Falling (36 page)

‘He is in love with me.’

‘Darling, I’m sure he is. I expect he wants to marry you.’

‘As a matter of fact he does. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to marry anyone – else.’

‘Good! That’s something, anyway.’

‘You sound very disapproving – against him.’

‘I don’t know anything about him.’

‘Exactly! Well, I do. I know a very great deal. He’s not just a simple gardener’s son, you know.’

There was an uncomfortable pause, while Anna lit a cigarette.

‘Daisy, darling, I’m not being a snob about him. I’m probably being one about you. I don’t care a damn who his father was. I care about whether he’s good enough for
you. You are too like Jane Bennet. Of whom do you ever think ill? I’m the opposite: I think ill until otherwise convinced. So – tell me all about him.’

‘I don’t know where to start.’

‘Start with the most important things and work out from there.’

She had been going to begin with a biography, the wretched childhood, the childhood friendship that developed into his first love, but now she dropped all that. Anna could read the letter some
time. She said: ‘The most important thing about Henry is his capacity to love. He’s the first person in my life who seems to love me whatever I am – ill or well. He couldn’t
have done more for me after that fall, and he never presumed upon my helplessness. I mean he didn’t try to be with me all the time – you know, meals, et cetera. He stayed in the cottage
because I needed someone there. He got the doctor, he dressed my wounds, he used to take me to the lavatory, but somehow it was all easy and all right.’

She looked at Anna, to see if she was being understood, but all she could tell was that Anna was listening.

‘The second thing – important thing – is that although he really has had a most difficult, sad life, he seems to be utterly without resentment. I know that if some of the
things that have happened to him, had happened to me, I should be a mass of bitterness. He isn’t that at all.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Oh, he discovered that the girl he loved first – Daphne – was actually his half-sister. He wasn’t even given the chance to say goodbye to her. Daphne’s mother
simply packed him off to another job with the blackmail that if he didn’t take it he would get no other reference from her.’

‘Do you mean that the girl’s mother had had an affair with Mr Kent’s father?’

‘I know it sounds like a nineteenth-century novel—’

‘More like a twentieth-century one.’

‘Well, whatever you think it is, it’s what happened.’

‘And then what?’

‘Oh, then he went to a place near Tonbridge in Kent.’

There was a pause. Anna lit another cigarette.

‘That’s not
all?’

‘Heavens, no! There’s masses more. By then the war had started, and when he was eighteen, he was called up. The old couple who owned the place had no money, he said, to keep it up.
The head gardener was well past retiring age, but they were never going to afford another one. He went back there to get a reference from them but they’d gone. The husband had died and the
widow had sold the place to a couple from London. It had all been done up, and he went to see if they’d give him a job and they did, and this time he was the head gardener, with a cottage and
a boy to help him. He said they were the opposite of the last owners, had a lot of money – the man was a banker and they wanted to turn the house and garden into a showplace. They put in a
huge S-shaped swimming pool and—’

‘But what
happened
?’

‘Oh, what happened was that he fell in love with their daughter. She – her name was Charley – was already married to a colleague of the father, who more or less bludgeoned her
into it when she was too young to face up to him. Henry said she was paralysingly shy and her father had always bullied her and the man married her because she was an heiress. He was horrible to
her, and she used to come home for weekends when he went abroad. Henry got to know her that way. He came across her crying in the swimming pool very early in the morning and he said that, although
she never talked about it, he had the distinct impression that she was trying to get up the courage to drown herself. He took her back to his cottage and fried her a breakfast and got her to tell
him about herself. That was how it began. Eighteen months later she ran away with him. Her husband refused to divorce her, and her father cut her off – would have nothing to do with her.
Henry said they were always short of money, but that they were so happy it didn’t matter in the least. They had a tiny basement flat in Camden Town, and he worked as a jobbing gardener and
started designing people’s small London gardens. She died very suddenly, a heart-attack. They had only been together for a few months, not quite a year. He wrote to the parents, but they did
not even come to the funeral. That’s what happened.’

‘Goodness!’

He adored her. He said the only comfort he could take was that he
knew
she had been so happy during those months.’

‘This was all a long time ago.’ Anna’s voice was gentle; she was well aware of Daisy’s tender heart.

‘Yes. I suppose it was. But he said it was the most awful thing in his life.’

‘Here’s a nasty old paper handkerchief.’

‘Anyway,’ Daisy said, when she had finished blowing her nose, ‘he did marry someone else in the end. I don’t know how long after Charley but he said it was some kind of
rebound. It was a complete flop. They’re supposed to be having a divorce. I don’t think that’s making him particularly sad. He just sort of wrote it off. But you see what I mean
about not being resentful.’

‘Mm. Like some coffee?’

‘I would. Let me wash up.’

‘No. You can bring things out to me.’ This was all ritual. Anna’s kitchen would hold only one person at a time.

When they were back in the two battered armchairs with coffee, Daisy said, ‘So now I’ve told you.’

‘Yes.’

‘You sound as though you disapprove.’

‘No. I mean I don’t.’

‘But – what?’

‘I just want things to be all right for you.’

‘They are. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this before.’

‘But you don’t want to marry him.’

‘I told you I didn’t.’

‘So what do you envisage?’

‘I don’t – much. I’m just enjoying each day. And night,’ she added, and felt herself start to blush.

‘May I come some time and meet him? Not as your gardener, I mean.’

‘Soon – yes. We haven’t been with people at all.’

‘You haven’t met any of his friends?’

‘No. I don’t think he has any where we are. I do want you to meet him,’ she added, ‘I didn’t mean to sound meagre about it.’

Afterwards, in bed in Anna’s little spare room, she wondered why the idea of other people meeting Henry made her feel so defensive. Was she afraid that Anna would not like him? Or
wouldn’t like him for the wrong reasons? She sensed that Henry was of the kind who was at his best when he was alone with one other person: she could not easily imagine him in company.

‘You’ve had your hair cut!’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ve been shopping, I see.’ He took the carrierbags from her as they walked along the platform.

‘It seemed silly not to. The sales have begun. I couldn’t resist them.’

‘And there’s no sign of the tooth?’ he said, when they were in the car.

‘If I bare my teeth, there is. He didn’t have to take it out. Such a relief!’

‘May I kiss you?’

She turned towards him.

‘Oh, my darling love! I tortured myself last night with the idea you might not return.’

‘I would never do that! Just
disappear.’
She was faintly shocked that he could fear such a thing.

‘Oh, well. One gets to imagining things on one’s own. Shall we stop for a drink at that pub near the river?’

‘Isn’t it rather early?’

‘It’s after six. A celebration: your homecoming.’

They sat at what had become their table because this was their third visit. The garden was nearly empty, although the long table was laid for a dinner. Fairy-lights – unlit – were
strung through the lower branches of the trees or pinned to the top of the trellis that edged the garden. Apart from a few unspeakable roses (Henry’s description), nothing much was grown, and
the grass was worn rather than mown. It was the kind of place that needed furnishing with people, but apart from themselves and the pub’s cat – an opulent ginger who was walking
petulantly on a long table laid for supper – there was only one other couple with a baby in a pram.

They sat silently for a while. She was very much aware that he was watching her, and her pleasure at seeing him was blurred by some sudden anxiety about how she should tell him that Anna was
coming to stay.

‘What’s up, sweetheart?’

She turned to find him regarding her intently.

‘You’ve told your friend Anna about us, yes?’

‘Yes. I was going to tell you all about that when we got home.’

‘Is it bad news, then?’

‘Of course not. She was a bit surprised – that’s all.’

‘I expect she’s against me. I’m not good enough for you, something of that kind.’

He was so on the mark that she felt herself starting to blush.

‘It’s not that, exactly,’ she began, and then – surprisingly – heard herself saying, ‘but it’s not easy to explain how one is in love.’

His expression changed. He took her hand and kissed it. ‘Oh, my dearest love! Of course we’ll wait until we’re home.’

When they were back he led her, her suitcase in one of his hands, her hand in the other, straight upstairs where he pushed her back on to the bed and, holding her shoulders so hard that she
could not move her arms, he began to kiss her, stopping twice to say, ‘Can you tell
me
how you love me, my darling? Can you?’ But when she tried to speak he stopped her.

He made love to her until she was too weak to move or to speak – past all urgency, all streaming, until she felt like an empty seashell, as though if he gathered her up and listened to her
he would hear the echoes of past loving, the ceaseless waves with their peaks and their troughs that were now imprinted in her. Then there was one last time and even in the stupor of exhaustion she
sensed that he had at last got what he wanted.

She must have fallen instantly asleep, because the next thing she was aware of was the room full of warm grey dusk, turned to a darker violet where the window reflected the sky. He was not
there, but she could hear him moving below. She got out of bed – she was still tired and her limbs felt stiff – and crept quietly to the bathroom; she did not want him to see her naked,
for some reason. Indeed, she thought, as she pulled her dressing-gown round her, she was afraid to see him at all – felt much as she had that first morning when she had tried to take the car
and escape from having to face him. And yet this had nothing to do with the absence of love; rather, it felt as though she was so much in thrall to him now that she would not know how to find any
separate self. How could she live this violently satiating life with him and be with other people?

But it would not always be like that, she thought; familiarity would breed something more companionable, or of a gentler nature, more acceptable to outsiders. His company, his averred and
practised love for her, had made for a delicious intimacy. But intimacy
a deux
was very different from intimacy in front of other people – even friends: or perhaps especially friends.
As she laved her face in very hot water, touching her bruised lips with a light finger, and was continuing this comforting appraisal, she was brought up sharp by the recognition of his lust –
hitherto held within comparatively stringent bounds. He had always, until now, wanted her because he loved her so much. But that last time had seemed different – she had felt anonymous. When
he called her from the kitchen, and she nerved herself to go down to him, there he was, bustling about, as gentle, as practical, as tender as before. He had warmed the pie (which he had not eaten
the night before, he said, because he had been to the pub), and he had made her a special drink. The kitchen table was laid for supper.

‘Sit down, darling, and try this.’

‘I’d like some water first.’

He set the glass down beside her and then touched the back of her neck with fingers cold from the ice in the glass.

‘I know you feel shy,’ he said, ‘but you’re quite safe. Nothing has changed.’ And she saw that he was smiling at her, almost with benevolence.

She said how good the drink was – a vodkatini, perfectly made – and he replied that he had worked in a bar for three months, on a cruise ship.

He was full of small surprises of this nature that cropped up often during their bedtime stories as he called them. Now, because she didn’t want to talk about Anna coming to stay, she
asked him about the ship.

‘Have you ever been on a cruise?’

She hadn’t.

‘Well, some of them are wonderful holidays, especially for the older passengers, and some of them are probably OK for the crew as well. But this was a downmarket affair: the ship was
really too old for the job. She was filthy, overcrowded with as many passengers as they could squeeze into the small cabins. The tourist class had communal washing facilities, and as the toilets
were almost always blocked, the floor was awash with sewage. The crew’s quarters were bug-ridden and the food was – well, if you saw the kitchens you wouldn’t have wanted the
passengers’
food and we got what they couldn’t stomach, plus a lot of potatoes and macaroni. The captain was drunk a good deal of the time and left everything to his first
officer, who was much younger and a real bastard. I knew nothing about cruise ships when I signed on, or I’d have chosen better.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘The Mediterranean. I thought I’d see a bit of the world, but of course I didn’t. You don’t get shore leave on a three-months’ stint. Don’t look so worried,
darling, it did me no harm. Working one of the bars was a soft option, anyway, compared to being a steward or a waiter.’