Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) (10 page)

Once she took Amy to the bed-sitting-room. Their meetings had begun to be farther afield than Laurel Walk. There were pictures to be looked at together,
and parks to be walked in – for Martha greatly loved the London parks, and knew perhaps a dozen more than Amy.

One afternoon, they wandered through Highgate cemetery where Amy had never been before. The whole area seemed to be crumbling, subsiding down the great hillside, and, below, lay London, misty, pearly, with the pale dome of St. Paul’s not yet entirely diminished by office blocks. Ivy had its stranglehold on broken gravestones. They were in a jungle of masonry and undergrowth.

“What would you like carved on your gravestone?” Martha asked.

After a little consideration, Amy said, “I think I should like ‘She meant well’. But I’m afraid I haven’t always.” Martha, who had her own answer ready, was not asked.

She had begun to take photographs while Amy wandered along paths, reading the gravestones where she could. The photographs were carefully done, like that one in the Topkapi gardens, in no slapdash or fidgety way. She waited patiently for a cloud to shift, for light to fall upon a statue of a mourning woman, clothed almost completely in dark ivy. But it was the last of the light for the afternoon; a smoky coldness held the air, and they turned and walked back – Amy suddenly wanting to run from the place – towards Martha’s home. They came to suburban roads about which Martha kept exclaiming with pleasure, and she described proudly all the pink may and the laburnums of early summer in what she regarded as her neighbourhood. “All so neat and tidy,” she said, “and
so happy, with the lawn-mowers going in the evenings.”

Her bed-sitting-room was at the back of a semidetached house with french windows giving onto a small lawn with trellis-work concealing dustbins, and pegs hanging on a clothes’ line. The house belonged to a widow, Mrs. Francis, who had once attended Martha’s lectures, but no longer did so, for familiarity had bred a little disillusion. She did not like Martha’s having sex under her roof. After all, she did not have it herself. She would clatter about in the kitchen next to Martha’s room when Simon Lomas was there, knowing perfectly well what was going on on the other side of the wall, and thinking it bad manners. She was amazed that Martha could come back from giving a lecture on Henry James, and then behave in such a way with one of her students. If only she could stop them, she would think, as she filled the kettle with a great rush of water and slammed it down on the stove. If she could put an end to it, she could take the tea-tray back to her own sitting-room and relax.

Amy knew nothing of this, as Martha did not, either, and this afternoon of her visit, Mrs Francis was out. Martha used the french windows as her front door, unlocked them, and pushed apart some peacock-blue curtains. This difficult colour was now seen to dominate the room, covering the divan bed and hanging over an alcove. The furniture was painted white. There were brown leaves in a pottery jar, and a tray laid ready for tea, with a plate of four large buns, two with currants, two iced. Amy was reminded of a schoolmistress’s room where she had once gone for extra coaching during the nineteen-thirties. It was all
surprisingly neat, considering Martha’s personal untidiness – clothes out of sight and the typewriter covered.

Martha lit the gas-fire and a gas-ring for the kettle, and Amy sat down in a wicker chair padded with peacock-blue cushions.

“I’ll show you round the rest of the house, while she’s out.” Martha said; but Amy shrank back in her chair and would not go.

“Well, you’ll never see it while die’s here,” Martha said. “She’s very secretive. I once thought we might become friends, but it seems not. Perhaps she was cross with me for picking some of her chrysanthemums, but I’m fond of flowers. Are you?” She asked this, as if it might be an exceptional trait. “I confess to taking them from parks, and once from a grave.”

“You’re not serious?”

“Oh, yes, I’m serious – just one or two gladioli from a sheaf. Not my favourite flower anyhow, and they were going off. No one saw me doing it, and what use were they to anyone else?”

The kettle boiled and tea was made. Amy was apprehensive about the buns, obviously bought especially for her, and she took the smallest, plainest-looking one, although they were all much of a size; the taste of it, like the room, carried her back to schooldays. She supposed she had not eaten a sticky currant bun since then.

It was one of Martha’s lipstick days, and the red came off onto white icing as she ate. She did so with a sort of vague hunger. Her lips when she finished were pale.

Two buns were left on the plate and when Amy refused another, she saw Martha give them a glance, and then look away, perhaps having decided that they would do for Simon when they came back after the lecture this evening.

“What is it tonight…what are you talking about?” Amy asked, having learned that she must ask questions.

“Faulkner. But I badly want to bring it round to Ivy Compton-Burnett.”

“You’ll have your work cut out, I should think. But now I must go. I must go,” Amy repeated emphatically, getting up at once from the wicker chair. “Gareth Lloyd is coming for a drink and I had almost forgotten.”

At that, Martha’s pale lips looked sulky. “I’ll go with you to the subway. I can as soon leave now as later. I won’t be a moment.” And, although Amy protested, Martha began to go back and forth, not hurrying much, tidying up the tea-things, putting away the buns, sorting her books by Faulkner, and other books with markers stuck in them, packing them all into that capacious bag, which still had its sickly smell of the bazaar.

“You’ll be much too early for your lecture,” Amy said, thinking ‘and I shall be much too late for Gareth.’

“Doesn’t matter. I can walk around a bit. There are some nice houses near there that I can look at.”

“But it’s so cold.”

“Cold I don’t feel.”

She began to comb her hair, without looking in a glass, and indeed Amy could see none. She also put
on a fresh dash of lipstick, not successfully.

And now for God’s sake what’s she up to? Amy wondered. It was Gareth’s day off and he would arrive at about six-thirty.

Martha had drawn back the curtains which mercifully hid her clothes, and she seemed to be considering the merits of one garment after another, and there were so few. Amy decided that she was purposely delaying her.

“I really shall have to go.”

“A minute only.” Martha took from a hanger a shapeless khaki sweater, which looked as if it had seen long war service somewhere. She pulled off the Turkish blouse she was wearing. In irritation, Amy watched, standing ready in her coat, her bag slung over her shoulder. Then she quickly put down her head, not pleased by the sight of unshaven armpits and the faint, yellowing patch of old sunburn above a cotton vest. Any improvement Martha had made by changing her clothes could only be for warmth.

Now she’ll have to comb her bloody hair again, Amy thought. And so Martha slowly combed her hair. Lipstick was now smudged, but she was not aware, and Amy decided to tell her later, to save being hindered now. At last Martha put on her raincoat, twisted the long scarf round her neck, turned out the gas-fire and was ready to go.

Back along the suburban streets with the admired privet hedges, the houses with their bowed and bayed windows, the skeleton laburnums which in spring would give such pleasure. Gardens were all in darkness now, but television lit up rooms, or shadows passed
behind drawn curtains. Sometimes lights sprang up in bedrooms.

At the underground station, Martha and Amy were going against the stream of people hurrying from work. Martha fought her way through, weaving and skipping aside, taking the right turnings, as if she had lived in London all her life. Amy, who hated tube trains and hardly ever went on one, tried to keep up. On the platform she stood pressed to the wall, against an advertisement for a plunge bra. She always felt terror as the train sped towards her, lest she should be sucked under in its onrush, or, that in some fit of madness, she might take it into her head to leap onto the electric rail. Martha stood balancing herself on the very edge of the platform, peering into the darkness of the tunnel, then turning to beckon to Amy, who went forward reluctantly, jostled by the out-pouring crowd.

Martha got off first. “Thank you for tea,” Amy called after her. Briefly, Martha waved.

Jolted backwards and forwards, Amy looked again at her watch. At the next station, she got out, ran along draughty passages, up into the open air, and took a taxi home.

Ernie Pounce had acted as host to Gareth, who in this house needed no such service. Having poured out whisky, put Malvern water to hand, Ernie lingered. Although Gareth was not his doctor, he was fair game all the same, as doctors had been when he worked behind the bar. In those days, sweeping a damp cloth
over the counter, leaning forward and lowering his voice, he would confide about headaches, palpitations, looseness of the bowels. “Not to talk shop,” he would say, feeling the atmosphere freeze. “Just wondered if there was a lot of it about.”

This evening, he spoke of his chest. He had suffered from it all his life. “Rotten luck,” Gareth felt obliged to say; for he was not in a pub now, on neutral ground, but a sort of guest in someone’s house. A tightness of the lungs, Ernie explained, had been playing him up since his day off. There had been dampness in the air when he had returned from the Jazz club. But his condition seemed to be of no interest to Gareth, who, in silence, leaned forward and took up his glass.

“I met a lady-wrestler,” Ernie said, abandoning his complaint for the time-being. “She was sitting there on her own, so I took the liberty of approaching her; not, of course, knowing she was what she was. A charming woman, North country, and big with it. Friendly. Well, I always say they are friendlier up there. Until you get to Scotland, and that’s a different matter. Of course, Wales is known for its warm welcome,” he added sycophantically.

“Is that so?” asked Gareth.

“Oh yes, doctor, well known. There’s a welcome in the hillsides and so on.”

Fearing that Ernie might break into song, Gareth said, “I’ve never met a lady-wrestler. In fact I didn’t know there were such things.”

“Yes, up North. This was my first, and I got a very different impression from what I’d been led to believe.
She was quite a lady, and full of conversation. We had a cheeseburger together after the session, and she was explaining how she keeps in strict training. No spirits or potatoes, plenty of steak. She had very high standards about fair play, too. ‘No nails,’ she said. ‘Hair-pulling or biting; but
no nails.’
She was quite explicit about that.”

“Interesting.”

“Yes, it is interesting to see how the other half lives. If you had told me when I set out on Tuesday that that very evening I would be having a snack with a lady-wrestler, well I think I would have said ‘Get away with you.’ All the same, my chest has paid for it.” He coughed a little and swayed, standing by, with a tray dangling from his hand. “She – Myra Formby her name … I must keep that in mind – ‘That’s a nasty old churchyard one you’ve got there,’ she said. She was rather the motherly type; advised inhaling Friar’s Balsam …” He waited for a moment, his head on one side ready for some sort of discussion which experience should have taught him was not likely to ensue. Gareth appeared to have no ideas about the merits or otherwise of Friar’s Balsam.

Then Ernie moved quickly towards the door, hearing Amy running up the front steps.

“Doctor’s been here nearly half-an-hour,” he said reprovingly, as she hurriedly took off her coat. “And there was a message from Mrs. James” (for so he always referred to Amy’s daughter-in-law) “wanting you to phone up as soon as poss.”

“I’m sorry. Gareth,” Amy said.

He was now standing with his back to the fire, smiling.

“Ernie’s kept me going.”

“All the same, I am sorry. I got caught in the rush hour. I’m sorry for people who have to do that every day.” But she easily brushed aside their plight and poured out a drink. “And now I’ve got to ring up Maggie. What on earth can she want?”

What Maggie wanted was a favour done. Amy’s heart sank at the preamble, sank still more at what followed. “Yes,” she kept saying, looking appalled. “Yes, of course.”

“What on earth’s a D. and C?” she asked, when she had put the receiver down. “I didn’t like to own to my ignorance.”

“Dilation and curettage. The womb. Why?”

“I never know those things. I don’t listen when women start talking like that. It’s Maggie. She has to go into hospital.”

“It’s nothing.”

“But that’s where you make your big mistake. I must go to look after the house while she’s away.”

“It’s the briefest possible operation.”

“Two hours will be too much for me. Too much by far of Isobel.”

“On the phone you sounded as if you were jumping at it.”

“She’s my daughter-in-law, remember.”

“If you have to do a thing, I agree it’s best to do it with a good grace.”

“Right out of the blue like that, a womb gone wrong at
her
age,” she grumbled, as if to herself.

Time is passing for her, he thought. And, as if she had guessed the very thing he was thinking, she said,
“Do you know, I wished for once that it wasn’t as late as it was. When I was keeping you waiting. Nowadays, I usually find it so much earlier than I can ever imagine, time going so slowly. Will you stay to supper? Ernie will be disappointed if you don’t.”