Going Gently

by David Nobbs

  She didn’t know what Enid thought. She was very quiet at tea, and Kate felt that she must be jealous again. There was no possibility of Enid ever remarrying, because there was no possibility of her divorcing, because there was no possibility of her marrying in the first place.

  There was no reason for Annie to feel jealous, she thought of marriage as a fate worse than death. If anything, she seemed excited at being privileged to sit in the presence of someone who led such an extraordinary life, though she could never admit this, and so she was very quiet also.

  It was a quiet evening, therefore, in the cosy dining-cum-sitting-room, with the deep red curtain pulled across the French windows, and the reproduction of the Cezanne over the table. John Thomas Thomas buried himself in his essays. Annie sat on a hard chair with legs and arms spread out wide, the arms because they were wound with great skeins of wool, the legs because those women who have the least worth showing always show the most. The others talked of inconsequential matters while being acutely aware of the consequential matters about which they weren’t talking.

  No mention was made all weekend of Kate and Walter’s remarriage, but there was melon at the beginning of Sunday lunch, and they had never had a starter before. ‘Putting on airs,’ sniffed Annie when she saw the melon, and Enid flashed her a quick look of resentment. Yes, thought Kate, I can understand how irritating Enid found that remark, but I actually prefer Annie in critical vein to Annie the gushing orphan. And then Annie spoilt it all by saying, ‘Not that I should criticise. I’m so lucky to be here at all.’

  As he drove away, Walter said, ‘You didn’t say anything about Dilys, then.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was waiting for you to, now that you’d told me.’

  ‘It’s all in the past, Walter. It’s all over. Is there any point?’

  Walter didn’t reply.

  Their next expedition was to London, to have dinner with Bernard. He was still working with Simms Fordingbridge, and he still had bits of foamy saliva around his teeth. He looked older than his thirty-seven years, but then he had looked about thirty-seven when he was ten. He took them to Schmidt’s in Charlotte Street, where they had Wiener schnitzel and hock, and he said, ‘In rejecting Churchill after the war the British people have made the most sophisticated decision, possibly the only sophisticated decision, in the history of democracy.’ They expected him to say ‘I beg your pardon?’ but he didn’t. ‘There are times when a country needs socialism, and this is one of them.’

  ‘I disagree,’ said Walter.

  ‘Oh good. I hoped you would. Wouldn’t be much fun if you hadn’t,’ said Bernard, with a grin that, just for a moment, made him look ten years younger.

  Poor Bernard, thought Kate, if he sees that as fun. But if you’ve worked as an accountant with Simms Fordingbridge for fifteen years, and think Wienerschnitzel with hock the apogee of sophistication, and have flecks of foam between your teeth, you probably don’t have much fun.

  Kate supported Bernard in the argument that followed. ‘If we can’t create a fairer, more compassionate, better educated, less selfish world after two massive world wars,’ she said, ‘there really isn’t a great deal of hope.’

  ‘I just want to make a decent profit and lead a comfortable life,’ said Walter. ‘Does that make me a leper?’

  ‘Intellectually, morally, spiritually and politically, yes, I’d say it does,’ said Bernard, and again he didn’t say ‘I beg your pardon?’ when it might have been expected. Kate wondered if he’d stopped saying it.

  Walter drove Bernard back to his flat in Kensington – as always, he had no problem getting petrol – and Bernard invited them in for a coffee and some schnapps he’d bought in Austria on holiday with Rodber before the war. He had this friend he referred to simply as Rodber, whom Kate had never met. It flashed through her mind that maybe Bernard was homosexual. Bernard adopted a rather posh, affected voice as he said, ‘I felt very at home in Vienna, City of the Strausses, but Rodber didn’t take to it. There’s no music in his soul.’

  When Kate needed to visit the smallest room, as she found herself calling it to Bernard, he waved his hands expansively, as if he was being a really generous host in allowing her to use it, and said, ‘You know where it is.’

  It turned out that he’d been overoptimistic in his assessment of Kate’s knowledge of his bachelor flat. She found herself in his bedroom, and its state shocked her deeply. The bed was unmade, the sheets were grey, and the floor was covered in used shirts, crumpled socks and grey underpants with skid marks. No, she realised, Bernard wasn’t homosexual, just asexual, which was far less hygienic.

  When he saw them to the door, Bernard shook hands with Walter and also with Kate. She was astonished that he didn’t kiss her, but rather relieved.

  ‘It’s been good to see you,’ he said, ‘and it’s marvellous that you’ve got together again, I beg your pardon?’

  Not long after their visit to London, they went to Farnham, where Oliver lived in an elegant Georgian house, as befitted a successful surgeon. He offered them sherry. No choice. He was as handsome as ever, thought Kate with pride. ‘A lady will be joining us,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

  Kate was thrilled. Oliver was not a man who was meant to live alone. She longed for him to find someone else, but honesty compelled her to admit to herself that she was a little worried when he added, ‘You’ll like Bunny.’ It’s hard to find two major causes for concern in a sentence of three words, but Kate did. She had found that she never liked people whom she was told she would like, because if the people who hoped she would like them had been confident that she would like them they wouldn’t have needed to tell her that she would like them. The second cause for concern was the name Bunny. Kate had met two women called Bunny, and she hadn’t liked either of them. She hated the name, and had a vision of a fussy little woman with a retroussé nose, an overwhelming maternal instinct and a distressing enthusiasm for lettuce.

  The doorbell rang. Oliver’s housekeeper, Emily, admitted Bunny to the drawing-room – Walter didn’t attempt to call this one the lounge, he knew when he was beaten – and said, in icy tones of fear and jealousy which she was unwise enough to reveal, ‘Mrs Parr-Parkinson.’

  Kate had been wrong to expect a fussy little woman with a retrousé nose, an overwhelming maternal instinct and a distressing enthusiasm for lettuce. Bunny Parr-Parkinson was a bossy woman with huge hands, a loud voice, a smoker’s cough, hair in her cavernous nostrils and a leathery skin more suited to a Greek fisherman than a Surrey lady. But Kate had been right about one thing. She didn’t like her.

  Oliver took them to the Prodigal Son at Worpleton St Andrew, where he gave them an excellent dinner accompanied by a fine Pomerol. They talked about love and marriage, without Oliver saying anything to indicate that his intentions towards Bunny Parr-Parkinson were serious. Kate had to admit that Bunny, whose surname was impossible to pronounce without sounding as though you had a slight stutter, was charming and civilised and not unamusing. In later years her gaffes would become legendary, but she only made one small faux pas that night, when she referred to ‘we Conservatives’.

  ‘Are there many wee Conservatives?’ Kate enquired. ‘In my experience most of them are disconcertingly large.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Bunny very seriously. ‘I meant “we Conservatives” in the sense of “us conservatives”. I assume we all are Conservatives.’

  ‘It’s dangerous to assume that other people share your particular views,’ said Kate. ‘For your information, Walter does, I don’t.’

  ‘Kate, please, this isn’t the time,’ said Oliver, and Kate thought this rather disturbingly weak of him, she’d never thought of him as weak.

  ‘I didn’t start it,’ she said, ‘but no, it isn’t the time, so I’ll stop it.’

  ‘It simply has been an astonishing year for tulips,’ said Bunny Parr-Parkinson, revealing an astonishing ability to change the subject dramatically.

  ‘It has. I�
�ve never experienced a year like it,’ agreed Walter. ‘For tulips,’ he added.

  Kate met his eye. A gleam passed between them. She felt very happy.

  ‘How did our parents accept your remarrying Walter?’ Oliver asked, over the coffee, which was vile. ‘They are wonderful people, but very narrow,’ he told Bunny.

  ‘Mother was deeply shocked but also delighted, though she wouldn’t say so in case Father wasn’t, said Kate. ‘Father thought it too personal a subject for discussion, so we’ll never know what he thought.’

  Oliver drove them back to their hotel in his Humber Super Snipe, and said, ‘I’m so glad you like Bunny,’ though neither of them had said that they had.

  On their fourth visit to Swansea, in the summer of 1946, Kate and Walter arrived, with Elizabeth, to find the family in a state of high excitement. The petrol ration had been increased by fifty per cent. This was a rare moment of joy in the austere public life of post-war Britain, to whom Victory had been delivered firmly bound with red tape. It was comparable, indeed, with that other moment of excitement, the arrival of the first bananas. Recalling Elizabeth’s excitement at the sight of her first banana, Kate felt a stab of pity for modern children. Knowing only plenty, living among surfeits, how could they feel excitement?

  The excitement in the Eaton Crescent household was because Bernard now had enough petrol to come by car. With two cars, there was the prospect of a run. It was hard, even for Kate with her sharp memory, to recall just how palpable was the excitement, in those days, of a family without a car, when they had the prospect of a run.

  Bernard was late. By the time the clock in the hall struck eleven, both her parents were yawning. She nudged Walter. Quick on the uptake, he said, ‘Look, why don’t you all go on up? Kate and I’ll wait up for Bernard. It could be well past midnight. It’s a long haul through Gloucester, unless he gets the Aust ferry, and there’ll be long queues for that on a Friday night.’

  ‘No, no. I should stay up to greet him,’ said Bronwen.

  ‘Only I thought we might go for a run tomorrow,’ said Walter, ‘and you want to be fresh for that.’

  John Thomas Thomas and Bronwen were persuaded without great trouble. When they had gone, Enid glared at Annie and said, ‘I’ll stay up. You’re visitors. You go on up. You’ve had a long drive. I insist. I’ll be all right. I’ll read Jane Austen in my dressing-gown.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s time to go up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire,’ said Annie, gathering up her wool.

  Kate could see that Enid was bursting to talk to her, and she felt a great pride in Walter when he said, ‘I’ll go on up, I think. Night-night, Enid. Sleep well.’

  ‘He’s surprisingly sensitive,’ she said to Enid.

  ‘Oh yes, he’s wonderful,’ said Enid drily.

  Kate sighed.

  ‘Oh, Enid,’ she said. ‘I hope you aren’t jealous.’

  ‘Well, no,’ said Enid. ‘Not really. But it’s very hard for me not to think of you gallivanting around, leading such a rich life – and the silly thing is, of course, I wouldn’t want your life, I’d hate it – while I stay here and teach and will stay because someone has to look after Mother and Father. I mean, I’m not blaming you, Kate. I’m here because I didn’t marry and I didn’t marry because I’m so feeble.’

  ‘Oh, Enid!’

  ‘My holiday this year was a guest-house in Llandrindrod Wells. It’s not exactly a glamorous life. Kate, I have to get it off my chest about Annie.’

  ‘What about Annie?’

  ‘She’s changed. She used to offer to do everything. “I don’t mind. I’m so lucky to have been taken in by this family,” she’d say.’

  ‘And now you’re beginning to think the family’s been taken in by her.’

  ‘You see. That’s clever. Well, neat anyway. I never say anything neat.’

  ‘Oh, Enid. So doesn’t she do her bit any more?’

  ‘She does her bit. Oh yes, always does that. Nothing more. I mean, she could have offered to stay up tonight.’

  Kate kissed Enid and said, ‘I wish you were happier.’

  ‘Well, this is the silly thing,’ said Enid. ‘I am happy, really. I quite like my life.’ She plucked up her courage, and asked, in a near whisper, as if she didn’t want the grandfather clock to hear, ‘Do you still hear from Heinz at all?’

  ‘He sends a card every Christmas.’

  Kate sighed.

  ‘Do you miss him?’ asked Enid.

  ‘No,’ said Kate. ‘I sighed because I like him. I didn’t like falling out of love with him, but no, Enid, no, I wouldn’t say that I miss him at all. Not that I need feel sorry for him. He’s engaged, and his fiancée’s very pretty. He sent me a photograph of her. That was kind of him, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Doesn’t he want to see Elizabeth?’

  ‘Oh yes, but he knows he can’t. She doesn’t know he’s her father.’

  ‘Will you ever tell her?’

  ‘At the right time, when she’s old enough, yes, I think we must. We must give him a chance to see her. He always asks about his little princess, in his card.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s best if he doesn’t see her, if he thinks of her as a princess.’

  Kate almost retorted angrily, but then she thought about how she would feel if she was a spinster and Enid had four children by three different husbands, and she held her tongue.

  They set off shortly before eleven, which was good going. The ladies had made a fine picnic in the scullery, and John Thomas Thomas had said hesitantly, ‘Er . . . I suppose Tenby would be too far,’ and Kate had realised that he was beginning to get just a little childish.

  ‘Aren’t you too tired, Bernard?’ Kate had asked. He’d looked very tired after the previous evening’s journey.

  ‘No, I’m not tired,’ he’d said.

  ‘But won’t it use up too many coupons?’ Kate had asked, offering Bernard a more official excuse to back out.

  ‘No, no. I can just manage it,’ he’d insisted. ‘I’d love to see Tenby again.’

  Bernard led the way, because he was Welsh and Walter wasn’t. The two cars sped along the empty August roads, the little Morris 8 in front, the posh Daimler behind, like a dinghy towing a yacht. Walter and Kate took John Thomas Thomas and Bronwen, while Enid, Annie and Elizabeth went with Bernard. Elizabeth whimpered because she wanted to go with her mother, but Kate said, ‘Don’t be so pathetic. I’ll only be in the car behind.’ Enid would have preferred Elizabeth to go in the car behind, but Annie was grateful for her presence, Kate could see, as a lever to use as a warning to Bernard.

  As the Daimler slid through the suburbs of Swansea towards Pontardulais, John Thomas Thomas pointed out a hideous, grandiose, gaunt, pebble-dashed chapel, and said, proudly, ‘Walter Copson, that chapel was built by my Uncle Emlyn.’ Kate thought Walter’s reply of ‘It’s big, isn’t it?’ uninspired, but it seemed to satisfy John Thomas Thomas. He asked Walter to slow down as they passed a row of low, grey terrace houses, and said, ‘See the house with the blue door, Walter Copson? The best fly-half Llanelli ever had was born there.’ Kate thought Walter’s reply of ‘In that very house? Extraordinary!’ rather foolish. The man had to have been born in some house, why not this one? But the answer seemed to satisfy John Thomas Thomas.

  On the outskirts of Carmarthen, Bernard pulled in to a garage, signalling to Walter to follow.

  Walter and Kate got out of the Daimler and walked over to the Morris 8.

  ‘There’s a rattle coming from my car,’ said Bernard. ‘The big end’s going.’ He said that with total assurance, even though he had no idea what a big end was, or where it went when it was going, and even though he was talking to a leading light in the engineering industry. Big ends were what went in cars in those days, so a big end going it must be.

  The mechanic, however, gave the car a test run and came up with a different diagnosis.

  ‘You picnic set’s rattling,’ he said.

  Walter showed no amusement at Bernard’s gaff
e, and Bernard showed no embarrassment. Kate felt full of love for her surprisingly gentle husband and her earnest bachelor brother.

  A few miles beyond Carmarthen, as Bernard approached a sharp bend, Kate saw Annie turn to Elizabeth and speak. She didn’t have to be in the car to know what Annie was saying. ‘Uncle Bernard’s coming to a sharp, narrow bend, Elizabeth. Watch Uncle Bernard slow down quite a lot and keep right in to the left very carefully.’

  They picnicked on the North Beach. Seagulls wheeled over the pastel houses of the trim, Georgian town, and they ate bloater-paste sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs and tomatoes and scones and Welsh cakes and bara brith. John Thomas Thomas and Bronwen stared at the sea enraptured, as old people do. An occasional small cloud passed swiftly across the golden sands, as if strange-shaped camels and elephants were flying past the sun, and a brief shadow passed over the conversation when Enid said, ‘Gwen Jenkins whose aunt had a seizure in Brecon had bloater-paste sandwiches and was dead within five hours. There was a lot of tragedy in that family.’

  When they got back to Swansea, Bernard wasn’t feeling very well and went to bed early. ‘Maybe it’s the bloater-paste sandwiches,’ he quipped bravely, but Kate looked into his tired, deep-set eyes and suddenly knew that it wasn’t the bloater-paste sandwiches, he was very seriously ill indeed.

  The next morning, in chapel, Kate prayed, on the off chance. After the service she remembered the day when Gwyn had come over to speak to her for the first time. She put her arm through Walter’s and squeezed his arm and thought herself lucky after all. She hugged Elizabeth to her, and the three of them set off happily for Sunday lunch. No melon this time.