Once a Land Girl (40 page)

‘You hurry back to Johnny,’ she would say. ‘Have another nice rabbit casserole.’ This had become a joke between them. ‘Don’t worry for one moment about me.
Autumn will soon be here and I’ll be lively as a cricket again.’

One evening Prue, engrossed by a story Ivy was telling about her husband’s big-game hunting, left later than usual. When she arrived at the cottage Johnny was standing at the gate in the
same sort of agitation as he had been on the day Prue had first arrived. ‘I’ve been waiting for you for ages,’ he snapped. ‘What happened? Where’ve you been? I was
worried.’

Seeing that he was oddly upset, Prue put a hand on his arm.

‘Don’t you touch me,’ he said, and hurried into the kitchen. There, the heat of the day had begun to wane. The room was unusually tidy. There was a jam jar of lavender on the
table, and a small box crudely wrapped in tissue paper. ‘Got something for you. Sit down. Sorry. I’m jumpy today. This bloody heat. Here.’ He pushed the box towards Prue, who took
the seat opposite him.

‘What’s all this?’

‘Just a little something. Thank-you present for the stable-door job – entirely your doing and old Mrs L paid me very generously. So now I can contribute a bit to
everything.’

‘No need,’ said Prue, ‘unless you really want to.’ She took off the paper, opened a small box. It held an embossed silver locket on a silver chain. She took it out, swung
it back and forth, laughed with delight, ‘Oh, Johnny. It’s lovely. I’ve always wanted a locket. Thank you.’

‘I found it in Marlborough. Open it.’ Prue did so. The two spaces for photographs were empty. ‘I was hoping,’ Johnny went on, ‘there’d be a picture of you one
side, me the other . . .’ He spoke jokingly, so Prue smiled.

‘We’ll get a Box Brownie,’ she said. ‘Take pictures of each other. I’m thrilled with it, I really am.’ She fastened it round her neck. ‘All right? How
can I thank you?’

‘You don’t have to. Just glad you like it.’ Johnny got up, went to the tap and filled two glasses of water. ‘I’d do anything in the world for an iced lager now. But
I don’t dare.’

‘No. You’ve been so strong.’

Johnny sat down again. ‘I’ve tried,’ he said. He looked at Prue, stretched out a hand and touched the locket with a finger. ‘It looks good. Something I must say,
though.’ He withdrew the finger, paused. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to start seriously looking for your own place. I can’t take much more of this landlord business.
I’m sorry.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean we can’t go on living like this, under the same roof. It’s agonizing. For me, that is. I thought it would be all right. Just the one brief occasion, a long time ago. I
thought I could bury it, but I can’t.’

‘I don’t know what—’

‘I mean you – there, here, every morning, every evening, every weekend – bobbing about, breasts half exposed under some summery little dress, not giving a thought to what you
do to me – would do to any man. It’s unbearable. God knows how many times I’ve been close to forcing myself upon you. Don’t worry, of course I’d never do that. Never,
ever, I promise you.’

‘Oh cripes. I never realized . . .’ Prue winced internally, alarmed. She cursed herself for having been so blind. The idea of her presence being difficult for Johnny had never
occurred to her. She had taken care not to flirt with him for a single instance, and he had given no sign of the frustration he now admitted. ‘I never realized you still fancied me. You never
gave a sign.’

‘You don’t look very closely, Prue, sometimes. There’s so much buzzing round in your half-empty head. One of your charms is that you’ve no idea what you do to men –
or perhaps you have? I don’t know. Perhaps this whole arrangement was daft in the first place. I’m so sorry I ever suggested it. How can a man and a woman of ordinary desires hope to
live together without . . .? And the other thing is, it isn’t just that I want you in my bed. I seem to have fallen in love with you. That never occurred to me. You’re not the sort of
girl I’ve ever gone for.’ He finished his glass of water.

There was silence, but for the slow drip of a tap. Prue blinked rapidly. ‘What can I say? This is the most awful surprise. What can I do?’

‘Go,’ said Johnny. ‘Go as soon as possible, if you don’t want to drive me mad.’

‘Blimey. All right.’ Prue nodded, thinking fast. ‘It shouldn’t be too hard to find somewhere . . .’

‘And then, you can imagine what it’s been like for me. Hearing about all your other men. How did you think I felt when you described with such relish the “glorious”
fucking with Rudolph? And now this Gerald man. God, how was that, in the Savoy?’

‘Nothing happened. I promise. We had separate rooms. It was all a disaster. Utter failure. It’ll be a funny story one day.’

Johnny looked at her, disbelieving. ‘More fool him, then. My night, imagining you both, was hell.’ He spat the word.

‘I’m so, so sorry. I’ll go as soon as I can.’ Prue touched her locket. Johnny watched her finger trace the pattern on its silver case. His desire for her to be gone
seemed to be dwindling.

‘It’s not that urgent, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Dare say I can put up with the torture for a bit longer. I can’t decide which would be worse – missing you, or
having yet not having you here – Anyhow, start looking around and don’t worry about me.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I’ve made roast rabbit with dill and cider.’ Johnny went to the stove.

‘Lovely.’

‘You don’t by any chance love me just a bit? Even in a vague, brotherly sort of way?’ He stayed with his back to her, stirring. The question’s lightness of touch did not
deceive.

‘Of course I love you a bit. You’ve been good to me. We’ve shared a lot. But I don’t love you enough, or anyone else, to commit my life in some way.’

‘OK. Thought as much. Dare say I’ll get used to the idea, make myself understand.’

‘Oh, Johnny. Such muddles we all get into.’

‘We do.’

Somehow they managed a peaceful evening: rabbit talk, a game of backgammon. A new moon hung from a thread of cloud in the window. They heard a fox bark nearby.

‘Better just check the chickens,’ said Johnny.

Prue went up to her room when he had gone. Just as a precaution, for the first time, she locked the door.

Cooler weather came with September. Ivy’s old energy returned and she spent less time resting. Eager for more rides in the Sunbeam, which had stopped during the very hot
days, she suggested she should accompany Prue on visits to see possible cottages for her to live. There was little on the market and they saw nothing that was remotely suitable. Often Ivy would
dismiss the estate agent who was waiting for them. ‘Don’t think we’ll bother to go round, thank you very much,’ she would say, after a cursory glance at the outside.
‘We can see straight away that it’s not what we’re looking for.’ She seemed to know more clearly than Prue what would be the perfect thing, and with one look knew
instinctively whether or not it was worth considering.

As the weeks stretched into autumn Prue became anxious about lingering in the cottage with Johnny. But since his outburst urging her to go he seemed to have calmed down. On several occasions he
had apologized for berating her, and said his real wish was for her to stay as long as she needed. Her presence was difficult, he said, but her absence would be no less so.

Prue reported to him every sighting of a rural cottage, to show she was trying, and they carried on living together in cautious harmony. Johnny made several more gates for Ivy. Prue, who had
moved from Dickens to Jane Austen, spent most of her time at the Old Rectory.

Gerald turned up unexpectedly one afternoon. He stayed for a polite hour, talking mostly to his aunt, then was gone again. There was no mention of another evening out. Must have forgotten, Prue
thought, and felt pleased not to mind very much.

One day in early October Ivy came into the sitting room, where Prue was reading
Emma
. She looked excited. ‘I’ve just had a call from my old friend Arnold Barrow,’ she
said. ‘Such a surprise. I thought he was living in Switzerland. Well, it seems he’s not. He’s back in his house near Amesbury and he wants us to go over, look at his garden. Would
you mind?’

‘Of course not.’ In truth Prue, happily engaged in her book, was not overjoyed by the plan but she managed to look enthusiastic.

Ivy sat down on the sofa, a little breathless. She put one hand on her chest. ‘You may think I have a curious lack of friends,’ she said. ‘I sometimes think the same myself.
But then after so many years abroad a lot of them are scattered. And of course a good many of them are dead. But Arnold! I’m so pleased he’s still around. What a lovely surprise. He was
a colleague of Ed’s. We shared a house with him for a while in Delhi. Ed was so fond of him.’ She paused, smiled to herself. ‘To be honest, I rather thought he was particularly
fond of me, though of course he was much too much of a gentleman to indicate any such thing . . . But let’s be on our way, shall we? It’s not far.’

Not long after they had set off in the Sunbeam, the gold October air dulled a little and there was a brief shower.

‘Never mind,’ said Ivy. ‘Arnold will have umbrellas. I seem to remember he had a proud collection from all over the world.’

They drew up at a handsome house, though smaller than the Old Rectory. ‘Queen Anne,’ Ivy said, who took every opportunity to educate her companion. Prue had never seen her get out of
the car so fast: the cane thrashed about, hindering rather than helping, and her long black skirt became tangled in her eager legs. Briefly she agreed to Prue’s help in untangling the muddle,
then almost ran to the front door.

When Arnold opened it Prue felt close to laughter, for he was so exactly like the illustrations of old men in Dickens’s books. Silver whiskers encircled his red face and merged at some
imperceptible point with a splurge of white hair. His screwed-up eyes looked as if they had set that way from constant laughter. Prue tried hard to imagine that he had ever been attractive, the
object of a sly glance from Ivy. Old age plays such tricks, cheats so cruelly on remembered youth.

‘Ivy! My dear, dear Ivy!’

‘Darling Arnold! Such a long time.’

They embraced. Arnold’s lumpen fingers played on Ivy’s shoulder: hers played the other half of the duet on one shoulder of his fine tweed jacket. At last they drew apart, observed
each other with fond honesty.

‘Just as beautiful! Just a shade paler, your hair.’

‘Are those new teeth, Arnold? They’re wonderful.’

They laughed.

Prue was introduced, her presence not explained. The plan was to go round the garden before it rained again.

Prue followed them at a distance. They tottered along, side by side, Arnold so stooped it was an effort for him to raise his eyes to the tall hollyhocks. Ivy was particularly upright, scorning
her cane for moments at a time as she pointed to things in the buxom herbaceous border. From time to time Prue heard squeals of delight and laughter. Then they would pause in their horticultural
journey, move their heads closer, recall something, somewhere, that Prue would never know. She wondered if in sixty years’ time she herself might be tottering round a garden with some old
man, and if so, who would he be?

The subtleties of planting had never interested her: Mrs Lawrence, she remembered, used to tease her for her lack of knowledge about plants. ‘Daffodils are the only things you
recognize,’ she would say. Well, daffodils had been the only flowers she’d seen in Manchester, Prue had snapped back. At the Old Rectory, she had tried, for Ivy’s sake.
She’d learnt to recognize a few papery shrubs, and had come to love the scent of roses, but to study plant after plant, as Ivy and Arnold were doing with such pleasure, she found infinitely
boring. She hung back. Eventually she made her way to a small terrace by the house, and sat on one of the ironwork chairs. She could still follow the old things’ progress. They did not notice
that she was no longer close behind them.

She had no idea how long she sat, no thoughts troubling her. The lawn was a glorious smoothness of emerald green, faintly glittering from the last shower of rain. A cat ran along a wall and
jumped onto the branch of an overhanging tree. A bird tried out a complicated song – blackbird? She knew a certain amount about stormcocks, but she had had only one chance to exercise her
knowledge. There were no stormcocks in the Old Rectory’s garden, though Ivy had seemed interested in all Prue had had to say about them.

She saw the old couple pause. Ivy stretched out a hand. Arnold took it. The knot of their arthritic fingers moved up and down, in some secret agreement, then parted. A large dark cloud, with no
warning, rose over the herbaceous border and covered most of the blue sky. A few single drops of rain, heavy as coins, fell onto the flagstones of the terrace.

Ivy and Arnold were now approaching the house as fast as they could. There were darker spots on Ivy’s skirt. Arnold’s hand was under her elbow, perhaps more for his own support than
hers.

Time, Prue felt, slowed in a strange way, dream-like. But at last the two friends were through the french windows of the sitting room. They made no mention of the rain. Ivy filtered round the
room admiring a collection of faded watercolours. Arnold rang a bell.

Again, Prue kept herself a little apart. She sat on a velvet stool by the fireplace when she wasn’t handing a plate of cucumber sandwiches or pouring China tea. Never had she felt so
invisible, and she was glad to be so. She was fascinated listening to the two old friends recount tales of the Raj. They spoke of many people with peculiar names – Calypso, Euphemia, Lalage,
Candida, Eugénie – the last pronounced by Ivy with a perfect French accent. Prue tried to imagine them all at parties under a full Indian moon, dancing with Clarence, Edgar, Erskine:
the names came tumbling out as Ivy and Arnold seemed high on remembrance of their long-dead world. The mutual pictures of times past gave them such pleasure that they kept unconsciously touching
each other. A finger alighted on the other’s knee or an arm, briefly as a butterfly.