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Authors: Anita Brookner

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‘No, of course not. What's the matter with her?'

‘Fed up with her husband. Child getting on her nerves. She just couldn't take any more. I left her in the flat. I suppose I'd better be getting back to her soon.'

‘Just a minute,' said Ruth slowly. ‘Who's looking after the child?'

‘The happy father, I take it. It was his idea to have it. Any fool could see that Harriet wasn't ready for such an experience.'

‘Is it very young?'

‘Eight months, I think. I'm not too sure.' He laughed. ‘Harriet doesn't seem too sure herself.'

‘Does Harriet intend to go back?' asked Ruth, who was worried about the sleeping arrangements at Richard's flat.

‘I can't let her.' He was suddenly very brisk. ‘I think her only hope is to get away from her home surroundings for a bit. She's so confused, poor love. I could send her to these friends of mine in Somerset, but she's not keen.'

Ruth could guess why.

‘She's got no money of her own, of course. None of my wretched children have. The thing is, if she went to Somerset, she could make use of the kiln. That's what she really needs, a sense of her own identity. Before her marriage she was a very promising potter.'

The small part of Ruth that was still sane wondered why they had to talk about this tiresome person. Surely they had things to say to each other? She thought longingly of Helen who always managed to ignore the existence of other women unless she decided to allow them to become her friends. And Anthea! Anthea would not put up with this for one moment. Anthea would be talking about herself. Ruth felt several degrees less worthy than she had at the beginning of the evening. And there was no chance of beginning again; she felt too tired.

‘I think Harriet ought to go home,' she said, knowing she was making a mistake. ‘She sounds thoroughly spoilt to me.'

Richard unwound his arms from his head, opened his eyes to their fullest extent, and beamed a dark blue gaze in her direction.

‘Now I wonder why you said that.' His tone was that of someone catching out a child in a trivial but unbecoming offence. ‘Just put yourself in her place. Twenty-two years old, saddled with a screaming brat, and a husband who is all set to be something in the city, on tranquillizers, drinking a bit too much, and clearly at the end of her tether. Just to talk to someone about it helped her.'

The wan light of Edith Grove seeped slowly from the room. It was all going wrong. Worse, it had gone wrong. Why should she worry about this Harriet when he was doing it so well all by himself? She had hoped that they might make love, that they might at least make some further plans for meeting again. But instead she was being usurped by Harriet who was not even there. She could not go through this again. But even realizing this, she longed to have the chance to do so.

There was no redeeming the situation and she wanted to be alone.

‘What were the other things you were worried about?'

He gave a sigh of genuine heaviness.

‘So many things, Ruth, so many. Responsibilities and choices all the time. Other people's lives depending on what one says and does.'

She sensed a more immediate, a more intimate danger. Was there an equivalent of ‘la jeune Aricie' somewhere in the background? Did she have rivals? Of course, she thought dismally, I must have.

‘I still think Harriet ought to go home,' she said, piling the coffee cups on to the tray. ‘Even if she didn't want to have a baby she can't refuse to look after it. Anyway, nobody said she had to drink and take tranquillizers. And she could go to evening classes for her pottery.'

Richard, after a minute's silence, relaxed still further on the sofa.

‘Sometimes, Ruth,' he murmured, letting his golden-lashed eyelids slowly fall, ‘I wonder if you're really a caring person.'

The following day, after a night made sleepless by misery and hunger, she sought him out and forced him to take a cheque for a hundred pounds. This would help Harriet and her ilk to get back to the potter's wheel in Somerset, and would buy food for the unfortunates who had unlimited access to Richard's flat and to his larder. She was well aware that she was paying to remove the stigma of being an uncaring person.

‘I don't know when I'll be able to pay you back,' said Richard, who was charmed by her gesture. ‘I'll see it gets put into the right hands. By the way, thank you for dinner.'

She would have to move out of Edith Grove and go home, of course. There was no point in keeping the flat on now, and in any case she would be going to France in the autumn. And she would need every penny of the rest of her grandmother's legacy if she wanted to stay in France for a full year. It would be cheaper to pay rent at home.

They were not surprised to see her back. She pretended that the landlord was putting up the rent and that she would not pay it. George helped to move her in the car; the knives and forks were restored to the dining room, the napkins went to the laundry.

‘Well,' said Anthea, ‘did he turn up?'

‘Of course,' said Ruth. ‘We had a very interesting evening.' She did not tell Anthea about the cheque. But when she mentioned that she had moved back to Oakwood Court, Anthea refused to speak to her for two whole days.

8

Sally Jacobs's flat in Bayswater was very clean and very warm. Even in September the central heating was on, and with the curtains half pulled to keep the sun out the effect was of entering a seraglio. George, who had taken to driving Mrs Jacobs home from the shop, was pleased with what he saw although he knew it to be in faintly bad taste; this, if anything, increased his pleasure. He particularly delighted in a coffee table covered with a sheet of mirror glass, and when he went into the bathroom to wash his hands he admired the initialled pale green guest towels matching the tooth mugs in plastic opaline. Through the bedroom door he caught a glimpse of a counterpane heavily swagged and pleated in blue-grey satin and a kidney shaped dressing table. The kitchen was immaculate, every surface swept clean of evidence. It looked as if nothing had ever been cooked there, but the battery of mixers, choppers, blenders, and freezers was impressive.

‘I make everything myself,' said Mrs Jacobs. ‘My ice cream is particularly good. Would you like to try some?'

She gave him a generous helping in a fluted octagonal glass dish which his mother would have relegated to the kitchen, if she had allowed it into the house at all. George basked in the warmth of the flat and the coldness of the ice cream. He particularly liked the way Sally took his plate away the moment he had set it down, how she ran to the kitchen and washed it up. He liked her rather
strenuous and obviously expensive silk dresses with their scarves at the neck and their jackets to match; he liked her double string of pearls, worn with the clasp at the side, and her very large diamond ring; he liked the way she talked about her husband.

‘Ernest was very good to me,' she said. ‘Of course, he was much older than me. More like a father, really. I couldn't say I had a
young
time of it with him. But he looked after me so well. Everything was always taken care of. I never had to make a decision all the time I was married to him.' From her black patent leather bag she extracted a handkerchief generously bordered with lace and wiped her eyes.

George, who had been sitting in his favourite attitude, his legs crossed to show his fine ankles, his face propped up on his hand, the little finger bearing the signet ring with his father's crest slightly raised, felt a long forgotten flicker of desire. Not necessarily for Mrs Jacobs but for the high degree of comfort that seemed to go with her.

He sat down next to her on the sofa, rather heavily; he must watch his weight. He placed a hand over hers and murmured, ‘Poor little Sally.' Mrs Jacobs cried harder. George slipped an arm round her and said, ‘You know I'll help in any way I can.' And why not? he answered unknown accusers. I have a precious thin time of it at home these days. Sometimes Helen doesn't even bother to get dressed, and as for that woman, she never could cook anyway. And the place is never clean. I've spoiled Helen, that's the truth of it. A woman should look after a man, not the other way round. Papa would never have dreamed of doing anything in the house. I've done enough.

Later Mrs Jacobs made them both a cup of tea, heavily sugared, and served in broad shallow cups. She produced a cut glass jar full of home-made biscuits and draped a tiny embroidered napkin over his knee. George ate hungrily. Down in the car was the half pound of tongue
and the tin of artichoke hearts that Mrs Cutler had asked him to bring home for dinner. At least, she had asked for the tongue and something to go with it; George rather fancied himself as a gourmet and they were getting to know him on the ground floor at Fortnum's. He glanced at his watch, registering the time with a start of genuine surprise. They would be well into their drinks at home by now. And that, too, was something they ought to watch.

On the way back to Oakwood Court, driving along with the evening sun on his face, he thought he might buy Sally something to cheer her up. With Ruth at home again, paying rent for her room, Helen did not talk about money as much as she used to. Helen had always been a bit close, in his opinion; he liked a touch of lavishness himself. Helen used to remind him that she earned more than he did. Well, nobody could say that now, since neither of them was earning anything. They were living on the money from the shop, his mother's legacy, and Helen's royalties. Ruth's contribution went straight into the housekeeping.

Sally, he reflected, must be lonely. How could he cheer her up? He had noticed a transistor radio in the kitchen and the largest size of colour television in the sitting room. Perhaps a record player? He could rig it up for her, placing the speakers at what he considered to be ideal intervals. The chairs would have to be moved slightly; no matter. He could spend the odd evening there. No, he admonished himself; they need me at home. He would never get away with it, anyway. But perhaps they could go back to Bayswater in the afternoons? Or he could drive her home a little earlier than usual? Delightful prospects for the winter began to open up in front of him. There was no reason why he should not keep them all happy. And with Ruth at home again, until she went to France – and he really couldn't see why she had to go – there was not much point in his doing the shopping.

He reached home in a fine humour to find Helen and Mrs Cutler having a difference of opinion. It had apparently started shortly after he had left in the late morning and had rumbled on all day. Consequently very little had been done in the flat and last night's washing up was still on the draining board in the kitchen. It was perhaps unfortunate that Helen, wandering in in her nightgown after George's departure, and intending to cut herself a slice of bread and butter, should have knocked over a jar of marmalade which had shattered on the floor. Mrs Cutler, suffering from her usual headache, which lasted until midday, had enjoined Helen, who had wandered back to bed, to clear up the mess. Helen, deprived of her breakfast, and also a little headachy, turned her head very slowly – a gesture for which she had been celebrated in her heyday – and said, ‘Darling Maggie, you can't be serious.' She gave a little laugh to indicate incredulity. It was the first bit of acting she had done for some years.

Mrs Cutler, who was no actress, nevertheless had her reserves. Pregnant silences alternating with tuneless whistling, the bathroom door left open, and a refusal to change out of her slippers, eventually modulated into an announcement that there was nothing for lunch and that she was damned if she was going out with all that mess to clear up. Helen then decided that a short course in Christian Science principles might help Maggie to overcome her problems and gave her a small book to read. This had been sent to her by her friend Molly Edwards, an elderly comedy actress now living in retirement in Hove, and relegated to the bedside table where it kept company with several novels by Georgette Heyer.

‘I found it
immensely
helpful,' said Helen, knocking the dust from it and presenting it to Mrs Cutler. ‘And could we have a cup of tea?'

‘No time, if I'm going to read this,' replied Mrs Cutler with great satisfaction. She could go without food inde
finitely. She not only read it, she read it aloud, frequently popping in to ask Helen's advice on a passage with which she disagreed. They were both enjoying themselves in a dangerous kind of way and it seemed only natural that they should have a heated discussion of some of the finer points over a large whisky. After all, they could not eat until George came home with the food. As they had had nothing all day the drinks went to their heads, and their voices were raised when George put his key in the door. Mamma always knew when I was coming home, he thought.

George exerted himself to calm the two women down but could barely intervene in their debate, which had now reached major proportions. Leaving them to it, he retired to the kitchen and made the tongue up into sandwiches, arranging them carefully on a plate. He went to the dining room and fetched three of his mother's napkins, stiff with starch; these he added to the tray which he took into the bedroom. He placed the tray on the bed, between Helen and Mrs Cutler, who both reached out a hand automatically and went on talking.

‘I have lost more than you have ever had,' said Helen imperiously, ‘yet I remain buoyant, optimistic.'

Mrs Cutler revealed a fine head for argument.

‘If it's all in the mind, who said you ever had it?' she countered.

‘My success is as real as your bunions,' retorted Helen furiously. ‘And we hear enough about those.'

The technical victory was Mrs Cutler's.

‘It says here that neither exists,' she said, laying down her tongue sandwich to find the source of her conclusion in Mrs Eddy's text.

Helen laid the back of her wrist to her forehead – a gesture for which she had also been famous – and said ‘I cannot bear it,' in so genuinely broken a voice that Mrs Cutler shot her a glance and retired to the kitchen to do last night's washing up. George, reluctantly replacing his
sandwich, put his arm round Helen to comfort her.

‘Come on, darling heart, it's not like you to give way like this.'

Helen, who was picking the meat out of his bread and eating it, rallied.

‘It's just that I get so tired listening to her stories about her beastly marriage and her beastly feet.'

At this point Mrs Cutler came in with another tray, bearing the
amende honorable:
three plates of sliced tinned peaches. She had intended to offer them coffee, but thought better of it.

‘I'll have an early night if it's all the same to you,' she said, tight-lipped.

‘Yes, do, darling,' urged Helen. ‘You'll feel better in the morning.'

She was feeling much better herself, and allowed herself an extra sleeping pill as a treat. She was quite ready to settle down after so stimulating a day.

When Ruth returned from her usual long walk later that evening, she discovered George in the kitchen eating artichoke hearts out of the tin. He looked furtive but not unhappy. She kissed him goodnight and went silently to her room. George, smiling, allowed himself one of his late father's cigars.

BOOK: A Start in Life
10.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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