Camomile Lawn

by Mary Wesley

  ‘Yes. Yes I am.’ Hamish looked wounded.

  Oliver felt perverse pleasure. ‘Saw your father run over by a tank in the war. Didn’t kill him, though. I was upset at the time, seems a joke now. I liked your father, a man of imagination. When Calypso married him I thought, we all thought—’

  ‘Thought what?’ Hamish stared at Oliver through an alcoholic haze. The rush of champagne on an empty stomach was having a malign effect.

  ‘We thought she was wrong to marry for money—’

  Hamish aimed a blow at Oliver and hit the curtain beside him. As he strove to regain his balance Oliver put out a hand to steady him.

  ‘Now, now, what’s going on?’ Calypso appeared beside them. ‘Are you two squabbling? Can’t have that.’

  ‘He said—’ Hamish tried to speak.

  ‘I said you married for money,’ said Oliver.

  ‘So I did.’ Calypso spoke lightly. ‘Wisest thing I ever did. Married for money. Then fell in love.’ She looked from Oliver to Hamish.

  ‘Why did you never tell me?’ Hamish suddenly roared at his mother. ‘Why did you keep it so bloody secret? Why did you never let on? Why did you let me suffer?’

  ‘You are drunk. Go and eat something oily, you are making an exhibition.’ She waved Hamish away. ‘Have you got any children, Olly?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you married.’

  ‘Twice.’

  ‘Twice. Goodness, I’d forgotten. Are you married now?’

  ‘No.’ Oliver’s eyes searched the room.

  ‘Are you happy?’ She watched him. He looked lean but had worn well.

  ‘Are you?’ His eyes came back to her face. ‘What’s happened to your face?’

  ‘I had a little stroke. Yes, thanks, I am happy. Well, as happy as it’s possible to be. Where do you live?’

  ‘Abroad.’ Oliver was noncommittal.

  ‘All right, don’t tell me.’

  ‘Polly’s grown very fat and respectable.’

  ‘Spread. She’s happy, too—’

  ‘Who is the father of—’

  ‘James and Iris? I’ve never asked. Why don’t you? We don’t dare.’ Leaving him apart Calypso moved back into the crowd, most of whom now held glasses of champagne. Oliver stood by the window watching the pattern of the party, two moving circles, the nearest moving up to and round Pauli, greeting, not lingering. The second circling round Helena sitting in an armchair, Polly and her children posed protectively, filtering, without seeming to, the guests who wished to speak to her. Calypso in white moving through the crowd. Corks popping and laughter from the kitchen where the twins opened bottles to fill glasses carried on trays by the young musicians who, offering with shy smiles, received congratulations on their performance, thanked with the kindness of youth the compliments of the old.

  ‘Fancy you turning up.’ Tony Wood shook Oliver’s hand. ‘Remember me, Tony Wood? We first met on the doorstep of Polly’s house.’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’ Time had done something terrible to Tony Wood.

  ‘We’ve all changed, of course. Old age has crept up on us.’ Tony noticed Oliver’s expression with malicious pleasure.

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Have you seen Sophy? Helena wants her.’ Iris kindly enquiring.

  ‘No.’ Oliver realized that what his eye sought was Sophy. ‘She was here. We came back from the church together.’

  ‘Oh, did you?’ Tony Wood’s bright eyes investigated. ‘What an exquisite girl child she was, one almost—’

  ‘Almost?’

  ‘Succumbed. Ah, here you are, have you met Peter? Peter and I have a shop in Brighton, antiques and objets. Peter, this is Oliver Anstey, you love his books.’

  ‘Do I, darling?’ pouting at Oliver.

  ‘Yes, you do. What about another drink and some of that lovely nosh Polly brought?’ Peter allowed himself to be led away by Tony. Oliver elbowed his way after them through the crowd. ‘Didn’t think then you’d become a writer.’ Tony looked at Oliver over his shoulder.

  ‘Didn’t think you’d turn into an elderly poof.’

  ‘Oh, screw you.’ Tony let out a high gleeful laugh.

  Oliver paused to listen to Pauli, who had succeeded in buttonholing a stranger.

  ‘If I add a wing for a restaurant and build a pool it will sell very well as an hotel in this situation.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the stranger. Oliver stopped to listen. ‘Of course.’

  ‘My father’s name will attract people. He had his master-classes here, you know.’

  ‘Yes, very wonderful.’

  Pauli waved his twisted fingers. ‘As I say, the situation above the sea is unique now the National Trust try to buy the whole coast. One heats the pool, it goes without saying.’

  ‘Of course,’ the man agreed, smiling.

  Oliver thought the man did not look like a friend of Max. Was Pauli merging business with funeral meats?

  ‘Dig up the lawn, pave it with those warm-coloured slabs, have a terrace.’ Pauli gestured out towards the lawn saturated and discoloured by the storm.

  ‘Put fake plastic chairs and tubs of flowers.’ Oliver shouldered into the conversation. ‘Something that doesn’t smell.’

  ‘Admirable suggestion,’ Pauli thanked him, ‘and of course garages, a sauna, haute cuisine, it goes without saying. One gets planning permission.’

  ‘It will make a nice property,’ said the man. ‘How much are you thinking of asking?’ He refrained from looking Pauli in the eye, glancing casually out at the water-logged lawn.

  ‘I must cost it.’ Pauli was thoughtful.

  Oliver moved to join another group, thinking he must say goodbye to Helena, feeling sickened, wanting to leave.

  ‘Has anyone seen Sophy?’ Polly’s voice, not much changed. ‘It’s getting late. Helena wants her before she leaves. I can’t see her any where.’

  ‘I’ll look upstairs.’ Oliver ran up the stairs two at a time.

  Sophy was standing by the window of what had once been her bedroom, looking out through the branches of the Ilex tree which shivered and creaked in the gale.

  ‘Sophy, Helena wants you,’ he said harshly.

  ‘What does she want?’ Sophy looked likely to take flight.

  ‘Are you leaving tonight?’ He came close to her, moving slowly, as though she were a nervous animal.

  ‘Yes, very soon.’ She moved towards the door. ‘Why are you here? You were not at the other funerals.’ She was wary.

  ‘I thought I’d get some ideas for the book I’m writing. It was stupid of me.’ She hadn’t grown much, he thought, compared with the other girls. She was a very small woman. ‘Why are you up here?’

  She looked away from him. ‘I used to climb along that branch.’

  ‘In your pyjamas, and eavesdrop.’

  She glanced at him sidelong. ‘What does Helena want?’

  ‘You jumped down and I caught you. Will you give me a lift? I came by train. We could have a meal at the Red Lion in Truro.’ He followed her onto the landing.

  ‘They’ve pulled it down. It’s gone.’ She sped down the stairs.

  ‘Oh no!’ He hurried after her in distress.

  ‘Oh yes.’ She had reached the hall.

  ‘Pauli is going to dig up the lawn.’ He caught her arm.

  ‘It belongs to him now.’ Her voice was expressionless. ‘You should not have come back,’ she said, looking at him with pain. ‘It’s worse for you.’

  ‘The lovely harbour’s been turned into a bloody great carpark.’ Oliver’s anger grasped at lesser sorrows. ‘We used to step off the train and hear the water slopping against the quay.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Gently she took his hand away from her arm. ‘I must go to Helena.’

  ‘She planted the lawn—’ He gripped her arm again.

  ‘I know, I know. Please, Oliver—’ She turned and went swiftly to find Helena, slipping through the crowd like an eel.

  ‘What do you want me for?’


  Helena gripped her hand. ‘Listen, Sophy, bend down close.’ Helena spoke urgently into Sophy’s ear. Oliver, joining them, heard her say, ‘Promise you’ll do that for me.’

  ‘Of course I will. Have you told your lawyer, put it in writing?’

  ‘Of course I have. I’m not senile yet. I hope to die first.’

  ‘That’s all right, then.’ Sophy stayed close to Helena, surrounded by Polly, David, Paul, Iris and James.

  ‘What’s the secret? Don’t keep moving away, you used not to be so elusive.’

  ‘She wants her ashes dug into Max and Monika’s grave.’

  ‘Good Lord.’ Oliver was taken aback.

  ‘It seems reasonable.’

  ‘What about Uncle Richard?’

  ‘He’s got his dog, didn’t you know? It’s what Max and Monika would want. Uncle Richard wouldn’t want her.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Oliver again.

  ‘It’s obvious, it’s right. Uncle Richard would be the first to—what are you laughing at?’

  ‘It’s so peculiar.’ Oliver looked at Sophy. ‘We were such an ordinary lot of people at that dinner party.’

  ‘You remember it, too?’ she said. ‘Max’s first appearance.’

  ‘So conventional,’ Oliver insisted. ‘We were.’

  ‘Calypso’s conventional.’ Sophy spoke defensively.

  ‘What will that splendid parson say?’

  ‘I shan’t tell him.’

  ‘How then will you manage?’

  ‘I shall be planting rosemary or something on Max and Monika and just pop Helena’s ashes in too. No need to say anything or tell anyone, just do it. You can come and help if you like.’ Sophy was defiant. ‘You used not to be so conventional.’

  ‘Oh, but I was, that was my trouble,’ said Oliver, staring at Sophy, suddenly realizing what he had been like as a young man. ‘If the Red Lion’s gone, how about oysters somewhere near the Helford River. We could—’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Sophy was in retreat again, he noticed.

  ‘You don’t know what?’

  ‘I don’t know anything any more. This was my home. It’s gone, it’s crumbling away.’ She looked near tears.

  ‘We’ll go somewhere we’ve neither of us ever been.’ She was edging away from him. ‘You are upset.’ He felt inadequate. Sophy sneezed violently.

  ‘I’ve caught a chill. I must go.’

  ‘I’m coming with you. We can’t go before Helena. I’m still conventional enough to know that.’

  ‘Poor Helena.’ Sophy looked distraught. ‘She’s getting up, she’s leaving.’

  Oliver was holding Sophy by the wrist.

  ‘Let go,’ she whispered.

  ‘No, I won’t.’ He tightened his grip as she twisted to get free.

  ‘You are hurting me.’

  ‘No I’m not. Look, she’s gathering herself up to go.’ Oliver held Sophy, who gave in and stood quietly. ‘Look, she’s having a last swig. I didn’t know Helena drank. That flask must hold half a bottle.’

  ‘She doesn’t really drink. This is a special occasion.’

  ‘I’ll say!’ Hamish was standing beside them. ‘I refilled it on the way down and I found her violets. Wasn’t that marvellous? I mean, violets in October! She didn’t want anything else for Max.’ Hamish sounded amiably drunk.

  ‘I will drive Helena.’ Calypso came up to Hamish. ‘You had better sit in the back.’

  ‘What about my car?’ Hamish was truculent.

  ‘I’ve arranged for your car. You don’t want to get breathalysed, do you? Here she comes.’

  They watched Helena making her progress out of the house.

  ‘Where’s your wife?’ Sophy snatched her hand free.

  ‘What wife?’ Oliver grabbed it back.

  ‘I thought you were married.’ Sophy, not wishing to make a scene, left her wrist in Oliver’s hand.

  ‘I married twice, Calypso look-alikes, neither worked. Haven’t been married for years. What about you?’

  ‘No, no.’ Sophy sounded miserable.

  ‘Lovers?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘I heard rumours about various—’

  ‘I daresay you did,’ she said stiffly. Then—‘Will you let me go. We aren’t children.’ She twisted her hand.

  ‘Sixty and more, and you?’

  ‘Fifty and more. Oh, look.’ Her wrist in Oliver’s grip, Sophy watched Helena.

  Helena’s progress was slow. She shook hands or kissed the guests saying, ‘I am glad you came, it was nice for Pauli. Thank you.’ She said the same thing to each person so that the words ‘nice for Pauli’ became the most important: ‘Thank you. Nice for Pauli.’ She walked quite steadily, flanked by Polly and Calypso, through the crowd of guests all preparing, as she was, to say goodbye to the inheritor, Max and Monika’s son, stout, prosperous, able to pull off a business deal in any circumstances, his soul uncluttered by musical nonsense.

  Not much nonsense about Pauli, thought Helena, as she reached him and stood looking up into his face.

  Holding Sophy’s wrist, drawing her close to him, Oliver watched Helena, as did all the guests, making ready to leave, to thank their host, to say goodbye, to condole once again on the loss of his father, to reach their cars, to drive away sighing with relief, to catch their train, to return to normality, to life, to forget this brief interlude until the next, the next funeral, maybe one’s own.

  Helena was speaking now. It was amazing that such an old woman should have such a clear voice. Her voice in the wet evening air—it had stopped raining, there would a beautiful sunset—carried to all the guests in the house, on the steps, in the drive.

  ‘Goodbye, Pauli, I am sorry—’ she hesitated. ‘I forget what I was going to say,’ she said, looking at him carefully, searching for some small trace of Max and finding none. She turned away, assuming vagueness, taking Calypso’s arm and walked to the waiting car.

  I am sorry, thought Helena, that so petty a thing as his intention to dig up the camomile lawn should make me wish he had died in his concentration camp, never come back, been made into a lampshade. ‘I cannot help my thoughts,’ she said much later to Calypso. ‘They rage.’

  As the guests dispersed a flight of starlings homing to roost blackened the sky, the sound of their wings muffling all other sound. Oliver tucked Sophy’s hand into his pocket and walked her to the car.

  Watching them go Polly said to the twins, ‘I hope the old boy hasn’t left it too late.’

  In Calypso’s car Helena turned to Hamish in the back. ‘Run after them, dear boy, and give them this.’ She handed him her silver flask. ‘It will help them over those awkward moments.’ Then, seeing him hesitate, for his baser nature hankered after the flask for himself, she added, ‘And look sharp about it.’

  So Hamish obediently ran, catching up with Sophy’s car as she started the engine. He watched her drive off without a backward glance, then plodded back to Calypso and Helena.

  Sophy drew into the side of the lane and sat staring ahead. From time to time she sneezed, her whole body shaken by the spasms. Oliver watched from the corner of his eye. He felt immensely tired, drained of anger and resentment.

  The funeral guests drove past, their tyres hissing on the wet road, spattering the windscreen with mud.

  Polly, her family all talking at once, the dog barking, a sudden cacophony of cheerful noise which Oliver took to be their norm and briefly envied as he watched other cars bearing Max’s friends, colleagues, neighbours. Then Calypso in her white coat glimpsed in profile driving serenely. Helena beside her, old, exhausted, spent. Hamish on the back seat, mouth slightly open, face blank.

  Finally Pauli’s Mercedes nipping along, lights on, indicators blinking, horn sounding in frenetic haste. Then the procession was over, leaving the sound of the wind, the sea in the distance, gulls crying, fresh rain tapping on the glass.

  Oliver looked at Sophy’s profile, tiny face, high cheekbones, immense black eyes, full mouth. She threw up h
er nose to sneeze, her thin fingers clutching the steering wheel, a tear forced from the corner of her eye.

  ‘Oh.’ She laid her head on her hands on the wheel. ‘Oh my God.’ He counted white hairs among the black, observed the wrinkles round her eyes and mouth. Picking up Helena’s flask he unscrewed the cap, swallowed a mouthful of whisky and said: ‘You?’

  ‘No, no thank you.’ She did not look at him.

  ‘Once,’ he said, staring ahead at the empty road, ‘you hid behind the curtains of the red room and I took you to bed to warm you. You smelt of soap. Rather nice soap. I wonder what it was.’

  ‘Rose geranium.’ Sophy turned her head away in protest.

  ‘When you were still asleep I put you back in your own bed, d’you remember?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Liar.’ He gulped some more whisky. ‘A funny little girl you were.’

  ‘Over forty-five years ago,’ Sophy whispered.

  ‘So now we have whatever’s left to catch up. What d’you say to that?’

  ‘We can’t.’ She turned to look at him in despair.

  ‘Why not?’ He stared at her, letting her see his thin lined face, receding hair, bright, slightly squinting eyes.

  ‘I am terrified,’ she said.

  ‘What makes you think I am not afraid too?’ Again he offered the flask. ‘I am just the same inside,’ he said defiantly, ‘as I was then.’ He forbore to say he might be wiser. He wondered whether she would refer to Calypso. She took the flask, tipped it, swallowed a mouthful. He watched her throat working.

  ‘I don’t feel anything any more,’ she said, averting her eyes. ‘I don’t know you now. I am old and so are you.’

  ‘I admit there’s a considerable gap in our relationship.’ Still he watched her and she did not answer. ‘If you are thinking of Calypso,’ he said tartly, ‘it was like loving Greta Garbo or Marilyn Monroe. It wasn’t real, it was a sort of measles.’

  ‘A very long attack,’ she said sharply.

  ‘All right, a very long attack.’ Oliver was patient, which went against his nature, holding back annoyance.

  ‘You slept with her.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I guessed.’

  ‘Just once. She made it clear she didn’t enjoy it. It was humiliating.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sophy sneezed. ‘I am sorry to keep sneezing like this. I must have caught cold in the churchyard.’ Her voice was brittle. ‘Looking at the graves.’