Casting Off (39 page)

‘It’s like the fogs before the war!’

‘Can you watch out for the left-hand kerb – and any more parked cars. Wind your window down.’

She did, and the acrid smell filled the car. ‘I can only see about three or four feet ahead,’ she said, ‘so do slow down.’

The occasional street-lights had become dull yellow blurs against which the fog writhed and swirled as though it was being blown upon them, although there seemed to be no wind. After a few minutes, he pulled up against the kerb. ‘I want a fag,’ he said. ‘And also, I’ve got to think what would be the best route. It’s going to take us hours to get home.’

‘We may come out of it. Can I have one?’

‘Of course. Wind the window up, darling, while we’re thinking – there’s no point in you getting cold.’

‘I suppose we could try to get to the Duchy’s,’ he said, when he had lit their cigarettes. ‘It’s far nearer. We haven’t got a torch, by any chance, have we?’

‘I’m afraid I let Jules have it for Torchlight Ogres.’

‘Or we could get down to Edgware Road and then straight to Marble Arch and along Bayswater Road. That’s all main roads. There’ll be more light and there won’t be parked cars.’

‘Won’t the fog be worse by the Park?’

‘Probably. Well, we could go via Carlton Hill and see if—’

At this moment there was a thud behind them. The car rocked.

‘Oh, Lord! Stay put, darling.’

He got out of the car and a woman’s voice said, ‘I’m most terribly sorry. I was trying to follow the kerb and I simply didn’t see you.’ She sounded old and frightened.

‘It can’t be helped,’ he said. ‘Better have a look at the damage, though.’

‘I’ve got a torch.’

She went back to her car and returned with it. His tail-lights were both smashed, which meant, he thought gloomily, that more people than ever would run into him.

‘I really am so sorry,’ the woman was saying. From the flickering torch he saw that she had white hair and was wearing evening dress. ‘If you’ll wait a second. I’ll give you my name and address.’

He followed her to the open door of her car and saw that she had a passenger, a man who seemed to be deeply asleep but, as the woman reached for her handbag, he lifted his chin from his chest and, enunciating with exaggerated care, said, ‘Bloody women drivers!’ and seemed instantly to resume sleep.

‘My husband has slightly overdone it,’ the woman said – apologies seemed her strong suit. She handed him the scrap of paper on which she had been writing.

‘Have you got far to go?’ He had begun to feel sorry for her.

‘Oh, no, not far, thank goodness. We’ve got a flat in Abbey Road. The night porter will help with him. What about you?’

‘We’ll be all right.’ He did not want to journey in tandem with her and, to his relief, this feeling seemed mutual.

‘I shall be on my way,’ she said. ‘But please get in touch with me in the morning about the damage.’

It wasn’t until she’d got into her car, manoeuvred round him and driven slowly off that he realized he still had her torch.

Zoë was shivering. ‘Let’s go on. I keep feeling that more people will hit us.’

He said that they’d better find a side road, park the car and walk.

‘All the way home?’

‘No, to the Duchy’s. Or Villy, I suppose – she’s even nearer.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to drive, if it’s not far?’

He explained about the lack of tail-lights. ‘If people do hit us it’ll be our fault. And it’s more likely to happen.’

They set off.

‘Was she on her own, poor woman?’

‘No. She had a drunken husband.’

‘I’m glad you’re not drunk.’

‘So am I.’

The fog seemed, if anything, worse.

‘Why don’t I get out with the torch and walk in front of you?’

‘We could try it. For God’s sake don’t go too far ahead of me. We’re looking for any left-hand turning. OK?’

It was no good. He kept losing her and then being afraid that he’d run into her or into something else while he was concentrating on trying to see where she was. He stopped the car and lost her. He hooted, and after a bit she came back to him. ‘It’s no go. I keep losing you.’

So she got back into the car and they crawled on.

‘There must be a turning soon.’

Eventually, of course, there was. He turned, drove a few yards down and stopped. The silence, when he stopped the engine, was eerie.

‘Right. You’ve got awful shoes for walking, poor girl.’

‘It’s all right if you don’t go too fast.’

‘No chance of that. Thank God for the lady’s torch.’

‘What good will it do? It’s very faint – the battery’s nearly dead.’

‘It means we can read the street names if we can find them.’ He linked his arm in hers. ‘Keep with me.’

They struck off for the opposite side of the road, and when they found the wall of someone’s front garden, turned right. ‘The name will be somewhere on the corner. We’ll keep the torch just for that. Priory Road. That’s something.’

‘How far have we got to go?’

‘I should think not more than half a mile. But at least we’ll know where the car is tomorrow.’

By now they were both cold: the air was raw and they could not walk fast enough to get warm. It took them over an hour to reach the corner of Clifton Hill.

‘What’s the time?’

‘It’s – twenty past one. I think it had better be Villy. She’s nearer.’

They crossed Abbey Road, and then couldn’t find the road.

‘It’s a crossroads. It must be here!’

‘We think we walk straight, and we don’t. That’s the trouble.’

After some fumbling to and fro they found it. ‘Villy is on the left-hand side about half-way up.’

‘It’s not like the other houses, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.’

‘We can’t see the other houses so I don’t see how that helps.’

They did find it in the end, got up the path and rang the bell. At the second ring, they saw a light come on upstairs and then heard Villy’s voice from an open window above. ‘Who is it?’

She was very good about it. Got them hot toddies and made Zoë take off her shoes and ruined stockings and got her some slippers. She gave them her bed and said she would sleep in Lydia’s room. ‘I hope your dinner party was worth it,’ she said at one point, and Zoë said, oh, no, it had been rather dull. She gave Zoë a nightgown, and apologized, her voice alive with meaning, about not having any pyjamas.

Villy’s bedroom was very cold and bare – a comfortless place – but they climbed into bed with relief. He thought how difficult Zoë would once have been throughout the evening’s ordeal, and how good she was now and, feeling a surge of affection for her, pulled her towards him. Instantly he felt her twitch away. ‘Just affection,’ he said. He felt suddenly hopeless.

‘It’s my heels. You touched them and I’ve got enormous blisters on both of them. Well, not even blisters – they’re raw.’

‘Oh, darling! And you never once complained. You are a good, brave girl.’

‘I don’t think I’m good, but I was a bit brave. I couldn’t have walked much further.’ She put her head on his shoulder and moved so that he could get his arm under her. ‘It’s over now, anyway.’ Then she said, ‘I suppose that it’s what adventures in real life usually are, isn’t it? Nerve-racking and dull at the same time—’

‘And better to look back on afterwards,’ he finished. There was a silence while he thought that that wasn’t true, that sometimes the opposite was the case.

She said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t think that that is always true.’

‘Nothing is.’

‘Is what?’

‘Always true. End of conversation. Go to sleep now.’

She gave a little high-pitched yawn and turned on her side and, minutes later, he knew that she slept.

Things are getting better, he thought.

The next morning the fog, though it had by no means lifted, was far less dense: buses were running, cars had their headlights on and people wore scarves over their mouths. He sent Zoë home in a taxi, retrieved the car and plodded through his day, which consisted of a visit to the dentist, a meeting with two architects, who did not agree with one another, a visit to the garage to get his tail-lights replaced, and lunch with two brothers who ran one of the largest building firms in the country. The brothers said ‘we’ the whole time, and never disagreed with one another. Unlike us, he thought grimly. It wasn’t that he didn’t get on with Edward and Hugh. It was Edward and Hugh with each other. And they kept on asking him what he thought but, really, each of them simply wanted him to agree with them.

When he eventually got to the office – late because of the car – he found that his secretary had flu. After the meeting with the architects he really needed to dictate a report while the facts were fresh in his mind, so he rang through to Hugh to see if he could borrow his. He could, in half an hour.

Rupert had taken over Edward’s old office; he had done nothing about it but, then, there had been nothing very personal to move from his last one. It was almost as though he wasn’t admitting to himself that this was his permanent place of work. But it would be, of course: he had Jules to educate – not to mention Neville, who might be going to university. And there was Zoë, of course. He wondered briefly whether all life consisted of parents having to sacrifice any notion of doing what they wanted in order to bring up children, who would bring up children and sacrifice any notion of doing what they wanted. By the time he’d retired with a pension, he would be too old for painting to be anything but a hobby. He envied Archie, who was so free of obligation and who didn’t seem to know how lucky he was. He knew that these thoughts surfaced largely from lack of sleep, and it was not the kind of day to think about Archie anyway because he knew that whatever he thought would make him even more uncomfortable with him when they next met than he was already.

He was quite glad when there was a soft knock on his door and Hugh’s secretary arrived. She was small, so small that it must be the first thing anyone ever noticed about her. Her hair was very pale, absolutely straight and cut with a fringe, which made her look like a page boy. She said good morning in a subdued way, as though she was not sure whether she was meant to speak. He asked her name.

‘Jemima Leaf.’

‘Right, Miss Leaf. Perhaps you’d sit on that chair and then, if you want to, you can use the desk.’

The session went easily. He sensed that she was nervous, so he said stop him if he dictated too fast for her and she said thank you, she would. When he had finished, she said, ‘I hope it’s all right to ask, but how do you spell’ – she searched her notes – ‘pinkerdo?’

‘P-y-i-n-k-a-d-o.’

‘Thank you. And Jarrah is J-a-r-r-a-h?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Will it be all right if I type this in the afternoon?’

‘Fine. It’s very good of you to help me out.’

She got to her feet, which he noticed were shod in leather brogues, polished till they looked like brown bottle glass. ‘Is there anything else you want?’

‘I don’t think so. If Miss Marriott goes on being ill, it might be a help to have you do my letters tomorrow.’

‘As long as your brother doesn’t want me.’

‘Don’t worry, Miss Leaf, I’ll ask him first.’

‘Actually, I’m Mrs Leaf.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

Her very pale face went slightly pink. ‘It doesn’t really matter,’ she said. ‘I’m a widow.’

She was gone before he could say anything.

He got through lunch in plenty of time for the dentist. Mr Yapp had looked after the family’s teeth for many years. He was getting on now, and Rupert hoped that he would soon retire and leave the way clear for someone younger, as Mr Yapp was of the old school who equated hurting patients with being thorough.

‘Two of your fillings are leaking badly,’ he said, in a tone that implied Rupert had been careless with them.

‘Oh dear.’

‘But we can put that straight. We’ll just gouge out the infected matter and replace it. Pity about your father.’

‘Yes.’

‘Still, we can’t all live for ever.’ This time the implication was that he intended to, which added to Rupert’s general apprehension. ‘Just a little injection.’

Mr Yapp’s injections nearly always hurt so much that anything after them seemed trivial. Today proved an unfortunate exception. The injection made him want to shy like a horse, but it was nothing to what followed. After much drilling and picking with a sharp little hook, Mr Yapp said that things had gone further than he had thought and that quite a bit of decay had set in. Rupert tried hard not to look anguished in case that provoked another injection, but he got one just the same. ‘That ought to hit the spot,’ Mr Yapp said, ‘I always forget what a low threshold for pain you seem to have,’ as he started drilling again.

An hour later Rupert left, feeling sweaty with a face that felt like a rubber ball, resolving for the hundredth time never to go back to Mr Yapp. By the time he got back to the office, the injections were wearing off, replaced by a throbbing jaw and the beginnings of a headache. When Mrs Leaf arrived with the typing, he asked her if she could get him a cup of tea.

‘Yes, of course. There are two or three messages for you. I’ve put them on your desk.’ He considered asking her for some of his brother’s headache dope, but Hugh was touchy about people knowing he took it, and Mrs Leaf was new and might not yet know about Hugh’s headaches. However, when she brought the tea, there were two aspirins sitting in the saucer. When he thanked her she said, ‘I thought you might need them. Someone rang to check the time of an appointment with you tomorrow, and I saw in your diary that you were at the dentist.’

‘Jolly thoughtful.’

At least, he thought when he was alone again, he had his teeth – unlike poor old Edward – although they had got into a pretty poor state after all that time in France, when going to a dentist had been out of the question. Once, when he’d had a really frightful toothache for nearly a week, Miche had pulled out the tooth with pliers. God, it had hurt! She’d been really tough with him about it. Looking back on it, he recognized her courage and physical strength and, above all, her determination. Once she had decided that something must be done, she immediately set about doing it. She had made him sit with his head against a high-backed chair, and then she had fastened a bandage round his forehead and tied it behind the chairback, had told him to grip the arms and keep still. In two goes she had it out, root and all. He realized that he was able now to think about this without the surges of painful longing for her that once had accompanied any thought about her. Perhaps he was letting go – casting her off? He felt regret – and relief.