Somewhere Beyond Reproach (4 page)

The trees on the Common stood out in isolation, their distance from each other and from the road blurred by the still-lingering fog. Later it would probably thicken. It was two weeks before Christmas when I drove along Park Side towards Wimbledon. In the shops everything was brightness, tinsel, Father Christmases, coloured paper wrapping. The edge of the Common was contrastingly bleak and lonely. A man crossed the road in front of me. His dog ran on ahead into the ill-defined area of common. I drove fast. It was already half past three.

Mrs Lisle’s road looked very different in winter. The trees had grown again since I had last been there, but there was no garden-suburb cosiness. The little gardens were empty of foliage. A solitary bay tree reminded me of the possibility of another spring and summer. I parked on the side of the road opposite Mrs Lisle’s house. I dared not watch from any greater distance for fear of missing the child. I had thought with horror of the possibility of other aunts and
grandparents
. But I had been able to dispel most of my fears. Mark’s parents would still be in the country; they had always claimed they hated towns. Mark had become an only child with the death of his sister and Dinah too had lived alone with her mother.

Groups of overcoated schoolchildren started returning home shortly after four. I watched carefully as they split up, walking up different garden paths. I narrowed my
viewpoint
down to Mrs Lisle’s door for fear of being diverted for a moment looking at other children. I cursed, there must
have been a school at the end of the road. The number of children passing down the street chattering to each other filled me with hope. At any moment one of them might turn towards that varnished door. The tall and far-spaced lamps came on at last. The street seemed ominously deserted
suddenly
. The time was dangerously near five o’clock. In my anxiety I lit a cigar, something I very rarely do. I don’t really like the things. I do find them calming though. The slight warmth and the red glow made me feel slightly less alone. The fact that I had been able to light the thing without shaking convinced me that I was fully in control of myself. Suddenly I became aware of a small figure at the far end of the street … undoubtedly a dwarf or a child. I strained my eyes as I stared into the gloom. Definitely a child … a male child. He was dawdling in the most tantalising way. He had a stick in his hand and every few yards he would take a swipe at the hedge of a house. This sudden movement made me think that he was going to go up a path. Closer and closer he came. I felt that my whole future hinged on the destination of this tiny figure. Only twenty yards away and still going strong. He stopped. I looked away for a moment. He had started to move again. Just outside the gate that I had been focusing my attention on for so long, he bent down to do up a lace. An operation that lasted an eternity, at least thirty seconds. He turned and started to move towards the varnished door. Surely not Bob-a-Job week or some
Christmas
charity? The door opened, he disappeared. I sank back into my seat and licked my dry lips. I felt nervous still, but the survival of one and a half hours of strain left me strangely light-headed. I hurled the cigar out of the window. It had been dead in my hand for over five minutes. I strode across the road and approached a house I had felt sure I should never enter again.

This time it was I who supplied the name.

‘Harry Cramb.’

She looked at me for a moment, her hand still on the door. I moved slightly closer just in case. Recognition at last:

‘You were a friend of my daughter?’

‘Yes.’

‘You want to see me?’

‘I’ve come a long way.’

She seemed to consider the various implications of this remark. Her eyes judged me from behind the same detestable glasses. Grudgingly she said:

‘I suppose you had better come in.’

I smiled reassuringly at her. She looked away. Was it possible that such a monster could be feeling guilty?

To my horror there was no sign of a child in the drawing room. I was reassured by the elaborate array of tea and cakes. Although she did not suggest it, I took off my
overcoat
. In the recesses of the house I heard the flushing of a lavatory, followed by the thud of a small person jumping down the stairs four steps at a time. Mrs Lisle also heard the noise. Just before the child came into the room, Mrs Lisle turned to me and whispered:

‘If you wanted to speak to me, you could not have chosen a worse time.’

I mumbled an apology. Even at this vital moment I was able to appreciate the humour of this. Her hair had the same solid perm that I remembered. She was absolutely the same. Ageless, but not indefatigable. I would prove that. My nerves made me more alert. I was like a runner waiting for the sound of the pistol.

I heard a door open and looked away out of the window. Being dark, I saw little: only a dim reflection of the room.

‘Andrew, come and say “how do you do” to Mr Cramb.’

I struggled to suppress a terrible false jocularity. Andrew came towards me and extended a stiff and formal arm. He looked slightly older than his nine years.

‘How do you do, sir.’

The smile I had managed to produce lingered for a second. Hoping to joke him out of this cold politeness, I replied with what I thought was gentle and sympathetic mockery:

‘Ah, but how do
you
do?’

‘I haven’t the foggiest.’

‘It can be pretty difficult,’ I said smiling. A long silence followed. Mrs Lisle busied herself with the tea tray. She gave me no help or encouragement. She turned to me and said pointedly:

‘Would you like to stay to tea?’

‘That would be very nice.’

I looked straight at her. She looked away first. I waited for the next attack. It wasn’t long in coming.

‘Andrew would you like to give Mr Cramb a plate and some bread and butter?’ She paused, and smiling in my direction added: ‘Well whether he’d
like
to or not, I’m sure he will.’

‘No really, can’t I help myself?’

She looked at Andrew, who was still sitting.

‘Well, since Andrew seems to be so slow, I suppose you’d better if you want anything.’

Andrew got up, blushing.

‘I’m very sorry. I’ll do it now.’

I hastily tried to save an already serious situation.

‘Come on. Not to worry. Let’s help ourselves. Why on earth should you bother about me?’

That same insincere heartiness again, and then Mrs Lisle:

‘Only because I suggested that he
should
bother.’

‘This really is absurd,’ I said, unable to hide my
desperation
.

Mrs Lisle nodded sagely.

‘I couldn’t agree more.’

Another silence. I looked at Andrew more carefully. He did not look particularly like either of his parents. This pleased me. It somehow made their marriage seem less
important
. The child sitting opposite me did not seem a
perpetuation
of their mutual existence. He was sitting looking at the carpet, obviously not realising that his grandmother’s
unpleasantness
had been aimed entirely at me. Mrs Lisle’s lengthy and elegant nibbling at a biscuit reminded me that I should have to make any further moves. I sensed her eyeing me, so could not risk making a face at Andrew. A pity; this would have been the best possible action. Andrew
came towards me, carefully carrying a cup of tea and a thin slice of bread and butter. I thanked him quietly and looked at my plate: such a tidily cut piece of bread. Mrs Lisle noiselessly nibbled her biscuit. There would be no help from her. My only consolation was the certainty that the child must hate these evenings with ‘Granny’.

‘What do you like doing?’ I asked Andrew. I thought he was not going to answer.

‘Making things,’ he replied after careful consideration.

‘I’ve never seen any of them,’ cut in Granny.

‘Most of them are at school.’ The hostility in this reply delighted me.

‘What sort of things?’ I asked.

‘Aeroplanes, model boats. I made a sledge in carpentry last winter.’ Granny again:

‘I’d have sent you more model kits if I’d known.’ To my amazement the woman was not being sarcastic. She was trying to ingratiate.

‘I made a glider with a six-foot wing-span when I was your age.’

Andrew looked at me with a mixture of admiration and scorn that I should be so boastful. He couldn’t resist asking:

‘What happened to it?’

‘It crashed into some trees.’

‘Didn’t it have a rudder.’

Did it? I tried to think.

‘The elastic must have broken.’

‘Bad luck.’

He was genuinely sorry for me. I laughed.

‘No, my fault. I should have seen that the rubber was frayed.’

‘Still, it
was
rough,’ the child insisted.

‘I don’t know why you don’t bring some of your models to Wimbledon. We could fly them together on the Common.’

I noted the dubious look Andrew gave his grandmother. I was surprised that she was trying to compete on these grounds.

‘We’d have to walk a lot.’

‘I wouldn’t mind that.’

‘But, Granny, you said your rheumatism …’

‘It’s better since I started seeing Mr Ward-Lee,’ she snapped. Then, recovering, she smiled: ‘Anyway I’m sure I never said I didn’t like walking.’ She turned to me: ‘One of the reasons I live out here is the Common.’

‘All the advantages of the country combined with the town,’ I said with magnanimity. A slight smirk may have been responsible for the hostility of her:

‘Would you like to stay for another cup?’

‘I’d love to when I’ve finished this one,’ I said affably. I reached a hand into my breast pocket and pulled out an envelope.

‘Do you collect stamps?’ I asked.

Andrew nodded.

‘Really Mr Cramb, I don’t think you ought to give him anything. Especially after the time it took him to get you some tea.’

‘I’ll show it to you anyway,’ I said with a smile of
commiseration
for Granny’s churlishness. He came over to look. The stamps were from Cambodia. One depicted an elephant uprooting a tree, the other a dancer in traditional dress. Seeing the look of appreciation in his eyes I asked
confidently
:

‘I bet you haven’t got any from there?’

‘I’ve got some Burmese ones,’ he replied proudly.

‘I get quite a lot from abroad. My firm does quite a bit transporting imported goods from the docks.’

‘They don’t need stamps,’ Andrew chipped in, hoping to make up for his humiliating deficiency in Cambodian stamps.

‘No, but the firms write to me,’ I made a sucks-to-you face that made me giggle.

Mrs Lisle said:

‘I don’t see what’s so funny about that, Andrew.’

I wondered if she meant the remark or the face I had made.

‘Do you always wear bow ties?’ he asked out of the blue.

‘Why, do you think I do?’

‘I asked you.’

Inevitably Granny didn’t let these beginnings of familiarity pass easily:

‘I don’t think you ought to speak to Mr Cramb like that.’

‘No, he’s quite right, he did ask me,’ I said in his defence. I turned to him: ‘Because I think I look smart in them.’ I puffed out my chest and stuck out my jaw in an absurdly sartorial gesture as I said this.

Again he giggled. Mrs Lisle was not going to intervene again.

‘My mother says that bow ties are “poncy”.’

Sure enough, the first genuine smile of the afternoon from Granny.

‘Did she think Winston Churchill poncy?’ I asked.

‘I never asked.’

‘You haven’t a clue what the word means,’ Mrs Lisle cut in as soon as she saw that I was unaffected by the sudden mention of her daughter in such a context.

‘Yes I have.’

‘Well I’m sure we don’t want to hear.’

‘So there,’ I said quietly to Andrew, who coughed loudly in answer.

‘Do you go out to the cinema in the evening with your grandson when he’s here?’ I asked Mrs Lisle.

‘They don’t finish till after his bedtime,’ she replied testily.

It really hadn’t been too hard to make Granny into a terrible old spoilsport.

‘What do you like seeing best?’

Andrew thought for a moment. Then, avoiding Mrs Lisle’s eye:

‘Battles, I think.’

‘You saw
The
Living
Desert
with me and you thoroughly enjoyed it.’

‘I
still
like battles.’

Mrs Lisle glowered. I smiled as I said:

‘I don’t mind a good Western myself.’

I hoped Granny was going to say there was quite enough
violence in the world already. Instead she asked me if I was ready for my final cup of tea. There wasn’t a lot of time left.

‘When are you here next?’ I asked Andrew, praying that he’d answer before Mrs Lisle interrupted.

‘All next weekend.’

I ignored his grandmother’s cold grey eyes as she stared at me.

‘Perhaps your Granny wouldn’t mind if I took you to a film.’

‘I think that’s up to his mother.’

‘I would have thought she trusted your judgement while he’s with you.’

I didn’t think she was going to reply. I could see her breathing quicken with her anger.

‘I don’t care what you would have thought. It’s hardly for you to show me the extent of my authority.’

‘Do you remember my last visit?’

She looked anxiously at Andrew. Hoping that I would be decent enough to take the hint.

‘I don’t see what that has to do with today.’

I’d got her and knew it. If she didn’t consent to my taking him to the cinema I could go on about the past.

‘I want to show that I don’t resent what happened.’

Andrew, who had been eating a sandwich and pretending not to listen, now looked at us with unashamed curiosity. Mrs Lisle saw this.

‘Granny wouldn’t mind your going.’ She smiled at Andrew, who heaved an excessive sigh of relief.

‘What time?’ I asked at once.

‘How about Saturday afternoon, Granny?’

‘You’d better collect him at two.’

‘I shall.’

Mrs Lisle looked at me through narrowed eyes. She, like me, tended to believe that few people do something for nothing. I wasn’t going to give her a chance to get me alone before I left.