Not That Sort of Girl (11 page)

‘I wish. I wish.’ Mrs Freeling trotted downstairs to her own breakfast in the dining-room. She would have been horrified if anyone had told her that what she wished was her husband dead. ‘We have been married nineteen years,’ she often told people, ‘and never a cross word.’

‘Ah, Rose, are you there? Did you have a good time? Don’t come into the room yawning. Was the dance fun?’ She offered her cheek for Rose to kiss.

‘I didn’t dance.’

‘Then how was it you got home so late?’

‘Oh, Mrs Malone—you know how it is—there were a lot of people—a lot of waiting about—then her car …’

‘Didn’t the Thornbys bring you home?’

‘No, Mrs Malone got someone who is staying there to drive me back in her car.’

‘How kind of her. One of the young men staying there?’

‘A tutor person,’ said Rose astutely.

‘Oh, really.’ Mrs Freeling’s interest dimmed. ‘You must tell us all about it. Pass the milk, darling. Do sit up, don’t slouch, it’s so ugly. Your father says you broke his racquet.’

‘Yes, I did this tremendous drive. I hit the ball so hard the strings bust.’

‘Oh, oh dear.’

‘Does it matter? He won’t ever need it.’

‘Rose, how
can
you!’

‘Oh, Mother, don’t cry—please don’t cry.’

‘It’s just, it’s just all so awful.’

‘Oh, Mother, stop. Please. Look, I’ll tell you about the tennis party. George Malone asked if cook still makes her jellies, and the new man at Slepe, Ned Peel, was there …’

‘Ned Peel, did you talk to him much?’

‘Not really, no. Not at all, actually.’ Rose, hoping to comfort her mother, was sorry to disappoint her.

I
USUALLY MANAGED TO
disappoint my mother, thought Rose lying in the hotel bed. She had propped the window wide now and thought she could really hear, was not imagining, the rustle of the reeds as they swayed in the still night.

I disappointed my father also, she thought, but not so much. He had his work to think about and his supposed cancer. I wonder whether he did have cancer? Whether it might not have been ulcers or something of that sort? He died of a stroke. I remember my mother’s resentment when the bill for the cancer treatment had to be paid. Had all that money been wasted? It’s curious how little I know about my parents. Rose abandoned sleep, surrendered to a wakeful night.

They disliked each other, those two, she thought. It was rather dreadful the way they pretended not to.

Presumably they never had any fun in bed. If they had, there would have been ups and downs in their relationship. Lively shouting matches to break the monotony. Their rows were tamped down, never allowed to surface, just the sort of thing to produce ulcers.

Those quarrels, thought Rose, yearned for a bout of healthy fucking. I bet my mother never had an orgasm. My poor Pa would not have known how to set about giving her one. An orgasm for a woman of my mother’s generation was a matter of chance. She almost certainly went to her death with an undiscovered clitoris. She always said she was unlucky. I wonder, mused Rose, how much the younger generation’s aptitude for guitars has contributed to sexual bliss. I must enquire of Christopher. No, I can’t, he would find my question in poor taste. There is too much of Ned in Christopher. No wonder Helen has such a grip.

The least disappointing time for my parents, thought Rose, was the period between the winter tennis party and my marriage to Ned.

It was extraordinary in retrospect how Ned had insinuated himself into the Freelings’ lives. Had there been a moment when it would have been possible to put a stop to Ned, choke him off without irreparably hurting him? Dear kind Ned. Was there a moment when I could have cried halt? It was my fault, thought Rose, I was inattentive, I should have seen that his strength was his apparent vulnerability. I used him to deflect attention from Mylo. I trailed Ned as the lapwing trails her wing.

She tried to remember when it had become unremarkable, accepted, for Ned to come constantly to the house.

At first it had been George and Richard who came on one excuse or another on their way to the Thornbys, or bringing some message from their mother to hers in a friendship destined for an early demise, blossoming briefly, to die when Rose married Ned.

Sometimes George and Richard brought Mylo, practising their French. At other times Nicholas and Emily would be there and other young men whose names and faces now eluded her. I was in love, thought Rose, that made me attractive to other men, that is the way it works, just like the animal world.

Mrs Freeling had been delighted, made references to moths and candles, causing her daughter to wince. The advent of this modest number of young men had excited her, increased her subtle pressure for Rose to marry. She picked over the young men deftly. This one’s father drank, that one had an uncle who was an undeclared bankrupt, another’s mother was rumoured to have Indian blood. How had she discovered these things, to which grapevine did she connect? For an unsociable, retiring woman, she was no slouch. She shuffled the pack, conjuring to the fore the two Malones (the jelly incident forgotten), only to push them aside when Ned appeared and re-appeared, became constant.

She never really noticed Mylo, thought Rose. No warning bell sounded. Rose chuckled forty-eight years later.

Mylo came, dressed now as were all the others in the dress of the day. Tweed jacket and grey flannel trousers, a uniform as ubiquitous as jeans. There had been a brief parental bristle. Wasn’t he rather foreign? Jewish, perhaps? No family. No money (poor boy, how worn his shoes). No proper job. No university degree. Frightfully young.

This quasi-invisible put-down, which applied in varying degree to lots of people, was enough for Mylo to steer clear, for them to meet secretly where they could be together unobserved: in the woods in fine weather, in churches when it rained. They pretended an interest in brass rubbing if anyone chanced to interrupt them absorbed in talk, sitting entwined in the most comfortable pew or reading aloud to each other. Our love, like prayers, must have soaked into the walls of those churches, stirred the loins of the long dead under the brasses, thought Rose.

Mylo had acquired his little car so they travelled far afield. It had belonged to a friend of Mylo’s father who, owing him a favour, repaid it to the son.

When the Freelings moved to London for Mr Freeling’s cancer treatment, they met in the museums, picnicked in the parks, strolled hand in hand in Kew Gardens, lolled in Richmond Park. Mylo by this time had finished his stint at the Malones (George never acquired a good accent, but was famous for fluency) and was looking for a job.

While Rose floated on cloud nine, Ned grew closer. Kind and friendly to her parents, consistently attentive, taking her to Quaglino’s, the Écu de France, to dine and dance at the Berkeley, to lunch at the Savoy. To the regatta at Henley (surprising in his pink socks), to the Eton and Harrow Ball, to the Air Show, to Wimbledon, to theatres and cinemas, displaying the kingdoms of his world. Had she played him off against Mylo, had she been seduced by Ned’s offerings?

If only I had not been a virgin, thought Rose. If only I had known what I learned later, that the hungry coupling of the young which failed us in that smelly little hotel could become a glorious leisurely indulgence.

How had the trap closed? Was there a day when Mylo gave up? Did he stand back, angry? When had she decided to opt for safety and pleasing her parents? (Be fair, I was pleased too.) Impossible now to put a finger on it, enough that she had said, ‘Yes, all right,’ walking with Ned in the dusk, in his Uncle Archibald’s glen with the curlew crying.

It was then, Rose thought wryly, that her parents had stopped feeling their disappointment, had quite liked each other, basking in a joint glow of parental success.

I was so young, Rose excused herself, and Mylo was so young too. If only we could have waited.

My parents’ liking for each other did not last. But the trap closed and I, thought Rose, grew fond of my jailer. Mylo, angry and estranged, absorbed by the war, disappeared; he might, in his silence, have been dead, so totally did he withdraw.

The telephone had rung while she was in her bath before dressing for her wedding.

‘Somebody wants you on the telephone, he won’t give his name’—her mother had been irritated—‘won’t give a message.’

Wrapped in her bath towel she had heard his husky voice: ‘Meet me at the corner of the street. It’s not too late. Come quick, don’t stop to think. I’ve got the car.’

‘How can I? I’m in my bath. I …’

‘I shan’t bother you again, then.’ He was furious.

‘Oh, please, please, don’t go, don’t say goodbye,’ she had screamed, regardless of her mother listening on the stair.

‘I am not saying it …’ He had rung off.

One of Ned’s secrets was a sense of insecurity. He needed to be reassured, pampered. Something of a parvenu—he was only a distant cousin of the old Peel, had not grown up expecting to inherit—he enjoyed obsequious waiters bowing to his money as they pulled out chairs, flapped napkins, proffered menus, and I, thought Rose, was too young, too naïve to observe this until later. Poor Ned, I no longer mind but there were times when I deeply resented the asking and the giving of that promise. Poor old Ned, poor Ned.

I wonder, thought Rose jerking awake before she finally drifted into sleep, where I put Ned’s ashes?

I am growing so forgetful, she thought worriedly, I am for ever losing things.

Then, How stupid of me. How could I forget? Helen took charge of them. Helen would, thought Rose, smiling none too kindly in the dark. One wonders, does Helen pleasure Christopher? He wears such a discontented expression. He was such a dear little boy. Now he has a sad look to him. Does Helen look covertly at me and wonder how Ned and I got on in bed? Will she care for Slepe as I did? Where will she decide to put Ned’s ashes? Is Ned, in ash, feeling more secure? There was never any need for Ned to worry.

Through the open window came the hotel cat, viewed on his way to hunt the night away. Now he sprang onto Rose’s bed, stepping onto her body to tread and purr, pressing down his claws to clench the bedclothes, catching and extracting them, purring and rumbling in ecstasy and Rose, released by surprise, wept for Ned for the first time since he had died.

‘S
O,’ NED SAID, RELINQUISHING
his imprecise memories of the winter tennis, ‘shall I show you round the house? Shall we do the grand tour?’ He was impatient, proud of his possessions, anxious to show them off, present Rose with her future.

Rose jumped up. ‘Could we walk round the garden first?’

‘If that’s what you’d like.’ He would indulge her. ‘I know nothing about gardens,’ he said, striking at a passing bee, swishing the head off a Japanese anemone.

Rose retrieved the decapitated flower. ‘Nor do I know much, but I am ready to learn.’ She walked ahead of him.

The paved path led through the garden to wrought-iron gates leading into a second garden. ‘How lovely,’ Rose exclaimed, ‘two walled gardens, what riches, what wonderful flowers.’ She looked around, pleased.

‘It’s very disorderly.’ Ned looked about critically.

‘That’s what’s so exciting,’ said Rose. ‘I like it.’

‘There’s a third and larger garden for vegetables and fruit,’ Ned said. ‘It should be useful if food gets short as it did in the nineteen-fourteen war. I hope Farthing knows his onions. Ah, there is Farthing—we’d better say hullo.’ He took Rose’s arm above the elbow, ‘This is my wife, Farthing, Mrs Peel.’

‘Ah,’ said Farthing, looking Rose over (as though I need pruning, Rose told herself). Farthing was a man of sixty with leathery outdoor skin, small bright eyes, a puckered mouth and obstinate chin. He was a very small man, no taller than Rose.

Rose took his hand. ‘Your garden is gorgeous.’

‘Who did that?’ Farthing’s eye seemed to slide down Rose’s arm to the flower head in her hand.

‘An accident.’ She would not betray Ned.

‘I saw him,’ said Farthing. ‘Bees is useful animals.’ He had witnessed Ned swish at the bee.

‘He missed.’ Rose grinned. ‘Do you keep bees?’

‘Two, three hives, depends.’

‘How are the vegetables, has it been a good season?’ Ned felt excluded.

‘Veggies is all right.’ Farthing was studying Rose.

I wish he’d call me sir, thought Ned. ‘We should concentrate on vegetables from now on,’ he asserted his authority.

‘But not to the exclusion of flowers, Ned, bees need them and honey is frightfully important; sugar is going to be rationed, and without disturbing the flowers, there are lots of vegetables which can be grown among them, aren’t there, Mr Farthing?’

‘Hadn’t thought to do that, Miss, good idea. Farthing will do, Miss, just Farthing.’

‘Mrs,’ corrected Ned, ‘since yesterday. Mrs Peel.’

‘Ah,’ said Farthing, ‘um.’

He is teasing Ned, thought Rose. ‘Will you teach me to work in the garden?’ she asked Farthing. ‘When I’m on my own.’

‘Ah,’ said Farthing, ‘veggies is through there.’ He nodded towards a door in the wall. ‘Nice crop of onions and shallots; my old gentleman was fond of garlic too.’

‘Good,’ said Rose. ‘Come on, Ned, let’s look.’ She led the way into the kitchen garden. ‘This is all jolly orderly,’ she said, pointing at the rows of vegetables. ‘What a lovely man; isn’t he nice, Ned?’

‘He will have to get used to me,’ said Ned, ‘he misses my uncle.’ Lovely was not, he felt, an applicable word for the gardener.

‘Of course he does. One can read his feelings, his love in the gardens.’

‘I can’t say I can, but he seemed to take to you …’

‘Come on, Ned, don’t be grumpy, just look at that crop of onions! They would win prizes anywhere.’

(I am not grumpy.) ‘I’d rather show you the house, come along …’ Ned walked her past the rows of onions ripening in the sun, turning his eyes away from the fruits of Farthing’s labours. ‘Fortunately Mrs Farthing has looked after the furniture rather well. The house needs a lot doing to it, but we shall have to wait until after the war. All I’ve done so far is to put in an Aga. My uncle made do with a monumental Victorian range. It all needs modernising.’