Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (16 page)

Mrs Burton had won something in the region of seventy-five shillings on the big race. Summers had carried the bet for her. Mrs de Salis had backed (with her own bookie, she rather grandly explained) a horse called Maisonette; but she searched the stop press vainly for its name. ‘Perhaps it didn’t run,’ she said, not in a hopeful voice.

Mrs Post had never put money on a horse in her life, and the very idea of doing so alarmed her. Mrs Palfrey would not have dreamed of betting off the course.

‘Her face looks so set, even grim,’ said Mrs de Salis, re-examining the photograph of the Queen. ‘Of course,
he
doesn’t like it; only goes on sufferance, I have heard. Dear little hat!’ She turned a page, and read out, ‘Turquoise.’

Mr Osmond, sipping his before-dinner wine, sat back and watched them.

‘They’re partial to turquoise,’ Mrs Burton said.

‘Oh, it’s England at its best,’ Mrs de Salis suddenly burst out, laying aside the picture of pouring rain. ‘Gold Cup Day. The salmon and strawberries. The band playing. Champagne.’

‘Oh,
wouldn’t
it rain!’ Mrs Post said, looking at the streaming window. She was thinking of herself now, and not of the Royal family at Ascot. She was waiting for a cousin to arrive. A summer’s evening drive had been promised, with a picnic. It was a yearly occurrence, and gave the cousin who was ten years younger than Mrs Post, a sense of duty done which might last her, with any luck, for the following twelve months.

Mrs de Salis leaned forward and put a hand on Mrs Post’s wrist, as if to both steady her and rally her. ‘Now don’t fuss,’ she said. ‘You’re going to have a lovely evening.’

For Mrs Post could not help looking, first at her watch, and then at the weather. The rain seemed quite relentless. They would have to sit in the car, perhaps in Richmond Park, to eat their fish-paste sandwiches. It was not going to be what she had looked forward to.

When Antonio brought Mrs Burton’s third whisky-and-soda, Mrs Post, on an impulse, asked him for a glass of sherry, to pass the waiting-time and cheer her up for her dismal excursion. Cousin was decidedly late.

‘Is your visitor late, dear?’ Mrs de Salis asked.

‘Oh, a minute or so; but my watch may be fast.’

They all compared their watches, and referred themselves to Mr Osmond’s, which gave the date as well and was much marvelled at and called upon.

‘Please God, let her come soon,’ Mrs Post was praying. As the minutes ticked by, she suffered Mrs de Salis’s probing glances. Suddenly – was it the sherry? – she said: ‘As one gets older life becomes all take and no
give. One relies on other people for the treats and things. It’s like being an infant again.’

Mrs de Salis looked at her in consternation, and Mrs Palfrey with concern. This was not Claremont talk.

‘But
you’ve
done the giving
earlier
,’ Mrs de Salis pointed out.

‘Not always to the same people,’ Mrs Post insisted.

‘It all works out, you know,’ said Mrs de Salis. ‘In the scheme of things,’ she added vaguely. ‘Bread upon the water.’

‘Being
taken out,
I mean, as if one were a school-child.’ Mrs Post put her fist to her mouth. She thought bitterly of sitting there, waiting for someone to turn up, out of the kindness of their heart. Will they come? Or won’t they, and so make oneself a fool? ‘I don’t take people out any more,’ she said aloud. All wished that she would stop. ‘I wouldn’t know where to take them. Of course, it’s nice to be given a treat, but not if it’s
always
that way round.’

Mrs de Salis looked at the half-full sherry glass, as if estimating how much it was to be blamed for this turn in the conversation.

‘Oh, come off it!’ Mrs Burton said robustly. ‘You
are
in the dumps. It’s this bloody weather.’

Mr Osmond saw Mrs Palfrey glance down and aside, and he approved of her doing so.

‘Anyway, for my part it just isn’t true,’ Mrs Burton went on. ‘I and my brother-in-law always stand treat in turn.’

‘We haven’t
all,’
said Mr Osmond heavily, ‘got a
brother-in-law who would tolerate such a situation.’

Mrs Palfrey had lost the thread of the conversation and began to turn the rings on her fingers, examining them with great interest, as if she had never seen them before.

Mrs Burton, for a while, appeared to be offended about her brother-in-law, but was only pretending. Taking umbrage was something not in her nature. ‘Now, don’t be so old-fashioned,’ was all she said to Mr Osmond, who set his lips together and looked steadily at Mrs Palfrey, with whom he had for some time felt himself aligned. But Mrs Palfrey was not thinking of him. She, too, was praying for Mrs Post’s cousin to arrive. It was nearly dinner-time.

The rain had stopped.

The receptionist put her head into the room and announced that Mrs Post was wanted on the telephone.

‘Oh, it is my cousin, I expect,’ Mrs Post said, hurrying from the room, her head ducked down.

‘Dear me!’ Mrs de Salis said, after a silence. ‘I hope she’s not going to be disappointed, let down. She seems in such unusually low spirits that a change of scenery is the only thing to buck her up.’

‘Well, I shall go in to dinner,’ Mrs Palfrey said firmly, making a move, and lessening, by one at least, the group which Mrs Post would have to face on her return. Mr Osmond opened the door for her, and followed: but Mrs de Salis and Mrs Burton decided to sit on a little longer.

When Mrs Post quite soon returned, she looked jaunty.

‘Well, that’s rather a relief,’ she said. ‘Brenda thinks it isn’t a very nice evening for a drive out. It will be better to wait for settled weather.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Mrs Burton.

But now the sun had come out and Mrs de Salis turned her head to the window to look at it.

During dinner, Mr Osmond had an idea, so sudden, so perfect, that he sat with his napkin to his lips for several seconds, staring down at his empty plate, pondering the possibility.

Then excitement began to work in him. His stomach seemed to be churning up the mushroom omelette. (He ate sparingly.) Acid gurglings he could not stop. A dish of ice-cream was placed before him, and he began to take sips of it, off the little spoon. He did not glance at Mrs Palfrey’s table, but he was blushing all the same. He felt – not fear; it was alarm, really. Later, he realised that he had eaten strawberry ice-cream, although he had ordered vanilla. Usually, he would have made quite an issue of it, but this evening had not identified the flavour until it was too late.

Coffee very few of these old regulars drank. It kept them awake they said; and it cost extra.

One by one, they stirred, they slowly rose, they made off towards knitting or crossword puzzles (in one case, brandy), and, such had things come to, probably more
talk about Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

How to get Mrs Palfrey alone, out of earshot, Mr Osmond wondered. Having had his inspiration, he felt that he would never sleep without knowing the outcome.

By some miracle, she was the last to get up.

The middle-aged celebrating group had not yet come in, and Antonio and the elderly waitresses were becoming grimly restless.

Mr Osmond glanced in Mrs Palfrey’s direction. She had such an air of being a gentlewoman, he decided. She ate her ginger pudding casually, as if she were unconcerned with what it was.

Now the timing had to be exact, he realised. He must reach her table as she was about to get up from it. Fusses like this upset his heart, and his hands began to tremble. Mrs Palfrey moved. He half rose. She searched round for, and found, a little beaded purse. She settled back, opened it, and peered into it, shut it, moved again. He, having leaned back, waiting, suddenly shifted, and slightly pulled a muscle in his calf. She was now definitely getting up. He followed, limping. She was almost regal, he thought, trying to intercept her.

As she was about to pass through the door, having said ‘Thank you’ in a gracious voice to her waitress, he was able to step forward before Antonio and hold it open for her.

‘Ah, Mr Osmond, thank you. Now we must go and take sides about Princess Margaret again, I suppose,’ she said.

For that I love you, he thought. During his time at
the Claremont there had been no
rapport
with anyone – attempts at it with waiters, porters, even the manager, but all one-sided, the attempts forced on others, and rejected. Women he usually tried to avoid, but Mrs Palfrey looked so wonderfully like a man, and had an air of behaving like one. Trivia (one of his favourite words) she appeared to scorn.

‘I realise you have been suffering, too,’ he said, walking very slowly towards the lounge. ‘It isn’t the same since Mrs What’s-her-name arrived. No more of those peaceful evenings.’

‘Some people obviously think it is better,’ she said, matching her pace to his.

‘I never cease to marvel how things get so much worse as one grows older. Everything! Everywhere one turns. Even a little quiet is now denied one.’

‘Oh, come!’ she said, smiling encouragingly, turning stiffly to look at him. What he called a reliable face.

They were nearing the lounge, and he would now have to blurt out what he would have preferred to lead up to.

‘Mrs Palfrey,’ he heard himself saying, rather loudly although, apart from Mrs de Salis, she had the best hearing at the Claremont. ‘Would you do me the honour of being my guest at a Masonic do?’

Mrs Palfrey looked a little startled. ‘I thought those were for men only, and highly secret,’ she said.

‘It is a Ladies’ Night. I have no partner, so I rarely go. But should like to.’

It was all of sixty years since any man had asked her
to go out with him. (Arthur had never issued invitations; he had let her know what was expected.) She wished that
this
invitation could have come in writing, to give her more time to decide.

‘It is not for some weeks,’ Mr Osmond said, watching her. ‘I simply wanted to make my plans and look forward to them.’

Mrs Palfrey, like most women, could not help her thoughts turning to what she could wear on such an occasion. She thought of her fur cape. That, and the invitation itself, and the stir it would cause if she accepted it, persuaded her at last to smile and nod.

‘Why, it would make a very nice change and a new experience for me,’ she said.

‘My wife always enjoyed the evenings.’

‘And I am sure that I shall, too.’

As their conversation was over, Mrs Palfrey walked on past the door of the lounge and stood looking out at the Cromwell Road. It was a beautiful evening now, and sun streamed in through the dusty glass of the revolving doors.

Mr Osmond hesitated, then went to take his usual chair apart from where the ladies sat. When Mrs Palfrey entered the room later, they did not glance at one another.

She sat down beside Mrs Post, who was subdued. To take her mind off the exasperating change in the weather, Mrs Palfrey began a conversation about literature. As Mrs Arbuthnot’s library-runner, Mrs Post had always been deferred to in this matter. She had
built up a reputation as an authority from her little chats with library assistants and knew, as she put it, what
went.

‘My grandson, who works at the British Museum, as you know, is ambitious to write a novel,’ Mrs Palfrey said. ‘In fact he is, I believe, quite far gone in one.’

‘Oh, I shall look forward to seeing that on the shelf,’ Mrs Post exclaimed. She could talk of knowing the author to the librarian.

‘I shall hope for it to be taken
off
the shelf from time to time,’ Mrs Palfrey said, in a soft, amused voice.

‘The things that
go,
you know! It’s no criterion. So often not at all what you and I would want to read – or your grandson would want to write!’ She sighed, and for some reason glanced across at Mr Osmond. ‘The baser element, you know. There’s such a great deal of the baser element these days. Miss Taylor at the library agrees with me. I shall never forget how, in my ignorance, I brought back one of those to Mrs Arbuthnot. It was called
All Done By Mirrors,
and so, of course, I thought it must be a detective. A sort of Agatha Christie title, don’t you agree? But it was not, and I was never allowed to forget it, as you can probably imagine.’

Mrs Palfrey nodded.

‘“They shouldn’t allow such scum to be published”, Mrs Arbuthnot kept saying.’

‘As she had her eyes glued to the page, perhaps,’ Mrs Palfrey suggested.

‘Well, she finished it, and then handed it back to me
as if she hardly liked touching it. Is your grandson historical? I do hope he is historical.’

Before Mrs Palfrey could find any sort of answer to this, Ludo himself appeared at the open door and looked about him. Mrs Palfrey made a sweeping, traffic-policeman’s gesture, and he came across the lounge and bent and kissed her soft and wrinkled cheek. It was so long since she had seen him that she felt put out, in a panic almost. She had been trying hard lately to forget him, like a young girl with an unresponsive, but beloved, boy. This evening was turning out to be a tiring and exciting one.

‘Mrs Post and I were just talking of you,’ she said, and then, trying to right herself, added, ‘in a general way that we were talking about books.’