The Facts of Life (8 page)

He and Sally began to take trips, to the north coast, to London, to Brighton, and stay in hotels, posing, unconvincingly, as husband and wife with the aid of a pair of brass curtain rings. Occasionally, Dr Pertwee’s deathless discretion again set her rooms at their amorous disposal.

‘
You go to my head
,’ he crooned over a new delivery of old anatomical textbooks, ‘
Like a sip of sparkling Burgundy brew and I find the very mention of you, like the kicker in a Julep or two
.’ The words were like a passport to a territory from which he had previously been barred.

Then, one night, as he was driving her home, Sally made him stop at the side of the road in the pitch black of open fenland. She wanted them to talk, she said. They never seemed to have the time to talk properly.

‘But we never stop talking,’ he insisted, happily, ‘Hardly ever.’

‘Oh yes. We talk about Things; songs, films, symphony orchestras, people, your work, my work but –’ she broke off, searching for words. He listened to her breathing. They had been at a party in the gardens at Tompion earlier. She had been drinking Pimms, and her breath smelled rich and sweet in the car’s air of mouldering leather. She was slightly drunk, they both were. He had discovered that her emotions were not always directly available to her – she needed alcohol or a crisis to set them free.

She went on, ‘But we never seem to talk about us.’

‘Well?’ He heard himself sounding German. ‘Talk.’

‘Where are we going, Edward? What do we want?’

‘What do you want?’ He touched her arm.

‘No,’ she said firmly, turning in her seat. ‘No. You say what
you
want for once.’

‘Me? I … I want
you
, my darling.’

‘Yes but
how
do you want me? Sometimes I feel so unsure of you.’

‘Sally!’ He was amazed. ‘Why?’

‘Because I do all the wanting. I do all the suggesting. Sometimes I feel it’s only
my
needs that keep our – that keep this going.’ She laughed drily. ‘If it hadn’t been for me, it wouldn’t ever even have started. You’re so … so self-contained.’

‘No I’m not.’

‘Yes you
are
, Edward!’

‘I love being with you! I love you!’

‘Yes but you’re not
in
love with me, are you?’

‘I … I think I am.’

‘Exactly! It’s all a bloody intellectual process for you. You have to think before you know what you feel. You’d miss me if I disappeared but you wouldn’t go to pieces.’

‘Sally, I –’ He struggled for words. Suddenly she seemed to be attacking him where his defences were weakest. He felt too terrified to open his mouth lest his words condemn him.

‘Go on,’ she prompted. ‘Edward, please. Tell me what you want.’

‘I want us to be together always,’ he said. ‘I want never to lose you. I want … Sally. I think that we should get married.’

She waited a second or two then asked with quiet determination, ‘Do you really
want
that?’

‘Yes.’ He laughed with relief at the sudden simplicity of the ambition. ‘Yes. Yes, I do!’

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘Ask me how
I
feel about it.’

‘Hmm? Oh. Yes. Sally. Doctor Banks. Will you consent to be my wife?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘How
can
you?’ He clutched her shoulders and turned her towards him. Not knowing whether she was joking or serious was torture to him. ‘Sally?’

‘What?’

‘Say yes.
Please
say yes?’

‘That’s more like it! Emotion. Real emotion!’

‘Well?’

‘Now I feel
wanted
, Edward.’

‘Sally for God’s sake!’ If she didn’t answer his proposal, he thought he would burst.

‘Oh don’t be absurd, Edward.’ She looked down and stroked the evening bag on her lap. ‘Of
course
I’ll marry you.’

They kissed, laughing in surprise and pure pleasure. She encouraged him to unbutton her blouse and he began to stroke her, but the difficulty of bypassing the gear and brake levers held him back, and he drew away, caressing her hands thoughtfully.

‘There are things I haven’t told you,’ he said.

‘Yes?’ She coughed in her effort to assume seriousness. ‘Tell me now, then.’

‘It’s about my parents.’

‘Yes.’

‘They didn’t just die in the war. It wasn’t just a bombing raid or something like that. They were transported to a work camp and a while later they were shot.’

‘Oh no!’

‘Isaac told me. He had all kinds of contacts and he knew within weeks of the news getting out. He came to the internment camp to tell me.’

Sally squeezed his thumb in her palm.

‘They were mad not to have sent Miriam with me. She’d just got engaged – well, as good as – to a town councillor, a gentile with a cousin in the army. They thought he’d protect her. Poor fools.’

‘Who was Miriam?’

‘My sister.’

‘You never said you had a sister.’

‘Didn’t I? Yes. Miriam.’

‘She survived, then?’

‘Yes. No. We don’t know. They were all sent to one place, then separated. Isaac went over as soon as he was allowed to, last year. I was too ill to go. There were lists. Terrible, long lists of names like garbled telephone directories. He traced my parents but not Miriam. He tried looking under her fiancé’s name too, in case they’d got married in a rush to save her. Perhaps she was moved on somewhere.’ Edward lifted Sally’s hand and kissed it solemnly. The well of words was drying up finally. ‘I don’t know where she is,’ he said. ‘Isaac gave some money to a friend to keep looking for us.’

‘Surely, if she survived, she’d have contacted you by now?’

‘That’s what I’d have thought but … her name hasn’t been found anywhere.’

‘Now that you’re better, now that you’re free to travel, wouldn’t you like to go and find out?’

‘There’s nothing I’d hate more,’ he sighed. ‘But I suppose I shall have to. Isaac died, you see. Three months ago. The things he saw there, the stories he heard … It was as though he was shocked to death. He was a quiet, scholarly man; very legalistic, very dried-up – he had no imagination whatever. Rosa said that he began to have terrible dreams that made him cry out. And not just at night, either. He would nod off at his desk, after lunch, and she’d hear him shout and mumble.’

‘How did he die?’

‘A stroke. I suppose it was what is called a merciful release. Funny.’

‘What?’

‘He left me half his money. He was quite rich. But I don’t get a penny until I’m thirty. That was his way of trying to force me to finish my studies.’

‘Were you close to Miriam?’

‘She was older but she was like a twin. We weren’t identical, although sometimes it felt as though we shared a mind. But, she did all the things I didn’t. She danced. She made people laugh. She was good at languages.’ He fell silent, remembering, then returned Sally’s hand to her lap and restarted the car.

When they reached her parents’ house, he wanted to come in to ask her father’s permission, but she laughed at him for being old-fashioned and Bavarian. They kissed and kissed and he got as far as undoing her blouse again, before a passing neighbour flustered her and she pulled back to tidy herself.

‘You’ll have to go, you know,’ she said suddenly, frowning. ‘You’ll have to go and find out about Miriam sooner or later. I couldn’t bear us to be married and happy, and for you not to know about her.’

Edward only nodded, relieved he had told her yet perturbed at how swiftly his revelation was assuming a shape and force between them.

Once she was lost to view, he drove back into Rexbridge and walked around the deserted streets, hunting for jewellers. Through a heavily barred window, he saw the ring he wanted and could not possibly afford. By rights, she should have his mother’s wedding ring, but that was irrevocably gone. Walking back to the car he was ambushed by a sense of loss, of the cruel interruption the war had brought to the comforting continuity of family life. He could not take Sally to meet his parents and Miriam. He had no home. He had no parents.

The scent of the car’s interior already bore a strong erotic charge in his mind after the frustrating, over-stimulated hours they spent there. When he parked outside Thomas’s house and leaned forward, cooling his forehead, on the steering wheel, the scent of leather and a lingering trace of vanilla entered his thoughts and turned his grief to bewildering lust.

‘You
what
?’

Sally’s mother was crouched on the end of her bed, her toes separated with wads of cotton wool while she coated their nails with varnish.

‘Not “pink”,’ she would exclaim to anyone who commented. ‘It’s
cerise d’amour
.’

‘You what?’ she asked again.

‘You heard,’ Sally said.

‘He
never
!’

‘Well thanks a lot.’

‘He took his time, though, didn’t he?’

‘Not really.’

Sally fiddled with the brass doorknob, which was loose. Struck by a terrible thought, her mother paused a moment, varnish-brush in mid-stroke.

‘He hasn’t put one in your oven, has he?’

‘What if he had? What difference would it make?’

‘He’d be marrying you for the wrong reasons, that’s what.’

‘Since when were you so romantic?’

‘Who mentioned romance? Marriage is hard enough when you start off on the
right
footing. You didn’t throw yourself at him, did you? Didn’t go cheapening yourself?’

‘Of course not,’ Sally lied. ‘He just asked me.’

‘And you said yes straight away? Well of course you did. Can’t go calling their bluff at your age. Christ Almighty! Married at last! Well come here and have a kiss.’

Sally came forward and stooped to the bed. She expected the usual, cursory, don’t-spoil-my-hair peck and was surprised by a hug that was actually tender. Then her mother quickly retreated into more characteristic gruffness.

‘And now you’ve made me cry! Give me one of those hankies quick before I wreck my face.’

Sally reached for a handkerchief from the pile of ironing her mother had left on the bedside chair. Her mother took it with muttered thanks and dabbed at her eyes, which had already been pink and watery from an over-zealous application of cold cream. Then, seeing to the last of her nail-painting, she said, ‘You were always such a
dry
little girl. You weren’t one for dolls or princesses. No ribbons in your hair. And you never cried.’

‘I must have done.’

‘Well not while
I
was around.’

‘I had you for an example.’

‘I always tried to look nice for you, you know?’

‘I used to think your nails
grew
that colour.’

Sally joined her mother on the bed although still kept at a distance by her careful labour.

‘Was I a disappointment to you?’ she asked cautiously.

‘No. Not really.’ Her mother stopped to consider then continued her work.

‘Well,’ she said, casually hurtful, ‘if I’m honest, I wanted a boy. I knew I couldn’t have any more after you.’

‘You never said,’ Sally sighed.

‘Complications in the birth, they told me. You’d understand, of course. Back then we never thought to ask for details. Anyway –’ she finished her nails briskly and screwed brush back into bottle ‘– you were the best of both worlds; brave as a boy, cunning as a girl.’

‘Cunning?’

‘You got your way. You always did. I admired that.’

‘Oh.’

‘So. Is he going to come and ask your dad’s permission?’

‘Certainly not!’

‘Why not?’

‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I turned eighteen several years ago. I don’t need permission. Your blessing would be nice, though.’

‘Oh,’ her mother snorted. ‘That. Well, I wish you well, of course I do. Marriage is no joyride – especially if you’ve a will on you like you have. At least he’s young. That way he’ll respect you and you can get him well trained. Well don’t go looking all old-fashioned! If you want wine and roses, you stay single, you know that. Marriage is a kind of business proposal when you get down to it.’ She carefully stretched out her legs before her to give her handiwork a critical once-over.

Sally looked about the room, this temple to her parents’ own marriage. There were so few clues. The big heart-shaped mirror over the pink-skirted dressing-table. Their wedding photograph. Sally’s christening photograph. China souvenirs from their honeymoon in Scarborough, meticulously dusted. Nothing much. The ugly, heavy wardrobe and matching chest of drawers, the big divan bed and the his-and-her chamber pots not quite tucked out of sight suggested some of the profound lack of romance at which her mother hinted. Their wedding photograph, in which her father was still upstanding, a lithe, fit young man, younger than his daughter was now, gave more positive proof of disappointment. Her mother caught her looking at it.