Not That Sort of Girl (2 page)

Rose did not reply.

‘What hotel shall you go to?’

‘I’ll find one, I haven’t thought.’

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘Only a few days, Nicholas. Do stop asking questions.’ Rose’s voice trembled.

‘Same old secretive Rose,’ said Nicholas. It angered him that whereas Rose knew most of what there was to know about his sister Emily and himself, there was precious little either of them knew about Rose that was not public property since her marriage to Ned in 1939. ‘Here comes Emily,’ he said, waving towards a white Ford car coming up the drive.

‘T
HERE SHE GOES.’ EMILY
Thornby stood with her brother Nicholas watching Rose’s car disappear. ‘Can you see which way she is going?’

‘No. The hedge hides the crossroads.’

‘It would be nice to know where she has gone,’ said Emily wistfully. ‘Do you imagine she has an assignation?’

‘Rose! At her age! All that sort of thing is long past, if it ever existed.’

‘So we believe,’ said Emily.

‘And there never was anything of that sort. She has been the model wife, she will now make an ideal widow. Rose’s love life never amounted to much, her life has been an open book.’

Emily snorted. ‘That was one of your theories when you called her the ideal daughter …’

‘When we were far from ideal,’ agreed Nicholas. ‘Mind you, I’ve always thought her father was preferable to ours, I rather envied Rose her father’s death.’

They had sat with Rose at her kitchen table and eaten the pâté provided by Nicholas. Emily had mixed a salad. Both women had watched Nicholas struggle with Ned’s corkscrew to uncork the Beaujolais. He had only succeeded after breaking the cork and had to decant the wine, straining off the bits of cork through muslin.

Rose did not drink more than a glass, while Nicholas and his sister finished the bottle and opened another. Now moderately inebriated, they stood on the steps outside the door which Rose had locked as she left the house. In the hall behind them the telephone rang unanswered, as it had all through the meal, as it would until Christopher, the new owner, the heir, took over or Rose chose to return.

‘I bet Christopher installs an ansaphone,’ said Emily.

‘Ned’s carefulness with money!’ said Nicholas irritably. ‘No ansaphone is on a par with his manic use of second-class stamps and re-use of envelopes. Just listen to it! How could Rose sit there all through lunch and not answer?’

Emily laughed: ‘I never told you about Rose and the crabs, did I? I was sure that no one, not even you, would believe me, so I kept quiet about it.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Nicholas, suspicious of his sister’s tone.

‘I am suggesting,’ said Emily, ‘that Rose has not been the ideal wife we have watched all these years. I am suggesting that there is more to Rose than meets our eyes.’

‘Let us sit on her doorstep while you tell me then,’ said Nicholas, lowering himself onto the stone steps warmed by the afternoon sun. He drew his sister down beside him. ‘We shall not sit here so intimately when Christopher and Helen are masters but for the moment there is nobody to bother about us.’ He smiled appreciatively at his sister, seeing in her delicately-pointed nose, narrow-lipped mouth, high forehead and inquisitive brown eyes a feminine version of his own beloved self. I wish, thought Nicholas, that I could tint my hair as she does, then we might still be taken for twins. ‘The chaps in the town are saying, “Poor, poor Rose, she will be lost.”’ Nicholas laughed and Emily, sitting down beside him, laughed too.

‘It’s nice here.’ She stretched her legs out beside her brother’s, admiring her neat ankles and small feet.

‘So, go on. Tell me,’ prompted Nicholas, ‘about the crabs.’

‘Some years ago,’ Emily turned towards her brother, ‘I was taking the short cut through Bennett’s passage into Waycott Street and up it, you know how steep it is, a Land-rover was slowly towing a small trailer. The trailer was open and it was full of crabs destined, one supposes, for one of the hotels, or more probably the fish restaurant in Jude Street. Actually, where it was going doesn’t matter. I came out into the street as the Land-rover slowed to turn right into the High Street. There was nobody about except Rose walking up the hill ahead of me. As the trailer drew level with her, quick as a flash, she helped herself to crabs as they went by, putting them into her shopping trolley. Then the Land-rover went on round the corner and Rose walked on with her booty.’

‘Were the crabs cooked?’

‘Yes.’

‘She didn’t see you?’

‘She didn’t see me.’

‘And?’

‘That was it. But later I met those boring fishing friends of Ned’s, Arthur and Milly, and they told me what a marvellous crab supper they had had chez Ned and Rose.’

‘Oh.’

‘And Milly said she was particularly impressed because usually she did not think Rose put herself out for them as they were so much more Ned’s friends than hers. Hadn’t much in common, was how she put it.’

‘How marvellous, how absolutely marvellous.’ Nicholas, who had been holding his breath, let it out in a gust, then leaned his head back against the closed front door and whinnied with laughter.

Emily looked pleased, but Nicholas, recovering from his mirth, said, ‘If there were this side to Rose which was unknown to us during her married life …’

‘Forty-eight years.’

‘Yes, forty-eight years! How can we be sure we really knew her before she married? Was there a Rose we did not know? Have we ever known her?’

‘Of course we know her. We knew her as children, as we grew up. We knew the men, such as they were, who might have married her. We knew everything she did. She confided in us, we were her friends. We knew she was a cold fish. Not for Rose the adventures and risks we took. Rose is conventional, she always was, she played safe, got herself married to Ned Peel and all this.’ Emily nodded back at the house behind them, waved her arm towards Ned’s acres. ‘Find me a better example of her breed and upbringing.’

‘But,’ said Nicholas, ‘with your crab story, you have been suggesting otherwise.’

‘It must be the exception, the slip which proves the rule,’ said Emily, feeling a little annoyed with her brother.

‘All the same.’ Nicholas was intrigued. ‘I would give a lot to get back into the house and go through her things. There might be a ribboned packet of letters, a precious clue which would lead to the discovery of the Rose who would steal crabs, a Rose who has conned us.’

‘If you went through the house with a fine comb,’ scoffed Emily, ‘you would find everything in order, in its place. Ned’s farm accounts perfect, their income tax paid. You would find bundles of receipts but no love letters.’ Now Emily wished she had not presented well known old Rose to her brother in a new and intriguing light; she feared her tale of the crabs had in a sense boomeranged. ‘We know Rose,’ she said with conviction, permitting the smallest note of patronage into her tone.

‘Maybe you are right.’ Nicholas stood up. ‘It’s getting chilly, shall we go home?’ Probably, he thought, knowing his sister as well as he knew himself, the crab story never took place. It’s more likely Emily saw the load of crabs herself, was tempted to help herself and attributed a non-existent act to Rose. It is the sort of story I make up myself.

‘Come on,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Time to go home.’

Emily took his hand, pulled herself up and walked with him hand-in-hand to their cars.

As they walked, it occurred to Nicholas that Rose had deliberately let the telephone ring all through lunch to put a stop to conversation.

‘W
OULD IT BE POSSIBLE
to have a sandwich in my room?’ Rose asked, handing back the pen she had borrowed to sign the register. ‘Or is it too late?’

The manager, who was also the owner of the hotel, flicked a quick glance at the book as he turned it back towards him, changing his mind as he did so as to which room to offer his guest.

‘Would a smoked salmon sandwich and a glass of wine be all right?’ (She looked exhausted.) ‘Half a bottle of Muscadet?’

‘Lovely.’

‘And a little fruit? Peaches, grapes? Brown bread or white? Coffee?’

‘Perfect. Brown, please, no coffee.’

‘I’ll lead the way.’ He picked up Rose’s bag. (Goodness, it looks tatty; I’ve been meaning to replace it for years.) ‘I will put you in a room on the ground floor. You look out on the creek and can step out into the garden. It has its own bathroom, of course.’

‘Thank you. I am quite tired.’ Rose followed the manager along the passage. ‘I shall enjoy the quiet.’

‘Would you like to be called in the morning?’

‘No,’ said Rose. ‘No, thank you. I wake.’ The trouble is, she thought, unpacking her few belongings, I don’t sleep.

She busied herself putting toothbrushes and sponge in the bathroom, laying her nightdress on the bed, keeping her thoughts at bay, as she had managed so successfully on the long drive from Slepe, a drive to nowhere in particular until at the end of the long afternoon she had seen the sign which said ‘Hotel’, and followed a winding lane down a wooded valley to arrive at this place, hitherto unknown to her.

She opened the window and looked out onto a lawn sloping down in the dusk to the water. A swan, its head tucked under its wing, drifted close to the bank; further out the cob swam placidly. Across the creek she could just make out the silhouette of a heron, immobile on a branch overhanging the water.

‘How long is she going to stay?’ asked a woman’s voice from further along the building, its tone of irritation amplified by the water. ‘I have just got that room ready for the Dutch couple who are booked for Tuesday.’

‘Then you will have to get it ready again, won’t you? She didn’t say.’

‘Why,’ a note of rising ire, ‘why did you not ask her?’

‘Hurry up with those sandwiches, don’t forget the lemon. I put her there because she looks the sort who will recommend us to her friends,’ the manager snarled.

Leaning out of the window Rose listened for a contemptuous snort, smiled.

‘With those clothes? With that shabby bag?’ asked the woman. ‘Why is she travelling alone?’ Her suspicion was almost tangible. One of them, Rose presumed the husband, banged the window down. Out on the creek, a coot cried and was answered. There was a knock on the door.

Rose drew away from the window. ‘Come in.’

‘Your sandwiches.’ She recognised the voice. ‘Is there anything else you would like?’ The woman wore good looks masked by an expression of martyrdom.

‘No, thank you. This looks delicious. I will put the tray outside the door when I have finished. Have you had a very busy season?’ The trick of making herself agreeable was automatic.

‘You can say that again,’ exclaimed the woman. (For two cents she will tell me how she hates her husband, how overworked and unappreciated she is.) ‘Shall I turn the bed down? Have you enough towels?’ The woman peered into the bathroom, assessing Rose’s toothbrushes and Greek sponge.

‘No, no thank you. It’s all lovely; thank you so much for all your trouble. Good night.’ Rose sat by the tray that held the sandwiches. She was suddenly ravenous and began to eat as the woman went out and closed the door.

Outside it was now dark. She finished eating, poured herself wine, went and stood by the window. Shafts of light illumined the grass, the angry voices were stilled, a secret cat crossed the beam of light and rejoined the night. I am travelling alone, thought Rose, and waited for memories of Ned to crowd into her mind, but all she felt was a surge of heretical pleasure at being properly alone for the first time since 1939.

Sipping her wine, she looked out at the water glittering blackly and savoured her pleasure. Her wine finished, she put the tray outside her door, locked it, switched the telephone by the bed to ‘Off, undressed, brushed her hair, went to the bathroom to clean her teeth and wash, smooth cream into her face, slide the nightdress over her head.

Ready for bed, she reached into the overnight bag for the picture she had taken off her bedroom wall and put it propped on the dressing table where she could see it from the bed. She got into bed, switched off the bedside light, pulled the bedclothes up to her chin, lay back, closed her eyes and courted composure. Then, remembering Nicholas and Emily’s expressions of pain as she let the telephone ring loud, intermittent, unanswered all through lunch, she began to laugh so that under her the bed shook. The probability was that all the messages would have been more or less identical, safe enough for the pricked ears of Nicholas and Emily. Yet one of the callers might have been Mylo. The risk of its not being Mylo had been so great that she had left the telephone unanswered.

‘H
AVE YOU DEFINITELY MADE
up your mind?’ Mylo held her against him, teasing her hair through his fingers, bending to nuzzle her neck. ‘Snuggle up close, then you won’t feel cold.’ He leaned back against the tree, feeling the bark rough against his spine. ‘Answer me, Rose.’

‘No, no, oh, Mylo.’ She put her arms round his neck, reaching up to him. ‘It’s so difficult, so hard.’ She pitied herself.

‘No, no, you won’t marry him, or no, no, you haven’t made up your mind?’ He pulled away from her, trying to see her eyes in the dark. ‘It’s not hard. You don’t love Ned Peel, you love me. He’s an old man, you can’t …’

‘He’s only thirty-one.’

‘And you are eighteen. It makes me ill to think of him touching you; you can’t possibly marry him,’ said Mylo violently.

‘My father …’

‘Your father thinks you will be safe with him. I bet that’s what he says.’ (He would say: I want to die feeling that you are safe, that you are provided for. Were it not for this ‘cancer’ I would not press you to make a decision. I am anxious for you. There is going to be a war. Married to Ned, you will be safe and with my ‘cancer’ I cannot ensure you will be. And so on and on, with the repetition of the dreaded word in inverted commas, the stress on security.) ‘He knows the man,’ Mylo went on, ‘he has this house in the country, he knows he is well off, he will have informed himself, spoken with Ned of marriage settlements. Of course he has, I’ve heard of his kind. He knows Ned’s job, knows what he earns, knows the form. Has he any idea what being in bed with Ned will be like? Has he put himself in your shoes?’