Appointment with Yesterday
Page 21
Was this a special sort of detachment peculiar to the twice-born, a privileged kind of opting-out? Or was it simply that it is almost impossible for anyone under fifty nowadays to experience guilt in the true, crippling sense in which our grandparents experienced it? Nowadays we are told constantly that we are all riddled with guilt-feelings, and that it is this overdeveloped sense of guilt that is at the root of all our ills: but surely, by now, this is more of a folk-memory than a fact? It was true once, no doubt: but can it possibly be true still? We have been told so often and for so long that no one is ever really to blame for anything: that it is all due to what Mother did, or Father, or Society. And what Mother did is itself the result of what her mother did, and of the pressures of Society in those days … cause behind cause, rolling in out of the infinite, as far as the eye can see or the mind can reach, leaving nowhere any place where guilt can come to rest, can settle and take root….
*
“And of course that Roach woman wasn’t much help!” Julian was saying—and Candida jolted herself out of her reverie to listen—“Apparently the old harridan had been going around telling everyone you weren’t married to Soames at all, that you were ‘No better than you should be’—I think that was her phrase. And of course everyone believed her—why not, in this day and age?”
Why not indeed. In the darkness, Candida was smiling. How ironic that the old woman, in her would-be malice, should have done her victim such an utterly unlooked-for service! Because, of course, this misconception delayed considerably the moment when anybody began seriously to search for Candida. All the while they were assuming that it was merely Gilbert’s mistress who had (so conveniently for all concerned) seen fit to make herself scarce, no one evinced the least interest in her whereabouts. It was the missing brother they were after at that stage, for he was the presumed next-of-kin. It was he who must sign the papers, pay for the funeral, sort out the incredible chaos of Gilbert’s accumulated possessions. And it was only after this brother had been found, and had been ineffectually muddling with Gilbert’s papers for several days, that it came to light that Candida really was Mrs Soames, really had been married to Gilbert. Then, of course, the search for her started in earnest.
*
“… I hate to say it, my dear Candida, but I’ve never in my whole life encountered such an incompetent way of disappearing! First you give yourself some daft phoney name, and then what do you do but straightaway sign a cheque with it! So, of course, the first thing Brother Soames finds on the doormat is this letter from the Bank, asking who the hell is Milly Barnes?
“Mind you, he seems to have been pretty slow in the uptake, too. Apparently he just shoved the letter in among the rest of the papers, and forgot all about it. It took me to point out that it might be an idea to find out who this Milly Barnes was—Not that I hadn’t already guessed, of course—who else would be acting so plumb daft? And anyway, I’d already heard from Felicity What’s-her-name that somebody’d seen you two or three weeks earlier hanging around Victoria Station, looking as if you’d committed a murder, or something. So, putting two-and-two together….”
Of course. It had been a daft thing to do. By hanging around a main line station all through the rush hour you are exposing yourself to just about as high a statistical chance of being recognised as it would be possible to achieve if you were specially trying. And as for Mrs Mumford’s cheque—that had been idiotic, too, but how else could she have got a roof over her head that night?
After that, it had all been easy for Julian. Victoria … Seacliffe … Leinster Terrace. Candida could visualise the impatient scorn with which Julian would have brushed aside Jacko’s implausible lies … the effortless charm by which he would have manoeuvred the tight-lipped Mrs Mumford into telling him everything she knew, including the fact that her newest lodger worked for a Mrs Graham—had, in fact, offered this lady’s name as a reference, only Mrs Mumford had never taken it up, on account of her low opinion of references in general (how courteously, in the interests of his ulterior motive, would Julian have listened to these opinions, betraying neither boredom nor impatience, charming to the last). And then the phone calls to Mrs Graham, and finally a visit to her in person, and the extracting from her of the information that her Daily Help worked also for a Mrs Day.
From Mrs Graham? Information? But Mrs Graham had never bothered to learn so much as her name!
Not her name, no. But her other jobs, yes. Because this was something that affected her, Mrs Graham. The fear of piracy by her dearest friends had never been far from Mrs Graham’s mind since that first morning, when Mrs Day had rung up with that treacherous offer of five pence an hour more.
So, on from Mrs Graham’s to Mrs Day’s … and Candida knew the rest.
Or most of it. Why, though, had he referred to himself as her husband, in talking to the caretaker?
She felt Julian give a tiny start.
What a quibble, he protested! Christ, after nearly twenty years of marriage, it was a slip anyone might make!
The moon had set now; and though the filmy rim of the water could no longer be seen, a soft gobbling sound in the shallow water at their feet warned that the tide had begun to turn. In the starlight, Candida could just make out the sulky hunch of Julian’s shoulders, and knew that he was discomfited, and in a moment would think up something to blame her for.
“You never answered my letter,” he said, aggrievedly; and for a moment Candida stared at him, in total bewilderment.
“What letter …?” she was beginning—and then, suddenly, she knew.
Answer it! That letter which she had torn into a thousand pieces … the letter which had goaded her through the nights and days, had driven her onward like one possessed, into folly, wickedness, and crime … Answer it!
“Oh, I was going to,” she replied lightly, her eyes on the hurrying swirls of the awakening water, just visible in the starlight. “I was going to, but you see I was waiting for the mustard and cress to come up first. I wanted to see if it spelt R.A.T.”
He laughed; and she felt a tremor of surprise go through him. Suddenly she realised that in the old days she had never cheeked him like this in answer to his bullying. This was something new. Something that Milly had bequeathed.
“… I suppose it was then that I got my first inkling of how impossibly touchy and possessive Cora could be,” Julian was saying. “You see, the crazy thing was she’d more or less written the damn letter for me—we were both a bit drunk at the time, and I remember how we laughed when she suggested the bit about the aunt! But no sooner had I posted it than she turned on me like a mad thing! Storming at me that I didn’t love her, that secretly I still loved you, or I could never have sent you a letter so pointlessly, so deliberately cruel! She accused me of trying to sting you into some kind of reaction, by any flamboyant, childish means I could devise, and declared that this proved I still cared! And by God, Candida, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and I realise she was right! I did still care! I still do! Candida, when my divorce comes through, will you marry me?”
*
The cheek of it! The unutterable, brazen impertinence! Now that Cora had thrown him over: now that he was no longer quite the brilliant success he had once been—now, Candida was good enough for him again!
For this was how it must be with him: she could see it clearly now. That Boston research job must have been a step down, not a step up … perhaps he had overestimated the permissiveness of the permissive society, particularly where it impinges on the medical profession: perhaps he had found, to his dismay, that the betrayal of an innocent wife does still cause raised eyebrows in some quarters, even nowadays.
Whatever it was, his conceit must have taken a beating, and so now here he was, with ego bruised and bleeding, limping back to Candida. And without so much as a word of apology or remorse!
How often had she dreamed of this very scene, during the long nights in the empty Kensington flat, and during the lonely, drifting days! Julia
n magically back again … pleading with her to forgive him … begging her to marry him all over again … to give him one more chance!
There had been all sorts of endings. Sometimes, after a wonderful scene of remorse and forgiveness, she had fallen into his arms. Sometimes, proud and aloof, she had spurned him, watching, with icy scorn, as his haughty features crumpled….
*
Out in the dark, a small wind had risen with the turn of the tide. Candida could hear the tiny waves lapping restlessly at the foot of the breakwater, limbering up for their journey up the dark sand. Against the starry blackness, she could see Julian’s dark bulk, but not his face. After twenty years, she did not need to see his face: from the set of his shoulders, from the tilt of his half-seen jaw, she knew exactly the expression of self-satisfied expectancy he was wearing; the smug look of a man who has no doubt of victory.
*
Julian, my boy, you’ve got another think coming. This isn’t the Candida that you remember, all meek and compliant. This Candida has Milly in her, a woman of whom you know nothing!
*
“Will you marry me?” he repeated, still with that cocksure confidence in his voice and bearing.
*
The conceit of the man! The insufferable, unbelievable smugness! The monstrous, insupportable arrogance!
*
“Yes,” she said.
*
Her friends, naturally, were less than whole-hearted in their congratulations. “Some people never learn!” they confided to one another wryly, with a shake of the head.
But Candida had learnt, of course. The only thing was that, as is so commonly the case, the lesson she had learned from her experiences was quite other than the one which seemed so obvious to the onlookers.
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2014
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
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All rights reserved
© Celia Fremlin, 1975
Biographical Sketch © Chris Simmons, 2014
The right of Celia Fremlin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–31265–8