Good Behaviour (25 page)

‘Well, and how are you?’ Mrs Harty took the box from me as if it were a Christmas present. ‘And the Major, poor man? A little
better … ah, please God.’

I stood with my back to the dirty blazing stove; the warmth of the room was sublime.

Mrs Harty put the parcel of my dresses down on top of a stuffed fox in his glass-fronted box. Fashion magazines cascaded past
his improbable glass button eyes. It was a doll-like fox and I suppose it was company for her. So was the stuffed badger,
curled and nailed on a board where she rested her club foot while the other worked the treadle of her magnificent Singer sewing-machine.
Now, shaking out my dresses, she
handled them preciously, pinching back their waists so that the skirts were blowing outwards, like those in an advertisement.
I was glad to think that that was once how I must have looked to Richard.

Mrs Harty wore a stuffed satin heart hung on a corset lace. It swung, full of pins, between her breasts. I felt some connection
between it and the sacred heart of Jesus flaming away in its holy picture, the constant small light burning below. Mrs Harty
plucked pins out of hers and lurched about on her club foot, standing back to survey her work, or pouncing forward to remedy
a fault. While the light shrank from her windows she swooped on me and round me with her scissors, and mumbled at me as she
changed pins from her heart to her lips, and then to the seams of my dress; at last she staggered away … I could feel her
dissatisfaction, and through it my bulk loomed to me – a battleship through fog. ‘The wholly all about it is,’ she said, ‘there’s
not enough of it in it.’

I could imagine the wedge-shaped gaps to be filled, and the strains that the pink chiffon would not take. I knew better than
to look into the narrow slit of mirror. ‘Do you know what we’ll do – how would it work, I wonder, if we used our gold to drape
our troubles?’

I demurred – then I agreed. Panels of gold lace swept from my hips to the ground, chiffon clouded my bosom.

‘And a big rose in gold and pink – imagine – on one shoulder.’ The rose was not there. She sketched it on the air, and pinned
the air down my left bosom. I moistened my lips and nodded agreement. In the wintry light, between the fox, the badger, and
the sacred heart of Jesus, I began to feel a story-book little-princess character taking me over – possessing me.

‘Now. Look at yourself.’ She turned me about like a child or
a dummy to face my reflection. I spun willingly round on my Louis heels. I closed my eyes, I spread my hand like a fan across
my chest. I decided how I should smile – I smiled. I opened my eyes, I pulled in my stomach, and I leaned a little forwards
to my reflection. Gold lace fell in points and godets to the floor. Flesh and chiffon were indistinguishable in the sweetheart
neckline. I caught my breath, and for a moment I was standing alone with the beautiful doll that was me.

Mrs Harty broke the silence. She too was looking enchantedly from me to my reflection. ‘Well, Miss Aroon,’ I could feel her
searching for the absolute word, ‘wouldn’t you make a massive statue?’

Statue? I knew just what that meant. And I had been feeling so mignonne and cherished. I was Aroon again – a big girl, even
a great big girl. She turned away from me. ‘I’ll have to light the lamp,’ she said, ‘till I see how do it fall.’

But how could I face the statue she saw? I had to get away before she said ‘statue’ again. I dragged my dress over my head.
I struggled in the slippery darkness of the lining. I tore my way out. When she came back, carrying the lighted lamp, I was
walloping round, a great half-naked creature, searching for my winter clothes.

What panic had taken me over? I wondered, pedalling home with the frost on my cheeks, and the wheels of my bicycle sailing
effortlessly under my weight. Assurance re-enfolded me as I remembered that ‘massive’ was Mrs Harty’s word for beautiful.
A rose could have a massive scent. Six yards of cobweb lace a massive quality. Statue was all right too. A nymph in a glade,
perhaps.

I hurried upstairs to Papa’s room, hoping that tea was still there. He was sitting up, comfortable among his pillows. In his
blue pyjamas and bird’s-eye scarf he looked delightfully handsome and easy as though there were nothing wrong with him. He
pointed to the fireplace where the teapot was sitting.
‘HOT FOR YOU.’
He spoke in slow capitals, but he was smiling in his own covert way. He tried again: ‘Pretty nice cake.’

Mummie had been and gone. A few drops of clear China tea, no milk, no sugar, were left in her cup, and a sprig of rosemary,
pinched to death, in the saucer. Papa’s good hand was wandering among the small necessaries on his bedside table. There was
something he wanted.

‘No,’ he said when I offered him another cup of tea; and: ‘Horrible – horrible,’ to his barley water. ‘Po cupboard.’ He found
the word with triumph. Oh, that bottle, and my tea had scarcely begun – but he waved that idea aside too. I looked again.
One of his silver drinking cups was on top of the po cupboard. Rose kept them as bright as buttons. She thought he took his
medicine more easily from them, as he could not see the size or colour of the dose. I put the cup into his good hand and hurried
back to my tea. Usually he swallowed his medicine down with an exasperated flourish. Tonight, he sipped away at it slowly,
looking at me over the top of his silver cup with approval and amusement.

‘Good girl, good girl,’ he achieved the words delightedly as I took the last scone. We both laughed. He went on shaking with
laughter.

‘Look out, Papa, you’ll spill the stuff.’ I jumped up too late to take the cup out of his hand. He only giggled at the mishap.
As the wet darkened and spread through his pyjama jacket, a smell like a small cloud hung close over his warm body and bed.
I sniffed at it, and at the empty cup – whisky! Papa had been drinking whisky. And whisky could lead only to another
stroke, to death. Stimulants were forbidden. I was appalled. But, when I looked at him, stilled and cheered from his nervous
melancholy, the thought floated to me and away from me, the thought that he required a respite from the misery that held him
in terrible polite dependence on us all.

But for his sake I banished the indulgent idea and concentrated my mind on the problem of how he had got hold of the whisky.
There was no more of it in the diningroom now, or in the cellar, so someone must have bought it for him. I am not exactly
slow-witted, and the answer came to me in less than a minute: ‘We must ask Rose if there is any more.’ I nearly choked on
my own diplomacy.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘helps a lot. Good person. Good person.’

When Rose came in to take away the tea things, I followed her out of the room, the empty silver cup in my hand. It was hard
to know what to say. She had drained authority away through her usefulness.

‘Rose,’ I said, ‘you know it’s not allowed.’

‘A drop left after the Christmas cake.’ She sounded careless and unrepentant. ‘And he needed it. And it did him good.’

‘Don’t you think the doctor knows best?’

‘Doctors must only go by their own rules.’ There was a resolute turn in her evasions.

‘Possibly you may remember,’ Mummie said when I told her about it (I had to tell someone), ‘who dismissed Nurse and put Rose
in charge.’

‘It was Dr Coffey who suggested it.’

‘You did it between you. I knew something like this would happen. I was against the whole idea.’

‘Nurse was so beastly. So rude. Rose would do anything for him.’

‘Exactly.’ If she had been at her tapestry Mummie would have pinioned a flower as she said the word. But we were at the end
of dinner. A Cox’s orange pippin sat on her green plate. She had moved her fingerbowl and its little mat, but that was as
far as she would go in eating the apple.

I said: ‘Aren’t you going to speak to her? It could kill him.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said.

‘Perhaps you’ll speak to her? Or perhaps it will kill him?’

She eyed her apple. ‘Shall we go to the library?’ She put her unfolded napkin down beside her place and pushed back her chair.
I had the feeling that she and Rose were allied and I was
the intruder. It was a love circle, and Rose was included.

Rose swept on determinedly, insolent and inviolable in her care for Papa. The hairbrushing, the shaving, the scenting were
her business. The delicate food was all contrived by Rose, and every day she asked for less help from Tommy or from me. She
was very strong, rather magnificent in her health and in her ignoring of any time off or comfort for herself.

I maintained the rota of my visits to Papa. And every evening now the smell of whisky hung clearer round him. Unquestioned,
unreprimanded, the drink lifted him into a silly sort of buoyancy. I would wait a little longer before taking any drastic
step. The Christmas cake whisky must soon be finished, I thought. But, after weeks had gone by, Papa was still enjoying his
evening drink. He looked at me longingly across his silver cup, and I took a decision.

‘You’d like another?’ He nodded. ‘Just one,’ I said. ‘I forget. Where does she keep the bottle? In here?’ I tried the po cupboard.

‘No.’

‘In the chest of drawers?’

It was hunt the thimble. ‘Fool. Fool,’ he raged and moaned as I coasted about. It was rather a horrid game, but at last in
the empty clothes basket I found the bottle – more than three-quarters full of Scotch whisky. I knew I was going to deprive
him of this pleasure. I knew I must. Rose was buying whisky for him and I was going to prevent her. In the morning I would
speak to Dr Coffey. Thursday was his day.

Next morning when he came hurrying down the steps, stockings and breeches under his overcoat, his white moustache
gleaming and staring in the cold, Rose was behind him, like a nurse waiting for last words about her patient. I thought, really,
she goes too far. But it was a brace of woodcock she was after.

‘When were they shot?’ was all she said. And when he told her, a calculation as to when they should be cooked passed clearly
over her face. ‘He’ll enjoy them, doctor,’ she said, and went away with his present, faultlessly polite and devoted.

‘Ah, Aroon child, cold old morning.’ He was bustling round his car to the driving seat.

‘I must ask you something.’ Impaled on my urgency, he stopped, his impatience melted in kindness and concern. He listened
with absolute attention while I told him of my suspicions: of my present certainty that Rose was buying and supplying whisky;
that in ignorance she would kill him; that she was getting above herself … I stopped.

‘Should I get you another nurse, I wonder? Of course, Rose understands him.’

‘Well, she knows just how long he likes his woodcock cooked.’

He looked at me in an odd, surprised way. ‘If that was all,’ he said, ‘she’d be replaceable tomorrow. As it is, I think,’
his voice turned back into a doctor’s voice, ‘it wouldn’t help him in his condition at all to make any change. Change is drastic.
A drastic thing.’

‘I do see that, Dr Coffey. All I want is for you to forbid her to give him whisky. So that it’s not just me … just me against
them … ’

‘Just you spoiling his bit of pleasure?’ He understood more than I had meant. He put his hand on the car door. He was going.
Nothing had been forbidden or decided. Then he
turned back. ‘My dear child,’ he said, ‘it makes very little difference. So long as he keeps happy, comfortable and happy
– put up with things. And I’ll see you again on Thursday – or any day, if you’re worrying. Let me know. You’re a great girl,
Aroon … ’ There was no more I could do. I was set aside. Why did they ignore me? Things might have been different. I’m never
sure.

There were times in the weeks before Christmas when I wondered whether Rose had exaggerated Papa’s sufferings with Nurse.
Once Rose and Nurse had got on very well together. So had Rose and I when we first got rid of Nurse. It had been fun, spoiling
Papa. I had been happy in my practical responsibilities. When I lifted him and eased him back onto his pillows, I felt really
glad to be a big girl. I could hold him quite as comfortably as Rose could. But now her progressive slighting of my helpfulness
was like a tide seeping in, quietly, inexorably taking my safe places from me. She said: ‘He’s resting,’ when I came in after
luncheon for a chat. Papa was lying back with his eyes closed. I turned round from the door with no special reason and his
eyes were open and lively. He was looking at Rose, who was looking at me with a kind of impatience. Perhaps Papa wanted his
bedpan. I went away.

I took the dogs for a walk. I went down the drive where Papa and I had stopped to look at my Black Friday yearling – only
his donkey was there, with a goat for company now. Would Richard understand that sale I had made out of love and pity?

For tea, I was back in Papa’s room. I was quite determined to keep that time inviolate. Though he did not eat much of them,
Papa liked sandwiches and tiny scones, and medlar jelly,
iced orange cakes, and ginger cake. Mummie, of course, ate nothing, so there was usually enough for me. Mummie watched with
cold disgust and Papa with pleasure as I cleared up the plates. I couldn’t help myself. I hate waste. When I unfolded the
day’s paper and started analysing the day’s racing results, she got up, hovered near him for a moment, then left the room,
to go and sit under her tapestry in the library, a fresh hotwater-bottle at her feet.

Once six o’clock came Papa would get restless; his groans at the idiocies of the racing correspondents would be louder, his
glances towards the door more longing. I knew it was not the correspondents – he liked nothing better than their mistakes.
He was waiting for two things: Rose, and his whisky. When I heard Rose coming, strongly, neatly stepping along the corridor,
I knew it was time for me to go. Because I could not allow that she had outdistanced me in the matter of the whisky, I had
to pretend that it didn’t happen. I had to keep up some semblance of authority. It was like putting my foot in the door to
keep it open.