Tea At Gunter's Page 17

‘Are you sure that you’ve eaten enough now?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I could go back –’

  It had been an enormous feast, I protested; more than I ever normally ate and really I would be all right. My drink-encouraged heart was thumping: that I should be here with him at all felt curiously unreal and it seemed suddenly very important to make some sort of conversation. The pearl I held was the Foxton-Tukes. ‘I think my mother knew your mother…’

  To get started, I said politely, ‘When are Nell and Quentin going to marry?’

  ‘September, October. Q’s been waiting, very noisily I may say, for the last three years – Nell refused categorically to be ensnared minus her degree.’

  ‘And your family?’ I asked, trying at the same time to remember the name of the Patmore chaplain, chasing it through the fog. ‘Are they pleased?’

  He was looking ahead as he spoke.

  ‘Yes – awfully pleased really. There are a few complications -religious mainly. Quentin’s an agnostic, and Mother who’s rather a keen Catholic is somewhat agitated. We were all brought up as Catholics, you see – Phil and I went to Ampleforth and Nell was at Mayfield. But she’s reacted against, rather strongly. Lapsed and come back and lapsed again. I’m not sure what the set-up is now, but Mother keeps creating about it. Fortunately Father’s pretty tolerant. Not, in fact, awfully interested.’

  I’d been brought up as a Catholic too, I explained. Of a sort. I didn’t feel, I said, that I was the real thing -

  ‘To be honest, mine disappeared during the War. Whil I was a prisoner. The life there, it seemed to produce either lots more devotion – one chap I know went in for the priesthood straight after – or a sort of drifting away. I don’t know –’

  We’d been climbing as we talked; now we’d reached the spreading bracken I’d glimpsed earlier. Below us, the rugs and the picnic were out of sight.

  I said in a rush, ‘I think your mother knew my mother. A place called Patmore, when she was a girl, near the Foxton-Tukes –’

  Just as I had dreamt it would, his face lit up. ‘But how tremendously interesting – And what a small world!’ He had heard of Patmore, he told me; but only as a convent: ‘I don’t know that side of the family awfully well at all – and Mother hardly ever speaks of her childhood. Phil was the one who was interested in the past. There was a martyr, Blessed Piers – a very grisly affair which we were frightfully proud of at school. But the only Foxton-Tukes living now are a couple of elderly maiden aunts in Sussex. They belong to a third order, I think. Anyway there’s a great jangling of rosaries and saying of Office – but I’m ashamed to say I haven’t seen either of them since before the War. Another aunt, Frances, I was rather fond of – but she died in the nineteen thirties.’

  As I’d suspected, Alice Ingleson couldn’t have mentioned my mother’s visit. It had been of interest possibly, for the rest of that day; but no longer.

  ‘You didn’t go to Patmore yourself, to school?’

  He was asking, plainly, out of courtesy; but as if given permission, or better still prompted, I began to talk; I was very calm and felt that I must surely be sober. The words flowing easily; I spoke of my mother, and Patmore, family history, the Tinsdales; then the sad little tale (edited) of Gervase and the kingdom lost. Sometimes as I talked I would glimpse as from far away, that there might be another version, another tale altogether; then straightaway I would go back to continue the gospel according to my mother.

  ‘This Gervase chap –’ Richard commented, ‘God, what a tragic business.’ Later, he asked, ‘Do you still go up to Gunter’s? Phil and I used to be taken there after expeditions to Daniel Neal’s. But even Gunter’s ices – and they were jolly good – couldn’t make up to us for all that measuring and fitting. There was even the indignity I think, of some shoes called “Phat Feet”.’

  By now, we were quite high up; a light breeze was flattening the surface of the bracken. We’d been following a sheep track, and treading now through a marshy patch we came to a bank with, running below it, a ghyll. We scrambled down.

  Richard, looking at his watch, said, ‘Let’s sit a while.’ We lay back where the ground levelled out a little. The water was surprisingly clear, reflecting the clumps of grass hanging at its edge; it moved only slightly, a few sticks floating along its surface.

  As I’d done all afternoon, I feasted on Richard’s presence. Propped up on one elbow, he was pulling, twisting the long grass; his hands were large, square-tipped, the veins standing out in the heat; as he moved his arm, the surprising white of the underskin filled me with tenderness.

  I blurted out: ‘Juliet –’ Then hearing myself, broke off.

  He looked up. Surprised, questioning.

  ‘It was just to say,’ I went on, horrified. ‘I just wanted to say –’ My voice was thick, as if through flannel. ‘I wanted to say – that I’d thought about you …’

  As my voice trailed away, he turned; and head bent, his hand still tearing at the knotted grass, he said, ‘I should talk about it, of course. But I don’t. I –’

  He was very flushed. ‘The subject’s more or less taboo at home,’ he said. ‘Which is probably just as well.’

  There was a pause. I thought perhaps he was going to ask me how I knew (yet Nell had supposed it to be public knowledge). My heart ached with saying: I would never let you down.

  ‘The worst was over a few weeks ago. I’ve been damn stupid anyway. Blind, really.’

  I waited for him to say more. He was sitting up now, hands round his knees, his head still bent; at the nape the hair was very soft and fair, and reaching out, I began to stroke it gently.

  He turned suddenly. I thought I saw tears in his eyes. Impulsively, I knelt upright, and leaning forward, cupped his face in my hands.

  For a few seconds, we were still, then freeing his head with a rough gesture he gripped my arm and feeling for my mouth pressed it to his, so that our tastes mingled warm and winey; then his hand plunged warm and hard between my breasts, and intoxicated by the scent of him, the warmth through the cotton shirt, I cried inside: here is what you want. But the smell grew suddenly into the smell of fear; and in a frantic attempt to save my gentle dreams, I pulled away and jerking, fell awkwardly; my body twisted, one foot slipping on the damp grass.

  Richard had his arm over his face, like a small boy. Neither of us spoke. Down in the valley a collie was barking, persistent, searching; I stared at some small pink flowers growing by the water and tried to remember their name.

  After a while, Richard moved his arm, and looking up, said in a stiff voice, ‘I’m sorry. I must apologize. I –’

  The conventional words jarred. Turning away, I said, ‘I’m sorry – it’s me to be sorry.’ I had begun to shiver uncontrollably.

  We sat a few moments in embarrassed silence; Richard looked at his watch again. ‘I think we ought to go,’ he said, his voice awkward, polite. ‘It took quite a long time to climb up here.’ As he helped me up, his hand was trembling.

  We walked back slowly. The air had begun already to smell of evening; a rabbit, startled, ran across our path, bouncing, twisting out of sight through the green bracken.

  Within sight of the rugs, Nell and Quentin came walking towards us, holding hands.

  ‘You look healthy,’ Quentin said. ‘She’s got the primus going,’ he added proudly, ‘China tea, and she managed to get a lemon –’

  At the sight of the little silver kettle I was sickeningly back with the nonsense of what I’d done at home; the worry of it settled now like a dull ache.

  We sat about drinking the tea; Richard said, ‘God, we needed this.’ I was shaky, parched. About the whole outing there seemed to be a flat feeling now. Nell and Quentin had settled into a steady bantering tone towards each other, which I recognized as an extension of their love-making, and envied.

  We packed up; the remains looked sordid. ‘Fête champêtre,’ said Quentin sadly.

  On the way back he insisted on driving again. ‘You look fagged out,’ he said to R
ichard; Nell said, ‘He always gets flat tired in the heat.’

  No one spoke much on the journey; I sat at the back with Richard and worried consistently about the kettle. After a while Quentin began to sing; then Nell joined im and they sang ‘Là haut sur la montagne’. ‘Our own scabrous version,’ said Quentin. We all did a half-hearted Whiffanpoof Song, but no one really knew the words; then Nell yawned and said she must sleep, doing so almost at once, her head lolling over onto Quentin.

  In Bratherton they dropped me at the house.

  ‘You’ve been a quiet couple,’ said Quentin. ‘Sleepy, Locket?’

  I had thought to jump out and run in, but Richard had got out too. At the door, he said goodbye; I thought in a hopeless way that he might be going to say something else – anything else – but pressing my hand quickly, he turned away.

  Nell from the car called out something I couldn’t hear, and a moment later they were gone.

  My mother was sitting on the sofa, wearing a creased flowery dressing-gown; beside her a tray of half-eaten salad.

  Her face was flabby, tired.

  ‘Darling, it’s nearly nine o’clock – whatever happened? And the kettle!’ she exclaimed reproachfully. ‘How could you be so thoughtless, Lucy? It was absolutely red hot. Fortunately, I had to go downstairs – Peter rang to say he’s staying on in London over the weekend –’

  Overwhelmingly tired, I hoped she wouldn’t ask for details of the outing: but after remarking, ‘I can’t imagine what Peter will do with himself in London on a Sunday – drink the day away, I expect,’ she began to question me intensely. In my anxiety to hide anything of consequence, I babbled on irrelevantly; looking pleased she lay back, her fingers stroking her cheek. I was sure that if I listed enough trivia I would escape catechism on more important matters, but too late, I realized that by a chance remark I’d revealed more than I’d intended.

  She leant forward, eagerly. ‘Do you mean Richard Ingleson has broken with Juliet? But when, Lucy darling?’

  I didn’t know, I protested; it must be recently, I couldn’t be sure. Panic-stricken: I saw growing in her mind, flowering in her eyes, the beginning of a Plan.

  ‘It can’t be coincidence he asked you,’ she said.

  ‘It was Quentin’s idea. Richard didn’t –’

  ‘But if he’s free – in that way, Lucy!’ As often when she was excited, spittle gathered at the corners of her mouth, ‘If he’s free, everything’s different. Quite different!’ She put her head on one side. ‘You do see that, don’t you, darling?’

  ‘I’m awfully tired,’ I said flatly; I saw that the front of my brown dress was torn, very slightly, and wondered who else might have noticed it.

  ‘We can hear all about it, bit by bit then,’ she remarked soothingly. ‘There’s going to be lots to talk about.’ And then, concealing her excitement in a flood of reminiscence, she exclaimed:

  ‘It sounds, you know, in a way rather like the sort of picnics I remember, Lucy! There was one in particular. It’s as vivid to me as yesterday – more vivid, in fact. I had this hat, Lucy, a straw one with streamers. Gervase kept borrowing it to shoo the flies away; it worked better than his boater, he said. And Tom and Bertie were there too, Lucy, and some girl cousins – Tinsdales. Then after we’d eaten, we all sat about and sang, and Tom acted the clown, as always. He nearly fell into the brook doing a Lew Hearn impression, falsetto. Singing “Hitchy Koo”–’ She paused: ‘That’s a tune I couldn’t hear now, Lucy, without thinking at once, of that hot, hot summer afternoon …’

  She sat up suddenly – fixing me with her gaze. ‘Oh, darling,’ she cried, ‘it could have been all right! It’s all been such a mess -but it could have been all right!’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The telephone woke me. Leaping out of bed I rushed downstairs, in the absurd certainty and dread that it was Richard; standing for a moment trembling before I lifted the receiver.

  But it was Elizabeth: ‘Lu – something awful’s happened. Really awful. I can’t say, not on the phone.’ In the background I heard Mrs Horsfall’s voice. She said hurriedly: ‘Can you meet me down the river for an ice, half ten!’

  I saw with surprise that it was already nine o’clock. I’d slept badly. Dry-mouthed, my head aching, I went into the kitchen to make my mother some breakfast.

  ‘Who telephoned?’ she asked as I came in with the tray. She began to cough almost at once; then like an echo, even a parody of my thoughts, she said: ‘I had rather hoped, Lucy, it might be Richard?’

  A little later – as so often in the wake of Patmore reminiscences – she asked anxiously, ‘You are going to Mass, aren’t you, Lucy?’

  She sat up, flipping over the pages of the Sunday Mail: ‘I had a terrible night. Otherwise, of course, I would go too.’

  Half an hour later, I hurried guiltily past the church. Everyone was just going in – missals clutched, hats balanced, dragging or pushing children.

  The weather was close and dull and down by the river a dry wind blew dust and waste paper round the café tables. Elizabeth was already waiting, and without asking me what I wanted, she went up and bought two fizzy oranges and two enormous sundaes. Digging into hers at once, savagely breaking up the elaborate mound of chocolate and synthetic cream:

  ‘Heck, Lu,’ she said. ‘Oh heck.’

  Her face was creased and she looked as if she’d been crying -her hair was uncombed.

  ‘I’ve done a daft thing, Lu. Right daft –’ she broke off, then glancing quickly around at the other tables:

  ‘Lu,’ she said quietly, ‘I think I’ve caught on –’

  There was silence for a moment. She gulped down a lot of her orange; then sitting hunched, she twirled her spoon round the softening mound of chocolate. I felt around woodenly for the right words but all I could think of was:

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She nodded. ‘Oh, heck,’ she said again; then she began to cry noisily, taking out a grubby handkerchief, sniffing, gulping, blowing.

  ‘Couldn’t it – just be held up? Like it said in that book –’

  ‘Two weeks last night, Lu. And don’t be daft,’ she said despairingly, ‘you know me and my monthlies. You could set the town clock by them, Lu.’ She chased up the last traces of ice cream: ‘I’ve felt sick too, Lu. Friday, that started – sort of poorly all the time I’m not eating. You know what? Real daft this. Last night I’d to go into the hotel kitchens, and just as I was coming out, I saw this piece of pig pie – ever such a size. And I ate it all, Lu – I couldn’t help it – all of it. Then I thought afterwards – ever such a daft joke, Lu – I thought, “Elizabeth, that proves it. You’re in pig all right…”’

  She gave a half-hearted giggle. We looked at each other; after a moment I pushed my ice cream towards her and she began spooning it in absentmindedly. Strangely for her, she wasn’t looking around the café at all. Out on the riverside path, beyond the striped awning, the crowds were milling about. Just near us some girls were dodging a pair of boys, chasing round between the chairs, knocking against the rickety tables.

  ‘Is it George?’ I asked.

  She was sitting quite still staring in front of her. ‘It was a dance,’ she said flatly. ‘After a dance at the hotel.’ She picked up her glass, swishing round the remains of orange. ‘– They’re smashing dances, you know, Lu. I always used to wish like, I wasn’t staff.’

  I passed my orange over to her; she drank it thirstily:

  ‘George was there,’ she said. ‘He hadn’t his son with him – just his wife and daughter – but he kept giving me that sort of you know – “I can’t notice you now, but” look. Then, while Pansy and her mam were getting their coats he came over to reception and I said I was off duty half one – and he said, “I’ll drive them home first” – meaning … Anyway he said he’d tell his wife some story about a business drink. He thought that was ever so funny, a right good laugh – and I saw then he was a bit tiddly. Only, you know –’ she frowned, ‘then we turned off the r
oad and it was just the usual carry on – only I couldn’t help feeling sort of proud like, Lu, him coming back like that – just for me. It made me excited like, you know – and he was breathing in this funny way. Ever so heavy and grunting. “Don’t fret yourself,” he kept saying. Then, suddenly, “Damn” he says, “I’ve nothing. Have you?”’

  She hiccuped loudly. ‘Honest, Lu, only he was right on top of me, I’d have laughed out loud. I mean -I ask you. As though I’d be carrying French letters around –’ She paused. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I know I’d only to say stop, Lu. But he’d not have heard. He’d got hold of me that tight. And then, a minute later – he’d done. Just like that, Lu, nothing to it. Just like that.’ She paused again. ‘Heck, I did feel bad. Awful.’ Then, with a touch of the old Elizabeth, she said: ‘And that cramped. A Rover’s not a Baby Austin – but it’s no double bed, Lu.’ She hiccuped again. ‘He looked quite poorly afterwards, mopping his face and not talking at all – it was awful, Lu. And I’d thought, you know, he’d be sorry he’d been rough like – that he’d say something. But he was all sulky. Heck, I was mad. Then, Lu, he didn’t come in all that week and I was real scared, and daft beggar that I am I go and ring him at work – he wasn’t pleased at all. He’d been ever so busy, he said – he sounded right vexed – and he was just off to Brussels. But that was three weeks ago, Lu, and of course the worry came the next week. And last night it was that bad, I got on the phone to his home. It was his wife answered, Lu. “Ho, ho,” she says, “George isn’t available at present. Can I take a message?” I nearly gave her one, Lu. “Tell him Elizabeth Horsfall’s caught on and what’s he going to do about it?” He’d have looked a right monkey, getting that one –’

  She tossed her head. Then jumping up, she went over to the counter and without asking me, bought two big sugary buns and some more fizzy orange.

  ‘If I wasn’t so bally frightened, I’d give it a shake. I would, Lu. Only – you can die like that, you know. I’d an auntie went that way – Cousin Elsie told me about it, last year. Before I was born it was.’ She bit into her bun: ‘Trust her – she didn’t tell me. Burst appendix she said it was. “Your poor Auntie that had perity-something”…’