Wish Her Safe at Home (18 page)

And then something rather awful happened. It had all been so extremely nice, with Roger and Celia so charming, so very pleased to have me there.

Yet—suddenly—it all just sort of fizzled out.

Up in the air one minute; nose-diving the next.

Roger came over to me and put his arm around my shoulders (I was bad: I
still
felt the electricity zooming straight through me) and said, “Well, Rachel, it’s been great!” Then, with appealing timidity, as if almost seeking reassurance: “It has been, hasn’t it?”

“No other word for it,” I answered happily.

“Thank you for making it so swell.”

All these Americanisms!

“Swell?”

“Yes—swell.”

I joyously concurred.

“Celia and I are awfully grateful. And so’s young Thomas of course.”

“And so he should be. I shall expect nothing but gratitude for the next half-century.”

“Fine. A deal. Look—what I wanted to say—is it all right if my father-in-law sees you home? Celia would quite like to get back to the flat—after all this excitement, you know—to have young master into his jimjams and into bed.”

“Yes,
naturally
that’s all right. It’s very kind of Colonel Tiverton.”

“Good. Well, then...
”

I imagined this was all for show. I expected him to add a lot less audibly that they would pick me up a little later. Or else give me directions on how to get there. I waited to be told of the arrangements.

Instead he leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. (Now there wasn’t quite the same high voltage.) Celia, who had come up just then with Tommy in her arms, also kissed my cheek. She held up my godchild, warmly squirming and reluctant, to administer something of the same treatment. But that was all. It was over. No mention of a knees-up.

And I had no right to complain, naturally—none whatsoever. After all, I’d had a very lovely time.

Yet even so.

That
was the part I’d most been looking forward to. This afternoon, I’d thought, had been merely the warm-up. The prelude.

* * *

“See you,” he’d said.

“We promise to be in touch
very
soon,” Celia had added.

No chance, then, even to give the little invitation I myself had been planning. In the car with Colonel Tiverton I felt a trifle flat.

But I’d seen Roger again just before we left. He had waved to me with a broad smile and a bit of jolly clowning and not the slightest idea in the whole world that anything could possibly be wrong.

Well then, I reasoned, when we were about half the way home, a poor memory in one’s friends was definitely an inconvenience but not something one could truly blame them for—not with any real conviction, let alone resentment. And they certainly
had
provided me with a brilliant afternoon and an opportunity to shine.

“Young Thomas is a grand old chap,” said Colonel Tiverton. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

* * *

Something else that surprised me though: why had Mark Wymark thought I might be related to the Allsops? Could he have forgotten that
he
was the one who had given me Roger’s address? “A friend of mine...
an undergraduate. Name of Allsop.” And had Roger never told him I’d be at the party; or that I was going to be the baby’s godmother? No, patently he hadn’t—“What an unexpected pleasure,” Mark had said.

Well, just talk about people having poor memories! And such very young people at that! Clearly they were both as bad as one another.

And, after all, it was good to be home.

It really was.

I flopped down in my usual armchair. I kicked off both my shoes. Displayed my newly painted nails—hardly visible, however, beneath the reinforced stocking tips. I wriggled all my toes.

“Yes, be it ever so humble,” I said.

I frowned—though not with impatience, obviously. Merely with surprise.

“Oh, surely you know it? ‘Be it ever so humble there’s no place like home.’” And then I realized my mistake. “Oh, I’m a fool! That’s only nineteenth-century, isn’t it? My father used to love those sentimental ballads. I think I can remember him singing it!”

I smiled nostalgically. I felt utterly relaxed.

Indeed, the sense of anti-climax after the party, succeeded now by this feeling of tranquillity at home, had made me rather drowsy. I yawned, my hand across my mouth. “Oh, do excuse me.” I began to sing.

“Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,

Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise.

My Mary’s asleep by the murmuring stream,

Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.”

I went on: “Oh, isn’t it strange? I’d have said I didn’t know a single word of that, apart from its title.”

My Mary’s asleep by the murmuring stream
...

“Doesn’t that sound just so tender and protective; so considerate and trustworthy?”

I smiled. “But on the whole you can’t really trust people, can you? Not deep down. Not in small things. I suppose the truth is—we’re all thinking more of ourselves than of anybody else.”

In saying that, I surprised myself a little—in fact, may have surprised myself more than I did him. “No, I don’t want...
” I gave another yawn.

“I suppose your Rachel’s half asleep as well. That’s why she’s burbling on like this. ‘O, my love is like a red red rose, that’s newly sprung in June...
’

“No, I really have no wish to grow cynical. And, anyway, when people are married and they have each other it may be rather different. I mean, a
good
marriage. Presumably they really do care—the death of one could almost be the death of both. They lie at night locked in each other’s arms, entangled in each other’s legs, heartbeat close to heartbeat, and they tell each other how passionately they care. And sometimes—frequently—it must be true. How lovely to be loved!”

I looked up at him wistfully. I remembered Roger’s tiny but amazing revelation of his need for reassurance. I seemed to get a nod.

“And also parents care for their children, don’t they? I mean again, good ones, a mother like yours, a father like mine...

“But apart from children...
and people in love...
and sometimes, I suppose, a sibling or a parent...
I’m rambling, aren’t I? Am I making any sense?

“I was in love once. Yes. He told me I reminded him of Vivien Leigh. Oh, you won’t know Vivien Leigh. She was an actress. An extremely pretty one. Next time I go to the library I’ll look for a book that has a photograph. She...
”

* * *

At breakfast, surprisingly, my mother wasn’t cross that I’d got in so late the night before. She hardly questioned me as to what we’d done. Instead she informed me that my grandfather was ill—she’d had a call from my grandfather’s housekeeper who’d been speaking from a phone box—and that we’d be leaving for Winchester that very morning.

“But I can’t!” I was aghast. “I’ve got my exams in another month.”

“You can study there just as well as here,” my mother said. “We shan’t be gone for longer than a week and you can telephone the college before we leave.”

“But can’t I stay here, Mother? Wouldn’t it be simpler? Besides—who’s going to water the plants?”

He’d said he would telephone me that night from Scotland.

“Mrs. Fowler will water them. And if I really thought, Rachel, that either the plants or even your examination results meant more to you than your own grandfather, who is clearly dying...
”

And Tony himself wasn’t even on the telephone at home; and if he had been it wouldn’t have done me any good. He was already on his way to Edinburgh and none of his family would have known where he was putting up—he’d never been to Edinburgh before. And his firm was called Smith & Son and other than its being in London I had no idea of its location. I just couldn’t reach him.

“It isn’t that,” I said, “but I’m expecting this very important phone call, you see, and—”

“Oh, from Mr. Heart-Throb?” Her tone was unexpectedly sympathetic. I felt a moment’s hope.

I nodded.

“Well, look, darling, so much the better. It’s
fatal
always to be just sitting by the telephone and waiting—take it from somebody who knows!” (For a moment I was sidetracked: I wondered how she knew.) “If you seriously want to hook him you’ve got to let him have a few anxious moments. Play a little hard to get. That’s the thing which always brings them running.”

It was funny she should have said this. I certainly hadn’t mentioned my fear that I might be too openly showing him my heart; I’d scarcely mentioned his name in her presence. (To anyone else who would listen, or even on my own, I must have spoken it on average twenty times an hour.) And an enforced absence was assuredly the one thing that would enable me to keep him guessing. If I stayed in London I shouldn’t have the strength.

It would only be a week.

And I could write to him.

“Of
course
you can write to him. Though I’d suggest you leave it for a day or two.”

* * *

But Grandfather seemed no worse than usual. He’d been bedridden now for several years and he’d always been hypochondriacal; even Mother said so. Indeed, I almost suspected that our abrupt summons had been nothing but a ploy on the part of Miss Wilkinson to get herself some help. Yet when I said as much to my mother she only answered, tiredly, “Look, write your letter to the boyfriend and I’ll go out and post it for you. I could definitely do with the air.”

The week turned into a fortnight. When I hadn’t heard from him after ten days, ten days of hope and disappointment and living on my nerves, which had put
me
into bed as well as my grandfather, she recommended that I write again. She was really rather sweet. “After all, it’s just possible it could have gone astray. Letters do, you know. Why not suggest he come to see you here? Tell him you’ve been ill.”

In the end we stayed in Winchester for three months. I didn’t even take my exams: typing and shorthand and business management seemed completely unimportant to me now—in fact they always had—both to me and, less foreseeably, to my mother. Grandfather recovered; or at any rate appeared to. “Dying?” repeated the doctor when I met him one day in the town. “That wily old fox? He could live another fifteen years! Longer!”

“That isn’t what he said three months ago,” Miss Wilkinson later protested. “Oh, dear me, no. No, not at all.” It was a strange look that I intercepted between her and my mother.

And I seemed to recover, too, after a fashion. But I had certainly lost that sparkle which had made me
almost
pretty.

I met Tony just once more—within a week of our return to London. By then he was unofficially engaged: to the schoolfriend at whose party we had met.

Letters? No. He hadn’t received any letters. He said he’d tried to get hold of me each evening for a week; had eventually been informed by a plant-watering neighbour that we’d gone away for the remainder of the summer, were moving from place to place on the Continent—she’d no idea where. In the end he’d had to tell himself I wasn’t interested. Despite appearances. I was probably having
far
too good a time of it in Italy and Greece. Never trust a woman, he’d added with a smile.

It didn’t matter now of course but the only other person to whom I’d written from Winchester had been that same schoolfriend, Arabella. I knew
her
letter hadn’t gone astray because I’d received an answering short scribble addressed to the flat for some reason but sent on—with all our other mail—by Mrs. Fowler.

* * *

Many girls, naturally, would have got themselves a job, left home and had a life of their own. During those early years there wasn’t a day when I didn’t consider it. But what could I do? I was unqualified, had no experience, had no inclination to return to college. As a shop assistant I
might
have earned £6 a week—hardly enough to make me independent. Besides, I
wasn’t
independent. I lacked both character and know-how and had always been unusually timid. Frightened of the unknown. Frightened of the jungle that grew outside our door.

But, blessedly, coupled with the fear there had at least been the hardenings of a discontent, which would later hone themselves into a sharp-edged desperation and help me hack my way through
.

Yes, a sharp-edged desperation and a sudden resurgence of the will to survive...
plus, of course, the letters.

For at that time, post-Winchester and post-Tony, I had believed I might always be frightened; and of course, basically, I suppose one nearly always is—there are degrees of trepidation. So I stayed with my mother. And she and I experienced a mainly joyless and destructive relationship of hopeless interdependence. God knows why she needed me: she was perfectly capable
then
of sweeping her own floors and making her own bed; of seeing to her own washing and shopping and cooking. (And I’m not suggesting that it
all
devolved on me; until the last year or so we used to share it more or less.) Perhaps she had some prescience of the incapacity to come—she had never been strong and oh how my father would have pampered her!—or perhaps it was simply a question of
anyone
’s company being better than none. (We often went to the cinema, occasionally to the theatre; I daresay it wasn’t all gloom—we generally made conversation.) But more dominant even than her need for a companion or a nurse or a servant, so I believe now, must have been her need for power. She had to have her daughter to manipulate.

And I—for all of my envying looks towards the outside, my reading of advertisements, my reading of romance, my secret play-acting (“I’ll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth. I tell what
ought
to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!”)—
I
, for all of my obstinate resistance to it, ostensibly obstinate resistance to it, must have needed to be manipulated.

Until it became too much and—if the desperation hadn’t finally kicked in—might well have led to madness.

Perhaps already had!

So it was a bleak kind of life we led together throughout my supposedly best years. A perpetual petty seeking for retaliation. Almost a game.

* * *

But in the end it was I who had the higher score. The verdict was a simple one of Misadventure.

Lucretia was the daughter of Lucretia.

* * *

The day before her death I discovered the letters. I don’t know why she’d kept them. Had she wanted to gloat at me; intending, eventually, to tell me something from beyond the grave?

The first letter was the one which really rocked me and hurt me and released the tears.

My dearest Tony,

Were you thinking I’d deserted you? I hope you didn’t ring and ring and stay awake all night. Or, rather, perhaps I hope you did, a little! I’ve hardly slept a wink for worrying about you and picturing all the uncertainty you must be going through. “You walked into my lonely world, what peace of mind your smile unfurled!”—recognize it? The rest of it is just as true: “My love is ever you, my love, now and forever you, my love...”

Talking of love, don’t laugh at me, my darling, but I’m so very glad I kept your handkerchief. I keep it under my pillow at night and bury my face in it a dozen times a day, thinking exuberantly that your nose has been exactly where mine is—well, I don’t know too much about the laws of chance and probability but I imagine that at some time it must have been, don’t you?—I sort of work my way from end to end. Also, of course, the other night this precious handkerchief absorbed your love (perhaps “absorbed” isn’t entirely the right word—poetic licence!) and I really felt so loath to wash it. (I did wash it though!)

I keep remembering the way that your hands just went wandering all over me—so possessive, so proprietorial; upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’
s...
whoops! I can’t wait until I feel those naughty scampering fingertips again! Or perhaps I shouldn’t say that—am I being too forward? But we don’t want ever to have to hide our true thoughts and feelings, do we? No matter how intimate? Except for one or two little white lies we’re only ever going to tell each other the truth.

And as an earnest of my good fait
h...
it doesn’t worry you, does it, that you’re just a degree younger than I am?—only a year and a half, nothing much, hardly worth the mention. (That little joystick of yours certainly didn’t seem to be too worried about it!) And, in any case, just through knowing you I shall probably grow younger by the day! You’ll have to watch out—they’ll say, “Who was that child I saw you with last night?”! I’m so happy by the way that that was the first film we happened to see together, aren’t you? I’m sure it must have been meant. Symbolic! Thank heavens it wasn’t Gone with the Wind!