Reckless

by William Nicholson

  ‘Just make sure you change it for the better,’ Maya replied.

  ‘Trust,’ said Ivanov. ‘Honour. Friendship. That’s how to make a better world.’

  20

  Rupert Blundell put his proposal to Hugo Caulder over the telephone, only to learn he was a month too late. Pamela was already installed in their spare room. However, barely an hour later Hugo called back, having thought more on the matter.

  ‘This Irish girl,’ he said. ‘Would she be wanting to go out on the town every night?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Rupert. ‘She’s much too shy.’

  ‘Not got crowds of smart friends?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘Pammy’s wonderful, of course. But she’s not quite turning out the way we expected. I mean, we love having her and so forth. But we don’t actually see all that much of her.’

  ‘Mary needs a home. I think you’ll find she’ll make herself really useful.’

  *

  They met by prior arrangement on the steps of the National Gallery, as if they were running away together. It was Mary who insisted on this conspiratorial manner of leaving the convent.

  ‘They’d never let me go if they knew.’

  Even here she glanced round from time to time, afraid she had been followed. She held tight to a small cheap suitcase, and looked mostly at the ground, like a child who believes that if she can’t see then she can’t be seen. Only when they were in a taxi and heading west, and had left Knightsbridge and Kensington behind them, did she look up and give Rupert a small nervous smile.

  ‘I hope they live a hundred miles away.’

  Harriet and Hugo came out onto the steps of the tall house in Brook Green to welcome her. Emily, even shyer than Mary, hid behind her mother. However, the child was already prejudiced in Mary’s favour. She had been taken to see The Sound of Music at the Palace Theatre not so long ago, and understood perfectly how it could be that Mary had been living in a convent, but was not yet a nun.

  ‘She wants to be a nun, Mummy,’ she explained to Harriet, ‘but she’s always singing when she shouldn’t be.’

  Mary’s drab garments and gentle demeanour pleased Harriet from the start. Here, unlike Pamela, was someone who understood the virtue of quietness.

  ‘Come on in, Mary. Rupert’s told us all about you.’

  She showed Mary to the room that was to be hers, on the third floor, an attic room with a small dormer window that looked out onto a tree in the street outside.

  ‘It’s not very much,’ said Harriet apologetically, ‘and you’ll have to go down two floors to use the bathroom. But we have the daughter of some friends staying at present, and the other room is John’s, which we like to keep it as it was.’

  The attic room was the largest space Mary had had to herself in all her life.

  Left alone, she unpacked her few belongings. She placed her statue of Our Lady of Fatima on the chest of drawers with her rosary at its feet. Then she knelt down and prayed.

  ‘Holy Mother, watch over Mam and Eamonn and Bridie, and keep them safe. Teach me how to serve these good people who have taken me in, a stranger in their home. Show me God’s will for me and give me the strength to follow it.’

  Rupert Blundell stayed long enough to be sure she was safely settled, and then said he must go. Mary’s face filled with alarm.

  ‘Come and see me off, Mary,’ he said.

  She came with him out into the warm evening street.

  ‘May I give you a word of advice?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Take off the headscarf.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She reached up at once and drew it off. Her hair beneath was dark, cut short like a boy’s.

  ‘That’s a convent haircut, is it?’

  ‘I hate it,’ Mary said.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Rupert said, ‘it suits you.’

  The short dark hair framed her pale face, changing the look of her. She seemed less fragile.

  ‘And the coat?’ he added gently.

  She took off the long grey woollen coat to reveal a long brown woollen dress. It was not quite a nun’s habit, but in its determination to conceal all and flatter nothing it might as well have been. She saw the look on his face and tugged awkwardly at the sleeves as if to improve its fit.

  ‘Same colour as your eyes,’ he said with a smile.

  He said this because he felt her embarrassment and wanted her to know it didn’t matter. But evidently she wasn’t used to such attentions. She blushed deeply.

  He looked away.

  ‘I’d better be on my way.’

  ‘You’ll come back and see me?’ she said.

  ‘Of course I will. But you’ll be fine here. They’re good people.’

  ‘When will you come?’

  ‘On Sunday,’ he said.

  He pointed to the church at the bottom of the road.

  ‘That’s Holy Trinity. Go to Mass there on Sunday and I’ll meet you afterwards.’

  ‘Won’t you come to Mass yourself?’

  ‘No, Mary. That’s all over for me.’

  He shook her small firm hand and strode away towards Hammersmith Road. She watched him out of sight.

  *

  Mary understood that her duty now, and her only means of repayment, was to make herself useful to the family who had offered her sanctuary. Lonely and frightened as she was, she set herself to learn as much as possible about her new home. She kept silent at mealtimes, and watched and listened, and so very quickly came to know the cause of the sadness she had sensed in the house from the start. There had been a child who had died.

  ‘John would be old enough to go to school now,’ Harriet said. ‘I would never have sent him away to school.’ Or, when Emily wouldn’t eat up her greens, ‘Think what a bad example that would be to John.’ To Harriet, and to Emily, John was a real and constant presence. Hugo was another matter. When they talked of John, he remained silent.

  Mary asked if she might see John’s room, and Harriet took her there herself. The room was clean and bright, with wallpaper of pretty white clouds sailing across a blue sky. There was a white painted wooden cot with a little bed made up in it, and a woolly lion lying by the pillow. On a tall chest of drawers there was a nappy-changing mat, with a stack of fleecy folded nappies beside it, and a tub of zinc ointment. The curtains, which hung in generous swags across the window, were printed with circus clowns and seals balancing balls on their noses.

  Mary gazed at the room, which looked exactly as if it had been newly furnished a few days ago, and then looked at Harriet. What she saw on her face was not grief at all, but a kind of expectant happiness.

  ‘How old was he when he died?’ Mary asked.

  ‘No age at all,’ said Harriet. ‘He was stillborn.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Six years,’ said Harriet.

  But her face told a different story. Something in her had stopped at the time of the fateful birth, and time was suspended. She had gone back to the day before, or perhaps even the hour before. Her baby had not yet been born. She was still waiting.

  Harriet for her part found that she was soothed by Mary’s undemanding presence. The day following Mary’s arrival proved to be one of her ‘quiet days’, when she took to her bed with a crippling pain in her temples. Mary brought her painkillers and cups of tea, and sat with her and listened to her tell how she was feeling: a story everyone else had tired of long ago.

  ‘I can always feel it coming long before it comes,’ Harriet whispered in the darkened room. ‘Nobody can know the horror of that feeling. You sense the pain is on its way, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Sometimes I wish there was a wound, and bleeding, so everyone could see how much it hurts. Hugo is very sweet, but I’m sure he thinks I’m making a lot of fuss over nothing. Thank you, Mary, I’ll have that cup of tea now. You see? I can barely lift my arm.’

  ‘Does the pain last very long?’ said Mary.

  ‘It comes an
d goes,’ said Harriet. ‘It comes in waves. It gets worse and worse until you think you can’t take any more, then it starts to fade. Then you have a little time of peace. Then it comes back.’

  Mary was shocked.

  ‘And do these waves go on all day?’

  ‘Not all the day,’ said Harriet, gratified. ‘Perhaps half the day, or three-quarters. And then after the pain is gone, I have this overwhelming weakness. I can’t get out of bed. I can hardly speak. I can’t bear loud noises or bright lights. Really I am a quite useless person.’

  ‘You’re called to suffer,’ said Mary.

  ‘I suppose it’s just my bad luck,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Mary. ‘These are the trials the good Lord sends us.’

  Harriet had only the most conventional religious faith herself, but she liked Mary’s version of her condition. She was being tested. There was courage in her suffering.

  ‘I like her very much,’ she told Hugo. ‘I’m so glad she’s come to live with us.’

  Pamela was out of the house, and did not return until after Mary had gone to bed in her attic room. Her initial reaction to the newcomer was suspicion.

  ‘Does Rupert know anything at all about her? What does he think she’s supposed to be doing here?’

  ‘She can help out with Emily,’ said Hugo.

  ‘I thought I was supposed to be doing that.’

  ‘Yes, but you have so many other things you have to do. And anyway, it’s an act of charity, taking her in. And you never know, you may get an art course sorted out and we’ll be glad to have her.’

  ‘So you don’t want me to go?’

  ‘Of course not. You’re like family.’

  This was all the reassurance Pamela needed.

  ‘You’re so sweet to me, Hugo.’

  It soon became apparent that Mary would undertake all the chores that it had been supposed Pamela would do; and better still, would do them willingly. This gave Pamela increased freedom to come and go as she pleased. She withdrew her hostility to Mary and even became, in idle moments, a little curious about her. Like Rupert, she suspected that behind Mary’s homeless condition there was trouble with some man.

  ‘Were you ever married, Mary?’ she asked her.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Mary, blushing.

  ‘Rupert said you were living in a convent, but that you’re not actually a nun.’

  ‘I was living in a convent, yes,’ said Mary.

  ‘So you must be very religious.’

  ‘We’re all religious in Ireland,’ said Mary.

  ‘Where do you come from in Ireland, Mary?’

  ‘From a little village nobody ever heard of,’ she replied.

  Pamela concluded that Mary was concealing some mystery. When Rupert came round she was open about it.

  ‘I know there’s a secret there. What’s she doing alone in London? Why did she want to leave her convent?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask her.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know?’

  ‘Yes. But she doesn’t want to tell.’

  ‘Do you think she’s pretty?’

  ‘Yes, I think I do. Don’t you?’

  ‘I think she could be pretty,’ said Pamela, exercising a judicious and semi-professional judgement. ‘But I think she doesn’t want to be. She looks so washed out. A little make-up would do wonders for her. And that dress!’

  ‘I think she’s happy to stay as she is.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Pamela. ‘She wants a man, like everyone else.’

  ‘Some people are happy to be alone,’ said Rupert.

  At this point Hugo came in.

  ‘Rupert’s telling me there are people who want to be alone,’ Pamela said to him. ‘But it’s all nonsense, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s Rupert’s philosophy of life,’ said Hugo. ‘He’s told me before. We’re all alone, whether we know it or not.’

  ‘What, always?’ said Pamela.

  ‘Deep down,’ said Rupert.

  ‘What about love? When you fall in love you’re not alone any more.’

  ‘Have you ever fallen in love?’

  ‘No.’ Pamela blushed a little. ‘But I can imagine what it must be like.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m the wrong person to ask about falling in love,’ said Rupert. ‘My own view is that the very act of falling in love blinds you to the reality of the one you love. So yes, you’re still alone.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Pamela.

  ‘Come on, Rupert,’ said Hugo. ‘Just because it’s never happened to you.’

  ‘I didn’t say it had never happened to me,’ said Rupert.

  ‘Oh, well,’ exclaimed Pamela. ‘So you’ve fallen in love and it hasn’t worked out. That’s just sour grapes.’

  ‘Maybe it is,’ said Rupert.

  He was untroubled by her disapproval. This provoked her.

  ‘You’re not that old,’ she said. ‘You should make more effort.’

  ‘I’m forty-four,’ he said. ‘I’m not love’s young dream. I’m not rich. I think it’s quite wise of me to make the most of my quiet bachelor life, don’t you?’

  ‘Actually,’ said Hugo, ‘Rupert moves in far higher circles than the rest of us. You know he works for Mountbatten?’

  ‘Mountbatten?’ said Pamela, greatly surprised. ‘Do you actually know him?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Rupert.

  ‘I see him every day.’

  ‘Golly!’

  *

  Mary said little and saw much. She saw how Rupert, unlike Hugo, was immune to Pamela’s charms. It wasn’t that he was unaware of how attractive she was, more that it never occurred to him that her charm was anything to do with him. Blinking through his spectacles, smiling when she smiled, but still speaking his own awkward truth, he enjoyed her radiance without seeking to possess it; as one might turn one’s face to the sun. Mary recognised in him the virtue of humility, and she too respected him the more for it.

  Hugo was another matter. Hugo looked at Pamela as if it hurt him to look but he couldn’t stop himself. Pamela sometimes touched him, carelessly and in passing, and when she did so he went still all over. He was plainly troubled by her unexplained comings and goings, but lacked the authority to control her.

  ‘Who are these new friends you go off to meet?’ Hugo asked her one day at dinner. ‘I feel we should know more about them.’

  ‘Just friends,’ said Pamela.

  ‘Yes, but what sort of people? Would your parents approve?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Pamela. ‘They’re very well connected, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Well connected?’

  ‘They’re just people,’ said Pamela irritably. ‘I don’t see that it’s anyone’s business but mine.’

  ‘You live here,’ said Hugo. A plaintive note had crept into his voice. ‘I should have thought I have a right to know something about the people you’re meeting.’

  ‘There’s Stephen, who does portraits, and has done Princess Margaret. And Eugene, who’s a diplomat. And André, who’s an art collector. There. Now you know.’

  Mary could never have spoken to anyone the way Pamela did, but she didn’t judge her for that. She didn’t have a high enough opinion of herself to judge anyone. She just watched and wondered what it was that Pamela wanted, never doubting that whatever it was she possessed the power to get it.

  Mary had arrived in Brook Green at the start of the last week of the school summer term. For those few days she took Emily to school in the morning, and was waiting outside the school gates to walk home with her at the end of the day. She also sat with her over her homework, and watched with her the allocation of television viewing she was permitted. Mary had seen almost no television in her life, and was repeatedly astonished by the happenings on screen.

  ‘Oh, no!’ she cried, covering her face with her hands. ‘The poor child!’

  This while watching Emergency Ward 10. Emily was entirely won over by Mary’s ter
rors before the television.

  ‘Look, Mary, that’s her mother. She doesn’t know her child’s been in the accident. She’s got a nasty shock coming.’

  ‘Please! I can’t look!’

  So the first week went by, and Mary was accepted into the family, and the mystery surrounding her arrival receded into the past.

  21

  Rupert was crossing the park as he did at the end of each day when he saw the two nuns again. He knew from far off that they were waiting for him. As he approached he felt their eyes on him. One was tall and stern, with thick eyebrows. The other was smaller and more timid.

  He stopped before them.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I hope so,’ said the stern one. ‘We’re concerned about Sister Mary.’

  ‘Sister Mary?’

  ‘Your cousin,’ said the other nun.

  Rupert felt himself go red.

  ‘Whether or not she is your cousin is beside the point,’ said the first nun.

  ‘Eight days ago she disappeared, leaving no word of where she had gone and when she would return.’

  ‘She’s safe,’ said Rupert. ‘She’s well.’

  ‘So she’s with you.’

  The stern nun’s voice vibrated with angry suspicion.

  ‘No, not with me,’ said Rupert. ‘She’s staying with a family I know.’

  ‘Why has she not informed us of this?’

  ‘I think she’s afraid.’

  ‘Afraid of those who love and protect her? Afraid of her own family in God?’

  ‘Sir,’ said the smaller shyer nun, ‘we’ve been so worried about her. She shouldn’t be out in the big city alone.’

  ‘I’m sorry she didn’t leave any forwarding information,’ said Rupert. ‘But I do assure you, she left of her own free will.’

  ‘Without a word,’ said the stern nun, her voice trembling. Rupert realised she was more hurt than angry.

  ‘Will you be seeing her, sir?’ said the smaller nun.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rupert. ‘I’ll be seeing her after Mass on Sunday.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the tall nun bitterly. ‘So she still goes to Mass.’

  ‘Please tell her you saw us, sir. I’m Sister Cecily. Please tell Mary we love her and miss her.’