As Time Goes By

by Hilary Bailey

  Polly had a feeling she was being manoeuvred. She put the phone down and said, ‘That was fast – an offer.’

  ‘I’d put the price up,’ said Kate. ‘They’ve got a list and someone’s jumped at it without looking.’

  ‘He said someone rang just as he got into the office –’ Polly mused.

  ‘Something funny going on,’ declared Ruth Fevrier.

  ‘How much did they offer?’ asked Coverdale.

  ‘Not your business, really, is it?’ said Polly.

  Undeterred, he said, ‘I expect the prospective purchaser is Alexander. Somebody said his wife was keen to move in round here. I hope I haven’t given away any secrets,’ he added. Polly gave a groan and, having achieved a reaction, Coverdale left.

  ‘What a worm,’ Kate Mulvaney said as they heard his feet going up the stairs. ‘Did I fall in love with him – was he like that?’

  ‘He was only in the making, then,’ said Polly. ‘Just sketched in. He might have gone another way at that time – you know, turned out all right. It wasn’t your fault,’ she added hastily.

  ‘I hope not,’ Kate said.

  ‘I bet it is Alexander,’ Polly said. ‘He knows I’m selling up, or suspects it. I’ve already had a letter from him making a claim. That’s nice, isn’t it? I sell up the family home with his children in it and he dashes in and buys it. To think he used to tell everybody property is theft.’

  ‘Say you need to know who it is, because you don’t want undesirable people buying your house,’ suggested Kate.

  ‘They’ll say it’s a company,’ said Polly. ‘Well, it will be – one of Alexander’s. Then he’ll fight me for his percentage of the money he’s due to pay me. But he’ll have it in his pocket, so it’ll be easier not to hand it over. He’s gone from property is theft to possession being nine points of the law.’

  ‘Oh my Lord,’ said Ruth Fevrier. All three women sat feeling uncomfortable, knowing that Polly’s home, the kitchen they sat in, was threatened by a tiger.

  ‘Well, that’s it, I got to go,’ Ruth said, adding, ‘Don’t any of you worry. I got a feeling things will turn out all right.’

  ‘Dear God,’ said Kate, after Ruth had left. ‘It’s hard to believe it’s really Alexander.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t, is it? I mean – we both know it is.’

  ‘I used to like him,’ said Kate into the silence.

  ‘People did like each other in those days,’ Polly said, ‘when the living was easy. Now it’s dog eat dog.’

  The phone rang. It was Lady Kops, inviting Polly and Margaret to tea on Sunday.

  By Sunday she was relieved to be leaving the house in what remained of her best clothes. Max, on vacation, with Val and the baby, had all turned up at eleven that morning, Harriet had arrived for the weekend and was still there. Polly, faced with trying to produce some food out of two pounds of mince and four pounds of pork sausages, had forgotten that Max was a vegetarian. Various groups had wound up taking responsibility for their own meals – producers of spaghetti bolognese tried to stir the brew while Val heated up the baby food and Max tried to edge a tray of cold vegetable samosas into the oven. The draining board beside the sink seemed to be generating its own supply of dirty pans and dishes. The house, a sea of moved mattresses, sleeping bags on sofas and used cups and plates, looked like an overcrowded, badly-run refugee ship, broken down and stationary many miles from shore.

  Polly, on the bus with Margaret beside her, breathed a sigh of relief and then felt a pang of depression when she realised her situation was so bad that the prospect of Sunday tea with her ex-mother-in-law, who had always hated her, was looking like a treat.

  The house in Bedford Square loomed up as awesomely as ever, Polly recalled having meals there years before while Alexander sat in T-shirt and jeans, with his hair halfway down his back, making it plain that if he had his way the Filipino maid serving them would shortly take over the house. Polly herself, who normally functioned as Alexander’s personal Filipino servant, only no one thought she needed liberation, was only grateful she was enduring Lady Kops’s spiteful remarks while eating a meal she had not cooked herself and would not have to wash up.

  And now, the maid was older, as Polly noticed when she opened the door. So was Lady Kops, in her drawing-room with the big Canaletto on the wall. Her face was much more lined and her posture, though erect, tired. When Polly apologised for the absence of Pam and Sue, Lady Kops just said, ‘I only half hoped they would come – at that age they have their own lives to lead.’

  During the exchange of enquiries that followed, much emerged. Polly, who had resolved not to complain about money, found Lady Kops plumbing her resources carefully. She seemed to know a lot about prices. Lady Kops, who was going to be too polite to talk much about Alexander, revealed a conventional, numbing breach between herself and her only son. Plainly she was being kept at a distance by Alexander and his wife, and the wife being over forty, the only grandchildren Lady Kops could be sure of were the twins Pam and Sue, whose births she had once awaited and greeted in agonies of jealousy and rage.

  ‘The house is too big for me now, of course,’ she said, looking round the large, very quiet room. ‘I ought to turn it into flats, but at present, quite honestly, I can’t be bothered. I’ll have to eventually. I can’t afford to keep the place up otherwise.’

  Polly nodded polite agreement, although she knew one of the habits of the rich was to claim they were unable to afford to live in their own homes.

  Tea came in and Margaret, who had been behaving well, quietly examining the pictures and ornaments in the room with what Polly hoped was an aesthetic and not an acquisitive eye, delightedly ate the smoked salmon sandwiches, petits fours and chocolate cake.

  ‘Don’t have any more,’ exclaimed Polly as she went for a third slice. ‘It was for her,’ Lady Kops said. ‘Why doesn’t Maria pack up the cake for the others? I shan’t eat it myself. Would you like to go and look at the books in the library?’ she asked Margaret, who, like a girl brought up in the best of circumstances, thanked her and went off with Maria, clearly now, in her own mind, the young and pampered daughter of the house.

  Lady Kops said: ‘She has a taste for good things.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Polly said. ‘Perhaps she’s a natural antique dealer. It’d be nice to think I’m making the right move.’

  ‘It hasn’t been easy, I know that. Is Alexander doing anything for Pam and Sue?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Polly.

  Lady Kops sighed. ‘I thought that might be the case. Well, I’ve left them some money in my will. No need to mention it to them. I can’t guarantee when I’ll pop off, and, perhaps it’s not a good idea to know you’re going to come into some money when you’re young.’

  ‘I won’t tell them, if you’d prefer it,’ said Polly. ‘This is very generous of you.’ She felt quite upset that she’d made a point of hating Lady Kops for almost twenty years.

  ‘Shall I tell you the terms?’ said Lady Kops.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t, if it makes no difference to you,’ declared Polly. ‘Information like that usually makes everybody turn nasty. You might remember the results of my own inheritance – first I grabbed at it – then disaster.’

  ‘It put a roof over the heads of four children for some time,’ her former enemy charitably pointed out. She paused. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Polly. ‘It’s kind of you –’

  ‘Do let me know,’ said Lady Kops. ‘Actually, I’ve got a feeling things are mending for you.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Polly. ‘Where are you going for Christmas?’

  Lady Kops was going to the West Indies. They agreed she should come to see the family when she returned in the New Year. As they parted she said, ‘There are a few things I’d like to get rid of here – nothing important, a pair of quite nasty art nouveau candlesticks, a dinner service, the sort of things you come by at my age when people start dying. They might give
you a start when you’ve bought the shop.’

  ‘I’ll buy them properly,’ Polly said.

  ‘Of course,’ said her former mother-in-law. And Margaret and Polly left.

  ‘She’s quite a nice old lady,’ Margaret remarked on the bus. ‘You should see the stuff she’s got in that library. It’s like the Victoria and Albert.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t pocket anything,’ Polly said dourly.

  ‘Oh Mum,’ said Margaret impatiently. Then she said gloomily, ‘I suppose she’ll leave it all to Pam and Sue.’

  It was Polly’s turn to become impatient. ‘Shut up!’ she said. ‘I don’t want to hear any more about who’s got what.’

  ‘The sixties speaks out,’ Margaret said.

  The fat girl, Harriet, sat and blubbered at me. She was wearing a dusty black top, black skirt, thick black tights and trodden-down black espadrilles. Her hair was frizzy – a bad perm. I was conscious of my own slenderness, my long, smooth, gilded hair, my slender legs tanned by tights subtly matched to my heavy silk dress, my large, amber eyes, well-kept hands, on one finger of which my grandmother’s diamond shone, on another, the golden band representing my marriage. It felt as if Harriet’s disorder might contaminate me and my orderly room – as if my own hair might become unkempt and bushy, my flowers begin to wilt and shed their petals.

  Geoffrey sat at the other end of the room, by the window, plain-suited, almost two-dimensional, like someone in a film, a stranger, with his paper, a briefcase at his feet. He said afterwards, ‘I didn’t want all this. I wanted a peaceful weekend, a springboard into next week.’ I apologised. I didn’t say what I thought – that Harriet was his daughter, not mine, and that his feeble attitude to his marriage break-up had brought this on him. Why he had let his wife move to Bromley I don’t know. At the stage when the divorce took place she could have got a job anywhere, further from London. Admittedly, she had wanted to stay in London itself, but since he was putting up half the money for the deposit on her house, he managed to get her out of central London; but I thought if he could manage that, then he could have gone further. And so could she. Of course, at that time the children were younger and I couldn’t imagine the day when they’d be able to start coming up to London alone on the train.

  That Sunday afternoon Geoffrey and I had, for once, gone upstairs after lunch for a rest together and I saw, at last, a break in the clouds. The situation was fairly awful – sometimes, not very often, Geoffrey would make love to me at night, mutter a few affectionate sentences, then go to sleep. The Sunday afternoon move upstairs might mean some real communication between us, some real discussion of ourselves, what we felt, our lives. We hadn’t even sorted out where to go for Christmas. If we were trying to evade Christmas at my parents’ it was nearly too late. It should have been decided weeks ago. I didn’t want to go to Scarborough. And I wanted him to tell me why he was giving more money to his old wife, too, as well. I wanted the silence between us to end. I didn’t want to be the person who kept a husband on his feet, serviced his wants, never had his attention or anything other than the affection some people give to dogs, rather like my own mother and father. I wanted a real relationship. But, as I sat at the dressing table, Geoffrey, with a sigh, had taken off his shoes and lain down in the dimness of the room, there came a ringing at the bell downstairs. Before I could stop him Geoffrey was on his feet complaining, pushing his feet into his shoes, saying, ‘I’ll get rid of them.’ I was left at the dressing table, staring at my reflection in the beautiful old glass. Although you can’t hear much from upstairs I heard Harriet’s voice of course. I even heard the words, ‘I’d like a bit of conversation –’ I wasn’t prepared to sit there and let her get away with this. I put my brush down and went down. She was sitting in the drawing-room looking rather solid in one of my chairs. Geoffrey was smiling at something she’d said to him. ‘Harriet!’ I said, ‘How nice – but why didn’t you phone to say you were coming?’

  ‘Because you wouldn’t have let me,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘Why would you think that?’

  She couldn’t really answer. I sat down, asking her ‘How are you? How’s the course?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. There was a pause. ‘I was wondering if I could talk to Dad privately.’

  It crossed my mind that if I said I’d make some tea I’d appear willing, but I’d be back in the room in less than ten minutes. And in less than ten minutes I was. Geoffrey had lost his smile. He was saying, ‘I’m really not sure. You see, Anna –’

  ‘Anna what?’ I said, coming in with the tray. As I juggled with the cups and plates, offering Harriet a biscuit – ‘Go on,’ I said, when she refused, ‘they’re all cane sugar,’ and she took one, fat pig, she couldn’t resist – Geoffrey was saying, ‘Harriet’s still very keen to move into the spare room upstairs. I was explaining you were about to turn them into a studio.’

  Harriet’s face changed. ‘You’re not a painter,’ she said. ‘You’ve never painted a picture in your life.’ Obviously she thought she was a painter, and had the right not just to live, but paint, in my house, because of it. ‘I’ve always wanted to paint,’ I told her. ‘There are reasons why I haven’t up to now. Geoffrey’s very kindly said he’ll back me up if I want to start. So you can see, Harriet –’

  ‘Yes, I can see,’ she said. ‘You don’t want me here. All this painting business is to use up those attic rooms. It doesn’t matter if I haven’t got any room to live, let alone paint – I have to paint in the garden shed, next to the lawn mower. In the winter I have to stop and go back in the house every half-an-hour to warm up. But I suppose I can’t expect you to care.’

  ‘This approach isn’t getting us anywhere, Harriet,’ Geoffrey said. I was annoyed he didn’t tell her off.

  ‘I think there may be reasons why you’re so upset,’ I told her. ‘You’re an intelligent girl. It isn’t the rooms. It’s maybe to do with your relationships at home. But listen – it won’t be very long before you’re qualified. You’ll be independent and able to leave.’

  Harriet stared, wildly, at Geoffrey hoping for some helpful comment, but he said nothing. ‘You see,’ I said, ‘it isn’t really possible for you to come here but all you have to do is stick it out at home for a bit.’

  ‘I’m not unhappy at home,’ she said. ‘I just don’t get enough peace and quiet. I’m sick of the shed. I just thought you and Dad could help. You’ve got plenty of room. You’ve got a cupboard out there, with a window, which is bigger than the space I’ve got at home – and I wouldn’t have to share with Deb. I could pay you some rent –’

  It was at this point that Geoffrey got up and went to the window, leaving me to face Harriet on my own. I said, gently, ‘Harriet – does your mother know you’re here?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet. ‘She thinks it’s quite a good idea, if you accept it.’

  ‘It’s not me, Harriet,’ I said. ‘It’s a question of practicalities.’

  She said, ‘Roger and Mum and Deb and me and Richard all live in a three-bedroom semi. It’s perfectly practical.’ Then she looked round the drawing-room. She said, ‘You’ve got Dad, so you’ve got all the money, that’s what’s happened.’ I glanced at Geoffrey. I was sure he had heard, but he pretended not to have.

  ‘Geoffrey is generous to all of you,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think I want to talk any more about all this.’

  And that was when she started to blubber and make incoherent statements about how selfish I was, and how I’d turned their father into a stranger and other things I couldn’t bear to listen to. I had to turn my head even to see Geoffrey. I cut in, as loudly as I could without shouting, ‘Harriet, I’m very upset and I think we should talk about all this another day, when we’re all a bit calmer. I’m going upstairs now.’ Not that I wanted to leave them alone. I was too afraid Geoffrey might yield to her entreaties, which I would of course have countered later, but it would have complicated things. Still, there was no point in my staying in the roo
m arguing because Harriet had reached the point where she was going to say some very nasty things. So up I went, and stood on my nearly-gold bedroom carpet, staring out through the net curtains into the garden and then, at that very moment Julie Thompson came marching in from the communal gardens with her two children, dressed in anoraks and wellingtons, and started going into the basement and I got even angrier. Not just because she was there, but because, even if I could get her out, I’d have Harriet round my neck again demanding a room. I felt trapped, I began to think of having a baby and, perhaps, if I did, Geoffrey would be the same to me again and there wouldn’t be room for any of them. Julie was yanking one of the children in. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘don’t give me any more aggravation.’ I’d seen her going out at regular intervals in the mornings and one afternoon a week, without the children, and I was pretty certain she had a job as a daily. She’d be getting cash in hand and not telling the Social Security, I guessed. I thought, if I can get Geoffrey to say he wants a child once the pregnancy is confirmed I’ll need that basement so my child can go out into the garden and play. First I’ll tell the Social Security I think Julie’s earning, then, when she has to repay them, Daddy will give me enough money to buy her out at a good price, and this time she’ll have to take it. I sat down at the dressing-table again, feeling a bit better, still worried about what Geoffrey and Harriet were saying to each other downstairs, but now I had a plan.

  When Geoffrey came up I was wearing the long kaftan-like dress we bought in Turkey. I didn’t let him tell me about Harriet. After we had made love I said, ‘Geoffrey, would you like it if we had a child?’

  He said, ‘One day. One day, Anna, love, if we both think it’s a good idea. Oh God, I’m so tired, would you mind if I fell asleep for a bit?’

  And there was nothing I could do but kiss him, then lie there, staring at the ceiling, wondering if I’d conceived. This time I was covered. I’d been upset, it was the middle of the afternoon, after a family difficulty. No wonder I’d forgotten to put in my cap. But I couldn’t go on doing it and Geoffrey’s statement, careful as any civil servant’s, hadn’t left any loopholes for misunderstanding. He’d be angry if I was careless in future. On the other hand, I thought, men were usually pleased, in the end, if they had a baby. I thought, it makes them more settled. A baby’s the final proof that you’re married, and your husband loves you. Once a baby’s born you’ve become a family, which is a very strong thing. Very strong, I was thinking, watching Geoffrey lying there asleep.