Eddie had come walking jauntily in, swinging a fry of fish on a piece of string, wearing his good navy suit over his thick jersey. Maisie was in the shop, wrapping up a pair of broken shoes for a customer, and by her glance he knew that something was wrong. He stood by whistling, until she was alone.
‘Mother wants to speak to you,’ she then said.
‘What about?’
‘You’d better go and see.’ Maisie hesitated. ‘She wants your room. You’ve got to clear out.’
‘She can’t do that.’
Maisie could not be bothered to answer such a stupid statement. She turned away.
Eddie opened the door into the back room and went in. Even Mrs Bracey faltered when she saw his expression.
‘What’s all this?’ he thundered.
‘Ah, Eddie!’ she said. She laid down her book and tried to look pleased to see him. ‘I’ve a favour to ask of you. I know you won’t mind giving up that room, but Dr Cazabon says I need the change.’
‘Dr Cazabon?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What about me?’
‘Well, I made it plain to your auntie at the time that it only held good for so long as I might see my way clear . . .’ She had embarked upon one of those formal, meaningless sentences which are heavy with grandeur but difficult to round off.
‘I mean, where do I go?’
‘Your auntie’ll have to put you up on the front-room sofa.’
He saw himself reclining on one elbow upon slippery -horse-hair-stuffed leather, the window darkened with curtains which parted only an inch or two to show the plant on what was called the palm-stand, and the room chill and gloomy as a sea-cavern.
‘If I go now, I’ll never enter this house again,’ he said.
Nothing clouded Edward’s happiness. Life entranced him. When the sun shone it touched his very bones. Time was undivided now by bells clanging; so he could drift, beguiled, unchevied, wandering in that maze of alley-ways where the roofs went tipping down so steeply towards the harbour that he could spit down the chimneys from where he stood, he thought. With the sun shining on them, these roofs were the colours of pigeons – the slates of rose and grey and lavender and blue. It was all familiar yet wonderful to him.
He stopped to read the picture postcards at the tobacconist’s – a fat woman bending down to make a sand-castle, red bloomers, ‘What would you do, chums?’ printed underneath. He laughed aloud at this joke, standing there, squinting with the sun, jingling coins in his pocket.
Then on down the cobbled streets until the sea showed in a little cup at the bottom. Far out, a white-sailed yacht ventured across the smooth stretch of glinting purple. Nearer in, the water was turquoise. In the harbour itself there was the fleet and a great congregation of gulls.
He passed the Waxworks and walked out along the quay. ‘For every Pipe Puncheon or Piece of Wine or Spirits,’ he read aloud off the wall of the old Customs house, ‘and so in proportion in smaller quantities the charge of one florin.’
By the lighthouse an old man with a beard was sketching the harbour. Edward went and stood by him, whistling, clinking his pocketful of coins. Along the waterfront Stevie rode on her tricycle, wearing Beth’s torn bridal-veil and a wreath of broken orange-blossom over one ear. The veil streamed out behind her, so furiously she went, and her little legs pedalled at a great rate. Edward laughed to himself.
‘Good day,’ Bertram said, sketching busily. It was an import-ant moment for both of them, he felt – this first meeting with his future stepson.
‘Good day,’ Edward said at once, edging a little nearer to the sketch, which was very good, he considered, very like, obviously a harbour.
‘I think you must be Edward Foyle,’ Bertram said, and he looked down at the boy’s slate-blue eyes and the great sweeping lashes on the downy cheeks.
‘Yes, I am,’ Edward admitted, glancing at the beard with curiosity. He turned his back to the wall and looked out to sea. Bertram turned, too.
‘My father had a yacht,’ the boy murmured, and he gazed and gazed at that tall, tipping wing of sail, and all his happiness was gone.
‘Eddie having gone off in a huff like that, you’ll have to fetch someone else in to help me upstairs,’ Mrs Bracey informed her daughters. ‘I can’t be jarred about by a lot of incompetents. Is that bed aired, Maisie?’
‘Yes.’
‘And pulled up close to the window?’
‘Yes.’
‘Slip up to the vicarage, there’s a good girl, and tell Mr Lidiard I want him urgent.’
‘That I will not.’
‘He’d come. Though what strength there is in him for a man’s job I don’t know. Tell him I want him here ready to make my last confession to him in case.’ She laughed recklessly.
‘That’d be worth hearing,’ Iris said.
‘Now Mr Hemingway, he’s what we used to call a fine man in my young days, before there was all this crooning and moaning and men trying to look girlish. He reminds me of your father.’
Neither of the girls would fetch Mr Lidiard and in the end Bertram brought Ned Pallister in from his afternoon nap.
The short staircase led up from behind a door and was so dark that Maisie went before with a candle. The light wavered over the flushed, set faces of the two men, who a minute earlier had been teasing Mrs Bracey about her weight, and upon Mrs Bracey’s own glistening forehead. Maisie went up backwards, the candle held at shoulder-height and great hunched shadows bending, climbing up over the walls and across the narrow ceiling.
They brought her up into the little room and put her on the bed by the window. All colour had now fled from her face and she lay there with her nostrils wide, her lips curved down.
‘Thank you,’ she breathed at last. ‘Many thanks.’
‘Perhaps she is going to die,’ Maisie thought; for her appearance, her sudden courtesy did suggest this possibility.
She tidied the bedclothes, wiped her mother’s face and Iris jerked the curtains wider apart, saying: ‘There, now, you can have a nice look out at last.’
But Mrs Bracey would not glance outside until she was alone. Already her throat felt half closed with emotion, her eyes could not accustom themselves to their new limits, these rose-covered walls, or the lightness of the atmosphere.
‘Maisie!’ she said sharply. ‘Run down and fetch that bottle of whisky I won in the Cruelty to Children Raffle. You put it to the back of the dresser cupboard.’
When Maisie had gone she said to Bertram: ‘I’d really intended it to be for the bearers when I kick the bucket, but we’ll have a nip out of it now and sod the undertakers.’
But as Maisie came back she could not help adding grudgingly: ‘Once a bottle’s broached it’s as good as gone; no hope of keeping any for a special occasion; a sip here and there, a little nip of a cold night or if a neighbour gets a bad turn and you’ve come to the end before you can feel the benefit of it.’
Bertram sat on the edge of a frail bedroom chair in his shirtsleeves and sipped from his tumbler. Ned Pallister leant against the wardrobe.
‘Here’s the best, Mrs Bracey,’ he said, holding up his glass. ‘Many more years of enjoying the view, I’m sure.’
She bowed in acknowledgment of this toast.
Iris was draped about the bed-post, picking her nail-varnish. Maisie went downstairs and they heard water droning into a kettle. Bertram and Mr Pallister finished their whisky and said good-bye.
‘Many thanks,’ Mrs Bracey said carelessly.
‘A pleasure to do anything for a neighbour,’ Ned Pallister replied. ‘Any time, you’ve only to ask.’
‘Next time I go down those stairs, I go with the lid screwed on,’ she said. ‘Show them out, Iris!’
Iris undraped herself. ‘As if they don’t know the way,’ she thought, but did not say so aloud in front of her employer.
Then, when she was quite alone at last, Mrs Bracey heaved forward a little on one elbow and, drawing the curtain on one side, looked
out.
‘Persevere!’ said Tory.
She sat on the fuchsia-coloured sofa in her bedroom window and watched the sea.
‘I can’t,’ Beth gasped, trying to tuck great bunches of flesh into the corset.
‘If I can, you can,’ Tory said calmly.
Beth stood quite rigid in front of the mirror, not breathing. ‘But I’m in agony. Surely it isn’t like this for you all the time.’
‘You get used to it. Put your skirt on. No, my black skirt.’ She turned her head at last. ‘You see! Don’t breathe in little gasps like that. Put your shoulders back. You’ve slumped over your writing-table too long.’
‘I shall never get out of it again.’
Tory suddenly became enthusiastic and fetched her best white blouse, the barathea jacket. Beth combed her short hair away from her temples and considered the effect rather shyly.
‘It’s a pity about the spectacles,’ Tory said. ‘Can’t you possibly not wear them?’
‘I should only get run over, and cut all my dearest friends.’
‘There you are! You look like a real writer now,’ she said. ‘Neat, distinguished.’
‘I think I look like a Lesbian,’ Beth said doubtfully.
‘You won’t when your hat’s on,’ Tory encouraged her. ‘A silly hat is what’s needed. My red-currant hat which shames Edward so.’
‘Oh, no!’ Beth pleaded.
‘I thought you wouldn’t. What about this?’ Tory twisted round and displayed a wheel of grey and yellow ostrich feathers. ‘Or the new white hat. You’ll have to go without spectacles. It won’t matter for one day, surely?’
Beth put the hat rather nervously on her head at what she considered a daring angle to please Tory; she thought that if she could forget that the image in the mirror was herself, she might approve of it.
‘Not forward!’ Tory corrected her. ‘Straight on the top of the head, or slightly back.’ She walked round and round Beth. At last, satisfied, she sat on the bed, looking triumphant. ‘You do see, don’t you? And you won’t add any finishing touches, please promise!’
‘Suppose it rains?’
‘Oh, well, if it rains you must wear your Burberry and just look dull and well-bred and hope for the best. Edward!’ she called, going to the door, ‘if you are out of the bath, run and fetch the sherry and a couple of glasses, there’s a dear boy. I love sherry in the bedroom,’ she said, turning back to Beth.
‘It makes one feel like – like Becky Sharp,’ Beth said, still turning slowly before the mirror as if bemused.
‘Watch Edward’s face when he comes,’ Tory said.
But when he did come, carrying the tray carefully, his dressing gown cord trailing on the floor, his face was expressionless like a good waiter’s, although smeared with tooth-paste.
‘Do you see nothing different about Beth?’ Tory asked him as she poured out the sherry.
‘She has your clothes on,’ Edward said.
‘And does she look nice, do you think?’
Tory handed Beth a glass and they smiled at one another.
‘She always looks nice, I think,’ Edward said politely.
‘Edward, you restore my pride,’ Beth laughed. ‘I was beginning to feel I was nothing in myself.’
‘Good night, darling.’ Tory bent and kissed him. ‘Don’t read too long.’
When he had gone she laughed. ‘He is non-committal like his father,’ she said, refilling their glasses. ‘Sit down, for heaven’s sake, Beth.’
‘Sit down! I can’t go sitting down here, there and everywhere just when the mood takes me. I cannot bend.’
‘Then you had better practise. You can scarcely stand up to eat your lunch to-morrow.’
Beth slid uneasily on to a chair, her legs straight before her. They sat laughing and rocking, the sherry a little gone to their heads, the white hat tipping forward again over Beth’s forehead.
‘I wish I could be there to-morrow to see you,’ Tory said weakly. ‘That hat will astonish him, especially if it falls forward like that each time you take a bite.’
‘Him!’ Beth said. ‘Astonish whom?’
‘Your publisher, darling. Oh, hell, I can’t speak properly now. Hush! the child will think we are intoxicated. I always imagine publishers looking like King Edward the Seventh, but I suppose they don’t – no more than anybody else.’
Years fell away from them. They became two silly girls giggling at nothing.
‘But my publisher is a woman,’ Beth said, looking mystified.
‘A woman!’
Tory sobered up at the shock. ‘How could a publisher be a woman?’
‘She could be and she is.’
‘Well, I’m damned!’ Tory exploded. ‘You might have told me. You really are impossible, Beth. What the hell have we been wasting all this time for?’
11
It did rain. In the end Beth went to London in her Burberry and an old felt hat. She carried her night things in a battered hat-box, and took with her some string bags. She did not look at all like Tory’s idea of what reviewers sometimes call ‘lady novelists’, but more like some sensible shopping woman. She also took a new exercise-book, hoping to bring Allegra to her last haven during the train journey. She yearned for the peace and quiet of the railway compartment, as Proust probably yearned for his padded, sound-proof study.
‘You will miss that train!’ Robert called up the stairs.
‘I am just coming, dear.’
It had seemed at that moment as if the sky had suddenly lightened, as if it were going to be a fine, hot day after all, and she was wearing all the wrong clothes; too late to change. She dashed some white powder round her nose and in the middle of her forehead.
‘The stew is in the casserole for to-night, Prue,’ she called.
‘You’ve told me three times.’
‘Don’t be rude to your mother,’ Robert said sharply.
‘This is for you to wear,’ Stevie said, holding out a large enamelled butterfly which Beth pinned hastily to her suit.
‘It won’t show inside your rainingtosh.’
‘But when the sun comes out I shall take it off and show everyone the glory.’ Beth began to go down the stairs. ‘Here I am, Robert. I left the note about the baker on the kitchen dresser. Please ask Mrs Flitcroft to iron Stevie’s frock for to-morrow.’
‘Beth, you will have to come,’ Robert said, very quietly, very distinctly.
‘That drawing of Stevie’s foot for the new shoes!’
‘Where did you put it?’
‘Behind the clock.’
Now they were all flying about and shouting: the cats went distracted.
‘Here it is!’ Robert cried. ‘We are now going, Beth.’
Outside the front door Beth stooped to kiss Stevie.
‘I don’t want you to go,’ she wailed, twining her arms tightly round her mother’s neck, pushing her hat over her eyes.
‘Don’t be silly, dear. Have a nice day with Edward and Tory.’
‘I don’t want to be left.’
‘Stevie, go indoors,’ Robert commanded.
‘I want to go to London.’
Her mouth slowly opened, her face crimsoned, then the tears fell, fluently, easily. ‘I haven’t ever been to London.’
‘You went to see Peter Pan, darling.’
‘I didn’t like it. I didn’t enjoy that day.’
‘Beth, don’t argue with her.’
‘But, sweetest, you know how you loved it at the time, and if you are a good girl I will take you to see it again another day.’
‘I saw the wires. I saw the wires,’ Stevie screamed, becoming slightly hysterical. ‘When they flew, I saw the wires.’
‘If we are going to stand here in the road discussing Peter Pan, I’ll say good-bye,’ Robert began.
‘I can’t leave her like this,’ Beth said over her shoulder.
‘I missed all that on the ship when I had to go out and be excused,’ Stevie bawled. ‘I missed the best part.’
Robert began slowly to walk away.
‘You are always going and leaving me,’ Stevie said, and Beth felt the injustice of this so keenly that she could not go without defending herself.
Tory’s door opened and she came flying out, wearing the lilac overall in which she so neatly did her housework.
‘Darling Beth, please go. She is just enjoying a little scene and she must not be indulged. As soon as you have gone she will lose interest in it.’ She led Stevie into her own house.
‘She wants a damned good thrashing,’ said Robert, that mild man.
Beth’s forehead had begun to pulse. ‘I don’t want to go,’ she said unhappily.
‘Don’t you start,’ Robert said, holding open the car door.
At the station, having bought Beth’s ticket for her, Robert said good-bye and told her to have a nice time, endeavouring not to know that her heart was torn in two.
‘Go to the theatre!’ he added robustly, handing over the hat-box. ‘Enjoy yourself! None of this moping about round the Elgin Marbles that seems to be your idea of a good time. Snap out of yourself a bit.’
Beth looked at him in amazement. He sounded quite unhinged, she thought. As he never kissed her in public, they merely smiled vaguely and drifted apart; she towards her waiting train and he out into the rainy station-yard.
She sat down in the carriage and closed her eyes. Her -forehead hammered dully. ‘Prudence. Stevie. Robert. Has Stevie stopped screaming yet?’ she wondered. ‘I am a bad mother,’ she once more told herself and fought back the feelings of shame and oppression which assailed her at this admission. ‘When I have finished this book I will never write another word. I’ll devote myself to Stevie, get Prue married somehow, turn Robert’s shirt-cuffs, have the hall re-papered. I’ll get a proper maid’ (for the end of authorship would begin the season of miracles, she felt), ‘early-morning tea to please Robert, constant hot water, new loose-covers. And I will have a freshly-laundered overall twice a week, like Tory, and flowers in all the rooms. Then, perhaps, when we are all reorganised I shall be able to write a short story here and there. None of that drugged sinking into a different world. No more guilt.’
A View of the Harbour Page 16
