afford. We were not over-paying her, yet after a few months
she was delighted to find that she had quite a tolerable credit
46
balance, while the issued pin-money was sometimes more
than she needed.
I returned from my summer holiday to learn that her
credit card had been stolen; she told me with pride, however,
that she had not been foolish about it in my absence,
having resolutely refused to speak on the telephone to those
silly, rude men from the credit card place who kept trying
to ring her up. I rang them up. The thief had been caught in
Brighton, but not before he had cost the bank �528. I asked
them what they expected if they issued cards to people like
Mrs Taswell. The loss remained, of course, theirs and not
hers: nor, incredibly, did they make any bones about issuing
her with a new card.
Mrs Taswell, who was by no means a bad-looking woman
- rather the reverse - never upset customers (though she
often formed the most extraordinary ideas and resentments
about them, which, since she usually told them to me, I used
to do my best to de-fuse). She could certainly type a letter.
Indeed, she was a perfectionist and would sometimes type
it two or three times, while I sat fidgeting and looking at my
watch. (One could insist on signing and sending Mark I, but
this was apt to upset her to the verge of tears.) The truth
about the filing dawned on me only slowly. 'Mr Desland,' she
would say with an air of grave and conscientious responsibility,
'I'm afraid I haven't been able to bring the filing up
to date just for the moment. We've been very busy, as you
know, and I really thought - I'm sure you'll agree - that it
was more important to re-arrange those jugs: they didn't
look at all right on that shelf.' Or 'Yes, I can certainly type
that for you, Mr Desland. Of course, you do realize that that
will mean that I shan't be able to get at the filing today?'
The fact was that she was not capable of understanding the
contents of the papers, let alone of allocating them to the
appropriate files. But the ingenuity of her pretexts - unconscious,
in my belief - showed talent.
She was, indeed, a strange woman, and had about her
something of the holy fool.
Young Deirdre, understandably, did not terribly care for
47
Mrs Taswell. I read her a lecture on the importance of being
able to get on with colleagues ('Just as important a part of
the job as selling') and, partly so that she couldn't accuse me
in her own mind of requiring her to do what I wasn't prepared
to do myself, used to chat with Mrs T. while she
handled stock or watered the fern-garden (which she kept
beautifully). One day I gave her, to return for me by post,
six or seven joke-illustrations and cartoons lent to me by a
friend, a professional draughtsman in London. One showed
a row of little angels, of whom the last was wearing a
grubby robe, with the caption, 'Someone's mother isn't using
Lamb's Blood'. Later that day she said, with slight hesitation
but complete self-possession and no trace of emotion, 'I
hope you don't mind my mentioning it, Mr Desland, but I
can't help wondering whether your friend really understands
the full extent of that terrible sacrifice.' I felt like an arms
millionaire brought face to face with Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
I replied, 'Well, I don't know about him, Mrs Taswell,
but I assure you that I for one sincerely accept your rebuke.'
The incident had a lasting effect on me. In any case, flippancy
is a shallow and inferior style of humour.
On this particular morning I had arrived to find on several
shelves, including one in the antiques corner, printed cards,
measuring about six inches by three and reading, in Gothic
script:
Lovely to look at,
Delightful to hold,
But if you drop it,
Sorry, we say it's 'SOLD! !'
'Where did these come from, Deirdre?'
'I reckon she must've sent for they, Mistralan. They come
in the post s'mornin', an' she's bin all round putt'n' 'em up,
like.'
The cards were marked on the back, 'With the friendly
compliments of-' (one of our wholesalers). I was just explaining
to Mrs Taswell that while I thought them a splendid
idea in principle, perhaps the two of us could design
something better as well as unique to our own premises (with
48
any luck she'd forget about it in a day or two), when I glanced
up and saw Barbara Stannard looking at me with a smile
that clearly included some amusement.
I knew Barbara to the extent that everybody knows everybody
else in a small provincial town (or even, perhaps, as an
American at Oxford once told another in my hearing, 'in a
small country like this'). She was the daughter of a gunsmith
and sports-tackle merchant, whose premises were not
far from ours in Northbrook Street. The Stannards lived out
near Chieveley and were well-to-do. Barbara drove her own
M.G., played a good deal of tennis in summer and sang well
enough to be given decent parts in the local amateur operatic
society. She was slim and fair, with a brilliant colouring
that might have been called florid except that it suited her
very well. Although I had met her from time to time at
parties and concerts, I knew little more about her except that
she was generally reckoned a nice girl.
'Am I interrupting, Alan?' she asked. 'If you're busy I
can easily look round for a bit until you're free. If you hear a
loud crash, just shout "Sold again!" '
'Nice to see you, Barbara,' I said. Mrs Taswell, selfpossessed
as ever, made her way down the glass passage,
gathering up the cards as she went, apparently with never a
thought for any possible tee-heeing on the part of Deirdre.
'Can I sell you a forty-two-piece dinner service, or just a
handsome tin plate for the cat?'
'It's Mother's birthday on Friday, Alan, and I was thinking
she might like a piece of antique china. Someone told
me you've started going in for the real thing, and I'd rather
get it from you than trek off to one of the Yank traps at
Wokingham or Hungerford. I'm sure you give better value.'
What she bought, in the end, was an eighteenth-century
New Hall cup and saucer, whose vivid, deep-pink and green
decoration struck me as entirely suited to herself, whether
or not it might be to her mother. She asked several sensible
questions and seemed genuinely interested in my modest
stock.
Next week she came in again and bought a beautiful little
earthenware copper lustre jug with blue and gold enamelling.
49
I explained that it was late nineteenth-century and not really
a piece of much antique interest or value.
'I don't care a hoot,' she said. 'I love the shape. It's got
what I'd call a desirable comeliness, wouldn't you? I shall
put snowdrops in
it.'
This seemed to show the rudiments of good judgement. I
lent her my copy of Haggar's English Country Pottery and
a week later took her out to dinner at The Bull at Streatley.
I remember we talked about Staffordshire, and I went on
to tell her how the newly-established Bow factory of the
seventeen-forties had employed immigrant potters from
Burslem and Stoke.
'But those must have been very humble, ordinary sort of
men, surely?' she asked. 'How on earth do we know anything
about them and their movements at all?'
'Well, various ways - parish registers, for one. Entries like
Phoebe Parr.'
'Who was Phoebe Parr?'
'Samuel Parr was a potter whose daughter Phoebe was
christened at Burslem in 1750. She was buried at St Mary's,
Bow, in 1753. Both entries are in the parish registers. There
are a lot of things like that - not all so sad, thank goodness.'
'Poor little Phoebe! D'you think the journey may have
been too much for her?'
'We'll never know, will we? During the seventeen-forties
and 'fifties there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing by those
chaps between London and the Potteries. Careless Simpson,
now he's important -'
'Why on earth was he called that? Did he drop the pots
or something?'
'He was Carlos Simpson really, but it was entered "Careless"
at his baptism at Chelsea in 1747. His father, Aaron
Simpson, had come down from the Potteries.'
'I reckon Aaron was the careless one.'
'He may not have been able to read. I suppose the parish
clerk had never heard of "Carlos" and was too proud or
in too much of a hurry to ask.'
'Caught up with him, hasn't it?'
As the spring advanced and the chiff-chaff duly showed
50
up, the ribes and forsythia bloomed in the blackthorn winter
and the other warblers returned, I spent more and more
time in Barbara's company. She came to dinner at Bull Banks
two or three times and got on well with my father and
mother, who seemed pleased by our friendship. I remember
my father giving her a white cyclamen from the conservatory
- not at all his style as a rule. To him, gallantry to a girl
young enough to be his daughter would normally be undignified
- the kind of behaviour he despised in 'Captain'
Tregowan, a neighbour of ours from God-knew-where who
had obviously married his plain, stupid wife for her money
and spent much time in making himself too agreeable to
everyone in the district. My father gave Barbara the cyclamen
because she had admired it and because he liked her.
From English Country Pottery, Barbara went on to Robert
Schmidt's Porcelain. She accompanied me to a sale at Petersfield
and bid for a Lambeth Delft platter which she was
lucky enough to get at a lower price than I had expected it
to fetch. (It was a pouring wet day and also I believe there
was a bigger sale at Southampton, which had attracted many
of the dealers.) Emotionally, she always seemed quite uncommitted
and detached, and nothing she said or did suggested
that she regarded our relationship as warmer than
others she might have - in the operatic society, for instance.
Certainly she could display warmth on occasion - when the
platter was knocked down to her she jumped for joy and
kissed me on both cheeks - and her conversation often included
a certain amount of light teasing, like her initial sally
about Mrs Taswell's cards. But nothing obviously affectionate
or possessive ever showed in her manner - any more
than in my thoughts of her.
One warm evening in early June I picked her up, as we had
arranged, at the Corn Exchange after a rehearsal. (She was
singing Pitti-Sing; a better part than Peep-Bo, anyway.) We
drove out through Hamstead Marshall to Kintbury, ate a
snack supper in a pub and later (trespassing), bathed in a
secluded, unfrequented pool on the Kennet. Half an hour
later Barbara, in high spirits, was sitting beside me in the
car, vigorously towelling her wet hair like a schoolgirl, when
51
suddenly she threw the towel into the back, flung her arms
round my neck and kissed me on the mouth.
'Oh, Alan," she said, 'I love you so much! I can't not say
it! I think you're wonderful! I'd do anything for you - and I
will!'
Her spontaneity and sincerity were as plain (and as
pretty) as a flowering almond tree. It was abundantly clear
that this was no deliberate step in a planned campaign.
I remember once seeing, in some magazine or other, a joke
depicting a sailor on a park bench with a girl on his knees.
Over her shoulder, he was reading from a manual entitled
How to Succeed with Women. Part 4. The Kill. 'Oh, Mabel,'
read the sailor happily, 'your words fill me with a kind of animal
passion.' There was nothing at all like this about Barbara.
I think perhaps she even took herself by surprise.
What held me back? What? She startled me? But she
didn't. There is such a thing as realizing - say, when a dog
bites or a light fuses - that you knew it was going to happen,
even if you hadn't consciously anticipated it. A moral
objection? Oh, no. On the one hand I had always felt sure
that she must have had some previous sexual experience,
while on the other I knew that her reputation was good I
had never heard her spoken of as an easy or promiscuous
girl. By my standards - a lot of people's standards - she was
doing nothing wrong in offering herself. If she fancied me she
was perfectly entitled to have a go, and this was as fair a
way of setting about it as any other - more honest, indeed,
in my eyes than any amount of 'Would you care to come in for
ten minutes?' or 'You don't mind me in my dressing-gown?'
Well, then, I didn't fancy her? But I liked and respected
Barbara, who had been at pains to show me that she enjoyed
my company. She was pretty, ardent and animated, and
plainly she wanted me - not just anybody. Nor, if I am right,
were there any strings attached. Anyway, she couldn't possibly
have maintained, afterwards, that there were. To any
young man with blood in his veins this was a godsend, if only
on the level of 'Care for a ticket for the circus this evening?'
Nervous? How could I feel nervous when I wasn't even
52
considering action? Pride? But I thought well of her, and
this was not charity that I was being offered. You can think
about your motives until terms become meaningless. Against
all my principles there floated up, with total unexpectedness,
a sense of distaste and disinclination. 'Love isn't something
you decide on balance might be quite enjoyable,' said an
inner voice. 'It's something that seizes and possesses you,
sink or swim, win or lose.' I felt, both in body and mind, a
good deal of what Barbara herself felt - of that I am fairly
sure. The difference was that that was as deep as her fee
lings
went. For better or worse, but anyway involuntarily, mine
needed to go deeper. She didn't bowl me over, and I wasn't
interested in anything less. In some remote, inarticulate
region of myself it had been decided that the balance of advantage
lay in not taking her. Like Mr Bartleby, I preferred
not to. This was a spontaneous impulse as sincere and unpremeditated
as her own, and it took me by surprise more
than she herself had. She was desirable, and a nice girl to
boot. I'd had plenty of time to see it coming, and now I
didn't want it.
I can't remember exactly what was said. I did my best.
There was no row, there were no tears; not even any cutting
remarks. Barbara was much too nice to make trouble.
Later, that in itself gave me a clue. As far as she was concerned,
the matter was straightforward. She'd made a mistake
and that was that. It was mortifying, disappointing,
painful - and therefore to be dropped as quickly as possible.
As I said, she was sincere; and charmingly undeliberate and
defenceless, too, in her ardour. She deserved better. But however
considerate and polite she was capable of being, and
however much credit she deserved for taking it on the chin
and not saying anything sharp, should she have had herself
so much at command? A leaf blown helpless on the wind, a
trembling fascination close to fear, the compulsive excitement
of the unknown - what was it the composer Honegger
said? 'The artist seldom fully understands the material from
which he is creating.' There was no least trace of these in
Barbara. A June evening on the Kennet - a boy and a girl
53
who've been bathing - the eternal ways of Nature - oh, yes,
this we can all safely understand. But 'She's all states, and
all princes I: Nothing else is; Princes do but play us' - that
it was not, neither to me nor yet to her. So I didn't want it.
What a prig! Yet it wasn't prig. A prig is superficial, and this
was just the other way round. My distaste came as a shock
and a mystery to myself.
Our relationship never recovered, of course. In what direction
could it grow? As things turned out, however, both my
puzzled musings and my embarrassment were swept aside
by graver events. At the height of summer, with all the
azaleas in bloom and the flycatcher darting from the tennisnetting,
my father fell mortally ill. I can hardly bear even
briefly to recall the miserable business: the surgeon's careful
words ('There's a very good chance, Mrs Desland, I'm sure
we can say that'), my mother's heart-rending, dry-eyed courage;
the hospital smell grown as familiar as one's own shaving
soap, the letters and papers brought up from the shop
for discussion - whether they needed to be discussed or not
- the kind inquiries of friends, like blows on a bruise, the
lupins and roses cut from the garden, selecting bits from
The Times to read aloud ('Perhaps we'll leave it there for
today, my boy. I feel a bit tired, I'm afraid'), Tony Redwood
casually dropping in, always with some excuse, like the good
chap he was. Flick ringing up every evening and finally corning
home before the end of term, with piles of exam papers
to mark and post back; and always, behind everything, the
sense of being caught in a current down which we must be
drawn, faster and faster, to the lip of the weir beyond which
we didn't want to look.
Week by week, less and less of my father remained. He
was no longer the man we had known. It was like the Cheshire
Cat's grin - and that, God blast it, he retained until it
was like the last rim of a sun on the sea's horizon. Before
the end we had plenty of time to get used to our situation.
The registrar; Tony, so sensible and kind; the undertaker,
the letters from distant relatives - when the time came I was
prepared for all of them.
On the morning of the funeral I went out and cut every
54
dahlia in the garden. It was not deliberate, but rather obedience
to an inclination: perhaps, as Mr Henry Willett might
have said, a kind of unconscious echo of the ancient Greeks
shearing off their hair.
THE loss of a parent catapults you into the next generation.
The realization can be a support and help even while it disturbs
- perhaps for the very reason that it does disturb. The
king is dead; and the desolate prince had better pull himself
together, or all hell will break loose in a week. It was
The Girl in a Swing Page 6
