Wish Her Safe at Home (4 page)
“On one occasion an elderly cousin of my father’s offered me something and got the customary response. So he simply gave a shrug and replaced the pound note in his wallet. ‘Very well, in that case, if you really don’t want it...
’ My disappointment must have showed. He pulled the wallet out again. ‘It isn’t that I don’t want it,’ I mumbled, with a burning face, ‘it’s just that...
’ ‘Just that what?’ he asked.
“‘I was trying to be polite.’
“‘Rachel, don’t try to be polite. Just try to be natural. Be a child.’
“And another time (the two things are connected) my mother was in hospital one Easter and I was staying with the elderly couple who lived upstairs. Well, on the Sunday morning there wasn’t any egg beside my plate—of course, I hadn’t been expecting one—but what there was, was a packet of Ross’s Edinburgh Rock. When I took my seat I saw it and felt jubilant; you didn’t get so many sweets in those days. Yet I didn’t say anything because, again, I had been told never to assume that something was yours until you’d actually been given it. But after a while Mrs. Michaels, who was a funny little woman, spindly-legged, slightly hunchbacked, jumped up from the table with a small cry of distress and exclaimed to her husband as she went, ‘It was meant as a surprise. So why isn’t she pleased?’
“Well, I sat there in shocked silence for a minute, gazing dully at the gift, and then I said quietly, ‘But I am. Very.’ Yet by then Mr. Michaels had gone after his wife and there was nobody left to hear.
“There was nobody either—but this I was glad of—to see the silent tears which trickled down my cheeks.
“And I didn’t know what to do with the rock. I carried all the dirty dishes to the sink and washed them and put away the cereal packet and the butter dish and the marmalade but in the end I just left that packet on the table. I couldn’t think what to say.”
I shrugged.
“Well, it simply disappeared and wasn’t spoken of again. I stayed with the Michaels for a further three days. It seemed a terribly long visit.”
“How deeply unfortunate!” said the woman.
“So, yes, my mother was a very silly person. Snobbish and small-minded and manipulative—and altogether altered from the time my father was alive. With him around, who knows, she might have gone on being the mother of my earliest recollections. With him around I can’t begin to tell you how different my own life would have been!”
“No, I feel sure of it.”
But I raised my hand with a commendably stoical gesture. “Oh, well.
C’est la vie
!”
A duck—rude thing—displayed its bottom. Perhaps the lady from the teashop would have gained in interest if she had done the same. “Oh, there’s your bus!” I cried. “Be careful with your basket!” I watched her running to the park gates and dropping her library book, the
Woman’s Weekly
and a ball of lime-green wool. Her hat slipped down over her eyes. It suited her. It made her look more stylish.
Sylvia was angry (
extra
angry) when I phoned to say I’d be spending the night in Bristol. “When the bloody hell did you decide that?”
“Oh...
about an hour ago.”
So it was as well I’d had the forethought
not
to bring my toothbrush. My hand had hovered over it that morning (“Just in case,” I’d told myself, for it had then been nothing but the barest possibility) yet native cunning had prevailed. I had slipped a nightdress into my handbag, and a fresh pair of stockings and knickers, and left it at that.
In the taxi though—since I was now a teenager again and on my way to Paris—the barest possibility had progressed from rank outsider to odds-on favourite. At Paddington I had asked for a weekend return.
And, roughly eight-and-a-half hours later, I was hoping that Sylvia would soon be pacified by the cheerfulness of my manner. “Is it still drizzling up in town? Here, right from the word go, it’s been lovely! Quite lovely! Right from the moment I got off the train!”
“Oh, my day is now complete,” she said. “Thank you so much.” She hung up.
Well, I needn’t feel guilty, I told myself. She was only being Sylvia. I got my toothbrush and my tube of toothpaste at a local chemist’s. “Not too bad a winter so far,” said the grey-haired man behind the counter. We were now in the last days of March.
“Oh, what a pessimist!” I exclaimed. “The winter’s over.”
He laughed. “Yes, you’re right.”
I questioned him about the town. “As a matter of fact I shall shortly be coming to live here.”
“You won’t regret it. It’s a nice place.”
I was glad to be discussing my plans. For one thing, it made them more official. Having just spoken to Sylvia—but naturally not having apprised her yet of my decision—I knew that back in London I might falter. I needed to have people to whom I had committed myself.
“Then we’ll be seeing you perhaps?” remarked the chemist.
“Certainly.”
“Hope so, anyway.”
As I walked along the street in the pale evening sunshine I pondered those last three words.
Hope so, anyway
. It seemed a strange thing to have said, a little unnecessary even, unless he’d truly meant it.
I smiled. There was no doubt about it. This was a most delightful town.
Then I quickened my pace and felt blissfully aware that spring
had
come. A charming red frock caught my eye in the window of a dress shop. I stood gazing at it for well over a minute, conscious both of my own reflection and that of the world behind me.
Disappointingly, the shop was closed.
Never mind. For dinner I chose some of the most expensive things on the menu. Now do be careful—I tried to sound a warning—yet it was a four-star hotel and I had a real feeling of being on holiday. Afterwards I again wandered round the city centre, cautious to keep only to its main thoroughfares, and came across a small arts cinema where they were showing
A Streetcar Named Desire
, one of my favourite pictures. All my life I had searched for pointers. Today I felt that everything was telling me how right I’d been: simply to trust my instincts.
As usual (this was my third time of seeing it) I loved that bit where Blanche sings in her bath,
Oh, it’s only a paper moon,
Floating over a paper sea,
But it wouldn’t be make-believe,
If you believed in me...
and I was very much moved once more by her pathetically brave declaration: “I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers.” Many years ago I had been told
I
looked like Vivien Leigh. This was the only meaningful compliment anyone had ever paid me and I had tried to savour it sparingly. Over the years, though, it had gradually turned sour. But that night in Bristol I again derived from it a gentle satisfaction.
The following morning I went and bought the dress.
It fitted perfectly. A further confirmation.
“I saw this frock last night. Half of me was petrified it wouldn’t be here this morning. The other half knew perfectly well it would—that it would wait for me, if necessary, for ever.”
The assistant was fortyish and svelte. “Yes, madam, it’s very lovely, isn’t it?”
“I don’t imagine anyone could call it dull?” I turned admiringly before the mirror.
“Good gracious, no!”
I told her I couldn’t bear to change back into my skirt and jumper, happy though I’d always been with them, and she very sweetly stowed these into one of her smart carrier bags and added my receipt and the card of the establishment—“What,” I said, “no tissue?”—we had quite a little laugh. Fortunately my elegant black shoes were exactly right for the dress. As were my hat and coat and handbag. I felt like a model.
It was another mild morning and even with my coat buttons undone I didn’t feel at all cold. I went back to the chemist’s to buy a bar of soap but my friend of the previous evening wasn’t there: merely a podgy adolescent who had mild acne and a shiny nose and wore a too-tight overall.
A slightly jarring note. But there was bound to be a reason for it. I didn’t let it throw me.
In the train I sat opposite a man who had a biography of William Wallace lying unopened on the table. I felt so sorry for poor William Wallace; but for some while I attempted not to think of him, tried solely to think about my own book. I couldn’t. At last (though not wanting to reveal either my straining curiosity—the title had been upside-down and difficult—or to give away a possibly surprise ending) I said to the gentleman—who was old enough to make me feel I wasn’t being in the least bit forward—“Do you mind if I talk to you for a moment? I’ve just read the most frightful description of a hanging, drawing and quartering and I’m afraid I can’t stop reliving it.”
I had to repeat my request but he didn’t appear at all put out. He’d only been looking through the window.
“Really,” I said, “we have no right—ever—any of us—to complain or get depressed, do we? Not about a thing.”
“What’s that? I’m sorry. I didn’t quite catch the last part?” He had leant forward.
I again repeated what I’d said. “Not about bills or the things that people say to us or even illness. Not even cancer when you come to think of it.”
“That’s probably true, my dear, but—”
“Just
imagine
: waking up in the morning, possibly from some rather pleasant dream, and suddenly remembering...
”
“I’m sorry?” He had now cupped his hand to his ear and I raised my voice yet further.
“Not that I honestly suppose you’d have managed to get much sleep.”
“I wasn’t dozing,” he said gently. “At least, I don’t believe I was.”
Poor man. It happened to the majority of us; might even happen one day to myself. All the more reason then to be patient and not yield to any base temptation to exclude. I raised my voice still more.
“I mean, imagine. Having your...
thing cut off! Stuffed inside your mouth! And then they start the disembowelling...
”
He stared at me, wordlessly, and I knew that I’d made contact: his eyes were showing something of the horror.
“Your stomach cut open, your entrails pulled out...
”
I suddenly realized just how loudly I was speaking and registered the relative, indeed unnatural, quietness of the whole carriage. I glanced about me. Along the full length of the compartment, heads were craning round, people were looking over the tops of their seats. I heard giggles.
I coloured and smiled apologetically at the old man. I picked up
Pride and Prejudice
again. I felt such an idiot.
“Sunday, bloody Sunday!” declared Sylvia. “Bloody awful fucking Sunday!”
I hated it when she talked like that.
“But why? Why are you taking it this way? You’ll very easily find someone else to share the flat with.”
“I must say it’s so lovely to be missed!”
“Naturally I’ll miss you.”
“Oh, pull the other one! I don’t suppose you’ve ever missed anybody in your entire life—not if you want to hear the truth!”
We were meant to be digesting our lunch. I had thought that while we were sitting over coffee and struggling with the crossword it might be a relaxed and opportune moment in which to reveal my intentions.
But my Sunday lunch—as I found so often happened with any meal eaten at home—was turning to a lump.
“That isn’t true,” I said, both angry and ashamed. I tried to think of all the people I had ever missed but unsurprisingly the atmosphere wasn’t conducive to compiling lists. For the time being I could think of only three people: my father and Tony Simpson and Paul (whose second name I’d never known), the young picture framer with the rabbit. “And of course I’ll miss you, Sylvia. But you speak as though—oh, how can I put it?—as though we were
married
,” I said.
And for the first time I suddenly wondered whether just possibly...
But, no, the thought was too incredible; too remote from anything in my own experience. Lots of women had slightly mannish ways, didn’t they? Even the fact of my having formulated the question was startling and ridiculous. I rapidly dismissed it.
“And if it were a goddamned marriage,” she was saying, “I know just what kind of marriage it would be! The kind that breaks down the moment the bloody man becomes successful. Which is precisely, if you want to know, what happened to my own mother.”
And then—most awfully—she began to cry.
I was amazed. I was the one who cried, did so quite often, cried with the quiet grey desperation of it all. Not Sylvia. Sylvia didn’t cry. I felt not merely amazed, I felt inadequate. Here she sat and blubbered unrestrainedly and all for what? Surely it had to be about more than just our current situation? I had so very little idea; and that seemed terrible.
During those ten or fifteen minutes I came my closest to giving in. Yet she wasn’t my responsibility—no one was—and I found an inner core of strength, of self-preservation. This both surprised and saved me.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised me.
Later that afternoon we had some further conversation. “You know you’ll never get another job?”
“Well, there’s always the dole,” I answered brightly. “And I
have
got a bit of money set aside. For ages now I’ve been quite careful.”
“Not to mention mean.”
There was a silence. I thought of how just the previous morning I’d overtipped the chambermaid and of how, on the evening before
that
, I’d even more absurdly overtipped the waiter. He had actually been rather cute.
Cute
. A new word to enter my vocabulary. A Bristol word. Even in these present circumstances I could feel strangely pleased with it.
“Do you really think I’m mean?”
“No. You can’t be. That house will cost a fortune.”
It wasn’t quite an answer. I now remembered the leather writing-case I had given her at Christmas, the cardigan on her last birthday. But I didn’t want to risk more tears. I only said—perhaps a shade coolly—“Well, anyway, whatever I do spend on it will doubtless be an investment.”
“Something to bequeath to your children?”
I didn’t answer. There really seemed no point.
“Do you truly intend, then, to start sponging off the state?”
Again I wouldn’t let myself be drawn.
“Oh, bloody hell!” she exclaimed, after a pause. “I always said that you were feeble.”
“Yes, you did,” I agreed, more equably.
“Without your job what have you left? What shred of dignity?”
Without Mr. Danby, you mean, and the clocking-in each morning and the clocking-out each evening (they sort of almost trusted you at lunchtime) and the boring day-to-day routine and the banal repetitive conversations and the yawns and the silly jokes and the waiting about in wet weather for a bus that, even supposing it stopped, you knew you’d have to fight to get on? Not to speak of that Monday-morning feeling which inevitably marred much of Sunday afternoon? (With the exception—fairly unsurprisingly—of this one; it was hardly the shadow of tomorrow that was beclouding things at present.) And the alarm clock set for 6:30 on five days out of seven? Yes, indeed. Without all that, what
had
you left?
“I’ve got a house that maybe God always meant me to have.”
Sylvia stood up, heavily. “Well, if you’re going to get all pompous about it I think it must be time I went to make the supper.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound pompous.”
“You know, I can just see you one of these days turning into a religious maniac,” she told me at the door.
“I don’t know why.”
“Oh, a lot of old maids get taken that way. Nothing better to do with all that time on their hands.” Her cigarette momentarily got the better of her. “Or perhaps you’ll go in for looking after cats.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I don’t especially like cats—or what I mean is, I don’t get soppy over them. And
must
you smoke if you’re about to go and do the food?” I had been fully intending to see to it myself; I had forgotten it was her turn.
“The house will stink of pee,” she said. “You’ll become an old eccentric like your aunt.” She chortled, then spluttered. “You too can have your own private scrap heap. Something to sit on at the close of day.”
Poor pitiful Sylvia. She was simply trying to wound. Bizarrely I again found it rather moving, this late realization of her sad unspoken dependence upon me; even if I most definitely didn’t want it.
And yet there
was
one way in which she had managed to hurt me. I knew I wasn’t mean—at least I hoped I wasn’t—but I did have to admit that in the whole of my adult life there was only one person whom I’d ever truly missed. And even that had been over twenty-five years earlier.
That Sunday night I lay awake for ages. It seemed an unfair truth to have to confront during those bleak and exaggerative small hours: that when it really came down to it there was no one I honestly cared about. That nothing which happened to others could genuinely affect me.
In real life I had never seen an instance of unspeakable agony. Newspapers, even the news on TV, created simply a transient impression. Apart from the times when I cried for myself it was only novels and films that could actually move me to tears. I was a freak, without compassion.
So I said a prayer: a prayer for someone whom I could care about, care about abidingly; someone for whom I would give up anything—life, looks, liberty, possessions—and on whose account, if necessary, I would wage war just as passionately as I would ever wage it on my own.
More
passionately. It was a prayer which harried me all night.
But towards the morning I regained some sort of peace. Some sort of dull perspective. I could even laugh.
“I’m afraid, God, I was probably a bit demanding! Oh dear! Perhaps you’re going to see me now as something of a handful?”
Or wasn’t that respectful? I was glad at any rate to have kept my sense of humour—glad at any rate that even in London, and after the kind of night which I had just experienced, I could retain a vestige of my gaiety.
