Angel Cake (24 page)

The idea of Eastbourne preyed on her at night too. Her dreams, which had mainly been nightmares since she moved down to the front room, started to include tantalizing scenes by the sea. She welcomed them, but sometimes they vexed her. She was having lunch with Leonard in Fusciardi’s Coffee Lounge – a nice piece of fish with mashed potatoes and peas – when suddenly the dear old waitress staggered in bringing her the biggest ice-cream in the world for afters and everyone in the restaurant turned round and applauded. Then the ice-cream somehow turned into a wedding cake, but it was all hard and frozen and Alicia found she couldn’t get her dainty silver cake fork into it at all. Another time, she dreamt she was walking along the pier arm-in-arm with, of all people, Harry Levy, on a bright but breezy day when the wind caught her straw boater and blew it ahead of them towards the waves. Harry leapt nimbly forward and lunged after it with a sportsman’s supple twist. He brought it back towards her but instead of handing it to her, he tossed it straight on to her head and cried, ‘Goal!’ and laughed and laughed. Alicia woke from these dreams doubly distressed to find herself high and dry on her settee. She would close her eyes again, desperately straining to get back to sleep, and when she didn’t succeed, she would lie in the evil maroon shadows and wonder miserably if she would ever set eyes on the sea again.

The day after Pearl’s visit, Alison gave her one of her surprise evening telephone calls.

‘Rob’s gone away and I’m all on my own here.’

Alicia exclaimed, ‘Gone away? Wherever to?’

Alison said, ‘I thought I told you. He’s gone up to Scotland to do some research for his new play.’

Alicia was very briefly distracted from the idea of Eastbourne which Alison’s voice had brought smartly back to mind. ‘How long’s he gone for?’

‘A week. He’ll be back next Thursday.’

Alicia tut-tutted. ‘That’s a long time.’

‘He’s got quite a lot of work to do up there. As well as just wandering around, you know, getting the feel of the place.’

‘Doesn’t think twice about leaving you all on your own, does he?’

‘I’m not a baby.’

Alicia drew breath sharply. She said huffily, ‘No one said you were. I just don’t think it’s very nice swanning off like that for a week at a time and leaving you in that flat.’ (She had never seen the flat, of course, but she knew its rooms were big and spooky, that at night you could hear the sharp shots of the central heating system and that there were skylights just made for cat burglars.)

‘He hasn’t gone “swanning off”,’ said Alison. ‘It’s work. Anyway, I don’t mind.’

‘Don’t you?’ said Alicia. ‘Well, I think you should. What are you doing with yourself in the evenings?’

Alison said, ‘Sewing. Catching up with correspondence. Doing a bit of extra work for my boss.’

‘That’s not a way to spend the evenings at your age,’ said Alicia. ‘Isn’t there someone who could take you out on the town? What does your Robert get up to?’

Alison giggled. ‘Propping up the hotel bar, I expect. No, I’m sure he’s got contacts, people to see.’

‘What kind of people?’ asked Alicia.

‘Oh, for the play, you know, sources. People who can tell him about things.’

‘And keep him company, I shouldn’t doubt.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! What exactly are you trying to suggest?’

‘I’m not trying to suggest anything,’ Alicia answered primly. ‘I just hope he’s keeping himself out of mischief, that’s all.’

That night, again, she dreamt something she would much rather not have. Like all the other seaside dreams, it started harmlessly enough. It seemed to be a tea-dance in one of the smart sea-front hotels. All the dining-room tables and chairs had been pushed back to create the dance floor and there
was mood music from a four-piece band. But she and Leonard were the only pair on the dance floor. They were twirling wearily round and round, all by themselves, like a clockwork couple on a musical box, and they couldn’t stop because the musicians wouldn’t stop playing. It was almost frightening; the tune they were playing didn’t have a beginning and an end like an ordinary dance tune. It just went on and on and on, repeating itself, and she knew that she and Leonard were trapped on the dance floor, doomed to carry on twirling until they dropped. She started to look around for help; maybe someone at one of the tables could stop the band? It was then she noticed, taking her eyes off Leonard’s unflinching face, that the tables were all empty too. She began to panic. Far away in a distant corner – for the ballroom had become enormously big – Harry Levy was sitting alone watching them. He had set up a telescope on the tablecloth, one of those seaside telescopes you put money into to admire the view, and he was looking at them through it, strumming his fingers in time to the music and grinning.
Grinning!
Alicia was too proud to call out to him. She held her head high and grimly she went on twirling. Swivelling to and fro, Harry’s telescope followed them. He had a pile of gold coins on the table cloth beside it, chocolate pennies in gold foil, and he could go on feeding his telescope as long as he pleased. Alicia looked the other way. She danced-two-three, danced-two-three and she pretended that she hadn’t noticed Harry. She could feel the beginnings of a stitch. Her feet were killing her. But she clung on to Leonard for dear life. She gazed up at him and she pretended that she had never seen hide or hair of Harry Levy.

It did feel distinctly odd in the flat with Rob gone, and I realized at one point that I had never spent a night there on my own before. Maybe that was why I felt such a stranger there all of a sudden. It was rather spooky and I stayed as late as I could at the museum the whole week he was away.

One night, I was still at my desk when Mr Charles came out to go home. He stopped in the doorway of my cubbyhole and mimed astonishment.

‘Alison! Whatever are you doing here at this hour?’

‘Oh,’ I said vaguely. ‘Oh, I had something I wanted to finish off.’

Mr Charles shook his head incredulously. ‘This won’t do at all.’ He took his big watch out of his pocket and held his head back straight and stiff to squint at it, the way long-sighted people do. ‘It’s getting on for eight, do you realize? Time all right-thinking people were long on their way.’

‘Gosh,’ I said lamely. ‘Is it?’

I hoped faintly that he might jovially ask me what I was up to after work, so that I could answer, ‘Nothing,’ a bit sorrowfully and he could respond, ‘Well then, why not come and have a quick drink with me?’

But Mr Charles would never dream of prying into my private life. He slipped his watch back into his trouser pocket and hesitated in the doorway. ‘Really, I should call it a day, if I were you,’ he insisted gently.

I stood up promptly. Perhaps, I thought boldly, he’s not only discreet but shy? I gave him a presumptuous helping hand. ‘Come, Mr Charles,’ I protested teasingly, ‘I know perfectly well you’re only going home to carry on working in comfort.’

He blushed. Mr Charles blushed! ‘Ah, there you’re wrong,’ he exclaimed. ‘On any other night you might well have been right, but tonight, as it happens, I have a dinner engagement.’ He got out his watch again, even though he had only just looked at it, and he added hastily, ‘And I’m running late.’

‘Have a lovely time,’ I said feebly, as he plunged out into the corridor.

Rob rang me from Glasgow that night, or perhaps it was the next. He sounded uncharacteristically low.

‘It’s fucking depressing, what’s happening up here,’ he said. ‘And I miss you.’

I told him cheerily there were three letters for him already and he asked me to read them to him. When I had finished, he asked, ‘And what are you up to? You’re not being unfaithful to me with Mrs Queripel, I hope?’

I went and had lunch with her that Sunday, since we had all day, and as the weather was brightening up I suggested a
short walk afterwards. It’s true, her neighbourhood isn’t very nice. You can imagine all sorts of sinister things taking place there after dark. But I thought the airing would do her good. We walked arm-in-arm to the corner shop, Mrs Q leaning on me far more heavily and obviously than she needed to, I think, so as to make it quite clear to the Indian shopkeeper and to everyone we passed on the way that she and I were a pair.

‘It was ironic really that we should have had to leave the coast for Leonard’s sake, when he was the one who had been so keen to settle there in the first place. I mean, I could take it or leave it in those days. But we were neither of us getting any younger, I suppose, and Leonard had started to suffer with his joints. He was collecting his pension already, even if I was still in my prime. To tell the truth, we never made a runaway success of the boarding-house. We neither of us had much of a head for figures and Leonard wanting to have everything of the best, with our means, didn’t help. I don’t rightly know where we went wrong, though. I like to think we offered too much for too little. All those cooked breakfasts! Theatrical people have such appetites, you know. Well, we kept our heads above water, but never much more. Then Leonard began to endure agonies with his joints. Osteoarthritis, they said it was. And there were incidents too.’

‘Incidents?’ asked Alison.

‘The doctor advised us to look for a drier spot, a more sheltered climate. He said to me in confidence that if Leonard didn’t move somewhere more agreeable to him, he would be bent double before he reached his three-score years and ten. Bent double; that fine upright man. Yes, incidents. I suppose you imagine nothing much ever happens in a boarding-house, do you? You’d be surprised. Over the years, I should think we had everything bar murder. Nothing to hush up, mind you, nothing to be ashamed of. But still, enough to put you off a place. In those last years, somehow, troubles seemed to come thick and fast. It was as if everyone who came to stay with us brought their troubles along with them. It got me down, and I think it affected Leonard too, although he
would never have let it show. We had quite a few members of the company to stay with us over the years, of course. Naturally, if they were in that part of the world, they came to us. We gave them preferential rates, you see, although of course they came for old time’s sake; the prices weren’t the only reason they came. It brought back mixed memories, revived old disagreements which would have been best forgotten. Clara Willoughby – did I ever mention her? She came. And others, who shall be nameless. And we had our regulars too, not theatre people, who used to come at their own time every year until, willy-nilly, they were more old acquaintances than guests. You couldn’t help getting involved. So, in a way, Dr Scott’s advice was a blessing in disguise; it meant we could sell up without admitting defeat. Leonard was such a proud man. He would never have admitted that things hadn’t worked out for us. Once he had an idea in his head, there was no shifting him. He would have stuck to his guns if it killed him. Leonard Queripel was a man of his word. But Dr Scott let us off the hook. We were leaving on doctor’s orders, you see.’

‘Wasn’t that infuriating sometimes?’ asked Alison, ‘Him always being so convinced he was right?’

Alicia gave her a sharp sideways look. She did often wonder if Alison swallowed everything which she told her. She seemed to, but there was no knowing. Out of the blue, she would ask such unnerving questions sometimes, and usually about Leonard.

‘Not in the least,’ said Alicia. ‘I looked up to him, remember. Where Leonard led, I followed.’

They sat in an awkward silence on their bench. They were at Shepherd’s Bush Green this week, amid the red fried chicken boxes and the yellow hamburger cartons, because Alison had come early again and said that a walk would do Alicia good. Alicia couldn’t imagine that sitting on this grubby bit of green amid the car exhausts and the bustling crowds of every nation was doing her much good, but by the time they got there, she had been too worn out from the walk to insist on turning straight for home. She watched a young but quite exhausted-looking black girl pushing a pram that seemed twice her size across the green and she remembered
that Pearl’s second eldest daughter, the one with two children, called Pauline, was getting married next weekend and she wondered what she had that might make a suitable wedding present for her. This thought went on for quite a long time through several of her drawers until she noticed that Alison, sitting beside her, hadn’t said a word for a while. She was looking as miserable as sin.

Alicia tapped Alison’s temple with her forefinger. ‘Penny for your thoughts.’

Alison grinned ruefully. ‘Guess who?’

‘Oh, him,’ said Alicia. ‘That good-for-nothing.’ She folded her hands on her lap and said lightly, ‘Still leading you a merry dance, is he?’

‘Oh no,’ said Alison. ‘Quite the contrary. He came back from Scotland on Thursday night and he was so happy to be back and so pleased to see me, but I don’t know what’s got into me, I just couldn’t make myself feel pleased at all.’

‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ said Alicia. ‘Why
should
you feel pleased to have a fellow back who goes gallivanting off on his own for weeks at a time and leaves you to stew?’

She was put out that Alison should giggle.

‘But it’s not like that,’ Alison objected. ‘A research trip to Glasgow is hardly gallivanting.’

‘Have it your own way,’ said Alicia sulkily. ‘But, mark my words, the scales will fall from your eyes one day. My Leonard never left me for a single night.’

‘But that’s not true!’ protested Alison. ‘You told me yourself; he used to go off on business trips sometimes, to book theatres and that kind of thing.’

‘Oh well, the odd night maybe,’ Alicia conceded grudgingly. ‘If you insist. But not as a regular thing, not just because it took his fancy.’

‘But Rob –’ Alison interrupted.

‘Let me finish,’ Alicia said strictly. ‘Leonard believed a marriage was for ever. Once you had entered into it, there was no messing about, no forgiveness for straying from the straight and narrow. You were chained together till the day you died.’ As soon as she had said this, she realized something sounded wrong, but before she had a chance to improve
on her wording, Alison asked slyly, ‘He was a bit of a tyrant though, wasn’t he?’