La's Orchestra Saves the World (3 page)

After a few minutes he invited her to come with him and a group of his friends to a picnic at Grantchester. She hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. She had that afternoon had a particularly unsatisfactory session with Dr. Price, who had criticised her essay and hinted that it was the sort of work that would attract, at best, a third. Dr. Price did not like men; this was a man asking her to go on a picnic, and so she accepted.

She learned more about Richard from a friend whose brother knew him. He did not have a reputation as a scholar, she was told, but was good-looking and effortlessly popular; he could row, although he would never make the college eight. Too lazy, somebody had said.

“Are you keen on him?” asked the friend who had imparted the information about Richard. “He’s good-looking, isn’t he?”

La felt flustered. Richard could be a friend, but she expected nothing more than that. “He’s nice enough. But that’s about it.”

“Pity. Because he likes you. It’s obvious.”

“Is it?”

The friend laughed. “Have you seen the way he looks at you?”

La had seen, but had put it down to something else, perhaps to what Dr. Price would have described as male arrogance. At the picnic in Grantchester, he had stared at her with a quiet solemnity, as if he had made up his mind about something. But now that her friend had spelled it out, she could hardly not think about it. It had not occurred to her that anybody could admire her in that way. She did not consider herself attractive; I am too tall, she thought. At school a spiteful girl had said to her: “Boys won’t look at you, La. Never. They don’t look at tall girls. Know that?”

She had grown up with the assumption that this was true and had decided that if a boy came along, one she liked, she would have to do the pursuing. But that was not yet. That would be at some unspecified time in the future, when she was twenty-eight, thirty perhaps. I will not let it become anything more than what it is, she told herself. I have not come here to find a husband.

They went to their picnic, and to another one after that.

“I like sitting in fields,” said Richard, and laughed.

He took her to tea, and started cycling out to see her every afternoon. Soon she came to expect him, just after four o’clock, even in the rain, to which he seemed indifferent. “Just water,” he said. “And you look nice when you’re bedraggled.”

They talked to each other easily, as if they were old friends. In the cinema he took her hand and then kissed her. He tasted of tobacco, and she imagined, absurdly, that she might reveal this to Dr. Price in one of their uncomfortable meetings. “Do you know, Dr. Price, that men taste of
tobacco?
Did you know that?”

Six weeks after their first meeting, he had told her that he hoped she would marry him; he would be honoured, he said. “I’ve never proposed to anybody before. I really haven’t.”

She almost laughed. There was a seriousness about the way he spoke which made her think he was reciting lines that somebody had taught him; perhaps she might find the very play from which they were lifted. “It’s very sudden.” That was all she could think of to say, trite as it was.

“Which means yes? Please tell me that this means yes. If you had wanted to say no, then you would have said it. Anything else must mean yes—it must.”

She wanted to be firm, but it was difficult. There was something winning about his manner that made him hard
to resist; he was like an eager schoolboy. “I don’t know. You can’t expect somebody to make up her mind just like that. It’s been five weeks.”

“Six. Almost seven. And I knew immediately. I really did, you know. I was quite certain that you were the one. You have to marry me.”

Now she laughed, and he had taken that as her answer. In her first private moment thereafter, she looked into a mirror, staring at herself, wide-eyed. You are a person to whom another person has proposed. It seemed absurd; risible. She had laughed earlier on, immediately after he had declared himself, but her laughter had been taken as some sort of assent. She would have to clear it up; she would have to sit Richard down and talk to him seriously. She would brush aside his persuasive banter and get to the essential point: she was not ready to get married. They could get to know one another better, and there was always the possibility that at some point their friendship might become something more, but not now.

She tried that, but he seemed not to take her seriously. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. We can think about things. Plenty of time for that. But you and I know how we feel, don’t we?”

“Well, frankly, Richard, I’m not sure that you know how I feel. If only you would listen to me …”

But as the months went past, and they still saw one another every day, meeting in that small tea-shop off King’s Parade, where the waitresses, who seemed fond of him,
addressed him as “Dickie,” she found that her feelings were changing. She looked forward to their meetings now; counted the hours and minutes before they would be together again. Was this what it meant to
fall
for somebody? She believed it was. And if she had to marry
someone
—and she mostly assumed that she did—then would she ever find anybody quite as charming as Richard? He would be kind to her. They would have fun together. Could one ever really expect anything more than that out of marriage?

Her father approved of Richard; approved of what he described as his prospects. Richard was going into the family firm of wine merchants—not just any wine merchants, but substantial ones, with connections to the port trade as well. They had their own warehouse in Bordeaux and a share in another one on the Douro. And Richard charmed him, as he could charm anybody, simply by smiling. He did not have to say anything; he merely allowed his smile to work for him. It disarmed.

“I’m so happy for you, my dear,” her father said. “After all that sadness, the business with your mother, and all that …”

“I’m glad that you like him. He’s a nice boy, isn’t he?”

His father waved a hand in the air. “Of course. But you never would …”

She waited. What would she never do? Choose the wrong sort of man?

Richard was not that; she was sure of it. He was gentle,
and amusing, and so she said yes, she would marry him. Later.

He looked at her earnestly. “After we leave Cambridge?”

“Of course.”

“June, then.”

She had not meant it to be that soon, but he was impossible to argue with. She acquiesced. What difference did it make, now that her future was to be with him.

Her friend Janey, the one who had taken her to the poetry reading, quizzed her. “Are you completely sure?” she asked.

“Yes. I suppose I am.”

Janey frowned. “Not suppose. You shouldn’t say ‘suppose.’ People who are madly in love with another person never say ‘I suppose I love him.’ They just don’t.”

La thought out loud. “I do love him. We laugh at the same things. He’s kind. What more could one ask for?”

“Romance,” said Janey. “Passion. An aching for the other person. An emptiness in his absence. That sort of thing.”

“Maybe,” said La. “Anyway, we’re getting married.”

The marriage took place in the chapel of St. John’s, his college. La’s small family, her father, his brother and sister, a few distant cousins, filled a couple of pews; Richard’s list was much longer, and included numerous school friends. They gave him a party the night before and threw him in the river, ruining his blazer.

La felt a strange, unaccustomed tenderness for him
at the altar, noticing the nervous trembling of his hands as he slipped the ring onto her finger. “It’s all right,” she whispered.

“I’m so happy,” he whispered back.

After the honeymoon, they went to London, staying first in a flat in Fitzrovia that Richard’s father had rented for them. Then, a few months later, Richard paid a deposit for the purchase of a house in Maida Vale that was too large for them, but which had a long strip of garden that La started to cultivate. He was now working in the family firm, a job that allowed him to leave the office at four in the afternoon if he wished. La wanted to work, but received little encouragement from Richard.

“Why?” he asked. “Why work when you don’t have to? We’ve got enough—more than enough. Why shut yourself up in an office with a lot of silly girls?”

She looked at him. “Not all of them would be silly.”

“Yes, of course.” He smiled. “Sorry.”

“I don’t want to spend my life sitting about. I want to earn my keep.”

“But that’s what I’m doing. I’m earning your keep.”

She shook her head. “You know that’s not the same. I want to do something with my life.”

He seemed genuinely puzzled. “But you are doing something. You’re my wife. That’s something, isn’t it?”

She did not think that was enough, but did not say anything.

“And there’ll be children,” he added, reaching out to touch her arm. “Soon enough.”

They had not discussed this; nothing had been said. It would be something that just happened, and she was not sure how she felt about it. One part of her wanted to be a mother; another understood that that would really be the end of her hopes to do something more with her life. But as the months wore on and nothing happened, she began to wonder whether that would happen. Still nothing was said.

They went to the theatre, to concerts, to the opera; Richard indulged her in all of these, although his tastes were not musical. “That part’s missing in my brain,” he said. “I hear the notes, but they don’t mean very much to me.”

“Are you happy?” her father asked her on an occasion when they met for lunch in town. “You look happy, I must say.”

“Of course I am,” said La.

“And Richard, too?”

“Very. He doesn’t talk about happiness, of course. Men tend not to. Men don’t talk about their feelings.”

Her father nodded. “So true. And yet men have feelings, I think, in much the same way as …” He looked out of the restaurant, at the passers-by in the street outside. Some of them looked worn-out, ground down by what he called
general conditions
. “General conditions are so …” he said.

La knew what he meant. She felt guilty that she should
be comfortable when others were suffering. “What can one do?” she asked her father.

“Not much. If you gave your money away it would be gone in a puff of smoke and not make much difference to anybody. So just concentrate on small, immediate things. They make a difference to the world.”

“But look what’s happening in Spain and Germany.”

He did not think that there was too much cause to worry. “Spain’s Spain, and always has been. They’re cruel. They’ve always been cruel—and not just to those unfortunate bulls. Germany is full of militaristic bravado,” he added. “But they’re weak. Our Empire is so much bigger, so much more solid. They’ve got nothing really. No wonder they go on about
Lebensraum …
”

La had never taken a very close interest in politics, but she read the newspapers and now it was impossible to be indifferent to what was happening. She took to attending lectures on economics and unemployment, and she felt the sense of outrage that gripped the audience. It was intolerable that people should be deprived of the fundamental dignity of being able to work for a living. Everybody was suffering, she read, but she did not think this was true. She and Richard were still well-off; it was something to do with not having too much invested in the stock exchange, Richard said, and in the continued demand for good wine.

She volunteered to teach a course in literature for the Workers’ Educational Association. Richard did not like her
going off to the East End alone, but she did nonetheless, and became involved in a parish soup kitchen and in a team that assisted a nurse to inspect the heads of children for lice and to shave their hair. The children were dirty, and her hands would smell after the smaller ones had taken them and clasped them. They wanted affection, these children, and she embraced them. “Careful,” said the nurse. “Check your own hair, Mrs. Stone.”

“We are at the centre of the greatest empire the world has ever known, Sister Edwards. And yet there’s all this want. Look at it.”

“It’s always been like that, Mrs. Stone. Nothing’s changed, has it?”

Richard said: “I’m not happy about all this, La. You have everything you need. I know that things are bad for some, but there’s not much we can do, is there? You don’t have to spend so much time trying to change things, you know.”

They disagreed on this, but La’s view prevailed. Her feelings for Richard had changed over the first year of their marriage; she was used to him now, and the fondness she felt for him had deepened. She began to worry about him, to feel anxious if he was late home. She took his hand at odd moments and held it to her breast. “I do love you, you know,” she said. “So much. You know that, don’t you?”

He smiled. “Strange woman.”

“Strange that I should love you?”

He winked. “Maybe.”

She went to a doctor, discreetly, without telling him that she had made the appointment. The doctor said, “It’s difficult to tell. People can wait for years, you know, and then suddenly a child comes along. We can do some investigation, of course. But it may not reveal anything.”

But it did. The doctor, who understood these things, who knew that the wife might not want the husband to know, did not write her a letter, but waited for her to telephone back for an appointment.

“It’s not good news, I’m afraid, Mrs. Stone.”

She left his surgery and walked back along the street, past the underground station where she should have caught her train. She walked on, along unfamiliar pavements in the hinterland of Harley Street. One future had closed to her with the doctor‘s few words.

She told Richard. He seemed surprised that she had consulted the doctor without telling him.

“You should have spoken to me about it, La,” he said. “I’m your husband, for God’s sake.”

“We never spoke,” she said. “I always felt it was a subject you didn’t want to address. I’m sorry if I was wrong about that.”

He spoke angrily. “You were.”

“I’m very sorry. And it’s my fault that we can’t have children.”