Clouds among the Stars

by Clayton, Victoria

  Archie looked at me in astonishment. ‘Has misfortune in love turned your brain, my dear girl?’ He gazed down at his immaculate Oxford bags and brown and white co-respondent shoes. ‘I – to clean other people’s tidemarks?’ I explained what the doctor had said about Maggie not being allowed to fret. ‘Of course I shall rally to the call. But not for anyone will I ruin my fingernails.’ He swung his legs down from the sofa. ‘I shall do the cooking.’

  Lunch was half an hour late but when it came was unusual and excellent. Sir Oswald, who had been standing about with a glass of sherry complaining about the delay to anyone who would listen, ate greedily of the shallot and parsley soup and a most interesting pie made from chestnuts and a mystery ingredient. Archie explained that they were cardoons, which he had found in the kitchen garden, wrapped with thick brown paper to blanch them. He had cooked them, beneath a lid of delicious flaky pastry, with a bottle of pear wine he had discovered in the cellar.

  Archie was modest when we praised him. ‘Anyone can cook. It is merely a question of imagination and taking trouble. But I cannot cook meat. Veins, necks, tongues – these things are too much for my feelings.’

  Maggie’s mind was set sufficiently at ease by the discovery that Archie could cook to allow her to fall into a deep sleep all afternoon. I kept the fire well-stoked and the room became so warm that steam rose from the armchair as it dried out.

  After I had helped Mrs Whale wash up the lunch things I took The Small House at Allington into the drawing room to read for half an hour before taking Dirk for his afternoon walk. I put a log on the fire and settled myself opposite Miss Tipple, who was dozing in her usual position with knees wide apart and the leg of one chewing-gum-pink bloomer, which had lost its elastic, trailing down her leg. Just as I was fancying myself as Lily Dale succumbing to the egregious charms of Adolphus Crosbie, Georgia came in.

  ‘Have you seen Emilio?’

  I closed my book politely, keeping a thumb in my place. ‘Not since lunch.

  ‘Oh.’ She strolled towards the table, her long fur-trimmed coat trailing across the carpet, and looked in the cigarette box, which I had forgotten to fill. ‘We’re about to leave. I suppose he’s saying goodbye to his latest conquest.’ She laughed derisively. ‘He thinks I don’t know about his philandering. What’s even more ridiculous, he thinks I’d mind.’ I smiled to conceal my surprise, wondering who the object of Emilio’s affections could be. There was no one remaining in the house who could possibly fit the bill. Miss Tipple was too old, beside being here in the room with us with us. Maggie was in bed. Surely not Mrs Whale? Then I thought of Cordelia. Luckily she and Annabel came in just then, before I had a chance to get angry and make an idiot of myself.

  ‘We’ve finished mangling the washing. If we take Dirk out for you, will you promise we can go to the record shop before the flicks?’

  I was so relieved to find she was not party to Emilio’s leave-taking that I was willing to promise anything. The girls rushed off, exultant at this latest addition to the list of concessions.

  ‘Sorry I haven’t done anything to help,’ said Georgia. ‘Too busy packing.’

  I had seen her lying on her bed, smoking and reading a magazine, as I had run past her room that morning bearing a pile of towels for the laundry room. I smiled politely for the second time and opened my book.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll go to Australia.’ Georgia found her cigarette case in her bag. As an afterthought she offered the case to me. I shook my head. She rummaged for her lighter. ‘It’s a mistake to run after men.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘They think they can treat you like shit.’

  ‘Well, I imagine that has more to do with their attitude than one’s own behaviour.’

  ‘I see what you mean. Could be. Anyway, no hard feelings about Max?’

  ‘None at all,’ I said frigidly. ‘Why should there be?’

  ‘Oh, come off it! Your eyes were on stalks, like a love-sick snail, whenever he was around.’

  ‘They were not!’

  ‘Please yourself. I don’t mind admitting I thought he was exceptionally luscious and extremely beddable.’

  ‘Oh?’ I was surprised that she should choose me of all people to confide in.

  ‘Only, if I’m honest, when it came to it, he was something of a let-down.’

  She blew out smoke and stuck out her chin, staring at me defiantly.

  ‘Oh.’ I said again. Against all odds I had clung to a ridiculous hope that Archie might have been wrong about Georgia and Max. This was now dashed and I was ashamed to feel a corresponding drop in spirits. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ I lied without an ounce of shame. I saw Georgia was gratified by this information.

  ‘Too bloody perfunctory by half. A girl wants a little attention, a little stroking and caressing, perhaps even a word or two of encouragement – not just to be climbed on and treated like a disposable semen receptacle.’ This had not been my experience in bed with Max but I had no intention of saying so. ‘You don’t know it yet,’ she continued when I remained silent, ‘you’re too young. But when you get to my age there are precious few decent men about. If they haven’t already been scooped up they’re mad or queer or have mothers with a capital M. I’m over forty, you know.’

  ‘You don’t look it.’ Another lie.

  ‘Any day now my jowls and boobs are going to droop and I’m going to develop a scrotum under each eye. I’m already having to dye my hair.’ She patted her ash-blonde, stiffly-lacquered locks, which looked as though they had been chromium-plated.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You get desperate.’ I wondered again about Emilio. ‘Invitations start dropping off. Suddenly there are long, lonely weekends when you’re grateful to speak to the paper-boy. Emilio popped the question when he was trying to get me into bed. He didn’t imagine in a million years I’d accept him. He lives with his aunt in a foul little hen-coop in Shepherd’s Bush. Hasn’t a penny. He’s a gigolo with dwindling assets and built-in obsolescence. Not that I’m rich exactly but I’ve got a private income of a few thousand a year. I accepted him because I’m frightened of being an old maid.’ She drew savagely on her cigarette and spat out the smoke. ‘Bloody funny, isn’t it? I expect you want to laugh.’

  ‘No.’ I didn’t. It sounded painfully sad. ‘But surely it’s better to live alone than marry someone you’re not in love with? Being an old maid is only an idea in people’s minds. Can’t you ignore what they think?’

  ‘Can you?’ Georgia lifted her pencilled brows and stared at me angrily. ‘What are we anyway but what we seem to be to other people? If I’m in a room on my own I’m invisible. Nothing.’ This was a new and interesting slant on the problem of identity.

  ‘I think I’m more truly myself when I’m alone than at any other time. Then I’m not trying to impress or be liked.’

  Georgia gave a sneering laugh. ‘You think that because you’re young and you’ve never been unhappy.’

  I knew that this was absolutely not true, that since my father had been arrested I had been intimately acquainted with unhappiness. But I felt no inclination to confess this to Georgia, so either her misery was worse than mine or I wasn’t the confiding type. ‘As you say, there’s a lot I don’t know yet but one thing I’ve learned is that the best antidote to unhappiness is work.’

  Georgia extinguished her cigarette in a pot of pale-pink hyacinths and threw the butt towards the hearth. ‘Sitting in an office all day being ordered about by a common little man who has a business selling tin-tacks or motor axles!’ She made a moue of distaste. ‘Squabbling with a gaggle of suburban typists over whose turn it is to buy the biscuits. I’d rather marry Emilio.’

  ‘Ah, but these days women don’t have to do menial jobs. Why shouldn’t you own the business selling tin-tacks? You could corner the market in tin-tacks – become the tin-tack queen. No one would think of you as an old maid then. And what a job does, above all, is stop you thinking about yourself all the time, which is a huge r
elief.’

  Emilio came in then, which was a pity because I was just warming to my theme. I was surprised by how evangelical I felt about the value of work, having myself been gainfully employed for a period of not much more than a month.

  ‘Aha, Señorita Harriet.’ Emilio took my hand and covered it with noisy kisses from his fat purple lips, his brown eyes rolling about in his head like ball bearings in a bowl. He must have been at the brandy again for the whites were nearly gold. ‘The sad time comes when I tear me away from you. I am pleasured to know you. A lovely mees, so pree-tty and swe-e-t –’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Emilio.’ Georgia snapped her bag shut and buttoned her coat. ‘You could pour a tin of treacle over people – it would have the same effect. If you’re coming back to London, let’s go.’

  ‘Oh, I come, Georgia. Do not fear, dear one, you have all my heart.’

  ‘Yes.’ Georgia looked at him as he minced across the room towards her. ‘I believe I have, such a tiny thing as it is.’ She cast a glance at me and shrugged. ‘I’d better make the most of it. It’s all I’m likely to have.’

  ‘What you say?’ Emilio asked politely, his head on one side like a parrot. ‘I not unnerstand.’

  She narrowed her eyes to peer at him more closely. ‘You’ve got lipstick all over your neck.’

  ‘Have they gone?’ Jonno came into the drawing room just as I had imagined myself back on to Mrs Dale’s croquet lawn at The Small House at Allington. ‘Oogh! What a gruesome pair! They deserve each other.’ Jonno looked pretty gruesome himself, haggard with red-rimmed eyes. He carried a plate of cold sausages and pickle, which he ate with his fingers, wiping them on his jeans when they got too greasy. It was an unattractive sight. ‘Breakfast.’ He offered me the plate. ‘Want one?’

  I shuddered. ‘You know, you’re going to kill yourself if you keep on drinking like that.’

  ‘So? Who’s going to care? Not me.’

  ‘Self-pity’s a great mistake. It kills off sympathy faster than anything.’ Jonno scowled dreadfully but I pressed on, remembering Rupert’s determination to domesticate Jonno. ‘Your family would care. Maggie worries about you all the time. One of the reasons she’s ill is because she puts everyone else’s needs before her own.’

  ‘Meaning I don’t.’

  ‘Not everything I say is solely about you.’

  Jonno gave one of his speciality bitter laughs. ‘I expect you’re grumpy because Lover-Boy’s buggered off. Well, if you’re going to be poisonous, I’ll bugger off too.’ He turned to go, but when I made no effort to detain him he came back and sat down beside me, balancing the plate on his knee. ‘Don’t be nasty to me, Harriet. I feel so bloody miserable. And my head’s beating like a tom-tom.’

  ‘Why do you drink so much?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it makes you ill and depressed. And a nuisance.’

  ‘Am I really so hateful?’ he said with a sigh that was almost a moan.

  Part of me wanted to point out the absurdity of these histrionics but another part was touched by something genuinely regretful in his voice. ‘The sober you isn’t hateful at all. I like what little I see of it. Everyone’s boring when they’re drunk.’

  ‘Boring?’

  ‘Dreadfully boring. A waste of time.’

  I had intended to have an effect but I was appalled when he put his head in his hands and began to sniff. ‘I wish – things were different,’ he bleated. A tear fell through his fingers. I cannot see people crying without wanting to cry myself. My throat grew tight in sympathy. I stroked his ponytail. ‘I hate myself for being so stupid and weak,’ he went on in a voice that broke with emotion. ‘I miss Kate so much. She was – the best thing – in my life.’ He began to sob and I knew this was real, the pain of loneliness and desolation that alcohol could only temporarily deaden. ‘Oh, oh!’ he cried, ‘I wish – I wish my mother hadn’t died.’

  Then he leaned his head against my chest and I cradled it in my arms, my own eyes pricking with tears. Dirk was roused from sleep by this unusual noise and padded over to see what was going on. He stared with puzzled eyes at Jonno and then, despite my frowns and silent mouthings, delicately extracted the last sausage from the plate and took it off to the hearth rug.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jonno said at last, pulling away to wipe his face on the sleeve of his shirt. He caught his nose chain on the button of his cuff and winced. ‘You must think I’m unbelievably pathetic.’

  ‘My father and brother often cry. We’re a crying sort of family, generally. It’s very good for you. You’ll feel much better now.’

  ‘Yes, I do, I think. Silly thing, though, to cry about something that happened so long ago.’

  ‘Not silly at all. Tell me about your mother. If you’d like to.’

  ‘I was twelve when she died. She was the most beautiful creature in the world. She was ill a lot and I think Dad made her unhappy too. But she said she felt quite safe with me to look after her. She called me her very perfect, gentle knight. It was from her favourite poem – I’ve forgotten what it was called. After she died I’ve never felt I was any good to anyone. Annabel had a nurse to look after her and in less than a year Dad married Maggie, who did everything for him – and everyone else. I was useless, pointless. As you say, a waste of time.’

  ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’

  I tried to put some severity into my voice. I felt utterly sympathetic but I knew I should take advantage of a rare moment in which Jonno was neither drunk nor stoned. He was silent for a moment, thinking.

  ‘Yes. I do know, really. I’ve got into the habit of playing dishonest games with myself, and other people. I wanted Kate to leave me so I could be miserable – have an excuse to be sorry for myself. I practically pushed her away. I knew I was hurting her but I couldn’t stop.’

  ‘I don’t think you can afford to go on like that.’

  ‘No.’ He sat for a while thinking. Then he said, ‘Promise you don’t despise me for crying?’

  ‘I like you better for it. Honestly.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because you loved your mother so much. Now I know you really do care about other people.’

  ‘I’ve tried not to. It always seems to end in pain.’

  ‘That’s not true. But even if it were, you can’t protect yourself by becoming hard. That’s cheating. Cheating yourself, I mean.’

  ‘Harriet?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Suddenly I feel I want to kiss you.’

  I offered him my cheek.

  ‘Actually I didn’t mean in such a brotherly way. But I suppose you don’t fancy me. I’m not as good-looking as Max Frensham.’

  ‘You might be. It’s hard to tell with so much camouflage. You could be rather handsome without that thing through your nose. And without the ponytail and that repulsive beard.’

  Jonno looked offended. ‘Some women go for the rebellious type.’

  ‘I don’t know about Manchester but in London Punk’s already embarrassingly tired. Chains and safety-pins are about as excitingly sexy as zip-up slippers and knitted ties.’ I remembered what Dodge had said. ‘Punk’s a corrupt nihilist movement without political meaning, motivated by an infantile need to shock.’

  ‘That’s the whole point – that it’s pointless. There’s no altruistic principle involved. It’s intended to be deeply offensive to the Establishment, that’s all.’

  ‘Actually that nose-chain makes me think of our old district nurse. She looked after my mother when she was having Cordelia. Her name was Tabby and she was very tall and scrawny. I was fascinated by the veins in her legs that stood out like ropes when she’d been pedalling. Her bicycle chain was always coming off and we children had to put it back on for her. I suppose sausage fat’s marginally more appetising than bike oil.’

  Jonno laughed. ‘OK. I was getting sick of it anyway. It catches on chairs and door-handles. Not only does it hurt but you look an arsehole. But what’s wrong with the rest of m
e? Don’t girls like virile, hairy men? Sort of caveman-cumintellectual?’

  ‘No doubt some do. I’ve a pathological hatred of beards. My father’s an actor and he often grows one for a part. He doesn’t like false ones; he thinks glue’s bad for his skin. As a child I dreaded being scratched when he kissed me. It’s probably given me a Freudian aversion to them. And ponytails look wet to me. Sort of left-over sixties. I expect I’m in a minority, though.’

  ‘Kate used to say she didn’t like it either. But I felt I shouldn’t give in.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it would have seemed weak.’

  ‘Frankly, I think having to be smashed out of your mind all the time is a darned sight weaker than doing something to please someone.’

  ‘You really do know how to hit a fellow where it hurts.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, you’re right. That’s why it hurts, of course.’ He sniffed. ‘Bloody hell! What’s that burning smell?’

  Until that moment we had been too busy talking to notice that wisps of smoke were rising from beneath Miss Tipple voluminous skirts.

  ‘Georgia’s cigarette end!’ I looked helplessly about for something to smother the fire, not daring to use an antique needlepoint cushion or a silk Persian rug.

  Jonno seized a vase of flowers, dropped to his knees and slooshed the contents over the floor beneath her chair.

  ‘What? What?’ Miss Tipple woke, seized her stick and cracked Jonno on the head with a force that was surprising in a very old lady. ‘Get back, you sex-crazed beast! Help! Rape!’

  THIRTY

  Darling Maria-Alba,

  This can only be a short letter because I’m so tired I can hardly hold the pen. I’m sitting up in bed writing this and Cordelia’s asleep beside me. She’s completely better and having a good time so don’t worry about her. All the men admire her hugely and she and Annabel get on pretty well considering how different they are. Annabel is child of contradictions, something of a tomboy yet she hero-worships Rupert with an unshakeable passion. Cordelia says she found her crying fit to bust because Rupert had gone away without saying goodbye. Also she has a savage streak which I find rather disagreeable. Cordelia got very angry with her for trying to wring a chicken’s neck. The poor bird was half-dead when Cordelia brought it into the kitchen but we put it in a box by the range and fed it porridge until it got better. Annabel said she had watched Dingle wringing their necks hundreds of times. I suppose this is the difference between a town childhood and a country one, and perhaps we should not have interfered. Anyway, Cordelia regularly patrols the hen-run now and counts them to make sure they are all there still. She and Dingle are sworn enemies.