He swung the car into the garage at the back of the house and switched off the headlights. Tory began to rustle again.
‘Tory!’ he began, staring at the blackness before him.
‘Yes, Robert?’
When he took her hand at once her fingers laced into his twisting tightly, answering him viciously and angrily as if she had awaited the touch too long. The dislike they had fostered, one for the other, had robbed them of tenderness. In the lamplight from the street he could see a vein running straight down the centre of her forehead, pulsing, and he sat back away from her and looked at her, feeling her hand relaxed in his.
‘I don’t for one moment see what we are going to do,’ he said inevitably and then, sharply, as if reproving her: ‘We must go in.’
Feeling for some reason contemptible and undignified, she stood near the lamp holding her paper bag, waiting while he slammed the garage doors. In silence they walked round to the front of the house, where the wind waited for them at the corner, striking suddenly like an assassin.
Prudence knelt, as she often did, at the window-sill in the darkness of her room, wondering if Bertram would come out for his last stroll along the sea front. She knew that Robert would be angry with her for kneeling there in the night air and she did not call out when she saw him come round the corner with Tory.
‘I am simply dog-tired,’ she heard Tory say. And then: ‘No, I want to go indoors by myself.’
In a quick and furious way Robert said suddenly: ‘Tory, forgive me!’
‘It is both of us,’ Tory said, and put her hand up to her forehead – and Prudence, in great fear, drew back into the darkened room.
4
‘I suppose Tory will come rushing in in a minute with her new hat,’ Beth said at breakfast.
‘I daresay,’ said Robert. ‘Prudence, you were coughing in the night. You must have the vapour lamp.’
‘Oh, hell.’
‘Don’t set Stevie a bad example,’ said Beth. ‘She would get into trouble for talking like that at school. Who is this letter from, I wonder?’
‘Probably from some old lady saying there is too much sex in your books,’ said Robert.
‘Oh, no! It is a young man’s handwriting, I think.’ Beth very slowly put on her spectacles.
‘Well, then it will be to say there is not enough.’
‘You could open it,’ Prudence suggested.
‘That is exactly what I intend to do.’
By now they were all on edge about the letter and looked at the Y.M.C.A. paper and the slanting lines of handwriting with impatience.
‘Why, it is from Geoffrey Lloyd. Of course,’ said Beth at last. ‘I had forgotten all about him. And he would like to come to tea on – oh, dear, that’s to-day – and if it’s not convenient I am to let him know. But I don’t see how, for he gives no telephone number. How on earth can I get a message to him at such short notice?’
‘But isn’t it convenient?’ Prudence asked.
‘Yes, I suppose it is. But I hate being rushed and unprepared.’
Beth glanced with regret at a little funeral picture she had in mind and had meant to describe later in the day. The thud of the clods on the coffin lid and so on.
‘Well, then . . .’ Prudence said and shrugged.
The old-time funerals were best, Beth thought, as she refolded the letter, the brown sherry and seed-cake, the floating crêpe, the horse-drawn hearse with all its carved black and its frosted glass. When we were children the plain liquorice-allsorts we called Norton’s Horses. Norton was a famous undertaker, and his horses shone like liquorice and wore plumes on their foreheads, and in those days there was much to beguile a novelist, ‘floral tributes’, not merely wreaths – the vacant chair made out of chrysanthemums, or a carnation harp with a broken string, or a lovely pillow of white roses with the word ‘Rest’ in mauve everlastings.
‘You did bring it on yourself,’ Robert was saying.
‘What a mercy I changed my mind about asking him for the week-end. We are rather out of cake, Prue. Could you knock up a few rock-buns this morning, do you think?’
‘It sounds as if he’d do better in the canteen,’ Robert said. ‘Stevie, get the egg off your mouth and come along.’
‘Did you go into prayers yesterday?’ Beth asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What did Miss Simpson say?’
‘I forget,’ Stevie said, reddening.
‘I will take you and wash you,’ said Robert and he led her away, determined not to have another scene. Loving her small warm hand in his, he also felt it this morning to be a reproach, a reminder.
‘Were you really coughing a lot in the night?’ Beth asked Prudence.
‘I didn’t hear myself.’
‘I didn’t hear you, either. Robert must have slept not well. He was expecting the telephone all night. I kept falling into those deep, drugged sort of sleeps, full of nightmares, dreadfully tiring. An awful one about your granny . . .’ Prudence resigned herself . . . ‘I was almost afraid that I should find a letter about her this morning with bad news. I dreamt I was at her funeral and when we were in the church I suddenly noticed that the coffin lid was moving up and down very slightly . . .’ Prudence poured herself more tea . . . ‘And I called out in a loud voice “This funeral must not go on!” Robert was furious and told me not to be hysterical because unfortunately no one else could see that the coffin lid was bobbing up and down, and at last . . . Teddy Foyle was there, I don’t know why . . . and he took one of those packing-case openers from his pocket and prised the coffin open . . .’
Prudence leant her chin on her wrist and looked at her mother, waiting.
‘And it was full of a very fine set of Fielding in calf, that I once coveted very much in a shop in London, only it cost twelve pounds. But, of course, it was not to be expected that we should find them in Granny’s coffin . . .’ Prudence stirred and stirred her tea . . . ‘And then Ethel, your Aunt Ethel, suddenly called out in a ringing voice: “I chopped Mother up and put her in the boiler last night, to make room.” And your father made a very nice and sensible speech asking us not to panic and saying, “You must all excuse Ethel. She is at a funny age.” It seems so very vivid this morning.’ She sighed, for the truth was that the memory of her dream funeral had rather spoilt the one she had mapped out for Chapter Thirteen, had made nonsense of it, in fact.
Robert put his head round the door.
‘I was just telling Prue of a terrible dream I had last night about your mother . . .’
‘I can’t stop, dear. Another time. Stevie will be late.’
‘No. All right. Good-bye, Stevie.’
Beth put her face under Stevie’s large school hat and kissed her.
‘How sweet young children are!’ she said to Prudence when the others had gone. ‘I think Tory won’t be coming in for a cup of tea. I expect she was late last night and is lying in this morning.’
‘She came by the last train. I heard her go by when I was in bed.’
‘Then we’ll clear the table,’ said Beth, and put one cup into another as if beginning her day’s work.
‘I wonder what it is like being divorced?’ Prudence said, looking at her mother.
‘Perfectly horrible, I should think,’ Beth said.
The day went on and Tory did not come. Beth remarked upon it several times, and again at lunch when Robert was there, but no one answered.
‘I think I must go round and see if she is all right,’ Beth -persisted.
‘All this running in and out,’ Robert said. ‘Women must live in one another’s pockets. No wonder they quarrel so much.’
‘I have never quarrelled with Tory in my life, not even when we were girls at school. I have never quarrelled with any woman.’ Beth’s relationships with people had always been of the most timid. Only on paper did she employ sharp words or risk a conflict. She had a sluggish nature and was lazy physically, but her head was full of clamour, her imagination restless.
‘I wonder what time Geoffrey will come?’ Prudence asked.
‘At ten to four, I expect,’ Beth said. ‘That is the time I go out to tea.’
‘I have never known you go out to tea.’
‘When I was a girl I went at that time.’
‘Perhaps things have changed since then.’
‘I went to school with his mother,’ Beth said, not irrelevantly.
Robert thought that having been to school with one another meant something special to women. Men never found it of interest, or felt themselves drawn together on that account; but women were entranced at the idea and retraced their steps tenderly together backwards to their girlhood, forever saying ‘Do you remember, my dear?’, shutting men out, implying (he thought) that it was in those days they were happy, before the world, men, impinged upon them. ‘Or perhaps I am jealous of them,’ he thought, since to-day all his heart’s doings were suspect. ‘Jealous of Tory and Beth.’
After lunch Beth put on a coat and went to call on Tory. She rarely went out-of-doors and consequently saw things freshly when she did, as if with the eyes of one released from a prison or sick bed. This was useful to her as a novelist. Everyday things did not become dull. She stood for a moment on the doorstep of Tory’s house and surveyed the surroundings: the men on the ladders at Mrs Bracey’s, Lily Wilson sitting on her window-sill high up, with her back to the street and the sash drawn down on her knees as she polished, the glass glinting blue, reflecting the dark sky. Out at sea a white sail tipped and turned, scarcely progressing.
Tory opened the door.
‘Oh, that yacht!’ she said at once, looking beyond Beth. ‘It reminds me of Teddy. The old days when he took Edward out and I would keep running to the window to see how long I must keep lunch waiting. I wonder where – if – he sails now?’
Her house smelt of hyacinths and furniture-polish. She led the way into the room, where a little gilt fire rustled.
‘Did you have a good day?’ Beth asked.
‘I didn’t get those socks for you. I have only just remembered.’
‘Did you get the hat?’
‘Yes. I’ll fetch it.’
Beth, still with her new eyes, glanced about her. She would have liked to have achieved such a room as this for her family, and felt the old guilt about her writing coming over her, and the indignant answer trying to smother it – ‘Men look upon writing as work.’ Even if she wished to be released from it, as she sometimes did wish, she knew that she could not. The imaginary people would go on knocking at her forehead until she died. ‘Haunted!’ she thought. ‘I’m haunted. Inside me I am full of ghosts. But I am nothing myself – I am an empty house!’ And panic began to rush through her, so that when Tory came back, twirling the hat on her fingers, Beth stood staring, her hand at her throat.
‘It certainly is a hat,’ she said at last, as if hypnotised by lilac. ‘What happens when it gets dirty?’
‘I shall take it to London in a bag and put it on when I get there.’
She put it on now, standing before the mirror, the black and white striped paper on the wall behind a background to all the white linen flowers and her pink face underneath them.
‘We haven’t altered . . . you and I . . .’ Beth said, watching her. ‘At school you wore even those holland tunics with a difference. You never looked crumpled or inky like the rest of us.’
‘You were always lying on your belly on the grass writing “Volume One” in a new exercise book.’
‘Writing Volume One is easy,’ Beth laughed. ‘I used to start the book wondering what in God’s name would come next. The physical act of writing tired me and I never reached Volume Two. The atmosphere around me . . .’ she waved her hand above her head . . . ‘must be full of half alive characters with no hope now of ever being brought to full-term. The best part of writing a book is when you write the title at the top of the page and your name underneath and then “Chapter One”! When that’s done the best part’s over.’
‘You made a catalogue once of all the books you were going to write before you die.’
‘Did I? When I think of all the words that have come pouring out of me since I was a child I feel dizzy.’
‘A little veil would soften this,’ said Tory into the mirror.
‘Your face softens it.’
Tory laughed. ‘Women pay all the best compliments in the end. And I doubt if men would pay any if we did not put them in their minds first.’
She took off the hat and perched it on a candlestick.
‘Geoffrey Lloyd is coming to tea. Come in, too,’ Beth said.
‘No – I’d rather not. I always loathed his mother, and I hate going out to tea.’
‘Did you see Teddy yesterday?’
‘Yes, I did, as a matter of fact.’
‘Why are you still in love with him?’
‘I doubt if I am. But he has become interesting to me for the first time for years. I’m not used to being left high and dry by men, and naturally I’m intrigued by the one who could do it. He has simply flabbergasted me, but unfortunately too late.’
‘Tory, I wanted to ask something of you.’
‘Of course,’ Tory murmured, but seemed at the words to become galvanised, ready to resist.
‘It is dreadfully tricky, and if I didn’t want it so badly I couldn’t ask.’
Tory looked frightened now; her eyes seemed to go instinctively to her hat as if for reassurance.
‘For God’s sake tell me!’
‘I am afraid it will bring up all those unhappy days when we first knew Teddy wasn’t coming back any more . . .’
‘I often think of them,’ Tory said carelessly. ‘It won’t be bringing it all back. It is here already.’ And she touched her breast and then her brow in a gesture of great beauty, Beth thought.
‘You remember the time when he refused to answer your letters . . .?’
‘Indeed, I do.’
‘And nothing would make him. And Robert wrote to him . . .’
Tory frowned, remembering.
‘And I sent a telegram . . .’
‘And still nothing happened . . .’
‘Then we had that idea of frightening him, so that we should make him come and talk to you . . .’
‘Oh, the blood-stained letter!’ Tory said suddenly and snatched a handkerchief out of her cuff and clapped it to her eyes, but it was laughter which had brought the tears, and Beth began to laugh, too.
‘Oh, God, yes,’ Tory went on. ‘ “Dear Teddy, when you read this I shall be dead.” I wrote it with the left hand so that it would seem my strength was failing, and we took it in the larder and dipped it in the meat-dish.’
‘A piece of topside . . .’
‘When I cooked that I felt as if I were eating part of myself. What fun we had even then!’
‘But he did come. He thought you had opened a vein. It only made him angrier than ever.’
‘Yes, but I got the chance to say what I wanted. I felt all right after that.’
‘Robert was angry, too. He said he had always known that there is nothing women will draw the line at.’
‘Yes, Robert was angry, too.’ And Tory was suddenly sobered, and she smoothed her handkerchief out on her knee and then folded and refolded it. ‘But what do you want to ask?’ she said, looking up.
Beth was ashamed again. ‘Tory, no one else knows about that, but just the four of us . . .’
‘She probably knows, too. Teddy’s young woman, I mean.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘What is on your mind?’
‘I am in difficulties with my book.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Tory looked relieved and sly. ‘You want your heroine to wipe her letters in the meat-dish.’
‘I hardly knew how to ask you. I have got them separated and I cannot find a way of bringing them together again.’
‘Suppose I had said “No”?’ Tory teased. ‘Does it matter more than your friends, more than your ch
ildren? Or your husband?’
‘There are some questions it is not right to ask. Like saying “Out of your children if one had to die, which would you choose?” It is a decision no one should be asked to make.’
‘You and I . . .’ Tory said. ‘We are so different. But nothing with men is so good as our friendship. If women love one another there is peace and delight, fun without effort. None of that wondering if the better side of one’s face is turned to the light . . .’
Beth scarcely knew what to say. The happiness she felt she had with Robert she would not smugly parade before Tory, who had no one. Instead, she said lightly: ‘The smart young ones would find a sinister implication in your words.’
‘Yes. They would overlook a trivial but everlasting thing about me – that I like to be made love to by men. Shall I get some tea?’ She yawned slowly and deliberately like a cat, and closed her eyes, leaning back among cushions. After that Beth could not have answered yes.
‘It’s half-past three. I’ll let myself out. Don’t move. I must go and powder my nose,’ Beth said, prepared to make this concession.
‘Tell me to-morrow what Rosamund’s little boy is like,’ Tory called after her. She opened her eyes as she spoke, but when she heard the door slam after Beth she closed them again quickly, yet it seemed as if she did it needlessly, for the darkness which rushed over her came not from outside but from within.
At three o’clock the front-door bell startled the silence of the house. Prudence ran downstairs, hooking her frock up at the side, and found a very scrubbed-looking young man on the doorstep. Against the rough uniform his face was rosy and the belt round his middle brilliantly white.
Prudence could not help seeming put out and furious with her mother, thinking of her next-door with Tory. She invited the young man to enter the hall, which he did, turning his cap over and over and then tucking it into his belt.
‘I am Prudence,’ she said, leading him into the drawing-room, where she had meant to put a match to the fire at three-forty-five.
A View of the Harbour Page 6
