The Backward Shadow (2 page)

The obvious answer to that, of course, was—don't return at all. Surely the sensible thing was to stay here, tucked away
in my own secure little niche with David for years and years until it was time for him to go to school, by which time anything might have happened. The way moral standards were turning themselves inside out there might well have been a sort of Wolfenden Committee on Bastardy which would end by recommending that illegitimacy should become a privileged condition … only illegitimate sons could inherit … ‘Bastards of the world, unite!' … there'd be a tremendous campaign to win public sympathy, all the great bastards of past and present would be enlisted to support the New Doctrine, namely that you couldn't be really intelligent, creative, artistic, etc. etc., unless you were born on the wrong side of the blanket … When I caught myself indulging in these ludicrous fantasies I always pulled up short, telling myself it was essential to be serious, to appreciate the gravity of what I'd done, and that it showed an immaturity bordering on infantilism to play games with myself like this instead of brooding on my responsibilities. I would laugh the other side of my face, I told myself severely, when the time came for David to understand his situation.

But that time was not yet. The time now was for him to lie in my arms and drink my milk and listen to me talking and singing to him while growing strong and brown in the sun. The time was for me to nurture the illusion that at long last, after 28 years, I was learning how to live alone.

So the future threw back only a pale shadow. It wasn't that which got under my skin, prickling and irritating like hunger as the summer began to end. I didn't know what it was—a nagging that was more than conscience, a need that was not merely for the city and for real life. It was a sort of superstition, really, left over perhaps from my theatrical days, that nothing good lasts, that it must all be paid for, and that the longer it goes on the farther the luck-pendulum will swing back in the other direction eventually. It was better, this superstition said, to keep a balance by pushing the pendulum back before it went too far, to turn your face voluntarily away from ease and pleasure, for fear the gods would force you to
it later, more fiercely the longer you had let yourself relax.

But I waited. I waited for a sign. ‘Let's get you safely into the fifth month,' Addy had said while I was under her wing in January. I said the same thing now to David, with a trace of Addy's own acerbity, as if it were David who was nagging at me to leave this haven. But really I was waiting—as I've always waited—for something outside to push me, to give me my direction.

I got my signs in October. They came, as they always seem to, in a cluster—three in one day.

It was one of the first real autumn days, with that faint crisp smoky smell in the air, the smell of things dying down which, perversely, always makes the sap rise in me. I pushed open the mullioned window over the sink which commanded the front path, and noticed that I could see the postman's breath, very faintly; he left footprints in the damp grass as he left the path to pass my letters through to me.

‘More visitors announcin' 'emselves?' he asked as I took the letters with one hand and passed him his accustomed cuppa with the other.

‘Shouldn't think so. Summer's over; the country's not such fun in the winter.'

‘Yup, in for a cold snap all right. How's the nipper?'

‘Thriving, thank you.'

He nodded to me, drained the tea, and tramped away between the hedges. The sun drifted wanly down, not even strong enough to make the dew sparkle. The dahlias and big yellow daisies were hanging their still-splendid heads, as if the strength had gone out of them overnight.

I sat on a high stool by the sink and examined my letters. There were three, or rather, two and a postcard. The postcard was typewritten; it said: ‘This is a tip-off. The Michelin Man will call at your establishment after closing-time tonight, disguised as a weary traveller. Give of your best, and you, too, may have a crossed knife and fork in the next
Guide
.'

It was unsigned. The style was familiar, but elusive. Dottie? Possibly. She'd just bought a car … I decided to lay on a
sumptuous feast just in case, and keep David up later than usual. She hadn't seen her godchild since the christening.

The first letter had a businesslike look about it which made me distrust it. But the other had the name of my bank on the envelope, which was considerably more ominous. I'd been living very cheaply, but a capital of
£
123 10s. doesn't last forever unless you're actually dead, and that was all I'd amassed at the time of David's birth and my retirement to Addy's cottage. Addy's other assets, also left to me, had consisted of a few Greek Government Bonds bought impulsively years ago after a holiday there and now down to
£
14 in the hundred, and the rights to a book she'd written which I had edited and typed. Not a penny of actual cash—her annuity had died with her. Father would help me if I asked him, of course, but I didn't want to ask him. And I didn't want Terry's help, either, though he'd begged and begged me to let him give me an allowance. I felt a bit mean for refusing; I could see it would make his conscience infinitely easier if I let him pay something … but that would give him rights, would sanction his paternity, and I shrank from that. David was mine. I'd earned him all by myself—or at least, with no help from Terry—and I wasn't going to let anyone horn in on him now if I could help it. I saw my fierce independence for the stubborn, unlovely thing it was, and didn't flatter myself; but I could not deny it.

I turned from the two discouraging red figures at the bottom of my bank statement to the other typewritten envelope. It had been forwarded from Fulham. I tore it open.

Dear Miss Graham,

Sorry I've been so long getting in touch with you about your aunt's book, but I wanted to wait till I had something good and definite to tell you. Now I have. As I suspected, the English publishers, always inclined to be timorous, have all shaken their money-wise old heads (some with genuine regret, I think). So I tried across the water, and halleluia! one of the New York firms has come up with an offer. It's a very good list, and your aunt can congratulate herself on landing in it
with her first book. They're very enthusiastic, as you'll see by the enclosed copy of their letter. Once it comes out there, I think it'll undoubtedly find a place here too.

Will you now ask your aunt to get in touch with me direct? I don't seem to have her address. I'm simply longing to meet her. I still think it's one of the most fascinating pieces of writing that's ever come into my hands.

Yours sincerely,

Billie Lee

I fell off the high stool, and tottered to the living-room to seek something more stable to sink into. The truth was, I'd forgotten all about the tough, hard-bitten little red-headed literary agent to whom I had taken Addy's manuscript months and months ago. I remembered her now, though, clearly—small, tightly corsetted, smartly dressed and coiffured, three charm-bracelets jangling on one tiny wrist and a man's watch incongruously strapped round the other. An impression of compactness, self-assurance and determination … Where had I heard of her? Oh yes, from Toby. She must be his agent … I read the letter again, letting my eyes slide over the final paragraph. I would think and feel about that later. After my first outburst of grief when Father told me of Addy's death, I hadn't shed one tear for her; it seemed oddly incongruous to mourn her here, where she still seemed alive. But now I was going to have to face those realisations which are a far sadder part of death than merely missing the person—those if-only-she-could-have-been-here-for-this regrets.

But first the letter from the American publisher. I was disappointed to see it was a carbon copy on commonplace flimsy, not as I had hoped the impressive original on high-quality airmail paper. The letter itself was very dignified and restrained, quite English in fact—a far cry from the sort of uninhibited New World enthusiasm I would have expected from an American firm. But a genuine excitement was apparent between the lines. Secure in the knowledge of being alone, I read it aloud to Addy's shade. I read Billie Lee's letter aloud, too. Then I put them both in my apron pocket, went out
into the autumn garden, and wept.

A lovely thing about living miles from anyone else is that you can cry out loud, luxuriously. How well I understand the Irish and other women, who wail and keen over their dead! How it helps, and how much more, instinctively, you feel you are paying tribute to your dead when you don't bottle it up, but let it all come out with a lovely, mournful, anguished sound! I could imagine how Father, and my aunts and uncles and cousins, had blinked back their tears with stiff upper lids at the funeral (I was still in hospital from David), concealing their genuine grief behind impassive British façades. I imagined Addy, somewhat improbably dressed in her voluminous canvas gardening apron, so tough she could keep shears in its pocket, and her muddy Wellingtons, looking on with disappointment and contempt. As I bent now over the droopping dahlias, scattering them with un-English tears and making a noise that would not have shamed an Arab wake, I could hear her saying: ‘That's more like it! I was beginning to wonder if anyone had noticed I was missing!' Suddenly the misery of wanting her sank down another fathom inside me; my legs went weak with sorrow and I found myself sitting on the wet grass, bawling, my head between my knees …

Suddenly I straightened up and listened. I had competition—David was bawling too. I rushed in to him; even by my haphazard standards, it was hours past his feeding time. I scooped him out of the wooden cradle so swiftly I left it rocking, and in two seconds the bawling had stopped—both lots. It was difficult to be unhappy with him in my arms, quite impossible while he sucked me. He tucked his near-side arm under mine, and I could feel his hand clutching my ribs in spasms of ecstasy as he drank.

I dressed him more warmly than usual (a jacket as well as a nightgown) and put him down to sleep in his pram in the garden. He didn't feel like sleeping right away, so we had a nice long stare at each other, which was good for meditation. His eyes were not going to be blue, after all—one more unlike-Terry
item which I added to his mounting score of good points. His hair, practically partable already, looked rather like Kenneth Kaunda's—it gave him a perpetually startled look, even when he was asleep. Suddenly, for no good reason, he grinned at me. It was his first recognisable smile
at me
, as distinct from indiscriminate face-experiments. I straightened up from my slouched position over the pram-handle. His eyes followed me, and he grinned again. I felt like a lioness whose offspring brings her his first kill.

If only Dottie
would
come tonight! Perhaps he would do it again for her. Her reactions to such an achievement were bound to be entirely satisfying. Only it wasn't Saturday, so how could it be her? Tantalising. I left David asleep, climbed into Addy's aged Morris, and drove into the village, where I resolutely put the two red figures on my bank statement from my mind and laid in a pot roast with every trimming I could think of, including a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape.

While I was in the pub I put through a call to Billie Lee. It was not very easy to say what I had to say, but she was so unexpectedly good about it—sympathetic in a terse how-
damned
-awful-I-
am
-sorry way—that I didn't start crying again as I'd feared.

‘Well, m'dear,' said her deep, mannish voice, ‘it all devolves on you, then.' She paused, and then added, ‘You know, I'm not only sorry for you, losing your aunt, I'm actually jolly sorry for myself as well. I
had
so looked forward to meeting her … damn. What a bitch life is. Oh well, I suppose we must just do our best for her book … she's left something of some importance behind, at least, which is more than most of us will.'

She went on to tell me the details of the American sale. It seemed the advance royalties were something in the neighbourhood of four hundred pounds, and even while I was glorying in relief, I was wondering for the first time whether there wasn't something rather dreadful about spending Addy's money. I felt I should keep it for her, somehow—as if she'd be needing it.

You poor eedjit, what d'you think I left it to you for? And mind you do something exciting with it, too, and don't just let it dribble away
.

I put the pot roast in the oven early, and David and I spent a restless two hours waiting for the ‘Michelin Man'. Finally I couldn't keep the poor child hanging on any longer, and reluctantly gave him his supper and put him to bed. I waited another two hours, unable to settle to anything, listening attentively for a car. The oven was turned down to almost off, the living-room fire had had four replenishments of pine-logs and I was getting decidedly sleepy myself, not to say hungry and a bit cross. Perhaps the card was someone's idea of a joke? Finally I could stand it no longer. I slammed down my book, stamped to the elegantly-laid table and swept one lot of cutlery back in the drawer.

Right on cue came a double knock on the door.

I'd heard no car, and there was no question of having missed it as you could always hear them, woomphing and protesting in bottom gear over that last half-mile of pot-holes. Even a cycle could be heard swishing through the puddles, and any light at all on the road shone through the big bow window onto the whitewashed wall opposite. I felt a marked twinge of fear, remembering poor Mrs. Stubbs and her chalk-dusted assailant (‘Like a proper
gole
he must've looked, dear, face and 'ands and clothes all white—but they wasn't white for long, oh no!') But there was a chain on the door, and after all, I was expecting
someone
.

I went to the door, put the chain on it, and opened it resolutely to its full six inches. Through the gap a hand, a small, strong, familiar hand, snaked in and made a strangler's gesture that was straight out of a Danziger Brothers B picture. I looked at it, dumbly, for a moment, until that well-remembered voice said plaintively: ‘Well, come on! How can I
do
you if you don't let me in?'