Sensible Life (28 page)

In London Tashie, telephoning Mabs, said: “I just thought I would tell you.”

“What did she say, apart from the rabies and the shopping list? Look, Tash, I’m in my bath. Can’t you ring me back?”

“No, we’ve got people coming to dinner—”

“Hurry up, then. I’m all wet. Ring me in the morning.”

“Can’t. We are off early for the partridge shoot. Henry’s friends in Norfolk, the Moberleys.”

“Do bring me back a brace or two. What did she
say
, then, Flora?”

“Hardly anything, that’s what upset me. It was clear as mud she was unhappy, doesn’t want to go to India—”

“She never did. Wasn’t there something funny about her parents? Don’t you remember them in Dinard? But gosh, she’ll like it when she gets there. My cousin Rachel had a hell of a good time in Delhi.”

“I daresay she did. Oh, God, Mabs, I felt I should have given her asylum. I felt so inadequate.”

“But she’s in the charge of the school and you are going away. You just said so.”

“You sound like Henry.”

“She’s under age. You can’t interfere.”

“Henry said that, too. Are you still there?”

“Yes, I am. But look, Tashie, I’m all wet, I’ve got to change; we are going to a play.”

“Oh, what?”

“Noel Coward.”

“You’ll love it. Henry and I went last week.”

“What do you propose to do about Flora, apart from telling me how rotten you feel?”

“I don’t see what I can do. We shouldn’t have been nice to her at Coppermalt. Or, if we were, we should have kept it up. It’s like buying a puppy for Christmas and then neglecting it. That’s why I feel so frightful, Mabs.”

“It was Felix’s mother started it all, made my mother invite her—” said Mabs.

“Your mother thought she was carrying on with Cosmo, don’t you remember?”

“I thought it was Hubert,” said Mabs.

“Or
both!
Oh Mabs, do you think she really—”

“She can’t have, she was only fifteen. Not with both together. My ma was having one of her menopausal fits.”

“So what shall we do?” cried Tashie.

Mabs said: “Knowing us, Tashie darling, we will do what comes easiest. I don’t suppose we shall do anything. Sorry, love, I’ve got to go.” Mabs replaced the receiver and got back into her bath to find that the water had gone cold.

“You are looking very pleased with yourself.” Hubert joined Cosmo at the bar of their local pub.

“Am I? What shall you drink? Your usual? Shall we sit over there?”

“Don’t tell me, let me guess.” Hubert watched Cosmo drink his beer. “A married woman,” he suggested. “You are not in love with her and she’s not in love with you. You have fun in bed when her husband is away. It’s extremely light-hearted and enjoyable and does nobody any harm. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Cosmo laughed. “Don’t be absurd. How is life treating you? What is it like working in a merchant bank?”

“So we don’t discuss, we are discreet. My merchant bank, you ask. God, Cosmo, how can Nigel and Henry revel in it so? It’s unbelievable. I hate it. I won’t last, there are so many more appealing things to do in life.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know yet, but I intend to find out. And you, eating your dinners, do you still see yourself as a successful barrister?”

“Eventually.” Cosmo swallowed some beer.

“Did I tell you,” said Hubert, “that after all the hooha about no money with it, a little has come with Pengappah?”

“No! How much is a little?”

“I have yet to find out. You know how solicitors are, very very slow, but apparently Cousin Thing felt some sort of remorse about the roof. He left enough to keep the rain out.”

“Have you been to see it yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s been a myth for so long, I feel hesitant now I own it. To be honest, I don’t want to be disappointed.”

“If it were mine,” said Cosmo, “I’d rush—”

“Taking the married woman with you—” There was a hint of a sneer in Hubert’s voice.

“Well—”

“She would not be the right person. Just think of the risk of taking Joyce. I speak metaphorically, of course. She’d prance and be jolly. She’d shatter the atmosphere.”

“How did you guess it was Joyce?” Cosmo looked ruffled.

“I saw you together,” said Hubert, which was untrue. Loving his friend, he was not going to divulge that he had smelled Joyce. Being married to a rich man Joyce had scent specially made for her in Paris. Its fragrance had lingered in Cosmo’s flat, just as it had lingered in his own rooms during his last year at Oxford; he had sniffed it too in the rooms of other men of his acquaintance. Joyce was a girl who got around. “Joyce has the knack of making life joyful,” he said.

“Oh, she has,” agreed Cosmo. “Which is more than can be said for my sister Mabs and her chum Tashie.”

“What have they been up to? Those two have the makings of society matrons; in no time they will be presenting their daughters at court.”

“Oh, come,” said Cosmo, laughing. “Their babies are boys.”

“They’ll have girls next, just you wait. But what’s troubling them?”

“They have seen, or Tashie has seen, Flora. The version I heard gar bled by Mabs is that her mother has rabies and her father has made her buy up the contents of Fortnum’s as consolation presents, which Flora has to escort to India where she sails by P & O.”

“When?” Hubert put down his glass, spilling some beer.

“Soon, I think. Mabs and Tashie feel they should have kept up with her, had her to stay and so on. They feel remorse at having let her slip from their busy little lives. In other words it’s pangs of guilt.”

“Which we should have too,” said Hubert.

“What?”

“You seem to forget there was a time we both wanted Flora. We agreed to share her.”

“So we did. Bloody silly idea. One couldn’t share a girl, could one? I mean, I can’t see myself doing it.” (Hubert raised an eyebrow.) “Of course, I saw her first,” said Cosmo.

“And I fished her out of the sea.”

“We sent her postcards, didn’t we? I remember we sent postcards from—”

“Postcards!”

“The person she loved was Felix. Heavens, Blanco, d’you remember Felix at Dinard? How all the girls flocked—”

“Honeypot Joyce among them, snaggle teeth in those days, a little chrysalis of fun.” Hubert smiled in recollection of those infatuated months at Oxford. But for Joyce he would have got a first. “Felix was adept at keeping disentangled; one couldn’t help admiring him.”

“He’s tangled now,” said Cosmo. “Joke’s over.”

“Has anyone seen him since his wedding?”

“It was a good party,” said Cosmo. “Father had a great time, reminiscences and so on. You know how he is. Why weren’t you there?”

“I was asked but couldn’t make it. I wonder whether Flora knows. Was Joyce at the wedding?”

“Yes. That was where I—yes-er-um—where we—”

“Oh, all right, no need to be so discreet. But back to Flora; I think one of us should see her off.” Hubert felt obscurely that this would annoy Cosmo, whose sexual satisfaction was aggravating him.

“All right, let’s all see her off. I’ll bring Joyce. I’ll ask her to find out the P & O sailings, check the passenger list. She’s fearfully competent.” Cosmo, basking in his affair with Joyce, was in no way annoyed. “Joyce has a good brain,” he said complacently.

“Not as active as her cunt,” said Hubert. “Don’t hit me,” he said, “you did once and it hurt.”

“So I did,” said Cosmo. “Over Flora. Your nose bled and I hurt my knuckles.”

Hubert resented Cosmo’s laughter and his easy suggestion that they should all see Flora off. He was surprised to feel the hot rage he had felt once before. I can’t be jealous, he thought, not of Flora and certainly not of Joyce.

M
ISS GILLESPIE, ESCORTING FLORA
from school to ship, had had enough. On former occasions with other girls she had sympathised with their eagerness to be off, down channel through the Bay of Biscay, into the Mediterranean, heading east to India and the delights of the Raj. Miss Gillespie was a romantic; she watched her charges note the young men boarding the ship with them: army officers, Political Officers, Indian police officers, officers returning from home leave, with straight backs, sunburned faces and trim moustaches. Potential husbands. Miss Gillespie, in her late, wistful and maiden thirties, envied the girls their chance.

Flora Trevelyan, remote and adult in her new clothes, was indifferent to the excitement of boarding. Her lack of appreciation maddened Miss Gillespie. She would leave her now, get back into London and spend the evening with her married sister. They’d go to the cinema, perhaps see Ronald Colman. “Shall you be all right if I leave you now?” she enquired. She had fulfilled her duty.

“Yes, thank you, Miss Gillespie, I shall be all right,” said Flora.

“I have asked the Purser to keep an eye on you, and the Captain knows you are travelling alone. I think you will be comfortable in that cabin.” (Why must she repeat everything? I was with her when she spoke to the Purser and with her when she gave him the letter for the Captain. She was with me to inspect the cabin. I wish she would go.)

“You seem to have a nice steward. A family man, he will keep an eye on you.” (All these eyes!) “He said your cabin is on the starboard side, but it does not matter at this time of year. He will have your trunk brought out of the hold at Bombay and see that you meet your father’s bearer.” (I was there, I heard you.) “You will remember how much to tip the steward, won’t you, dear? Not too little and not too much; one must keep their respect. And you will mind, won’t you, how you behave in front of the crew; they are all natives. It’s so important.”

“I wish, if you are going, Miss Gillespie, that you’d go,” said Flora pleasantly.

“Flora Trevelyan! Your manners! I shall have to tell—”

“The headmistress? I’ve left school, Miss Gillespie. You don’t have to do anything any more.”

“Flora.”

“I am sorry, Miss Gillespie, but you repeat yourself. People get bored. I’ve longed to tell you for seven years,” said Flora kindly, “that if we’d had to strain to hear what you said just once, we would all have learned a lot more.” Oh hell, I’ve hurt her feelings, reduced her to huff.

“Ungrateful, after all I—”

“Very sorry, Miss Gillespie.” Flora walked fast along the deck towards the gangway with Miss Gillespie keeping up. “I hope you have a nice evening with your sister and Ronald Colman,” she said. Miss Gillespie did not reply; she had often suspected Flora’s tone, never exactly pinned it. “Do you write to Ronald Colman?” asked Flora, who knew from the school grapevine that she did. “Next time you write, do ask him to shave off that moustache. None of the girls believe Beau Geste would have been allowed it in the Legion.” Flora felt, as she walked along the deck, that in spite of her parents waiting to trap her in India she could at least shake off school. She would be wonderfully, luxuriously alone on the ship for three weeks.

Awkwardly they said goodbye. Miss Gillespie hesitated before kissing Flora, but it was best to part on good terms and ignore her hurtful speech. Flora might some day have children, as other old girls had, and need a school for them. “I wish I was going to India,” she said mournfully.

“Oh, Miss Gillespie, go instead of me! I’ll give you my ticket, just say the word,” cried Flora. “Swop.”

“What an idea,” said Miss Gillespie. “What a fanciful girl you are, but generous. What would your parents say?” She had misjudged Flora.

“They’d find you a husband and fix you up,” said Flora, undoing her small good.

She watched Miss Gillespie’s back, in her respectable coat and skirt, as she made her way down the gangplank and walked away to find a taxi. The exact price of the taxi would be put on the bill and sent to her father c/o Cox & Kings, Pall Mall, SW1. She leaned over the rail and peered down the ship’s side into the murky water of the dock. Far below in the filthy water she could see a rat painstakingly breasting through the rubbish, paper, straw, orange peel, cigarette stubs. Someone threw a bucket of soapy water from a porthole and swamped the rat. As Flora watched, its head bobbed up; she imagined its whiskers and desperate paws. Oh, courageous rat. She craned her neck to see better.

“There she is! Flora! Flora! We’ve come to see you off. Isn’t this fun? Aren’t you thrilled, off on the long voyage into adulthood, fun and wickedness?” Joyce, Cosmo and Hubert were bearing down on her. Joyce strode forward, showing her teeth in her big smile, holding out expansive hands to grasp Flora. Cosmo followed, looking English and sheepish. Hubert looked angry.

Surrendering her hands, Flora recollected that Joyce had American connections which would account for this enthusiasm. She said, “Hello.”

“Aren’t you pleased to see us? You look surprised.” Joyce squeezed Flora’s hands. “We heard you were off from Mabs, who heard it from Tash. You are a funny one. Why didn’t you tell us? Why did you never come and stay? We’ve brought a bottle of champagne to drink you on your way. Oh, you’ve got it, Hubert. Let’s ask a steward for glasses. I suppose you are travelling first class?”

“Second.”

“Much more fun. The old and married travel first; all the young and lovely men will be in the second. You’re going to have
such
a marvellous time, Flora. I wish I was coming too. Shall we join the ship? Wouldn’t that be a joke?” Joyce slipped her arm through Cosmo’s, drawing him close.

Flora supposed later that she had said the right things. They had moved from the deck, where porters were still bringing on board trunks and suitcases banded with regimental colours, their owners’ names painted large: Major this, Colonel that, Lieut, something else. In the saloon a steward brought glasses, uncorked the bottle and poured. Joyce sat close to Cosmo. “My goodness, Flora, what a choice of appetising men! Look at them! I bet you get engaged by the time you reach Bombay.”

Cosmo looked about at passengers milling to and fro, seasoned travellers. “I suppose it’s all army and civil service.”

“There will be some boxwallahs too, bound to be,” said Joyce. “They’ve got more money so they’ll join the ship at Marseilles. So don’t lose your heart before Marseilles, Flora, keep some room for those—”