“But surely—” I stopped, baffled. What, actually, could you do, if your grown-up children just don’t leave home? All the advice you ever read is about giving your children their freedom. No one has ever written an article about how to make them take it.
“And we’ve always tried so hard to do the right thing,” sighed Liz. “We’ve always encouraged them to be independent, haven’t we, Bernie? But when we used to swear that we’d never interfere with the boys leading their own lives, it never occurred to us that they’d be leading them here!”
“Oh well….” Bernard shrugged. “It can’t go on for ever.”
It could, though. As I say, why should three perfectly intelligent young men exchange all that they now had for that uncomfortable, demanding thing called Freedom? I kept my opinion to myself, however. There was no point in depressing this unhappy pair even more by making them face the awful stability of their situation. Bernard looked at his watch.
“Any chance of some food, Liz? I’ve got to go at one. Can you get into the kitchen yet?”
Liz chewed her knuckle for a moment, reviewing the chances.
“Well—Pepita’s up, I know, because I heard her crying in the front room. And Mario must be up too, I heard Giles shouting at him about that electric razor.” She turned to me: “Mario keeps borrowing Giles’ razor, you see, Clare, because his own one has an Italian voltage, or something, and it fuses all the lights. It makes Giles mad. Anyway, I think it means that there’s no one actually asleep in the kitchen, so now it’s just a question of if there’s room at the cooker…. They’re always frying things, you see, especially with Sonja’s divorce hanging fire like this.”
I couldn’t quite get the connection of ideas, but I have no doubt at all that there was one. We housewives get like this. I often hear myself saying things like: “Don’t take all that butter, Janice; the laundry isn’t coming till next week.” I know what I mean, and so does she: I mean that since the laundry isn’t coming, I’ll have to take an extra load down to the launderette this morning, and that will mean that my basket on wheels will be so full of washing that I won’t be able to carry home groceries as well. I suppose it is this kind of abbreviated reasoning that gives women their reputation for illogicallity; but it is not really a failure of intelligence at all: it is more like a speech-defect; one’s own family understands with perfect ease, while to outsiders it is an embarrassing jumble of non-communication which they do their polite best to ignore.
Liz and I crept down the stairs on tiptoe. We had become creatures of the jungle, alert and futive, and intensely aware of the dangers that lurked behind every door. The danger of being manoeuvred into looking after the little boy in the vest; of having to adjudicate in the argument about the electric razor; of getting enmeshed in Sonja’s headache, or in the reasons for Pepita’s tears. One by one, and with a growing sense of achievement, we negotiated these hazards down the whole height of the house, and with a last triumphant spurt we gained the kitchen. With a swift movement Liz closed the door behind us, and then we turned to each other, gleeful as children who have successfully escaped over the school wall.
“Empty! Would you believe it!” Liz exclaimed, looking round the room full of camp-beds and washing-up. “I do believe they’ve all finished having breakfast already! That means we can make omelets, and mushrooms, and coffee! We’ve got the whole cooker to ourselves! The only thing is, Clare, we’ll have to be very quick; if they find we’re cooking something, they’ll all be wanting it.”
We set to work. The table was littered with the morning’s accumulation of dirty breakfast dishes, and the cooker was spattered with evil-smelling black grease, but for the moment at least we had solitude. Nervous as gazelles at a water-hole, we set about our preparations. Swiftly, and with many an uneasy glance towards the door, Liz whisked up just enough eggs for the three of us, while I chopped mushrooms and buttered bread. Within ten minutes all was ready. We were just on the point of carrying the tray up to our bathroom refuge, when Tony put a tousled head round the door.
“A-ah! Omelets! I thought I smelt something good! Son-ja!”—he turned and yelled up the stairs: “Son-ja! Om-lets!”
“Oh dear—Oh, I’m so sorry, Tony—” Liz was garrulous with remorse. “The thing is, there’s not enough for everybody. Daddy’s in a hurry, you see, he’s got to get back to work, so I thought I’d make something quickly, just for us….”
“Just for you!” Tony stared, outraged. “But honestly, Mum, if it’s lunch time, it’s lunch time! Surely we can all eat together?”
“But Tony, dear, don’t you see….”
The argument went on; the omelets were fast losing their first delectable plumpness; the plates were cooling. Firmly, I took the tray from Liz and set off up the stairs. As I reached the first landing, Sonja put her dishevelled morning head round the door of her room.
“God!” she said. “Food! I don’t know how you can face it, first thing in the morning!”
There was nothing personal in it. She hadn’t even noticed who I was; and it was only after I had answered, rather dryly, that it was nearly one o’clock, and that this was not breakfast, but lunch, that she raised her big, languid eyes from the disgusting spectacle of nourishment, and allowed them to rest, briefly, on my face.
“Why, Mrs Erskine!” she exclaimed—her voice lingering on the name with a sort of sleepy mockery. “So we meet again! And how are the happy pair?”
I wasn’t going to tell her, naturally. She probably knew, anyway, and that was why she was asking.
“Very well, thank you!” I said brightly, and continued on my way up to the next floor. But her voice followed me, husky and lazily venomous.
“Good. I’m glad they’re making the most of it. Because you know what happens next, don’t you? You know about Mervyn Redmayne’s girl-friends, I suppose, and what becomes of them?”
She laughed, an unpleasant sound; and I marched on up the stairs, ignoring her. It was nice to be able to ignore her from the bottom of my heart at last, and not just as a matter of pride. She could hint what she liked about the Redmayne family now, and only make me the more thankful that Sarah was well out of it. It was amusing, really, to find myself the target for arrows falling so very wide of the mark. Evidently I had overestimated Sonja’s perspicacity, if not her spite; it seemed that she did not know of the ending of the engagement, or she would not be thus squandering her malice in so useless a direction.
I laughed to myself as I hurried on up the stairs; and while we perched along the edge of the bath, clutching our plates to our laps, I could feel myself being better company than I had been for days. I had Liz and Bernie actually laughing in their exile; and after he had gone off to his office I tried to cheer Liz up still further by telling her as much as I could of our misfortunes, not omitting an unexpurgated version of Janice’s bad temper and general tiresomeness.
It is rare for me to reveal Janice’s shortcomings in this way; and I must say that it seemed a poor reward that Liz should just simply agree with me. That was not the idea at all. Yes, she said absently; she’d noticed that Janice didn’t seem too happy these days. The girl had been round two or three times lately, and didn’t seem at all her bright self. She, Liz, supposed that it was A-levels, or something; perhaps the prospect of University? There was a certain pathetic hopefulness in her voice here: Liz is always on the watch for drop-out material among her friends’ children: she lives in the (not unfounded) hope that at least some of them will throw away their educational opportunities in just the way her sons have done. She wanders keen-eyed like a beachcomber along the reluctant fringes of the academic sea, and I must say she makes some good hauls now and again; I just didn’t see why Janice should be one of them. Particularly just now, just when I had been so generous with her failings just to cheer Liz up. I changed the subject, and asked after Tony.
Oh dear. Poor Tony. It seemed to get more and more complicated. Long-distance phone calls from Wolverhampton, at all hours of the d
ay and night, and Tony shouting ‘Tell her I’m out!’ right across the room, and she, Liz, at the telephone trying to explain it away to the poor girl as best she could; it was getting more and more embarrassing. It was all Sonja’s fault really, pursuing Tony like this and turning his head: didn’t I think it was disgraceful, a woman of her age, and him so much younger? Especially, Liz added, aggrieved, when she’d only been invited to tea in the first place. Five months ago that was, and she’d been here ever since, seducing sons, borrowing aspirins: the list of grievances was endless.
“But I suppose it’s not really her fault” Liz finished charitably—nowadays you can say as many nasty things as you like about a person and still be charitable, so long as you end with the final insult: it is not their fault. They are not only contemptible, that is to say, but they are incapable of being otherwise.
“She can’t really help it, you see,” Liz explained, in dutiful conformity with the above principle. “She’s had such a sad life—everybody seems to have let her down. And then that business with Mervyn, of course; that was the last straw!”
“Mervyn? What business with Mervyn? You mean our Mervyn—Mervyn Redmayne?”
I swivelled round to stare at her; the bath dug into my other hip. I suppose my whole manner must have seemed aggressive with the shock of it, for she edged away along her perch like a nervous robin. She clutched at the rusty tap, still labelled Hot, for support.
“Oh dear. Oh, Clare, perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything! But I thought you knew. I thought Sonja had told you. That time you were here—you remember—and there was all that muddle about the jumble. They told me you’d been talking to her about Mervyn for hours!”
“They”? The whole, shambling, idle lot of them, probably. Talking on the stairs as we had been, we could hardly have hoped for privacy.
“No—well, that is, we were talking about him, but only because she’d known the family. Years ago, I mean, when she was a schoolgirl. She certainly didn’t tell me that she’d ever had any closer relationship with him.”
“Oh, Oh dear! I’ve said the wrong thing. But” (with a little spurt of self-assertion) “if she wants it kept a secret, she shouldn’t go round telling everyone, should she?”
This seemed eminently reasonable. I made encouraging noises, but Liz still seemed hesitant.
“Oh dear, Clare, I wish I knew what to do! You see, it’s not as if your Sarah was still engaged to him—if she was, then perhaps I’d feel that you ought to know….” Her voice trailed off, uncertainly, and her glance darted this way and that around the room, as though the rules of fair and unfair gossip were posted up somewhere on those stained and peeling walls, for reference.
“Well, I suppose it must be all right to tell you roughly what happened,” she concluded at last. “It’s just that Sonja and Mervyn were going around together for a bit, a year or two ago, and—well—his mother got wind of it.” She paused for a long time. Then: “Well, that’s all, really. You know what his mother is!”
I tried to make her go on. What, exactly, had Mrs Redmayne done to bring the romance to an end? Had Mervyn given in without protest? And what had Sonja said—done?
“She doesn’t strike me as the sort of girl who would take that sort of interference lying down,” I prompted.
“She isn’t. She didn’t.” Liz paused, staring in front of her. “Actually it all ended—well—in a rather dreadful sort of a way….”
Again she paused; came to some decision and finished in a sort of nervous gabble: “Well, that’s all. I daresay Sonja will tell you all about it herself, sometime. Meanwhile, I think you should be thankful, Clare, that Sarah’s not mixed up with the Redmayne family any more. You should be absolutely thankful!”
And when I returned home that afternoon it was to find Sarah radiant; a creature transformed. All was forgiven! Misunderstandings were at an end! She and Mervyn were to be married early in the New Year!
CHAPTER XIII
TO SAY THAT Love is blind is a truism; but that this blindness is as infectious as the common cold has been less often remarked on. I ought, as a parent, as an older, more experienced person, to have damped that singing joy; I ought to have warned my daughter that her happiness might be illusory, her confidence misplaced. I ought to have told her of my doubts and fears; to have reminded her of that last, shameful scene when Mervyn had repudiated his love for her and trotted off home with his Mummy like an obedient toddler. What sort of faith, I should have asked her, could she put in the love of a man so childish, so easily dominated?
But I didn’t; and I didn’t for the simple reason that I couldn’t feel these doubts any more myself. Sarah’s present happiness dazzled and confused my judgement as if I was gazing full into the noonday sun; all my adult common sense was obliterated by the sheer impact of her joy. I flung my arms around her, and we clung together in a shared, unthinking rapture, and relief flooded my being as if she had miraculously recovered from a long and dangerous illness. For that is what it is like—no, what it is—when a girl is crossed in love: it is truly an illness. Her vital forces fail, and she becomes a sick and ageing woman under your very eyes. Her skin grows dull, her eyes sunken; even her mind begins to wander and she becomes peevish and inattentive, like an old, old woman. And when the miracle happens—when, between one hour and the next, she becomes a young and blooming girl again—how can you then urge her back onto her bed of sickness, and call it common sense? Force her to take up the trappings of senility once more, and feel you are doing your parental duty?
You can? Well, I couldn’t. I could only send up prayers of gratitude at recovering my happy, lovely young daughter as if from the very threshold of the grave. Together we rejoiced; together we chattered about the happy days to come; and together, with a determination that neither of us knew we possessed, we forgot about that last, humiliating scene of Mervyn’s tears. She knew, and I knew, that we would never mention it again. By our combined strength we defied the poet’s words: we succeeded in cancelling that half line: not with tears, but with joy, we washed out the words of it.
That evening Mervyn himself came round, and it seemed to me that I had never before seen them so truly happy together, so truly in love. There was an ease in their relationship now, a total understanding, that had been absent before. He still teased her, and treated her as the silly little woman, and she still played up to it; but there was so much warmth in the teasing, so much laughter in her response to it, that it no longer worried me. He recognises her innate wisdom, I thought, and he respects it. The rest is just a game.
No one else was quite as overjoyed as we were. Congratulations were cautious this time, as was understandable. “Well, she’s made her bed twice now, hasn’t she?” observed Peggy. “She really will have to lie on it.” And Granny remarked, with a certain smugness, that she had always made a point of never taking a man back after a jilting. “Whether it was his fault or whether it was mine,” she declared jauntily. “It made no difference. ‘A quarrel is a quarrel’ I used to say, ‘and no sense in patching it up. Who wants a patched garment when the shops are full of nice smart new ones, all sorts and sizes?’ That’s what I used to say.” She cackled wickedly, and I undertook, at her earnest request, to convey the substance of this philosophy to Sarah. Sarah just laughed.
“Dear Granny! It’s amazing, isn’t it, that with all that choice she ended up with Grandad! Though I suppose he wasn’t deaf in those days, and didn’t go on about windows being open four inches at the top. Mummy, will it be all right if I’m away next weekend? Mervyn has to go to Bristol about his job, and we thought we might do a bit of flat-hunting.”
“Of course. A splendid idea. But—”
I stopped. I had been going to say “But what about his mother?” I was so accustomed by now to her automatic obstructiveness that it seemed to me extraordinary that she should be taking such a plan in her stride. But it occurred to me just in time that perhaps they hadn’t told her? Perhaps—and this was the first time tha
t the thought had struck me—perhaps she didn’t even know that the engagement was on again? I couldn’t possibly blame the young couple if they had decided, this time, to keep her in the dark about it all. It was really the most sensible thing to do, and possibly the kindest, too. If this was the case, then it would explain—a thing that had been puzzling me—why it was that no word of protest had so far come from Mrs Redmayne about the renewal of the engagement. The last time I had seen her she had been declaring with the utmost vehemence that there was no possibility of the couple coming together again. Now it had happened, and not so much as a murmur had been heard from her. The only possible explanation, it now seemed to me, was that she must be totally unaware of the true state of affairs.
But I was wrong. Whatever it was that had been keeping Mrs Redmayne quiet these last few days, it was not ignorance. On the very afternoon of their departure, the Friday, she rang me up. Her voice was peremptory, businesslike. She was ill, she said. She had been taken ill very suddenly, and would I inform her son and ask him to return home immediately?
Just that. No apology. No compunction at upsetting his plans, and possibly losing him his new job. And certainly she didn’t sound in the least ill; I had never heard her voice so crisp and powerful.
I thought quickly. In less than half an hour they would be gone. Sarah was up in her room putting the finishing touches to her packing, and Mervyn would be arriving with the car at any moment. There was no need for either of them to know of this telephone call at all.
“I’m sorry,” I said, holding the mouthpiece as close as I could to my lips so that my voice should carry clearly down the line, but not upstairs and into Sarah’s ears: “I’m sorry, Mrs Redmayne, but they’ve already gone. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
The gasp of dismay was certainly not feigned.
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