The Fountain

by Mary Nichols

  She decided to have a day in London to buy her outfit for her father’s wedding and use it as an excuse to see Penny, and it would take her out from under her mother-in-law’s feet for a few hours.

  Penny met her at Liverpool Street station. She was looking very glamorous in a double-breasted coat fastened with a single enormous button. It had a fur collar and fur cuffs to the sleeves. ‘Let me have a look at you,’ she said, holding Barbara at arm’s length and surveying the belted overcoat she had had for some time; new clothes, Barbara had recently discovered, were a luxury they could not afford. ‘You’re looking a little peaky.’

  ‘I’m fine. I didn’t sleep too well last night, that’s all.’ She gave a shaky laugh. ‘It must be the excitement of coming up to town and seeing you again. You look stunning.’ She surveyed her friend. ‘And you’ve had your hair cut.’

  ‘It’s all the rage.’ Penny twirled round. ‘Do you like it? It is so easy to manage. You should try it.’

  ‘I don’t know what George would say if I went home shorn.’

  Penny laughed, leading the way out of the station, throwing a few coins to the beggar who was sitting against the wall out of the keen wind. ‘We’ll have lunch first and then we’ll go shopping. I’ve got lots to tell you and I want to hear all your news.’

  Barbara expected to go to the cab rank, but instead Penny made for a cream-coloured car, parked at the kerb. ‘Yours?’ she asked.

  ‘No, it’s Simon’s, but when he heard you were coming he offered to lend it to me. It’s a beauty, isn’t it?’ It was too. It had gleaming chrome headlights and door handles and a spare wheel strapped on the luggage compartment at the back. The upholstery was brown leather. ‘He would have been here himself, but he had to go to the office. Dad finally persuaded him to buckle down to work. He sends his love.’

  ‘Oh.’ She didn’t know what to make of that. ‘And can you drive it?’

  ‘Of course. It’s easy. You should get George to buy one.’

  ‘He needs his van and we can’t afford both, but when the business is on its feet, he says we’ll have one.’

  Penny drove them to a little restaurant in a back street which, she assured Barbara, was managing to defy the shortages and produce edible meals and was a place where they could talk uninterrupted. ‘Now spill the beans,’ she said, when they had ordered.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Married life. Is it all it’s cracked up to be?’

  ‘Why, thinking of venturing yourself?’

  ‘No fear! I’m intent on a career. A husband would only get in the way.’

  ‘And how is the career?’ She didn’t want to talk about marriage.

  ‘I had a walk-on part in a play and I was the victim in a murder film, killed off within five minutes of the start, neither of which will put my name up in lights, but you have to start somewhere. One of these days someone will notice me.’

  ‘I don’t see how they can fail to. You’ll always stand out in a crowd.’

  ‘Thank you. Enough about me. What about you?’

  ‘Nothing to tell.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t like the sound of that. You are not having regrets, are you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ It was said a little too quickly and Penny looked hard at her, but she was saved from comment by the arrival of the waiter with their order. They sat back while he set everything on the table and left them to serve themselves. ‘What’s it like, making films?’

  ‘It’s not like being on the stage. It’s all done in short scenes. The title is put up on a screen and the actors actually speak the words to get the timing and the actions right. One of these days, we’ll have talking pictures. They’ve been experimenting with recorded sound but they haven’t been able to synchronise the action with the sound yet, but it will come and it will have a tremendous impact. Some of the actors we’ve got now have terrible accents. It will be a dreadful shock to their devoted followers to hear their voices. They’ll have to learn to speak properly or they won’t last.’

  ‘You have a lovely voice.’

  ‘Thank you. You need a good voice for stage work. And wireless. That’s the coming thing. There’ll be wireless sets in every home before long, you see. Simon thinks I should stick to films. I can’t make up my mind. What do you think?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I’m the last person to advise you. I can’t even make up my own mind about getting a job. I’ve never had one.’

  Penny grinned. ‘Child bride, straight from college to domestic bliss.’

  ‘Something like that. But I don’t have enough to do at home, Elizabeth does everything. The thing is, what could I do? I’m not qualified for anything.’ She smiled. ‘And don’t you dare say it’s my own fault for not finishing my course. I had enough of that from Dad.’

  ‘I won’t. No good crying over spilt milk. So, what have you got going for you?’

  She paused to butter a roll. ‘You’re presentable, you’re articulate and your smile is a knockout. You can read and write and add up.’

  ‘Office work, you mean?’

  ‘Or shop work. Something high class. A dress shop perhaps. Or an antique shop. I know! An art gallery, then they’d show some of your pictures and you’d be famous. We’d become famous together.’

  Barbara laughed. Penny was good for her, she cheered her up, made her get things in proportion, even if she had no intention of following her advice. ‘I don’t think George would like that somehow. He is against working wives.’

  Penny laughed. ‘Oh, how very Victorian! Barbara, this is 1920. Women have become emancipated. Put your foot down.’

  ‘I can’t. Whenever I mention it, we almost quarrel.’

  ‘Only almost?’ Penny laughed. ‘Do it. Have a good row and get it over with. If you don’t, you’ll regret it, I promise you. You’ll always be the one to back down.’

  Barbara had no answer to that. They ate in silence for a few minutes and when they finished Penny insisted on paying the bill. ‘I can afford it,’ she said, when Barbara protested. ‘Dad gives me an allowance, but as it happens I’m not paying for this, Simon is. He told me to treat you.’

  ‘That was kind of him, though I can’t think why he should.’

  ‘Because he wanted to, I expect. He’s very fond of you. I think it was quite a blow to him when you married George.’ She did not wait for Barbara to comment, which was just as well because she did not know what to say. ‘Bond Street, here we come.’

  They went from shop to shop, trying things on, and in the end Barbara chose a pale-blue chiffon tubular dress over a silk slip, a pair of tan kid sandals and a small cloche hat in tan, with a ribbon bow at the side in a blue to match the dress. ‘I mustn’t outdo the bride,’ she said, twirling round to look at her rear view in the fitting-room mirror.

  Penny laughed. ‘No, but you’re not exactly enamoured of the idea of your father marrying again, are you?’

  ‘I just wasn’t sure Virginia was right for him. She’s so young, the same age as George.’

  ‘Surely that’s for your father to decide?’

  ‘Yes.’ She managed a smile. ‘If Dad wants her, then who am I to object?’

  ‘What changed your mind?’

  ‘You could say I’ve matured and learnt about marriage and what it means.’

  ‘And what does it mean?’

  ‘Being less self-centred. Thinking of your husband first, making him happy.’ She paused, realising Penny was about to quiz her about it and had to be forestalled. Although she confided most things to Penny, she didn’t think she could tell her about Elizabeth’s cutting remark: it was too near the bone, something to push into the recesses of her mind and try to forget. She wanted to believe she had misunderstood, that her mother-in-law had been joking. Some people had a funny sense of humour.

  ‘It works both ways, you know.’

  ‘Of course I know. George is loving and generous. There isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for me.’

  ‘Except allow you to go to
work.’

  ‘He’s just a little old-fashioned, that’s all. He likes to pamper me.’

  The wedding ceremony was over, attended by half the town, or so it seemed to Barbara, all wanting to wish John Bosgrove and his new wife well. The bride had looked a picture in her white lace gown and John was a handsome and distinguished man. There were many more guests than had been at her own wedding, Barbara realised with a pang, though that had been her own fault for marrying so hastily.

  ‘I don’t intend to be your typical farmer’s wife,’ Virginia told Barbara. ‘I’m keeping my job. At least, for the time being.’ They were standing in the drawing room at the farm, crushed among the other guests, all holding glasses of champagne and trying to balance plates of wedding cake at the same time. Her father was being jovial to a group of fellow farmers.

  ‘But there’s a lot to do on a farm, you know. Mum was always busy, she never went out to work.’

  ‘I am not your mother, Barbara.’

  ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. What does Dad say about you working?’

  ‘He tells me to do whatever makes me happy.’

  ‘He would.’

  Virginia gave her a rather startled glance, as if she were reading more into the comment than the two words she had spoken, but at that moment one of the other guests intervened to speak to the bride and they became separated. Barbara mingled with the company, chatting inconsequentially, though her thoughts kept coming back to the fact that George hadn’t said, ‘Do whatever makes you happy.’ George had put his foot down. She looked over at him, talking to her father. Was he expounding his views on a woman’s place in society? She moved to join them. They were talking politics.

  The next day she saw the advertisement for an assistant stuck in the window of a craft shop which specialised in picture framing. It also sold prints and original paintings on a commission basis. It seemed to be tailor-made for her, and because she was still feeling peeved with George she pushed open the door and went in. She was given an interview there and then, at the end of which she was offered a job. The pay was minimal, only ten shillings a week, but that didn’t matter. It was something to get her out of the house, a way of bringing money into it, if only a little. She went home treading on air.

  Her euphoria lasted until the evening. Why she thought George might be pleased for her when faced with a fait accompli, she had no idea. Even in the midst of his lecture on the subject of working wives, she could hear Penny’s words: ‘Have a good row and get it over with.’ The trouble was that it wasn’t a row. He refused to get angry. ‘You know how I feel about it,’ he said without raising his voice. ‘And I’m more than disappointed that you went and did it behind my back.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have agreed.’

  ‘Knowing that, why do it?’

  ‘I’ve got to do something, George. I’ll go crazy, if I don’t.’ She intercepted the look which passed between her husband and his mother; it was as if they were enjoying a secret joke. ‘Anyway, I’ve said I’ll take it.’

  He sighed. He hated rows, always had. He supposed it had something to do with having to stand on his own feet very early on. He remembered his first day at school. Being an only child, he had never had to relate to other children, had never learnt to share anything. He reacted with tears and anger and sheer bloody-mindedness but, by the time he went to grammar school, he had learnt how to win friends, mostly by buying them – a bag of sweets, a currant bun and, later, cigarettes and beer. He had discovered he had a facility for manipulating people and that was something his mother had never taught him. It might have come from his father, but as he had never known that gentleman he couldn’t be sure. All he did know was that quarrels were to be avoided, tempers controlled, if he was ever going to get what he wanted from life and make his mother proud of him. But his mother was not his only consideration now: he had a wife and there had to be some give and take. In any case it would not be for long.

  ‘Well, as you seem so determined,’ he said. ‘You’d better give it a try.’

  She had won, but it didn’t feel like a victory. Elizabeth, without actually saying so, made it plain Barbara had transgressed, and George himself was only pretending to agree. She didn’t know if the win was worth the price in nervous tension. Only while she was at the shop, and involved in serving customers and familiarising herself with the stock, did she feel the strain seeping away. She enjoyed it and would have loved to share her enthusiasm with George when she went home each evening, but she dare not. They spoke about everything else: Elizabeth’s day; local gossip; a car crash which had happened just outside the town; the division of Ireland which didn’t seem to have solved its problems; the growing unemployment and what George would do about it if he were in charge; and the latest film to reach Melsham’s tiny picture house. Anything except how Barbara had spent her day. It was almost as if they had to pretend her job did not exist.

  It didn’t exist for long. One morning, in the middle of July, she woke up feeling nauseous and had to rush to the bathroom to be sick and she couldn’t face her breakfast.

  ‘You know what’s wrong with you, don’t you?’ Elizabeth said, standing over her, teapot in hand. ‘When did you last have the curse?’

  She stared at her mother-in-law. There was a gleam in her eye which looked suspiciously like triumph. ‘I can’t be. George is taking precautions. We agreed…’

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question.’

  She began counting back. What with starting a new job and everything to learn, and the atmosphere at home, she had been too preoccupied to notice she was late. ‘It’s only a week or so over.’

  ‘Have you been late before?’

  ‘No, I’m usually as regular as clockwork.’

  ‘There you are, then. Mistakes can happen in the best regulated families. So-called precautions are far from foolproof.’

  She was sick again before she left for work, but she struggled in, though she felt dreadful and must have looked deathly because they sent her home again. But by the time George came in at six o’clock that evening, she was feeling better and decided Elizabeth must be wrong.

  As soon as the meal was cleared away, George spread some plans out on the table and began working on them. Barbara went to help Elizabeth wash up.

  ‘Have you told him about the baby?’ Elizabeth asked.

  ‘I don’t know there is a baby. It’s much too soon to tell. Just because I was sick…’

  ‘Go and tell him now. I’ll finish off here.’

  It was easier to do as she was told than argue. She put the tea cloth down and went back into the dining room. George was drawing on a large sheet of tracing paper over what appeared to be a street plan. He didn’t look up and she stood at his elbow watching him making slight changes to the lines which appeared through the transparent paper.

  ‘George, your mother thinks I might be pregnant. I’ve only missed by a week, but I was very sick this morning.’

  He put his pencil down and looked up at her, grinning. ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘But I can’t have a baby here. There’s isn’t room and…’ She couldn’t add that she was sure his mother would take over the child; it would never be entirely hers and George’s while they had to share a home. ‘You said not until we had a home of our own.’

  ‘And we will.’ He smiled and tapped the papers on the table with his pencil. ‘By the time the baby is born, or very soon afterwards, this will become reality. We will have our own house.’

  ‘Really?’ She flung her arms round him from behind and put her cheek against his. ‘Then, of course, I’m pleased as punch. That’s if I’m really pregnant.’

  ‘Go and see the doc. He’ll tell you.’

  ‘It’s too soon. I’ll go in a week or two.’ She paused. ‘But that’s not a house plan, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s the ground plan of the new council estate. One hundred and fifty houses and I’ve got the contract to build the lot.’

  ‘And did you have
to…’ She was going to say ‘cheat’ but changed her mind. ‘…oil wheels, to get it?’

  ‘Of course.’ He didn’t know how it had happened, but Donald Browning’s part in the affair of the flats had become known and he had been asked to leave, which was why he was now on Kennett’s payroll. He would never amount to much but he did know how the wheels of local government turned and he got on well with both suppliers and customers for his apparent ponderous honesty. It was that which had convinced his employers that his lapse from his usual integrity had been due to his wife’s illness. He was not prosecuted and nothing was made public.

  ‘And the profits will be enough to buy our house?’

  ‘It won’t cost us a penny.’ He laughed and pulled the plan from under the tracing paper. ‘This is a plan for one hundred and fifty houses and where they are to go on the available land.’ He tapped the tracing paper. ‘This is a plan for one hundred and fifty-one houses on the same land.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You’re going to build one more than they’ve asked for?’

  ‘Yes. They’ll never know the difference.’

  ‘But you can’t do that. They know how many bricks and things you need. They aren’t going to pay out for more.’

  ‘They won’t have to. It won’t cost them a penny either, that’s the beauty of it.’ He was so obviously pleased with himself, he couldn’t keep his scheme to himself. ‘I’m not the only one who oils wheels, you know. Suppliers of bricks and tiles and timbers are all prepared to put their hands in their pockets to get orders. I give them the order for bricks for one hundred and fifty houses and they supply sufficient for one hundred and fifty-one. No paperwork, just enough to build an extra house. The same goes for tiles and roof timbers and windows and floorboards, plaster and paint, the lot.’

  Barbara was horrified. Oiling wheels was bad enough, but this. ‘But it’s dishonest.’

  ‘No, simply clever business practice.’

  She was appalled. ‘But the council are bound to find out in the end.’

  ‘I haven’t cheated them, except out of a tiny piece of land. They’ll hardly notice that and they won’t want to make a fuss about it, if they do. How d’you think it will make them look? They won’t want the publicity.’