by Rumer Godden
‘Tasting of sour soap,’ said Rob.
Some of the restaurants were so exalted that they were safe too. Only Rob’s producers might have haunted them; Fanny might possibly have met Anthea there, certainly no one else she knew. ‘You must have spent a fortune in those days,’ she told Rob.
She could not put them into chronological order, tell the dates, the days of the week, but it went on all through May and June, into July, she thought. It was too big for arithmetic, thought Fanny.
Rob was shooting Haysel to Harvest every day of those long dry months, though dogged by the cold winds. ‘Trying to work in England!’ he said. ‘How can anyone get a halcyon haymaking scene in a June north-easter?’ and, ‘We must finish here by mid-July,’ he told Fanny. ‘We are booked at the studio.’ He had, too, rushes to see every day, sometimes at Technicolor – Whitcross was handy for West Drayton – sometimes at Pinewood; now and again in Wardour Street. He had evening conferences, script changes, meetings, and all the time, behind Haysel to Harvest, a small picture for Rob, was looming the big one, Diamond Pipe, that would take him to Africa.
‘Why Diamond Pipe?’ asked Fanny.
‘Diamonds come out of pipes, not mines,’ and Rob explained, ‘Over billions of years the heat at the earth’s core has made vents, like long tubes or pipes, from deep, deep down to near the surface. No one knows how or why, but some of these vents have solidified into a sort of blue clay, and in that clay rough stones, diamonds, are found. A pipe might be half a mile in diameter and Diamond Pipe is about one of these huge ones.’
Still he found time to meet Fanny, once, twice, three times a week, though she never knew where she must go, by car, by train. Her comings and goings in the Rover were too familiar to be remarked; Whitcross was used to her driving up to London, or to the airport, to meet Darrell. And it was my business, thought Fanny. Margot had often called Fanny an oyster – why is an oyster always derogatory? wondered Fanny – and all that time she said not a word to anyone. She even succeeded in evading Lady Candida who thought she was giving talks to Women’s Institutes. ‘She knew Anthea had asked me to.’ What Gwyneth thought Fanny did not know.
Each time she and Rob met they grew more tense, a tenseness that became unbearable, thought Fanny. If she had come by train he would be waiting for her on the platform, so many platforms, thought Fanny – and they would walk away, not touching one another, we had not touched then, and get in a taxi or Rob’s car. Sometimes I came in the Rover, thought Fanny. Cars tell no tales.
‘I suppose we were so furtive,’ she said to Rob, ‘because we thought it would pass.’
‘It was never that,’ said Rob, ‘it was just that we decided to be private.’
And strangely enough we succeeded, thought Fanny, until Charmian saw us at the theatre. Charmian, of course, told everyone, but because it was Fanny no one believed there was anything in it.
‘I didn’t believe it myself,’ said Fanny. Even in those days, her trust and belief would suddenly ebb. ‘It can’t be true. He can’t mean it,’ but it became obvious that Rob did mean it. He was in love.
Only in Margot and Anthea a small antenna lifted. Fanny, Anthea reminded Margot, had met Rob Quillet before either of them; Margot reminded Anthea about the dinner-party and they came to see Fanny. It was the day after Charmian and the theatre. Fanny had been making apple jelly. Then it must have been October, thought Fanny, puzzled. She seemed to have skipped over a hiatus of time, but, yes, the children had gone back to school, been back several weeks. Then it must have been the end of October, after Rob and I … Then why was I making jelly? asked Fanny. Force of habit? Or had it been an excuse not to think?
Now, across the villa terrace drifted the smell of Celestina’s cooking, tomato, garlic, peppers, chicken, sizzling in oil. Apple jelly is very English, thought Fanny. Very far away. Had anyone eaten that batch, or was it sitting, labelled ‘Stebbings, October—’, on that London larder shelf? Gwyneth would not have thrown it away, thought Fanny.
Fanny had been straining the apple juice when Anthea and Margot had walked in. Gwyneth, sweeping down the front stairs, had told them where to find Fanny. Their faces were portentous. ‘We want to talk to you.’
‘Do you mind if I go on?’ Fanny had asked.
‘It’s something that may be … important,’ said Anthea.
‘That is important,’ said Margot.
‘I can listen while I sieve.’
‘Gwyneth might come in. Anyway she’s in the hall. Can’t we go up to your room?’ and Fanny had known what was coming.
Margot sat in the armchair, Anthea on the dressing-table stool, Fanny on the window-sill, facing them; Anthea had leaned over and pressed her hand. ‘You won’t mind what we say?’
‘How do I know until you have said it?’ Fanny smiled at Anthea.
‘It’s not funny, Fanny,’ said Margot. Her eyes were harder than Anthea’s. Well, Margot was piqued, thought Fanny, so piqued that she was angry. It was not that she, Margot, had been prepared to be serious with Rob, but she had undoubtedly been ready to be flattered, marked out and, yes, perhaps ready for more. It must have been an unpleasant shock to find unintelligent ordinary Fanny preferred to herself, and it was very gently that Fanny had said, ‘Let me hear what it is. Say it.’
‘Charmian saw you at the theatre last night with Rob Quillet.’
‘Yes, he took me,’ said Fanny. She found she could keep her voice level. ‘We saw Charmian.’ Fanny seemed to see Whitcross in a new perspective now. ‘She must have rung you both up this morning? I knew she would.’
‘It’s not funny,’ said Margot again, and, ‘He seems really attracted to you,’ said Anthea.
‘It was clear at my dinner,’ said Margot.
‘That’s ages ago,’ and ‘In another life,’ Fanny might have added.
‘He was attracted then. You knew it, Fanny. Everybody knew it.’
‘How did they?’ asked Fanny. ‘Unless you told them? You or Sydney.’
Margot coloured at that but she retorted, ‘Sarah Ogilvie was there, and then he saw you home.’
‘Wasn’t that courtesy?’
‘Perhaps, but the next night …’
‘The very next night,’ said Anthea.
‘He came here again.’
‘Yes,’ said Fanny. ‘He took me out to dinner. I thought that kind.’
‘It may not have been kind,’ said Anthea.
‘I took it that it was. He knew that I was lonely. I have been sometimes.’
‘Oh, Fan dear, don’t be such an innocent.’
‘What exactly,’ asked Fanny, ‘are you trying to say to me?’
‘This—’ said Anthea, but Margot broke in, ‘You are a darling, Fanny, but not very worldly wise.’
‘You are afraid I might lose my head because a man takes me out to dinner and the theatre?’
Are we all such hypocrites when people give us advice? thought Fanny now. ‘She deceived us,’ Margot and Anthea must be saying now. ‘I didn’t deceive you,’ Fanny answered silently. ‘People need only be told as much of the truth as they are entitled to know. You were not entitled to know about Rob and me.’
She let them talk and said nothing more.
Anthea, sensitive compared to Margot, had been disturbed by Fanny’s silence. ‘Forgive us, Fanny dear.’
‘We are old friends,’ said Margot.
‘And we don’t want you to get hurt.’
Fanny almost betrayed herself then; it was this new vanity, she thought, but this was after Rob and I … Under her blouse she had been wearing Rob’s ring. It had become for her a jewel in the deepest sense, a talisman, the red of the sanctuary lamp that had shone in the frightening gloom of the church, the deep red of heart’s blood as Rob had said – and he had bought it on that afternoon, gone straight out to buy it, never wavering as she was so piteously wavering, even at that moment. ‘What makes you so sure,’ she had asked, ‘that I should be the one to get hurt?’ She saw Margot and Anthea exchanging
glances: so Fanny is vain after all.
‘Shall we,’ she had said, getting up, ‘shall we have some coffee before I get on with my apple jelly?’
‘But we did try to stop it,’ said Fanny in the villa now. From the beginning she had known that it ought to stop. ‘Aunt Isabel had brought me up too thoroughly for me not to know that,’ she could have said, ‘but I had told myself that it was to be nothing. Nothing but a little light amusement, something to while away the time for him, for me a peccadillo, and I had never had a peccadillo in my life.’ To be simply a wife and mother can blot you out, thought Fanny. I had had no fun or flattery for years and I was tempted, but Aunt Isabel and the moral books are right when they tell you you are playing with fire, tasting goblin fruit. All those clichés are true, thought Fanny.
But she had tried. There was a day – it must have been far back in June, before these months that she had skipped – when she had gone up to London to lunch with Rob, and it was only lunch, thought Fanny, as defiantly as if she could have told that to Margot, Anthea, Charmian. Rob drove her back to Marylebone and, as they turned into the station yard, had said, ‘The same time on Friday?’
‘No, Rob.’
‘No?’
‘I’m not coming again.’
He had glanced down as he slowed the car. ‘Do you think that will do any good, my darling?’
‘My darling.’ Fanny’s heart had begun to beat in a strange suffocating way, and she looked quickly out of the window to hide the tears. ‘I must try,’ she had said. ‘I must try to stop now.’
Rob had said nothing.
‘I must be frightfully busy,’ said Fanny, speaking as slowly and deliberately as if she were dictating. ‘Too busy to think. I must do all the things I haven’t been doing. That have been left, neglected. I don’t know where I have been these last few weeks but I have been neglectful. I must do things.’
‘What things?’ Rob’s voice was nonchalant as he stopped by the kerb.
‘The holidays will soon be here.’ Fanny tried not to let the words tremble. ‘Philippa is going to a family in France. I should have written to the mother again. There are things to do in the house; the stairs to be painted. I must garden. None of my flowers are in for next year, wallflowers, pansies.’ It did not sound important and she gave it up. ‘All the same, I must try,’ and she said desperately, ‘Rob, leave me alone.’
‘Very well.’ They were two such quiet little words that Fanny had felt rebuffed. ‘I suppose I was surprised and piqued,’ she said now. The tears had really come into her eyes before he could get out and come round. ‘Goodbye, Rob.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘You might have made a show of minding,’ she told him afterwards.
‘Why?’
‘It would have been polite.’
‘You are not polite when you are in love.’
‘You didn’t seem in the least perturbed or moved.’
‘I wasn’t,’ said Rob. ‘I knew we couldn’t stop, but I knew, too, it was better to let you try.’
‘I did try.’
For more than a month she had lived in a vacuum, blank, somnambulant, ‘and nobody noticed, except Lady Candida,’ said Fanny.
‘You look listless, Fanny. You need waking up,’ and I expect I did, thought Fanny, because I was sleep-walking; but Lady Candida had not the power to wake her, nor Darrell, nor anyone, not even Hugh. Being without Rob was like being put back to sleep when you had been awake. For the first time in my life, thought Fanny, since I was a child, I was awake. What wisdom there is in the old fairytales, she thought; ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ – only I am not a beauty, thought Fanny, and Rob did not even have to kiss me to shatter me awake; but the end of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ was pure fantasy; in real life even the heroine has to go back to sleep, ‘and in those endless few weeks,’ said Fanny, ‘I found out what that meant and how far I had gone.’
‘We had gone,’ Rob would have interrupted her.
‘Yes, but I didn’t know that about you then,’ Fanny could have answered. ‘I was sure, for you, this was a passing thing,’ and she went steadily on in her sleep-life. Oh yes, I could have stopped then, thought Fanny. Rob and I had barely touched one another, we were still finding out about each other, and ourselves, and I could have gone on with Darrell at Stebbings quite well, only asleep, only knowing with a vague and perpetual unhappiness what I had missed.
Then one day … was it in July? asked Fanny. It must have been because she was sorting the children’s holiday clothes; one day, towards the end of July, Darrell had come in and said, ‘The company’s leaving.’
‘What company?’ Fanny was feeling too dimmed to understand even that.
‘The film company. The picture is finished, at least the parts they can shoot here, and they are giving a farewell. Anthea’s lending the Big House and Margot is helping to organize it all.’ Anthea and Margot seemed to be the fates for us, thought Fanny. ‘Margot caught me up at the Club House,’ said Darrell. ‘She said she had been ringing here all afternoon. Didn’t you hear the telephone?’
‘Yes,’ said Fanny.
‘Then …?’
‘I didn’t answer it,’ said Fanny, and Darrell stared at her.
‘Are you ill?’ he asked and he still looked at her. ‘You don’t look very well.’
‘I’m perfectly well. Tell me about this … this … is it a party?’
‘It’s a Haysel to Harvest “thank you” for all the locals. The village has been pretty good, helping and providing. The Red Lion will have a free night, and there will be supper – and champagne, I gather – for invited people up at the Big House. All of them in the picture will be there: Gail Starling, Mark Bennett, and this Quillet man the director. The producer chap’s an Italian and he’s over here. I must say it’s decent of them,’ said Darrell. ‘I thought film people used you and forgot you as soon as they had finished.’
‘They must forget,’ said Fanny. ‘It’s inevitable,’ but the words seemed to stick in her throat.
‘Can’t expect them to remember what happened on every picture,’ said Darrell cheerfully. ‘This is quite impromptu, and Margot wants you to help.’
‘I can’t,’ said Fanny. ‘I won’t,’ she might have said. She prayed Darrell would not probe, but that was a vain wish with Darrell. ‘Why not? Are we doing something?’ he asked at once.
‘I am.’
‘What have you to do?’
‘Something I promised.’ Fanny’s voice was near breaking.
‘You couldn’t have promised anything very important.’
‘Important to me.’
‘You can put it off.’
‘I can’t.’
‘It would do you good,’ said Darrell. ‘You have been in too much lately. That’s why you are looking pale. Mother says you need a good tonic.’
‘Is a noisy party a tonic?’
‘She says you are too quiet.’
‘I have always been quiet.’
‘She says …’
‘Darrell! Will you please ask Lady Candida to leave me alone.’ Darrell stared at the exasperation on Fanny’s face, the way she clenched her hands. ‘Please, Darrell.’
‘My dear Fanny! Very well, if you feel like that, we won’t go.’
‘You go.’
‘Not if you won’t. I should rather stay with you.’
‘No, go! Go! Go!’ Fanny wanted to shout at the top of her voice, but, ‘I shan’t be here,’ she managed to say calmly. ‘So I think you should go. You don’t get much fun out of Whitcross.’
‘I must say I should rather like to see Gail Starling at close quarters, and the grounds will be floodlit when it gets dark,’ said Darrell like a small boy. ‘If you are sure …’
‘Quite sure,’ said Fanny. She had to fight the exasperation down again. ‘It had come upon me suddenly,’ Fanny told Rob afterwards, ‘that you were to be so near.’ The Big House gates and the park were only across the road from Stebbings. ‘I would hear the cars driv
e up, voices, laughter. Darrell said it was all to be in the garden …’
She had thought, when the time came, she would do something onerous. When Darrell had gone, she would turn out the linen cupboard, tidy the attic, anything busy or heavy so that she should not hear or think, but as half-past seven came I couldn’t do it, thought Fanny. I couldn’t stay in so near. She had to get away. She went into the cloakroom and blindly took a coat. Gwyneth had come in – Fanny had forgotten to tell her Darrell was out for dinner – and called, ‘Are you going out?’
‘Taking Danny for a run.’ Fanny slipped out through the door at the bottom of the garden, so as not to meet anyone, and up the side lane. It had begun to spot with rain. Poor floodlighting, thought Fanny. Poor Anthea and Margot with their tables in the garden, but the rain was cool as it hit her hot cheeks and aching eyes.
There was one walk where people seldom went, a path that led behind the park up through the woods to the cross that gave Whitcross its name. It was cut in the chalk of the hill and made a landmark for miles. Only lovers walked this way, to be alone, thought Fanny. She knew that they would be too shut away with themselves to notice anyone else. Her breath felt as if it were choking. Danny ran ahead.
The path made a green alley, closed like a maze as it came higher up the hill. I used to tell the children not to run along it in case they might collide with someone coming the other way, but they always ran, thought Fanny. I was walking fast, my head bent, rain on my face like tears, my hands clenched in my pockets – and she had come round the corner full tilt into Rob.
If it was not meant to happen, why did God let it? asked Fanny like a little girl. It was absurd to bring God into it, but, ‘We were avoiding one another,’ she said. Rob could not face the party either. ‘Not to meet you casually. I knew you were coming.’ ‘Fanny Clavering with her husband,’ Margot had said and had looked at him with her emerald gaze, and ‘She could look,’ said Rob. ‘Her barb was more right than she dreamed. I knew I couldn’t see you with another man, going away with him. I thought I would put in an appearance, I had to do that, it was Renato’s party, and leave when you came. You didn’t come – but I saw Darrell,’ said Rob, ‘Margot kindly pointed him out to me and I knew I had to go. I went through the park, like a tornado, I expect, and up on the Cross, and looked down on Stebbings, those tiles among the apple trees. I could have dropped a pebble down your chimneys. I wondered if you were there. I could hear the party and I thought I would go back to town. I started to walk down and you walked into my arms.’
