The Archdeacon conducted the service in St Peter’s, and then the guests made their way to the garden of the hotel. That the wedding reception was to be at the hotel was a business arrangement between the Archdeacon and Mr Congreve, for the expenses were to be the former’s, as convention demanded. It was a day in June, a Thursday, in the middle of a heatwave.
Dervla and a new maid with spectacles handed round glasses of champagne. Artie saw to it that people had chairs to sit on if they wished to sit. The archdeacon’s daughter wore a wedding-dress that had a faint shade of blue in it, and a Limerick lace veil. She was kissed by people in the garden, she smiled while helping to cut the wedding cake. Her four bridesmaids, Molly and Margery-Jane among them, kept saying she looked marvellous.
Speeches were made in the sunshine. Dr Molloy made one and so did the best man, Tom Gouvernet, and Mr Congreve. Dr Molloy remembered the day Christopher was born, and Mr Congreve remembered the first time he’d set eyes on the beauty of the Archdeacon’s daughter, and Tom Gouvernet remembered Christopher at school. Other guests remembered other occasions; Christopher said he was the lucky man and kissed the archdeacon’s daughter while people clapped their hands with delight. Tom Gouvernet fell backwards off the edge of a raised bed.
There was an excess of emotion in the garden, an excess of smiles and tears and happiness and love. The champagne glasses were held up endlessly, toast after toast. Christopher’s mother moved among the guests with the plump wife of the archdeacon and the Archdeacon himself, who was as frail as a stalk of straw. In his easy-going way Christopher’s father delighted in the champagne and the sunshine, and the excitement of a party. Mr McKibbin, the bank agent, was there, and Hogarty the surveyor, and an insurance man who happened to be staying at the hotel. There was nothing Mr Congreve liked better than standing about talking to these barroom companions.
‘Thanks, Dervla.’ Taking a glass from her tray, Christopher smiled at her because for ages that had been possible again.
‘It’s a lovely wedding, sir.’
‘Yes, it is.’
He looked at her eyes, and was aware of the demanding steadiness of her gaze. He sensed what she was wondering and wondered it himself: what would have happened if she’d been asked to leave the hotel? He guessed, as she did: they would have shared the resentment and the anger that both of them had separately experienced; defiantly they would have continued to meet in the town; she would have accompanied him on his walks, out into the country and the fields. There would have been talk in the town and scenes in the hotel, their relationship would again have been proscribed. They would have drawn closer to one another, their outraged feelings becoming an element in the forbidden friendship. In the end, together, they would have left the hotel and the town and neither of them would be standing here now. Both their lives would be quite different.
‘You’ll be getting married yourself one of these days, Dervla.’
‘Ah, no no.’
She was still quite pretty. There was a simplicity about her freckled features that was pleasing; her soft fair hair was neat beneath her maid’s white cap. But she was not beautiful. Once, not knowing much about it, he had imagined she was. It was something less palpable that distinguished her.
‘Oh, surely? Surely, Dervla?’
‘I don’t see myself giving up the hotel, sir. My future’s here, sir.’
He smiled again and passed on. But his smile, which remained while he listened to a story of Tom Gouvernet’s about the hazards to be encountered on a honeymoon, was uneasy. An echo of the eyes that had gazed so steadily remained with him, as did the reference she had made to her future. That she had not been turned out of the hotel had seemed something to be proud of at the time: a crudity had been avoided. But while Tom Gouvernet’s lowered voice continued, he found himself wishing she had been. She would indeed not ever marry, her eyes had stated, she would not wish to.
A hand of his wife’s slipped into one of his; the voice of Tom Gouvernet ceased. The hand was as delicate as the petal of a flower, the fingers so tiny that involuntarily he lifted them to his lips. Had Dervla seen? he Wondered, and he looked through the crowd for a glimpse of her but could not see her. Hogarty the surveyor was doing a trick with a handkerchief, entertaining the coal merchant’s daughters. Mr McKibben was telling one of his stories.
‘Ah, he’s definitely the lucky man,’ Tom Gouvernet said, playfully winking at the bride.
It had never occurred to Christopher before that while he and his parents could successfully bury a part of the past, Dervla could not. It had never occurred to him that because she was the girl she was she did not appreciate that some experiences were best forgotten. Ever since the Congreves had owned the Royal Hotel a way of life had obtained there, but its subtleties had naturally eluded the dining-room maid.
‘When you get tired of him,’ Tom Gouvernet went on in the same light manner, ‘you know who to turn to.’
‘Oh, indeed I do, Tom.’
He should have told her about Dervla. If he told her now she would want Dervla to go; any wife would, in perfect reasonableness. An excuse must be found, she would say, even though a promise had been made.
‘But I won’t become tired of him,’ she was saying, smiling at Tom Gouvernet. ‘He’s actually quite nice, you know.’
In the far distance Dervla appeared, hurrying from the hotel with a freshly laden tray. Christopher watched her, while the banter continued between bride and best man.
‘He had the shocking reputation at school,’ Tom Gouvernet said.
‘Oh? I didn’t know that.’ She was still smiling; she didn’t believe it. It wasn’t true.
‘A right Lothario you’ve got yourself hitched to.’
He would not tell her. It was too late for that, it would bewilder her since he had not done so before. It wouldn’t be fair to require her not to wish that Dervla, even now, should be asked to go; or to understand that a promise made to a dining-room maid must be honoured because that was the family way.
Across the garden the Archdeacon lifted a glass from Dervla’s tray. He was still in the company of his plump wife and Christopher’s mother. They, too, took more champagne and then Dervla walked towards where Christopher was standing with his bride and his best man. She moved quickly through the crowd, not offering her tray of glasses to the guests she passed, intent upon her destination.
‘Thank you, Dervla,’ his wife of an hour said.
‘I think Mr Hogarty,’ he said himself, ‘could do with more champagne.’
He watched her walking away and was left again with the insistence in her eyes. As the dining-room maid, she would become part of another family growing up in the hotel. She would listen to a mother telling her children about the strand where once she’d bathed, where a retired lighthouse keeper had passed by on a horse. For all his life he would daily look upon hers, but no words would ever convey her undramatic revenge because the right to speak, once his gift to her, had been taken away. He had dealt in cruelty and so now did she: her gift to him, held over until his wedding day, was that afternoon shadows would gather for ever in Room 14, while she kept faith.
Lunch in Winter
Mrs Nancy Simpson – who did not at all care for that name and would have wished to be Nancy le Puys or Nancy du Maurier – awoke on a December morning. She had been dreaming of a time long past in her life, when her name had been Nancy Dawes, before she’d been married to anyone. The band had been playing ‘You are my Honeysuckle’ and in the wings of the Old Gaiety they had all been in line, smiles ready, waiting to come on. You are my honey-honeysuckle, I am the bee… Was it called something else, known by some other title? ‘Smoke Gets in your Eyes’ had once been called something else, so Laurie Henderson had said, although, God knows, if Laurie’d said it it probably wasn’t true. You could never tell with songs. ‘If You were the Only Girl in the World’, for instance: was that the full title or was it ‘If You were the Only Girl in the World and I was the Only Boy’? She’d
had an argument with Laurie about that, a ridiculous all-night argument in Mrs Tomer’s digs, Macclesfield, 1949 or ’50. ’50 probably because soon afterwards Laurie went down to London, doing something – barman probably – for the Festival of Britain thing. He’d walked out of Mrs Tomer’s and she hadn’t seen him for nine years. ’51 actually it must have been. Definitely the Festival had been 1951.
She rose, and before she did anything else applied make-up to her face with very great care. She often thought there was nothing she liked better than sitting in her petticoat in front of a looking-glass, putting another face on. She powdered her lipstick, then smiled at herself. She thought about Fitz because today was Thursday and they’d drifted into the way of having lunch on Thursdays. ‘My God, it’s Nancy!’ he’d said when by extraordinary chance he’d come upon her six months ago gazing into the windows of Peter Jones. They’d had a cup of tea, and had told one another this and that. ‘Of course, why ever not?’ she’d said when he’d suggested that they might occasionally see one another. ‘Old times’ sake,’ she’d probably said: she couldn’t remember now.
Her flat in Putney was high in a red-brick Victorian block, overlooking the river. Near by was the big, old-fashioned Sceptre Hotel, where drinkers from the flats spent a few evening hours, where foreign commercial travellers stayed. During Wimbledon some of the up-and-coming players stayed there also, with the has-beens. She liked to sit in the Bayeux Lounge and watch them passing through the reception area, pausing for their keys. That German who’d got into the final about ten years ago she’d noticed once, and she liked to think that McEnroe had stayed in the Sceptre before he’d got going, but she hadn’t actually seen him. Every year from the windows of her tiny flat she watched the Boat Race going by, but really had no interest in it. Nice, though, the way it always brought the crowds to Putney. Nice that Putney in the springtime, one Saturday in the year, was not forgotten.
Fitz would be on his train, she thought as she crossed Putney Bridge on her way to the Underground. The bridge was where Christie, who’d murdered so many prostitutes, had been arrested. He’d just had a meal in the Lacy Dining Rooms and perhaps he’d even been thinking of murdering another that very night when the plain clothes had scooped him up. He’d gone, apparently, without a word of protest.
‘My, you’re a romantic, Fitz!’ she’d said all those years ago, and really he hadn’t changed. Typical of him to want to make it a regular Thursday rendezvous. Typical to come up specially from the coast, catching a train and then another train back. During the war they’d been married for four years.
She sang for a moment, remembering that; and then wanting to forget it. His family had thought he was mad, you could see that immediately. He’d led her into a huge drawing-room in Warwickshire, with a grand piano in one corner, and his mother and sister had actually recoiled. ‘But for God’s sake, you can’t!’ she’d heard his sister’s shrill, unpleasant voice exclaiming in the middle of that same night. ‘You can’t marry a chorus girl!’ But he had married her; they’d had to stomach her in the end.
She’d been a sunflower on the stage of the Old Gaiety when he’d first picked her out; after that he’d come night after night. He’d said she had a flimsy quality and needed looking after. When they met again six months ago in Regent Street he’d said in just the same kind of way that she was far too thin. She’d seen him eyeing her hair, which had been light and fair and was a yellowish colour now, not as pretty as it had been. But he didn’t remark on it because he was the kind to remark only on the good things, saying instead she hadn’t changed a bit. He seemed boyishly delighted that she still laughed the way she always had, and often remarked that she still held the stem of a glass and her cigarette in her own particular way. ‘You’re cold,’ he’d said a week ago, reminding her of how he’d always gone on in the past about her not wearing enough clothes. He’d never understood that heavy things didn’t suit her.
In other ways he hadn’t changed, either. Still with a military bearing and hardly grey at all, he had a sunburnt look about the face, as always he’d had. He had not run to fat or slackness, and the sunburnt look extended over his forehead and beyond where his hair had receded. He was all of a piece, his careful suits, his soldier’s walk. He’d married someone else, but after twenty-three years she’d gone and died on him.
‘Good week?’ he inquired in the Trattoria San Michele. ‘What have you got up to, Nancy?’
She smiled and shrugged her skimpy shoulders. Nothing much, she didn’t say. There’d been a part she’d heard about and had hoped for, but she didn’t want to talk about that; it was a long time since she’d had a part.
‘The trout with almonds,’ he suggested. ‘Shall we both have that?’
She smiled again and nodded. She lived on alimony, not his but that of the man she had married last, the one called Simpson. She lit a cigarette; she liked to smoke at meals, sometimes between mouthfuls.
‘They’ve started that thing on the TV again,’ she said. ‘That Blankety Blank. Hilarious.’
She didn’t know why she’d been unfaithful to him. She’d, thought he wouldn’t guess, but when he’d come back on his first leave he’d known at once. She’d promised it would never happen again, swearing it was due to the topsy-turviness of the war, the worry because he was in danger. Several leaves later, when the war was almost over, she promised again. ‘I couldn’t love anyone else, Fitz,’ she’d whimpered, meaning it, really and truly. But at the beginning of 1948 he divorced her.
She hated to remember that time, especially since he was here and being so nice to her. She wanted to pay him back and asked him if he remembered the theme from State Fair. ‘Marvellous. And then of course “Spring Fever” in the same picture.’ She sang for a moment. ‘… and it isn’t even Spring.’ Member?’
Eventually she had gone to Canada with a man called Eddie Lush, whom later she had married. She had stayed there, and later in Philadelphia, for thirteen years, but when she returned to England two children who had been born, a boy and a girl, did not accompany her. They’d become more attached to Eddie Lush than to her, which had hurt her at the time, and there’d been accusations of neglect during the court case, which had been hurtful too. Once upon a time they’d written letters to her occasionally, but she wasn’t sure now what they were doing.
‘And “I’ll Be Around”. ’Member “I’ll Be Around”?’ She sang again, very softly. ‘No matter how… you treat me now… Who was it sang it, d’you ’member?’
He shook his head. The waiter brought their trout and Nancy smiled at him. The tedium that had just begun to creep into these Thursday lunches had evaporated as soon as she’d set eyes on the Trattoria’s new waiter six or so weeks ago. On Thursday evenings, in her corner of the Bayeux Lounge, his courtesy and his handsome face haunted her. Yes, he was a little sad, she often said to herself in the Bayeux Lounge. Was there even a hint of pain in those steady Latin eyes?
‘Oh, lovely-looking trout,’ she said, continuing to smile. ‘Thanks ever so, Cesare.’
The man she had been married to was saying something else, but she didn’t hear what it was. She remembered a chap like Cesare during the war, an airman from the base whom she’d longed to be taken out by, although in fact he’d never invited her.
‘What?’ she murmured, becoming aware that she’d been asked a question. But the question, now repeated, was only the familiar one, so often asked on Thursdays: did she intend to remain in her Putney flat, was she quite settled there? It was asked because once she’d said – she didn’t know why – that the flat was temporary, that her existence in Putney had a temporary feel to it. She couldn’t tell all the truth, she couldn’t – to Fitz of all people – reveal the hope that at long last old Mr Robin Right would come bob-bob-bobbing along. She believed in Mr R.R., always had, and for some reason she’d got it into her head that he might quite easily walk into the Bayeux Lounge of the Sceptre Hotel. In the evenings she watched television in her flat or in the Bayeux Lo
unge, sometimes feeling bored because she had no particular friend or confidante. But then she’d always had an inclination to feel a bit like that. Boredom was the devil in her, Laurie Henderson used to say.
‘Thanks ever so,’ she said again because Cesare had skilfully placed a little heap of peas beside the trout. Typical of her, of course, to go falling for a restaurant waiter: you set yourself out on a sensible course, all serious and determined, and the next thing was you were half in love with an unsuitable younger man. Not that she looked fifty-nine, of course, more like forty – even thirty-eight, as a chap in the Bayeux Lounge had said when she’d asked him to guess a month ago. Unfortunately the chap had definitely not been Mr R.R.
‘I just wondered,’ Fitz was saying.
She smiled and nodded. The waiter was aware of her attention, no doubt about it. There was a little wink she was gifted with, a slight little motion of the lids, nothing suggestive about it. ‘Makes me laugh, your wink,’ Eddie Lush used to say, and it was probably Simpson who had called it a gift. She couldn’t think why she’d ever allowed herself to marry Simpson, irritating face he’d had, irritating ways.
‘It’s been enjoyable, making the garden, building that wall. I never thought I’d be able to build a wall.’
He’d told her a lot about his house by the sea, a perfect picture it sounded, with flowerbeds all around the edge, and rustic trellising with ivy disguising the outside sanitary arrangements. He was terribly proud of what he’d done, and every right he had to be, the way he’d made the garden out of nothing. Won some kind of award the garden had, best on the south coast or the world or something.
The Collected Stories Page 127
