When I Was Otherwise (32 page)

“Nonsense,” she said briskly. “You used to think she was the bee's knees.”

“That only shows how little
you
know about it!” answered Daisy, as a prelude to a quantity of mutterings on the subject of people whose poverty of language was such they could express themselves merely in cliché; she had forgotten that it was she herself who was being quoted. But it was certainly true that, in Daisy's eyes, since the day of the court hearing Malcolm and Phoebe's stock had fallen meteorically. It had never recovered or looked like it ever
could
. “Besides, who are you to talk about knees? If anyone's an expert on knees around here—always having to drag them up and down these hard, cracked pavements, a disgrace even to Hendon—that person is not you! No! You were usually interested in something a little higher up!”

Yet as she told this mainly to the wall and Marsha didn't catch more than one word in every three it fizzled out into just an angry murmur, a Daisy-type variation on the woodpecker's thrum.

In any case, although Malcolm had somehow contrived to keep this from the household in Alderton Crescent, it was now nearly five months since Phoebe had walked out on him and shortly afterwards married a widower from her office. “Good riddance!” Daisy had exclaimed, in a not completely successful attempt to comfort her nephew, when eventually he
had
told them about it. “I can't imagine what the idiot sees in her! Probably another of these weak-willed specimens who likes to have his life controlled by a bossy woman.” Turning now to Marsha: “I'm sure
you
, if anyone, would agree with that!” But, of all things, Phoebe had never been a bossy woman. Daisy had momentarily got muddled and been thinking of what she'd heard about Andrew's wife Janet. For to Daisy all women, once they fell from grace—along with those who had never been there in the first place—were shrews, irredeemably so. “Anyhow, Malcolm, you're well out of it and no mistake.” So it was not in any way an accurate reading of the situation but even if it failed lamentably in its proper objective it still had the secondary effect of cheering up Daisy herself, who, despite all endeavours to correct her, very quickly came to believe it and liked to imagine Phoebe giving hell to the widower's children, and the widower's children giving hell straight back again, with interest.

Malcolm and Phoebe had been together for a dozen years. Malcolm was devastated. After she had left him it seemed he couldn't settle to anything; a totally new way of life appeared to be the answer. He had friends in Canada who suggested he might like to join them.

There was a bittersweet corollary to this. Well, bitter for Marsha but certainly rather sweet to the taste of her sister-in-law and even to that of her brother. On reading Malcolm's accounts of the higher standard of living to be found in Canada, Andrew or more probably Myra had quickly become envious. They had applied for entry there. It was refused: advertising men were far less in demand than architects. By then, though, the wanderlust had got them. They settled for Australia, which they now let it be known would have been their first choice anyway, if they hadn't been swayed by their consideration for Malcolm. They went. Marsha dabbed her eyes at the dockside. Daisy said she felt that, after all, she might have been a little hasty in her judgment of Phoebe.

“She wasn't such a bad type, I believe,
au fond
. You know, dear, God moves in a mysterious way…”

And Dan, to whom this had been primarily addressed, answered conspiratorially: “Oh, Lord, I'm sure that Myra is going to have a most difficult and testing voyage!”

“If that's true so is everybody else!”

“She's not up to much at the moment.”

“I'm afraid she never was!”

Brother- and sister-in-law were rarely so united.

The fact of the matter, in Dan's case, was that he had once viewed Myra's hypochondria with tolerance and even compassion although he and Erica had long suspected the reports of her stoicism came indirectly from the lady herself. But when Erica had been discovered to have cancer and Dan had been forced to witness what real bravery could be in the face of real illness his amusement at the varied trials of Myra had abruptly ceased.

Unfortunately, however, Andrew hadn't learned not to propagate these tales of his wife's courageousness until hearing what were possibly the most uncharitable sentiments ever to issue from his uncle's lips.

But on the evening of the day they sailed, some neighbours to whom Marsha had spoken of the impending separation while standing in a queue at the greengrocer's called at No 10 to extend their condolences. They were a husband and wife who were not yet in their seventies but unluckily, because they both seemed more infirm than Dan and spoke rather more loudly, Daisy rashly assumed they were equally hard of hearing. In answer to their umpteenth round of polite observations regarding Andrew, Myra and the boys—“It must be such a wrench for you all; we know so well ourselves what it feels like to be left behind!”—and while Marsha was nodding gratefully and murmuring, “Yes! Oh yes!”, Daisy smiled sweetly and said, “Poppycock!”

The visitors imagined they'd misheard and then compounded their mistake by not asking her to repeat what she had said. They commiserated further, as though they hadn't already done so quite sufficiently, and Daisy, like a precocious child who'd been encouraged by its initial success, continued to whisper pertinent asides, masked, as she supposed, by her sister-in-law's flow of platitudes. Certainly Marsha carried on quite innocently and not even the hint of a smile came to poor Dan's face to signify awareness of the witty enjoyment that so narrowly eluded him.

“Yes, that's right, we're heartily glad to be shot of them. We call them ‘the dear departed' although the adjective is controversial. They're only dear because they have departed, if you see what I mean. But then you'll fall into that same category yourselves in an hour's time, or six, more likely, from the way you've settled in. What did you
really
come for? To find out if the curtains could be half as gruesome on the inside as they appeared from the outside, from your vantage point by the postbox? To scrounge a glass or two (or three or four) of best sherry? Well, you'll be lucky, in this household! You interfering old biddies.
We know what it's like to be left behind
, indeed! Yes, I'll bet you do! Silly asses! Who in their right minds would ever aim to take
you
with them?”

She snorted. She looked up contemptuously from her own empty glass and was suddenly aware that everyone else had stopped talking. How long ago? Panic-stricken, she wondered if she could possibly have gone a bit too far on this occasion: swept away by her natural gaiety, her lively and unquenchable sense of adventure. Moreover, while she'd been practising all that happy tomfoolery, had she remembered to wear her jolly smile of good neighbourliness? She said:

“Did you ever know such a woman as that silly ass Thatcher?”

She looked around expectantly. As a stock conversational gambit she had to acknowledge that it had usually met with more success.

43

Afterwards, Marsha physically assaulted her. Or very nearly. At one point she looked as though she actually meant to shake her. And she screamed like a fishwife. She dredged up every sin that Daisy was supposed to have committed in the last seven hundred and fifty years and told her she was evil—
evil
! It was degrading and frightening and obscene. Daisy could hardly drag herself away from it all fast enough but even then Marsha ran in front of her and barred the door like some terrible ogress, at least ten inches taller than she really was.

“We
can't
have her in this house!” the ogress cried to Dan. “We can't! Put her out! Tonight! If
you
don't
I
shall!”

Yes, it was frightening—frightening—the more so, of course, since she couldn't guess what Dan was thinking. His presence between them was possibly what saved her from being struck, she admitted that, but all the same he appeared to be letting his demon-possessed sister rant on and on, almost as though he believed she might be justified. It was nightmarishly unimaginable, yet it really did seem that he aligned himself with Marsha.

Eventually, however, she was able to make it to the stairs; she vaguely assumed Dan must have mildly remonstrated with the vixen. And the moment she gained the potential sanctuary of her bedroom she wedged her fireside chair beneath the doorknob. She didn't know where she had found the strength.

Then she sat trembling on the edge of her bed and covered her face with her hands. It was only by the way her hands moved up and down that she became aware of how quickly she was breathing.

But did you ever witness such a terrifying performance? The woman had gone berserk. Quite literally berserk. Stark, staring mad.

And did they really mean to throw her out before she'd even had a chance to arrange something?

Of course she wouldn't
want
to stay. Not after this. But she'd need a little time to think where she could go.

She wished that Malcolm hadn't left. Bill was now too frail to assist her much. And—besides—that termagant of a wife of his! (Why was she beset on nearly every side by termagants and harpies?) And Edgar and Vera…their little flat in Blandford Street was hardly any larger than a lift in Selfridge's and anyway poor Vera was no longer in the best of health. And Madge?
No
! Daisy wouldn't be able to stand it! No, she'd rather be living with a Barbary ape! Almost
would
be, in fact: a chocolate-guzzling, inanity-drivelling, dowager-humped Barbary ape who lay on a sofa the livelong day gawping at TV! And Mr Patrick…? Well, at the moment he was on holiday in Greece with one of those nice but slightly fey young men who sometimes came prancing into his shop with flowing scarves and hysterical exclamations. Mr Patrick had promised to send her a postcard but she didn't suppose it was ever going to reach her, not now. She had no idea of how she was possibly going to cope.

And even if she'd had some money she couldn't have stayed at the club. The club had never been residential. Apart from that, the very thought of being made to wash out her dirty linen
there
… No, unthinkable! She had to be permitted to hang on to a vestige of her pride, no matter how much warmth and sympathy she knew she would receive.

But it was all so…extraordinary! What had she done? Only played the giddy goat a little and performed—let's face it—quite the funniest, most entertaining piece of nonsense that could have enlivened that dull and somniferous sitting room in the past six thousand years or so. (Oh, beg its pardon,
lounge
!) If only the other participants could have seen the delightfully madcap humour of it all!

Yet what did you expect? In Hendon?

Oh, but how they would have laughed about it at the club! The shenanigans, of course. Not the subsequent shemozzle.

No, it was no good. She would somehow have to manage to get down there again, even if it
was
a question of two buses in either direction and of having to hang around late at night for God knew how many hours on windswept corners and hard pavements waiting to be mugged and have your handbag stolen. And this was to say nothing of the likelihood of driving rain and the near-certainty of having to harangue a coal-black conductor for ringing the bell too soon, long before you'd reached your seat.

But she would have to deal with it somehow! She must! She must! There was just no alternative. Although the underground station was close Daisy couldn't use it. She had once seen an old man throw himself under a tube. She had never recovered from that.

In any case. Underground station close? Only a couple of buses in each direction? She didn't know where she'd be living yet.

And abruptly she brought her fists down on the bed, one on either side of her, in a despairing attempt to release at least a little of her frustration. She suddenly felt so very much unloved and isolated and
homesick
. Homesick for the club. Homesick for those many old-time friends, some of them now living overseas but most of them long dead, who would at once have understood. Homesick, above all, for Marie.

Oh, Marie, she thought.

Marie!

She thought of Jimmy, too. Jimmy would be in his forties now. She often wondered where he was, how he was getting on. She fantasized about his charming wife, his talented and lively children, what it was like for him at Christmas and on birthdays.

She hoped that he was happy.

She heaved herself up from the bed, moved to her wooden chair beside the table, sat with both arms on the tablecloth, cheek resting on her hands. She hadn't meant any harm. She truly hadn't. She knew she sometimes
did
upset people but it was never because she actually wanted to. It was only some devilry which wouldn't let her stop. She wished she could get to know herself better; learn what made her act the way she did.

Half an hour later Dan came up.

44

He had to knock a long time before she realized he was there and he quickly grew alarmed, calling out her name with mounting urgency while trying to believe she was merely sulking and hadn't suffered a stroke or a heart attack. But Daisy in fact, just before making her escape, had finally had the presence of mind to switch off her hearing aid and thus reduce the ogress—magnify her?—to a grotesquely moving mouth and a dingy set of spittle-glinting teeth, almost Hogarthian. Yet she had afterwards forgotten, in all her misery, to switch the aid back on. In any case what point? Eventually, however, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the rattling of the knob.

“Who is it? What do you want?”

“Ah, thank God!” He'd heard her voice, had heard the rhythms of her questions and guessed what she was asking. “Daisy. It's me—Dan! Are you all right?”