Tea At Gunter's Page 13

  ‘We must ask Dr Varley for an iron tonic. Gervase’s mother was very anaemic as a young girl,’ she said; leaving me to wonder how ever this tendency could have been passed on to me.

  My father, to irritate her I think, suggested a bottle of Wincarnis.

  He was snubbed. ‘Tonic wine,’ she replied haughtily, ‘is just an excuse for people of your background to take alcohol.’

  But after a while, probably because she was still feeling low herself, she stopped her comments. I settled into a mechanical, conscientious routine: White Rose all day, homework checked and double checked all evening. Between times, I was lost. Weekends were the worst, and I tried several times to get in touch with Elizabeth: feeling her cheerful self-absorption might be just what I needed, or ought to need. But she was never there. The fairy tales, which half-ashamed I tried to return to now, had gone dead on me: I wondered what beauty I’d ever found in them. Only the Handel record still held its magic, and rationing myself strictly, afraid always it wouldn’t last, I’d creep upstairs and play it, over and over again – almost as if it could give me some answer.

  During the week, instead of spending my lunch hour sensibly in Jennifer’s company I’d make various excuses to wander off on my own. It was the same when we came out at four o’clock. Not wanting to go home, I’d go up to Smith’s bookshop and browse idly, never remembering what I’d seen; or haunt the cosmetic counter at Marshall and Snelgrove’s – the warm air, the heady blend of scents, the creams, powders, soaps, the suggestion of potential extravagance were all for some reason comforting.

  More often though, I would go to the Valley Gardens. The weather was still icy; guiltily aware that I could well be visiting my grandmother, I’d sit on the bench above the stream till I was stiff with cold, then wander up and down the sun colonnade or in and out the paths; sometimes even through on to Harlow Moor. Once, though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t, I walked up to Cornwall Road: strolling, nonchalantly I hoped, twice past the Inglesons’ house – pretending, finally, to put something in the pillar box on the corner.

  One afternoon, I was sitting on the usual bench; we’d been turned out of the White Rose half an hour early, so that it was still quite light. Three children, hooded, muffled, woolly-legged, came running along the path below, then stopped by the water to throw bread to the ducks. A uniformed nanny was with them and while they jostled each other for the creased paper bag she stamped to and fro in her sensible shoes, impatiently, rubbing her brown woollen fingers.

  The paper bag burst. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’

  At the water’s edge the children were all fighting over the pieces of biscuit and bun. As I watched them, a man came by; his head was bent, the collar of his British warm turned up.

  Between sight and recognition there was a second only of shock; I couldn’t speak, and he was almost past, before, weak-legged and with beating heart, I called out, ‘Hallo – hallo, Richard!’

  He turned at once; his hawklike features sharpened by the cold, looked at the same time familiar, and yet hardly known at all. ‘But hallo!’ he said, smiling. I felt sure that he was asking himself who I could possibly be, was hastily trying to remember where on earth he’d seen me before. But no: ‘It’s Lucy, isn’t it? How awfully nice to see you –’ I’d got up from the bench and was standing awkwardly beside him, ‘I had to take some papers over to a client. Conveyancing. Then I thought I’d walk back – some damn silly notion about the need for healthy exercise. Only it’s always further than you think – and cold with it.’ He hesitated:

  ‘Were you just leaving the Gardens?’

  ‘I’m going for my bus,’ I said; my voice coming out with a squeak, hitting the cold air. ‘The Bratherton one.’

  Then look, I’ll walk up with you – if I may? Our office is in Victoria Avenue, so I go most of the way.’

  I nodded, incredulously.

  ‘This really is an awfully pleasant surprise,’ he said, as we walked along. Then, ‘Are you still at that frightful place? Juliet’s awfully pleased to be out – I know. Not that she took it very seriously –’

  The duck-feeding children came running up behind us; one of them, a boy, darted across our path, and the nanny called out angrily, ‘Mind how you go, Lionel!’

  ‘Poor little b’s,’ said Richard, as she stalked out of view. ‘We had someone frightful like that when we were children. Not brown though – a sort of grey witch. Awfully superior. She ruled over our insides. A real reign of terror. Nell thinks probably she was costive herself, and her mood every morning depended on her success or not after breakfast. Anyway-we found prep school a riot of freedom afterwards.’

  ‘Who’s we?’ I asked: this time my voice came out breathy and small.

  ‘My brother Philip. He was killed at Alamein.’

  We were just coming up to the gateway; on the stone shelf at the side a solitary glove, stiffened in the cold, waited to be claimed. ‘My brother was run over –’ I began hesitantly. But it sounded odd, an unfair bid for sympathy and I added, ‘a long time ago though. Five or six years before I was born –’

  ‘All the same, how terrible. What a terrible thing to happen!’

  As we walked on out I glanced at him, stealthily. Our pace, although it was probably on the slow side, seemed to me unnaturally accelerated: as if to fit the racing by of time; and it was racing by; even in thinking, he is really here, I have only now – even in thinking this, I was wasting the moment. Already we’d reached the White Rose. In its projecting upstairs windows a few lights were still shining; below in the chocolate shop the dragees, the truffles, the violets, the gingers were laid out temptingly. I rarely looked at them now as I hurried in and out, but Richard, stopping in front of the window, said:

  ‘These look awfully good.’ He hesitated, his hand in his pocket: ‘I seem to be much too well off for coupons – hardly a sweet tooth in the house …’ Then rummaging: ‘Look-would you – may I get you some?’

  I stood trembling by the counter while the girl made a selection. My mother liked crystallised violets, I told him. For myself, I hurriedly chose dragees. Richard pulled out a ten-shilling note and some dog-eared coupons; I watched him: his face creased, eager, a little uncertain; and suddenly I was reminded of Uncle Gervase.

  It was a fleeting resemblance only; of manner not of physique: something in the impulsive, almost extravagant gesture; Uncle Gervase on the pavement outside Gunter’s, wanting us on the spur of the moment to stay up, to go to a theatre, to let him give us this, that, the other. I could see him as in a faulty photograph when one exposure over another a second and ghostly figure stands behind. And for a moment I felt as if the world of my mother had invaded this other, intensely private one. Then, in seconds, it was over. Richard was handing me the carton; opening the shop door.

  Outside again, the cold hit us forcefully.

  ‘What time is your bus?’ We turned into the narrow Ginnel leading up into Parliament Street: I wished it a mountain and he helping me up it, ‘Couldn’t I get you a cup of tea or anything? Are you sure? The Kiosk’s just here. Or – or we could brave Fuller’s, or Betty’s?’

  But I was unable to accept. Frightened at the prospect of such riches, I assured him that it ought to be, had to be, the next bus. And then – because I knew I must sooner or later, and desperately didn’t want to – I asked, ‘How’s Juliet?’

  ‘Oh, she’s very well.’ His face had lit up; I sensed an excitement in him to be speaking of her at all. ‘She’s leading the idle life at the moment. Sort of getting her bearings. Recovering from the White Rose and all that.’

  We came up out of the Ginnel, straight into the freezing wind; the icy air whipped our faces. (Shall you marry Juliet? When will you marry Juliet?) I glanced over: he was looking straight ahead and where the wind had lifted his hair, the tips of his ears were red with cold, the skin of his face drawn with it.

  ‘We go to Rome you know in the spring. A foursome, with Nell and Quentin. Q’s aunt has this flat in t
he Corso Vittorio Emmanuele – then a villa on the coast. We’re looking forward to it tremendously. Nell and I were over last year, but it’ll be Juliet’s first visit –’

  We were crossing the road, into the evening traffic, up the other side of Parliament Street. The greater part of the walk was over, my time was nearly up, and remembering my thin, pointed hunger I began, almost without realizing, a fierce catechism.

  But he answered easily; didn’t seem surprised at all. It was awfully nice of me to be interested – Yes, he had been up at Cambridge – John’s, before the War. ‘Only a couple of years though-then the Army of course.’ No, he hadn’t gone back. He’d done the rest of the work in Germany. ‘Thanks to the Red Cross, I could bash the books out there. God knows there was time enough …’

  Yes, he had tried to escape. Once. But it had been a miserable failure. ‘I wasn’t the type. And by that time, Q had turned up. He didn’t even try – much too lazy, he said. We just settled down really to making the best of a rotten show. He read an awful lot, did some quite remarkable drawings – and I had the exams of course. But it was a pretty frustrating War…’

  We were nearly at the top of the hill. ‘I’m afraid I’ve rambled on terribly about myself –’

  We stopped just by Jaeger’s window, opposite the War Memorial where four or five roads meet and it’s always windy, whatever the time of year.

  ‘This is where we part, I think.’ We stood there; he made no move. There was a rush of people coming by; on the road a car trying to cut across another braked suddenly, and two sets of horns fought each other.

  I said: ‘I used to be afraid of the police horse here–’

  ‘Did you? I wish sometimes I’d been …’ He pointed over to the Imperial café, ‘I must have spent pounds of pocket money over there, buying it enormous Bath buns –’

  A bitterly cold rain was blowing across now, icily hitting our faces. I said, clutching the carton to me, ‘Thank you very much for these.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s been – awfully pleasant.

  We stood there shivering. He seemed about to say something. Then:

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s terrible of me keeping you standing in this incredible cold, It’s just that –’ He hesitated. I saw in the street light that he had coloured. It’s just that – look – I should have apologised before. That business at Christmas – you should never have been involved. Quentin exaggerated everything rather but we all behaved badly. Really, I’m fearfully sorry. I hope-we’re forgiven?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I mean, it wasn’t anything,’ I said. ‘I’d forgotten all about it.’

  I heard my words die away. A moment later, his hand raised in a farewell gesture, he’d gone. For a long time, I just stood on the corner; at first I was frightened he might glance round and notice me still there, so that I had to pretend to look in Jaeger’s window. Forgetting to shelter from the wind, ready at any moment to fix my gaze on a belted camel coat, price eight pounds, I watched him, till he was right out of sight.

  Chapter Eleven

  Over the last few weeks my mother’s health had been improving gradually; her breathing easier, her cough less. She was all set in fact for one of those sudden attacks on life, fits of enthusiasm I knew so well. Now, as Lent began, she launched herself, zealous and fervent, into six weeks of piety.

  For once I was glad to see her like this, feeling that totally absorbed as she was she wasn’t likely to stumble on any of my secrets. I had in any case been feeling easier with her – I seemed to have grown a skin now over the affair of her letters. But I trembled still that I might give myself away about Richard.

  Every evening now she went off to church, usually to the Stations of the Cross; she’d have been pleased if I’d gone with her, but I made homework a convenient excuse.

  She had decided to observe a full fast in Lent. She explained to me carefully exactly how much and how little she was allowed:

  ‘At Patmore there were always these little gold scales standing on the table. Cheese, or biscuits, or toast-they could all be weighed. One was able to be quite sure that one was keeping the rules…’

  My father, watching her one evening pick ostentatiously at half a potato, remarked:

  ‘I’d thought anyway your Pope had let you off all that nonsense–’

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied coldly. ‘I prefer to keep the spirit of the law and the letter.’

  Exasperated: ‘What about that R.C. cat Pugin, then?’ he flung at her – at us both. ‘What of him? Shouldn’t he be bloody well fasting?’

  Scarcely able to believe the meeting with Richard had ever really happened, during the next few weeks I lived it over and over again: wastefully, prodigally, telling myself I was impressing it on my memory: knowing I was using it up, sucking it dry.

  February turned into March; and at the White Rose term dragged on: still nine typing specimens to go; and tests, tests, tests. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons now we typed to Victor Sylvester (‘rhythm and relaxation, Ladies! I want to see both’). Miss Laycock worked the gramophone, an antiquated machine which seemed to vibrate to the pounding of the typewriters while, mistakes piling up, we listened to the records – often surprisingly modern: ‘Shrimp Boats’, ‘Buttons and Bows’, ‘Slow Boat to China’.

  ‘I’d like to get you, on a slow bus to Bradford,’ sang Jennifer in the desk behind: in her element, fingers flying.

  A few more weeks, and it was spring. It came suddenly, arriving as it were overnight. Warmth everywhere, sudden sharp colours, fresh scents, piercing greens; a blackbird was nesting in the bush by the front gate.

  I was in the Valley Gardens as often as ever; but whereas in winter there had seemed to be hordes of children, running, sliding, stamping through the cold, now there seemed to be only couples. Strolling hand in hand – not talking, or striding out together, arms swinging: then the sudden burst of laughter, a sleeve clutched, the joke shared. Sometimes an impulsive kiss, the girl’s head pulled roughly against the man’s collar; once, sitting on the bench beside me, a long-drawn-out bee’s kiss.

  Stupidly, I sat always in the same place: reasoning that if only I sat there long enough, often enough, Richard would come by again. One lunch hour, seeing a sports-jacketed figure in the distance, I rushed forward with crazy conviction; but panting and puffing, hunting frantically for memorable words, I knew before I arrived that I was mistaken; and looking with near-hate at the body which by some trick, set of shoulders, shape of head, had deceived me, I mumbled an apology.

  At last, term ended. We were released at noon and coming out, I went straight to Marshall and Snelgrove’s, to buy my mother an Easter present; something frivolous and unlikely – the religious bout I reckoned, must be nearly over and disaffection would set in soon. I was standing among the talcum powders and boxes of soap, looking, when a voice behind me said: ‘Darling, hello.’

  At the next counter, finger poised over an open jar of cream, was Juliet. Seeing my surprise, she gave me one of her little smiles; she had, as ever, her air of contented kitten.

  ‘Mm – and well, how has it been, darling?’

  In spite of the mild day, she was wrapped round in stone-coloured tweed; I noticed beige gaiters too, and a long thin umbrella propped against the counter. Staring at her, I was struck by sudden panic: certain that by looking at me she could see, could guess, that I loved and pined for Richard – as if her own position gave her immediate insight.

  Putting aside the cream, she gazed at me for a moment. ‘“Darling you look tired he said”’ she murmured, quoting a skin food advert that once we’d joked about together at the White Rose.

  ‘“And a tired look is an old look,”’ I said, finishing the slogan. feeling it described exactly my present dusty, lukewarm condition of mind and body.

  ‘I can see it’s been a terrible term, darling,’ she said, pouting slightly. ‘That woman shouldn’t be allowed.’ She turned away a moment, took up another pot of cream. The assistant – smart, a little anxious – as
ked: ‘For day or night use, Madam?’

  Juliet ignored her. ‘I must have something really rich, darling,’ she said to me, ‘or the Roman sun will frizzle me completely.’ She shrugged her shoulders: ‘Silly Juliet should wear a sun hat of course. But she never does.”

  She picked up a tester lipstick and tried it out; it was a pale rose colour. She looked at it critically.

  Hearing, unwanted, an urgent note in my voice: ‘When do you go?’ I asked.

  ‘A few days after Easter.’ She gave a little yawn. ‘I don’t know. Richard has the arrangements.’ She tried on another, brighter lipstick, ‘It’s this currency allowance business which is so boring, darling – he’s supposed to be doing something about it. Or Quentin is.’ She gazed around her; the assistant was still hovering. ‘But pas discuter ici. We may need to go abroad again, you see – if Juliet should weaken, for instance.’ She smiled, ‘I couldn’t really imagine a honeymoon spent in the British Isles, darling, could you?’

  Her scent wafted about her, rising above even the mingled shop scents; looking at the paper-thin texture of her skin, I realized, trembling inwardly, that this was the flesh Richard touched. As she stood there, I could sense it, could trace where his bony hands had stroked.

  ‘Not Lizzie Arden,’ she was saying. ‘Her jars are too heavy – for my wrists, you know. What about Guerlain? or Dottie Gray?’ The assistant’s smile was fixed in patience. ‘Nellie Rubenstein possibly – although I rather like Lancôme. Yes, now I think about it, Lancôme. Do you have their Crème du Jour?’

  I tried to sneak away. I thought she wouldn’t notice, but even as I made a move, she turned:

  ‘Don’t wait for Juliet, darling – I shall be an age. I find it so boring – choosing.’ She gave another yawn. I muttered something like, ‘Have a lovely time, and lots of sun.’

  ‘But yes.’ She turned back. ‘Goodbye, darling. I shall send you a card.’