Christmas was only eight days away and Ruth had still heard nothing from Harry. She and her uncle had settled into a kind of routine. Tea they dispensed with. Instead, an hour or so before Christopher came home, Ruth lit the fire in what had been her grandfather’s study and drew the heavy curtains against the dark outside. The curtains were paler at their inside edges, where the accumulation of many summers had bleached the material and roughened it. Once her uncle came in, they installed themselves in the warm study with a bottle of sherry, the paper folded at the crossword. Christopher was teaching her how to decipher the clues.
After the crossword was done and they had had their sherry, they went together into the kitchen. Ruth had never cooked with another person before. She’d hardly even seen a man in a kitchen, except her stepfather, Digby, who liked to go and investigate what was being prepared, lifting saucepan lids and aligning his beaklike nose above the pan. Digby liked puddings even though – or perhaps because – he was so thin. At their house there was often a treacle sponge or a fruit pie and sometimes queen of puddings, his favourite. At the very least there would be rice pudding and stewed fruit of some kind and always cream, served in the dented silver jug which had come down from Digby’s grandmother. But Digby didn’t actually cook, he just took an interest. Harry certainly never touched anything in the kitchen. It occurred to Ruth with a pang that he wouldn’t even know where things were kept.
Christopher was entirely different. It was not only the novelty of the fact that he cooked at all, he also cooked novel dishes, things with abundant sauces made from cream and dried herbs and the odd dash of brandy or wine. He went once a month by train to Oxford, where he lunched at his old college with a university friend who had become a don, before visiting the covered market to buy provisions more arcane than Malvern could offer. At home he bought olive oil at the chemist’s by the post office. He squeezed tomato purée into stews and sauces. He even used garlic. Ruth wondered how a provincial schoolmaster should have come across such exotic dishes. She supposed it was in some way connected with the two evenings a week, Mondays and Thursdays, when he changed out of his work clothes at about six o’clock, bathed, then set off in his shark-blue Standard Companion, whistling throughout. He never returned until the small hours, or sometimes only after dawn. Ruth would hear him whistling quietly in the kitchen – often it would be Mozart’s horn concertos at this hour, tunes she never heard from him at any other time – as he made himself a cup of tea, before coming upstairs to get into his teaching clothes.
On these evenings, Ruth cooked herself an egg or made a jam sandwich, if she remembered, food she ate standing up at the draining board, her reflection in the dark glass of the curtainless kitchen window looking back at her like a ghost. When Christopher was at home they concocted supper together and ate at the breakfast-room table, with only a fork. She thought how the Longdens would disapprove if they could see her sitting at such a bare table, without side plates or place mats or even knives. While they ate, they talked about what they were eating. This too was new for Ruth: with Harry she had asked about his day then told him about hers, detailing amusing little things that the girls had done. With her uncle she now discussed how a dish might be improved upon, or better accompanied. The two of them generally left the dirty things stacked for the charwoman to do in the morning, then repaired to the study, revived the fire and sat with their drinks, playing cards or listening to a talk, a play or concert on the Third Programme. Ruth almost felt happy then. But when Christopher announced, by standing up and stretching, that he was going to bed, Ruth was invariably jolted from her contentment. Once he had gone upstairs, she had no buffer against the shame and the loneliness; no buffer except drink. The whisky decanter sat squat on the drinks tray, implac- able in its cut glass, affecting grandeur with its silver name necklace. Next to it was a bottle of Dubonnet, untouched for years, then a decanter of brandy and another of port.
When Ruth poured the honey-coloured liquid – with its faint scent of warm tarmac – into her glass, she held the silver name-plate against the decanter so that it would not clink. She replaced the stopper with a careful sliding action so that it, too, would make no sound. She did not know why she continued to muffle the decanter like this. Christopher was too kind and too polite ever to question her drinking, or any other personal matter. It was unlikely anyway that he would have been able to hear the sound from another storey, with his bedroom door closed. It occurred to Ruth that she was concealing the sound from herself. If she allowed the silver tag to chime against the cut glass; if the roughened glass end of the stopper grazed the smooth throat of the decanter as it was replaced; if the whole clunked against the silver-plated tray heavily as she set it down: these sounds weren’t quite polite, were not quite sober. Whereas the more silently she could pour herself the whisky, the more gracious and benign she felt, almost as if she were an estimable lady from another age, pouring a drink for an honoured guest.
While she drank she sat with a book on her knee, but she did not read. It was more of a prop than a pastime. Instead she tended to stare at the fire, or what was left of it, for she seldom added new coal to the grate once she was alone. The thing was not to think about the children. That was one of the things the whisky was for, to push away thoughts of the girls. They would be asleep now, that was something. She did not have to wonder what they were doing, who was looking after them, as she did constantly during the daylight hours. She had only to try not to keep picturing them sleeping, innocent in their brushed-cotton sheets, their skin as clean and smooth as soap.
Harry had not answered her letter. That meant he could not forgive her, did not want her to come home. These truths were too terrible to face by day. Late at night, however, with a warm shield of whisky between feeling and fact, she knew that she would not be going back. Then the longing for home lurched over her, like water spilling from too heavy a bucket. Christmas. To awake on Christmas morning in a house a hundred miles – more – away from the children. What if Isobel cried, what if she asked for her mother? Worse, what if she was brave and did not? Ruth made her way untidily across the room to the drinks tray once again. Some thoughts were too dreadful to be anaesthetised with whisky. Tomorrow, she decided, tomorrow she would telephone. She must not put off the call any longer.
Her own voice sounded brittle to Ruth, harshened by the tiled floor where the small telephone table stood, by the foot of the stairs. Even as Harry spoke she was aware of not taking in what he was saying. Only a general impression remained, a sense of relief but no actual words, as after a visit to a doctor. He seemed to be saying yes, that she could come and see the children on Saturday.
On Friday night she limited herself to just one drink after dinner, so that she would feel no ill effects the following morning. She took an early train, then the underground, then walked. The just-the-same-ness of the streets leading to her own seemed peculiar, like the false familiarity of a place in a dream. The holly and privet hedges were as they had been, some trimmed low so that neat front rooms could be glanced into from the street, others high or unkempt, imbuing the houses behind with a touch of mystery. The paint was fresh on some window frames and flaking gently on others, the wood silvery beneath, exactly as it had been when she was here last. This is what it must have been like for people coming home from the war, she thought. They must have imagined, as she had, that the sight of home would be comforting, enveloping, when the reality was only blankness. The place where your heart was, where all that you thought of and longed for resided, it was just an ordinary house in an ordinary street, like all the other houses.
This impression was heightened as she opened the low gate to her own house and walked up the path. The house did not care whether she stayed or went. It was entirely indifferent. Perhaps that was the case also for the people within. She hesitated before knocking. There were footsteps, a woman’s; the shape of a person coming across the hall, their outline and features smudged by the coloured bumpy glass set into the
door. Then the door opened and there was Verity. Ruth felt herself colour with disappointment. ‘You’re early,’ said Verity.
‘Yes. I caught the earlier train. I hope that’s all right.’
‘Come in.’ Verity turned and called into the depths of the house, ‘Isobel! Look who’s come to see you!’
Then there was scampering and there was Isobel.
‘Mummy! We went to Derry and Toms’ and Father Christmas was there! He lands his sleigh on the roof to come and see the children! I told him I had a doll called Florence and he asked if she—’
‘Isobel, let your mother take her coat off,’ said Verity. She turned to Ruth, who was waiting awkwardly. ‘Well, don’t let’s stand here in the hall all day. Come in and sit down. I’ll go and see about a tray of coffee for us.’
Isobel took her mother’s hand and led her into the sitting room.
‘Where’s Emily?’ Ruth asked.
‘My sister’s a baby,’ said Isobel importantly, as if she were telling this to someone who knew nothing of the family. ‘Nanny Harris has taken her out in her pram. She takes her out in her pram every morning after breakfast.’
‘But who’s Nanny Harris, darling?’
‘She’s the nanny. Nanny Harris. Her name is Ellen but we don’t call her Ellen. We call her Nanny Harris.’
‘And where’s Daddy?’
‘Daddy’s gone.’
Ruth felt her mouth fill with panic. ‘Gone where? Where’s he gone?’
‘Just out. He’s coming back later. Aunt Verity told him to.’
‘Oh. Did she tell him to go out or tell him to come back?’
Verity came into the room with a plate of biscuits before the child could answer. ‘Harry’s got a new woman, Mary, who comes in at weekends to help. She cooks the lunch. Usually leaves him something he can heat up later for supper. He comes to Richmond for lunch on Sundays of course, so it’s only really for Saturdays. Under-seasons everything fearfully, but worse things happen at sea. She’s going to bring coffee through.’
Ruth did not answer. She stared at Isobel, hungry for the feel of her child, the weight of her.
‘Tell me about Father Christmas. Was he fat?’
‘Very fat.’ Isobel giggled.
‘And did he have a beard?’
‘Of course he did! He’s Father Christmas. Silly.’
A woman appeared with a tray. She was younger than Ruth had imagined, with dyed hair the coppery golden colour of mint humbugs. She looked at Ruth with undisguised curiosity. Isobel leant against her mother’s knees, chattering.
At length she heard voices at the back door, the nanny and Mary, the woman with the dyed hair; strangers who now occupied her house. It occurred to her that it took three women to approximate to what she, one woman, had been.
‘Ah, there’s Nanny,’ said Verity. ‘I’ll go and see whether the baby’s awake.’
Ruth wanted to get up and run towards Emily, to push these women aside, but she seemed to have lost the power of movement or even of independent thought. She merely did as Verity said.
‘My sister can’t talk,’ whispered Isobel. ‘She won’t be able to talk ’til she’s bigger.’
‘You will be nice to her, won’t you, though?’ said Ruth, urgently.
Isobel looked at her mother. ‘That’s what Daddy says! I am nice to her, all the time. I promised Daddy I would be,’ she said.
Verity brought Emily into the room, holding her away from her body slightly, as if the infant were a bundle of damp washing. The baby’s cheeks were red from sleep and her hair stood up from her head like a young hedgehog. As soon as she saw Ruth her mouth opened wide, but there was a silence before she began to wail, a pause which seemed to go on for a long time. Almost before the sound of her crying had formed, during the interminable intake of breath required to generate the wail, Ruth stood up and took her. She clasped the baby’s tight little body against her chest and patted her back gently. Ruth was not going to cry in front of Verity. She was not.
‘It’s all right,’ she said quietly, into her daughter’s hair. ‘It’s all right.’
Chapter 7
There was only one bicycle, so they had to take it in turns. Emily was taller than her sister, despite being younger. When it was Isobel’s turn she had to stretch her leg and tilt the bike sideways for her foot to reach the ground, making her always a little nervous of falling off, whereas it was just the right height for her sister. Going up towards the town was too steep. You couldn’t pedal up the hill but had to wheel the bicycle beside you, and on the way down you went too fast, the brake whining in complaint all the way. But going along St Andrew’s Road to the common was just right, not too far if you were the one walking and far enough to get the wind in your hair if it was your go on the bike. Halfway along, the road rose and then fell, in a perfect undulation: you didn’t have to pedal for nearly fifty yards after you’d come over the gentle summit. When it was her turn, Emily liked to freewheel with her legs stretched out in front of her, while Isobel preferred gently to back-pedal, the chain clicking quietly, like the watch she’d had for her last birthday.
On summer days the long grass on the common waved like the sea. A regatta of small bright clouds sailed across the tall sky. Then the hills resembled dark cliffs and the white-painted bungalows along the western edge of the common were like seaside houses, their ample verandas looking out across the ocean of rippling grass. The girls left the bike on its side at the edge of the common and then ran about until they were too puffed to run any more. Emily liked to pretend she was an aero-plane or a train, but Isobel secretly imagined herself as a fairy or, if that seemed too impossible, a ballerina. She imagined that one day a tall man with a sad, distinguished face would walk across the grass and tell her that she was exactly the girl he had been looking for to star in the ballet he was putting on in London, at Covent Garden. He would have searched the whole land for years on end, and his sad look was because he had thought he would never find the right girl. He would have a droopy moustache probably. Later, after she had become a prima ballerina, the man might marry Mummy, Isobel wasn’t quite sure about that part. She had heard that great dancers, at their curtain calls, had flowers thrown at their feet by grateful audiences. The prima ballerina had to curtsy again and again, scooping carnations and lilies and long-stemmed roses into her pale, graceful arms. The thought seemed almost too exciting to bear.
After running, the girls would lie side by side on their backs, looking up at the sky until the blue air seemed to form revolving particles which danced before their eyes. Sitting up, Isobel would sniff her knees. The sun made her skin smell different from usual, like toasted teacake: she liked it. Emily sucked her thumb and, with her free hand, twiddled the ends of her hair.
‘Bell, if you could have anything in the world, what would it be?’ she asked, her voice muffled by the thumb which she had only half removed.
Isobel had been dreaming of herself encased in layers and layers of tulle, her toes bleeding a little – heroically – into the shell-pink satin of her ballet shoes, but she did not like to share such reveries, especially as her sister knew she wasn’t actually very good at ballet. At her weekly lesson she couldn’t stop herself from thumping undaintily and she was always forgetting to point her toes.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘What would you?’
‘To go on an island for an adventure, I think,’ said Emily.
‘What kind of adventure?’ asked Isobel.
‘An animal adventure. With bears and crocodiles.’
‘Oh.’ Isobel was not very interested in animals.
Emily resumed her thumb-sucking in silence.
It always took a day or two to get used to being in Malvern. Isobel didn’t like the food. At home Mary usually made them boiled eggs with fingers of toast for tea, but here there were baked eggs cooked with cream. It was hard to tell which bit was the cream and which the egg, because it all formed a sort of horrible gloop. Most of the food had a sour, on
iony taste. The grown-ups talked about what they were going to have to eat, whereas with Daddy food just appeared; it wasn’t a thing you really thought about much. At home there were always puddings, but Mummy and Uncle Christopher preferred savoury things, so here they only had fruit or smelly cheese for afters. They didn’t even have a biscuit barrel for tea times. At home the girls loved the smell, like a new Elastoplast, when the biscuit tin was opened after they’d had bread with Marmite or a paste sandwich. Here Christopher sometimes gave them two shillings each, for ices. Isobel always got a strawberry Mivvi, but Emily preferred a Zoom, even though it never lasted as long and her sister would still be taking tiny complacent bites out of her Mivvi long after Emily had only the pink-stained, banana-tasting stick left, to suck the last traces of flavour from.
The food had got a bit better now that Ilse lived at the house. At weekends, when she wasn’t working, she made biscuity things and puddings. She produced tiny crescents of shortbread sprinkled with caster sugar, and damp heavy cakes made with apples and raisins and cinnamon. Nobody had said anything, but Ilse was Uncle Christopher’s girlfriend. The girls had guessed. That was why she lived in his house. But because they were not married, she didn’t sleep in his bedroom. She had her own room, which had been the spare room. When Emily and Isobel came to stay she slept in the other bed in Mummy’s room, so the girls could have her room. The girls didn’t understand why the biggest bedroom in the house, the one at the front that had belonged to Mummy’s grandparents, was left empty. Uncle Christopher hadn’t even tidied his parents’ things away, although they had been dead for years and years. His mother’s brushes were still on her dressing table in the window and her clothes – including her fur coat – still hung in the wardrobe. Sometimes Isobel and Emily crept into the room and opened the cupboard and held the camphor-smelling fur against their cheeks. The coat felt cold and slippery, almost slimy, not at all like the fur of a living thing.
My Former Heart Page 9
