The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

by Margaret Forster

  Chapter Thirteen

  THAT WINTER, THE winter of Stanley’s accident and convalescence, passed more pleasantly and at a faster rate than any Rose could remember. They were in April and some sunshine at last and the garden coming to life before she knew what had happened. She had a cold in February, soon after Stanley came home, but threw it off easily and felt no ill-effects. During the whole period she had no real downs at all, no dreadful weeks when the thought of seeing another set of days come up made her want to scream. On the contrary, she had so many good days to look back on that she didn’t know which to choose when she wanted to indulge herself in a little nostalgic wallowing.

  There was the day Alice took them to Whipsnade Zoo, a day so perfect that Rose never tired of reliving it. She told everybody about it until they were sick and tired of hearing it – or that was how Elsie felt, for she had heard it three times and each time it grew in the telling. She was given to understand that these young neighbours of Rose’s that she set such store by were angels in disguise. The thoughtfulness, the consideration – those were the qualities Rose harped on about. Elsie thought it the daftest idea she had ever heard of – an outing to a zoo at their age and on a freezing March day and with Stanley only a few weeks out of hospital. As for the absurdity of having a picnic, well. No matter how much Rose went on about the novelty, and the steaming hot soup and the crunchy hot buttered French bread, Elsie could not accept that it had been in the least enjoyable. What amazed her was Rose’s wilful distortion of the facts – Rose, who so prided herself on frankness and plain speaking. Whipsnade Zoo was only twenty-odd miles away and Elsie knew the weather didn’t vary that much. The day had been freezing, frosty and freezing, with a cold, clinging mist. All right, the mist had lifted and the sun shone, but it was a March sun, no warmth in it at all. It was unbelievable that it had been so hot in the sheltered dip beside the kangaroos that they’d loosened their coats. And apart from anything else, what about the driving? What about the Mr that Rose had sworn she would never go on? Some people forgot things very quickly.

  Rose knew, of course, how Elsie felt and made allowances for her. Elsie was jealous and jealousy was a terrible thing. She couldn’t bear the Orams to have been so kind, she wanted to be the only one who was kind. Well, she had been. She’d given them a nice day too – not as spectacular as the brilliant one at Whipsnade but very nice all the same, just somehow more conventional, more the sort of outing you’d expect. Elsie and George had no imagination but you couldn’t blame them for that. Who, on the face of it, would think an old couple would like a winter picnic at a zoo? No, Elsie’s outing was more what anyone would have thought their cup of tea – a drive to Kew Gardens and a look in the greenhouses and then a drive to Richmond and a look at the river and tea in a very good-class hotel, then back to Elsie’s and an evening watching colour television. No conversation at all. Bits of chat about Dolores but nothing to get your teeth into, nothing like the talk they had with Alice and Tony. Rose knew she would treasure the talk more than anything, especially the arguing.

  They had argued, Alice and her against Stanley and Tony, a real set-to. Nobody had got upset, nobody had shouted or been unpleasant, they’d all abided by the rules of debate, but no punches had been pulled. Ding-dong all the time. She’d been pleased with Stanley’s performance. He’d been most intelligent in his remarks. The young people had listened very respectfully and she could tell they were impressed. She’d been pleased with her own showing too, though she worried that she might have sounded more violent than she felt. Anyway, she didn’t care. It had been so lovely not just having pleasantries thrown at you. People were full of meaningless pleasantries towards the old, they thought that was enough – and if they did go any further they handled you so carefully, that was the most insulting thing of all. You weren’t worthy of combat once you were over sixty, not unless you were someone famous like Malcolm Muggeridge. If you were just an ordinary old person nobody bothered to find out what you thought.

  Rose would have liked, when she tuned in to her memories of this day, to have been able to go over the argument in detail. It worried her dreadfully that she couldn’t for the life of her remember what it had been about. She was ashamed she couldn’t remember the main topic. If only she could ask Stanley he would trigger her memory off and it would all come back, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask him. Having to do that would nullify the whole experience. How could she relish the intellectual content of that day if it had apparently made so little impression on her brain that it couldn’t retain it? It was too humiliating. She preferred to cling onto the certain knowledge that something worthwhile had been discussed than run the risk of finding out it had all been about nothing.

  Stanley, she knew, had enjoyed it as much as she had, if for different reasons. It was difficult to make him see that the idea of a young couple taking an old couple out for the day was at all startling. Stanley saw nothing revolutionary about it and did not quite grasp Rose’s point. He accepted other people’s effort so easily, that was his trouble. But he had been grateful and it was he who had invited the Oram family for tea the following Sunday. Rose’s heart had leapt in the old way when she heard him, but she had managed to back him up and sound convincing and squash her apprehension which was still real enough to make her dizzy. He was quite right. Hospitality must be extended and on a grand scale and at once. There was no reason whatsoever why not. They had no secrets from the Orams – who knew how shabby and dull their house was. Nothing would be a revelation, and she didn’t need to feel they didn’t really want to come because if they found their company boring they wouldn’t have asked them out for the day.

  All week Rose worked hard in preparation for the tea. She spring-cleaned the house, paying particular attention to the bathroom and lavatory. If they stayed a couple of hours, as they were bound to, these areas would be visited and they must be spotless. She felt some of her former resentment as she cleaned them – those places were so old-fashioned. Nowhere was the contrast between Alice’s house and hers more stark than in this area. She loved the lavatory in their house. Everything was white – white basin, white pedestal, white tiles on the floor, white paint on the walls, all so hygienic and pure and what a lavatory should be. It always smelt fresh and airy and faintly antiseptic, whereas her own, no matter how many bottes of bleach she poured into the bowl, always smelled funny – fusty and earthy and generally not clean. But it was clean, she knew it was, scrupulously clean, it was just that it was old and probably lined with rust or something. She hated the clangy old chain you pulled – Alice’s had a button – and the green paint and the old dark wooden seat and the brown pipes everywhere. She really had to take a firm hold on herself to stop getting upset.

  About the tea itself she had fewer worries. She baked three kinds of cake, made her own biscuits and boiled her own ham which she was going to have on the table on the big oval plate with the willow pattern. The ham wasn’t really an extravagance for she and Stanley would live off it for weeks. Well, a week. There were lots of things you could do with cooked ham and the soup at the end would be delicious. Pea soup with ham stock took some beating. She almost made soup but decided it was too heavy for tea time, and then there were such a lot of plates involved with soup. She wanted to be sure she could cope without getting flustered.

  It all went off very well. They couldn’t have been more appreciative, and what a tea they had eaten! It was a good job she hadn’t been counting on the ham for it took a beating. Stanley carved it beautifully in long thin slices, just a rim of white round each. Tony Oram had six and Alice four and even little Amy managed a whole one to herself. She was glad, of course. She hated people to pick at their food, she liked hearty eaters. When Alice remonstrated with Tony she was fulsome in his praise. The cakes vanished too and really the only thing they left was the jelly and custard at the end which had been made for Amy. Afterwards they retired to the sitting-room and played games – I-spy, that kind of thing. Stanley had kept
looking towards the television set but knew better than to put his longing into words. They’d finished off with a glass of sherry and then they’d gone home: a success, but very tiring. She could hardly clean up the mess afterwards, she felt so drained. It wasn’t the work, it was the strain of having guests. She shouldn’t have felt any strain but she did, she didn’t feel natural, not yet. She’d found herself watching for things going wrong all the time and couldn’t really relax. She kept jumping up to go and get some missing item from the table and then overdoing the apologies that it had been missing in the first place. Not the way to behave, but there you are. She half thought of confessing these feelings to Alice the next Wednesday morning but stopped herself just in time. It would only be embarrassing.

  The Wednesday morning sessions were now a firm fixture, and so was the once a week babysitting. In addition, Rose had Amy in on her own when Alice went shopping on Tuesday morning, and also took her out for a walk on Monday afternoons when Alice’s sister Laura came. Altogether, it was a full week. Elsie was right to comment that they were getting very thick. What Elsie didn’t understand was that any services rendered were reciprocal and that there was no obligation on either side. Rose liked looking after Amy, she was glad to give Alice a break after all she’d done for her. The girl never took advantage which was what Elsie couldn’t see – Alice was always scrupulous to ask, every time, if it was convenient to have Amy, convenient to babysit and Rose was always scrupulous to say, ‘Are you expecting me?’ when she went for coffee. They had the ideal relationship, they were what neighbourliness was about. Rose, standing in her garden the first real spring day, looked towards next door with her head high and a smile on her face. She looked forward to summer and chats over the wall and Amy in sight and hearing every day. There was nothing – or only a very little thing – to mar her pleasure.

  ‘I can’t stand it any longer.’ Tony felt justified in being more emphatic than he normally allowed himself to be, even if it brought down on his head the kind of long-winded discussion he went a long way to avoid. ‘It’s driving me completely and utterly mad. If you don’t get somebody else just every now and again I’ll never go out again. What’s the point? If we have a bad evening it makes it a million times worse having it dragged out another hour, and if we have a good evening it spoils it totally. And Amy sleeps now – when did she last wake up? Since she was two she’s slept like a log.’ He was standing at the window of their new grand sitting-room on the first floor. ‘There’s the Stewarts out again – no problems. They go out about four times a week, no fuss, twenty pence an hour and goodbye when they put their key in the front door. That’s what I want.’

  ‘We’re very lucky to have the Pens,’ Alice said, ‘they’re very good to us.’

  ‘Bloody hell – they’re good to us – we run a one-man charity for them. When I think of the endless bloody boring hours – days – I’ve put in amusing them to please you – you’re raving. They’re not good to us – it’s the most one-sided business I’ve ever come across. Look, what would happen if we went out of the Pens’ lives – what, eh? Total collapse, the light going out, whatever you like. What would happen if they went out of ours? Relief, that’s all I’d feel, bloody relief.’

  Alice carried on ironing. She knew he didn’t like her ironing in the evenings but Amy was so dangerous to have around when irons were on and there were so many other things to do when she had her nap.

  ‘The point is,’ Tony was saying, more patiently, ‘you don’t like it either, do you?’

  She kept quiet, sweeping the iron across the wrinkled sheets and folding them with great precision.

  ‘She gets on your nerves,’ Tony went on. ‘You’re so careful with her the strain exhausts you. I just don’t know why you bother.’

  ‘We’ve had all this before,’ Alice said.

  ‘True. But you’re getting more and more involved with them, you can’t do what you want any more – there are so many trumped-up reasons for leaning on the Pendleburys, you’ve worked so hard to make them feel indispensable you’ve come to believe they are.’ He stopped and looked at her, then took the iron out of her hands. ‘Stop ironing. Sit down. You look like a bloody drudge.’

  ‘Well I’m not.’

  ‘Let’s go out and have a meal. I’m going to go and ask that au pair girl the Stewarts have if she’ll come in for a couple of hours.’

  ‘We can’t – it would hurt Mrs Pendlebury’s feelings dreadfully.’

  ‘Why? For God’s sake – she can’t take offence because we ask somebody else in to babysit, what the hell has that got to do with her?’

  ‘She thinks she does it to give me a break, but if we get somebody else then we could always get somebody else and not need her.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘We can’t, it’s not worth it.’

  ‘But I want to go.’

  ‘I’ve got a perfectly good meal ready.’

  ‘Keep it for tomorrow. Please, Alice. It’s ages since we just went out without any fuss. After September we’ll hardly get out again anyway. I’m going to ask that girl.’

  She let him go, out of weakness. The truth was she never wanted to go out enough. Even working herself up to go out when the Pens came in was an effort – and yet once out, she enjoyed it, it was good for her. And as Tony said, after September when the new baby was born, they would hardly get out at all They must make the most of their comparative freedom, before they were back to three-hourly feeds. She dressed in something Tony liked and tried to stimulate some enthusiasm. She wasn’t fair to him. Charlotte was always reading her little lectures on keeping herself young and fresh and lively for her husband. This, according to Charlotte, meant not doing any housework or cooking or other demeaning tasks – demeaning to the body and the intelligence – but getting other people to do them so that you remained beautifully preserved for your husband. It was useful to be able to say to her that they couldn’t afford chars or au pairs, but it was a cheat to get out of the argument that way. She was always teasing Tony and saying wouldn’t you like to be married to Charlotte? – teasing because he couldn’t stand her. She was the epitome of the middle-class graduate wife that he loathed. He had only to see her, in all her six o’clock finery, lolling on a chaise-longue in the drawing-room windows, Sam safely with an au pair girl, glass of sherry in her hand, ears pricked for dear Richard to enter, to maintain he wanted to vomit. Alice thought she could well remind him of that if he spent the rest of the evening nagging her.

  But he didn’t. They went to an Italian restaurant near by and had a meal and she had to admit it was relaxing and enjoyable. Usually they were so keen to get the most out of the Pendleburys that they crammed a film and a meal into the time and ruined both.

  ‘Did you know,’ she said over the coffee, ‘the Pendleburys have a flat on top of their house.’

  ‘They can have a penthouse for all I care.’

  ‘Their son, Frank, the one in Australia, used to live up there with his own little kitchen and it’s all equipped.’

  ‘You fancy moving in, do you?’

  ‘Don’t you think,’ she went on, ignoring his attempt at facetiousness, ‘that it might be a good idea to get them to rent it to Jane?’

  He said nothing at all, just looked at her until she blushed and bent her head.

  ‘You won’t be able to ignore her,’ she said, ‘we’ll have to have her to stay. In fact, I’m surprised your mother hasn’t pointed out we have enough room for her to live with us. It might be very clever to forestall that.’

  ‘It might also be very foolish, and bring all kinds of things down on our innocent heads. I don’t like Jane, you don’t like Jane, Jane doesn’t like me and she certainly doesn’t like you. To invite her to live next door would be ridiculous.’

  ‘She is your sister.’

  ‘That doesn’t make me responsible for her welfare. If she comes to London it’s under her own steam.’

  ‘Your mother thinks –’

&n
bsp; ‘I don’t care what my mother thinks.’

  ‘But you do. You do care what your mother thinks, even if you don’t like her either. She only has to get on your back and you can’t get her off it.’

  ‘I might if you’d let me.’

  ‘It was like that long before I ever appeared on the scene.’

  ‘But I was just about to break away.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘I really would have done, I’d have emigrated.’

  ‘Like Frank.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Frank Pendlebury, he emigrated.’

  ‘Sensible bloke. I’m not surprised. If Mrs Pendlebury was my mother not even you would have stopped me emigrating.’

  ‘I bet she was a marvellous mother, you’ve got her all wrong. She’s not in the least like your mother, she’s got a spirit of adventure about her.’

  ‘That wine went to your head.’

  ‘Yes, it did, it always does when I’m pregnant.’

  She looked very pretty, flushed and soft, her cheeks full of curves and hollows.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he said. ‘No big bad wolf tonight.’

  ‘You’re very unkind.’

  They didn’t discuss Jane any more, but by the time the following Wednesday came round Alice had made up her mind to ask Mrs Pendlebury if Jane could have their flat. The more she thought about it, the more attractive the idea seemed. If Jane was next door she wouldn’t ever need to stay the night. She would be distinctly useful for babysitting – Amy liked her if nobody else did – and she was not the sort of person who would hang about them. That was not her technique. When she came to see them it was always resentfully, a visit she imagined was a duty one to keep her mother quiet. Alice knew Mrs Oram pushed Jane into it with her ‘Haven’t you been to see Amy this week?’ and then she felt obliged to come and to stay. She was a funny girl. They were a funny family, not at all Alice’s idea of what a family should be. No bonds except blood seemed to unite them and yet none of them broke free. Each of the three grumbled about maintaining contact with the others and yet they all did. Alice wished she’d known Tony’s father, for whose memory they all seemed to have great admiration. Daddy had been dead ten years yet they all constantly referred to Daddy approving or not approving of something.