Not That Sort of Girl (8 page)

‘So what?’

‘Don’t be rude, Rose. I was making sure Emily and Nicholas will pick you up tomorrow. Emily told me that he is to be there.’

Rose said nothing, rinsing her hair, rubbing her head with a towel, jerking a comb through the wet hair. ‘Don’t do that, darling,’ said Mrs Freeling, ‘let your hair dry naturally; wet hair is so brittle.’

‘Mother!’

‘All right, darling, I will leave you. I only want you to enjoy yourself …’ Mrs Freeling retreated. Rose ran after her, flung her arms around her and hugged her. ‘Oh, darling, you are making me all wet,’ said Mrs Freeling.

‘Oh, oh,’ whispered Rose, watching her mother go down the stairs, ‘neither of us ever gets it right.’ She watched her mother’s diminishing back with pity. ‘Poor Mother, am I supposed to be gobbled up by this Ned Peel?’ She began filing her nails, waiting for her hair to dry. I’d better shave my armpits, she thought. And what about my legs? She pulled down her stockings and eyed the soft almost invisible hairs on her legs. No, leave the legs hairy. She went back to the bathroom and stole one of her father’s razor blades. After shaving her armpits, she took the blade out of the razor and put it in her purse. A desperate idea had occurred to her.

O
NE OF THE MYSTERIES
about Nicholas and Emily was that in spite of their perpetual cries of poverty, they always managed to look chic; they exuded an aura of confidence and one-upmanship which Rose found unnerving. Arriving to fetch her in their father’s respectable old Morris, wearing immaculate white tennis clothes under twin camel-hair coats, they jumped out to greet her, showing themselves off.

Rose often thought of them as saplings planted too close together, growing up entwined. She grinned at them posing, their arms round each other’s waists. ‘Willows,’ she said, ‘wandlike, unpollarded.’

‘What?’ asked Emily.

‘Nothing,’ said Rose.

Nicholas cried, ‘How pretty you look, Rose,’ meaning: look at us, are we not pretty?

‘Shall I sit in the back?’ asked Rose, drawing her old school coat around her, muffling it over the pink dress. ‘What are the suitcases for?’ she asked, squeezing into the back seat, pushing aside tennis racquets and suitcases.

‘There’s usually a dance in the evening,’ said Emily, getting back into the car. ‘We’ve brought our evening clothes to change into.’

‘Oh,’ said Rose, surprised.

‘It’s for the house party, but we are prepared, if asked, to stay on for it,’ said Nicholas, settling himself in the driver’s seat. ‘Come on, you old rattler.’ The car shot forward.

‘I see you’ve got your father’s racquet,’ said Emily, whose beady eye missed nothing, ‘his new Slazenger. What happened to yours?’

‘Bust,’ said Rose, feeling inferior. If they had told me about the dance I would have cried off, she thought, seeing in her mind’s eye people dancing in evening clothes while she still wore her pink cotton. (She would have sweated under the arms by then, or spilt something down her front.) She said, ‘Nobody said anything about dancing to me.’

‘Never mind,’ said Emily, who had discussed with Nicholas whether to tell Rose and voted not to. (Nothing worse than an odd girl to upset numbers.) ‘Nicholas or someone can run you home. We got our racquets in the end of summer sales,’ she said, ‘they are brand new.’

‘They smell nice.’ Rose sniffed the leather on the racquet handles. ‘Delicious.’

‘Father is letting us have this car for ourselves from now on; the diocese are providing him with a new one now he is a bish,’ said Nicholas.

‘Oh,’ said Rose, impressed. ‘A car for nothing.’

‘We will swop it soon for something more dashing; it looks a bit too churchy, don’t you think?’ said Emily. ‘We want a red sports.’

‘One could have guessed,’ said Rose.

‘A soupçon of vulgarity suits,’ sang Nicholas.

‘And,’ said Emily, leaning over from the front seat, ‘Father is sinking his savings in the Rectory.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The new parson wants a smaller house. Father is buying the Rectory from the Church Commissioners and putting it jointly in our names. He’s heard this will save death duties.’

‘Very thoughtful is Father,’ said Nicholas.

‘We are going to live in it, just us two,’ said Emily.

‘The real reason is he would find us an embarrassment in the Bishop’s Palace,’ said Nicholas. ‘Not that he actually says so.’

‘Why,’ asked Rose, bewildered, ‘should he?’

‘If you don’t know, we shan’t tell,’ said Emily in the tone of voice which would lose her many a friend through life.

Nicholas sniggered.

Rose wished fervently that she had not let her father work on her feelings. ‘Have you been to this winter tennis before?’ she asked dubiously.

‘Oh, yes, often,’ said Nicholas.

‘Several times,’ said Emily.

Once, perhaps, thought Rose.

‘I hear Ned Peel is going to be there. I hope we shall like him as a neighbour,’ said Emily. ‘I plan that he shall be an asset.’

‘I quite took to him when I met him,’ said Nicholas, who had happened to sit next to Ned on the London Underground on a brief journey between Knightsbridge and Piccadilly and seized the opportunity to introduce himself. ‘I met him in London not so long ago. Of course, he never came down to Slepe before his uncle died.’

‘The old man was a recluse,’ said Emily, ‘never entertained. Ned hasn’t opened the house properly yet, let’s hope he’s not like his uncle.’

‘Oh, no, he’s not at all like the old man,’ said Nicholas, ‘he’s entirely different.’

‘All the old man liked was his garden, they say,’ said Emily. ‘He kept a full-time gardener but no proper servants. I bet the house is in a state.’

‘Supposed to be full of lovely things,’ said Nicholas, double de-clutching around a corner. The Morris, unused to such grand treatment, screeched its gears like a demented turkey and stalled its engine.

‘Poor old dodderer, outlived his welcome in this world,’ said Nicholas, re-starting the car. ‘High time there was some young life at Slepe.’

What a lot they know, thought Rose, wondering whether the skirt of her dress was the right length, sure that it wasn’t, fingering her father’s racquet as it lay across her knees. It’s too heavy, she thought, it’s a man’s racquet, I shall never be able to play with it, I shall look a fool, I wish I had not come. Then she thought, Nobody will notice me, they never do, they will notice Emily who is so lively, she will hold her own, outdo the girls from London, why the hell should I bother? Then again, she thought, they will all wear white. I shall stand out like a sore thumb. My pink dress will make me obvious when I do something awkward, I don’t want to be noticed, and Emily does, they will notice Emily if only because she is wearing white and has a new racquet, I wish I had the nerve to ask Nicholas to drop me by a bus stop to find my way home. (There is no bus stop.)

Nicholas drove the old Morris up to the Malones’ front door. ‘Here we are, girls, let battle commence.’

They had arrived too early.

George Malone, coming round the house from the stable yard, found them grouped on the doorstep waiting for the bell to be answered.

‘Hullo, hullo,’ said George, ‘you are early birds, we don’t start play until twelve, but do come in. Everybody will be changing. I bet some of the girls are not even up yet, there were faces missing at breakfast; we went to a party last night and got to bed in the small hours, but, tell you what, I’ll get Betty to take you round to the court, you’d probably like to knock up or something, get your eye in. Will you show them the way, Betty?’ said George to the maid who had appeared to open the door. ‘You haven’t been before, have you?’ he said to Emily.

‘It’s Rose who hasn’t been before,’ said Emily quickly, ‘I know my way to the court. Come on, Rose, I’ll lead the way.’

George smiled at Rose and said, ‘Does your mother’s cook still make those stupendous jellies?’ And to Nicholas he said, ‘I must rush up and change. Mother likes us to be ready to greet our guests.’

This is where if I liked Nicholas better I would feign a pain and ask him to drive me home, thought Rose, but he would see through me. Why, oh why, do he and Emily make me feel so provincial? She followed Nicholas, Emily and the maid through the house, out through a side door, across a stretch of garden to the building which held the covered court. Here the maid left them.

Nicholas and Emily took off their coats; Nicholas measured the height of the net, adjusted it, bounced several times on the balls of his feet, swung his racquet serving an imaginary ball.

‘Isn’t George an old comic,’ said Emily, swishing her new racquet. ‘What was that reference to jellies, Rose?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Rose, remembering with relief that Nicholas and Emily had not been at the party where George had disgraced her mother, but been in bed with mumps.

‘Let’s knock up,’ said Emily, swishing her racquet again. ‘Where are the balls?’

‘Here.’ Nicholas opened a box of new balls. ‘Come on, girls, I’ll take you both on.’

‘No, you and me against Rose and her father’s wonder racquet,’ cried Emily, ‘let Rose Freeling take on the Thornbys.’

‘Why not,’ said Rose, fiddling with her shoe laces, standing up to confront Emily, gripping her father’s racquet. The handle was too thick, intended for a man’s hand. It occurred to her that one reason she had so enjoyed George’s awful performance with the jellies was that Emily and Nicholas had not witnessed it; life unwitnessed by Nicholas and Emily was tolerable. Nicholas was already on the court practising his service. ‘Why don’t we play a single and let Rose ball-boy?’ Nicholas was furious with George for belittling his sister, snubbing him for his ineptitude at arriving early, and for having secret knowledge of Rose (what’s this about jellies? I must find out). He knew George only pretended to think this was Emily’s first visit; he had once overheard George tell another man that Emily was a pushy little tart who could do with taking down a peg. Hitting the ball as hard as he could, Nicholas vented his anger. Rose could be whipping boy.

Stepping onto the court, Rose felt Nicholas’s enmity linked with Emily’s malice; she mistrusted them. She felt the spring in the wooden floor communicate itself to her legs. She swung her father’s racquet, returned Nicholas’s serve, enjoyed the whizz of the ball, the impact on the strings of the racquet, the feel of the sinews in her wrist reacting. ‘I’ll take you both on,’ she shouted on a rise of spirit.

‘Ho! Listen to her! All right, little Rose, we take you at your word. Shall you serve first?’ Nicholas patronised.

‘No, you.’ Rose stood ready near the back line.

‘No quarter,’ said Nicholas.

‘No quarter,’ answered Rose.

Emily danced from one foot to the other near the net, looking mockingly at Rose.

Nicholas served, putting all his strength into it.

Rose returned the serve, flukily driving the ball hard and low. The strings of her father’s racquet parted with a twang. The ball, driven across the net with the combination of Rose’s strength and the weight of the racquet, thumped into Emily, hitting her hard between her breasts. Emily yelped. ‘My breast bone!’

‘Sorry!’ cried Rose. ‘Oh, look what I’ve done to Father’s racquet. Oh, bother, I’ll go and see whether I can borrow another from somebody.’ She ran lightly from the court, making her escape. Behind her, Emily groaned and Nicholas sympathised. I must get away, thought Rose, running across the garden and into the house. She doubled along a corridor and opened a door at random, shutting it quickly behind her. She was in Mr Malone’s library. There was a log fire burning in the fireplace, the smell of hyacinths dotted about the room in large bowls, no sound except the faint ticking of a bracket clock on the mantelshelf and the rustle of ash as a log settled in the grate.

Rose put the broken racquet down on a table, leaned forward on her hands and let furious tears fall onto the polished wood. She stood thus for several minutes, drawing her breath in long shuddering gasps, loathing Nicholas and Emily.

Presently she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and straightened up.

A yard from her nose across the table were a pair of men’s feet, bare, high-arched, long-toed. The heels rested on a copy of the
Field.

Rose said, ‘Oh, my God,’ and froze.

The feet disappeared as the legs they belonged to were lowered. A young man stood up, holding the book he had been reading against his chest.

Rose stared. He was not much older than she. Tall, thin, dressed in clothes she had only seen worn by French workmen, baggy cotton trousers in faded blue, a baggy jacket to match over a dark flannel shirt, collarless, fastened at the neck with a bone stud. He had thick, almost black hair worn rather longer than most people, a thin eager face, longish nose, wide mouth and black, intelligent eyes.

They stood staring at each other across the intervening table. On the mantelshelf the clock ticked on while their eyes meeting measured, assessed, questioned.

Then he smiled. ‘I must put on my socks.
Je m’appelle Mylo, et vous?’

‘Rose,’ said Rose.

‘Lovely,’ said Mylo, sitting down on the sofa which had hidden him from Rose. ‘I have a bloody great hole in the toe of my sock.’

‘Oh,’ said Rose.

‘Why don’t you sit down,’ said Mylo. ‘You could mop your tears with this.’ He reached across the table to a blotter and eased out a sheet of blotting paper.
‘Comme ça,’
he said, blotting the tears which marked the table. ‘Salt isn’t good for furniture or cheeks. Salt dries and becomes uncomfortable.’ He handed Rose the blotting paper. ‘Try it.’

Rose took the sheet of blotting paper and dabbed her face. ‘Thanks.’

‘Excellent, and now the socks. Just look at that for a hole.’ He wiggled his toe through the hole.

‘Are you French or English?’ Rose moved round the table, nearer the fire.

‘Both,’ said Mylo. ‘French mother, English father. And you?’

‘English.’

‘Come for the tennis?’

‘M-m-m.’

‘Bust your racquet on purpose?’ I had a razor blade with me just in case, but it broke anyway. It’s my father’s. I was annoyed with somebody.’