The Backward Shadow (11 page)

‘My mother's is rather like him,' he said musingly. ‘But then I suppose they all look much alike.'

I stopped dead and stared at him. He was hard on forty, must have been. ‘Your
mother's
got a baby?'

‘Step-mother, I mean, of course.'

‘How old's your father then?'

‘Sixty-four.'

‘Good for him.'

‘Well, why not?' he asked defensively.

‘No reason at all! I said—good for him.'

‘Thought you were being sarky.'

‘Is it your step-mother you're going to visit today?'

‘Yes. They live not far from here. Dad's retired. They've got a little house near Walton.' The accent was sounding more and more incongruous. It would have led me to expect a dad on a council estate in Roehampton. My trouble, one of them, is that I'm a sort of snob. I mean, I'm inclined to stick labels on people according to what used to be class, and now that one can't do that any more, I'm often at a loss. Fortunately I'm beginning to like it that way; much more interesting than being able to pigeon-hole people as Shaw's Professor Higgins was able to. Henry really intrigued me, and I liked him for that. In a sudden rush of affection for the unwonted mental activity he was unwittingly supplying, I said, ‘Do sit down. I'm going to make you a huge breakfast right away. Bacon and eggs?'

‘Fine. Any left-over potatoes, have you got? I like a few fried-up potatoes in the mornings.'

‘I've got a left-over steak, if you want it,' I offered jokingly.

‘Fine,' he said, not jokingly at all.

‘Oh,' I said. ‘Well, perhaps you wouldn't mind feeding the baby?'

‘Who, me?'

‘It's easy. You just spoon it into his mouth.'

‘Can't your friend do it?' It was clear he thought that was woman's work.

‘Dottie's still fast asleep and likely to remain so until she hears the toast being scraped.'

‘Oh hell. Oh, all right. Let's be having you,' he said to David, who was staring at him, mouth ready agape. ‘Here,'
said Henry plaintively a few seconds later. ‘It all comes out again.'

‘Scrape it off his chin and put it back.'

‘Ugh!'

‘Oh, don't be such an old woman!' I couldn't help saying rather sharply.

‘It's just because I'm not an old woman,' he retorted, ‘that I'm not accustomed to this kind of thing.'

‘You wouldn't make a very nice husband if you insist on such distinctions.'

‘I would have made an excellent husband for any woman who didn't mind
being
the woman and letting me be the man.'

I let this go, because all possible responses would have been either trite or inquisitive. It was only later that I wondered about the tense he'd used.

We drove into the village in Henry's car in the middle of the morning. Henry was ready and aching to get started hours before we were; he sat or stood about, not troubling to hide his impatience, and yet watching with the same puzzled look in his eyes as Dottie wafted somnolently about, her long, elegant house-robe billowing in the draughts and her streaky hair attractively tousled. At last she went drifting upstairs to make a leisurely toilet while I tidied up and got David and myself dressed in warm slacks and an anorak apiece. He really looked very fetching in his little red one; his hair was long enough now to fall in a silken fringe across his forehead under the hood, and with his great dark eyes and solemn mouth he looked like a little Eskimo.

‘Isn't he a darling?' I couldn't help asking Henry rhetorically, just because I had to say it to someone.

‘Will he pee on my upholstery?'

‘Oh Henry, do stop about him peeing! What a fuss!'

‘My step-mother's peed all over the back seat. It took two weeks to get rid of the smell.'

‘Your car's obviously a new thing in your life.'

‘Well, I've waited a long time for one,' he said rather sheepishly.

We got the key out of the agent without difficulty and drove to the shop. Dottie had now completely woken up (it usually took her about two hours, three cups of coffee and a bath to achieve this) and was on top of her form; she looked stunning in her suède boots and a startlingly short scarlet topcoat which reminded me of the time she'd been my only visitor in hospital when I'd nearly miscarried with David. Now she walked in ahead of us and immediately began swooping to and fro like a swallow engaged in nest-building, gesturing and explaining and painting mental pictures for us to such an extent that I, at any rate, soon forgot the present unpromising appearance of the place. But Henry was made of sterner stuff.

‘I expected something much larger,' he said flatly when she paused for breath.

‘What do you want for £5,000, Liberty's?' she asked indignantly. It was obvious she regarded the place as her own and resented any slight upon it.

‘There's scarcely room in here to swing a cat. And it's pitch dark. You'd have to use artificial lighting all day—that's damned pricey.' He looked up at the ceiling, about which Dottie had just been reverently making plans. ‘Dare not touch that,' he said. ‘Start stripping off the layers of varnish and the whole lot'd likely come down. It's only the paint that holds the plaster up.'

‘But the lovely old beams!'

‘Never mind them. Let them stay up there under the paint and do their job as long as they can. One thing though, we'll have to get an expert in to see if there's woodworm or dry rot. There's bound to be, I suppose—always is in these shaky old buildings. Depends how extensive it is. If it's at all bad, there's no use touching it. We'd just have the whole thing ready to go and one of us'd walk in one day and fall through the floor.' He walked round the room, bent over, apparently examining the skirting-boards. ‘Here, look at this!' he said, more, it seemed, in triumph than dismay. He showed Dottie his
fingers which were tipped in white. ‘Damp. Bet the place has no damp-course at all. Have to lay one down—very expensive business.'

This went on for about ten minutes. By the end, Dottie looked rather like a flat tyre—all the joy had gone out of her. She was just sitting on a box in a dark corner looking as if she might burst into tears.

There was a silence and then she sighed, stirred herself and lit a cigarette. Then she stood up and moved to the door. ‘Let's go,' she said forlornly.

‘Where to?'

‘Take the key back and then home.'

‘What's the matter, have I put you off the whole scheme just by being a bit realistic?'

‘Well, you're obviously not interested, so what's the sense?'

‘Really,' he said, ‘you are a silly girl. Did you expect me to join you in your never-never-land of dreams? If you wanted someone who just wanted to get rid of his money, you should have looked for someone with plenty of it. Anyway, you told me you needed a man, to take over the practical details. And when I do so, you get all damp and tearful.'

‘I am not damp and tearful!' retorted Dottie furiously. ‘I thought you were giving up on the whole thing!'

‘Well, I haven't yet. But I don't promise I won't. If there's dry-rot—'

‘Oh, shut up about dry-rot!'

Henry cast a speaking glance at me which loyalty forebade me to acknowledge. Instead I said tactfully, ‘It's nearly opening time.'

‘I can see you are going to be useful,' said Henry. Dottie swept out ahead of us and he was forced to take the other handle of the carry-cot.

‘Actually she's more of a problem than the dry rot,' he said in an undertone. ‘Talk about easy glum, easy glow! What's the matter with her?'

‘She's an enthusiast, that's all,' I said—more shortly than
I would have done had I not also privately thought Dottie was acting rather childishly.

Alf served us in the saloon bar with a somewhat bleary Sunday-morning air as if he'd been taken by force away from his Colour Supplement. ‘Nice to see you the other side of the bar,' he said. ‘How's the nipper then? Sleep well, did you?' he asked David. ‘Not so nice on your own, is it, my lad? Chilly-like on these damp nights.' He enjoyed his joke until he looked at me and, thinking I suppose that this might be a sore spot in my own life, stopped chuckling abruptly.

The drinks hit home and did us all good. Dottie cheered up as Henry bluntly told her
his
plans. He proposed sending out experts early in the week to inspect the place and make estimates for putting it in order. When he'd seen those, he said, and only then, would he be able to make a decision. On mature reflection, and a double whisky, this could not but seem perfectly reasonable to Dottie.

‘I can see you're exactly what we need, actually, I mean apart altogether from the money,' she said. She was sitting in a very fashionable position with her legs stretched out and her toes turned in, and was twiddling her glass on her knee, where the base left a round, wet medallion on the patterned stocking. ‘I'm sorry I behaved like such an idiot. I can never take having cold water poured on my infant enthusiasms.'

Henry, sitting in his stiffly upright position, well-shod feet planted apart, and the feeling about him that he should have a watch-chain festooned across his waistcoat, glanced at her in surprise, and his eye got stuck to the wet place on her knee. ‘Oh—forget it,' he said uncertainly. Then he looked quickly back at his glass, at me, at the bar, at the door. Suddenly he stood up, tossed back his drink and said abruptly, ‘I must be off.'

‘Now? But you said after lunch.'

‘Well … I don't go in for lunches much. I'll drop you at your place on my way.'

He whisked us back to the cottage and before we quite
knew what was happening, we were watching the cream rear of the Triumph vanishing down the lane.

‘Impulsive, isn't he?' said Dottie, sounding puzzled.

‘Is he frightened of women, do you think?'

‘I don't know—he certainly didn't give that impression this morning.'

‘I didn't mean as business partners, I mean as females.'

‘Dunno. Don't care much … Come on, let's eat, that whisky's gone to my head.'

On Tuesday morning the first of the experts came roaring down from London to investigate the shop. I was working of course, so Dottie dealt with them. Dottie was causing quite a stir in the village. Her clothes were 100 per cent Mary Quant and King's Road in general—not too far out, but far enough for the village to find her pretty hard to swallow and pretty interesting to talk about. Even Alf, who flattered himself he was with-it, could be seen waving his heavy eyebrows about a bit at his male customers whenever she entered the pub, and Dora said enviously, ‘Is that what they're wearing in the Smoke now? Makes you feel right out of it, living in the sticks
AND
being too busty and hippy even if you didn't. She's got a nice figure, your friend.' However, she couldn't resist adding that blonde tips and streaks went out years ago.

The experts, as I say, came and went, but not before Dottie had charmed them all with her enthusiasm. ‘I believe he
did
find a spot or two of dry rot,' she mentioned on the Wednesday evening. ‘And some tiny holes which he insisted were made by some insidious beetle or other. I said the holes were old and the beetle was probably dead long ago, but he put his ear to one and said he could hear them chewing. Never mind. When I explained what we were going to do, and how badly we needed him to give a promising report to Henry, he sort of made scratching-out motions with his pen in his notebook. He was making a joke of it, but still, I think he'll play it down. He was quite a sweetie as a matter of fact,' she said coolly. ‘Easy to work on.'

I looked at her anxiously across the supper-table. Alf had asked me to go back and help out between 8 p.m. and closing time, so I was rushing, but more and more there was this thing about Dottie now that was worrying me. She was different—tougher. I didn't like it.

‘But you don't want Henry to invest his money in something that's going to fail, do you? I don't know how he made it, but it's all he's got and he said there's no more where that came from.'

‘Well, that's all rot, to start with. He's a young, active chap, not some retired old grandad handing over his life's savings—
if
he came a cropper over this, why couldn't he earn some more? But anyway he's not going to lose it. All this fuss about a few beetles and a bit of damp! The building hasn't fallen down for 400 years, it's not likely to collapse in the next five.'

‘What “next five”? Dottie, I told you, I'm in on this for exactly the next eight months or so, then I'm off.'

‘We'll see.'

‘We
will
see. I'm going.'

‘Why are you so set on it, anyway?'

‘I've got to do something exciting with the £400.'

‘Wouldn't starting a business be exciting enough?'

‘It's not the right kind of thing. I can't explain.'

‘What if you met someone and wanted to get married?'

I was struck dumb with surprise. Could it be that Dottie hadn't understood about me and Toby? But of course she had! She noticed my expression and interpreted it correctly.

‘Oh, I know all about
that
. But sometimes things like that drag on until one finds one's missed the boat. When you get the ball you have to play it quickly or it just turns to lead in your hands. I think you and Toby may have dropped the ball already. I mean, how long since you've seen him?'

‘I don't know—I don't keep count like that.'

‘Well, that doesn't sound as if you're still in love.'

‘In love …' The words rang strangely in juxtaposition to Toby's name. In love did, indeed, mean counting days, rushing for the mail, peaking and pining. Toby was … how to put it,
even to myself? I wasn't in love with Toby any more. Toby was part of me. You don't get in a lather about someone who is simply a basic essential in your life. He was just with me all the time. I thought suddenly that even if he died, it would still be like that.