We talked of this and that over the pâté, and that and this over the canard à l’orange. You would never think we were both dieting and used to nothing more at midday than a lettuce leaf.
She waited – very subtle, Mother – until we had chosen from the trolley with its silent crème brûlée, its pyramid of profiteroles weeping chocolate tears. The waiter had come and gone before she said: ‘You are going to marry Wallace?’
I really didn’t want to upset her. I knew that it hadn’t been intentional that I was an only child, but then it really wasn’t my fault either that she pinned all her too-high hopes on me. I could not complain. She had reared me splendidly and unstintingly, then given me my head from the age of eighteen. She did, she really did, what she thought was her very best not to interfere in my life.
‘I’m in love with Clive,’ I said. Just to say it brought back the warmth, the tenderness, the feel of him, and made me grow weak at the knees.
‘He’s very charming,’ she said, sure she was playing her cards right. To condemn outright would be foolish. ‘But he’s years older than you, and besides, he’s been married before.’
She made him sound shop-soiled, which I presume in her eyes he was. ‘Besides, it’s a very up and down way to earn a living.’
There was nothing I wanted more than to go up and down with Clive.
‘With Wallace,’ she said, ‘you wouldn’t have to worry. There’s the house in Chester Square and the place in the country … Chester Square is perfect, his mother tells me, furnished to the last teaspoon. You wouldn’t have to have one of those ghastly wedding lists …’
I dug my fork into the profiteroles as I listened to her singing the praises of Wallace, who was as utterly suitable as the blue, structured gabardine suits of the old days that I never, but never, wore. She was carrying on about Scotland and winter sports while I thought of Clive and St Trop. Wallace never went to the sun at all as it brought him out in prickly heat.
I pushed my plate away and decided it was time to make my position absolutely clear. That I was no longer sixteen or eighteen and quite capable of making up my own mind.
‘I’m going to marry Clive,’ I said in a voice that could be heard six tables away.
She put down her spoon on the crème brûlée and looked at me as if she hadn’t really heard aright.
‘But Wallace …’ she said.
I had to remind myself that the days of the old dressing-room struggles, the shopping expeditions, were well and truly over. There were no more arrows in her quiver, no more tiny persuasive darts in her armoury.
I looked at her and realised she was biting back not only the tears but the desire to get her way at all costs as she had in the old days. Poor Mother; I took her hand, as the realisation finally dawned that a husband was not something you could select, just like that, and wrap up in a paper bag. There was no salesgirl she could appeal to, no instinct of appeasement in myself. It was no longer a question of cheesecloth versus gabardine and not the slightest use her offering to pay half.
The Man Who Understood Women
1976
He stood on the platform at Victoria inhaling its particular and unmistakable smell, indistinguishable to the outside eye from a hundred other commuters. He was not even remarkable by the fact that he was wearing odd socks, one grey, one almost grey but actually slate-blue. It was, after all, Monday, not the best of days and the mornings still exceedingly dark; there was not one of them on which he did not regret the economy he had practised in neglecting to have a light that would come on as you opened the door inside his custom-built wardrobe. At the time it had seemed the very epitome of extravagance – he liked comfort but not ostentation – but each winter morning as he selected socks and shirt and tie and pants and tried to distinguish dark-navy from light-navy he cursed himself for his short-sightedness. A considerate man, he did not like to put the main light on in the bedroom for fear of waking Veronica, who was not at her best in the early hours. He would rather rummage and peer, attempting to distinguish blue from green, and curse inwardly, as he equipped himself each morning fittingly for the City. Some men he knew, several in fact, expected their wives to be up at the same time as they, to awaken them even with tea, and to prepare breakfast before they left. He did not consider this fair. Just because he had to get out of bed at a quarter to seven Monday to Friday he did not see why Veronica should. True, he would have liked her company in the mornings before he left but he was perfectly capable of squeezing an orange and boiling an egg and he could see no reason why she should be deprived of her sleep. Each morning, therefore, he bathed and dressed with the very minimum of noise, glancing occasionally at the familiar sleeping figure, beneath the duvet in which they had recently invested, on the right-hand side of the bed.
It was damp but not cold. ‘Temperatures higher than normal’ the forecast had said as he waited for his egg to boil. For once they were right. The platform gleamed with surface moisture but there was none of the foot-stamping, arm-swinging bitterness that came with the icy weather and brought with it the annual desire to move further into town.
He glanced at the headlines in the evening paper allowing his eyes to wander no further. If he gobbled up the nightly ration of news now, on the platform, there would be nothing left to nourish him on the train, to while away the minutes from Victoria to Haywards Heath. As it was, there was only one paper instead of two. The economy had been brought about by the recent inflation, the mess into which the country was getting itself, and the need for everyone to tighten his belt. It was not easy. Having established standards, one was bound to keep them up even though it appeared to get daily more and more difficult. With the purchase of one evening paper only Brian Kingsley felt that he was doing his bit, particularly since the paper he chose was not the one he preferred for its presentation of the news but the one in which Veronica liked to attempt the crossword puzzle. The balance of current affairs could, he felt, be put right in front of the twenty-two-inch colour television set at nine o’clock. It was not a large sacrifice.
‘Evening, Brian.’
‘Evening, Eric.’
Eric, he knew without looking, would not be wearing odd socks, not indeed because he had an interior light in his cupboard but because he was married to Helen who was a paragon of all the virtues but whom Eric, as everyone agreed, treated abominably.
For Eric there was no do-it-yourself morning egg, no teak-Formica breakfast bar on which to rest his elbows.
Eric breakfasted in the dining room, sugared his grapefruit from an antique silver caster, one of a pair, and had his coffee, first and second cups, poured into the Minton cup by Helen, already made-up. Never, he boasted, had he so much as opened the fridge, unless of course to get at the ice, which reproduced itself endlessly in a special compartment at the top. No wonder, Brian thought, Helen always looked so miserable. By 6 a.m. she had laid out Eric’s tie and suit and shirt, together with his clean underwear and matching socks and, suitably house-gowned, was prepared to sit at the breakfast table with him, making scintillating conversation. He was not surprised that, as rumour in Haywards Heath had it, she had a lover in Brighton from which she was no more than a short ride on the train on which she was frequently seen. What a pig. What a male chauvinist pig, as the current phrase had it, to expect his wife to rise at an unearthly hour, winter and summer, just because he had to, seemed utterly unreasonable. He was living in the past, Eric was, when there had been maids and cooks and other hired help for people in his position. He seemed unaware that these had given way to automatic juicers and electric toasters and coffee pots and that it was no great chore to throw a few switches in the mornings. Brian would not have been at all surprised to discover that he even expected the long-suffering Helen to polish his shoes.
On the 7.05 a.m. to Victoria and the 6 p.m. to Haywards Heath they often discussed their wives. Usually, wary of what they might reveal, in jocular fashion. It was surprising how many men expected their womenfolk to be rays
of sunshine, pillars of support, each and every day. They seemed not to be aware, as Brian was, of the very nature of the species; that life these days was hard for women, a continuing hassle with bills and supermarkets and accumulations of tiny frustrations to do with children and plumbers and truculent machinery which a sympathetic ear could do much to mitigate. Brian did not expect, as many of the others did when he came home in the evenings, for the outpourings of the day’s events over the Martinis to be one-sided. Unlike Eric, who considered happenings outside the Stock Exchange to ‘be of little importance’, Brian was aware that within the three-quarter-acre boundaries of The Oaks there could be sufficient happenings in minuscule during the course of a day to cause alarm and despondency, and to require both understanding and sympathy. He saw his home as a business in miniature with Veronica as Managing Director; Eric, he was sure, if he gave any thought whatever to Helen, considered her as some kind of unpaid, unvalued servant, and as such expected her to have neither feelings nor problems.
It was not only his wife whom Brian understood. His powers of empathy extended to his office and its employees. In particular to one Lavinia March for whom he was planning to leave Veronica, his children – now old enough, he felt, to stand on their own feet – and The Oaks and all it entailed.
It was two years now since Lavinia had walked into his office in reply to the advertisement he had placed in The Times after his secretary for the last ten years had retired to care for her old mother in Worthing. Accustomed to being cosseted by a woman of middle age he had been unprepared for a dolly-bird, although it did not come as an altogether unpleasant surprise. Lavinia, although she had legs that went on for ever, hair to her bottom, and translucent green eyes, appeared to have all the necessary business qualifications. With the proviso of a month’s trial Brian decided to give her a chance. He learned gradually that she came from a good but impoverished army family with a place in the country, that she ‘shared’ with two other dollies in Sydney Street, and was engaged to an airline pilot of whom as time went by Brian became more and more jealous. When he was away Brian did his best to sympathise and keep her spirits up. When he came home Brian expressed approval of the new sweater or shoes she generally bought with which to greet him, and let her off early. He did not complain when she arrived late for work after dancing the night away, or on Mondays not at all after a riotous weekend in Paris or Bruges. The airline pilot was more than generous and Lavinia had more bits and baubles to hang round her neck, more handbags and perfume and crocodile notecases than anyone he knew. He considered, however, that she was treated extremely unfairly. It was obvious to anyone that she was crazy about the man whose twisted heart she wore on the fourth finger of her left hand but that he did not treat her well. That he left her for weeks at a time he realised was due to the exigencies of his occupation, but for weeks he did not write or call, left her on tenterhooks as to when he was next going to reappear. It was no way to treat a woman, not, in particular, one so desirable as Lavinia.
He took her out to lunch and encouraged her to discuss her problems. Over caviar or smoked salmon, which she adored, she admitted to him that she hated being left at home for weeks at a time while her fiancé flitted from capital to capital round the world. That she hoped by the time they got married he would have got flying out of his system and settle to a nice job in insurance. That it really was very lonely at times in the shared flat in Sydney Street.
After six months of lunches and drinks after office hours and heart-to-heart talks Brian felt so sorry for her that he decided, on his next business trip, to take her to New York. She agreed with alacrity. He discovered that she liked champagne at mid-morning, to dance all night, and that she was quite remarkable in bed. He bought her a ruby pendant, which buried itself in her cleavage, to commemorate the trip and reminded himself that he was old enough to be her father.
It became a habit. He took her to Amsterdam and Stockholm, to Brussels and Copenhagen. When he did not need her she made herself useful getting the shopping on the list Veronica invariably gave him for each city.
After a year in his employ she gave the airline pilot back his ring and allowed Brian to buy her a tiny flat in World’s End, convenient for Victoria, and a Mini to enable her more quickly to get down to visit her people.
After two years he realised that he could not live without her. He discussed it with Lavinia and discovered that the feeling was mutual, Veronica, of course, was aware of her existence. When she came to the office she made polite conversation with Miss March, whom privately she considered a bit dumb, and on each of the two Christmases she had been working for Brian Veronica selected for her a suitable present. She knew nothing, of course, of the fact that she accompanied Brian on his business trips nor about the flat at World’s End. Only that on two nights a week, and occasionally three, Brian arrived home late and exhausted from clients whom he had to entertain.
Admirable character that she was, Brian knew that she would not take too badly, once the first shock had passed, his decision to leave her. There had been no crisis, during the twenty-five years of their marriage, which she had failed to face up to. Birth, illness, death, four moves of house, impossible stages of the children’s development, there had been nothing that had not only left her undaunted but with enough courage and wisdom to help him too. It had been a partnership in which she had been strong; unlike his impending one with Lavinia who relied on him for every little thing. He had arranged, of course, to leave his wife well provided for. She could remain at The Oaks, which he had put in her name, and she would not have one single financial worry. On that point his conscience was clear. It was clear also on the point that apart from being a good manager as far as the house and children were concerned she did not depend on him in the physical sense. Both before and after the time that he had formed a relationship with Lavinia their sex life had been on the perfunctory side. There was always so much to do in the house and garden and the children wanting this that and the other, that at night time they were both tired and had rather allowed it to lapse.
There would, he felt, be no hardship there, and in time she would most likely marry again.
All in all, he had, he felt, sorted everything out nicely, and was looking forward to his new life. He was selling everything, except for one of the cars, which he would leave for Veronica, and abandoning the rat race.
He had bought a tiny cottage in the country where he and Lavinia would bury themselves. From this love nest he would emerge once a week only to keep an eye on his business, which would run very well without him. Besides, his future needs would be simple. They would grow their own vegetables (not that he knew much about it, it was Veronica who saw to the garden), eat simple, wholesome meals cooked by Lavinia who was learning from a book he had bought her, and travel – if at all – by bicycle, horse-drawn caravan, or canal boat. There would be need for no sophistications such as dishwashers, rotisseries, and waste grinders, which brought their own counter-irritations, and they could live very nicely without the pseudo-pleasures of theatre, restaurant and cinema. In this idyllic milieu he and Lavinia (hair washed in rainwater collected in a butt) would live out the rest of their days. He looked up and down the platform at the rolled umbrellas and bowler hats and felt pity for his fellow-commuters trapped in the nasty mess of their own civilisation.
The customary gang had collected around Eric and himself by the time the train arrived.
They clambered into their usual carriage and put their newspapers on their laps. It was talk till Croydon and after that the newspapers like so many shields up before the eyes until two minutes before Haywards Heath when they were smartly folded and put into identical briefcases.
‘What did you think of the meeting last night?’ Brian asked when the noise of the train pulling out had settled to a steady rhythm.
It was another role he would have to give up. For two years now he had been chairman of the Woody Dene Residents Association to which most of them belonged. Its business w
as to deal with such matters as the private road in which most of them lived with its inevitable trespassers, unlawful parkers and speed fiends; Mrs Reed-Roberts’s frightful habit of chewing up everyone’s grass verge with her abysmal driving; noise after midnight; and the latest and most urgent problem: squirrels.
At the meeting of the previous night a motion had been passed to engage one Mr Nokes, at the cost of several pounds per resident, to eliminate the pests, with which they were all troubled. Regardless of the exclusive nature of Woody Dene itself, or the illustriousness of its inhabitants, they destroyed daffodils and crocuses, lovingly planted, before they saw the light of day, and in summer gobbled up lettuces, beans, and strawberries with reckless abandon. Previously they had all dealt individually with the invaders with their own shotguns but the problem had become worse. There was now no moment when you could look into the garden and fail to see them hopping nimbly up the trees or gambolling playfully on the lawns preparatory to bringing the fruits of weeks of hard labour in the gardens to naught.
‘What about my dogs?’ Eric asked. ‘Wouldn’t like old Nokes taking a pot shot at them.’
‘He has strict instructions,’ Brian said, ‘to ring the bell before entering the gardens and advise the owners to keep their pets inside.’
‘I hope you’ve told him not to call on me,’ Nigel Avery said. ‘Melanie would have a fit.’
‘I can understand her not wanting to have them shot,’ Brian said. ‘Although I consider it selfish and misguided I respect her views. But to actually feed them! Have you explained to her that they’re vermin and the damage they do?’
‘Melanie thinks they’re rather sweet,’ Nigel said. ‘She wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
‘Rats!’ Eric said. ‘That’s all they are. Just happen to have bushy tails.’
The Man Who Understood Women Page 18
