The Sweetest Thing

by Susan Sallis

  They went down to lunch and sat at the table in the window. Outside, a gardener pushed a mower carefully around flower beds cut meticulously into the lawn. Mrs Pentwyn came in and asked whether everyone was happy. There were only three of them and they all nodded and smiled through their soup.

  Mrs Pentwyn smiled back and said brightly, ‘Why don’t you join Mr Mather and his fiancée, Mrs Heatherington? You get on so well. I can soon lay another place at their table.’

  Mrs Heatherington raised questioning brows at William, who bounced them on to Connie. She said, ‘Please do, Mrs Heatherington. There’s a good view from here.’

  There was a lot of settling in. Mrs Pentwyn had to move their place mats slightly to make room for Mrs Heatherington’s. They grabbed their cutlery before it could clatter to the floor. The water jug splashed excitedly.

  William stood up and brought across a chair and held the back while Mrs Heatherington disposed herself, her handbag, her wine glass. She smiled mistily. ‘Can you bring the decanter, Mrs Pentwyn? And two more glasses.’ She looked roguish. ‘I know you will say you do not drink at midday but a siesta in this heat . . . and the wine will help.’

  It was cabinet pudding and she opted for cheese so William did too. Connie did not want either but she chose the pudding anyway. Mrs Heatherington talked to William through her.

  ‘Your husband has been so kind, my dear. I am an actress, I know nothing about contracts, why should I, I’ve never had any difficulties before and I could not have believed that my manager of twenty years . . . like a knife being slipped between my ribs!’

  Connie seized the tiny silence and said for the third time, ‘We are not married yet, Mrs Heatherington.’

  Mrs Heatherington nodded and smiled indulgently. Connie held on to her spoon and looked away from her. She knew. How did she know? She knew. It was unbearable. Connie was absolutely certain that William would never have said anything, why would he? Perhaps it showed somehow. She raked her fingers through her hair in case it was too set.

  Mrs Heatherington patted her other hand. ‘You are both so wonderfully settled somehow. My husband and I never had that. We were married during the Blitz, the day before he was posted . . . We never saw each other again.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Connie murmured.

  ‘Oh my dear, don’t be. I expect he’s out there somewhere having a high old time. Rangoon. I imagine him in Rangoon. I was not broken-hearted. I am an actress to the core and I have to be a free spirit.’

  Connie removed her hand and leaned back to make room for the arrival of the cabinet pudding. Mrs Pentwyn added a small jug of cream and smiled as if Connie were a favourite niece. ‘These two don’t know what they’re missing, do they?’

  Connie murmured something about the heat and luckily did not comment on the solidity of the pudding as Mrs Pentwyn continued, ‘I made it with my own fair hands, of course.’

  William tried to look rascally as he leaned over and took a spoonful of pudding on to his plate. Mrs Heatherington gave a little scream and tried to do the same. Mrs Pentwyn was smugly satisfied.

  ‘I knew how it would be!’ she said triumphantly as she left them to it.

  William and Mrs Heatherington laughed uninhibitedly. Connie began to eat, stoically.

  She had thought she and William would spend the afternoon at the beach hut but it seemed that Mrs Heatherington had brought her stage photographs from before the war, which she thought would provide added ammunition when it came to getting rid of her manager. ‘I mean I had no idea there was a law saying you could not sack an employee for not doing their job!’

  William cut some more cheese. ‘Actually, Mrs Heatherington, I rather think photographs such as those might help his case rather than yours.’

  She thought about it while she nibbled a cracker between her front teeth like a rabbit. Then she nodded reluctantly. ‘I see what you mean.’ Then she smiled. ‘I would rather like you to see these photographs. As publicity photographs go, they are not at all bad.’

  ‘Probably it would be better to keep business and pleasure separate.’ William had a very nice smile and Connie thought he had won the day.

  ‘Such a shame. You would have enjoyed seeing them too, Miss Vickers. But . . . perhaps you are rather too young to appreciate the fashions then. And you are looking forward to a swim no doubt?’ She beamed at William. ‘It looks like another tête-à-tête then, Mr Mather. Or may I call you William? My father was called William. Such a solid name. Brought from France by William the Bastard, I understand. You don’t mind, do you, Miss Vickers? You will have the rest of your life with your dear William.’

  Connie swallowed. William looked at her pleadingly. She said, ‘Of course I don’t mind. Not at all. Really. Honestly. No, I won’t stop for coffee, I can have one from the beach shop. A lovely lunch . . .’ She swept her bag from the back of the chair and stood up. Mrs Pentwyn was coming in with a tray of coffee things and smiled at her.

  As she said to Philip Pardoe when she reached her deckchair, ‘They all think I’m such a good girl because I am really co-operative. It’s all right, I’m just out of breath. Yes, I’ve run. Well, of course I was running away! If you could see Mrs Heatherington’s lipstick and matching nail polish you would understand exactly why!’

  He said, ‘You’ve got jam on your nose.’

  ‘Oh . . . hell’s bells!’

  She scrubbed at her nose with the towel he passed her. And they both started to laugh. And – almost magically – she forgot Mrs Heatherington and Mrs Pentwyn; she was still cross with William but she understood how difficult it was for him. In a strange way she wished she did not understand; it was part of the ties of loyalty already stretching between them. Part of last night. Part of not being Connie Vickers, single female. Part of giving herself over to someone else. And though it was William and though he was a marvellous human being, he was still . . . someone else.

  The cove filled up during the afternoon and Philip Pardoe had no time for reading or sitting by her on the sand. She pulled the brim of her sunhat well down, leaned back in her chair and watched him, smiling slightly, already proud of him for being patient with the two little girls and their bucket of shells, for carrying a picnic basket to the top of the cliff for an elderly man. She thought of his mother, visualized her with her three little girls and this charming straw-haired boy . . . She was not yet forty but was probably grey and thin. Did she know her very special child wanted to go to America and find his father’s family? She must ask Philip, warn him to tell her gently. His mother might be delighted because obviously she had been amazingly in love with Philip’s father . . . How had she coped with a second man? A second family?

  Connie checked herself: she was crying again. What on earth was the matter with her – was this another outcome of sleeping with her fiancé before the wedding day? Those were her mother’s words. Was she a replica of her mother after all?

  She took on another piece of her mother’s advice and ‘snapped out of it’. Philip was now trapped inside his little shop dealing with a queue of people wanting ice creams. She picked up her crisply sun-dried costume and went into the beach hut to change into it. She would have a swim. That’s what she and William would have done. It would wash away all her strange doubts and fears.

  She was floating on her back gazing up at the cliff top, moving with the sea, conscious of the tingle of the sun, when she saw William beginning the descent to the cove. She started to swim back to the shore; it was as if he was pulling her in. She felt a surge of joy that he had got away from the Heatherington and come straight to her. She watched him stop by the beach hut and reach down to kick off his sandals. Why had she thought he looked awful in shorts? He looked marvellous. His dark hair fell across his forehead. He was probably twice Phil Pardoe’s age but he certainly did not look it. She dipped her head beneath the crystal-clear water and watched the weed move languorously on the seabed. The cord that joined them seemed to be shortening of its own accord. She stop
ped swimming and felt herself still moving towards him. It no longer irked her; she gloried in it. To be part of a whole was wonderful. He had come to her and she would go to him. It was perfect.

  She was halfway up the beach when she saw that the small group he had followed down the steps had split off and gone on towards the rocks. Except for one. She was sitting – luxuriating – in Connie’s recently vacated deckchair. William had just erected the other chair and was settling himself in it. He flung his hands behind his head, stretched his long and hairy legs, saw her coming . . . drawn by the blasted cord . . . and freed one hand to wave to her.

  She stopped where she was, dug her toes into the dry sand and held her arms rigidly at her sides. He called to her.

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Fine.’

  He waited for her to move. ‘I’m trying to persuade this good lady to dip a toe or two.’

  She forced herself to move forward.

  Mrs Heatherington laughed. ‘I can’t swim. And I haven’t got a costume. I think I’ll stay here. This is lovely. So relaxing.’

  ‘It certainly is.’ William smiled up at Connie blissfully. ‘Shall I get another chair, darling?’

  Suddenly she knew what must happen. It must. If it didn’t then she couldn’t possibly marry William Mather.

  ‘I’ve come to get you. Come on. You know you love swimming.’ She jumped on to the concrete shelf outside the beach huts and held the door open.

  William glanced up at her meaningfully then said to Mrs Heatherington, ‘What can I do, dear lady?’ He began to manoeuvre himself out of the chair.

  Mrs Heatherington raised her painted eyebrows incredulously. ‘You’re not considering immersing yourself in the Atlantic Ocean, surely? I thought we were going to look through some more photographs?’

  He subsided into the chair and for a moment Connie thought she had lost. Then, quite suddenly and strictly against her mother’s advice, she became provocative, more than provocative; she became coy.

  ‘Come on, darling. I’ll help you to change into your costume.’

  He looked up, surprised, nearly shocked. She smiled down at him and began to tighten the cord, certain she was in control of it. And she was. He stood up and positively leaped on to the concrete so that she had to retreat hurriedly into the hut before he grabbed her. But then, as the door closed behind them, he did just that. It was as if he had been waiting for ever to hear those words; magic words. He was laughing and kissing her at the same time. He cupped her wet head in his big hands and kissed her eyes and her nose and her ears and her mouth and her neck.

  She laughed too but stopped him there. ‘Darling, not now. Really. Come on, let’s go for that swim. Otherwise the Heatherington will rip open the door and expose us to the world!’

  ‘She would, yes, you’re right – she would do that!’ He pushed down his shorts and grabbed his trunks and began hopping about. ‘She acts as if I’m some sort of minion . . . which I guess I am.’

  ‘You said guess. Are you American too?’

  ‘No. Are you?’

  ‘No, idiot.’ The cord was tightly around them. They kissed, but fondly this time, not understanding what the other was saying yet knowing it was about love.

  Mrs Heatherington was probably not the ancient femme fatale Connie had thought. She kept smiling at them and telling them they looked like water nymphs. William fetched a tray of tea and a packet of chocolate Wagon Wheels already gooey in the sun. Connie dried her hands carefully and looked through the folder of old photographs showing Mrs Heatherington when she was Greta Gainsborough, in a variety of cloche hats or Suzanne Lenglen headbands. She had been truly beautiful.

  ‘I keep this one separately.’ Mrs Heatherington delved into a small leather wallet and extracted a tiny photograph. ‘It’s just a snap. Not properly posed or anything. We were married in a register office . . . It was wartime. Actually I must have been nearly forty then.’ She laughed, embarrassed by her own honesty. ‘He was fun, but I didn’t really know him. Not properly. I simply did not want to die an old maid and death seemed fairly likely then.’

  Connie looked at the blurred image. There was Greta Gainsborough in a crepe dress – no colour, of course – big puffed sleeves and some sort of smocking around the high waist, gloves up to the elbow, a pearl cap holding down the huge cascade of curls that tumbled to her shoulders, unidentifiable flowers, high-heeled shoes with – yes – peep-toes. The man next to her was in a loose-fitting suit and a homburg; he might have had very dark Brylcreemed hair and brown eyes. He was smiling widely and showing good teeth; yes, his eyes were brown – dark brown; big ears and nose. He seemed to be full of optimism and good humour. And Connie knew that her mother would describe him as a ‘wide boy’.

  She felt her own eyes fill with sentimental tears. It was twenty years ago: she had been nearly three years old, her mother still had a husband and she still had a father . . . William had been sixteen, enjoying the ATC, wanting the war to go on until he was old enough to help defeat the Nazis, not even knowing that Arnhem was a place and he would see it quite soon. It was a different world, a different time, a different life. Where had it gone?

  They swam again. Connie introduced ‘Philip’ Pardoe and asked him to join them, but there were still people on the little beach who might want something from the shop and he declined, smiling.

  Mrs Heatherington said, ‘You should be an actor. Film, I think. You have a look of one of the . . . what is the name, William? A theatrical family. One of the children looks exactly like this beautiful boy. It’s on the tip of my tongue. I could perhaps arrange an audition . . .’ But Philip had gone, someone wanted an ice cream.

  After the swim they lay on towels and dried off in the late afternoon sun before trekking back to Blue Seas.

  The young family were staying there for the rest of the week. Mrs Pentwyn did not normally accommodate children but their landlady in a house further down the sandy road had been taken into hospital with appendicitis and Mrs Pentwyn had come to the rescue.

  ‘I drew the line at her cats,’ she confided to William. ‘But one of the little girls has offered to keep an eye on them. So what could I say? I do apologize, children are so – so unpredictable. I certainly cannot pander to their odd menu. They will have braised steak and the rest of the cabinet pudding whether they like it or not.’

  ‘I’m sure they will thoroughly enjoy it, Mrs Pentwyn,’ William said firmly, already halfway up the stairs.

  Connie said happily, ‘I can vouch for the pudding, as you know. And the little girls are so sweet, they’ve been on the beach all day collecting shells. Please don’t worry. We’ll make sure they’re all right.’

  Mrs Pentwyn looked at Connie almost fondly. ‘Dear girl,’ she murmured as she made for the kitchen again.

  Mrs Heatherington rolled her eyes. ‘I’d better stay on your table. We can protect each other.’

  There were plenty of vegetables with the steak, which was just as well as the Membury family were vegetarian and Mrs Pentwyn stuck to her guns and offered no alternatives. It was Connie who went to the sideboard and carried the cheese to their table. ‘How about grating some over those lovely carrots?’ she said to Rosalie and Lily. ‘I’ll go and find a grater and perhaps some more butter.’

  She returned with a grater. She had been left in little doubt that she had lost her brief spurt of popularity with Mrs Pentwyn, who said, ‘The parents are no better than fussy children themselves – should be made to sit there until they’ve eaten properly.’ She had raised her voice slightly so that it could be heard in the dining room.

  Connie hurried through and grated some cheese on to a side plate, shaking her head slightly as if the words had been said jokingly.

  Mrs Membury refused to be apologetic. ‘Eating animals is no less than cannibalism,’ she announced to the two little girls, who were sniffing the air curiously as William served steak on the next table.

  Mr Membury murmured, ‘Hardly, darling.’
/>   Connie willed her queasiness to go away as she took her seat and spooned some new potatoes next to the pool of gravy on her plate. One of the girls at the office dabbled in vegetarianism so she had heard this kind of thing before and thought about it rather too much.

  William smiled at her and tried to change the conversation.

  ‘Did you really think the boy in charge of the cove might become an actor?’

  Mrs Heatherington paused, steak on fork, considering. ‘I don’t know, of course. But he is certainly what my generation called a matinee idol.’

  William turned smilingly to Connie. ‘What do you think, darling? You know him fairly well, I gather.’

  She looked at him, surprised. ‘We chatted this morning. I don’t know him. But he would like to be a carpenter, I think. Or even a sculptor. He enjoys making things. Using his hands.’

  ‘How old would you say he is?’

  Mrs Heatherington and Connie spoke together. ‘Sixteen.’ They laughed. Connie said, ‘He told me he was born in 1944, so I’m not guessing.’

  ‘I was.’ Mrs Heatherington nodded. ‘He’ll lose that beauty in another year.’

  Connie ate her potatoes, avoiding the steak. She felt a rush of sadness that the boy she had named after a character in a book was suddenly made ephemeral. The little girls at the next table finished their makeshift meal. Mrs Pentwyn brought in the remains of the cabinet pudding.

  ‘Is there animal fat in the cake?’ Mrs Membury eyed the plate suspiciously. Mrs Pentwyn said, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea. And it’s not cake. It’s cabinet pudding!’ She swept out.

  When she returned with trifle and ice cream for the other table, Lily and Rosalie were eating their pudding with relish and Mr Membury was placating his wife. ‘It will be margarine, darling. Isn’t that made from vegetable oils?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  Connie remembered the pudding as being very solid and the Memburys obviously were half starved. They left not a crumb. Surreptitiously she passed over a dish of trifle as Mrs Pentwyn brought in the coffee. The three of them thought it was rather a joke but neither the Memburys nor Mrs Pentwyn found it funny.