Wish Her Safe at Home (7 page)

I went back to the chemist’s. I wore my red dress, though this was now a little too warm for the time of year. And only the previous afternoon I’d had my hair done. It was a moment I’d been continually anticipating and, squirrel-like, had been hoarding.

Of course, as with nearly all such moments, there was the particle of grit in the shoe, so difficult to dislodge that one almost welcomed a particle in the eye as well: in this case the haunting knowledge of a poor night’s sleep, coupled with a touch of indigestion.

But I couldn’t have put it off. Having decided this would be the day, postponement would have seemed quite wrong. A giving in to weakness.

I said, “Good morning. How are you?”

“Very well, thank you, madam. Yourself?”

At first it would have been practically a relief if the lumpy, shiny-nosed girl had been there instead but as soon as we spoke I began to feel better.

“I came in last March. You advised me I ought to settle here. Well, I’ve taken your advice!” I said this smilingly, to make sure he realized he had no need to reproach himself.

“Oh, yes, of course. I remember.” It was very clear he didn’t.

“I was wearing a light blue jumper with a darker blue skirt. My boat-race outfit as everybody called it! But since it wasn’t summer yet (and
ne’er cast a clout till May be out—
or is it may?) I naturally wore a coat over it. Camel hair. And quite a pretty little hat...
black, you know, and really rather smart.” I laughed.

He merely gave a gentle nod, boyish and abstracted; it came as no surprise that he should be the strong and silent type. That was the kind of man I often found attractive.

But I realized I should have to help him out.

“Though who am I to say my little hat was smart? A hostess doesn’t praise her own cooking! Besides, good sir, smartness—like beauty—is surely in the eye of the beholder?” I slightly worried that my laughter was beginning to sound foolish.

He said: “Well, well. So you’ve lately moved to Bristol?”

A man came in behind me.

“Why don’t you serve this gentleman? I’m not in any hurry.”

The man bought a large box of Kleenex and a packet of corn plasters. I took note of everything. All thoughts of indigestion and of tiredness had completely disappeared now that things were slipping along so merrily. The customer was youngish and his jeans looked clean but he was very down at heel. Literally I mean. It wouldn’t have mattered except for one thing. He obviously hadn’t heard this: that when there was a shine on your shoes there was a melody in your heart.

Poor man. If he’d recently purchased a tin of polish he mightn’t now be needing plasters. There was a definite connection. I pictured him out of work, keeping up a brave front—it was only in that single admittedly important detail he had failed—struggling in something like a garret to produce a masterpiece.

It was a lovely world. I executed a few unobtrusive dance-steps which scarcely moved me from the spot. My own shoes were immaculate: high-heeled red sandals with lovely thin straps, dreamily delicate. This was the first time I had worn them.

I had such pretty feet.

It didn’t matter that he hadn’t recognized me.

A woman came in. That didn’t matter either. She only wanted a packet of sanitary towels.

Corn plasters; sanitary towels. What a funny old world it was. I was so
glad
I could see the humorous side of it.

“Yes, I like it here very much,” I said as she put away her change—and before she should remember, dear heaven, that she needed toilet rolls as well! “I think Bristol must be one of the nicest towns on earth. When did you first come here yourself?”

“Oh, about thirty years ago.” He smiled. “I came here when I married.”

There was a stillness: the sort of stillness that exists, I believe, right in the eye of the storm. It was like being sealed in a glass cylinder at the bottom of the sea. It reminded me of when I’d caught sight of my name in the newspaper. But that had been different; now only a Houdini could possibly find his way out. With a start I became aware of myself—no expert, sadly, in escape—staring through those transparent walls at a showcard on the counter. Things happened after a Badedas bath. You might be whisked off to Camelot by a lovesick errant knight. There was the picture of a woman staring dreamily from a window, just a towel draped carelessly about her. Well, lucky her. Standing nearly naked in an illuminated bathroom with undrawn curtains she was undoubtedly a floozy; but, right then, I wouldn’t have minded changing places with her.

She
had to face no brutal truths.

No, not brutal perhaps. Unnecessary. Insensitive. It hadn’t eluded me he might be married.

But wait. “Ah, yes, I see. And is your wife still...
?” I corrected myself; despite the numbing quality of such a shock I hadn’t lost any of my old cunning. “And does your wife enjoy her life in Bristol?”

“Very much so.”

I bought a tablet of lavender soap; the same as the one I’d got here previously. I decided the Paracetamol would certainly be cheaper at Boots.

“Have you settled nearby?” he asked.

“Buckland Street.” It was the first name I could think of.

“Oh, just around the corner.” That, too, seemed an unnecessary scrap of information. I definitely wouldn’t be returning here. “Then maybe we’ll be seeing something of you. Nice.”

It was almost what he’d said before. This time I wasn’t fooled. They could make a dupe out of you once...
because, after all, you were only human, you didn’t set out to be cynical. But in their arrogance they supposed that they could go
on
doing it, time after time after time.

I thanked him with dignity and in a very natural manner whose slighter degree of coolness such a person could hardly be expected to appreciate. But that was good. I didn’t want him thinking his rebuff had been important.

Outside, a few doors along, I passed the marriage bureau through which he’d probably met her. I had never understood how anybody, no matter how lonely, could be sufficiently lost to all sense of pride as to resort to that.

But I wreaked, I thought, a rather subtle form of revenge. I went into another chemist’s shop (it wasn’t Boots) where the prices were most likely as inflated as his own. And I not only bought the Paracetamol. “Do you happen to stock Badedas?” I asked, with a merry ripple of laughter. “Because, if so, I’ll take the very largest size you have.”

Yet despite such inspired retaliation I knew I needed to cheer myself up. I recognized the signs. For the first time since coming to Bristol I felt quite low. Help! I went to the public library.

Where I quickly began to recover. The woman at the desk might have been no older than I was but unquestionably she looked it. Someone should have told her about touching up her hair or even about the invention of contact lenses. I wanted to say, “You know, my dear, men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”

I said: “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”

I tried to convey that it was really neither here nor there but that it might still be as well to think about it. I didn’t want to hurt her.

“Excuse me?”

I considered adding that they only caused you trouble for the first week. Contact lenses I mean.

I flashed her a winning smile. “Errol Flynn,” I said.

“Oh. Books on the cinema are over there.”

I saw that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. I automatically liked her and despised her and felt sorry for her and was glad.

“Would you know offhand if you’ve anything on Horatio Gavin?”

“Is he connected with the cinema?”

“Oh! You can’t be serious!”

She led me across to the biography section. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What was that name again?”

It was all very well—she was certainly not unpleasant but I began to feel resentful. Both on Mr. Gavin’s behalf and more obscurely on my own. Probably the fact that I now owned the house in which he’d lived entitled me to some measure of sensitivity.

There was nothing on the shelves. “I’ll check the cards,” she said.

This was more successful. “Ah, yes, I’ve found something! Oh? Was he a local man?”

I answered with both relish and severity. “He lived barely half a mile from where we stand now. Why?”

“This booklet was published by a local press. I’ll go to check if we’ve still got it.”

After five minutes she returned empty-handed—and apparently they couldn’t even acquire it for me.

“Well, never mind,” I said. “At least you can give me the name of the press.”

“I’m afraid the press closed down. Several years ago.”

“This is absurd!”

I felt prepared to make a scene. What had started out as almost an idle enquiry had now become a matter of some urgency.

She said: “I suppose you could try in the secondhand bookshops.” But her tone entirely lacked conviction.

“And I could advertise too.” I had never in my life thought to advertise for anything. The words just seemed to come to me.

“Yes, indeed.”

“I could even go to the council.” Goodness, I sounded smug. There was clearly no end to my ingenuity. She nodded a bit uncertainly and I was going to enlighten her but suddenly I didn’t want to. It was nice to have one’s little secrets; it made one feel superior. This would be something solely between Horatio and myself. Just the two of us. I smiled.

“Well, thank you for all your help. Thank you, at least, for having tried!”

On my way out I passed the shelves bearing the encyclopaedias. There was no mention of Horatio Gavin in
Britannica
but I found a few lines about him in
Chambers
. I felt a tremendous leap of the heart. It was like the feeling you might get on seeing a well-loved face in the crowd when you hadn’t believed that it could possibly happen.

Gavin, Horatio (1760–1793), English social reformer associated with William Wilberforce in his campaign to eradicate slavery; died fourteen years too soon to see the longed-for abolition of the British slave trade.

It was the shortest entry on the page, perhaps in the whole encyclopaedia, but what of that? I rushed back to the desk. “Look!” I cried. “Look!”

I pointed triumphantly, realizing a little too late that I’d pushed in front of two women who’d just arrived to have their novels stamped. They stepped back and I apologized and all was sweetly smiling politeness. But although I knew it was less out of interest than a sense of duty that the librarian read the entry; although she said nothing more than, “Well, fancy—yes I’m glad you’ve found something!”; although as I walked over to the photocopier I was sure the three women were leaning their heads together in genteelly malicious gossip...
none of this seemed to matter. I only felt that in some small way Horatio Gavin had been vindicated.

But frustratingly I soon discovered that I needed help with the photocopier.

For the third time I approached the desk.

“Oh, incidentally, I’ve found a bar of soap here. I don’t know if anyone will claim it.”

So he was just thirty-three when he died. The same age as Jesus. I was mildly disappointed—not I regret for his own sake but simply because I’d been picturing someone a little older than myself. Yet I quickly adjusted. In the library I had already felt protective. A fine man, his name linked with William Wilberforce. Of course from the beginning I had known that he was good. But the expression “the good die young” now occurred to me with more immediacy, more poignancy, than it had ever done before—even in connection with my father, or with Paul the picture framer.

I suddenly wished I were younger. Well, one wished that fairly often but this time I experienced a feeling of nausea. There were so seldom any second chances. I had now missed out forever.

“Just thirty-three,” I said. I spoke aloud. The nausea had briefly brought a fine perspiration to my forehead but now I continued with the preparation of my lunch. “What on earth could you have died of at the age of thirty-three?”

I paused again in the act of peeling a potato.

“Well, at that time I suppose you were one of the luckier ones to live even that long.”

And perhaps I was one of the luckier ones too. A survivor. Unexpectedly strong.

After lunch I went round the secondhand bookshops. And just before I stepped into the third, I positively knew that I was going to find it there. I scarcely felt dismayed when the owner shook his head. He was a wizened little fellow who good-humouredly invited me to browse. Yet I did so for barely a minute.

The man stared at my discovery as though unable to believe what his eyes were telling him. “I’d have sworn I hadn’t seen one of these in years!”

I felt so pleased. “It was right there in the middle. The shelf was even at eye level.”

“Was it now!”

“You know what must have happened? Whenever you had your back turned this wise and precious book made another little jump towards the centre!”

And I couldn’t have explained it but I almost believed in what I was saying. Only when he answered, “Yes, a lovely little game of leapfrog!” did I fully acknowledge its absurdity.

But how my heart had bounded—and for the second time that day. Even despite my certainty.

There was no price pencilled inside, no sticker on the thin fawn cover. The man shrugged and said, “Oh...
20p.” I was immensely moved. He had seen how much I wanted it. He could have asked for ten times that amount and I would willingly have paid. People were sometimes so very kind. I walked home in a glow, almost skipping, almost dancing, nearly as much on account of people’s kindness as because I had the book.

I didn’t start to read it straightaway. I made myself a pot of Lapsang Souchong and carried this upstairs as I did almost every afternoon. My sitting room looked warmly inviting with its many polished surfaces, its softly filtered light and quantities of fresh flowers.

I set the tray down on a small gateleg table with a red chenille cloth, stood at one of the windows for a moment enjoying the geraniums on my balcony, then glanced appraisingly in the antique mirror over the Adam fireplace—after lunch, before going out again, I had changed into a cooler dress. At last I poured the tea and carried it across to my chair. I didn’t want a biscuit. When I had taken a few appreciative sips I placed the cup and saucer on an occasional table by the chair.

I picked up my purchase of the afternoon.

The book had fewer than sixty pages and its print was large. Even then much of the prose was irrelevant, the style long-winded and pontificating. I read the whole thing in an hour.

Nevertheless it was an hour during which I lived intensely.

There plainly wasn’t a lot known about Horatio Gavin. The author had probably consulted whatever records he could find but most of the work was surely based on supposition. One paragraph I liked in particular: “He may have thought, that fine Spring morning, as he cantered past the cathedral, of all the faith and hope and backache that had gone into its creation, this immense project begun in one man’s lifetime, perhaps not finished even in his grandson’s. He may have thought of all the myriad small miseries of daily life, so erosively familiar to anyone in any age, like headache, constipation, haemorrhoids, or family tiffs. Young Gavin may have thought of all these stirring things as he cantered past—yet, on the other hand, it seems unlikely that he did, since his mind that morning must have been very full of what he was about to say to Wilberforce.”

A biography like that, even with nothing more to offer, must soon become a favourite on anybody’s shelf!

But this one—at least to someone like myself—had a great deal more to offer. It told the story, however fictional, of a lonely brooding idealistic young man, son of a merchant in Bath, who upon his father’s death had moved with his mother to live near a widowed aunt in Bristol. It told of his championship of the underprivileged, his entry into politics, his meeting with Wilberforce and of the instant rapport established between them. It told of his tender feelings for a Miss Anne Barnetby and of the great blow when on the eve of their nuptials she eloped with some far more worldly man: a shock from which, averred the Reverend Lionel Wallace, the young Horatio had never quite recovered. The author speculated that when he had died—as the result of a burst appendix—he had not found anyone to take her place.

“I say a burst appendix, where another man might say a broken heart. I claim, however, that that other man would be mistaken. Hasn’t he yet discovered the balm of self-immersion in a noble cause?”

When I had finally closed the book I sat for a long time. I meditated, I conjectured. I wove a brightly-coloured tapestry. I began to picture myself as that shallow fickle woman whom he had so much loved, that sad deluded woman who—incredibly—hadn’t appreciated such devotion.

But I decided it didn’t suit me to be sad or deluded—any more than I would ever opt, of course, to be either flighty or shallow. For the moment I saw myself, more comfortably, as her successor.

I wondered if despite Mr. Wallace’s denial he
could
have found a woman to replace her? The departure of Anne Barnetby was factual; what had come afterwards was nothing but surmise.

I had once seen a play called
Berkeley Square
: about a man becoming his own ancestor and falling timelessly in love before needing to return to the present. Did I believe in reincarnation? I wasn’t sure. But what a delightful thought and yes why not? Supposing it had been foreordained that twentieth-century Rachel should be returned to the house in which
eighteenth
-century Rachel had been able to mend a young philanthropist’s heart and lovingly restore his will to live...
?

I laughed. Though not by any means through sheer frivolity.

“No wonder I’ve always felt so very much at home!”