Mr Wrong (16 page)

‘But thank you,’ she repeated, backing away.

‘Why don’t you take her upstairs?’ suggested her grandmother, and Vanessa, in an unnaturally clear voice, cried, ‘What a good idea!’ and went.

She sounded exactly as though I was the child – as though she was humouring me, thought her grandmother.

‘I think she
is
pleased, really,’ said Ann. ‘I know she wanted a doll very badly.’

‘Heavens!’ thought her mother-in-law; ‘is
everyone
going to treat me as though I were nine?’ Aloud, she said, ‘I know exactly what Vanessa was
feeling.’

When, a short while later, the telephone rang, it was Donald who answered it. ‘If it’s the Stevenses, ask them to tea
tomorrow
,’ called Ann. ‘Shut the door after
your father, Desmond, or he won’t hear a word with all our racket.’

Eventually – he returned. His mother looked up as he shut the door, and knew at once: her heart dropped with a single, sickening thud, as she rose slowly to her feet.

‘You were ages:
was
it the Stevenses?’ asked Ann, and then she saw his face.

‘Mind! You’re spoiling my accident, Uncle Donald. There’s going to be the most enormous
awful
accident in a minute, and you’re in the way!’

‘Sorry, James.’

‘Was that Mamma on the telephone?’

Donald answered easily, ‘Yes. She sent you her love.’

‘Ho! Van will be furious. She likes her love properly sent. Now everybody watch the great accident!’

But all the grown-ups had disappeared, except Marie-Laure. He had died about an hour ago, Donald told his mother and Ann. Lillian said that he’d had a stroke early in the morning, and
he’d never regained consciousness. Ann’s eyes filled with sudden, easy tears, but his mother sat still in her chair without a word.

‘I said I’d go up at once to – to help – or do anything, but she wouldn’t let me. She said she’d be down here in a couple of days, and that the doctor was
being helpful and kind. She said please don’t ring her up – she’ll telephone when she’s coming down.’ He made a helpless gesture with his hands. ‘I
couldn’t
argue
with her: she sounded pretty shocked; as though telling me at all was the most she could manage.’

Ann said: ‘What about the children?’

‘She said she left that to us. We were to tell Vanessa that she was coming down, anyway.’

‘And where is my son to be buried? What about his funeral?’

Donald noticed with alarm that his mother was tearless. Drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair, she repeated, ‘What about my son’s funeral?’

Before he could reply, the door burst open and Vanessa shot into the room. She wore a thick white jersey over her party frock and outdoor shoes covered with fresh mud. She rushed at Donald:

‘She rang up! My
mother
rang up and you never called me! I’ve been waiting for her all day and you never called me!’ Unable to bear her own agony of reproach, she
dropped her face in her hands and burst into bitter tears.

Ann moved towards her, but she flung out an arm with a gesture absolutely denying comfort. ‘You promised! I made you all promise
that I could speak to her and then you never told me! How could you! How could you be so wickedly unfair!’

Donald, utterly taken aback, floundered: ‘Look here, we’ve just had some bad news, you know, one thing at a time,’ and then realized too late that she was only a child. They
heard her draw in her breath with a little gasping sigh; an expression of fear, terrible, and terribly familiar to her face crept upon it; she clutched the wrist weighed down with the absurdly
large watch, and then turned speechlessly to her grandmother, who had not moved or spoken.

‘Your father is dead, Vanessa. Your mother is perfectly well. She is coming down here very soon. Very soon.’

Ann put Vanessa to bed and her mother-in-law on a sofa in her own sitting-room. She gave her children their Christmas tea, packed Donald off to drive Marie-Laure to her church,
herded the children upstairs for their final rioting, cleared up the drawing-room and arranged that she and Donald should sup quietly in there.

Then, with a certain trepidation, she went up to see her mother-in-law.

She discovered her lying on her sofa with Vanessa in her dressing-gown sitting on a small beaded stool at her feet. They were both sticking cloves into oranges and talking quietly.

‘. . . evenly, but not too close together, because the orange will shrink as it dies and there must be room for the cloves. Ah! Ann, my dear. Vanessa is not being naughty: I sent for her, and when her orange is finished I shall send her back to bed.’

‘Good.’ Ann smiled uncertainly and Vanessa smiled gravely back. ‘I really came to ask where you would like to dine?’

‘I shall not come down again tonight. Change into your pretty clothes and have a quiet dinner with Donald which you richly deserve. Don’t forget to wear your garnets. He would notice
that, I think.’

Ann pulled the necklace out from under her jersey.

‘I never took them off. I’d better go and dress up to them. Good night, Vanessa. I’ll come and see you in bed.’ When Donald went up to their bedroom, he found her bathed,
decorated with his necklace and dressed in the only dinner-dress he had ever admitted to liking.

‘You
do
look nice: what a pretty dress too!’ Then they both smiled at the old joke of the old dress.

‘We are dining alone. I’ve got the children to bottle down, and you take your Mamma some sherry.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘She seems perfectly calm. She has remarkable courage. She was talking to Vanessa when I saw her – she’s much better at that than I.’

‘Oh – that reminds me. That wretched dog was bounding about the drive with this.’ He held out the golden doll.

‘Oh no! How did he get hold of it?
Covered
with mud. Oh, poor little Vanessa – she really hasn’t had any luck today.’

‘Looks as though he tried to bury it – of course his mouth is like silk – he hasn’t bitten it anywhere. I’ve shut him up, but what shall we do about
Vanessa?’

She put the doll on the stool. ‘All her clothes will have to be washed, and her hair, and most of the doll, but I think she’ll be all right. I’ll do it tonight and put her by
Vanessa’s bed for the morning.’

On a sudden impulse he took her hand and kissed it, ‘How exceedingly kind you are – darling Ann!’

Her face burned: she could not remember his ever kissing her hand before. She said, ‘I always thought that kindness was a difficult thing to admire.’

With an unexpected grace of perception he replied, ‘If kindness were your only quality, I might not admire it so much.’

To Donald, his mother said:

‘If one has mourned someone’s life as I have Russell’s – for so long – their death is, I think, more of a shock than a grief, and I had not realized until today how
very much Russell has lived at other people’s expense. The expense to Vanessa, for example, has been too great.’

‘Surely more to Lillian than anyone else!’

‘Oh, infinitely more to her. But Lillian has the capacity – as Russell had – of inspiring such marked devotion, that I think she will find it again.’

She held out her glass to her son. ‘Unlike you and me, my dear. We are the devoted. Do not forget that, or try to change it. It will be the constitution of your happiness, as it has been
of mine.’

To Vanessa, she had said, ‘I want to talk to you about your Mamma, as I know you love her very much. Perhaps people are put next to one another like beads. Look.’ She unclasped her
necklace of crystals and laid it on Vanessa’s lap. ‘That’s you: and next to you, because you love her, your mother. And next to your mother because she loved him, your father. You
see? Everybody needs one person and is also needed by someone else. Now your father dying means that the string has broken just there next to your mother and she will be very sad, so you must be
very thoughtful about your love.’

‘What was on the other side of my father?’ Vanessa touched the spot with her finger. ‘That bead?’

‘I was there. That is the end of that end of the necklace. You see, your grandfather was on the other side of me.’

Vanessa looked up solemnly. ‘I see.’ There was a brief silence, then she asked hesitantly: ‘And the other side of me?’

‘What about James? He’s much smaller than you. He needs someone.’ She smiled and joined the ends together.

‘Or you can do that, and then I am next to you. You may keep the necklace. Run along.’

Alone, she indulged in no philosophy, reflecting, a little wearily, that it was very much easier to comfort other people than oneself. Her son was dead, and she was not
comforted, until before she finally slept, she remembered how, when she had mentioned Alec, Vanessa had looked up, her hair scraped back from her eggshell forehead, and in her eyes –
Russell’s eyes – a look of ageless, silent compassion.

When James returned from his bath he found Vanessa already in bed.

‘Where have you been?’

‘To see Gran.’

‘You weren’t at tea either,’ he accused. ‘A piece of cake has been saved for you. With the H of Happy
and
the I out of Christmas. Lucky swipe!’

She opened her mouth to tell him not to call people swipes and shut it again. He had been scarlet with over-excitement and now he looked belligerent and near to tears. His train was arranged on
two chairs by his bed.

‘Did you show Mrs Bond your train?’

‘I showed her. She just said “Fancy”. She says that whatever you show her,’ he replied gloomily. ‘But I told her Dad was dead just when I left. She didn’t say
“Fancy” then.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Nothing. She gave a sort of raspberry gasp, and then she told Ruby to turn the Light Programme off.’ He got into bed.

‘James – are you sad about it? About Dad, I mean.’

He looked blank. ‘I haven’t thought properly yet. It is a difficult thing to think about, isn’t it? Are
you? Do you want to do some crying? Can I have your watch?’

‘I’ve stopped crying: I’m too old for it.’ He looked so hurt that she added, ‘But you can wear my watch for the night.’ She got out of bed and strapped it
sloppily round his wrist. He looked at it with satisfaction and seized his train.

‘Listen. The train is going to run . . .’ He looked up at her and casually gave her a splendid kiss.

When she was back in bed he said: ‘Van! Dad – I suppose now . . . he’s just a holy ghost?’

She turned to him, a little startled. He was furiously winding-up his train.

‘He might be, James. I don’t know. Ask tomorrow.’

‘Turn off the light. This train is going to run in the dark.’

He held it up whirring. ‘I would have liked to show it to Dad.’

The clockwork noise ran slowly down – coughed and was silent. James said:

‘That’s the very end of Christmas.’

‘Walking out on her in the middle of the night! I’m not easily shocked, but that shocks me!’

His conversation, she thought, was full of exceptions he made to his own rules. ‘They’ve only been married a few weeks – it’s just a tiff.’

‘I dare say.’ He stretched out a sunburned muscular arm, reached for a ginger-nut and popped it whole into his mouth. Speaking through it, he went on: ‘But he’s got his
own way out of it, hasn’t he? It’s he who’s off to Scotland, spoiling her holiday and leaving her on her own. Poor little thing! She’s only eighteen – only a
child!’

‘Shirley won’t be on her own: she’s coming down to us just the same.’

He said nothing for a moment, swilled back the rest of his chestnut-coloured tea, wiped his moustache with a huge, navy handkerchief, and thrusting it back into his breeches pocket pronounced,
‘Well! It may sound funny to you, but
I
don’t like the idea of
my
daughter being mucked about. It annoys me, that’s all. Gets my goat.’

There was silence in the kitchen while Kate Ewbank did not retort, ‘She’s
my
daughter too, isn’t she? How do you know she’s being mucked about?’ or simply,
‘You don’t say!’ Years of not airing them had cramped and damped her responses into this kind of thing which she would not sink to out loud.

The stable clock struck five and Brian Ewbank got to his feet, collecting his old tweed jacket from the back of his chair. Then, stooping slightly to see himself in it, he combed his thick, wavy
grey hair in front of the small mirror that hung by the sink. ‘You’ll be fetching her from the station, then?’

‘I will.’

The Ewbanks lived in what had been the coachman’s cottage near a large Victorian stable block built round three sides of a courtyard. It had been designed to serve the huge neo-gothic
house that was now a girls’ boarding school set in vast, semi-derelict grounds of parkland and wooded drives. At five-thirty on summer term-time evenings he took a flock of girls, chiefly
called Sarah and Caroline, on bulging, grass-fed ponies for a ride. They called him Brian behind his back, but he was really Captain Ewbank, and they held interminable conferences about whether his
marriage was happy, or a tragic failure.

The moment Kate was alone, Marty, the tortoise-shell cat, slammed through the cat door with a mouse in her jaws. She tossed it under a chair, mentioned it several times in a high-pitched voice until she had forced Kate to meet her glassy, insolent gaze, and then began to crunch it up like a club sandwich. She liked Kate, in a limited way, to share
her triumphs. In ten seconds the mouse was gone, she had drunk a saucer of milk and was polishing her spotless paws. She kept herself in a gleaming state of perpetual readiness – like a fire
engine.

When she had cleared the tea, Kate went up to make the bed in Shirley’s old room, in case she would rather sleep there than in the twin beds pushed together to make a double in the spare
room. She also moved the jar of marigolds and pinks. She wanted Shirley to feel welcome. After that, she could not think at all what else she ought to do, and stood motionless, wondering what it could possibly be. But then, as sometimes nowadays, a moment after she had stopped
physically moving and was still, despair engulfed her, as dense, as sudden and palpable as stepping into a rain-cloud or a fog. Senses of futility and failure fused; then the pall receded, leaving
her with a feeling of weakness and mediocrity.