Tea At Gunter's Read online

  She didn’t mention Juliet, as I’d feared. Quentin did however:

  ‘You have surprised us, Lucy Locket! I shut up shop for a week, and come back to find Cornwall Road in an uproar. And the final rout of Blackett’s,’ he added (Richard wasn’t there), ‘that was the best work of all, Locket.’ He looked at me, eyebrows raised. His expression was warm, affectionate, but I could have wished he hadn’t made the remark.

  Letters began to arrive. There was nothing from Elizabeth though, and she hadn’t answered my note. Nobody had heard from Juliet; I rather hoped they wouldn’t. Jennifer, in an excited scrawl, wrote: ‘You dark horse! Ring me up soon, and tell me all about it – we must meet.’ There was even a letter from Miss Metcalfe. Wishing me every happiness, she still wasn’t able to resist an allusion to the White Rose training: I would find, she said, that it would stand me in good stead – in any sort of future I might have.

  ‘My God,’ said Quentin, reading it, ‘imagination boggles.’

  ‘Yours doesn’t,’ said Nell, lovingly.

  ‘Winifred’s girl, you know,’ said Uncle Gervase to the waitress, his head bobbing from one of us to the other. Then, waving the menu card agitatedly, he began to give a confused order: every few seconds breaking off to congratulate Richard; ‘Such splendid news!’ or chin jutting out, to ask me anxiously, ‘Winifred. Winifred. How is my Winifred?’ The waitress looked suitably puzzled. Eventually, he finished, only to call after her almost immediately – his voice sounding unnaturally loud:

  ‘I say – could you possibly – also. Some ices?’ Richard and I trying to explain that no, really, we didn’t want anything more, were unable to stop him; as ever people were turning round to look, but for once – for the first time in fact -I wasn’t ashamed. Richard, who didn’t seem at all embarrassed, was very gentle with him.

  When we’d first come into Gunter’s, ourselves five minutes early, Uncle Gervase had already been waiting half an hour; even then he’d seemed very over-excited.

  Now, This really is absolutely splendid!’ he said again, ‘tremendous!’ The nuns: he’d told the nuns and a Mass was being said. ‘Be sure to tell Winifred that.’

  He darted from subject to subject: ‘Alice, ah yes, Alice. A tomboy. Rather a tomboy. And Charles –’ The waitress brought the order: ‘This looks jolly good …’ Then ‘I think you said Ampleforth – I have this very good story about Benedictines. Alice nursed, went to Serbia – it was Serbia? Charles was Stonyhurst, you see. My contemporary. A – a superb slip fielder. You couldn’t I think have known Charles –’ Then, confused, distracted by memory he said again: ‘Ampleforth’; his arm shooting out suddenly, narrowly missing the milk jug, ‘This story now -I have this story. A Jesuit and a Benedictine – both terrific smokers. And – and they felt it the most enormous hardship, you see, wanting to smoke when they should be praying, so the Benedictine went to his abbot. “Father,” he said, “do – do you think that I might be permitted to – to smoke, while I’m meditating?” “No” said the abbot at once – he was quite shocked, you see, “I forbid it absolutely.” No go. But meanwhile the – the Jesuit has been to his superior. “Father,” he’d said, “I wonder – would it be in order if -I were to meditate, while I’m smoking?”’

  He paused. ‘It’s rather good, don’t you think? I -I get all these stories from the girls, you know.’ He flapped his sandwich about: a piece of cucumber dropped into his cup; he seemed quite unaware.

  ‘Now look,’ he said suddenly. ‘Winifred. Is she getting better? These tests? Is she halfway fit again?’ He waited anxiously for our answers; he was looking all about him, and I thought I saw tears in his eyes. But when he spoke again, it was to ask me, very concernedly, about the White Rose.

  ‘This – this White Star place. Was it any good? Winifred seemed to think so, you know. Languages. Wasn’t it languages? You liked it?’

  ‘Good, good. That’s jolly good.’ Helping himself to more sugar, he rattled the tongs against the side of the bowl. Two lumps splashed into his cup.

  It was splendid of us to come, he said. All this trouble. He’d put everyone to the most enormous trouble. Suppose, perhaps, the three of us were to come to Patmore? A visit. ‘It would be awfully jolly, you know, if you could.’ But when Richard said: ‘Well, we’re rather hoping, sir, that you’ll be able to come to us, for the wedding’, this seemed to confuse him. Fussed, he knocked his tea cup, the pale liquid slopping into the saucer.

  He would have to see. It depended – on a number of things. Something to do with a gardener. Possibly the nuns could… well, you know, if he could be spared.

  His knobbly fingers, with their enlarged knuckles, drummed on the edge of the table. I was touched by what he obviously felt was his importance in the life of Patmore.

  He was still agitated when we parted. He’d bought my mother some chocolates; I’d got her some crystallized violets. ‘Does she -does Winifred still like those?’ It seemed to jog his memory: ‘I wonder, would she? Would Winifred?’ Then Richard invited him to dine with us that night, and he was thrown into a fresh panic.

  No, no he said. He assured us excitedly, he was doing something else. Yes, he was certain he was. Moving back suddenly, jerkily; stepping off the kerb, almost into the traffic.

  We were to spend the night with an aunt of Richard’s, in Knightsbridge. She was the widow of his father’s brother, so that I couldn’t hope this time to be helped by any family resemblances.

  But, yet again, all went well. We sat over drinks in the long drawing-room. His aunt smoked a lot, and was very smart, dressed with an expensive carelessness which made me wonder why Juliet had ever impressed me. I felt easy with her at once: more interested in me than the Inglesons had been, she gave the impression that if Richard had chosen me, then her approval could be taken for granted. She teased him a little: he led a very staid life, she said: ‘Incorrigibly upright – like Bernard.’

  Now, when I think of those two days in London, it is as an idyll. Elated, in a dream world, I saw all the sights, sounds, scents of that hot, dusty July evening, as part of the glamour.

  We were to have dinner at Rules. (Gervase, I thought, would have enjoyed that.) Before, Richard said:

  ‘If there’s any sort of place you’d like to go to first – any sort of name – just ask. Bentley’s for instance? Oysters. There won’t be any natives this month, but – if you’d like to go there?’

  I was dazed with happiness. I felt sometimes that my breath was held, suspended, that I would never breathe again.

  Of Rules, I remember almost nothing. The Edwardian atmosphere, the signed photographs, the caricatures, the old theatre bills: an impression of dark plush velvet, of courteously superior waiters – they were all just the backdrop for our enchanted, romantic plan-making.

  Over claret, we discussed where to go for the honeymoon. Richard loved travel agents’ brochures – he’d go to Cook’s, he said: get a great pile of them.

  Perhaps, after all, we could get married sooner than January? It was certainly something to think about:

  ‘Because, you see, you’re sure. You are sure, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure …’

  The evening was nearly over. Richard was looking at my ring: my hands cupped round a brandy balloon.

  ‘It won’t come off,’ I said.

  He suggested, a little anxious: ‘Shouldn’t you try to remove it?’ He tugged a little, and I winced.

  ‘It’s very simple, you know, to get it enlarged. We can go to the family jeweller –’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ I had in fact worn it several days now, since the announcement. ‘Anyway, I feel safer with it on.’

  Richard looked puzzled; I wondered too what I could have meant. ‘Less likely to lose it,’ I said hastily, and he laughed.

  From Maiden Lane, a taxi home.

  ‘Happy, darling?’ In Piccadilly, the lights flashed bewilderingly, beautifully: Richard had wanted me to see them – on again now after nearly ten years.
Before the War, I’d been too young.

  How Elizabeth would have loved them, I thought with a stab of conscience; remembering her now, worrying about her, for the first time that day.

  Next morning at King’s Cross, I was standing at the door of the train waiting for Richard who’d gone to buy papers and magazines. It was hot weather again; the group of tartan-capped soldiers milling about the entrance hall looked creased, uncomfortable. Richard, coming into view, lifted his free arm in greeting. I waved back.

  And at that moment, without any warning, panic overtook me. Immediate, total, suffocating: I could feel it as he came into the compartment, leant towards me, as I smelt the familiar scent of his hair, his skin, his hands. The words came clearly into my head: ‘One day – he may not be here,’ and I sat, heart drumming in terror at the thought that I might ever be separate from him.

  Such strong emotion; surely he would notice?

  But he was settling himself, stretching his legs, looking at his watch:

  ‘Shall we risk the coffee?’

  Yes, I said, of course.

  As far as he could see, he said, British Railways weren’t much improvement on the L.N.E.R. ‘But still –’

  Slowly, very gradually, the panic subsided. The train moved out and we settled down. He’d bought me a copy of Vogue and prolonging the idyll, relishing the glossy feel of the paper, I began to choose my trousseau – what I would buy if money were no object; then coming upon a menu for a dinner party, and appalled at the realization, exclaiming: ‘But I can’t cook!’

  No hurry, Richard said, there was no hurry; laughing, tolerant, tender:

  ‘Perhaps though – if we’re thinking, you know, of advancing the date, darling – we ought to see about perhaps, winding up your job with the Gnome?’

  The air was stifling in the train in spite of all possible windows open. For the last hour or so I slept heavily, waking just before we reached York, feeling refreshed, peaceful. We walked along the platform, Richard carrying the luggage, me the magazines. He said:

  ‘How I used to love – still do – those stairs up-to the bridge. Do you know? The ones with tin advertisements under the treads -Fry’s cocoa, Mazawattee tea –’

  He broke off. ‘Hallo, hallo,’ he said, laughing, ‘There’s a surprise –’ I looked over: Alice Ingleson was standing just by the ticket barrier; ‘That’s not like her. It’s Women’s Institute day. What ever?’

  She’d seen us now and was striding over purposefully: she was wearing an old white linen sun hat pulled well down, and looked hot and distracted.

  She kissed us both briefly: ‘The car’s outside,’ she told Richard.

  ‘Okay, I’ll drive.’

  She had taken hold of my arm: in her grip I felt a sudden return of my panic. When she said, almost at once: ‘I have some bad news, I’m afraid –’ I knew then that I’d known she had.

  In a brisk, antiseptic voice, her face turned away from mine, she told me that my mother had died.

  ‘Very suddenly, my dear. This morning – You and Richard had already left –’

  Her hand was still on my arm like a weight. There was the clanking and rattling of a station trolley behind us; we stood back for it. Richard had hold of my other arm:

  ‘All right, darling, all right.’

  I couldn’t see from the cars outside, which was theirs. ‘Which car is it?’ I said, twice, ‘which car is it?’

  Then, I was huddled on the back seat. ‘You drive,’ Richard was saying to his mother. ‘I’ll sit with her.’ I still had hold of the magazines; my hand released them suddenly and they fell, open and twisted, the pages spreading out on the floor of the car. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry …’

  Richard bent to pick them up. I could see, looking at me, a grinning face with cherry lips. Snapping the page shut, he bundled them all to the back.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said again. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  I had been used to her ill health for years: hadn’t, really, taken it very seriously. Nuisance migraine, nuisance asthma (the darkened room, the Roger’s spray): distressing as they were, they weren’t killers.

  And yet, early that morning, in the midst of such violent happiness, she had had a sudden, very severe asthmatic attack – she’d gone into what they called ‘status asthmaticus’. Two hours later, she was dead.

  They took me back to Cornwall Road, I remember standing in the hall – the three of us, by the big green vase with a crack in it which served as an umbrella stand; there was a smell of stew coming from above and below the baize door leading to the kitchen.

  ‘I must ring my father,’ I said, thinking of him suddenly – the first real thought I’d had since getting into the car; I had an image of him: shocked, desolate, wanting me at once.

  Alice Ingleson said something to Richard in a low voice.

  ‘Okay then. You deal with it.’

  He brought me through into the drawing-room, sat me on the sofa, then bringing me a glass of brandy, sat down beside me, his arm round my shoulders. I had begun to shiver: ‘Try some. Drink a bit, darling.’ I sipped: tonight it was bitter, medicinal. I drank all of it, very quickly; Richard, stroking my face, my hair, said, ‘I know, I know.’ Out in the hall, I could hear Alice Ingleson on the telephone. He said: ‘She’s told Jowett you won’t be in tomorrow.’

  She came back into the room: I was to stay the night with them, she said; her voice had a gentle edge to its efficiency. My father would come to see me early the next morning.

  I sat on – it must have been half an hour or more; I was frozen inside, could feel the hard lump of ice, solid, pressing, painful. Bernard Ingleson came home, and I saw his wife take him aside. Then he was back in the room – the air full of murmured condolences. At supper, conversation was restrained, tactful, solicitous; I stared at my stew with its irrelevant greasy colours, unappetizing in the heat. Someone said: ‘Try and eat a little.’

  After the meal – it was still only half past eight – Alice Ingleson looked out a play on the wireless. We all sat politely and listened. Billed as a comedy, it wasn’t I remember, very suitable: there were a lot of jokes of the ‘bumping old so and so off’ and ‘you’re better off dead’ variety. But after it, they let me go to bed.

  I was to have Nell’s room, as the guest room wasn’t aired. I hadn’t been in there since the dance: Nell’s belongings were everywhere; Alice Ingleson, coming in with a hot drink and some sleeping pills apologized for the untidiness: ‘Quentin is welcome to put up with it.’

  Richard, holding me close, asked: ‘Shall I stay with you – sit here, till the pills work?’

  I shook my head: I would be all right, truly.

  At first I lay between the sheets quite rigid; stabs of feeling coming and going; little cracks in the ice; but I still couldn’t cry.

  Then after a while I got out of bed and going over to the suitcase, took out the crystallized violets. What to do with them? Alongside, lay the chocolates Gervase had bought her. What to do with those? The problem struck me suddenly as enormous, the possibilities endless. Perhaps they should be destroyed, or hidden; buried with her, sent back to Gervase, donated to a hospital? Perhaps this, perhaps that, perhaps the other?

  I was still worrying at it, when what seemed hours later, I fell at last into a drugged, dreamless sleep.

  My father came the next morning; I’d been hovering around waiting and let him in before he rang the bell. Alice Ingleson had already gone out to keep an appointment, the housekeeper was nowhere about, and a woman I’d never seen before was banging the Hoover round the drawing-room: too nervous to ask if we could go in there, I took him instead into the small study where, in December, Quentin had upbraided me over the Italian dress. We stood and looked at each other.

  They’ve a big place here,’ he remarked awkwardly. ‘Bigger than you’d think from the outside.’

  His face was very drawn, and that he should be so pale shocked me. His eyes were tired, bloodshot, hi
s hair uncombed, and there was a long shaving cut on his chin. Looking away from me, he sat down suddenly in the swivel chair and taking out a packet of cigarettes, lit up at once. There was an alabaster ashtray on the desk – I pushed it towards him, and noticed that his hand holding the cigarette was trembling. I wondered suddenly, against all hope, if perhaps by some miracle he had really loved her all along?

  Crushing in his other hand the packet of Gold Flake, he launched straightaway into practicalities: the plans for the funeral, what they’d said at the nursing home, what Dr Varley had said.

  He made some remark about Bratherton church and I said:

  ‘Isn’t there – wasn’t there – something about being buried at Patmore?’

  ‘No – there wasn’t,’ he said shortly.

  We were both silent for a moment. Then, without looking at me, and as if talking to himself: ‘What a rotten, ruddy mess,’ he said explosively. ‘What a marriage! What do you blame for a muck-up like that, eh?’ When I said nothing: ‘A marriage that was dodgy from the start – and before.’ His hand was still trembling. Stubbing out his cigarette he took another; it was almost flattened. He tried to coax it back into shape:

  ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said suddenly, looking at me directly now. ‘I knew it was no go. Right from when she ran off, cocked a snook at Patmore. I knew it. Knew it in my stomach. And I could have got out then. If she’d turned up in the flesh at Patmore, they’d have had her back right enough. Only there was no telling me anything those days. Twenty, and stuffed with romantic notions. Stuffed with them from here to here, and a sucker for anything that wasn’t blood or mud or death. That was me. Patmore – the flowers that bloom in the spring. They bloomed at Patmore all right –’

  He was talking very fast; I wondered if perhaps he’d been drinking. But there was no smell of alcohol. He seemed more shocked than anything: looking at some point beyond me, through me.

  ‘I’ve been a fool, and a knave,’ he said. ‘Lately though –’ he paused. ‘Lately – mostly knave.’