Under Gemini (3 page)

*   *   *

To begin with, Marcia had refused to marry Flora's father. “You can't marry me. You're the senior classics master of a reputable grammar school. You ought to marry some quiet, respectable female with a felt hat and a way with boys.”

“I don't like quiet, responsible females,” he had told her, slightly irritated. “If I did, I'd have married Matron years ago.”

“It's just that I don't see myself as Mrs. Ronald Waring. It doesn't fit, somehow. ‘And here, boys, is Mrs. Waring, to present the silver cup for the High Jump.' And there is me, falling over my feet, and forgetting what I'm meant to say, and probably dropping the cup or giving it to the wrong boy.”

But Ronald Waring had always been a man who knew his own mind, and he persisted, courting and finally persuading her. They were married at the beginning of the summer, in the tiny stone church which was older than time and smelled musty, like a cave. Marcia had worn a very fetching emerald green dress and a huge straw hat with a drooping brim, like Scarlett O'Hara's. And for once Ronald Waring was coordinated and all of a piece, with matching socks and his necktie firmly knotted, not slipping down to reveal the top button of his shirt. They made, thought Flora, a wonderful couple. She had taken snapshots of them as they came beaming out of the church, the brisk sea-breeze playing havoc with the brim of the bride's hat, while causing the bridegroom's thinning hair to stand up on end like the crest of a cockatoo.

Marcia was a Londoner born and bred who had somehow reached the age of forty-two without ever having been married—most likely, decided Flora, because she had never found the time. She had started her career as a drama student, graduated to wardrobe mistress with a provincial repertory company, and from that inauspicious beginning had cheerfully barged on through life, apparently ricocheting from one unexpected occupation to another, and her final job had been sales manager in a shop in Brighton which specialized in what Marcia called Arabian Tat.

Although Flora had taken to Marcia from the very first and encouraged like mad the alliance with her father, there had been certain inevitable reservations about Marcia's housewifely capabilities. After all, no girl wants to condemn her parent to a lifetime of bought pies, frozen pizza, and soup out of cans.

But even on that score Marcia succeeded in surprising them. She proved to be an excellent cook and an enthusiastic housekeeper, and was already developing all sorts of unlikely talents in the garden. Vegetables were already coming up in neat, soldierly rows; flowers bloomed if Marcia looked at them, and the deep windowsill over the kitchen sink stood two rows deep in the earthenware pots of geranium and Busy Lizzies which she had grown herself.

That evening, as they made their way up the cliffs and across the cool, long-shadowed fields, Marcia, who had been watching from the kitchen window, came to meet them. She wore green trousers and a cotton smock, heavily embroidered by some gnarled peasant hand, and the last rays of the sun lit her bright hair to a flame.

Ronald Waring, catching sight of her, lifted his head with pleasure and his footsteps quickened. Lagging behind, Flora decided that there was something special about two middle-aged people who shared a bond, not only of affection, but passion as well, so that when they met in the middle of the field, embracing without restraint or embarrassment, it was as though they were coming together after a separation of many months. Perhaps that was how they felt. Heaven knew, they had waited long enough for each other.

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It was Marcia who drove Flora to the junction the next morning to catch the London train. The fact that she was actually able to do this was a source of great pride and satisfaction to Marcia. Because in attaining her great age, she had not only missed out on matrimony, but, as well, had never learned to drive.

When quizzed about this, she had a number of reasons to explain the omission. She was unmechanically minded, she had never owned a car, and there was usually someone around who was willing to drive her. But after she married Ronald Waring and found herself marooned in a small Cornish cottage at the end of nowhere, it was obvious that the time had come.

Now or never, said Marcia, and took lessons. Then tests. Three of them. She failed the first time because she ran the front wheels of the car over the booted toes of a constable. And the second time because, while backing the car into a tricky parking place, she inadvertently knocked over a perambulator which, fortunately, did not contain a baby at the time. Neither Flora nor her father imagined that she would have the nerve to try again, but they underestimated Marcia. She did, and finally passed. So when her husband regretted that he could not drive his daughter to catch the London train, owing to some educational conference which he was bound to attend, Marcia was able to say, with casual pride, “That's no trouble. I'll take her.”

In a way, Flora was relieved. She hated goodbyes, inevitably becoming emotional at the sound of a train whistle. She knew that if her father were there, she would probably weep all over him, which would make the parting all the worse for everybody.

It was another warm and cloudless day, the sky as blue as it had been all year, and the bracken gold. As well, there was a sparkle to the air which made the most mundane objects as clear-cut as crystal. Marcia, whose thought processes were comfortingly simple to follow, began to carol in her fruity contralto, “Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day…” and then abandoned her song and stooped down to feel for her handbag, which meant that she wanted a cigarette. The car, accordingly, weaved dangerously across the white line and over onto the wrong side of the road, so Flora said quickly, “I'll get it,” and found the bag and the cigarette while Marcia got the car back on course again. Flora stuck the cigarette into Marcia's mouth, and then held the lighter so that Marcia wouldn't have to take her hands off the wheel.

The cigarette going, Marcia went on with her song.

“I've got a beautiful feeling, everything's going…” She stopped again, frowning. “Darling, you do promise me you're not going back to horrible London just because of me?”

This question had been asked every night at regular intervals for the last seven days. Flora took a deep breath. “No. I've told you, no. I'm simply picking up the threads of my life and carrying on where I left off a year ago.”

“I can't get rid of this feeling that I'm turning you out of your own home.”

“Well, you're not. And anyway, you can look at the situation from my point of view. Knowing my father has found a good woman to take care of him, I can go off and leave him with a clear conscience.”

“I'd feel happier if I knew what sort of a life it was going to be. I've got a horrible preconceived pictures of you in a bedsitter, eating cold beans out of a tin.”

“I've told you,” said Flora robustly, “I'll find somewhere to live, and while I'm looking I'm going to stay with my friend Jane Porter. It's all been fixed. The girl who lives with her is on holiday with her boyfriend, so I can have her bed. And by the time she comes back from her holiday, I shall have found myself a flat of my own and a fabulous job and I'll be home and dry.” But Marcia continued to look gloomy. “Look, I'm twenty-two, not twelve. And a terribly, terribly efficient shorthand typist. There's not a thing to worry about.”

“Well, if things don't work out,
promise
to call me and I'll come and mother you.”

“I've never been mothered in my life and I can manage without it.” Flora added, “I'm sorry. That wasn't meant to sound quite so brusque.”

“Not brusque at all, darling, just plain fact. But you know, the more I think about it, the more fantastic it becomes.”

“I'm not sure what you are talking about.”

“Your mother. Abandoning you and your father, and you just an infant. I mean, I can imagine a woman abandoning a
husband.
At least, I can't imagine
anybody
abandoning darling Ronald—but a
baby!
It seems so completely inhuman. You'd have thought that having gone through all the business of actually
having
a child, you'd want to keep it.”

“I'm glad she didn't keep me. I wouldn't have had anything different. How Pa managed, I shall never know, but I couldn't have had a more wonderful childhood.”

“You know what we are, don't you? The Founding Members of the Ronald Waring Fan Club. I wonder why she went? Your mother, I mean. Was there another man? I've never liked to ask.”

“No I don't think so. They were simply incompatible. That's what Pa always told me. She didn't like him being an unambitious schoolmaster, and he wasn't interested in cocktail parties and the merry life. And she didn't like his being vague and immersed in his job, and always looking as though he'd been thrown together out of a rag bag. And he obviously was never going to earn enough money to keep her in the style she fancied. I found a photograph of her once, in the back of a drawer. Very chic and elegant, and expensive-looking. Not Pa's scene at all.”

“She must have been as hard as nails. I wonder why they got married in the first place.”

“I think they met on a skiing holiday in Switzerland. Pa's a super skier—perhaps you didn't know that. I imagine they were both blinded by sun and snow, and intoxicated by heady Alpine air. Or maybe she was knocked flat by the manly figure he cut as he swooped down the mountainside. All I know is that it happened, and I was born, and then it was over.”

They were on the main road now, approaching the little station where Flora was to catch the London train. “I do hope,” said Marcia, “that he doesn't ask me to go skiing with him.”

“Why ever not?”

“I can't,” said Marcia.

“That wouldn't make any difference to Pa. He adores you, just the way you are. You know that, don't you?”

“Yes,” said Marcia, “and aren't I the luckiest woman alive? But you're going to be lucky, too. You were born under Gemini, and I looked you up this morning and all the planets are moving in the right direction and you've got to Take Advantage of Opportunities.” Marcia was a great one for horoscopes. “That means that within a week you're going to find a super job and a super flat, and probably a super tall dark man with a Maserati. A sort of job lot.”

“Within a week? That doesn't give me much time.”

“Well, it's all got to happen in a week, because next Friday you get a new horoscope.”

“I'll see what I can do.”

It was not a prolonged goodbye. The express stopped at the junction for no more than a moment, and no sooner were Flora and her considerable luggage on board than the stationmaster was walking down the platform, slamming doors and preparing to blow his whistle. Flora leaned out of the open window to kiss Marcia's upturned face. Marcia had tears in her eyes and her mascara had run.

“Telephone; let us know what happens.”

“I will. I promise.”

“And write!”

There was no time for more. The train began to move, gathering speed; the platform curved away. Flora waved, and the little station and Marcia's blue-trousered form grew smaller and then slid out of sight, and Flora, with her hair all over her face, shut the window and sat with a thump in the corner seat of the empty compartment.

She looked out of the window. That was a tradition, watching everything slip away, just as it was a tradition, when traveling in the opposite direction, to start leaning out of the window at Fourbourne in order to catch the very first glimpse of one familiar landmark after another.

Now the tide was low, the sand of the estuary a sort of pearly brown, patterned in blue where pools of slack water reflected the sky. On the far side was a village with white houses gleaming through trees, and then the dunes, and for an instant one could see the ocean out beyond the distant white breakers of the bar.

The railway curved inland, and a grassy headland swung into view while the ocean was lost behind a rash of seaside bungalows. The train rattled over a viaduct and through the next town, and then there were small green valleys and white cottages, and gardens where lines of washing bellied and flapped in the brisk morning breeze. The train thundered over a level crossing and a man waited at the closed gate with a red tractor and a trailer filled with bales of straw.

They had lived in Cornwall since Flora was five years old. Before that her father had taught Latin and French at an exclusive and expensive Sussex preparatory school, but the job, though comfortable, was not much of a challenge, and he had begun to run out of the sort of conversation acceptable to the mink-coated mothers of his well-heeled charges.

He had always had a hankering to live by the sea, having spent Easter and summer holidays in Cornwall as a boy. Thus, when the post of senior classic master at the Fourbourne Grammar School came up he promptly applied for it, much to the concern of the preparatory school headmaster, who felt that the bright young man was destined for better things than pumping classics into the heads of the sons of farmers, shopkeepers, and mining engineers.

But Ronald Waring was adamant. At first he and Flora had lived in digs in Fourbourne, and her first memory of Cornwall was that small industrial town, surrounded by a bleak country of shallow hills spiked with old mine workings which stood out on the horizon like so many broken teeth.

But once they had settled down and her father had found his feet in his new job, he bought an ancient car, and on weekends father and daughter cast about for somewhere else to live.

Finally, following the directions of the estate agent's office in Penzance, they had taken the road from St. Ives out toward Lands End, and after one or two wrong turns found themselves bumping down a steep, brambly lane which led in the direction of the sea. They rounded a last corner, over a stream which ran permanently across the road, and came to Seal Cottage.