In the garden and the house there were tasks to be done, and shopping in the town. There was the preparation of meals, legalities to be typed out on her Remington, Sunday mass. Every evening either Katherine or Henrietta telephoned.
Days turned into weeks, and gradually the rawness of the wound grew its first skin. Mrs Spanners’s chat began to lose its stilted note, Mrs Anstey became less grim. ‘Honestly there’s no need to,’ Julia assured her daughters, and soon after that the daily telephoning ceased. She no longer dreaded the moment of waking in the morning, and for that mercy she gave thanks as often as she prayed. As if by consent, the past was encouraged to claim what belonged to it, and succeeded to such a degree that when a tendril from the days before the marriage suddenly presented itself there was no sense of alarm, only bewilderment. Returning from shopping one Monday afternoon, Julia met Mrs Spanners on her way out of the house. ‘A chap called Hodge rung,’ she said.
‘Hodge?’
‘He has a dog for you. In Cheltenham this Hodge is.’
Julia shook her head. She knew no one called Hodge, nor did she know anything about a dog.
‘Spaniel,’ Mrs Spanners persisted. ‘Liver and white, seemingly.’
‘But, Mrs Spanners, it was a mistake or a wrong number. It must have been.’
The cleaning woman, whose mood had been effervescent because of having to impart this peculiar news about a dog, became solemn. Having been searching Julia’s face for reactions, her eyes were suddenly cast down. She spoke in the low voice she had perfected some weeks ago and recently abandoned.
‘It was a dog Mr Tyte arranged for, seemingly.’
‘Good Lord!’
‘I thought you’d maybe be surprised, see. I mean, I knew you wasn’t expecting nothing in the way of a dog. I mean, I said it to the man.’ Mrs Spanners continued on her way, only imparting further the information that the telephone number of the man called Hodge was written down on the pad in the kitchen.
When Julia rang it ten minutes later she discovered that a liver and white spaniel, one of a litter of eight, had indeed been ordered by Francis in advance of the birth. Mrs Spanners had explained to the man what had happened and he now said that although the pup had not been paid for he would not, in the circumstances, hold Julia to the arrangement. ‘Oh, but,’ Julia protested, ‘we’ll most certainly have it.’
‘Lovely,’ Mrs Anstey said when she was told, thinking of all the rooting up the animal would do in the garden, and the nuisance of house-training. The man claimed that Francis had telephoned him in answer to an advertisement in a local paper: in the circumstances Mrs Anstey found that odd, but did not say so. The next morning Julia drove to Cheltenham and brought the puppy back in a shoe-box.
‘What on earth shall we call him?’ she said, watching the tiny creature staggering about the lawn. He was soaking wet because he’d had to be washed, having been repeatedly sick in the car.
‘Before you were born we used to have a terrier called Pekoe at Anstey’s Mill,’ Mrs Anstey said, but as they continued to watch the spaniel sniffing the grass they decided that the name wasn’t suitable and so the dog remained without one.
Its arrival spurred Julia to action in another direction. Francis’s help in the garden had been counted upon, and he himself had urged that no one should be employed to replace old Mr Pocock. But now, without either of them, it was beginning to look tatty and something had to be done about it. Eventually she thought of her hairdresser’s boyfriend, remembering Father Lavin saying that the boy’s job in the motel hadn’t turned out successfully. ‘It’s terribly kind of you,’ Diane said in the Crowning Glory Salon when Julia sounded her out, and Julia replied that it was of course up to Nevil himself and that it was only a day a week. ‘I’ll get him to come out and see you,’ Diane promised, and three days later Nevil Clapp arrived on his motor-cycle.
For once Mrs Anstey agreed with Mrs Spanners: the whole idea of employing a person like this in the garden was ludicrous. As was her way, she did not say so, but Mrs Spanners repeated what Charle had remarked about Nevil Clapp, which wasn’t complimentary.
Julia listened and nodded, but was not deterred. She showed Nevil Clapp around the garden, explaining the nature of the work which would be required of him. His mouse-coloured hair was cut very short. His face, flecked with pieces of grit after his motor-cycle ride, was mainly flat. He carried enormous motor-cycling gloves in one hand and a yellow crash-helmet in the other. The black nylon jacket he wore looked as if it had been pumped up.
‘There are odd things in the house as well,’ she said. ‘Old Mr Pocock did them in winter, or on wet days.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Bits of redecoration now and again. The central heating gives trouble occasionally.’
‘Yeah, that’s O.K., only I don’t know nothing about a garden.’
‘It’s the rough work mainly, and keeping the lawns cut. Starting the lawnmower’s sometimes difficult. Didn’t you work in a garage once?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you did the garden at the motel?’
‘Gravel they have. Not much of a garden, you couldn’t call it.’
‘Well, if you want to give it a try, it’s here for you. It would help us out.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I just thought it might help you out, too.’
He nodded, unwilling to commit himself as to whether it would help him out or not. A fly had settled among the specks of grit on his face, but he didn’t wave it away.
‘Yeah,’ he said again. ‘Say Mondays, then?’
Julia hesitated. Monday was Mrs Spanners’s day and it seemed unwise that Nevil Clapp should share it with her. But for a reason he did not divulge he particularly wished to come on Mondays. ‘Say change to Saturdays if I get employment?’
She nodded. She asked him how much he had been paid an hour at the motel and offered him a little more. Agreeable to that, Nevil replaced his crash-helmet and roared away on his motorcycle.
Another lame duck, Mrs Anstey thought, more typing taken on to pay for him; and a week later Mrs Spanners drew attention to the fact that when Nevil Clapp came to the kitchen for his cups of tea he brought grass-cuttings with him, trailing from the ends of his jeans. He didn’t rinse his hands under the tap as you’d expect a person to do before picking up a biscuit. He made a noise all the time, a kind of snuffling under his breath, whistling she supposed it was. As to the dog, was it stupid or something that it would never go on the sheets of newspapers that were put out for it, preferring to make its puddles by the fridge, which was not hygienic?
But four weeks after the dog’s advent, and a fortnight after Nevil’s, the new regime at Swan House had developed an air of permanence. The pain and embarrassment of what had happened was already part of Julia’s life, as the death of her husband had become. The people to whom Mrs Anstey had posted little boxes of wedding-cake all knew by now that they should not have consumed it in celebration. The story which Julia had imagined being told about her in Stone St Martin was already current, but there was sympathy in Highhill Street and in the shops, though no word was ever spoken. Then, in the middle of one sunny afternoon, the telephone rang.
‘Yes?’ Julia said in the hall.
‘It’s Doris Smith here.’
‘Who?’
‘Doris Smith. Are you the woman that married –’
‘Yes, l am.’
‘This Mrs Ferndale? It gave your name on the paper. Julia Ferndale, Glos. I rang Directory Enquiries –’
‘I didn’t realize there’d been a newspaper report in England.’
‘A couple of weeks ago, Julia, the Evening Standard. It said about Frankie going like that in Italy. There was a photo from the commercial he was in. Actor vanishes, it said. Honeymoon drama.’
‘I see.’ Julia paused, not wishing to continue. Then she said, ‘Francis told me about you, Miss Smith. And about your child.’
‘The thing was, Frankie was married to a woman in F
olke–stone. That’s what I said to Joy – how could he marry someone else?’
‘He committed bigamy.’
‘My God!’
The line went dead, but ten minutes later, when Julia was making tea in the kitchen, the telephone rang again. She poured what remained of the boiling water into the tea-pot before going to the hall to answer it. Doris said:
‘I’m sorry about that, dear. I couldn’t continue for a moment.’
‘There honestly isn’t much we can say to one another.’
‘I have to talk to you, Julia, I have to get it straightened. Thing is, I was in the Underground at Oxford Circus, queuing up for a ticket. I opened the paper and there was Frankie’s face, tucked away in a corner. With this little snippet about a honeymoon. Hardly said a thing, and the photo wasn’t much neither. But of course I’d recognize Frankie anywhere.’
‘I’m sorry you should have found out like that.’
‘The next thing, I’m lying on the floor in the traffic controller’s office, with a crowd of West Indians staring down at me. It didn’t make any kind of sense, see, a honeymoon in Italy.’
‘No, I don’t suppose it did.’
‘I thought it was the girl, Julia. I said to myself, the girl’s got him to Italy with her even though she made me a promise. I passed the remark to the West Indians but they looked like I was out of my tiny. So I went over to the Spread Eagle and kept on reading the little snippet, shaking my head over it. They’ve got it wrong, I said to myself, referring to a woman in Glos. Susie Music the girl’s called.’
‘Francis didn’t mention that name to me, but then of course –’
‘Julia, I sat in the upstairs bar watching the fan going round. There’s this big fan like an aeroplane propeller in the middle of the ceiling. I’m not a drinker, Julia, but I had to have a couple that evening. There was this rock music going full blast, and all the time I was trying to remember what he said the last night when he was round in the flat. Bits of it came back to me, and when I woke up Joy to tell her it turns out she heard a bit herself on account of the wall being a partition.’
There was a pause. Julia was about to end the conversation but Doris interrupted her.
‘I think he’s maybe taken his life, Julia.’
‘Good heavens, no.’
‘I’ve got used to it in the time that’s gone by. Well no, not used to it, I’ll never get used to it. But I’m calmer, Julia. I’m not in a state, if you get what I mean?’
‘Francis is in Germany.’
‘I doubt he is, dear. The thing is Joy was lying awake that night and both of us was definitely under the impression it all had to do with this Constance Kent. He was on about a debt-collector, for instance, and I distinctly remember saying to myself, this is the bloke that drove Constance Kent to do the killing.’
‘He told me too, but the debt-collector has nothing whatsoever to do with Constance Kent. I mean, he couldn’t have.’
‘I know what you mean, Julia. One minute it’s the house Constance Kent was in and the next it’s his mum’s knitting-needles in this Rowena Avenue, and then again the dressmaker’s place down Folkestone way. On top of that there was people he mentioned that Joy has no recollection of, maybe she fell asleep. Two old sisters he met on a train and then again some doctor and his missus, and another couple in their greenhouses. Only it’s difficult unravelling it, if you get what I mean.’
‘Francis has certainly not committed suicide.’
‘I work in a shoe department, dear. I have loads of time to think. After the weeks that’s passed I can tell that that last night in the flat poor Frankie was distributing the blame.’
‘Blame?’
‘He knew hell with that dressmaker, Julia, and then again he knew hell as a kiddy, his mum and dad elderly, this debt-collector a type of devil. I’d say the old parents have something to answer for, you know, else he wouldn’t have said they didn’t exist. Another thing is, Julia, Joy and myself didn’t think you existed yourself. I kept saying to Joy it was an error in the newspaper. Dirty weekend with the girl I kept saying.’
‘Well, I do exist and I’m really afraid there’s not much point in continuing this conversation.’
‘Joy cried when she heard, Julia. Joy cared for him in her way and there it was, bucketing out of her, poor kid. Not only that. I’ve just found out she’s not attending school. She’s gone bolshy and difficult, poor little scrap, trying to get a job in a Bovril factory. Can you hear me, Julia?’
‘Yes, I can hear you.’
‘All I’m saying is we should have a natter. Could I come and see you, Julia? Is there a train down? I would arrive on a Saturday morning. Every second Saturday I have off–’
‘I’m afraid I’d rather you didn’t. I have an elderly mother: I couldn’t possibly have you coming here, upsetting her with all this.’
‘I know. I do know, dear. And I wouldn’t bother you only there’s ends left dangling, Julia.’
‘I don’t consider there are. I’m sorry, but I’d rather you didn’t telephone me again.’
There’s people to blame, Julia, I can hear him saying it. It’s my opinion that on top of everything else he maybe picked up an infection off this actress girl. Don’t get me wrong, Julia, I’m not stating it as a fact. But a lot of these young actresses is promiscuous, you see it on the papers. It’s the age we live in, Julia, and all I’m saying is poor Frankie was made for suffering, like the Kent girl was. That’s what he was getting across to us that last night, Julia. He kept on about Constance Kent, dear.’
Julia replaced the receiver, but almost at once the ringing began again. She didn’t answer it. Instead she collected the tray of tea things from the kitchen and carried it to where her mother was sitting beneath the tulip tree. She placed the tray on the beech-wood table while the ringing continued in the house. Neither of them commented on it, but Julia was aware her mother had guessed that the conversation she’d just had had been about Francis. She was also aware that her mother did not wish to be told more, that whatever happened now she would prefer simply to happen, without introduction or preamble. Julia sipped her tea, and abruptly the distant ringing ceased.
Confident by now, as if the place belonged to him, the unnamed spaniel sniffed their feet.
10
Doris’s
In London that same evening Doris telephoned the Sundown Home and from the conversation that ensued it was again confirmed that there were two Tytes in the home, a man and his wife. The following evening she made the journey to Hampton Wick and at the home she announced herself as a close friend of the Tytes’ son. They had a grandchild, she told a male nurse, a fact that might be a comfort to the old people in their grief. The nurse was at a loss.
‘Visiting’s Sundays,’ he said. ‘Unless emergencies and close relatives.’
Doris was lighting a cigarette with a match from a box which was damp. Matches had been giving her trouble all day, and in the hall of the old people’s home not even a glimmer of a spark occurred when she scraped the head of yet another on the abrasive side of the box.
‘Ciggy?’ she offered the male nurse, pressing a packet upon him. ‘Got a light, have you?’
He shook his head, rejecting the cigarette and indicating that he didn’t carry matches. It was preferred, he added, that visitors didn’t smoke unless it was absolutely necessary. ‘Visiting’s Sundays,’ he repeated. ‘Unless otherwise for a reason.’ He was small and dark-haired, with a dark jowl and a white cotton jacket that had the marks of a ballpoint pen around one of its pockets. ‘You’d best see Miss Purchase,’ he said, and went away.
Doris couldn’t think what it was he reminded her of and then remembered: a black rubber ball. He looked as though he’d bounce if someone threw him. The hall was a dimly lit place, with coats hanging up and sticks in a thing that reminded her of the Zoo,
‘Yes?’ said a tall woman in a navy-blue twin-set, with spectacles on a chain. Doris gave her name and proffered her hand. The woman li
mply took it. ‘Yes?’ Miss Purchase said again.
‘The Tytes.’
‘What about the Tytes?’
‘I’d like to see them for ten minutes.’
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. Visiting is on Sunday afternoons.’
‘This is it, dear. What I’m saying is –’
‘Are you the person who kept telephoning us a while back?’
‘I’m the mother of the Tytes’ grandchild. I was saying to the bloke a minute ago the Tytes have a grandchild they don’t know about. It’s just that the news would cheer them up in their distress.’
‘The Tytes are not in distress. No inmate here is in distress.’
‘When a person takes his life you get distress. Naturally you do.’
‘What person? What are you talking about, please?’
‘Look, dear, I have Frankie’s kid and I want to know why poor Frankie’s gone. All I’m doing is making a few inquiries for my own peace of mind. It’s all mixed up, Mrs Purchase, it needs unravelling.’
‘I would be glad if you would do me the courtesy of addressing me correctly. My name is Miss Purchase.’
‘Be that as it may, dear, what I’m attempting to explain is that poor Frankie had death on his mind because the telly thing set him going. He couldn’t help it, dear.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, madam. It would upset the Tytes beyond measure to hear these references to suicide. We have not been informed here of their son’s death and until we are-’
‘Take a look at this.’
Doris rooted in her bag and eventually produced a scrap of newspaper. Honeymoon Drama., Miss Purchase read. British Actor Vanishes in Italy. An actor, pictured above, who had recently become familiar to television viewers because of his role in a series of tobacco advertisements, had disappeared on his Italian honeymoon. His name was Francis Tyte and he had married Mrs Julia Ferndale of Stone St Martin, Glos. The report ended abruptly with a sentence that belonged elsewhere in the newspaper, to the effect that sugar prices were holding their own.
Other People's Worlds Page 16
