Tea At Gunter's Read online

  Tea At Gunter’s

  Pamela Haines

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  ‘There he is!’ my mother cries, standing in the doorway, ‘there’s Uncle Gervase!’ Joyfully, triumphantly almost: ‘Impossible to arrive before Gervase!’

  It’s 1937: Coronation Year: and perhaps, who knows, perhaps while we are here, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose may come in? My mother has already asked:

  ‘Would you, Lucy, be able to behave, know how to behave, if their grandmother were to bring them?’

  But now she can think only of reaching as swiftly as possible the corner table where Uncle Gervase waits for us. I try to keep up with her but, clumsy-winged (she would fly if she could), she pushes ahead of me: striding, she is pulling out of shape the skirt of her beige suit: her fawn velours hat, pushed up by her thick hair, is slightly askew. She trembles with a sort of joyous excitement.

  Gervase has already seen her: leaping up to greet us, shaking, smiling, his twitching limbs seeming to knock into, over, everything:

  ‘Winifred! Look – this is awfully good of you, you know –’

  There is a flurry. He has backed into a waitress. No, but really – this is the most frightful… ‘Look, I’ll –’ He rushes round to pull out chairs for us: ‘Winifred. Lucy.’

  But several people have turned round. Staring hard, while pretending not to.

  ‘How dare they,’ my mother will say afterwards. ‘How dare they!’ Later, she will add, ‘Of course one gets a very vulgar sort of person everywhere nowadays. Even, alas, in Gunter’s.’

  She’s sitting down now, hitching up the skirt of her sun; her pouchy face comes to life as the conversation begins: aged six (seven, seventeen) I am scarcely noticed as they talk jerkily, in stops and starts, about Patmore where she and Uncle Gervase grew up together in the golden days.

  For this, we have come all the way from Bratherton in Yorkshire – there and back in the day. It’s my first visit to Gunter’s (although my mother comes every year). I’m only here because Uncle Gervase has asked to see me: I haven’t wanted to come. And already, after only a few moments, I’m forgotten – like the food. How can any sandwiches, cakes, éclairs, meringues even, hope to compete with this absorbed journey into the past?

  ‘What did they talk about, then?’ my father will ask me afterwards. Then angrily: ‘I know – don’t tell me. Patmore. Bloody Patmore …’

  But Patmore is a convent now; has been since 1925. Gervase, its former owner, lives in a cottage in the grounds. Only in his forties, he looks sixty; loud-voiced, as jerky and uncoordinated as a schoolboy when he moves, victim of violent headaches, disconcerting memory lapses, he cannot concentrate on any one subject for long. (My mother must hold him to this one, Patmore, Patmore, Patmore.)

  Once upon a time though, he was beautiful. Until sometime in 1917, when the change began which was to turn him gradually into the eccentric we are taking tea with today.

  ‘Don’t pity the dead, Lucy,’ my mother says. ‘Pity those who didn’t die. Who were never the same again …’

  Now, in his cottage, Uncle Gervase reads a lot, writes a little, possibly, and helps in the garden certainly; the convent girls, although they laugh at him, are friendly. And he is an absolute brick when help is needed with a Christmas play, a bazaar, a garden fête.

  Outside Gunter’s, it’s hot, sultry, scorching even. August. But my mother always comes up at this time, for sentimental reasons. She’d be loth to change to a more fashionable date. (Surely we cannot be expecting the Princesses?)

  Now, she’s making some rude remark about my father. Some moan of despair. ‘Peter is so this, so that…’ The tea party is nearly over. I have behaved badly, and will be told off on the journey home.

  Before we leave though, Uncle Gervase will tell us a joke. Each year he brings us one, or even two: his mind, tenacious of little else, is tenacious of these. He gets them from the girls at the convent; (it’s not always clear which has pleased him most: that they’ve told him, or that he’s been able to remember).

  Oh, those jokes.

  ‘There was this chap on an – on an omnibus (it’s rather a good one this – I got it yesterday) and he – he won’t pay his fare. The conductor, don’t you know, is in an awful bate, “Come on,” he says, “who do you think you are? Pay up – like everyone else.” But this makes the chap tremendously indignant. “Look here,” he says, “you can’t speak like that to me – I’d like you to know, my man, that I was brought up at Eton.” “Oh no,” says the conductor, jolly quick: “Oh no you wasn’t. You was eaten – and brought up …”’

  *

  Even in dreams (particularly in dreams), I never go back now.

  Gunter’s is gone anyway. I was in London yesterday and, stupidly, looked for it. Standing where it should have been: wondering if I’d mistaken the number; asking a man just turned out of Chesterfield Street:

  ‘Gunter’s? It’s gone. Been gone years now –’

  I’d purposed only the swiftest of controlled glances; yet now I’m desperate with loss: victim of that irrational demand that nothing ever, anywhere, shall change in our absence.

  The man is saying, comfortingly:

  ‘A nice little teashop, Gunter’s – people still ask after it …’

  As I am asking?

  ‘Everyone,’ my mother is saying, ‘but everyone has heard of Gunter’s. Anyone who is anyone – and who has memories. Impossible not to have heard of it, Lucy!’

  But who is this?

  ‘… Leeds to London and back, just for a cup of tea. It’d be sad – if it weren’t so daft.

  ‘I’d forgot. It’s the company. Tea and memories – and Gervase. Worth every bloody mile to you, Winifred, that is …’

  Ghosts at Gunter’s, help me.

  *

  If, that first time, I hadn’t much wanted to go, my mother had wanted even less to take me. Nothing about me pleased her in those days; and except that Gervase had asked to see me (and how could she refuse such a request?) she would gladly have left me at home.

  ‘I think you’re to be looked over. Shown off. Compared. God knows –’ said my father, putting me to bed that night; his manner with me unusually short.

  But, after a bit, I’d realized that it meant a visit to London, and grew over-excited. This she liked least of all: for distracted by her half-hearted promise to try and visit the Tower, I scarcely listened to what she said.

  (‘Please listen, Lucy. What shall I do with you, why ever did I say that I’d take you?’)

  But it was her warnings that in the end aroused my curiosity. ‘Lucy. However Uncle Gervase behaves, whatever he does – you are on no account to make any remarks. Whatsoever. And above all – do not stare …’

  I spoke to my father about it, when he took me out for my Saturday treat – ice and pop in a café near the market place in Bratherton. But he’d seemed cagey. ‘Ask her,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t know, I’ve not met him.’

  A few facts had sunk in: I knew that although he was called Uncle he wasn’t her brother; she’d had brothers, twins, who’d died (‘I did tell you, Lucy.’): Gervase was her ste
pbrother.

  ‘He and I share no blood you see.’

  On the journey, she repeated the warnings. Sitting opposite me, her carefully pressed suit already beginning to crease, her velours hat pulled down, her usually shiny face thickly powdered. ‘Above all, don’t stare, Lucy.’ She looked unfamiliar, and as the train approached King’s Cross, agitated too. (‘I wonder, really, why I brought you?’) Hunched up in her corner seat, she drummed her fingers nervously: ‘Your voice is like the Leeds slums,’ she told me. ‘And with your front teeth missing …’

  She had made me curious though. The reality was pure disappointment. I don’t know what I’d expected (performing dog, red-nosed clown, falsetto-voiced midget?) but here was just a very tall, elderly man, knobbly, with sparse white hair and a high colour; skin drawn tight over his cheekbones, his chin jutting out as he spoke:

  ‘But – it’s you, Winifred!’ he exclaimed, staring at me very hard. ‘Really – awfully like, don’t you think?’

  The flurry of our entry was over and we were all sat down: remembering not to stare back, I smiled nervously – mouth closed to hide my missing teeth.

  My mother said quickly: ‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea what I looked like at that age, Gervase. I –’

  As if making a discovery, ‘It was Easter,’ he interrupted in a very loud voice, ‘You came to Patmore at Easter, Winifred. And – and just a week after, you lost both your front teeth. I remember exchanging them for two lead sepoys – from my army, you know. You were most fearfully keen to have them, I remember. They stood by your table in the night nursery –’

  ‘Yes,’ said my mother, colouring. Her face had gone very soft. ‘Yes.’ Then in a crisper voice:

  ‘She’s Peter’s build of course, Gervase. On the small side. His features, too. And the hair – his father obviously. Fortunately, it’s a shade of red which just misses vulgarity.’

  They paid me no more attention after that. They were talking about Patmore: my mother, looking at once happy and yet unhappy; Uncle Gervase, gesticulating, excitedly diving for more memories.

  Unnoticed, I ate all the sandwiches then several iced sponge fingers. Finally, bored, I announced very loudly that I’d far rather have gone to see where the Princes were murdered.

  There was no response; so, desperate, I fired off a stream of questions – some of them landing in the pauses of their absorbed conversation. ‘Why’s his hair so white? Has he got some children at home? Why can’t you share your blood with him? Why’s he pulling at his tie like that? What happened to him in the Great War?’

  Suddenly taking notice, my mother said angrily: ‘The child is over-excited, Gervase.’ She made some remark about my father. ‘Peter stimulates her too much,’ I heard her say. ‘Entertains her with a deal of quite unsuitable information.’

  But Uncle Gervase, addressing me directly, said it didn’t matter at all: he repeated this several times, his smile curiously sweet, but like the rest of him, very jerky. As he spoke his wrists shot forward from his shirt cuffs, as if propelled.

  ‘All those remarks,’ said my mother wearily, in the train going home: rubbing her forehead with her knuckles as she always did when tired. ‘And when I had particularly asked –’

  ‘He took seven lumps of sugar,’ I told her; remembering with pride that I’d been better at handling the tongs.

  She sighed heavily. ‘Nervous people have this craving for sugar, Lucy. He’s neurasthenic, you know. He had a most terrifying time in the Great War. Suffered horribly –’

  Like my father, then? But she interrupted me at once:

  ‘Oh that! That was just physical. Gervase’s is in the mind – he will never recover, Lucy.’

  She didn’t speak much after that, except to say, just as we were nearing home:

  ‘Gunter’s has gone off, I think – a little. In its day, I’m not sure I didn’t prefer Rumpelmeyers …’

  The next year Uncle Gervase provided, if not excitement, at least some of the embarrassment my mother had promised.

  I was wearing a new dress. Royal blue velvet, with a cream lace collar and matching velvet buttons, it had been bought for the occasion, and had cost I suspect more than she could spare. It was very uncomfortable in the heat. She was pleased when Gervase praised it, but then as I grew restless, pulling, wiggling the top button which had grown loose, she told me irritably not to fidget. A moment later the button dropped off onto my plate – catching as it fell the edge of a chocolate eclair.

  Uncle Gervase, leaning forward, picked it up at once. Then, to my horror, he stood up and holding it in the air began to recite, to sing almost:

  ‘Lucy had some buttons –’

  A waitress stopped in her tracks, then moved swiftly on again. His voice was loud, quavery: I was sure everyone around would be forced to look:

  ‘Lucy had some buttons

  Spherical was their shape.

  And every time that Lucy laughed

  A button would escape …’

  ‘That’s all I can think of,’ he said suddenly, sitting down again, nervously – as if he’d just realized where he was.

  My mother wiped some cream off the edge of the button and put it in her handbag.

  ‘I’ve been wondering,’ she said, ‘about visiting Patmore?’

  Uncle Gervase made clucking noises. ‘Winifred. If you could –’

  ‘If only I felt,’ she went on, ‘if Lucy perhaps – the schooling, Gervase. Peter, you see, insists that the Council school is adequate … his salary, of course … the most we can pray for now is a scholarship to grammar school.’ Her face, always soft, crumpled almost, when she was with him, looked collapsed now: ‘Gervase, I think –’

  ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I could speak to Reverend Mother, or – or to Sister Xavier. No – but I’d like awfully to do that.’ Warming to his theme: ‘It is rather a special case.’ His hand shook so much that I was afraid he would miss the cup, knock it sideways. ‘It would be rather splendid, if …’

  But my mother, her voice sounding thick, panicky, said: ‘It’s not possible – even with arrangements. Peter would never – and there’d be expenses … It’s not possible at all, Gervase –’

  Her distress distressed him. He looked this way and that, knocking against the table with his knees, rearranging himself, agitatedly putting another lump of sugar in his tea.

  Then he was inspired:

  ‘I heard a very good one, Winifred. About Mussolini and the Pope. I had it, you know, from Bishop Turner – he was at Patmore for – for Confirmations. It appears you see, that Musso …’

  But the topic was too painful – even though she duly laughed when, a trifle mangled, the point of the story was reached. It was 1938. There might be, probably would be, a War, and she didn’t want to think about it.

  The next year, she could think of nothing else.

  We wouldn’t of course be coming up again, wouldn’t be able to, for the duration. ‘What will become of us all?’ she asked. ‘What shall I do?’ I thought that she was going to cry, sitting there in Gunter’s.

  In the train going home she did weep. She was coughing too, flushed, and I became afraid that her asthma would pounce before we reached home.

  Then suddenly, the train rattling through the darkness, she said, in a very calm voice:

  ‘A hawfinch came and nested in the orchard, that summer, Lucy. Late spring, early summer, 1914. It was in a cherry tree, if I remember rightly. Its song was odd – a sort of sharp, biting sound, Lucy. Tom (he’d have been your real uncle), Tom could imitate it to perfection – but some boys stole the eggs, and we never saw the birds again. It was the only sad thing to happen that summer. Until August.’ She turned her head to the window, pulled up the blind: ‘You’ve no idea, Lucy. No idea at all – what it was like for us. Everything came to an end then. The lamps went out, all over Europe.’

  In the darkness a train sped by, its windows flashing brightly. She said sadly, ‘I shall not see them lit again in my lifetime.’
/>   I thought they were her own words. She frightened me with her images of a whole continent plunged into primitive darkness and chaos, and for the rest of the journey I sat eyes tight shut. Falling after a while into genuine sleep.

  I woke to find we were nearly there; we were alone in the coach. My mother looked at me. Her face was blotchy, agitated:

  ‘There was this song,’ she said,’ “What shall we be when we aren’t what we are?”,’ her voice had thickened again. ‘Peace came too late, Lucy,’ she said, ‘We’d thought it would never end and when peace came, it was too late. For me, it was too late.’

  ‘Oh Lucy,’ she said – she had never appealed to me before.

  ‘What shall we be,’ she asked, the tears streaming down her face, ‘what shall we be, Lucy, when we aren’t what we are?’

  Chapter Two

  In the event, she’d a very easy War. Her asthma barred her from doing anything very active; and except for a few months at the beginning, we had no evacuees. She passed the time somehow, without doing anything very much – yet always appearing slightly exhausted.

  I sometimes wondered how she did pass the time. It wasn’t with housework certainly; she loathed cooking, and all the cleaning was done by Mrs Pickering, a tiny birdlike woman from the other end of the town, who worshipped her and fussed over her regularly. Nor was it in social life; she hadn’t really any friends – close or casual – and always-spoke disparagingly of ‘people who gossiped their lives away’. Next door to us, Frank Tucker and his crippled wife Nora were visited formally, once a month, as if by the lady of the manor. (In my first term at the grammar school, when I’d overheard two girls in the cloakroom talking about her I learnt that she was known locally as ‘the Duchess of Bratherton’. Thinking of, and remembering their ‘Ho, ho, ho, she says,’ I had wept all the way home.)

  Then, there were what I thought of as her ‘religious bouts’. She’d been brought up as a Catholic – in a half-hearted way was bringing me up as one too – but for most of the year there was little evidence that she had a religion. Then, every six months or so, there would be a sudden revival, usually without warning. Accusing herself of having been very slack religiously, she would get up each weekday morning for Mass; her ‘Garden of the Soul’, crammed to bursting point with parchment markers, holy pictures, and black-edged memorial cards, followed her about the house; and yet again, she would begin the Nine First Fridays: frequently, too, there would be an elaborate novena for some mysterious Cause. On Thursdays and Sundays she would drag me along to Benediction, where occupying the front row of the church in feudal manner she would sing the ‘O Salutaris’ and ‘Tantum ergo’ loudly in her rich wobbly contralto. (The opening and closing hymns, from the Westminster Hymnal, she would disdain. ‘We never sang those at Patmore.’)