from deep interest and not a mere curiosity. His eyes behind the spectacles were very dark and kindly. He was not in the least intimidating.
She said, “It sounds ridiculous, but it’s very simple really. He is my only son. He is also my baby. We’ve always been together, and very close, all his life. I adore Sally, but in some way she is a person apart from me, that’s one of the reasons we get on so well. But James and I are, I don’t know, like two branches on the same stem. After my—” She leaned over to put down her teacup, hiding her face from the Professor with a curtain of hair, for still, even now, she could not trust herself to say it and not to weep. “After my husband died, there wasn’t anyone for James but me.” She straightened up and pushed her hair out of her eyes and faced him again. She smiled. “I’ve always had a horror of smothering mothers and sons that were never able to break away.” He watched her thoughtfully, not answering her smile. She went on, briskly, “It’s a nice school, small and friendly. He’s very happy there.”
He was, too. She knew this, but was still bedevilled with doubts. After the agony of this morning, of the last lunch and the journey to the station, and the final parting, she felt that she could not go through it again. She was haunted by James’s face, the pale wedge showing over Nigel’s shoulder, growing smaller and more blurred as the express sucked him away from her.
“Perhaps,” said the Professor, “if you lived in a different sort of place, where there was a similar sort of school, and other boys, and things for him to do?”
“It’s a father,” said Veronica without thinking. “Something to do with not having a father.”
“But you’re lonely without them? You must be.”
“It’s sometimes selfish to be lonely … and now, please, can we not talk about it anymore.”
“All right,” said the Professor amiably, as though he had never brought the matter up. “What shall be talk about?”
“Your book?”
“My book is finished.”
“Finished?”
“Yes, Finished. Typed, corrected, and typed again; not by me, I may add. Not only is it typed and bound up in buff covers and red tape, but it has reached the desk of a publisher and been accepted.”
“But that’s wonderful. When did you hear?”
“Today. This very day. I got a telegram over the phone and I went to the post office to pick up the confirmation.” He reached into his jacket pocket and took it out and flapped it around in the breeze. “I always feel safer when things are in writing. It proves I didn’t imagine anything.”
“Oh, I am pleased. And what happens now?”
“I still have three months of my year’s leave to run and then I go back to lecturing at Brookbridge.”
“What are you going to do with the three months?”
“I don’t know.” He grinned at her. “Perhaps go off to Tahiti and become a beachcomber. Perhaps stay here. Would you mind?”
“Why should I mind?”
“I thought perhaps I’d been so rude and unfriendly you wouldn’t be able to wait to see the back of me. The thing is that I find being sociable, and organising things and arranging things, takes the most enormous amount of concentration. I mustn’t have anything else on my mind. Especially when writing a textbook on archaeology. Can you understand that?”
“Easily. And I never thought you were rude or unfriendly. Anyway, I’m just as bad. James wanted me to ask you in for supper one night and I said you wouldn’t want to come. I said you’d be too busy.”
“Perhaps I was.” He appeared to be embarrassed; he frowned, tried to flatten the coxcomb of hair with the palm of his hand. He said, “James came in to say goodbye to me last night. While you were getting his supper. Did you know?”
It was Veronica’s turn to frown. “James did? No, he never said a word.”
“He told me then that you wouldn’t ask me to supper because you thought I wouldn’t want to come.”
“He shouldn’t have…”
“But he did add, in a man-to-man sort of way, that perhaps I might ask you to supper.”
“He what…?”
“He’s concerned about you living on your own. He knows how much you miss him and Sally. And you mustn’t be annoyed about it, because I think it’s the nicest thing I’ve ever known a small boy to do.”
“But he had no right!”
“He has every right. He is your son.”
“But…”
He overrode her objections. “So of course I said I would. And that’s what I’m doing now. And I’ve even gone so far as to book a table at that new place over at Porthkerris. For eight o’clock. So if you refuse to come, it’s going to be very difficult for me, because I’ll have to go and cancel it and the head waiter will be furious. You won’t say no, will you?”
For a moment she couldn’t say anything. But watching him, she remembered what Frank had said about him and all her resentment and annoyance melted away. People are exasperated by Marcus Rydale, amused by him … but he is impossible to dislike. And she thought, and was t
aken unaware by the thought, that he was the nicest man she had met in years. She had shared her house with him all these months and never even guessed. But the children had guessed. They knew. James had known from the very first.
She began to laugh, defeated by a multitude of pressures. “No, I won’t say no. I couldn’t say no, even if I wanted to.”
“But you don’t want to, do you,” said the Professor, and once more it was a statement, not a question.
Amita
The notice of Miss Tolliver’s death was in this morning’s paper. My husband handed it to me across the breakfast table and the name sprang at me from the column of close print like a cry from the past:
TOLLIVER. On the 8th July, in her 90th year, Daisy Tolliver, daughter of the late Sir Henry Tolliver, some time Governor of the Province of Barana, and Lady Tolliver. Private cremation.
I had not thought of the Tollivers in years. I am fifty-two now, well into middle age, with a husband on the point of retirement, and children and grandchildren of my own. We live in Surrey, and Cornwall and childhood seem a long way away, another time and another world. But every now and then something happens to bring it all back, like a note struck on a seldom-played piano, and then it is as though the crowded years between had never happened. The old, aimless days are back, bright with perpetual sunshine (did it never rain?) and crowded with remembered voices, running footsteps, and marvellously nostalgic smells. Bowls of sweet peas in my mother’s drawing room, and the fragrance of pastries baking in the oven of the black-leaded Cornish range.
The Tollivers. When my husband had said goodbye and taken himself off to catch the London train, I went out into the garden with the newspaper and sat in the swing chair by the rose bed and read the lonely little paragraph again—the late Sir Henry Tolliver, some time Governor of the province of Barana. I remembered him with his red face and great white moustache and his panama hat. And I remembered Angus. And Amita.
* * *
The Blue Bedroom: & Other Stories Page 9