As Time Goes By

by Hilary Bailey

  Polly thought, for two seconds. The huge rise in house prices in London turned everything into telephone numbers, but, debts paid, she still had to buy somewhere else at the same inflated price. There was no point in thinking Alexander wasn’t dishonest – not dishonest as in ‘going to jail’, but just grabbing for percentages and hoping the punter wouldn’t see the point.

  ‘Fancy you coming here on Christmas Eve, Alexander,’ she said, ‘to turn your children out into the snow. Don’t people change?’

  ‘Times have changed, Polly,’ he told her. ‘You’re not being realistic, are you, but then, you never were, particularly. I’m offering to give you £200,000. It’s a lot of money.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot of debts. And then I have to buy another place to live, to house Pam and Sue and Margaret.’

  ‘Not too hard on the best part of two hundred grand. Pam and Sue’ll be leaving home soon, anyway.’

  Hers was a world where there were no jobs for the young, no rentable accommodation, no available council flats; out there waiting for her children was the squat and the dole queue. Alexander either didn’t know this, or didn’t care. Or perhaps it was all part of the cut and thrust of capitalism, just the end of another normal day for noted businessman, Alexander Kops. The reasons didn’t matter, she decided.

  ‘Just go to the house agents in the normal way and make an offer,’ she said, knowing he must have heard she’d sacked Moore-Biggs.

  ‘Is that your final decision?’ he asked.

  ‘I may not be a genius, but I’m not a widow you can swindle either,’ she told him.

  ‘I hope you don’t regret this,’ he told her.

  She also hoped she wouldn’t as she watched him get back into his car. She was shaken. He was a powerful man now. She was poor, tired, her only defence the law, which she knew, hadn’t mother said so, was not always the protector of the weak. For hundreds of years women had warned their daughters not to challenge the power of their husbands and even now it looked as if they were right.

  Too tired to fight, she knew she had now only the energy for passive resistance. She hoped it would be enough. But Alexander’s coming and going had taken away her courage. It was like being sucked into a black hole.

  Clancy rang, sounding emotional, from a pub. ‘It’s Christmas, Poll,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Go away,’ she said. Behind him people were singing White Christmas and there was the odd shout. Telecom must get a lot of extra 10ps on Christmas Eve as worse-for-wear men stood and told ex-wives and girlfriends it was Christmas. Some of the women, perhaps, were ready, scent on, fires burning clear, trees full of lights, pining for the call, the arrival, the reunion. The remainder, up to their armpits in the turkey and their knees in wrapping paper, were saying tiredly as she was, ‘Christmas – what difference does that make?’ Her children, even Margaret, were too old to have ‘Dad’ trundled in for Christmas like a statue brought out on a feast day, paraded through the streets and then put away in the crypt for another year. They didn’t need it now and neither, by God, did she. She was sewing up the turkey viciously when Kate Mulvaney popped round with a parcel – ‘Only tights,’ she remarked, as ‘Only a pot plant,’ Polly responded, handing over a poinsettia. Kate produced half a bottle of Scotch from her bag.

  ‘They’ve all gone to a club and left me with these birds,’ she said. ‘At least that turkey doesn’t look so once-alive as those poor little ducks. And I don’t know what to do with them – am I supposed to stuff them or what? Can you lend me a lemon and some basil, and what’s basil, by the way?’

  ‘I haven’t got any,’ said Polly. ‘You don’t have these things when you’re broke. Nobody understands that. That’s why they go on about simple, nutritious meals out of cheap ingredients. They don’t calculate the cost of the back-up.’

  ‘Saves you worrying about the poor,’ Kate remarked. ‘It’s their fault if they’re overweight and have tooth decay. They don’t do enough jogging and lentil soup.’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of sage,’ said Polly. ‘I’ve used most of it.’

  ‘I’ll boil up some apples,’ Kate said, raising her glass. ‘Down with skinny little game birds, quarry tile floors, exercise tights, the SDP and pasta.’

  ‘Give me the chance. I can’t afford any of those things,’ said Polly and told her about Alexander’s visit and Clancy’s phone call.

  ‘They’ve got hysterical because it’s Christmas,’ Kate told her. ‘This is probably the last real home they ever had – now Clancy wants to come back to it and Alexander, being a famous entrepreneur and realist, wants to own it.’

  ‘He’ll have to kill me first,’ declared Polly. ‘You’d never believe his own children lived here. Perhaps they’re right when they say men should see their children born. Otherwise they think you left the house with a cushion under your dress and came back with a baby they gave you out of stock at the hospital, nothing to do with them at all. Or maybe he just thinks it’s indecent, me and the brats occupying this expensive house. We ought to be on a council estate – that’s the proper place for single parents and their children. I suppose it’s a reprisal against all those women lolling about by swimming pools while the children are at boarding school and their husbands are living in bed-sits and giving them all the money.’

  ‘That figure from popular mythology,’ said Kate.

  ‘Popular misogyny,’ Polly corrected her. ‘I suppose you’d like to be back in Africa?’

  ‘It was a project, not permanent,’ said Kate. ‘I couldn’t go permanently. The nuns wouldn’t let Bernadette live here for ever, and now there’s our merry rapist on the prowl, and Ajax is claiming to be an orphan at school and the education officer is nosing around. I think they’re more shocked a nun’s in charge than they would be if the children were alone – they’re very dogmatic about right and wrong, these libertarians. I think Julian phoned the school to say I wasn’t taking proper care. I don’t know why – he’s supposed to be happily remarried. In the end you see yourself as that silly figure, the person who’s working for the welfare of others, and ignoring their own children. Charity begins at home and all that. It’s the old story, “Be there, or else,” Not that I mind. I want to do it. I’m lucky to have a well paid job, these days –’

  ‘Lucky to have anything at all – a house to sell, a job –’

  There was a pause. Kate said, ‘Well, Alexander’s doing all right, anyway. As his contribution to the return of Victorian values he managed to struggle round on Christmas Eve to evict you.’

  ‘At least Joe Coverdale’s fixed up – I was feeling as if all the wolves were coming round for dinner,’ Polly said.

  ‘Lots of wolves about these days,’ Kate said. ‘Still,’ she added firmly, ‘it won’t go on for ever.’

  Kate was, by inclination and professionally, faithful, hopeful and charitable.

  I felt happy as we bowled up the motorway into Nottinghamshire. It was a relief to be away from the house and its problems. And I would have Geoffrey to myself for a week. We’d be meeting more people, too, and who knew, in that comfortable, even glamorous setting, if a new era might not begin, even more so if I was pregnant. After all, I’d simply blame it on the moment. These things happen, and he’d never force me to have an abortion, not Geoffrey. Then he’d be pleased by the idea; he’d be bound to. After that, I could get Julie out of the basement more easily, Harriet’s staying with us would be right out of the question for all time, and we’d be a proper family. I’d decided – that’s all. It was beginning to look a bit suspicious, nearly five years married and no children and no plans for any. It made the marriage look a bit temporary somehow, like a show business marriage. We now needed the commitment a child would give. I put my hand on Geoffrey’s knee as we drove up the M6. He shivered slightly, but I couldn’t help remembering before, when I did it, before and just after our marriage, he used to shiver with pleasure. We turned off into a field once, made love under a hedge. It seemed a long time ago but obviously there’s a
n ebbing and flowing of sexual feeling in marriage – you can’t go on like that always. In the romantic away-from-home surroundings of Roger Lombard’s house things might change. It was a beautiful place, acres of undulating farmland, with a river running through the estate and a classic eighteenth-century house surrounded by beautifully landscaped gardens. It would all go to Roger’s son eventually, a chinless wonder called Morgan, after Roger’s first wife’s family. On the other hand, if Morgan had an accident in his fast sports car or something, Geoffrey was next in line. It would be a nice place to bring up children, that house. I stopped myself from wondering if Morgan died would Geoffrey’s other children be his next of kin, before mine? It was sordid and horrible to think about.

  So in due course we bowled along the country lanes, up the drive and finally reached the house. Roger and his wife, a tall, quite pretty country sort of woman, about twenty-eight, in tweeds, said ‘Hullo’ and we went into the drawing-room for a drink. Only two other people were there, an actress I’d seen on TV, in light comedies and in ads, and her husband, an advertising director. The actress was called Susanna Leighton, she was fair, with quite a lot of lines on her face and huge blue eyes. She seemed rather dim. Her husband Tony was an unbelievably tall, dark and handsome man, in fantastic physical condition. He talked Glasgow. I thought he was rather self-conscious about it – his wife, Susanna, obviously came from a rather different background. In fact she was putting in a bid to go out on the Boxing Day shoot. Roger seemed to wear it and asked me if I would join the Annie Oakley set. ‘Goodness no,’ I said. ‘I don’t know one end of a gun from another – it wouldn’t be a shoot, it’d be a massacre.’ But after Geoffrey showed his keenness to go shooting I rather wished I’d said I’d go too – as a matter of fact I can shoot a bit. When I was still at school I learned from Andrew Thwaite, the boy at a farm near Scarborough. He was a friend of my brother’s. We used to shoot rabbits. I remembered standing in those big Yorkshire fields in the morning, as the sun got hotter, up to our knees in dry grass, while the haymaker droned along parallel with us. Still, it was one thing being sixteen in jeans in a field with Andrew Thwaite, yet another standing there at my age in corduroy trousers and a silly tweed hat, with the rain drizzling down. I hadn’t come away to be one of the boys, even if Susanna Leighton had, and when I thought of the kind of meal you wouldn’t be able to help bolting down afterwards, you’d be so famished, scones and toast and God knows what, I flinched.

  Afterwards, we went upstairs to dress for dinner. I got in the bath, and Oh God, I hoped Geoffrey would want to make love to me, or even just come into the bathroom and look at me, and caress my shoulder or something, anything. He didn’t. He didn’t even speak to me. He just did what we’d come up to do, he got dressed. I wore a beautiful blue chiffon dress and I kind of knew he was going to ask me if I’d be warm enough, the dining-room could be cool. I couldn’t wait to hear it, I walked off downstairs, just ahead of him, then at the last moment, when he caught me up, tucked my arm in his so that we could go into the drawing-room arm-in-arm. I tried to stay calm and gracious, but I knew if the holiday passed with Geoffrey like this, distant and detached, I wouldn’t know what to think. He was trying to be a stranger, fob me off, worse than he had ever been at home. A maid handed round drinks. Apart from the Leightons and Roger and his wife, there was one other man, an old friend of Roger’s who lived near by, a sort of local magistrate type. I concentrated on Tony Leighton, very discreetly, just enough to let Geoffrey see. Annoyingly enough I got the magistrate on my left and Susanna Leighton on my right but across the table there was Tony, so I gave him the full benefit of my attention. I could see that Geoffrey disliked it; Tony Leighton didn’t. This was what I wanted and sure enough after dinner Geoffrey stuck to me like glue and I was very pleased by the whole thing. The house was lovely, the food so good – I had the letter from Dr Robertson, but sticking to my diet was easy anyway – and there were enough staff to do everything, I began to feel it might be all right. I talked a bit to Susanna Leighton about herself – she had two children by a previous marriage but wanted another one, Tony’s, only she had so much work booked she didn’t dare stop. ‘It’s an uncertain business,’ she said, ‘and if I drop everything I’ll be dependent on Tony, which neither of us wants. I like working, but I’d like to have another child –’ and here she looked at Tony, who was standing looking very handsome, talking to Roger at the fireplace and I could see she didn’t feel he was quite trustworthy. Well, I thought, here’s a woman who’s famous and successful, and still she hasn’t got her life straight. ‘I expect he’d like a child of his own,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. She looked at me and changed the subject. Then Geoffrey came up. ‘Roger wants your opinion on a Romney he’s got,’ he told me. ‘He’s been told it’s no good, by a pupil or something, wondered if you could throw any light on it.’

  I got annoyed, suddenly, when I thought of that dimwit Morgan ending up with this beautiful house stuffed with pictures, and all the land, but I stood up and went out with them. The picture, of a woman in a straw hat, was hanging in a small room off the hall, badly lit and right over a radiator, but in spite of all that it yelled Romney at you from the wall. I told Roger I wasn’t an expert on the period, but I was as sure as I could be it was authentic, and added that it might be better to take it away from the radiator. I was tactful about the lighting. On the way back to the drawing-room I said to Geoffrey I was tired and why didn’t we go to bed. He said, ‘Yes, of course,’ although I guessed he wanted to stay on downstairs talking. Upstairs he yawned while he was taking off his shoes and said, ‘This country air knocks you right out.’ I sat on the bed beside him and put my arms round him, and told him here was a chance to relax properly at last and things like that, so we did make love. Afterwards we lay there, in all that silence. ‘I’m so happy, Geoffrey,’ I said. He said, ‘Wonderful here – it always has been.’

  ‘It’s tomorrow that we met. Did you remember – at that party my cousin gave?’

  ‘Mm,’ he said, ‘I remember. Listen – that’s an owl. You can just hear it.’

  I stayed awake after he did, remembering the house-warming party in Camden Town – Abbie and John had just moved there. I met Geoffrey while we were taking our coats off upstairs, he looked tired and haggard but he brightened up when he saw me. I had a silver dress on, and shoes. ‘You look like the spirit of Christmas,’ he said. ‘Let’s go down and get something to drink.’ I knew we were right for each other. I knew it then, I still know it. He left early because his wife had ‘flu. I phoned him that week and made him give me lunch – I could still see him, rather tiredly taking off an oldish overcoat, in John and Abbie’s bedroom and how I thought immediately I wanted him. ‘It’s all right,’ I told myself, as I went to sleep, whereupon the owl hooted again.

  When I woke, it was Christmas Eve, Geoffrey was still asleep. I got up, looked at myself in the glass – was I two pounds heavier than I should have been? My hair could have done with some streaks. Then I saw, in the glass, that Geoffrey’s eyes were open, he was looking at me looking at my reflection. His face had the same expression on it he had when he studied the papers he brought home at night. I know more about that now. Mind you, I sometimes wonder what the world is supposed to produce for the Geoffrey Lombards – they seem to need a lot, more than most people. It could still have been all right if the phone had rung that minute saying Morgan had been killed on the M6, but it didn’t. Even now Geoffrey’s uncle is still alive and well and Morgan is still perfectly fit and drinking and driving as usual. I’ve been told I’m greedy about these things, but they do make a difference. They do to people like Geoffrey and me, anyway. Still, no love-light in Geoffrey’s eyes that Christmas Eve. He wanted to say something to me, but he hesitated and the maid came in with the tea. I knew quite well I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. People say stupid things when they’ve just woken up, I didn’t want to hear it. I wouldn’t have been able to deal with it. All I knew w
as that the break wasn’t going the way I’d planned. And in a way being with his uncle wasn’t doing any good. He was a spikey person, Roger. He was a bit too blunt, too black and white, and I didn’t want Geoffrey taking his tone from him. I blamed Roger’s attitude for Geoffrey’s – I can see his face, as he lay propped up in bed, in the mirror, now. To cap it all, after I was ready, he said, ‘I don’t think I’ll come down to breakfast. I’d rather go back to sleep. You don’t mind, do you?’

  He faced me with going down alone to the dining-room or staying upstairs, fully dressed, while he slept. The others were still almost strangers. I was furious. I looked out of the window over that dripping landscape and I said, ‘Oh Geoffrey, I wish you’d come with me. It looks so rude if you don’t.’

  ‘Well, Roger won’t mind,’ he said. ‘He told me last night I looked wiped out.’

  ‘I suppose you agreed with him?’ I asked, not too pleased. The implication was that I wasn’t taking proper care of my husband.

  ‘I said I wasn’t feeling too perky,’ he told me.

  ‘Well, you should see the doctor,’ I said. ‘I wonder Roger didn’t recommend someone.’

  ‘It was just a casual conversation,’ Geoffrey said. What he didn’t say was that he’d get up. He was in one of his obstinate moods – I could see he was determined to stay there.

  ‘I rather wanted to come up after breakfast and check on my dress for the dance,’ I told him.

  ‘It’s not a dance,’ he said. ‘Roger’s only aired the old ballroom and lit a fire – then he’ll put on the record player for anyone who wants to dance.’

  ‘I’ll ask him if he knows a really good specialist,’ I said. I knew Geoffrey hated doctors and wouldn’t like his uncle dragged into his health problems.