Not That Sort of Girl (3 page)

Rose giggled. ‘I can’t see Father and Ned tucked up together.’

Mylo shook her. ‘Rose, stop it. You know you love
me, me
.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do.’

‘So what’s so difficult?’

‘It’s all difficult,’ weakly, for she was tired. Rose began to cry. Impossible to repeat her parents’ opinion of Mylo. (A nice boy, of course, but only nineteen, no prospects, no money, no family, no job, hasn’t even been to university, good looking in his way, speaks French. The speaking of French was somehow derogatory, louche, dangerous.) Their argument had gone on the whole evening, all through dinner in the restaurant and in the car driving out of London to the relatively quiet spot where they now stood on Wimbledon Common. She felt that all she wanted was to go to bed and sleep, forget her father, forget Ned Peel, even forget Mylo. ‘He is dying,’ she said, as she had said several times before, ‘he has cancer.’

‘I don’t believe he has cancer. I think he is using a rather unsubtle blackmail. I think your father is a snob. He is impressed by Ned Peel and his worldly goods. It’s a very old story. He’d like to boast about “my son-in-law, Ned Peel”, look him up in
Who’s Who.’

‘He’d never say that.’

‘Not in so many words. It’s the elevation by implication …’

‘Anyway,’ Rose said bitterly, ‘he couldn’t say it, he’d be dead.’

A car passed along the road; the tears on Rose’s cheeks glittered in its headlights. The driver, a happy man, seeing the lovers, gave an appreciative toot on his horn.

‘I bet you he will live for years and years,’ said Mylo nastily, ‘the old fraud.’

‘Mylo!’

‘He will, like to bet?’

‘You are calling my father a liar.’ She swung away angrily.

‘I am. You wouldn’t be so angry if you didn’t know it’s true. Your father would absolutely panic that you would ruin your prospects—that’s how he’d put it—by marrying me. He knows I have no money, he’d think me far too young, nothing alarms a solicitor more than insecurity.’

‘Take me home.’ Rose walked to Mylo’s little car parked on the grass verge. ‘I’ve had enough of this, I shall do what I please. I do not belong to you; all you do is make me miserable. It’s terribly late and I promised I would be in by twelve. The aunt I am staying with is extra respectable and quite strict, she thinks late nights are immoral.’

‘One can also be immoral by day,’ said Mylo caustically, ‘not that you go in for it, silly little prude.’

Rose said nothing, biting back a mixture of hurtful and/or loving, joking retorts. How on earth, she asked herself, have we got ourselves into this misery?

Mylo drove back into London. He had said too much, gone too far. ‘I am off to France,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a job.’

Rose’s heart turned over.

‘I wanted it to be a surprise,’ said Mylo. ‘Now I shan’t see you again. I wanted to take you with me. We could have managed; it would have been fun.’ (It was unlikely he would be allowed to take Rose, but never mind.)

Rose sat beside Mylo saying nothing, feeling a void opening in the heart that for the whole year had overflowed with Mylo.

‘It’s pretty stupid,’ said Mylo conversationally, keeping his eyes on the road, ‘we haven’t even slept together. There has never been anywhere to go and I do so terribly want you …’ He gripped the wheel tightly. They were crossing Putney Bridge, a flock of gulls flew down river. ‘It’s all right, I shan’t drown myself or anything. It just seems so wasteful that I have never held you naked in my arms, never spent a whole night with you, never learned with you how to make love. We could have learned together.’ He guided the car into the King’s Road, past the World’s End. ‘World’s End,’ he said. ‘Well, our bit of World looks like ending. Where are you staying, I forgot to ask?’

‘Chester Street.’

‘I dare say Ned Peel knows how to book in for a night at an hotel with a girl without curling up with embarrassment in inexperienced agony. He is not nineteen, he’s an experienced man of thirty-one. It’s possible, though he doesn’t look the type, that he’s done it often. He really does look reliable and safe, one can see the charm he holds for your father. I dare say your respected Pa is absolutely right. Here’s your aunt’s street, what’s the number?’

The bitterness in Mylo’s voice was dry and crisp as the east wind.

‘Twenty-two. The green door, by the pillarbox, just here.’ Rose got out of the car. ‘It’s dreadfully late. I must creep in and not wake her. Good night.’ They did not kiss.

‘I’ll wait and see you safely indoors,’ he said.

‘I have a key.’

‘I’ll wait.’

Rose fumbled in her bag for the latchkey, put it in the lock, turned it, pushed the door. ‘I’m locked out,’ she said incredulously.

‘Ring the bell.’ Mylo watched her.

Both were astonished when the door suddenly flew open and Rose’s aunt let fly.

‘I hadn’t realised she was like that,’ said Rose presently, standing by the coffee stall at Hyde Park Corner sipping boiling tea from a china mug, still so shocked by her aunt’s invective that she had to hold the mug with both hands for fear of letting Mylo see how they shook. ‘What a surprise,’ she attempted a joke, ‘she slammed the door like an expert chucker-out.’

‘I thought whore, prostitute and tart all meant the same thing; her vocabulary isn’t exactly original,’ said Mylo. ‘Where did she get her ideas about sinful and loose-living youth?’

‘Father says she was unhappily married, distrusts men.’

‘Perhaps her husband had lots of outside sexual encounters. Where shall I take you now? What about Nicholas and Emily, aren’t they friends of yours? You could come with me to France, of course.’

‘No, I can’t go to them.’ Rose shied from the suggestion of the Thornbys, ignored the allusion to France.

‘They don’t seem the type to think I’d robbed you of your virginity in Park Lane.’

‘She didn’t say Park Lane, she said “dingy nightclub”. I said I’d rather not go to Nicholas and Emily’s.’

‘She implied every conceivable indecency, suggested things I’d never heard of.’ (As though there could ever be indecency between me and Rose.) ‘Don’t let’s think about her, she’s a nasty old woman,’ said Mylo.

Will she write or telephone my father? Rose wondered. He is so ill, it would be the last straw.

Mylo read her thoughts. ‘She won’t bother your father; that sort of person keeps the hatch on her sewer. More tea, my love?’ Rose shook her head. ‘I am staying with an aunt too, another sort of aunt, I’ll take you there. She will give us breakfast and lend you money to get home. Come along, it’s across the park, she lives in Bayswater.’

As they drove across the park, Mylo said quietly, ‘Rose, don’t rush into marriage with Ned. He’s a nice chap; I’m jealous, that’s all. There’s nothing really wrong with him, but you are only eighteen. Even if you don’t want me, you may find you want somebody else. There’s the whole world, Rose, all your life.’

Rose did not answer.

Mylo stopped the car by the Serpentine bridge. ‘Let’s be quiet a minute and watch the water.’

The park was empty at this early hour, nobody about, London as still as it ever is.

‘Shall we walk a little way?’ Mylo got out of the car and held out his hand to Rose.

They strolled by the water, watching the water fowl. Ducks cruised, coots paddled in desperate haste to reach the reeds, calling to each other with sharp querying cries.

Under the bridge Mylo stopped and kissed Rose gently.

‘I warn you, I shall have at least one more try before I give up,’ he said, ‘in any case even if we never meet again I am in your bones. It can’t be helped. I know it, and you would too if you were honest. We can’t escape. I will go to France. You may marry Ned. However unhappy we are, and I hope we won’t be, we shall always have each other. Tell you what,’ said Mylo, laughing now, ‘I will telephone from time to time all through our lives.’

‘All down the years?’ Rose mocked, yet felt a lift of spirit.

‘You never know,’ said Mylo. ‘But the first time will be soon, you won’t have long to wait.’

Rose was uncertain how to take this. ‘Is that a threat or a promise?’

Mylo grinned. ‘I shall marry too, perhaps find myself a beautiful girl, kinder than you.’

Rose drew in her breath.

‘You can’t have it all your own way,’ mocked Mylo. ‘I can’t delay my sex life indefinitely, can I?’

Rose did not answer.

‘Besides,’ said Mylo, walking her briskly back to his car, ‘there are more things than marriage to worry about. There will be a war soon; that will keep us busy.’

‘Ned is in the Territorials.’

‘Ned would be; his future role tidily arranged. My darling, do you realise what an utterly conventional life you are letting yourself in for?’

‘I may enjoy it.’ She was defensive.

‘We were going to travel the world, I seem to remember. Visit Russia, explore the Balkans, discover Greece, cross the Andes, explore Tibet.’

‘I shall travel with Ned.’

‘I dare say you will and at the back of your mind you will always be wondering whether it would not be more fun to be with Mylo.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Get into the car, my love.’

Mylo drove slowly towards Bayswater. By the look of the sky it was going to be a beautiful day.

‘And, in bed with Ned, you will wonder whether this curious act of sex would not with Mylo turn into something sublime.’

‘Shut up.’

Mylo stopped the car outside his aunt’s home.

‘Promise me one thing, Rose, you owe me that.’

‘All right.’

‘When I send for you urgently to come and meet me, you needn’t do anything you don’t want to do, but just come.’

‘How can I?’

‘You will manage.’ Mylo had confidence.

S
TRETCHING HER LEGS DOWN
into the bed, Rose tried to remember Ned. Easily she visualised his upright figure in greenish tweeds. The ancient but beautifully cut coat. The knee breeches he affected, ribbed stockings, brogue shoes, if it were fine. If wet or cold, he would wear a green quilted waistcoat, green gumboots and a greenish waxed rainproof jacket with poacher’s pockets. Round his neck the soft scarf she had given him, dark red this, underneath a checked Viyella shirt and either a knitted tie or his old school tie, which he wore as unashamedly as had been the mode when he was a young man; topping the lot would be a checked cap or a tweed hat with flies stuck in it.

Ned’s face was harder to remember than his clothes. A narrow-lipped mouth, watery blue eyes giving the impression that he drank, which he did not, a thick reddish nose which by its coarseness spoiled his otherwise rather distinguished appearance. His chin, a good feature in his youth, had mysteriously doubled, mysterious since he was not a fat man, more on the spare side.

More on the spare side, Rose repeated to herself while she waited for the memories which should now come flooding into her widowed mind.

Since no memories came, she tried dressing Ned in his London gear (they had after all lived much of their life in London), but although she could see Ned well enough in his navy pinstripe, his charcoal—almost black—suit, his Prince of Wales check, his camel-hair overcoat, even in his boring old striped pyjamas, Ned steadfastly refused to come to life. Which, thought Rose, as she lay in the strange hotel bed, is quite natural since he died ten days ago and is cremated.

She got out of bed and padded to the window, opened it to let in the night. The air rushing in was chilly; getting back into bed she switched on the electric blanket. This hotel was a lucky find—every comfort.
‘Tout confort.’
Who said that? Mylo, of course.
‘Tout confort,’
he had said, holding her tightly in his arms that first time in that fearfully uncomfortable hotel in the shabby little port where they had their first rendezvous.

Suddenly Ned materialised in her widowed mind’s eye. Ned watching her read the letter from Mylo with its neatly worked-out instructions for the intricate journey. ‘You take the boat as usual from Dunoon to Glasgow; from Glasgow you take the 11.30 train to Crewe. At Crewe you wait an hour, then catch the train for Holyhead. I shall be waiting on the station platform. You need do nothing you don’t want to, but I absolutely must see you before I leave the country. This may well be our last chance to meet.’ Had Ned, watching her read Mylo’s letter, also heard her answer the telephone two days before? The unexpected, for she had taken care not to tell him the Scottish address, call from Mylo, long distance. He had said, ‘I am in Dublin. I have written the trains and boat you must take to meet me. Do not fail me.’ And, clever Mylo, he had rung off before she could prevaricate or protest or get his number to ring back.

She had felt unease that he was in Dublin when she had believed him to be in France. Her thoughts when they strayed to Mylo had crossed the Channel, even caught the boat train to Paris. What was he up to in Dublin?

What had Ned been thinking as he watched her read the letter? Her heart jolting in her chest, she had said, keeping her voice casual, ‘Oh, damn, I had quite forgotten, how awfully rude of me. The Wigrams are expecting me on Wednesday. I shall have to leave a day early. They are my father’s greatest friends’ (well, they might be, if they existed). ‘I am so sorry, how maddening.’ She had held the letter out to Ned as though it was a nothing letter, a letter from an expectant hostess, taking the risk that Ned would take it, read it, but more probably not since he read with difficulty without his glasses and with luck would have left them upstairs. With her heart in her throat, Rose gambled on Ned’s eyesight and good manners.

‘Of course you must go,’ he had said, ‘but this means I cannot drive you home.’

‘Oh,’ she had said, ‘I’ll take the train—she says I have to change at Crewe.’

‘I promised to give Nicholas and Emily a lift home and we cannot make them cut their visit short, they are relying on me.’

‘Of course. Never mind. It’s not for long. You can’t let them down, they can’t afford the train.’ Gratefully she thanked God for the Thornbys’ sponging habits, their continual cries of poverty.

‘Poor you. How boring for you.’ Emily with her usually needle eye had noticed nothing. ‘The separation,’ said Emily, ‘will add spice to your engagement and, who knows, some good may come out of your duty visit, a sumptuous wedding prezzie, perhaps?’