‘It doesn’t seem …’ as so often with his hesitation Josh stopped and Melinda waited, and then, ‘it doesn’t seem right to me – Mel, in fact it seems really wrong.’
‘Well, I know, but there we are. As a friend of mine at school was always saying, God did not choose to come down on earth as a woman but if He had it might have made things a bit easier, if not for Him at least for us! No, in case you hadn’t noticed, Josh, it’s still a man’s world.’
Josh lowered his voice while reaching for another peppermint. ‘All right, all right, but don’t tell Goosey, OK? I don’t think she realizes she has to have foals no matter what.’
They both laughed at that, feeling relieved that the truly serious moment had passed, and Melinda once more looked more cheerful.
Josh shifted gears as the old wooden-sided horse box pulled them up the last hill, almost groaning with the effort of making the steep, steep ascent, until at last the view told them that down below in the green and the dark of the end of day lay the Mill House, and home.
Hope was saying, ‘Letty’s no trouble, Jack, really. She’s as easy as anything. I don’t mind if you leave her with me while I have my rest, really I don’t. I quite like it if she plays near me.’
‘I am taking her for a walk and you are staying for some peace and quiet. What’s the matter, don’t you trust me?’
‘Of course I do,’ Hope lied, but she put on Letty’s coat and waved goodbye to them from the cottage door until they had quite disappeared up the garden towards the gate, as if by watching her out of sight she could prevent anything untoward happening to Letty.
Nowadays Hope was so far into her pregnancy that she had reached that point when she could hardly remember a time when she had not been pregnant, and yet her worry over Letty would not be abated, despite the fact that she knew that once she was in hospital, or home with the new baby, she would have to delegate responsibility for Letty to Jack and the girls anyway.
She lay down on the cottage bed and stared at the ceiling.
Even now, the violent change in their circumstances sometimes did not seem possible. To go from the big old house to Keeper’s Cottage, from being married to being separated, from being un-pregnant to being pregnant. It sometimes made her head reel to think of how their lives had changed since Aunt Rosabel had come to stay that Christmas. It was less than two years ago, but it felt like a thousand.
Yet it was not so long that Hope did not still find herself, at night – before she put on her bedside light – looking round for doors and rooms that were Hatcombe, or turning, when she heard someone coming in, expecting to see Verna or Aunt Rosabel. It took a moment to remember that they, and Hatcombe, were quite gone.
The moment a person dies a place seems to change, not within weeks, but within hours, and where once such an object was placed there, or flowers arranged over here, or a picture changed so that it will catch the light better, and beds made with specially hand-ironed sheets and the bedside tables covered with sweet-scented leafy geraniums, those things die too. But not within days, as one might expect, but at that moment. The person who has gone seems to take their very essence with them, perhaps because they owe their purpose to them. And in a second the life of a place has vanished, and it is all over. The plants may remain, the beds stay made up, the paintings hang in the same place, but the imagination that placed them there, the intention behind them, once so vibrant and giving, just goes.
Someone had said that to Hope, long ago. Was it her mother? Was it someone she had once known and would never see again? Or was it simply something she had read, somewhere, by someone, and they too – like the geraniums and the paintings and the hand-ironed sheets – were gone, their sweet kindness never to be replaced?
Keeper’s Cottage with three teenage girls, despite everyone finding themselves part-time work or signing on at local colleges, was beginning to feel unsurprisingly more crowded by the minute, and yet the less Hope was able to do about it the more she worried about the effect that the arrival of another baby in such an environment might have, which really did not make sense, for she was already far, far too late into her pregnancy to worry. But then neither did her proud refusal to move in with Jack make any sense. (It was a refusal based on the knowledge that Josh, Tobe and Cyndi, while still living at home, must not even begin to sense that their father’s attention might not be wholly focused around them.)
Then, abruptly, the Merriott sisters’ situation at over-crowded Keeper’s was suddenly made sense of by Rose.
‘Mums?’
Rose scratched at the door. Despite the fact that Hope had just dropped off to sleep, she sat up immediately. ‘Come in, come in.’
‘Mums.’
‘Rose.’
She took Hope’s hand. ‘This is not going to sound right, but there is no other way of putting what I have to tell you – I am going to London. I had a letter this morning from Aunt Rosabel’s old friend, Hugh Reilly? And he’s made me an offer to lodge in his house, and I simply can’t refuse. You see, it means, while I’m beginning to go for auditions and go up for RADA and all that, I can be on the spot, and if other things come up, you know, small roles and stuff, walk-ons, whatever, I can go up for those too. Which will be brilliant. But I have to go up to London the day after tomorrow, if I’m going, because he’s going out on a tour and he wants everything fixed up before he goes. You know?’
Hope stared at Rose. It was not really a surprise. Yet now the moment had come it was still a shock, because it spelt yet another end to everything that had been only a few seconds before. Suddenly it seemed that even the last hour was in some way an end, as if every minute of every hour that passed was just that, an eternal end to something which had been before.
She could see at once that very soon there would be no Rose to laugh with, to watch dancing about the place, to see cheering on young, studious Claire to make herself more glamorous – contact lenses instead of glasses, New Year diets, do-it-yourself yoga.
Soon Rose would be gone from them, and with her departure her dark beauty, her ringing laugh, her zest and her humour, and soon after that she would be only a set of photographs, or a voice down the telephone saying, ‘How are you, Mums?’
Hope wanted to beg Rose not to go to London, not to try her hand at auditioning for drama school, not to be independent of her, because she loved her so much. She loved all of them so much, she just wanted them to stay for ever as they were, where they were, all of them together at Keeper’s. Laughing together, cheering each other up by making cheap but warming meals out of spices and vegetables from recipes in magazines, drinking hot chocolate to keep warm before huddling together in the little bedrooms above the tiny living rooms that made up Keeper’s.
But it was not possible. And besides, even to hint at such feelings would mean, Hope knew, that she was a bad mother.
All her daughters must leave her, and with things so bad for them – sooner rather than later, she knew that; so there was no point in pretending either to them or to herself. No-one could stay at home, they all had to take their chance. It was just that Rose happened to be taking her chance first. Inwardly Hope breathed in and out, willing herself to sound cheerful and accepting.
‘I’m so glad, darling, that you have decided to go to London, and to audition for drama school, you know that? I never wanted you to stop dancing, Rose. It wasn’t me who wanted you to give up your place at Park Lodge.’
‘No, I know. Don’t worry, I realized that, long afterwards. Dads shouldn’t have blamed you! I don’t know how Dads has been able to treat you as he has—’
‘No, darling, you mustn’t criticize your father. It takes two to tango and I am just as much to blame for our break-up as anyone.’
‘Oh, come on, Mums.’
‘No, not come on, Mums at all. Really. My fault. I should never have agreed to come to Hatcombe, to live in the country, saying yes when I meant no. Not telling the truth. No, I was just as much to blame for our drifting apart as Dads.
I was weak and stupid, always trying to cover up when I should have stood up. Remember that, Rose. For my sake, never say ‘yes’ when you mean ‘no’. Not ever. Do what Jack says the farmers do round here – take a year, two years, what you will, before you come to a decision rather than say yes when you mean no. Now. End of lecture, you’ll be glad to hear!’
Rose looked down at her mother’s hands. They looked suddenly careworn, and although, with the pregnancy, and Jack’s attentions, she had bloomed, Rose would have liked Hope not to be pregnant, to be back in the dear old days once more, at West Dean, where they had all seemed so happy, and not to be facing having yet another child.
But there, it was all over and done for now, and Rose had to go to London, get organized, audition, kick on as Mellie would say.
‘Anyway, I thought I’d better tell you first – you know, before I started to spout large chunks of Saint Joan at breakfast and you began to wonder what was happening.’
‘You’re an angel, do you know that, Rose?’
‘Of course,’ Rose agreed briskly. ‘But this angel must leave you to have a zizz while she learns to play a saint!’
Telling her mother of her plan to leave Keeper’s and go to London was dead easy for Rose compared to telling Mellie and Claire that she was leaving Wiltshire for good, and what was worse doing so in only a couple of days.
Perhaps it was because Rose had not really thought out the effect it would have on her sisters and so had just blurted it out. Or perhaps she herself had not really thought it out, and it was only at the actual moment that she made her announcement and saw the expressions of real loss on the faces of her two sisters that the reality hit Rose.
She was leaving home, and them, and although she said, jokingly, to them, ‘It will mean there’s a bit more room to swing a cat, and even Minou is in need of more room at Keeper’s,’ she could see that room was not exactly what the other two most wanted, for the fact was they had all, despite their adversities, or perhaps because of them – as Claire had said, all the time – just like the war when everyone got on so much better and didn’t grumble – grown a great deal closer, if that were possible.
Small wonder then that the other two wanted Rose to stay with them and not to go to London, but to go on trying to make them laugh with her send-ups of her audition pieces, helping them both get through this really scary bit of their lives, when their parents’ marriage was breaking up and they all needed each other so much, if only to share a magazine and a mug of hot chocolate, or a good gossip about people in the village, if only to stop themselves from bursting into tears every other minute that God sent.
Now they both stared at her, not really believing that Rose was going so suddenly and so soon, that she had already found a room in a house with a mad old actor, someone whom Aunt Rosabel had used to know many, many years ago and whom, just before she had died, the old lady had got it together enough to write to on Rose’s behalf, knowing that Rose had quite set her heart on what Aunt Rosabel always called that acting thing you want to do.
‘This Hugh Reilly. This old actor friend of Aunt Rosabel. He will give me a room in his roof, an attic room, in return for doing his housework and the other lodgers’ ironing. Apparently it’s got the use of a shower on the same floor – I only heard about it all this morning. And I would have come and told you straight away, but I thought I ought to tell Mums first, or else she might be upset.’
There was a long silence during which no-one had anything to say, so Rose went on, ‘And Mums has said yes. I mean, she’s agreed that it’s a pretty marvellous opportunity thing.’
Claire turned away, clearing her throat and pretending not to be upset, which was always Claire’s way.
‘If you’re going to be doing all the laundry you’d better learn to separate the coloureds from the whites,’ Melinda joked, as she saw from her turned back and hunched shoulders just how upset Claire was at Rose’s news. ‘Blimey, Rose, your ironing’s not exactly brilliant.’
‘I thought you could coach me,’ Rose told her, smiling and pulling a droll face, although she suddenly did not feel like it at all, but only wished to go to bed and pull the duvet over her head and not get up again, ever. ‘How about now, for instance? You’re not doing anything, are you? We could improve the shining hour with a spot of the old ironing. I mean if I don’t learn to get stuck in, I’ll be out on my ear. Although he did say it would mostly be sheets, which is a relief, particularly when you remember how many of Aunt Rosabel’s petticoats I burned, not to mention – ugh – Dads’s shirts.’
Melinda raised her eyes to heaven, still pretending to be bored and intent on teasing Rose, if only to give Claire time to get over her feelings. ‘Oh, all right,’ she groaned, and she caught Rose by the arm, pulling her towards the tiny cottage kitchen as if Rose was reluctant, which they both knew she was not, thereby giving Claire not just the time, but the space, to finish being upset.
‘What was that you said?’ Rose had heard Claire muttering something.
Claire, her back still turned, said, ‘Nothing, really. Just that thing Aunt Rosabel used to say. You know. If you feel sorry for yourself there’s nothing for anyone else to do.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Rose cleared her throat. ‘I’ve spent most of my life feeling sorry for myself. I actually don’t think one should give other people the privilege.’ She raised her eyes to heaven, as if talking to a saint, and added to her departed relative, ‘Sorry, Aunt Rosabel, but you know what I mean. There’s something so lovely and slushy and damp about feeling sorry for oneself! Like having a warm bath after a cold walk!’
‘Right.’ Melinda set up the ironing board. She had always seen to Rose’s dancing things for her, ever since she was quite tiny. Loving to make her look as good as she could, just as nowadays she loved to spend hours grooming the Grey Goose and making her look her best. ‘So, what you should do with shirts is this. You start at the back of the collar, right? Like this …’ She turned over a large shirt that happened to be in the ironing basket, and then wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh no, don’t let’s do this one – it’s Dads’s old one. Yuk.’ She threw it back, took out one of her own riding shirts and began again. ‘Start at the back of the collar, you see?’
Rose nodded, but she stood for a second staring at nothing even so, utterly shocked at Mellie’s reaction to their father’s shirt.
God. It was so strange that Mellie should hate Dads now as much as Rose, did when Mellie had always been his favourite. As Claire often said, Mel was the only one he didn’t mind being a girl, because he still thought there was time to have a boy, you know?
And yet look at Mellie now – she could not even bear to iron one of his old shirts.
‘Do you hate Dads now, Mellie?’
Melinda looked up from spraying the shirt with starch. ‘What?’
‘I said do you hate Dads now?’
‘No. Not really. I mean hatred is such a waste of time, don’t you think?’
Rose twisted her mouth into a funny shape and then took in a great gulp of air before letting it out again. Then she asked in a low voice. ‘Do you think Dads was always the way he is now, Mellie?’
Melinda nodded, still concentrating on her ironing demonstration. ‘Oh, yes. Always. It’s just that we were all so busy trying to pretend that he wasn’t, that he was our darling Dads, the only man in our lives, we couldn’t see the wood for the trees. That’s why it’s so important to see things clearly, not to try to pretend, because if you don’t, well, you end up like Mums. Don’t forget that when you’re in London, and you’re not getting anywhere. Whatever happens, it’s better to – you know, try at something, even if you don’t make it, even if you never make it, even if you drop dead from trying – it’s better to – you know, kick on.’
They stared briefly at each other, both knowing what she meant. Rose must not be weak as Mums had been with Dads, always giving in to his whims when she should have stood up for herself.
‘Funny.’
‘What?’
‘That’s just what Mums herself just said.’
Melinda wanted to say A bit late for that, isn’t it, considering? but that would have been unfair, and anyway they both wanted to get on with the next few days, kick on as Colonel Simpson kept telling Melinda as she and the Grey Goose prepared to take off over some new obstacle, kick on.
To cover the moment, and to get them both over the difficult forty-eight hours before Rose’s departure, Melinda plumped for being facetious about Rose’s leaving home. They had always loved sending up well-known platitudes – little nuggets of wisdom that will never do anything except drive you raj bongo was how Rose sometimes put it – whiling away the time on long dull journeys by making them up, and then, naturally, finding them excruciatingly funny. So now Melinda thought up a couple on her own, both to get over her own desolation and to cheer Rose when she might be finding the going a bit tough in London.
Life’s just a cross country course, full of obstacles, but great when you complete! She wrote this on a piece of paper which she secretly put on the top of Rose’s clothes before shutting her suitcase for her. And again to make her laugh, she placed another at the bottom of the suitcase for Rose to read when she finished unpacking the last of her things when she arrived in London.
Life’s just like a dressage test, no-one really understands it, but everyone pretends that they do, even the horses!
After which they tried to keep their goodbyes what Rose called cheap and cheerful because, in the event, as Claire agreed in her deep little voice, when they finally waved Rose off at the station, ‘It is best, really it is, Mel. Like people in black and white films, you know? Best to keep crisp. Like Brief Encounter and those sorts of things.’
Love Song Page 24
