Getting It Right (43 page)

‘He is a beautiful child.’

‘I can’t see anything wrong with him,’ she said.

‘What do you do in the evenings then?’ he asked casually, while he was looking to see how the pies were doing.

‘Oh, there’s always plenty to
do
– sometimes I have a job to get through it all. I do all the ironing, you see, and most of the washing, and I make a lot of
Andrew’s clothes.

At weekends I do the cooking to give my mum a let up, and on Saturday mornings I do the big shop at Sainsbury’s. But evenings . . . I go to bed quite early. When I started as a junior I
thought my feet would never hold out. I did used to find books to read, I told you, but I never found anything as good as the one you gave me.’

‘Pies not ready,’ he reported. He had been going to ask her about her friends, but now he had the feeling that there were none, and thought it better not to ask. He would hate people
asking him about his friends, if it weren’t for Harry.

‘Mrs Hodgson-whatever-her-name-is has written other books, I saw. Are they all good too? She’s got a name like a client, hasn’t she? You know, double-barrelled, they call
it.’

‘Hodgson-Burnett. Her best-known book is called
Little Lord Fauntleroy.
’

‘Go on! What a name! Is it as good?’

‘Not to me. It’s a sob story. Sugary. Sentimental,’ he added.

‘All right. Perhaps I’d better read another author.’

‘There’s plenty to choose from. Tell you what. We’ll go and listen to some Mozart while the pies are getting ready.’

‘All right.’

She stumped upstairs after him. At least he’d made his bed, he remembered, although this time there were no records on it.

But she didn’t seem to mind about the records. She sat on the chaise-longue while he went through his catalogue, trying to find the right piece to start her with. In the end he selected a
horn concerto – with Tuckwell playing. She listened very quietly and, when it was over, said: ‘He’s posh, isn’t he? Compared to the other man. Chopin. I like the main person
playing.’

‘That was a French horn. It was a concerto.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Well – it’s a piece of music usually written in three movements, for a solo instrument, with an orchestra.’

‘And French horns do the solo part?’

‘No: a concerto can be written for all kinds of instruments. Mozart wrote a lot of piano concertos, and some for the violin as well. But you can have them with almost any instrument:
harps, trumpets, oboes, clarinets, violas, ‘cellos and so on.’

‘If I went to a concert, I’d see what the instruments were, wouldn’t I? I’m not fishing to get you to take me to one,’ she said starting to blush, ‘but
I’d really like to know.’

‘We will go to a concert, but I’d like you to hear more music first. Concerts go on for rather a long time, and I don’t want you to get bored.’

He put the record away and suggested that they go and eat their pies.

Eating them brought up the subject of his mother, and he felt he had to warn Jenny that, once his mother was back, there couldn’t be any more evenings like this one.

‘Doesn’t she let you have people then?’

‘It’s not exactly a question of let.’

‘What is it, then?’ She had her elbows on the table, her chin propped in her hands; he saw that she was asking with genuine concern rather than curiosity – none the less he
felt obscurely irritated.

‘Oh it’s all kinds of things. I don’t think mothers are particularly quick at recognizing that one wants to lead some sort of independent life. She’d fuss a lot –
it wouldn’t be the same.’

‘And I suppose
you
want to get out, but like most people, you can’t find anywhere to go. Prices are terrible nowadays, and people expect you to buy places, don’t
they?’

‘That’s it. I’d go if I could find the right place.’

‘That
is
bad luck.’

They had their bananas and cream. ‘Andrew’s
mad
about bananas. Sardines and bananas – he’d live on them if I let him.’

Later, she said: ‘I should thank my lucky stars, shouldn’t I, having a place like I have to live. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for my
mum.’

‘Would she mind you having people to supper?’

‘She wouldn’t mind. I just haven’t done it. I sort of kept away from the people I’d known at school and that, when I had Andrew. Some people said some horrible things. I
went off people rather and Andrew takes up so much of my time that what with work and him I don’t seem to have any over. I’ve told you all that, though, haven’t I? But I
want
to have more things in my life now, because if I don’t, I’ll be a terrible bore for Andrew, and when he’s older he won’t have any time for me.’

‘You mustn’t do everything you do only for Andrew,’ he said gently. ‘You must do some things for yourself, as well. Like some coffee?’

‘Please. I’ll do the washing-up while you make it.’

As she was drying their plates, she said: ‘Do you only like highbrow things?’

‘No. And it’s difficult to say what is highbrow really.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean that what’s highbrow for one person may not be that at all for someone else.’

‘Oh,’ she said politely. Then she said: ‘Is Fred Astaire highbrow?’

‘What made you think of him?’

‘Well, I thought that, as his movies are all old ones and they keep on happening, he might be. I think he’s marvellous.’

‘So do I.’

‘There was a film club I belonged to when I was seventeen.

They showed a whole lot of his films. I loved the songs too. You could remember them easily afterwards. But perhaps,’ she said, after thinking about it, ‘perhaps Art isn’t
meant to be easy. Perhaps it’s meant to be hard to understand. Like Shakespeare. We did him in school and I didn’t understand him at all. Well – not much. We did a play called
Julius Caesar.
I couldn’t get the point at all.’ She looked at him challengingly: ‘But I expect you’d say it was good.’

‘I think you might feel differently about some of the other plays. I don’t think that was a very good one to start with.’

‘Do you know them all, then?’

‘I’ve read them all. I’ve hardly seen any of them.’ Harry didn’t care so much for the theatre, and he didn’t enjoy going by himself, so much.

They went back upstairs and she asked if she could look at his books while he was choosing a record. He had just decided that it had better be more Mozart – one composer per evening seemed
enough – when the telephone rang. He shut the door of his room after him, because he thought it would probably be his mother, and he didn’t want Jenny to hear him talking to her.

It was Harry. ‘I just wondered whether you were at all at a loose end.’

‘Sorry, I’ve got someone here.’

‘Oh. Well, the best of luck to you. Winthrop’s spending the evening with Joan, so I just wondered.’

‘Wondered, what?’

‘Whether you would be free. Never mind. See you soon.’ He rang off.

Gavin stood in the hall a moment, wondering why Winthrop should be doing that, when he, Gavin, had not even managed to speak to Joan. It seemed odd, to him, odd, and vaguely humiliating.

Jenny was sitting on the floor by the bookcase.

‘I’ve found a book called
Jane Eyre
that looks quite interesting. I picked it because it was a girl’s name, but the beginning seems good. Shall I read that?’

‘Why not? Jolly good choice,’ he added absently. He was trying to remember how well Winthrop
knew
Joan, but he couldn’t get any further than supposing that it was
because he
did
know her that they’d all gone to the party in the first place.

He’d decided to play Jenny part of a piano concerto, and had picked the first movement of K.491. He explained what it was. She got up from the floor and went at once to the chaise-longue,
took off her sandals and lay down, as though this was the agreed way to listen to music. Not a bad idea, either, he thought, and cast himself on his bed. He came to with a start – sat up to
realize that the music had stopped, which must mean that they’d had the whole concerto, two and a bit movements of which he hadn’t heard. He looked across to the chaise-longue.

Jenny lay motionless, and when he went over to her he saw that she, too, had fallen fast asleep. Quite funny, really: if it had been just her, he honestly recognized, he would have written her
off as not interested, but he couldn’t, could he, because he knew
he
was interested, and yet he’d fallen asleep. He looked at her again. She looked rather waif-like; very small
and vulnerable, even younger. She had taken off her specs and she lay with one side of her face resting in the palm of her hand, her breathing light, and even. His heart lurched; he wanted to pick
her up and hold her in his arms; he felt extraordinary. The feeling went; he couldn’t possibly do that anyway. How would he feel if he was asleep and someone suddenly grabbed him? And she was
frightened of people, and he knew what
that
was like, he had no intention of frightening her. The feeling had completely gone now, leaving him with a sense of unreality – it occurred
to him that he’d just imagined feeling it. He walked away from her and called her name while he was taking the record off the turntable.

She was apologetic and embarrassed at having slept. ‘I’m not used to staying up so late,’ she said. He told her that he’d dropped off as well.

In the car, she said: ‘We haven’t done poetry.’

‘No. Well, we’ll have to do something about that. But we haven’t
done
anybody really. I’m just introducing you – starting you off. Poor old Mozart
didn’t have a fair chance this evening. Mozart wrote over six hundred works – all kinds of things – including opera. You haven’t heard any opera yet.’

‘When is your mother coming back?’

‘She may come on Monday.’

‘Oh, I see.’

He glanced at her; she was staring straight ahead, but he had the impression of overwhelming disappointment. He said:

‘Tell you what. We’ll have an intensive course till then. I’m free except for probably going to see someone one evening. And, when she does come back, we’ll think of some
other way.’ He couldn’t think how, but he couldn’t bear for her to feel let down.

As she got out of the car, she said: ‘Gavin, I really appreciate all the trouble you’re taking. All this driving and giving me meals and not laughing at me because I don’t know
things. I really appreciate it.’ And, before he could say anything back, she had slipped out and was running up the path to her house. He watched her in, waited for her to turn and wave as
she had done before, and then waited for the door to shut. ‘Just seeing her safely in,’ he said to himself. He drove home with the windows down: the damp night air was amazingly
exhilarating.

In many, if not all, ways, that Friday morning was like any old weekday. He worked hard at the salon: the boiler was back in business but, on the other hand, it was a
particularly busy Friday. He made several attempts to ring Joan and got put off by the Filipinos; although one of them once admitted that Madam
in
. He told Jenny that he would be free in
the evening, and she said that she’d told her mother that they only had a few more days before
his
mother returned, and that her mum had said, ‘Make the most of them.’ He
had faint feelings of discomfort at the idea of Jenny discussing his relationship with his mother: it would almost certainly show him up, he felt, in a rather weak and unfavourable light. Most
people would think it a bit odd, surely, if, at the age of thirty-one, one’s social life was circumscribed by one’s mother? He tried taking refuge in the fact that she couldn’t
know the whole story, but then honesty shoved the knife in: the whole story would simply show him up in a worse light than ever. Mrs Lamb had never
tried
to keep him at home, he had just
gone on being there; laziness and fear of the unknown had combined to keep him a comfortable prisoner of her régime. Of course, she
liked
having him, but he could not recall a
single thing that she had ever said or done which could be interpreted as pressure to make him stay. Which was not at all to say that she wouldn’t kick up now if, after thirty-one years, he
said he was going. She was used to him being there, and she had a profound distrust of all change. But he really couldn’t stay in a place where he couldn’t even have the odd girl in to
supper and to play his gramophone. Supposing he didn’t leave – simply said that that was what (from time to time) he was going to do? This was when the first of many imaginary
conversations with his mother began.

He: Oh – by the way, Mum, I’m having the odd girl in to supper from time to time . . .

Mum: (interrupting – you bet) You’re what? What girl?

What do you mean ‘odd girl’? Is there something funny about her? It doesn’t sound very nice to me. However did you meet someone like that?

He: I didn’t mean that I
was
going to do that, Mum. I simply meant that,
if
I meet a girl, that’s what I might want to do.

Mum: If every single time you met somebody you brought them back here the place would be like Piccadilly Circus.

He: It wouldn’t, Mum, I’d never bring them all back at once.

Mum: There you go. One minute it’s one girl, and the next it’s dear knows how many. What do you want to bring them back for?

He: We want to play the gramophone, Mum.

Mum: Play the gramophone? That’s your
room
the gramophone’s in. That sort of girl who’ll go rampaging up there in that room with your bed in it will not be at all a
nice type of girl, I can tell you . . .

Even this first conversation showed him that he was much better at putting his mother’s point of view than he was at putting his own; however, there it was. One of the things about his
mother’s points of view upon anything was that they were definitely not subject to change. He walked out of the pub where he had been having a sandwich, and then rather aimlessly down the
street to nowhere in particular. What he was actually thinking about, he discovered, was
how
he was going to introduce Jenny to poetry – so that she would think it neither soppy, nor
incomprehensible, nor dull. ‘We haven’t
done
poetry’ indeed! He must also disabuse her of the idea that he knew everything: although he had to admit that, being the
person in the know, relatively speaking, was an intoxicating change. He probably liked having her for these evenings for reasons of vanity.