by Helen Harris
‘The scampi is good too,’ said Alison. ‘Well-chosen. I like this place.’
The hotel restaurant had always been busy at Sunday lunchtimes. More often than not, they couldn’t get the corner table they liked best. In the corner, you had the view and you had your privacy. The sun streamed in the bay window. Her hand, creamily clear of liver spots, lay close to his on the cloth. In the background, there was chit-chat and there was music, not Johnny Icebreaker’s now but the sweet strains of the Palm Court. Beyond the beach shone the sea, lighter and darker blue in patches like a school map. From this angle, the pier strode out proudly into the middle of it, all set to rule the waves.
‘So are you going to tell me,’ asked Alison enviously, ‘why you look as though you’re in seventh heaven?’
Alicia took a hold on herself. She said to Alison, ‘You can’t know what it means to me, dear, to have come back here, to be sitting in this hotel, in this dining-room, having Sunday lunch.’
And Alison, putting down her knife and fork, asked wistfully, ‘Does it have special memories for you, then?’
Looking out to sea, where a small ship was obligingly suspended, Alicia answered, ‘Oh my dear, so very special.’
It seemed quite natural today to have an ice for afters, although Leonard always teased her about her fondness for ices and asked her if they were all to quench that famous inner fire?
Alison only had a coffee. She seemed to have lost her appetite, Alicia noticed. And Alicia, who could have sworn before coming into the hotel that she couldn’t swallow a morsel, found the ice slipping down and she didn’t care if she would pay for it afterwards.
‘Well, go on,’ said Alison. ‘Tell me when you last came to this hotel. Why is it so special? You know I’d love to hear.’
For a minute, Alicia feared that the terrible struggle within her might spill overboard. Locked in a combat to the death, the two figures whirled and tottered, as they had whirled and tottered before her long ago; the tall upright tyrant who was her husband and the dark handsome bounder who wanted to step into his shoes. An almost insuperable desire to choose the bounder took hold of her. It ran through her veins with the lethal sweetness of her last drop of strawberry ice-cream. Why fight the good fight all over again? Whichever choice you made, you were left with the same bitter after-taste in the end. Only in the nick of time, she pulled herself together. She clasped her hands so that the sunlight played on her gold band and she declared, ‘This was our honeymoon hotel.’
The Parade was filling up once again with strolling crowds as they walked from the restaurant arm-in-arm to Regency Villa. The crowds eddied disagreeably around them as they stood still on the opposite pavement and took a look. Alicia felt a shiver run down her spine. In twenty years, it had hardly changed; there were still net curtains at the windows, sucked out to flutter in the slightest breeze, and still, if she wasn’t mistaken, the same metal awnings over them which hid their expressions like eyelids. The long first-floor windows stood open and Alicia wouldn’t have been surprised to see her own head pop out to take the air.
She must have leant especially heavily on Alison’s arm, because Alison asked her, ‘Are you all right? Do you want to sit down?’
She didn’t want to sit down, but she didn’t want to stay standing there either. Through the open windows, she thought she could hear conversations, voices. She knew whose striped swimming trunks those were, hung out to dry over the second-floor sill. She had a nasty feeling that the front of the boarding-house, which had been a flimsy building at the best of times, would any minute swing open like a dolls’ house unhooked by a child’s careless hand, and reveal its inhabitants in their shame.
‘Come away,’ she said to Alison, as though it were an indecent spectacle. ‘I’ve seen my fill.’
The afternoon sun shone full in their faces as they walked back towards the bandstand. Ahead of them, the sweep of the big hotels shimmered like a display of iced cakes: white decorated with gold, white decorated with blue, Fuller’s cakes, with names she used to recite to herself like poetry, Burlington, Claremont, Bellevue.
They paid for two deck-chairs by the bandstand and sat and Alicia snoozed. In and out of her snooze came the righteous music of the band and the feet of the man in the deck-chair next to her, long and familiar feet in lozenge-patterned socks and sandals which interfered with the view. In and out went a figure seen prancing on the beach far away in the sunshine, a dark, sun-tanned figure who flung himself headlong into the waves. In and out, as time passed, came the thought that they should have tea at the Lilac Tea Rooms.
‘Your face above a petit four.’ Who said that? Mockingly but tenderly, tenderly but mockingly: ‘Your face above a petit four. Did you know that sugar flower is the very same colour as your eyes?’ Who reached across with his cake fork, in public, in the middle of the Tea Rooms, and speared a piece of gateau off her plate?
‘Are you awake?’ said Alison. ‘Did you know you were smiling in your sleep?’
She seemed to have perked up somewhat now, Alison. As they headed slowly for the Tea Rooms, Alicia stiff from having sat too long in her bottomless deck-chair, Alison asked her mischievously, ‘Did you have sweet dreams?’
Alicia giggled girlishly.
Alison insisted, ‘About Leonard?’
Alicia looked round at her sharply. ‘Who else?’ she exclaimed defensively.
The Tea Rooms had definitely gone downhill. In fact, when she saw them, Alicia wondered if it was right to go inside. They looked a real day-trippery place these days. But Alison was eagerly peering in and pushing the door and saying to her, ‘Oh yes, look at the cakes. You’ll have to tell me all about what happened here too.’
‘I’m not sure I should,’ said Alicia when they were seated, toying with the short sticky menu.
‘Oh, go on,’ said Alison. ‘Be a devil.’
The waitress brought them a choice of cakes on a mauve plate.
‘They used to do a lovely gateau here,’ Alicia said dubiously. She eyed the cakes with misgiving.
‘Have the one with the cherry,’ said Alison. ‘That looks like a gateau, doesn’t it?’
But Alicia felt she was sailing too close to the wind here. Take that gateau on to her plate and who knew what might happen? Quickly, before she gave in, she punished herself by taking the smallest shrivelled scone.
Alison shook her head. Then, naughtily, she giggled. ‘Well, if you won’t,’ she said, ‘I will!’
‘You know what?’ she announced, picking the glacé cherry off her gateau. ‘I think today’s been a real old-fashioned happy ending, don’t you? We finally made it, we’ve been so lucky with the weather and everything’s turned out just as we hoped. All’s well that ends well.’ She twirled the little cherry on her cake fork. ‘Guess what?’
Alicia didn’t feel at all well. She had walked too far, eaten too much lunch, slept in the sun and her head was spinning. The Lilac Tea Rooms were filling with a lilac fog.
‘What, dear?’ she murmured.
‘It’s to do with Rob,’ Alison said eagerly. ‘Go on.’
Alicia peered at her through the fog. Whatever was she on about? She shook her head helplessly, but the fog didn’t lift.
‘OK, I’ll tell you,’ said Alison. ‘I bet you’ve guessed, though. I’ve made up my mind at last, I’m going to leave him.’
Alison’s voice came and went through the fog. Her face came and went too. At all the little crowded tables, other voices were yattering and yapping too and other faces, some of them slyly familiar, were coming and going like mad. The tea-urns hissed. The big fat waitresses bustled to and fro, clattering cups and saucers. It was unbearably hot. This is what hell would be like.
‘Gosh, are you all right?’ asked Alison.
They helped Alicia to a seat nearer the air. The manageress brought her a glass of water. After a minute or two, she started to come to again. She had always had a good line in faints.
Alison held her hand. ‘Are you all right?
Are you all right?’ she repeated. ‘Gosh, you did give me a fright!’
Nobly, Alicia held her head high. ‘Between you and me, dear, today’s been a bit of a trial,’ she said bravely.
There could be no question of walking all the way back to the station. Alison asked the manageress to telephone for a taxi. Alicia sat graciously until it came and then made an elegant exit from the Tea Rooms, leaning just the right amount on Alison’s arm.
In the taxi on the way to the station, she pulled herself together and she said cautiously to Alison, ‘Did I hear you right?’
Alison grinned. ‘You did. What have you got to say to that?’
‘Where are you going to go?’ Alicia asked faintly. Gracious, she did hope Alison hadn’t somehow got herself into another entanglement while her back was turned.
Alison hesitated. ‘Well, I wondered,’ she said delicately, ‘if it’s not too much trouble, if I could maybe – just for a week or two – stay with you?’
Sayings, a whole series of sharp worldly-wise sayings, like polished hatpins stabbing a pin-cushion, rained down on Alicia’s poor brain: ‘Got your come-uppance now.’ ‘Bitten off more than you can chew.’ ‘Coming home to roost.’ Through the hail of stinging sayings, she managed to utter, ‘Course you may, dear. I’ll tide you over.’ To make up for the more eloquent words which she couldn’t get out, she patted Alison reassuringly on the wrist.
They held hands as the taxi bowled on to the station forecourt and Alison said, ‘Oh, I do think it’s been a lovely day, don’t you?’
Alicia heaved a gusty sigh. ‘So you fell under the spell too, did you, dear?’ she asked wistfully.
Alison nodded. She gave Alicia’s hand an extra strong squeeze. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.’
Of course, they left before nightfall. They missed the coloured lights along the sea-front and the gentle shushing of the waves in the dark. They missed the lights going on in the hotel bedrooms all along the Parade. But then enough was as good as a feast.
Alison was doubtless sound asleep in the back bedroom, but Alicia couldn’t get off to sleep at all. She lay on the settee and cursed the weather forecast man. That evening, as she and Alison had picked at cold meat and salad at the kitchen table, the floodgates had opened and Alison had poured out all her woes of the last weeks. How sorry and shabby it all sounded; what a villain that good-for-nothing must be! To take Alison’s mind off her troubles, Alicia had turned on the television after supper. The weather forecaster, drat him, had come on straight away, perspiring and beaming, and announced that there was no change in prospect. Rubbing his hands in glee for the sun-lovers, and then bending forward apologetically to those who were suffering, he had admitted that – phew! – tomorrow would be another scorcher.
Alicia fretted on the settee. There was no rest for the wicked. She flinched; those sayings were still bothering her. She turned towards the window, hoping for a refreshing breath of air. ‘Of course you should sleep with the window open,’ Alison had scolded her, ‘Only a tiny bit. But it’s so hot and stuffy in here. It’s not good for you, you know.’ But all Alicia got were the outside noises of the summer night shrilling incessantly in her ears. She tossed wretchedly. She knew she would never drop off.
She wondered if Alison really was sound asleep upstairs. Maybe she couldn’t drop off either? Alicia listened for a clue: a creak, a breath. But above her the house was quiet – another beastly saying caught her unawares – as quiet as the tomb. She propped herself up to listen better. A throbbing pain in her hand took her mind off Alison.
It was the weather. Day followed day of sweltering unbroken heat, unbearable in Shepherd’s Bush. Night followed night of galloping insomnia. It was enough to drive you mad.
In a fury, Alicia tried to sit up and discovered the night was sitting like a fat black cat on her chest and stopping her. She fought for breath. She must have been lying on her arm without realizing it, because it was tingling up and down and when she tried to move it, there was no life in it at all.
She suddenly snivelled. What earthly difference did it make if Alison was asleep upstairs or not? She herself was no better off; she still couldn’t sleep, she was still too hot and her arm was killing her. Outside, two voices were saying good night to each other. They had been saying good night for ever. They were called Ray and Damantha and she hated them. She thought that if she could only sit up, she would call out to them to shoo, to take their dirty billings and cooings away with them and leave her be. With her good arm, she pushed off the one light blanket which lay between her and pneumonia and struggled to sit up. The perspiration poured off her. It was unexpected, considering how very hot she was, but it was then that she noticed her old friends, the seagulls, were back, swooping and squealing around her and drowning out everything else. She lay back and listened to them. They kicked up such a racket, she was almost glad. When they piped down, far away on the edge of the night, she heard an ambulance siren and she thought, with a wave of self-pity, ‘It’s coming for me.’ She tried to pull the blanket up to protect herself, but it was gone. She groped further and further into the dark to find it, but the shooting pains in her shoulder soon put a stop to that.
She was getting cold. She had no business being cold, considering only a moment ago she had been baking, but the perspiration was drying on her and, out of nowhere it seemed, a little breeze had sprung up.
Besides how in a million years could she ever imagine marrying Harry? It would be like walking the gang-plank; stepping blindfold off the good ship Queripel, secure aboard its trusty English oak timbers, into stormy uncharted seas, into the arms of a grinning swarthy pirate. For, when she got down to it, what was at the bottom of her infatuation with Harry Levy? (That was all it was, an infatuation.) It was his wicked dark strength which drew her, his spicy foreign flavour which she knew she could never hope to encounter in a man like Leonard Queripel. And just as well, she chided herself again and again, for Leonard was right; Harry Levy was no gentleman. He would hardly have carried on the way he did, if he had been; flirting with her, pursuing her, right under Leonard’s very nose. By then, she was engaged to be married to Leonard. But did Harry pay a blind bit of notice? Not he! Rules and good behaviour and conventions, he laughed at them, and hearing Harry laugh was like being fed rare steak when you were ravenous. It didn’t make you approve of him, though. You knew he was no good, whatever tricks your insides played on you when he walked into the room. When all else failed, she reminded herself that he was Jewish. That surely settled it. For how could she, Alicia Evans, daughter of Wilfred and Muriel, marry a Jew? She could as much consider marrying Harry when he was blacked up to the eyes and bejewelled in the Indian play they had such a success with. Well, she wasn’t to know, of course; she wasn’t to know what she was letting herself in for by marrying Leonard. She had learned her lesson. If you blindly insisted on sticking to your own kind, with no regard for your finer feelings, you got your come-uppance. But she had grown up the hard way. She saw so brightly what benefits and adornments being Leonard’s wife would bring. She wanted to marry Leonard.
And she did. Although as she stood between the two of them at the altar, all light and lovely in her white, the wedding had been nearly ruined by a vision; she was marrying both of them. Harry’s warm arm, his strong, faintly garlicky smell, even on a day like this when they were all spruced up to the nines, the way those tight, coarse little coils of hair curled on his neck; she couldn’t shut him out of her responses. And when Harry’s arm gave way to Leonard’s firm one and Leonard’s scented smells of talcum powder and coal-tar soap and lavender, she was positively relieved. Marriage would put a stop to this foolishness. Back down the aisle they went, she and Leonard, and the organ played a march of triumph. In the nick of time, she had made it, she was safe aboard. Harry looked after her, left behind on the barren shore, while she and Leonard sailed away into the sunset, in a rosy glow of wedded bliss and confetti, champagne glasses and happy-ever-after. Let Harr
y look his fill, she was Leonard’s now for ever more. Except, as it happened, things had not turned out that way at all.
Their wedding night – but that was the deepest hidden layer, that she really couldn’t. There were some things in life that should never see the light of day. You owed it to yourself to keep them hidden. They might chafe and fret you, work their way out sideways in dreams and nightmares, but of your own free will you should never let them out of the bag. Leonard had cut a fine figure in his knife-blade creased trousers and tails and his grey silk wedding hat.
Their wedding night had been a sham. Alicia, an utter virgin, had only the vaguest idea of what ought to have happened. But she knew that what had occurred between them was not nearly enough. It hadn’t hurt her, and she knew from secret female conversations that there ought to have been writhing and tearing, a painful savage ripping and blood. Leonard undressed with his back to her, took her gingerly in his arms and gave her a quick dry kiss. Then he lay back, crooked his hands under his head, smiled at her once shyly and fell fast asleep. Alicia lay awake, wondering. In the end she decided he was being considerate; it had been a long and draining day and they were both of them worn out. Leonard must have restrained himself, decided to spare her that ordeal today on top of everything. She congratulated herself happily on what a considerate husband she had found for herself. Except that nothing happened the following night either, or the one after that. She still enjoyed the honeymoon. She had never stayed anywhere as smart as the Queen’s Hotel. Leonard had arranged for cut flowers in the room and they had whatever took their fancy for dinner. From the outside, everything was excellent and it was lovely being ‘Mrs’. She thought that maybe Leonard was waiting until they were more used to each other. Perhaps she should indicate to him that she felt ready? But he failed to see her signal, even though she considered it plain enough. That was when she first began to have her little needling worry that maybe all was well, not quite right with Leonard. She did her best to squash it. Whyever worry about the night-time when the daytime was so beautiful? They went on their walks and outings, strolled arm-in-arm along the sea-front. Alicia told herself that it would surely all come right in time. And in the meantime, frankly, was she really all that bothered? Wasn’t it rather nice to have the paper satisfaction and the trimmings of marriage and be spared the savagery and the pain?
