A Misalliance (7 page)

‘A little warmer at last,’ offered Mrs Duff. ‘We shall soon
be out in the garden again.’ For they shared adjoining gardens behind their respective mansion flats, and although Blanche never sat there she sometimes looked down from her window at Mrs Duff, taking the afternoon air, in a print blouse and a dazzling white skirt, on high summer days.

They made a little conversation about the weather, what it had been like, what it seemed to be about to be like, what was promised for the days ahead, in tones of great cordiality, as such acquaintances will. Blanche felt a pang of regret that she was not able to respond to Mrs Duff’s overtures in a spirit of open-mindedness or the sort of mutual congratulation that would bring a smile to Mrs Duff’s face. Her enormous consciousness of her own defeat had removed her, apparently for ever, from such an exchange of compliments. There was an innocence about Mrs Duff that Blanche rejected, as no longer hers to share. It was as if she herself had lost her own innocence, could think only in tortured worldly terms, must apply her censorship to every action, every word, and was oddly fearful of revealing herself to others. Yet despite all this, the little girl, perhaps because of her wordlessness, had struck some response from Blanche, had penetrated her defences, and, perhaps for that very reason, was seen to be significant.

Blanche watched Mrs Duff’s figure marching trimly in the direction of home and, after a short delay, followed her out into the street. The damp evening closed round her, numbing her responses. Looking up, she saw at the bus stop on the other side of the road Mrs Beamish and Elinor, who had evidently managed an appointment with the doctor after all. Instinctively, she raised her hand and waved. Mrs Beamish nodded and smiled, then patted her daughter on the shoulder and indicated Blanche. After a second’s thought Elinor lifted up her arm and waved back.

‘Yes,’ said Blanche later on the telephone to Barbara. ‘Quite an interesting day. Not bad at all.’

At the last moment, as she was about to leave her apartment, Blanche heard the telephone. When she learned that Barbara had succumbed to influenza, she put down her bag, walked to the kitchen and began to assemble supplies, planning in her mind the asparagus soup, the braised wing of chicken, the casserole for Jack’s dinner that would occupy her for the rest of the day. Like a soldier at the barricades, she maintained herself in a state of grim good health, ever fearful of the hazards of falling ill. She had therefore survived the mild ’flu epidemic that had claimed her sister-in-law and seemed to herald the untimely arrival of summer; it had arrived with the warm but still wet weather that now dripped morbidly from the leaves of chestnut trees and greeted every morning with a spectacular show of vapour, the impotent sun a hazy white smudge in an otherwise colourless sky. The delicate steam of her soup, scenting the kitchen, made her think of greenhouses, of wet grass, and of the sun breaking through to shine on rain-spotted windows. Sweating the onion for her casserole and chopping the leek and the carrot, she reflected how glad she was to have an opportunity of doing some substantial cooking again, having restricted herself to stark single items of nourishment for far too long; her attitude to her own well-being was largely functional, without indulgence, easily despatched.

‘And yet I manage to keep quite well,’ she said to
Barbara, later that morning. ‘There is no need to worry about me as you do. Worry about yourself instead. And drink a little more of this coffee. It is so good for you, whatever they say. Such a heavenly smell. It will soothe your poor head, and make it think of better days.’

‘I can’t smell a thing,’ said Barbara. ‘Take it away. But you are very kind, Blanche. I had forgotten what a kind woman you were. I suppose it is because you don’t pretend to be kind, as so many people do. Have you noticed? It is difficult to know how to deal with such people, the sort who say, “If I had known you were ill I should have done something.” And yet you would never let them know because it would be tactless, a sort of intrusion. You would not assume them to be available.’

‘Perhaps you should never assume that people are available,’ said Blanche, removing cups and plumping up pillows. ‘Why should they be? But you are right about kindness. Genuine kindness is actually rather rare, more rare than one would imagine. I think it ought to be a cardinal virtue, and yet you don’t see too much of it. Not in the past, certainly not in painting. I have been thinking about this a lot. You know I go to the National Gallery quite a bit?’

‘Too much,’ said Barbara, blowing her nose. ‘Nobody needs to go that much. It is becoming an obsession with you.’

‘Well, but you see, I am trying to decipher all those expressions. They are held up to one as standards of excellence, to be always admired, and yet there are many terrible lessons there. One realizes that even the Holy Family didn’t have a lot of time for the rest of creation. We will not even speak of the Crucifixion, if you don’t mind. And all the martyrdoms. Those poor saints, throwing away their lives, the only possession they could really call their own. And the cruelty of their tortures. All so that they could be shown in painting, resurrected, in perfect form, with merely a tower
or a key or a wheel as a dainty allusion to their sufferings. As if the realm of painting were taking its lead from the kingdom of heaven. I worry about that a lot.’

‘Well, then, don’t look at these things if they upset you.’

‘There is actually worse to come, if you turn to the pagans. They recline on clouds absolutely impervious to everything and everyone. No kindness there. No begging for mercy from the ancient gods – they would laugh. They obey a different code, and it is exceedingly difficult to know what it is. It fascinates me. You are wrong to say that I shouldn’t study these things. It is quite harmless, and it is very instructive. I am learning a lot. Only it is rather difficult at the moment to work out exactly what I am learning. That is why I keep going back.’

‘Will you go there today? You don’t have to stay here, you know. I shall probably sleep this afternoon, now that I don’t have to worry about Jack’s dinner.’

‘I’ll look in this evening and put it in the oven for him. And you can have a little soup then, if you want to sleep now.’

‘Don’t go to the National Gallery, Blanche,’ said Barbara. ‘It is bad for you to wander about on your own like this. Isn’t there something you could …’

‘Why, no,’ said Blanche, in some surprise. ‘There is nothing sinister about my visits. I am not deranged, you know. And I have always wandered about on my own, even when I was married.’ She laughed. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll look in this evening. Take care.’ She bent to kiss Barbara, then left the house, closing the door quietly behind her.

The street was blessedly normal, after the rigours of the sickroom. Gratefully, she breathed in the mild damp air. Across the street she saw Mrs Beamish and her child at the bus stop and instead of contenting herself with a wave, she went over to speak to them. The child, Elinor, was today wearing yellow, which assorted ill both with her serious
face and with the jaundiced weather. She looked pale and disengaged, but gave the impression that she was furiously thinking. Mrs Beamish, although dressed in a spiralling garment of grey cotton, which, Blanche noted, was expensive and fashionably Japanese, looked paler and even more discontented than the child, her pointed features drooping, her expression withdrawn.

‘Hello, Elinor,’ said Blanche. ‘How are you today?’

‘She’s a very naughty girl, aren’t you?’ said the mother, giving the child’s hand a shake. ‘She wouldn’t stay with the child-minder. After all the trouble I went to to find her one. And now I’ve got to drag her up to town with me. And I did want an afternoon on my own for once.’

‘She certainly won’t enjoy it in this weather,’ murmured Blanche, looking down at the face so studiously devoid of expression. ‘Perhaps if you waited until tomorrow …’

‘I can’t wait,’ the girl burst out. ‘I’m going to meet an old friend, and he was going to give me lunch, and now it’s all ruined.’

Yes, Blanche thought, it is ruined. The child wanted to prevent you from meeting this old friend because she is defending her father’s position. And again she marvelled at Elinor’s strength.

‘If you like,’ she said carefully, ‘she could come home with me while you have your lunch. I could give her something to eat and you could collect her later. Would you like that?’ she asked, bending down to Elinor. In reply Elinor put her hand into Blanche’s outstretched hand and nodded. She has made her point, Blanche thought, and now she is hungry. What could be more natural? She knows she must survive.

‘Well, if you’re sure,’ said Mrs Beamish, with no hesitation, her features instantly swept up into a dazzling smile. ‘Look, Nellie, go with this lady and I’ll come and get you this afternoon. There’s a taxi. Quickly. Oh, terrific.’

‘I live just across the road, that building on the corner,’
Blanche called after her. ‘Do you see? The bell is marked Hubert Vernon.’

‘Hubert Vernon,’ echoed Mrs Beamish, out of the window of the taxi. ‘Be a good girl, Nellie. I’ll come for you later.’

Hand in hand, Blanche and Elinor walked away from the bus stop, Elinor leading the way, Blanche smiling to left and right, smiling at Mrs Duff, at the greengrocer, at the postman. She relinquished the prospect of the National Gallery without reluctance, enjoying the feel of the little girl’s hand tugging at her own. The child seemed quite composed, not at all discountenanced by this turn of events, and determined to take advantage of any arrangements that were likely to forward her own inscrutable plan to grow up as quickly as possible. She seemed to sense in Blanche a certain reliability, not only in the form of her lunch but as far as the rest of the day’s programme was concerned, although Blanche had no idea what that might be. A weak sun emerged; pavements dried, giving off a smell of concentrated damp. Blanche bought a small brown loaf and a pound of apricots.

‘Well, I never,’ said Miss Elphinstone, resting a pink rubber-gloved hand on the jamb of the kitchen door. ‘Who’s this, then?’

‘Her mother is a friend from the hospital,’ said Blanche, putting the apricots to stew in a little brown sugar. ‘I said I’d give her lunch,’ she added, in the tone of one granting an unimportant favour.

‘Well, now, my lovely, let’s have a look at you,’ said Miss Elphinstone, taking off her gloves and unbuttoning Elinor’s yellow waterproof. ‘What’s your name, then?’ Elinor stared gravely into her face and made no answer. ‘Cat got your tongue, has he? You come and sit down nicely and talk to me, then. What were you thinking of giving her by way of lunch?’ she asked Blanche.

‘I thought, scrambled egg and brown bread and butter, and these stewed apricots. By the way, don’t be surprised if she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t speak,’ she mouthed, over Elinor’s head.

‘Oh, maladjusted, is she?’ replied Miss Elphinstone in her normal tone of voice. ‘Obstinate, more like. You’ll mind your manners in this house, miss,’ she added, but when Blanche’s back was turned her long dry hand reached out and stroked the child’s cheek.

Seated at the table, they both watched Elinor intently, as she ate her lunch with slow but careful movements. Several times Miss Elphinstone reached out and cut up the child’s bread and butter into unnecessarily small pieces. ‘My word, she’s a deep one,’ she remarked to Blanche, accepting another cup of coffee. ‘Seems to have taken to you, though.’ The kitchen, warmed by this unaccustomed activity, presented an uncharacteristic air of disorder. ‘I’ll just give you a hand with these dishes,’ said Miss Elphinstone, reluctant to leave. ‘I expect you’ll want to put her down for an hour.’

When Blanche returned from the bedroom, it was to find Miss Elphinstone packing her gloves away in her bag and very slowly adjusting her hat in the glass. ‘I could give you a hand with her, if you like,’ she remarked. ‘I’m not wanted at church until six o’clock. And there’ll be trouble there this evening or my name’s not Sylvia Elphinstone.’ Normality required a certain amount of discussion on this matter, so that it was three o’clock before Miss Elphinstone decided to commit herself to the bus that would take her to Fulham, where her basement flat was situated one street away from Bertie’s up and coming semi.

A child-minder, thought Blanche, moving soundlessly about the bedroom while Elinor, flushed, slept in Blanche’s own bed. And what sort of a woman would entrust her child to a comparative stranger? She is not to know that I am famously above board. And the father away. And the
mother going out to meet a friend, reluctant to take Elinor with her. Secret lives, she thought, determined to learn more. She telephoned the hospital, obtained Mrs Beamish’s address, which was down by the river, quite near, in fact, and decided to take Elinor home, not wishing, for a reason she preferred to leave obscure, to admit Mrs Beamish into her own flat, and in any event thinking that she would not remember the address, which she had repeated mindlessly in her anxiety to get away to her rendezvous.

Elinor awoke beautifully from her sleep, drank a glass of milk, and had her hands and face washed. Then they set out on their walk, in the damp but bright afternoon, for it was to have the child’s hand in hers and to see the smiles on the faces of passers-by that Blanche desired, and her desire was almost equal to her curiosity. In the newsagent’s she bought a book about animated trains, which Elinor carried in her free hand. And at four-thirty they descended a set of area steps to what Blanche instantly thought of as Mrs Beamish’s grotto, having it by now firmly fixed in her mind that Elinor’s putative mother was in fact a sort of nymph and thereby related to those persons whose mythological smiles she had questioned so endlessly on those afternoons so different from this one, afternoons which usually ended in a downcast return to her own lumpen status, vainly seeking transcendence, or at least translation, in whatever wine happened to be available that evening.

But the grotto, to which she was admitted, it seemed to her, after some interval and only after a telephone receiver was at last put down, was dusty, and flies circled above the sugar bowl when the tea-trolley was eventually organized. An imperviousness to contingencies was apparent in the mixture of style and squalor which were the most evident characteristics of the room. Mrs Beamish half sat and half lay on a lumpy brown Victorian
chaise-longue
, covered in a coarse material which showed signs of a cat’s scratches,
the wood of its elaborately fretted frame harbouring stray secretions of fluff. An afghan, crocheted in alternate squares of purple and cream, was thrown carelessly over one end of it, the end at which a leg trembled on its castor every time Mrs Beamish made a move. Splendid orange velvet curtains, newish in appearance, were pulled imperfectly back to reveal tall windows spattered with the dried spore of old raindrops. An equally splendid dark green carpet had obviously been amateurishly or hastily laid since it rose up in eddies around the legs of chairs and shrank from the corners of the room, revealing glimpses of bare wooden boards. The
chaise-longue
was complemented by a large squarish sofa with a row of cushions propped up against its back; this was draped in the same brownish cloth as the
chaise-longue
, with an equally fatigued appearance, although the cushions were covered in an expensive flame-coloured Thai silk. A low curving brown velvet chair on a wooden frame, with wooden arms and legs, in a Fiftyish design, occupied the space opposite an empty green-tiled hearth, even more dusty, with a pottery jar of honesty in the space where the fire should have been lit, for the room smelt musty and was probably damp. Blanche sat on an opulent square leather
pouffe
, part of an ambitious reclining chair, the major part of which had disappeared. Elinor sat on her own small chair, in exploding basket weave, reading her book.