Rosie Hogarth

by Alexander Baron

  Tea, at the flat, was a miserable affair. Gran sat crouched in her armchair in a sullen, defiant silence. Tom and Nancy were too busy, too attentive, too cheerful in their commonplace talk, to succeed in anything but underlining the failure of the expedition. Joyce maintained that painful pretence of deafness and blindness common to all who find themselves the involuntary witnesses of other people’s family quarrels. Jack was still sunk in mystification. Once, catching Nancy alone for a moment, he said, “Here, Nance. I don’t catch on. What’s old Gran got her rag out about? All that rigmarole. I mean, I know Rose ain’t what she ought to be, but —”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “Jack, I feel so tired, and I’ve got a headache. Please, dear.” Jack muttered, “Sorry, Nancy,” with the resentful voice of a small boy who has been rebuffed.

  When he rose to leave he felt worn out. He was incapable of coherent thought, and still numbed emotionally.

  As they walked to the bus stop, Joyce, freed from the restraining presence of others, chattered mercilessly. “I can’t see what business it is of the old woman’s the way Rose lives. I can understand her not liking the idea of her son’s daughter carrying on like that, but what all that’s got to do with driving him to his grave I can’t imagine. Rose was hardly four years old when he died, was she? It doesn’t make sense.”

  He mumbled knowingly, “It wasn’t that.”

  “What then?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. When he spoke, it was to answer his own questions as well as hers. “Ah, you know these old folk. They get weak in the head. They get everything muddled up, what happened last week and what happened twenty years ago. That’s all it is. You don’t want to take any notice.”

  His answer seemed to satisfy Joyce more than it satisfied his own doubts. After all, she was not deeply interested. She shot off on a new tack, full of admiration for Rose — for her poise, her speech, her complexion, her clothes. She seemed to have caught in her own cheeks the glow of Rose’s warmth. Under its melting influence she had forgotten to adopt the stern attitude of disapproval she usually displayed to the errant of her sex. She was too flattered and excited to be critical.

  Jack realised that now, only an hour after the encounter, he had not retained a single impression of Rose. Had she changed? He could not remember. What did she look like? There was no picture in his mind. Instead, he felt as if he were recovering from a blow on the head. Joyce’s maddening chatter was the only proof that the whole episode was not merely a freak of his imagination.

  “She asked us to come and see her,” Joyce said.

  “Who did?”

  “Rose, of course.”

  “Did she? When?”

  “Before she went, silly. You remember, you said, maybe.”

  “Did I? I don’t remember.”

  “Are you kidding? What’s come over you? Shall we?”

  “Shall we what?”

  “Jack, you dummy, wake up! Shall we go and see her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  His voice shook. “Because I said so.” He steadied himself. “Here, Joycie, be a pal. I feel bloody tired. I got a headache.”

  Half-sulky, half repentant, she said, “Sorry, Jack.” Silence soon became too much for her, and all the way home she overwhelmed him with admiring talk about Rose.

  Chapter Four

  Six months ago Joyce had dreaded the approach of her twenty-fifth birthday: the end of another year unmarried. Now that her future was settled, she was able to enjoy a birthday as she had done in her childhood and ’teens. The week had been a happy one. On Thursday morning, the fifteenth of September, she had lain in bed with her eyes shut pretending to sleep while footsteps creaked in the room. Alone, she had sat up, feeling not only the old wild, childish thrill as she reached for the parcels, but an added sense of pleasure in the knowledge that she was still capable of feeling the thrill. A pair of bedroom slippers from her father (‘Mum bought them for him,’ she decided), an imitation pearl necklace from her mother, a pair of nylon stockings from her friend Maureen — they had all spent more on her than usual this year, in tribute to her betrothed state — and a handbag from Jack. Jack’s note, ‘To the future Mrs. Agass, with love and kisses,’ had provoked from her a critical grimace, not only because she despised his large and clumsy handwriting, but because she did not like to be reminded of her future surname. There had been kisses all round at breakfast and several birthday cards arriving by the first post; three days later they still decorated the parlour mantelpiece. In the evening Jack had taken her to the Palladium and to supper afterwards. Yesterday afternoon there had been a big family tea, and today — Sunday — Jack was taking her on their long-discussed trip to the country.

  Joyce sat, prim and erect, on a roadside bench, gripping her handbag in her lap with both hands, while Jack spoke with a passer-by. She watched him with the complacent approval of a mother who sees in her child’s behaviour the proof of her own good management. Jack came back to her. “It’s not far now,” he said, “you leave it to me.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said, as they walked away along the unpaved road, “my poor tootsies! Lucky I dressed for a long walk.”

  The Surrey hills, sweeping away into the autumn mist, were crested with clumps of trees; their flanks were girdled with serpentine rows of houses. Here and there pale patches of grassland still showed.

  “I thought Surrey was the country,” Joyce said.

  “It used to be.” Jack sounded perplexed. “Perhaps we should have gone a bit further out. We used to come here a lot.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Oh, you know, all the ’Erbs, on our bikes.”

  “Didn’t you know any better places to bring me?”

  “Well, where is there?”

  Joyce was unable to answer. Where, indeed, was this mysterious place called ‘the country?’ Few people in Lamb Street could have answered. London stretched away, in all directions, a brick maze without discoverable exits. One could walk all day and not come to the end of it. One could ride to the end of any bus line or bump about for hours in a tram and still be surrounded by houses. True, it was possible to go to a railway station and be whisked away to Southend, Margate or Brighton. It was true that fields, cows, woods and streams could be glimpsed on such journeys, behind the billboards and the swooping telegraph wires. It was true that some of one’s friends, the cyclists, the ramblers, the adventurers, seemed to be able to find their way out to it and come home brown and bluebell-laden. But Joyce, for all her quick intelligence and shopgirl’s worldliness, had never explored outside the imprisoning city. Indeed, she only knew her own corner of her own borough, and a square mile or two of the West End. “Never mind,” she said, “it’s nice walking, for a change, and the air is definitely fresher, isn’t it?”

  Jack sniffed loudly and said, “Mmm. Not half. You can tell the difference right away.”

  “Well, let’s find somewhere we can eat our lunch. We don’t want to carry it around all day, do we?”

  “You leave it to me.”

  She was content to stroll at his side. His presence did not intrude into her consciousness. She remembered a couple they had passed a half-hour ago, the girl sagging raptly against the man, the pair of them obviously lost to all but each other. Well, she supposed that was all right for some people. She preferred to ignore the mysterious sadness the sight of them had left in the background of her emotions, and to walk aloofly, reminding herself with a glance of Jack’s presence from time to time but otherwise busy with her own dreams and plans, enjoying the unexciting but still novel surroundings and the mild autumn sunshine.

  “Joyce.” His voice disturbed her thoughts. “About what I was saying in the train. Can’t we hurry it up a bit?”

  “I thought we’d settled that. We’ve had it out half-a-dozen times this last week or two. I don’t know what’s come over you.”

  “Look, it’s like I said. Wh
y wait till December? We could get married in a couple of weeks.”

  “Oh, how can we?” She could not help being curt, going over it all again, “We’ve got to wait for the flat. There’s things to buy. What’s the hurry? Everything’s going all right.”

  “We could still wait for the flat. But we could share a room in your house in the meantime. At least we’d have each other.”

  “We’ve got each other.”

  “Ah, Joycie, you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean all right. You men! Marriage only means one thing to you. You’ve got no time to think about a nice home, and giving people a good impression. Well, it doesn’t to me, and you can jolly well wait and like it, see?”

  “Well, there’s a nice thing to say! Trying to tell me you don’t look forward to — wah, you know!”

  “Perhaps I do and perhaps I don’t. I’m the same as the next woman. Anyway, my dear, you wait till the time comes, and you’ll find out soon enough then.”

  “I don’t know,” Jack groaned. “You want to have kids, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Here —” Jack looked at her in alarm. “You mean to say you don’t know —? Here, it’s me that works the oracle, old girl, not the bloody stork, you know.”

  She laughed and laid her hand on his arm. “I know, dear. And Columbus discovered America in ten-sixty-six. So what?”

  She uttered a triumphant little sound as Jack relapsed into a puzzled silence, and squeezed his arm consolingly. She had long ago discovered that she could always subdue him with a little repartee. She enjoyed seeing him blinking dazedly at her; it made her feel superior, subtle, a possessor of the ancient womanly power; but instinct also prevented her from pushing him too far, and she would always relent and soothe him. “It’s been such a lovely week, Jack. I told Maureen about the seats we had at the Palladium, right in the front. She was green with envy, I could see.”

  “I bet she was. Took a lot of trouble to get them seats. You got to know how to talk to ’em.”

  “I know, dear.”

  He led her into a field. “Here we are, what did I tell you?”

  There were houses behind one side of the field, and another row was being built opposite, the wooden frames gleaming white in the sunlight. Heaps of fresh red bricks were stacked in the field along the hedge.

  “It’s all right if you look that way.” Jack pointed downhill. “Look, you can see right across to them hills. Fields and fields.”

  “It’s lovely,” she said. In any case, she could see little without her glasses. Jack spread his coat and they sat down in the long grass. “It’s all right here, Jack,” she said, “I like it like this. The country’s all right, but I get frightened when there’s too much of it. It makes you so lonely.”

  “I know. It’s the sky that puts the wind up me. Here, I’ll tell you something. You know the time in the war when I was most windy? It wasn’t overseas. It was one evening, Salisbury way. I was walking back to camp on my own. It was getting dark. The road ran along the edge of a valley, and there was hills all round. There I was like a little flea crawling round the edge of a great big bowl. It got all darker and darker. Proper mysterious, I can tell you. The valley filled up with shadows. All the trees went black. And the sky, it was — ooh, it was — well, I tell you, it was too bloody big. No end to it. All mauvy, like. You reckoned you were looking up about a million miles. Then them bloody big black clouds started piling up behind the hills. You couldn’t hear a sound. Not a bloody sound. Do you know, I didn’t half shiver. I felt as if I was the only one left on earth. Whoo, I says, time I got out of this. And I run all the way back to camp. Two mile. All the bloody way. Well, I mean, that shows you what the country’s like, don’ it?”

  They finished their lunch and lay back. Jack put his arm beneath her shoulders. He drew close and kissed her. She returned his kisses lazily, pressing her parted lips softly against the side of his face nearest to her. Once she leaned over him to kiss his mouth and his other cheek. She felt warm, tender and trustful. A moment later she knocked his hand away from her body.

  He put his hands behind his head, fingers linked, and stared up at the sky. His chest heaved in brief, private grunts of laughter. She was assailed with misgivings. Ought she yield to him? She was bemused by the sunshine and by the scent of the hot grass beneath them. Enervating impulses moved about her body. Perhaps she might lose him if she continued to repel him. There was no mistaking his mood for days past; his stifling embraces; his painful grip on her arm; the urgency of his footsteps at her heels; the edge to his voice. It was frightening and flattering. For some seconds she lay in a dreamy sweetness, awaiting him. Fear, a coldness, returned. She remembered all the solemn advice she had heard from her mother and her girl friend. She heard another dark grunt from the man at her side. Oh, what ridiculous animals they were! She asked, “Are you laughing at me?”

  “No.” There was another little quiver of laughter. “Something I remembered.”

  “Secret?”

  A second’s hesitation. “No. It’s something happened with Rosie once. We went to Kew Gardens once. We were laying on the grass like this, and all of a sudden she says, ‘Oh, Jack, if there’s one thing I love it’s a lark.’”

  “Well?”

  “Well —” another reminiscent splutter — “I reckon I got the wrong idea.” He pointed at a bird wheeling above them. “She meant one of them things.”

  A note in his voice had caught her interest. “Did you go there often?”

  “Oh, on and off. She loved it. She was the girl for the country. Knew all about it, she did. I don’t know where she picked it up. Any tree you like, she could tell you right off. Oak tree. Elm tree.” — He was trying to think of another. — “Beech tree. Bloody marvellous. Takes some doing, that. She didn’t half used to get excited down there. Face all —” he was twisting his lips about in the effort to find the words — “well, you know, her eyes all — whoo, you know! She used to stretch herself out in the sun, you’d think some geezer was kissing her, the look on her face.” His voice foundered. “She was a girl all right.”

  She let him recover before she asked, “Jack, you were a bit gone on Rose, weren’t you?”

  “Me?” A prolonged, “N’yah!”

  She pondered. “Jack, how did you feel when you saw her again the other week?”

  “Me?” A stupid laugh. “Can’t say. Never really noticed her, I reckon. Why?”

  “Jack.” She forced herself to speak calmly, in her precise, shopgirl’s voice. “Why are you so keen to get married all of a sudden? Just lately?”

  “Me? Can’t help being sweet on you, can I?” He turned on her and pinned her down by the shoulders. “Oh, Joycie!” He stifled her with kisses. Her body felt leaden and muscleless, inert upon the earth, but her arms clung to him as if they must never let him go.

  “Jack!” Turning her head, she had kept her senses sufficiently to see movement at a distant window. Propriety, which never slumbered in her, rose against passion. “Jack —” she struggled free of him — “there’s people watching us.”

  He squinted angrily at her, took a disbelieving look at the houses and sighed. “Dunno what you trouble to wear glasses for. You can see an excuse a mile off.”

  “Let’s find somewhere else.” She still felt too stifled to talk coherently.

  They rose, sluggish and heavy-eyed, brushed grass from each other and walked away, arms closely round each other’s waists.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon searching for a secluded place. Every time they headed for a clump of trees they were driven off by a glimpse of villa turrets or a gleam of windows. Whenever they hopefully rounded a bend in the road another string of houses faced them on the opposing slopes, like a row of beaters hemming them in. They became hot, dusty and dispirited. Jack cracked stubborn, feeble jokes. Joyce looked up with distaste at his red, sweat-beaded face. They loosened their grip on each ot
her, held sticky hands for a while, then walked apart.

  As the mood guttered out in both of them, Joyce wondered angrily how she had ever succumbed to it. How had that wild idea about Rose ever entered her head? Why had it made her give way, instantaneously, to a wild, jealous panic of surrender? Why! — she reminded herself — Jack had not even noticed what Rose was wearing. He had not even heard what she had said to him or remembered his own offhand reply. He had not said a word about her since the encounter. He had never shown any desire to accept her invitation to see her again, although he was usually enthusiastic about visiting old acquaintances. What a foolish idea! As if her old slow Jack could harbour secret passions! And did his kisses feel like those of a man who has room in his thoughts for another woman? Joyce remembered her mother’s advice, “When a feller loses his head about you, you keep yours, and you’ve got him, my girl, you’ve got him just where you want him.” What a fool she’d almost made of herself! Well, a miss was as good as a mile. She peeped into her mirror and said, “You haven’t half messed me up.” She had to be careful of her looks: her nose left unpowdered in the heat, a smear of lipstick, a wave of her dry bleached hair out of place, and she would look a real sight, Plain Jane again, lonely Joyce Wakerell. “Let’s sit down on this bench and I’ll tidy myself up before we go back to the train.”

  In the train they sat opposite each other, slumped back with their heads leaning against the windows, eyeing each other as if they wanted to find out each other’s thoughts and conceal their own. Joyce did not know whether she had escaped the crisis or merely postponed it. She could see that Jack, equally uncertain, was wondering whether to accept defeat or to make another attempt. She could not even decide what she wanted to happen, for, although her cautious self had been aroused to stand guard over her, another part of her had been awakened for the first time by the hint of more profound satisfactions than she had ever known. She was left mentally indecisive and physically weak.

  They returned to an empty house. They moved about their rooms, washing themselves and changing their clothes, Joyce humming and Jack whistling, each expressing a spirit of vague defiance towards the other. Joyce prepared supper. When they had eaten they went into the parlour. Joyce, her actions as oppressed and helpless as if she were in a trance, drew the curtains and sat by Jack’s side in the gloom.