Wish Her Safe at Home (6 page)

I felt now as if I’d
never
had a real home—anyhow not since the age of eight.

The rented flat with my mother assuredly hadn’t been a home; it had been a prison. Or at least that’s what it had rapidly become, obscuring earlier memories of snugness and contentment and what had seemed unselfish love; obscuring the fun and irrepressible laughter when I was being tickled in my bed or sliding down the back of the bath and making floods upon the lino. Within a few weeks of my father’s death we had moved into Marylebone High Street; at that time not the wealthy street it is today. My mother had always been spoilt and somewhat frail—the shock of losing her husband, allied to the fact of our having been bombed out a mere four days after receiving that pitiless telegram; allied to the fact of her having suddenly recognized how relatively poor we had become...
these were blows which she unendingly bemoaned throughout the remainder of her life. Add to
them
a reluctance, even an inability, to cope with so many fundamental chores (no husband and—for the first time ever—no maid) and I suppose that in retrospect it’s not surprising she grew hard.

But to return to the point. Whether it was a prison or a home, the only time I could remember being consulted on some question of its decoration my opinion had been summarily dismissed; and after that I took no interest.

Admittedly, when she had died and I was sharing another rented flat, this time with Sylvia, I had done my best, we both had, to make the place comfortable; but I had never particularly regarded it as expressing my own personality—Sylvia’s had always appeared, up to that odd display of weeping and dependence, by far the more assertive.

Yet now it was different. My homemaking instincts had been aroused. There was something inspiriting about the atmosphere of that house in Bristol, the almost human voice which had bidden me welcome there. It had caused a predominantly cautious person nearly to forget that such a quality existed. I had not only rushed off to Olympia; I had spent fascinated hours in one department store after another, gazing at kitchen units
,
bathroom fittings, track-lighting—oh, at all manner of things! I may still have been a dull woman but before I quit London and while there were still a few people left to talk to, my dullness had at least gone down a different route. As one slightly overbearing friend had put it when I went to say goodbye—in fact more a friend of Sylvia’s than of mine—“Rachel, you used to be such a gentle, timid little thing. Repressed, even. One wonders what’s got into you.”

“Ah,” I said mysteriously, “the influence of a good house. Reaching out in spirit the moment I had stepped inside.”

I laughed and opened my eyes wide and held my hands aloft with outstretched trembling fingers.

“Woo-ooo...
! Woo-ooo!”

Even if I hadn’t been about to leave London I might still have needed to make new friends.

But first there were the more prosaic things: the damp, the rot, the applications to the council. Rewiring, heating, insulation.

New plumbing. New slates. The removal of the bunkers.

The filling and refilling of the skip. Sometimes it was
this
which seemed the most completely satisfying.

During these earlier stages I compared the whole process to all those years of study and apprenticeship that may finally lead to the work of art, to public recognition and the flowering of an assured, even a flamboyant, personality.

After that, the things that really showed, the fun things: the workmen with their long ladders, trestle tables, tins of paint, buckets of paste; and the woman who was making the curtains; and the man who was re-covering the chairs; and the firm that was fitting out the kitchen; and the shop that was putting down the carpets. Every day had its excitements. “All those years of study and apprenticeship” reduced basically to just over six weeks: one of the few advantages of the recession—the speed with which large jobs could now be undertaken, the promptitude to match impatience. Some of the last tasks were the repainting of the black railings above the area and those of the tiny balcony; the cleaning of the windows; the application of a final coat to the front door. Its deep gay yellow gloss beneath the shining and winking new knocker and letterbox was redolent of springtime and daffodils and seemed to symbolize all the brightness of my own new life.

That yellow was a fine choice, the right choice, even if at first I’d been uncertain. But—oh, naughty, naughty me!—I should have remembered: all things work together for good, to them that love God. Yes, I
was
rather naughty; sang these words to the tune of “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now”; only needing to change “love” to “appreciate” to make the lyric fit. I felt like Oscar Hammerstein.

And then too, halfway through June, there was the young student who came to do the garden. He was nicely tanned and muscular and worked without his shirt and though I kept being drawn towards the window of my bedroom I found him almost unbearable to watch; in particular the way he swung his pick when breaking up the concrete. And when I went to speak to him, to settle some fresh point or take him out a cooling drink, I was really afraid of what my hands might do. Fly up to feel the film of moisture on his chest? Fondle that coat of darkly golden hair? Dear Lord! The embarrassment! Whatever would one say? “Whoops! Please forgive me! I thought there was a fly.” It was like experiencing a compulsion to punch a baby’s stomach in the pram; or to use on someone standing next to you the carving knife you held.

He was only twenty-one.

But despite such unsettling irrelevancies I felt blest to have him there: somebody straight and vigorous and clean who might one day achieve eminence and who would certainly love widely and be widely loved, spin a web of mutual enrichment from the threads of many disparate existences: a beguiling web whose silken strands must soon make way for even me. Indeed, the process had by now begun. He was in the throes of creating my garden. The thread was indissoluble.

Perhaps all this was slightly fanciful but is there anything much wrong with that? The young man worked from a design of his own, so as to obtain, he said, the prettiest town garden imaginable; and I suggested a handful of refinements. What I wanted, I declared, was first and foremost my seclusion: my own small kingdom, where marvellous and curative things could happen: robins sing arias, neuroses go to seed, fear be altogether uprooted.

Then I wanted an air of mystery—and romance: you shouldn’t be able to see from one end to the other: it would be nice to have arches and
trompe-l’oeil
s
and a path that enticed you with its possibilities. It would be nice to have a fountain, because I loved water, and a bird-table and some fruit trees and an arbour with a wrought-iron bench. It would be nice to have daisies in the grass—daisies, buttercups, dandelions—and lots of lovely things in flowerbeds, most cunningly variegated.

I’d also like a hint of wilderness.

In short—I asked him for the perfect garden: in thirty by a hundred.

“I’m afraid, Roger, it may be a bit of a tall order. Do you happen to work magic?” Our plotting had almost an air of conspiracy: the two of us pitting our wits against nature. It was as though for a fleeting period he belonged only to myself.

He claimed neither potions nor spells, however. “But even without them, Miss Waring, wouldn’t you say a tall order is sometimes the most interesting there is?”

“Do you think, then, we can pull it off?” There was even pleasure in the choice of pronoun.

“I’ve always wanted to find something just like this—and then to start from scratch—just like this—and...
”

I understood at once. “Make it your own?” I asked.

“Well, yes...
in a manner of speaking.”

“The two of us are very similar, I think. We both want the world to be a better place for our having been here, don’t we?”

The world of Rachel Waring was certainly a better place for his having been there. He worked in it for ten days.

Naturally my garden wasn’t at once what we had visualized. But it would grow. It would grow towards perfection. And even in the meantime it made a worthy extension to the house itself, which if the garden was my kingdom should logically have been my palace.

Yet few palaces could ever have appeared so cosy—unless they came out of a picture book or animated cartoon. (In real life, for instance, could you imagine thorns and trees and brambles and creeper growing up fast and impenetrable around
Buckingham
Palace?) This one, like most of Disney’s, even if not quaintly turreted and gothic, was charming, intimate and friendly. In whichever part of it I found myself I never felt troubled or alone. I felt as if I had only to call out—perhaps I’d be downstairs in the basement—and someone would hear me in the sitting room two floors above and send me back a greeting. Elsewhere, of course, I had often felt anxious and unhappy and completely on my own.

This blessed serenity; this conviction of rightness and responsiveness...
It was a nice feeling to have about one’s home.

And what had that spiteful and unhappy fairy brought to my own christening? Ah. She dealt in negatives and yet her gift was comprehensive: an inability to make the most out of my life.

But
The Sleeping Beauty
had never been one of my favourite stories and I don’t know why I’d even thought of it; Prince Charming’s palace would probably have been just as pleasing. I much preferred
Cinderella
. And shortly before the war I’d seen a rerun of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
. I’d liked that, too, and told the little boy next door that someday my own prince would come; at five years old I had genuinely believed it. But Bobby was unkind. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” He laughed and pointed a grubby and derisive finger. “Not you, Rachel Waring, not you! Besides, you haven’t got a wicked stepmother,” he added a little more gently, as though this might actually be a matter for condolence.

Some three years later, after my father had died and all the tickling had stopped, Bobby’s words came back to me. Snow White’s father had also been dead or at any rate he hadn’t seemed to be around. And in the interim, I thought, I’d really grown much prettier. My grief had made me so. Therefore I began hopefully to chant, mainly at bedtime, the mirror incantation. Of course, this hadn’t actually been Snow White’s role—but was anyone about to nitpick?

In some ways it was almost as well that the tickling had stopped. Handsome princes didn’t usually come to maidens who were cosseted.

Not usually. But when I was much older I hesitantly went to a party at which—although I remember it better for another and not wholly unconnected reason—a group of us was choosing the person, living or dead, whom we should most like to have been. “Grace Kelly,” I answered shyly, when eventually it came round to my turn.

I then had to say why.

“Well...
” It appeared so obvious. She came from a cultured, wealthy family. She was lovely to look at. She’d had a tremendous success in Hollywood; won an Oscar; played opposite many of the best-known and most attractive actors (some of whom, it was thought, had carried on affairs with her) and now, on top of all of that, there were even rumours she might marry a prince.

Champagne and Ruritania combined. Applause; celebration. A honeysuckle path, from cot to marriage bed.

“It just isn’t fair,” I said.

They waited. Others had made their answer several times as long. I was the one with whom the game was finishing. I fought against providing anticlimax.

“You see, I’d really like to have been an actress. To play interesting roles, have interesting rehearsals, work with warmhearted and truly committed people. As often as possible, I mean, to be part of a close and caring company.”

I was talking far too quickly and I knew I’d gone quite red.

“Though I’m not sure if she’s ever actually appeared on stage.”

There was still a silence but I simply couldn’t think of anything to add.

“That’s all.”

“Well, if you’re being serious about wanting to be an actress,” someone asked, “what’s stopping you? After all you’re only twenty. You’ve still got time.” She gave a sidelong glance at those around us.

“But I don’t know any of the right people; I haven’t got connections.” I was aware they thought this very feeble.

“Connections? The ability’s no problem?”

“I don’t know.”

“We must find out,” they said. “An audition!”

“What?”

“Recite something. Anything. ‘To be or not to be: that is the question...
’”

“Don’t be silly.” I was beginning to panic.

“A poem, then.”

“No. I couldn’t.”

“Oh, don’t be shy, Rachel. We think you’re probably quite good.”

I could see they were never going to leave it. Instead they were growing more persistent. I mumbled desperately for mercy.

“Silence, silence, everybody! Rachel’s about to recite a poem.”

“No...
No!”

I had a choice between rushing from the room, bursting into tears or actually doing what they wanted. I whispered, before the whole party should get to hear of it, “Will just a few lines be enough?”

“Yes, yes,” they cried, greedy for at least an ounce of flesh if they couldn’t obtain their full pound.

So I said my few lines. I thought that I said them without expression or audibility and definitely too fast. It was the first stanza of
The Lady of Shalott
. From as young as nine I had experienced a fellow feeling for that lady embowered on her silent isle.

And, somehow, this must now have shone through. Apparently I had misjudged my own performance.

“Oh, that was good. Wasn’t that good, everyone?”

There was much earnest clapping; they really did seem to have enjoyed it. “You aren’t just poking fun at me?” They swore they weren’t. Others—presumably because they had heard all the applause—came in from neighbouring rooms.

“More!” they said. “More!”

“What? Honestly?” Still nervous but not like at the start.

“Yes, Rachel. Please.”

“You’re
sure
you aren’t teasing?”

“Of course we aren’t. That would be cruel.”

I knew I could improve on what I’d done.

Confidence came quickly; the more I recited the better I grew.

“Or when the moon was overhead,

Came two young lovers lately wed;

‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said

The Lady of Shalott.”

Unfortunately, however, my memory of the poem wasn’t perfect.

“Never mind. Just carry on. You’re doing great.”

“Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack’d from side to side;

‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried

The Lady of Shalott.”

Now I really was projecting and making good use of my hands as well. I had known I had it in me to be an actress.

Yet the real test lay in the final stanza—where, recumbent in a stolen boat, she drifts downriver in the moonlight, borne towards the resplendent, many-towered court of King Arthur. In her mirror she had sometimes seen the knights come riding two-by-two. (“She hath no loyal knight and true, the Lady of Shalott.”) I wanted if possible to bring the tears into people’s eyes. I finished on a quiet and wholly reverent note.

“But Lancelot mused a little space;

He said, ‘She has a lovely face;

God in his mercy lend her grace,

The Lady of Shalott.’”

Even at school I had invariably found this a poignant end. Now my own eyes were so swimmy I couldn’t quite tell how my audience was affected. But I certainly caught sight of the odd handkerchief, heard the odd blowing of a nose.

And one triumph led on to another. They wanted other things; just wouldn’t let me go. Finally I sang to them. They seemed beside themselves with pleasure. At last I put my hands up to my chest—returned once more to my prep-school days—revived the unexpected hit of my childhood.

“Although when shadows fall

I think if only...

Somebody splendid really needed me,

Someone affectionate and dear,

Cares would be ended if I knew that he

Wanted to have me near...”

It was sheer intoxication; a wonderful prelude to what was to happen later that same evening.