Tea At Gunter's Page 14

  As I left, she was smiling to herself, one of her secret, satisfied smiles.

  Her card came about two weeks later, a blue and golden picture of the coast near Rome. In her careless rounded hand she’d written: ‘Lots of sun and good food, darling, we’re all lizards. Richard peeling horribly …’ I carried it about in my shoulder bag for several days, grateful for any news at all; was even tempted to show it to Jennifer – half hoping perhaps to be asked ‘who’s he?’, even to be lured, so late in the day, into talking about him.

  I’d seen a lot of Jennifer this holidays. Her home, with its relaxed jollity, its liveliness, woke in me the same envy I’d had for Alan’s imagined family.

  Elizabeth I hadn’t seen since the New Year, and with the emotional muddle I was in now, I wasn’t really keen to. Then in the last week of the holidays she rang me up, very early one sunny morning.

  She was in a bad mood.

  ‘Lu, it’s my day off – and she says I’ve to spend it all in the fresh air. You hear that? But I said I wouldn’t, only you came too.’ She gave a breathy groan, ‘Fountains Abbey – that’s her idea. On bikes. Heck, it’s miles, Lu –’

  She was in the kitchen looking sulky when I arrived. Mrs Horsfall was packing lunch for us: beetroot sandwiches and some unattractive squares of cheese. She told Elizabeth several times over, ‘Your system’s clogged up, you know. Her pipes are all furred,’ she said to me; she sounded always as if she’d culled her vocabulary from laxative advertisements, ‘Furred with stale air, Lucy. It’s not good, isn’t that job.’

  We’d only been cycling about ten minutes when Elizabeth said the meal looked so foul she’d have to have something for it to sink into. ‘We’ll find a café, first thing.’ As we pedalled along on a flat stretch, she sang: ‘I want some red roses for a blue lady’ through her nose, over and over again. In between times, she kept up a stream of questions and comments:

  ‘You see Up in Central Park Lu – Deena Durbin at the Odeon? Bonnie Prince Charlie, you ought to go to that, Lu! – there’s this scene, ever so sad, Flora Macdonald, with the colour all lovely, and the boat going away. “Speed bonny boat, like a bird on the wing…” I cried like anything, Lu.’

  After three or four miles we found a café. So far she hadn’t talked about boys at all; but now, over lukewarm Bev and a chocice, she hinted at revelations to come. Pulling a face at two boys she would have ogled only a few months ago, she said scornfully, ‘Look at them. They ought to be in short pants, they ought.’ Then, scrumpling up her choc-ice paper:

  ‘Still, heck – if they were all I’d got on my mind!’

  But it wasn’t until well in the afternoon that she told me anything. We’d made Fountains in good time, and after we’d eaten, exhausted by the long and hilly ride, we lay sprawled on the grass. It was quiet, too early in the season for many tourists, the weather balmy and gentle; an early afternoon sun cast shadows across the river Skell, while by our faces the grass smelt sweet and fresh. But I’d reached that stage of unrequited love where all natural beauty is painful, and guiltily, I was wishing Elizabeth away.

  Lying on her back, her feet in her old plimsolls pointing outwards, she seemed to be asleep. Opening my bag, I took out Juliet’s card. Beneath an impossibly blue sky, pine trees fringed the edge of the beach; I began a set of fresh useless imaginings. Perhaps, standing together at the kiosk, Richard had helped her choose it? But Juliet’s voice purred in my mind,’… And I nearly forgot – a card for that pathetic little thing, the one I brought to tea that day – remember, darling?’ Her bent head intruded, as bare arm touched bare arm; I lost his face – felt the chill goose pimples rise on my own untouched flesh.

  ‘What’s that, Lu?’ asked Elizabeth, sitting up suddenly.

  I rammed the card back into my bag hastily – too hastily. ‘Go on, give us a dekko,’ she said, shaking her head vigorously, bits of grass sticking to her frizzy hair. ‘I bet it’s a boy. You’re a deceitful beggar.’

  I had flushed. It was just a White Rose girl, I explained.

  She pulled a face:

  ‘I wish I didn’t have to believe you –’ She lay back again, hands behind her head; she asked: ‘Ever go with that Alan now?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘he wouldn’t have set me on either.’ She picked up a blade of grass and began chewing it at the juicy end ‘Lu,’ she said, ‘remember that George Turnbull? The one I said about the moustache and the kissing? Christmas time.’

  I tried to think what she’d told me – I didn’t think there could have been very much; but it seemed an age ago, another life.

  ‘It’s just – I don’t know what to do. I’m in a right pickle. It’s daft – but –’ She spat out the chewed grass. ‘Lu, this George – well, he’d like me, you know, as his – well, sort of fancy lady. Mistress like.’

  She propped herself up on one elbow and looked at me; she was giggling, but she’d gone very red. I tried to remember something – anything – about George, but all I could recall was her saying, ‘he’s good-looking; but not so good-looking as your dad –’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘In business,’ she said. ‘He’s in business.’

  She took up another blade of grass. ‘You know, Lu, it’s all going a bit fast like. Even for yours truly.’ She shrugged her shoulders, ‘I mean, when it all began, he just used to come over to reception to have a chat like. That was all. He’s in three nights a week, you see – been coming for years. And his wife too sometimes. And his son – a great big boy, Lu, and older than us! Only, after Xmas we weren’t that busy and he was in a lot – alone, Lu – and he’d ask me, you know, for a drive afterwards. Well, he’s got this great big Rover – he’s in business like I said. “Let’s go for a quick spin, love,” he’d say, then I’d give him a look. “Don’t fret yourself,” he’d say, “I can get petrol! All I want, love.”’ She pulled a face, half-laughing: ‘Heck, what we do, Lu – it doesn’t use much petrol –’

  She was quiet a few moments, thoughtful. Then she said suddenly:

  ‘I’m not daft, you know, Lu. I didn’t think like I was in that bally Rover to admire the moonlight. But this, it’s jinks, real high jinks, Lu.’ She had gone very red again. ‘I mean, you know me. I’d used to think like a boy was that daring if he had you feeling his cock. But now –’

  She sat up and, leaning forward, clasped her hands round her knees. ‘Heck, I dunno!’ She paused; bits of grass were still sticking to her hair. ‘There’s another thing, Lu. You know, him having a son like that – it gives me a right funny feeling.’ She screwed up her face, ‘You know, he’ll stop his fumbling suddenly and look at me – really odd like. Then he’ll say, “Don’t you wish now it was that son of mine doing this, don’t you, eh?” And I’ll say how I don’t. Because I mean what’d I want with him? but that only sets him on more, and then he goes all rough and he’s saying all the while, “It wouldn’t be like this with Douglas would it now, would it eh?” Then in a bit, he’s after me to go the whole way – only I won’t. Then he sulks, Lu.’ She gave a great sigh: ‘Heck – it’s dodgy.’

  She reached into the haversack for the fizzy lemonade we’d bought at the café, then drained the bottle, laying it on the grass beside her. For a while, neither of us spoke. Then ‘He wants to buy me some clothes,’ she said. ‘I mean, he would, if … But I’m not bothered.’ She began rolling the empty bottle to and fro. ‘Only, jewellery now – I could fancy that, Lu. A bit of something good, you could look at it and say “1 earned that”.’

  ‘What about his wife though?’

  ‘Her? She just sits around on her fanny all day, playing bridge. I’ve no time for her. And she’s dead scared of George – I know that for a fact. I’m not worried, Lu –’

  A moment later she asked, matter of factly:

  ‘What shall I do, then?’

  It was so unlike her to ask for advice: I was taken by surprise. But I needn’t have worried. Before I could answer her, i
ndeed say anything at all, she suddenly changed the subject.

  ‘You got a boy?’ she asked. Then when I shook my head, she began talking about the hotel instead.

  ‘Smashing dinner dances they have there, Lu,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting asked. Real do’s they are.’

  On the way back she kept singing, ‘We’re a couple of swells, we stay at the best hotels’. She didn’t seem too worried. Just once, as we were freewheeling down a slope, she called over:

  ‘You’ll not tell, Lu – will you? You know her. She’d crown me, she would, if she ever got wind of this little lot!’

  We were back in the Horsfall home for tea by seven. I was exhausted, with the familiar drained feeling I got always from a lot of Elizabeth’s company. Over the meal, I yawned continually.

  Mrs Horsfall was very pleased. The ride must really have done us good.

  ‘There’s nothing like a bit of God’s own fresh air,’ she said to Elizabeth. ‘It’ll blow away anything.’

  Chapter Twelve

  My mother’s religious bout (after a short period of exhaustion and three days in bed) had given way to a frenzy of spring cleaning. The April sun showed up thick layers of dust, and Mrs Pickering was away, ill. No she didn’t want any help from me, she would do it all herself.

  My father, appalled at the mess and discomfort went over to stay in Harrogate; and a disturbed and moulting Pugin for whom she had no time now, was turned out of his Lloyd Loom chair, the wicker scrubbed, the cushion beaten. While I waited anxiously for the moment when her energy would suddenly give out – and Mrs Pickering and I would be left to clear up the confusion – she emptied drawers, took down curtains, rubbed, sponged, scrubbed.

  One morning, I came through from clearing the breakfast and found her kneeling by the big cupboard in the sitting-room. It was the last Saturday of the holidays, and she’d been cleaning for nearly a week.

  ‘How can anyone tolerate such a mess!’ she exclaimed, opening the doors. The contents hurtled out: piles of yellowing newspaper, a couple of gas masks, two chipped china dogs, some souvenir booklets and theatre programmes, a broken Mickey Mouse clock.

  ‘Perhaps we could make a pile for a jumble sale, Lucy?’ she said hopefully. She rifled through the rubbish, making the disorder worse, stopping all the time to comment.

  ‘Frightening things,’ she said of the gasmasks, pushing them, black rubber flapping, to the back. The newspapers she lifted into a pile, then sitting back on her heels began idly glancing through them. ‘So trivial,’ she commented, ‘these provincial goings on.’

  Then something caught her eye.

  ‘Look!’ She sat up again, very erect, her face taking on that expression of surprised light I knew so well. ‘Look here, Lucy!’

  The paper was dated sometime in the thirties. She pointed to a small paragraph low down the page:

  ‘… the exhibition, which deals with monastic life up to the time of the Dissolution, was opened by Mrs Alice Ingleson, wife of the Harrogate solicitor. Mrs Ingleson, who before her marriage in 1919 was a Miss Foxton-Tuke, is a direct descendant of Blessed Piers Foxton-Tuke, martyred at Lancaster in 1584. In her speech, Mrs Ingleson said …’

  ‘But Lucy!’ my mother cried, ‘that family – the Foxton-Tukes. They lived near Patmore. Fifteen, twenty miles away only!’ She was trembling with excitement, ‘I didn’t know them well, but Gervase was at Stonyhurst with the boys: and I certainly met some of them – many times. They were a huge family, Lucy. Then I remember, Father Ainslie – before he came to be our chaplain – he spent a summer there!’

  She sat back again, the newspaper slipping from her knees; a stray tendril of hair lay flattened against her damp forehead. ‘But what a discovery, Lucy! It’s like some voice, darling, back from the dead!’

  There was no more tidying that morning. The pile of rubbish was pushed in again, the catch on the door forced shut. She walked round the room, talking all the time, excited, animated.

  I sat very quiet. I was stunned by the news: treasure so enormous I wanted only to go off and sit by myself and think about it. She pressed me:

  ‘See if you can remember anything about Alice Ingleson, Lucy. That party, before Christmas. You must have met her?’ But my mind was a blank: I remembered only plum-coloured satin, a bony face.

  ‘You’re not very observant,’ she said. Then, still in high spirits, she announced suddenly: ‘I shall call on her, Lucy. This very afternoon.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Peter comes for you at two. He can give me a lift over.’

  She was beside herself with excitement. Straight after lunch she went upstairs and changed into her Gunter’s suit. Talking all the time, she took down and rewound her heavy hair, pulled on the velours hat.

  ‘I wish you could come along too, darling,’ she said twice. But I had already promised a long-overdue visit to my grandmother; Richard was anyway still in Italy, and I doubted that I could have borne sitting in his house in my mother’s presence. Surely I would weep or blush or stutter, disgrace myself, give everything away?

  Frank from next door was being given a lift into Harrogate too; my mother insisted that he sit in the front. ‘Lucy and I have a lot to talk about,’ she said mysteriously: hoping, I think, to be asked what the excitement was so that she could refuse to answer. But my father carefully avoided speaking to her.

  My grandmother had improved very little: her house, although spotlessly clean, had still the same unloved look I’d noticed earlier. And just as before, she moved restlessly about the kitchen, arranging and rearranging plates, mugs, knick-knacks. She remarked several times that for the spring to come round without my grandfather didn’t seem right.

  ‘He’d wait always, would Alfred, for those daffodils round at back.’ Then she said to my father, ‘They’re no good, Peter, what we’ve planted on the grave. It’s too cold up there, too cold and all on that moor.’

  Towards the end of the visit my father said he wouldn’t be driving back. He’d stay on with her for five or six days. ‘You girls can get a bus,’ he said when my mother reappeared. She ignored him, barely concealing her impatience to be alone with me. As soon as we’d left the house, she began talking excitedly:

  ‘Lucy – she remembers me! She came over to Patmore once at least, maybe twice. I would have been about seven, she thinks. I can’t get any picture of her though – even when I saw her. But of course she’s several years older than me. And she was abroad in 1911. Then during the Great War she was in Malta, nursing.’ She was walking so fast that I had to run almost to keep up with her. ‘And then, my drama, Lucy – she thinks she remembers that! Only vaguely, but she recalls that she was very surprised there was so much upset.’ We were standing on the kerb by Queen Victoria’s statue, waiting for the traffic to clear: ‘I did not tell her,’ she said, in a sudden fierce tone, ‘what a terrible mistake it’s all been.’

  The thought seemed to sober her, for a while; but then just as we were climbing onto the bus, she clutched my arm:

  ‘Would you believe it, Lucy? She hadn’t realized Gervase was still alive. But of course she hasn’t kept in touch – their own home was sold up you know. I hadn’t realized. All five of the boys were killed, Lucy –’

  She chatted on. I was afraid to ask questions, longing for and dreading the moment when she would mention Richard. But she said nothing till we were almost into Bratherton, and then it was only: ‘I saw photographs of the son and daughter; Lucy. Very fine-looking. And both, I gathered, more or less engaged –’

  She looked thoughtful for a moment. We were crossing the bridge now; the evening sun illumined the dark green of the trees massed on the cliffside; up on the viaduct a train was rushing by.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said suddenly, ‘her telephone rang six times while I was there? So busy!’

  On the way back, she seemed exhausted, flat. But later when we’d both gone up to bed, she came into my room suddenly, carrying the Memory Box.

  ‘Lucy – but how silly of us!’ Sit
ting on the end of the bed, she scattered photographs about the eiderdown: ‘Look me out any that are a group will you, darling? Stonyhurst are the most likely.’

  One by one she held them up to the light. Then her face drooped:

  ‘You know – there was one remark of Alice’s which really shocked me. About her early life. “I scarcely give it a thought,” she told me. “We’re here to do good in the present – not mourn the past.”’

  She peered closely at a blurred group in fancy dress: ‘I don’t think really,’ she said, ‘that I shall call on her again. Other than this childhood link – I can’t see that we have anything in common. Can you darling?’

  We went back to the White Rose. It was for a few weeks only, a token term, with all the frills removed and nothing but shorthand and typing. There were daily tests. Next month Miss Metcalfe would go abroad, not returning till September, but meantime the room echoed to her shrill commands, ‘Wrists up, Ladies, wrists up!’ or her shocked discoveries: ‘Miss Taylor – eraser dust in your machine!’

  Obsessed with the thought of Richard, counting the days till he might be back, I inhabited a kind of no man’s land: bouts of intense concentration alternated with heavy-limbed dreaminess. My mother meanwhile, had calmed down over her Foxton-Tuke discovery. She’d written to tell Gervase about it but his reply – being mainly enthusiasm – had told her very little. Her only other reference to it all was to say one day, out of the blue, and almost coyly: ‘What a might-have-been! If this Richard had been free, and nearer your age – and if everything else had been favourable. Then – who knows, darling?’

  What she did talk about a lot though, now that the White Rose was nearly over, were her plans for my move to London, next winter. She wasn’t very realistic. Not only was I to emerge, as from some chrysalis, poised and successful, there’d also be a highly-paid, impressive job (Password: the White Rose). The same sort of magic was going to take care of all the practical arrangements; she would say airily: ‘Of course, I could spend the first few weeks up there with you,’ or ‘Gervase will be able to see about somewhere for you to live’ – and other unlikelihoods. Once she said hopefully, ‘I’ve read somewhere that there’s a very pleasant social club for Catholics starting up, or started, in Knightsbridge – That might be useful!’