Tea At Gunter's Read online

  Then as suddenly as it had begun, the bout would be over. She would have a migraine, or there would be a change in the weather, bringing on an attack of her asthma; or Father Casey would say something in his sermon. ‘We, of course, had our own chaplain. Father Ainslie. One would never have heard that kind of sentiment …’

  Another mood, one which I remember strongly and which would affect her for days at a time, was a kind of restless boredom; she’d stride about, to and fro (and she was big: with high heels, would have been taller than my father) like some giant tethered animal, possessed by a vast, undirected energy which days later, departing, would leave her worn out and languid.

  In this she was quite unlike my father. He, too, was often restless, so that when he was at home – admittedly as little as possible – the whole house would feel full of his suppressed, conserved energy. A banked-down fire. Waiting, waiting, waiting. My mother’s I thought of as self-destructive; his was self-preserving. And whether he was out drinking, playing snooker, singing choral works or letting rip his favourite music-hall songs, he brought with him always this sense of terrific, coiled-up vitality. As one of his friends said (for he was very popular – outside the house): ‘Let’s ask Peter Taylor, we say. If anyone does, he’ll make a go of the evening, will Peter.’

  The backdrop for all this was their unhappy marriage. As a child I’d thought quite simply that all families were like ours; later, equally simply, I’d wondered why ever they stayed together. Perhaps, I thought sometimes, the battlefield – strewn as it was with dead hopes – was a scene they needed? If so, it couldn’t have been for the sake of the heat or the noise, for most of the time a quiet coldness prevailed (although every now and then there would be a sortie when, shocking me, one or other would draw ammunition from their considerable arsenal).

  An only child – my brother had died four years before I was born – I stood unhappily in the middle; I don’t recall consciously being used as a weapon – certainly not by my father. On the other hand if there was a war, then my mother could be said in one sense to have won it: for when in 1937 I’d gone to Gunter’s for that first tea, I’d been my father’s child. By 1945, when we went back there again, I was hers – and hers alone.

  I still didn’t please her, though; the difference now was that I tried – I cared. I minded passionately that, from happiness, she should have come to this misery; and whenever I saw her, soft, tremulous, eager, sitting opposite Uncle Gervase, then I would grow soft too: thinking how she had been exiled from Paradise; vowing that one day, somehow, I would make her happy again.

  But although so completely hers, there were some small pockets of rebellion – private areas not amenable to her influence. My friendship with Elizabeth Horsfall for instance, whom she disliked (that my father thought highly of her, admired her vivacity, only made matters worse). ‘She’s so vulgar, Lucy,’ she would say.

  Another cause for her concern and complaint was something which seemed to me the most natural thing in the world: my Yorkshire accent. Elizabeth had one, my father had one, everyone about me seemed to have one; and although I’d realized vaguely that my mother spoke differently, I’d never consciously noticed it. Her voice was just – my mother’s voice. Not that my accent was particularly marked: merely twenty-odd years ahead of the fashion – but my short ‘a’s’ irritated her, and at intervals over the years she’d threatened me with speech lessons. Then in 1948 she brought up the subject yet again, as part of a more general worry: my future.

  Elizabeth and I had just left school. She’d gone, immediately, decisively, into receptionist work at the King’s Head, a country hotel several miles out of Bratherton. But for myself, I hadn’t a single idea of what I’d like to do. Unattractively timid by nature, I trusted vaguely that something would come along, without very much hope that I’d like it when it did. My mother on the contrary, was full of ambitions for me, most of which she presented as already achieved (she was always rather better on destinations than journeys), but which after a short period of enthusiasm would be discarded. We ended up with shorthand and typing which had been one of the first, obvious suggestions. There was a good, sound place in Leeds, which my father could afford; but this she sniffed at:

  ‘You’ll get nowhere from there, Lucy. It wouldn’t widen your contacts at all.’

  Instead she began to talk, longingly and hopelessly, about another and quite different secretarial college: the White Rose.

  Only a few miles away, in Harrogate (near the Pump Room), the White Rose Secretarial College offered on its syllabus – as well as shorthand, typing and book-keeping – flower arrangement, history of art, etiquette (including, I’d once heard, the correct way to eat globe artichokes) and French conversation. The fees were enormous.

  ‘Thank God we’ve not the money,’ said my father, reading the prospectus. ‘All the ruddy place does is keep poor little rich girls out of mischief.’

  He was probably right. I knew the place of course. Although I’d never actually met anyone who’d been there, the name cropped up regularly enough in the local papers. ‘… is to be presented this summer … recently completed a course at the White Rose … hopes to be accepted at the White Rose this autumn…’

  Some of these girls my mother dismissed at once: ‘Clogs to clogs in three generations-that family has risen much too quickly!’ or ‘Her parents are in trade, Lucy,’ or ‘Why do people think money can buy breeding?’ But the place itself held for her an aura. Corridors of possibilities. At the very least, it would place me in contact with people who hadn’t been to a grammar school, weren’t short of money and, in the main, didn’t have accents. And from such a beginning what might I not achieve?

  ‘You’ll maybe let me know then – when you’ve decided,’ said my father sarcastically.

  He was quite safe. There wasn’t the money for it, and that was that. And secretly I was glad.

  It didn’t stop my mother talking about it however. That summer, walking through Hyde Park on our way to Gunter’s, she harked back to the subject continually, irritably, in between telling me off for waddling. ‘You look like a duck,’ she said crossly, as I walked, hips thrust forward in an attempt to make my short summer dress nearer to the New Look which I could see everywhere about me.

  But once inside Gunter’s – all was forgotten; as usual I might as well have not been there. It was Uncle Gervase who paid me attention – asking me solicitously what I was going to do with myself now that I’d left school?

  I murmured something about shorthand, typing –

  He turned suddenly to my mother:

  ‘Look, Winifred – about this White Star place.’ He stirred his tea wildly, the spoon clattering against the cup, ‘the – the one you mentioned in your letter. I’ve been wondering … Are the fees awfully high?’

  ‘Oh, there!’ cried my mother, as if to dismiss it at once; contemptuously almost: ‘Oh, there! Ninety, perhaps a hundred pounds a term. Quite absurd …’

  She looked down at her hands. He was silent for a moment, then,

  ‘Would you – could you, do you think –’ He hesitated, his face twitching. Then nervously, in a rush: ‘Look – do you think you could let me pay, Winifred?’

  My mother’s face creased. I thought for a moment that she was going to cry, but she concentrated instead on pulling down her hat – pushed up continually by her thick hair. Her mouth still working, she said:

  ‘It’s – I… I couldn’t, Gervase. It’s –’ Then in a choking voice: ‘Darling – you can’t. Gervase!’

  I looked away, not being able to bear it for her. At the next table a couple – son in khaki and new Sam Browne, mother in a tulle hat – were arguing fiercely, their anger barely concealed. I fixed my attention onto them. But Uncle Gervase, turning to me again suddenly, asked: smiling encouragingly, bushy eyebrows raised: ‘What do you think, Lucy? Should you – should you like to go there?’

  But before I could speak, my mother said for me: ‘Of course she would, Gervase.
It’s the sort of chance, you see – you know, I’d thought …’ To my horror, I saw that tears were running slowly down her cheeks, driving a pathway through the pale powder.

  ‘Look here, it’s the convent, you know. It appears they’re doing frightfully well. They want to expand. Buy some more Patmore land,’ trying to reassure her, he waved his arms about, his bony wrists shooting back and forth as he gestured. ‘My – my solicitor’s arranging a sale. Very favourably I shouldn’t wonder. And my own living expenses at the cottage – they’re not great at all.’ He paused, his chin jutting forward, ‘Look, I’d like awfully to do this, Winifred –’

  ‘Besides,’ he added, when she didn’t answer; his head nodding vigorously: ‘who else is there in the family – now?’

  This reference to her family had an immediate effect on my mother: blowing her nose loudly, she said that of course we’d accept. Then Uncle Gervase, as if relieved of some burden began talking at once in a rapid, staccato manner. Little sentences, unconnected, fragmentary. Several times he asked me about the White Rose – or White Star as he called it, but without waiting for an answer. He even tried a joke –

  My mother smiled palely throughout; she seemed overcome still, unable to look directly at him, every now and then blinking rapidly to keep back the tears.

  Tea over, he became even more excited. Asking us, eagerly, if we couldn’t both, just this once, stay on? His club could find a hotel; book dinner; telegraph …

  ‘We could all go to a theatre. There’s a – a show the Americans have put on. I hear it’s rather jolly. Oklahoma I believe they call it. And by all accounts, the convent girls –’

  He looked from one to the other of us, his face suffused with excitement: ‘What do you say? Winifred? Lucy?’

  But my mother, flustered, explained that we couldn’t possibly. There was no question of it: ‘You see, Peter could – if he were to get angry, Gervase, he might – could stop all this!’

  She was crying again. Flustered himself now, Uncle Gervase put us in a taxi, and insisted on coming with us. When we got out at King’s Cross, he underpaid the driver by mistake and then greatly embarrassed, overtipped him grossly, the coins spilling in a shower on the taxi step. As he waved us goodbye, my mother was openly crying, and I thought too that I saw tears in his eyes.

  But only about an hour out of London, she livened suddenly, her distress giving way to an almost manic gaiety.

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ she kept saying, arranging the fingers of her gloves, pulling and smoothing them … Her voice shook: ‘Such generosity, Lucy!’

  She was full of wild, extravagant ideas; wondrous things which would come to pass: ‘As soon as you have the diploma, you must go to London,’ she exclaimed, filling me with fear.

  She chattered on, my lack of enthusiasm unnoticed. She became subdued only when she remembered that my father would have to be told. ‘He wouldn’t accept money from Gervase, you understand that, Lucy?’

  After some thought however, she came up with an idea. ‘An inspiration.’ ‘It can be a legacy,’ she said. ‘That’s it, Lucy – a legacy! Perfectly reasonable – and just possible. A distant cousin, I should think. Some Patmore connection he doesn’t know of.’ She warmed to her plot. ‘It could come by second post, while he’s out – I have the name of the family solicitors put away somewhere.’

  She leant forward, chin cupped in her hand, eyes shining. ‘Lucy, darling – it’s going to be all right!’

  But I didn’t in the slightest want to go to the White Rose: and now that it was a possibility, I felt terrified.

  As soon as I woke next morning, I decided to try and disinfect my news by telling it to Elizabeth. I’d heard my father leave the house early: one of his occasional days fishing – an act of kindness to Frank Tucker.

  I went in to my mother: she was lying in bed, Pugin our ageing cat curled up at her feet. She had a severe headache; ‘too much excitement, Lucy.’

  But she seemed cheerful enough. Consoled that she was happy, I kept quiet about where I was going.

  The Horsfall home was only about five minutes’ walk away, on the main road out of Bratherton. I took my bicycle though, because usually Elizabeth and I decided to go off somewhere, to escape her mother.

  The front door was open. There was no sign of anyone about so I went through to the kitchen, where I found Mrs Horsfall. Sleeves rolled up, she was making pastry. She lifted a floury hand at me then pushing past, she called up the stairs loudly: ‘Here’s Lucy come, Elizabeth!’

  I tried then to go straight on up, but her bulky uncorseted figure, with its crown of dark frizzy hair, blocked the doorway.

  ‘Put the kettle on, love,’ she said. ‘And sit you down. She’s not out of her bed yet.’

  I took a chair reluctantly: the warm kitchen was full of the heavy smell which always hung about Mrs Horsfall. Strong, sour. For years now I hadn’t been able to eat a biscuit in their house, because once I’d seen her offer the tin round with the lid tucked under her arm and had been sure afterwards I could taste her mixed with the ginger.

  Nowadays, quite irrationally, I’d come to connect this smell with the vague but forceful views she held on nature cure, food reform and the healthy life generally. Not that she had any views which weren’t forceful – recently I’d been hearing a great deal of them: ever since she’d taken to having what she called ‘little talks’ with me. Although these could be on any topic and often were, their purpose was always the same – to find out what Elizabeth was up to; that she never seemed to learn anything from me didn’t discourage her at all. But today, she began by enquiring politely after my mother, whom I knew she disliked. ‘Very nice – a trip to London,’ she said, raising her eyebrows. Then with hardly a pause she went on:

  ‘Lucy, this hotel job, now. I’m not sure it’ll do at all. Twice-cooked food and odd hours. Very odd hours.’ She shook some flour over the board: ‘She’ll not have been bothering with Nature’s call, that’s for certain – she’ll be full of impurities. Everything upset. But she’ll not listen to me, Lucy. It really fashes me. Yesterday, I said to her: “You’re to come into Harrogate next week, Miss, the Royal Baths. We’ll have you irrigated –”’

  Elizabeth walked in. ‘Heck,’ she said angrily. ‘If it’s not boys – it’s bowels.’

  She crossed over to where the kettle, boiling now, was spitting over the range. ‘Wotcher, Lu,’ she said, pulling a face behind her mother’s back. When she’d made the tea she offered round the biscuit tin, scooping up a handful for herself first.

  ‘Lucy doesn’t clog herself up with sweet things,’ commented Mrs Horsfall. Elizabeth took no notice. Gulping down her tea, she mouthed at me: ‘I’ve met a smashing boy …’ Then out loud she said:

  ‘Lu and me are going down by the river, Mam.’

  This seemed to please Mrs Horsfall, who was always telling us that fresh air was free. As we went to get ready, she called after us that we weren’t to sit in any stuffy cafés. ‘She’ll be lucky,’ muttered Elizabeth.

  A few minutes later we left. Pedalling along the wide road with its Georgian houses, on through the traffic, past the turning leading up to the town, then freewheeling down the steep leaf-shaded hill to the river.

  Bratherton in the summer was a very busy place. An old market town, it was full of history: sightseers came by the charabanc load to visit the 14th-century castle, perched on the sandstone cliff, or to see the hermit’s cave which later had become a murderer’s refuge. They strolled thickly along the riverside buying china souvenirs and pink rock, or walked through the beechwoods to see the famous well – gazing wonderingly at the collection of hats, shoes, gloves, parasols, teddy-bears, even animal corpses, which over the years had been turned to stone by the lime water which dripped non-stop from the rocks above.

  But nowadays neither Elizabeth nor I bothered with the sights. In season, we always made straight for the riverside, with its bustle, its cafés, souvenir shops, rowing boats, punts, canoes. Elizabeth parti
cularly loved it there. Last summer and the summer before, whenever we’d the money we had hired one of the punts, then she’d made me take the pole, while she kept a keen look-out for likely boys in rowing boats, who seeing how badly we were doing, might offer us a tow.

  Today, as soon as we reached the river, she stopped at a milk bar and although we’d only just been drinking tea ordered buns and strawberry ices. There were no boys in the café, but as she stood at the counter she kept turning round and looking at the path beyond the striped awning. I knew that if any did come in, they would notice her even though she was wearing old clothes and no make up, for as she’d told me so many times: she had the one thing that really mattered; the thing without which all the cosmetics and clothes in the world were useless. ‘I’ve got sex appeal, Lu.’

  Of me, she despaired. For about three years now she’d been trying to teach me basic techniques. ‘I know it’s easy for me, Lu – only with that hair – heck, you shouldn’t have to try even.’ But I never did anything right. I couldn’t sway my hips, I couldn’t wink convincingly; worst of all, when I did get noticed, I never knew the right thing to say. ‘I give up, I really do,’ she would say, after a morning’s work had yielded only two soldiers – both of them asking her to go out.

  Leader and led, that was the arrangement: and had been always; right from the far-off days of 1939 when, just evacuated from Hull, she’d arrived at the Council school in the middle of the Christmas term. With her high colour, her large features (Mrs Horsfall’s, refined by dilution with Mr Horsfall’s mousey ones), her mop of frizzy hair, and her big new front teeth, she’d been instantly noticed; and within two weeks – pushing out of place a blonde, chubby girl with Shirley Temple ringlets – she’d become queen of the playground.