Imaginative Experience (7 page)

Maurice swivelled round to find himself staring at a row of grossly outsized toys. Crushed together on a sofa like rush-hour travellers were a pink bear, a life-size clown, a blue tiger and a green elephant with a sort of boa constrictor round its neck. They looked pristine, new; he almost expected to see their price tickets. He said ‘Oh!’ and gulped his whisky. ‘Was little Christy very fond of them?’

‘Of course. Not that
she
—She would not have them in London. Not that it mattered, of course. This,
this
was his home. Their home.’

‘So—’

‘I mean Giles and Christy’s home.’

‘Ah.’

‘Got that straight?’

‘Mrs, I mean Miss Brownlow did indicate—suggest—’

‘What?’

‘That you—er—that your daughter—’

‘I do not regard her as my daughter.’ Clodagh May gulped her whisky and rose to refill her glass. She had splendid legs, Maurice thought, and the arse of a young woman.

‘Miss Brownlow called her a vehicle,’ he said, venturing into jocosity.

Clodagh May’s smile was sardonic. ‘That’s just what she was. Excellent. Quite clever of Madge. So,’ she said, ‘d’you want the truth?’

Maurice said, ‘Please,’ and waited.

Clodagh May arranged her thoughts, gazing past her visitor into the garden hedged round with camellias planted by Giles. ‘I married an architect,’ she began. ‘He impregnated me with his sperm. You’re shocked by the word sperm? Some men are. The regrettable result was the girl. He left quite soon. I kicked him out actually, I can’t live with my mistakes. And the girl left too, eventually. One day she was at school as usual and the next gone, something in her genes.
I
don’t suddenly disappear. She took after her father. To tell the truth, I was glad to be shot of her. There is something about adolescent girls I find intolerable.’

Maurice laughed and Clodagh, catching his eye, smiled.

‘What did she do?’ Maurice asked.

‘Do?’

‘Yes.’

‘She became a servant.’ Clodagh May’s voice was chill.

‘How did she set about that? I thought they were an obsolete species.’ Maurice laughed.

‘It’s no laughing matter.’

‘Of course not, do go on.’

‘It began waitressing in the holidays. Well, that’s all right, I suppose, just. Working behind the bar in the pub I didn’t like, but it was in her holidays. Then one day she was gone and later I heard she had become a “domestic”. I was humiliated. Well, wouldn’t you be?’

‘I have no children.’

‘No. And I suppose you—’

‘Would not be humiliated?’ Maurice grinned. ‘Do go on,’ he said, ‘please.’

Clodagh May frowned. ‘Oh well, to cut a long story, some years later I broke my leg. I needed help in the house. I have a daily but we needed someone living in, and nurses cost the earth when you can get them. So Giles suggested—’

‘Giles? How did—’

‘He was living here, did I not say? He was working on his book.’

‘I did not know he wrote.’

‘Of course, brilliant, to think of that talent cut down so young—’

Maurice said, ‘Terrible, absolutely terrible,’ and wished she would offer him another drink.

She said, ‘Shall I go on?’

‘Please.’

‘Refill my glass. This is bringing it all back, I’m not sure it’s good for me. Get yourself a refill, too.’

Maurice said, ‘Thank you,’ and took both glasses to the drinks table, where he measured an inch into each. ‘Do go on,’ he said. ‘It’s cathartic.’

Clodagh took the glass from him. ‘So I wrote,’ she said, ‘told her to come. She came. She did the work. Giles looked after me, of course, but she did the rest and—’ Clodagh May sipped her drink.

‘And?’

‘She behaved like the skivvy she was. God! When I think of it!’

‘And?’

‘She got him into trouble, didn’t she? Got herself pregnant, had the cheek to say he raped her. But she would say that, wouldn’t she?’

‘And Giles?’ I’m beginning to think I knew this fellow, Maurice thought, enjoying himself. ‘And Giles?’

‘Darling Giles explained it, I can hear his voice: “Little bit tiddly, that sort of thing? Rather like you and Daniel”—that was naughty of him—“Could happen to anybody.” It had. “So what,” he said. “You and I will have a baby.” And that’s what we did, we had Christy.’

‘I thought Giles married—I thought—’

‘Of
course
they married; I could not have Christy illegitimate. Bad enough that the mother was a servant.’

I am not hearing this. Maurice hugged himself. I love it, I must make her go on; it’s beautiful. ‘So?’ he said.

‘So she buggered everything up,’ snapped Clodagh May. ‘Took Giles off on a honeymoon to Paris. People would have gossiped if they had not, but
then,
would you believe, she takes Giles off to some squalid flat in London and, when my grandson is born, he only comes to his home on visits.’

Maurice ventured, ‘Tough,’ and then, ‘Surprise.’

‘Surprise?’ Clodagh May, who had kept her voice low, shouted, ‘Surprise, you say! The next surprise is she divorces him. What do you say to that?’

Maurice said, ‘On what grounds?’ hoping for the indictment of smelly feet and parts, or better still adultery, and if adultery who with and in whose bed? He held his breath, guessing.

Clodagh May drew her legs up, to sit contained in her chair. Distancing herself, she said, ‘What does it matter?’ She stared past her visitor. ‘Now I have nothing,’ she murmured, ‘nothing.’

Maurice glanced uneasily at the toys sitting in their malevolent row. ‘You have their grave,’ he said.

She said, ‘Would you have expected me to have Giles and Christy freeze-dried?’ And presently she said, ‘Have you far to go?’

Dismissed, Maurice Benson headed for the main road but, level with the pub and reading an enticing notice,
Open all day,
he stopped and went in. The landlord with whom he had chatted earlier was gone, the customers too. A bored woman polished glasses to the rhythm of piped muzak. Maurice leaned against the bar. She said, ‘Whatalyahav?’

‘I’d better have something soft, I’m driving.’

‘A non-alcoholic beer?’

‘That will do, thanks.’

She said, ‘You have been drinking shorts with May and Brownlow,’ and poured his drink.

Maurice said, ‘Somebody been watching me?’

She said, ‘This is a small village. You a friend, then?’

Maurice said, ‘You could say that.’

‘Didn’t see you at the funeral.’

Maurice said, ‘Couldn’t make it,’ and sipped his non-alcoholic beer. Then he said, ‘Tell me about the widow.’

The woman said, ‘You work for the
Sun?’

‘I’m not Press. I was a friend of Giles Piper; tell me about Julia.’

The woman leaned dimpled arms on the bar. ‘Julia, she’d gone before I came here, and from what I hear she should never have come back.’

Maurice said, ‘Ah,’ and hopefully, ‘Why?’

‘You should ask her yourself if you were a friend of Giles. Got her address?’

Maurice said, ‘Yes,’ and then, at a venture, ‘You didn’t like Giles, then?’

She said, ‘I didn’t say, did I? Some found him devious, can’t say I did. Straight to the point, your friend. No messing about, up the girls’ knickers. Shouldn’t slander the dead, should I? It was a dreadful accident, dreadful.’

Maurice said, ‘I heard. Mrs May is taking it hard. Might I offer you a drink?’

She said, ‘Thanks, I’ll have a shandy.’

Maurice said, ‘What was she like as a mother?’

‘The girl or her mother?’

‘The mother, she didn’t strike me as the maternal type. You a mother?’

‘Not yet.’ The woman eyed Maurice, daring him to suppose she had left procreation too late, and following this train of thought, she said, ‘Clodagh May was a teenage bride, to hear her talk, Julia born when she was eighteen.’

Grinning, Maurice said, ‘What else is she like?’

‘You’ve met her. Not much money but class, she imagines, and Giles just the same—his grandfather was a Sir, but you’d know that. No money, but to hear them talk little Christy was going to Eton and us wondering who would pay. They were a funny couple!’ The woman smiled. ‘Thing was, Julia didn’t fit.’

‘Oh?’ Maurice willed her to go on.

‘She’s divorced your friend, hasn’t she? I never saw her when the child was here, it would be with its daddy and Clodagh May. But she came to the funeral. I saw her.’ The woman looked past Maurice towards the road he had followed to the cemetery. ‘They say in the village that she never stayed with her mother after she and Giles married, even before the divorce; if little Christy visited she’d stay at a farm which does bed and breakfast.’

‘Funny.’

‘Not really. Before she married, she had not been home for years. It was Giles and Clodagh who’d come to the pub, they were regulars, but one night Clodagh fell over a chair here in the bar.’ The woman laughed. ‘She broke a leg. I shouldn’t laugh, but it seemed funny at the time.’

Maurice Benson said, ‘Other people’s accidents are.’

The woman said, ‘Well,’ forgiving herself. ‘It was then they sent for the girl to look after her mum and help Giles, who was designing the garden. They could have got help from the village, but Clodagh May’s not one to spend on help if she can get it free.’

Maurice said, ‘So that was when Giles met her?’

‘That’s right. She looked after her mother, ran the house and worked with Giles. Did most of the work, according to some. I like flowers but I’m an Interflora lady, I don’t get my fingers dirty. But she did.’ The woman’s gaze flicked past Maurice. ‘The poor girl,’ she said. ‘Another beer?’

Maurice said, ‘No thanks. Mrs May talked as though she and Giles—’

‘No, no,’ said the woman. ‘She watched and I dare say Giles watched, too. People say it was mostly Julia did the garden. They say she can make a dead stick grow, pops a seedling in the ground and says, “Grow, you bugger,” and it does, knows all sorts about gardens, birds, wildlife, that sort of thing. Green, don’t they call it?’

‘So as they toiled in the garden, they fell in love?’ suggested Maurice. ‘An idyll in Eden.’

The woman snorted. ‘A bonk in the potting shed, more like! No!’ she exclaimed in sudden irritation. ‘I feel really sorry for poor Clodagh May, she was passionate about that fellow.’ As Maurice opened his mouth to speak, she added, ‘I don’t know why I’m gossiping with you. If you’ve got the girl’s address, why don’t you ring her up, ask her all these questions yourself?’

Pushing himself away from the bar Maurice said, ‘I may just do that.’ (One could stir things up on the phone perhaps?) And as he opened the door to the road he asked, ‘Which fellow was she passionate about?’ But the woman had turned her back and switched the muzak up loud.

J
ULIA PIPER HAD WALKED
with no aim other than to get away which, since what she hoped to escape was herself, was an exercise in futility. It had been a fine night but now it started to rain. After hours on unforgiving pavements her feet ached and the rain trickled off her hair down her neck. There had been nowhere to rest or shelter; the seats on the Embankment were occupied by sleepers and the doorways of shops crowded with people huddling in cardboard boxes. Walking steadily, avoiding contact, she kept mostly to side-streets. Early in the night she had been narrowly missed by a speeding car. The driver had swerved, hooted, shouted, ‘Stupid bitch! Cow!’ before driving on.

Crossing Trafalgar Square she sat briefly on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields, but moved on at the approach of a policeman to wander across Shaftesbury Avenue into Soho. Now very tired and walking at a snail’s pace, she knocked against a man carrying a heavy backpack hurrying along unshaven and angry. He too exclaimed, ‘Stupid bitch! Cow!’ and she found herself longing for green fields and ruminating cattle, their sweet breath scenting the air as, sitting humped and contented, they chewed the cud. Then ahead she saw steps, an open door, and people going into a church; she followed them in out of the rain.

Moving up the church, she sat on a rush-bottomed chair in a darkish side chapel. The other people kept to the body of the church; she was alone. She stretched her legs and eased her feet. An old man shuffled up, took a candle from a box, stuck it in a holder, fumbled for a match and lit the candle; he mumbled, crossed himself and wandered away. Watching the flame, Julia closed her eyes.

When she woke there was a Mass going on; where she had had the chapel to herself, there were people, six or eight women, several men in City suits, and hurrying in late a middle-aged couple with a little girl. The man sat in front of Julia and gestured to his wife to sit across the aisle with the child. The couple did not look like the child’s parents, more like an uncle and aunt; the man kept glancing fussily at his wife while the child, a girl of about ten, fiddled with her plaited hair, looked bored and sniffed. As the sniffs grew louder, the man passed a handkerchief across to the child. Mutinously she wiped her nose and handed the handkerchief back. Julia averted her eyes. Since she could not leave without causing a disturbance, she tried to pay attention to what the priest was doing. She had never been to a Mass and thought she had better copy the man in front, rise and kneel, sit and stand when he did.

She felt terrible after her sleep and could only catch an occasional word, for the priest muttered and his intonation was foreign. Somebody ran a thin-sounding bell and people knelt; the priest held something up and the bell tinkled again. Clearly it was a sacred moment; there was a hush. But the man in front of her was watching the child. He leaned across the aisle and, whispering indignantly to his wife, said, ‘She is picking her nose.’

Covering her face with her hands, Julia snorted with laughter and stuck her fingers in her ears until the Mass was over and people were leaving. Watching the couple go out with the child she saw the man speaking angrily to the woman, and wondered whether what he had said was, ‘Stupid bitch! Cow!’

The old man’s candle was guttering. She got up, took a fresh one from the box, lit it from the dying taper, breathed in its homely smell then sat down again. Some time later she remembered that she had once, years ago, before she married Giles and the advent of Christy, worked for the fussy couple and been sacked because she never, when she dusted, replaced their collection of ornaments in the correct order. This useless memory reminded her that she should resume work immediately if she wanted to pay the pile of unopened bills scattered among the letters lying on the floor of her flat, and recollecting the unhappy period when she had worked for the middle-aged couple. She remembered, too, that the woman had jealously counted the biscuits she ate with the grudgingly provided mid-morning Nescafe. This in turn made her realize that she was hungry, had eaten little since Mrs Patel’s curry.