The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

by Margaret Forster

  Stanley just looked at her.

  ‘Ellen’s pram,’ she repeated calmly, ‘that big Silver Cross pram – what did you do with it after she died?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Stanley said in a croaky voice.

  ‘Clear your throat,’ she said, ‘too much smoking – clear it and have a think.’ She waited. Stanley shifted from foot to foot. What an unexpected day of reckoning.

  ‘I think I gave it to Elsie and told her to get rid of it as best she could,’ he said at last.

  ‘And did she?’

  ‘I never asked.’

  ‘That’s not like you. Well, we must ask. I’d like to know. Now then Amy, where’s your mum?’

  ‘Here,’ called Alice, at that precise moment so that Rose knew she must have been watching from the window. It made her happy that she must have seen them coming home in such good style.

  ‘Did you have a lovely time?’ Alice asked, unstrapping Amy and lifting her out. ‘Thank you so much for taking her – it was a lovely idea, you are kind.’

  ‘As long as it gave you a break,’ Rose said.

  That evening, they sat watching television in front of the electric fire. Snow was forecast for the Christmas holiday.

  ‘Frank’s well out of it,’ Stanley said, ‘they’ll be eating that pudding of yours in a heat wave I expect.’

  ‘They can keep their heat waves,’ Rose said. She sat and thought about it. Often, Frank sent a snap of them all taken on Christmas Day on the beach with them all in bathing costumes and a picnic spread out in front of them, her pudding in the middle. She’d always meant to ask them how they got it hot on the beach and where was the white sauce? Surely they didn’t eat it cold or lukewarm, surely Veronica made white sauce?

  ‘Here,’ she said, abruptly, ‘what happened to those folders and things you had about going to Australia?’

  ‘They’re in the drawer,’ Stanley said, concentrating, if you could call it that, on the news.

  ‘Which drawer?’

  ‘The hallstand drawer.’

  ‘Of all the places,’ Rose said. She sat a few more minutes and then went to look. They were all there, in a big buff envelope. She took them out and through into the kitchen with her. Now she had her spectacles she didn’t need to rely on Stanley to find out the facts for her, not that he would ever falsify anything.

  When Stanley came through an hour later looking for his supper she had all the leaflets divided up into three piles in front of her.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked, disappointed to find only paper on the table and no sign of tea.

  ‘Those are no good,’ Rose said, pointing at the biggest pile. ‘I don’t want to go by sea. You don’t get cheap rates by sea and anyway I’d get fed up long before we got there. Those are too expensive, silly to spend more than we need. These are possibles, travel clubs you can join. Mind you, I’d want it to be above board – none of your fiddled charter flights – we’d have to join a proper club what we were entitled to join and wait our turn. They have meetings and things, we’d have to go to those.’

  Stanley cleared his throat.

  ‘Yes, well, let’s get Christmas over first then the decks are cleared.’

  ‘They’re clear now,’ Rose said. ‘I’ve got all my presents ready, such as they are, and I’m not sending any cards. It’s a waste of money.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Stanley said.

  ‘Yes well what? Are we going to Australia or are we not?’

  ‘It’s a big decision,’ Stanley said. ‘You said yourself there’s forms and things.’

  ‘Now I’ve got my spectacles I can deal with forms,’ Rose said, ‘and I dare say a medical or whatever you have to have will be no worse than an eye test.’

  ‘Seems a funny time to think about it,’ Stanley complained, ‘bringing it all up again like this, springing it on me. What put all this into your head all of a sudden?’

  ‘That’s what you can’t call it – sudden,’ Rose said. ‘It’s been in my head for years, and well you know it. Every year at Christmas Frank and Veronica ring up and what do they say? When are you coming over, that’s what they say. They put those children on and what do they say? When are you coming to see us, that’s what they say. It’s our duty to go. We owe it to them to at least turn up. I don’t know what they must think of us. I’m ashamed to think how rude we’ve been. Wanting to go doesn’t come into it, that’s neither here nor there –’

  ‘Steady on,’ Stanley said.

  ‘And there’s that baby, same age as Amy next door and we haven’t even seen him. Oh yes, we help out next door and I’m not saying I regret it but we don’t help out there do we? How many grandparents have those poor children got? Only us. Veronica’s parents are dead, aren’t they, and even they made the effort before their time came – they went out when Carol was born, and I should think so too, but we didn’t, did we?’

  She was thumping the table sending the leaflets flying, and Stanley didn’t like the look of her at all. He resolved that by hook or by crook he’d have a word with the doctor about her, see if there wasn’t something that could be put right. She got so excited and worked up it frightened him – and not only that, she’d got it all wrong. They’d be going to Australia to enjoy themselves, wouldn’t they? For a holiday, good times. She was making it sound like a prison sentence. If she was going to look at it like that he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to go, not on your nelly.

  ‘Yes, well,’ he said slowly, ‘I’ll write off for particulars to those clubs you mention, see what we can do.’

  That quietened her. He was relieved to see her put the kettle on and start getting some food out. That kind of carry on made him hungry.

  ‘I’ll tell Frank then,’ she said, ‘when he rings. It’ll give us something to talk about for a change.’

  There was never, in fact, much time for talking. When the phone rang at nine o’clock on Christmas morning, as it always did, Stanley was there in the hall, ready and waiting, with Rose at his side. There was always such a lot of interference and so many voices telling you to hold the line and then when Frank did come on he sounded so far away you had to tell him at once to shout and usually he couldn’t hear you at all. Then it was Happy Christmas Grandad, Happy Christmas Grandad and Happy Christmas Grandma and the phone getting passed from one to another so that just as you’d got used to one voice there would be another and the air was full of people asking who they were talking to. When the big moment came and Frank duly said, ‘When are you coming over?’ Rose laughed and shouted, ‘You’ll never guess!’ Stanley could hear all the crackling that went on as Frank presumably passed this onto his family, and then Rose was positively yelling, ‘Next year, we hope, yes we’ve made our mind up at last!’ The noise that followed was very gratifying to say the least. When she came off, Rose had to wipe her eyes.

  ‘They seemed very pleased,’ she said.

  ‘I should think so,’ Stanley said.

  ‘Veronica was ever so nice about it, it’s what I’ve always hoped for, that was what she said. I expect she was putting it on, but still. We’ll give you a marvellous time, she said, and I said –’

  ‘I heard you,’ Stanley interrupted, ‘and I don’t think you should have said what you said.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You made it sound as if you didn’t really want to go. That wasn’t very nice.’

  ‘Of course I want to go.’

  ‘Then say so.’

  They argued all Christmas Day about that, off and on. Only going to Elsie’s in the afternoon put a stop to it temporarily because on the way there and back they had Elsie’s to bicker about. Stanley thought it was plain daft to miss dinner and just go for their tea. He couldn’t see the point of such half measures. Why go at all if they weren’t going to go properly? Rose called it a compromise but what for, that’s what he wanted to know. They had a very nice chicken dinner, he had to admit, but it was hardly the same. They also went next door to give Amy her present, but what made S
tanley even more annoyed, Rose refused a drink – Christmas Day and she wouldn’t accept hospitality. They were in and out like a whirlwind, no point in having gone. Rose hissed at him that he was slow on the uptake, couldn’t he see the young people had visitors? So what, Stanley had wanted to know, it’s Christmas, people do have visitors, it’s a time of good fellowship, haven’t you heard? Rose replied she knew her place and no one would say she didn’t, Christmas or no Christmas. But Stanley had the last word. Just before they arrived at Elsie’s he said, ‘Sometimes I think you need more than your eyes tested,’ and she had no time to reply. He knew what his New Year resolution was going to be, anyway.

  Chapter Eleven

  THERE WAS ONLY one guest Alice found difficult at Amy’s party and that was Rose Pendlebury. She didn’t misbehave in any way but the sheer strain of seeing that she was in no manner slighted, overlooked, ignored, left out, told before the celebration was half over. Stanley was no trouble. He sat in a corner slowly and carefully blowing up balloons with a pump as the children burst them. Nothing flapped him. He even managed to drink seven cups of tea without maiming for life the throng around him.

  Rose too had been given her jobs. Alice had thought long and hard about what tasks would be considered menial and which an honour. She couldn’t ask Mrs P. to make the tea – that would make her too much the servant-in-the-kitchen. Nor, she felt, could she ask her to answer the door. She finally settled on Mrs P. being in charge of all the little presents and giving them out. They were all wrapped up in layers of coloured tissue paper and tied on to the Christmas tree. Every time a game ended Pen untied a present for everybody and gave it to them. It would all probably have worked perfectly if the children hadn’t got overexcited and rushed for the tree each time, but such was the state of permanent confusion that there could be nothing orderly about the process. Mrs P. got quite flushed and Alice worried about her welfare. She wasn’t wearing her new spectacles and seemed to take an age to untie the little gifts. The children became impatient and the older ones shouted while the younger ones cried. Alice decided it was time for tea half an hour before she had planned.

  Tea was a success. Nobody ate very much except the two boys from next door but they all sat quite still and stared at each other. Mrs P. of her own accord went round pouring out orange juice and clearly enjoyed the clamour for more. It was, Alice thought, lucky that the children were so young and not a smart-alec among them. Otherwise the sight of Mrs P. complete with black fur hat and garish make-up might have proved irresistible. As it was, she was accepted as part of the furniture, at least until the grown-ups came at the end to collect their offspring.

  The minute the first person came into the room Mrs P. started to say she’d better go and to call for Stanley to get her coat which she now clearly regretted having taken off at all. But Alice was firm. It was her solemn intention to introduce Mrs P. to every single parent. She would do it loudly, with pride, so that Mrs P. would get the message. She would involve herself publicly – no more of this slipping in for coffee as though on a secret mission. Mrs. P was her friend and must meet her other friends on equal terms before their friendship went any further. Luckily, the first parent happened to be the mother of a little boy who lived across the road and had moved in even more recently than Alice herself, so Mrs P. could have no preconceived ideas about her. Alice introduced them to each other and was agreeably surprised to hear Mrs P. begin to chat quite freely and civilly. She promptly left her to answer the door and was reassured by the laughter that followed her.

  By the time Charlotte, Sam’s mother, arrived Mrs P. had met and appeared to charm some dozen of the road’s inhabitants, many of whom she had been meeting and ignoring for anything up to ten years. The technique, Alice observed, was for her to look vague as vague and murmur something about not seeing too well these days and then hope the person she was talking to would leave the subject alone. They all did so, even the Stewarts, who had actually been emphatically snubbed many times. As Alice had hoped, they welcomed the opportunity to catch Mrs Pendlebury with her guard down and establish themselves as the nice people they were and not the ogres she had cast them as. They, and others, were fulsome in their praise for her garden and Alice even heard her assure Jeremy Stewart that he could certainly come and get a japonica cutting when it was the right time to take it. It was, she thought, really quite funny to see Mrs P. being courted by all these terribly smooth prosperous couples so terrified that she might condemn them as snobs. She was definitely the star of the occasion and rose to it with zest. Alice caught Stanley’s eye at one point and distinctly saw him wink.

  But Charlotte was another matter. Mrs P. had already said she hated her, had already pigeon-holed her feelings. It was up to Charlotte, who knew nothing of how she was rated, to persuade Mrs P. otherwise and Alice found she had not the nerve to do more than introduce them and then gratefully submerge herself in the surrounding hubbub. When she looked round again, as the first people were beginning to leave, she saw rather than heard that everything was going reasonably well. True, Mrs P. was no longer laughing and her smile was more forced, but she was talking to Charlotte and that was something. Charlotte herself was on the other hand smiling too much, that particularly glacial smile that Alice too found irritating. Her mouth smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkled authentically, but the eyes were hurried, wanting to do anything but smile, wanting to be away from such intimacy. Alice suddenly felt as worried for Charlotte as for Mrs P., which she knew was silly. Nobody could be more detached, stronger, more confident than Charlotte. Socially, she had no problems, where beside her Mrs P. was a mass of complexes and nerves.

  When everyone had gone Alice sat down amid the wreckage and closed her eyes. Her legs ached, her head ached and she was quite hoarse with shouting against the clamour. Mrs P. had offered to help tidy up, saying it was a shame to leave her with all that mess, but Alice had been insistent – she would do it herself, when Tony came home. She wanted more than anything just to be on her own, to have the luxury of flopping and not having to talk. She felt, indeed, a bit like Tony himself for once – people were a bother, entertaining them was striking attitudes. She wished she hadn’t offered all the parents a drink when they arrived at the end, but it had seemed such a nice idea, a way of returning the hospitality extended to her but never accepted. All her ideas were nice, all her motives warm, but the reality proved so tiring.

  At her feet Amy played with some of her new toys, most of all with Pen’s train that whistled as you pulled it along, the train that had been so minutely examined to see that there were no sharp edges, so anxiously scrutinized to see the paint was lead-free, the parts securely welded together. Tony scorned toys for children – they were supposed to like wooden spoons and pan lids just as well – but he would like this one. He should really have been there but he didn’t think there was any need for a party – Amy was too young, he said – and they had quarrelled so much about it that Alice deliberately organized it for when he would be at work. The Pendleburys had obviously thought that very queer. There had been remarks about a father’s what you need here every time the boys next door fought. It had made Alice spring to his defence in spite of herself.

  Tony was a good father. She needed to reassure herself that he was. He loved Amy, he was devoted to her, it was just that he didn’t do so many of the things her own father had done. He wouldn’t take Amy for walks on any account, maintaining against all the evidence that they bored her as much as they bored him. He wouldn’t see that she had plenty of fresh air and any sunshine going. He wouldn’t make her eat things that were good for her that she didn’t necessarily want. For two weeks she ate nothing but ice-cream and tomatoes and he only laughed. He wouldn’t supervise her manners, he wouldn’t insist on please and thank you, he wouldn’t stick to her nap routine at weekends. He wouldn’t follow the pattern Alice had followed and was trying so hard to recreate.

  She wondered, as she rested, about Rose and Stanley as parents. Rose wa
s full of advice about every single aspect of bringing up children. Nothing, it would seem, had ever been too much trouble, too much effort, she had disliked nothing about it, found nothing annoying. Alice knew, at a distance of some forty years, Frank’s routine from cradle to manhood. ‘I always used to’ was Mrs P.’s favourite opening. Alice was given to understand that theirs had been an idyllic partnership, never marred by ugly arguments or scenes. It somehow depressed her, and then the fact that she could be depressed by such a happy thing depressed her even more. She felt, always, inadequate. Amy required her to reach heights she did not feel equal to scale. Every day of motherhood found another fault in her. She would never be able to look back, like Mrs P., and glory in her perfection.

  And Stanley? He made no claims. Being a father seemed to have made no impact at all on him. She had watched him while Rose launched into some long saga about Frank’s childhood and he had been blank. Frank apparently stirred no chords in his memory. Without saying a word, it was obvious that Rose was the only one he had ever cared about. Alice wondered if Tony would be the same, or would everything change when Amy grew older? She shivered at the thought of the years ahead and the state the Pendleburys had reached and was glad to hear Tony’s voice in the hall.

  ‘The Pens must have enjoyed it,’ Tony said, ‘they’ve got every light in their house on. It’s like Blackpool illuminations.’

  But Alice, for once, did not have the strength to be curious.

  Every light was indeed on in the Pendleburys’ house. Rose had started at the top and gone right down the whole house putting lights on, main lights, lamps, every blessed light they had. She left all the doors open as she went and when she arrived back at the kitchen she thrust a writing paper at Stanley and said, ‘Get a pencil.’