by Jane Gardam
There was an uneasy, negative movement, a slight sliding away of eyes.
‘Not yet, thank you.’
‘How will we know her—the niece? She’s quite young, isn’t she?’ said Fanny. ‘She sounded quite young in the letter. I suppose she’s a great-niece. How are we going to know her? I mean, any of these women might be nieces,’ she looked about, ‘eating their lunch.’
‘Well, a lot of people are nieces. And eat lunch. We have been nieces—’
‘Not primarily,’ said Fanny. ‘We were never primarily nieces. All these women look primarily nieces. It’s very depressing. It’s rather a test when you think about it—looking a niece. Dench herself for instance would never have looked a niece. Mr. Salteena would never have fallen for a niece. We don’t look nieces—’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Lady Benson, munching a roll.
‘Well, I dare say we’ll spot Niece Dench,’ said Mabel. ‘I believe I once saw her as a matter of fact. I went to East Molesey to see Denchie—oh, seven or eight years ago. She must have let me in. A nice little woman. I expect she’ll come back to me. There was masses of ironing about.’
‘Ironing?’
‘Yes. On airers. You know those old-fashioned standing airers. All round the sitting room. Beautiful ironing it was—I remembered the smell—lovely warm clean clothes, and Denchie in a bed in the corner. She did look small.’
‘Yes. I think she must be a very good sort of woman, the niece.’
Fanny said uncertainly, ‘I suppose that’s what she meant about a nursing home,’ but Mabel said, ‘Oh, come on—Dench was no trouble. And she ate like a bird. Don’t you remember in the War? If ever we got anything on the Black Market and there wasn’t enough to go round Dench never minded being left out. There were some eggs once—it was when we were in Lincolnshire and she was cook-house-keeping—six beautiful eggs and we had them boiled for a treat. There were Humph and I and the children and some child staying—little Polly Knox. D’you remember? Pretty baby thing—Dench adored her. Seven of us and only six eggs and someone said, “What about Dench?” Polly Knox said, “You can have half mine, Denchie”—and Dench said straightaway, “Thank you, dear, but I don’t take eggs.”’
‘She used to say that about cream in the War, “No thank you, I don’t take cream. Not since Canada.”’
‘She’d been a hero in Canada, you know. Nursed a typhoid case nobody else would touch—and caught it and nearly died. She’d volunteered—it was in all the Canadian papers. It was while we were over there. She got flowers from all over the place. Rather marvellous for her—except for being so delicate afterwards, no cream and so forth. Oh and having no money—otherwise she had a pretty good life I’d say, Denchie. I wonder if she had the OAP—I never paid her stamp, did you?’
‘No.’
They fell silent. No niece appeared. The waiter drew closer holding pencil and pad.
‘D’you think we should have sherry?’ said Fanny.
‘All right. All right, yes. She’s very late. We’ll have sherry. Three sherries please. Very dry and—well what about ordering some wine? I mean this is to be a tribute, isn’t it—instead of the first idea of putting something in the paper. More lavish. And romantic. And very much nicer for us. I want to do it properly. I want the niece to feel we’ve done things properly. Do they have half bottles?’
‘We can’t order wine,’ said Nelly, ‘until we know what the niece is going to eat.’
The sherries came as they considered. Lady Benson decided she had lost her shopping-bag, then, finding it, wondered if she had time to go downstairs to the Food Halls for a pound of Finnan Haddock which though expensive was more certain than in Notting Hill not to be coloured cod.
Dissuaded by the others she sat on, and at last when the niece was more than half an hour late they ordered.
‘It seems,’ said Mabel to the waiter, ‘that our friend is not coming. We will have three chicken à la king.’
‘Anything to start with, madam?’
‘No thank you.’
‘Vegetables?’
‘Er—perhaps a green salad.’
‘I’d like vegetables,’ said Lady Benson. ‘I seldom seem to eat vegetables.’ But a chill stare from Mabel sent him off.
‘D’you remember the lovely vegetables in Hong Kong?’ said Nelly. ‘They used to fly the lettuces from America.’
‘That was Jamaica.’
‘Do you get vegetables, Fanny?’
Fanny said they had good Brussels sprouts.
‘I don’t see any point in spending money,’ said Mabel, ‘if the niece isn’t here.’
‘We were never in Jamaica,’ Nelly said. ‘Nor Africa. I’m glad to say we never had to go through Africa, Charles was always too senior.’
‘I can’t see how he can always have been too senior.’
‘The place none of us ever got to,’ said Mabel, ‘senior or otherwise, was South America. D’you know that Dench knew South America? Very well. I first found her in Jamaica on her way back from Buenos Aires sitting all by herself at a table at The Mona—eating lettuce, I dare say. Perhaps Brussels sprouts. I thought, what a charming little woman and how sad she looks. I suppose she’d just left Salteena.
‘So fragile. So sad. Not a bean. The children took to her and I thought well, she might be just the thing, and I took her on. And that was over forty years ago.’
‘Devoted,’ said Fanny. ‘Utterly reliable.’
‘More than the niece,’ said Mabel, looking towards the door where a dazzling woman had just come in wearing a tightly-belted Persian lamb jacket with mink lapels. Her long legs wore long grey suede boots. Her coat and skirt said Paris. Not young, she made youth seem a triviality.
‘Not,’ said Mabel, ‘that I ever felt we were real favourites with Dench!’
Fanny said, ‘I thought you were. I never really felt we were. She talked of your children all the time.’
‘To us she talked of yours.’
‘She never talked to anyone about mine,’ said Lady Benson, ‘and neither did I.’
‘Used to send her good presents though,’ she added. ‘Pound of tea at Christmas. When we were in Ceylon.’
‘The child she really did love more than the rest was that child Polly Knox,’ said Mabel, ‘the one who tried to share the egg.’
‘Yes, but then that was an easy child. My word she was a clever girl, too. She did do well for herself.’
‘Yes—Charles and I paid to go over that place once. Chateau. They weren’t there. Somewhere else in another chateau I dare say. Rolling. My dear, that woman is coming over to this table. You don’t think it could be the niece?’
‘Not if the niece is bringing presents. This one’s not carrying presents.’
A uniformed chauffeur, however, walked behind with parcels and they both approached. The woman, who looked more beautiful as she came nearer, spread Persian-lambed arms and cried, ‘Dears!’
The three ladies sat like rocks.
‘I’m so terribly sorry. We found it so difficult to park. Chetwode couldn’t stay with the car because of the parcels. I’m so fearfully late. Oh I do hope you haven’t waited. Oh good—you haven’t. Thank you, Chetwode, just here on the window-sill. I’m afraid they’re nothing. She said in the will you were to have mememtoes, but she had so little. You’d not believe how little. So few possessions. There—well—’ She looked round. The chauffeur melted. Her hair was the colour of very pale sunshine, her eyes enormous, clear and contrite. She took off her gloves and revealed beautiful long-fingered hands which she first clasped and then undid and waved about.
‘Champagne,’ she cried. The head-waiter who had come close came closer. ‘Champagne. We are here to celebrate,’ she told him, ‘the life, the happy life of the dearest, dearest old— No I won’t call this an In Memoriam. Denchie couldn
’t bear going on about the past. She had the happiest life and she died peacefully and thinking about us all. A good dry—yes that one. Number six.’
Mabel said faintly that she was very glad about Dench’s happiness. Nelly Benson said nothing and Fanny Soane shut her eyes and opened them again.
The niece. The niece so good at ironing.
‘I believe she talked of you three,’ said the niece leaning forward, ‘more than anyone else. Day after day, year in year out. All the places she had seen through you and how you rescued her, Mrs. Ince, when she was in very low water and let her have an absolutely free hand with all your children—let her nurse them when they were ill. And even grandchildren, Lady Benson.’
Bewildered at being recognised and so warmly, and unable to keep her eyes off the niece’s sapphire and diamond ring Mabel said stiffly, ‘We grew to rely on her very much.’ Lady Benson began to say that Dench knew her pl—, but stopped to watch the niece’s easy greeting of the champagne and the arrangements to make the bill for it separate and hers. Fanny watching the niece draw from her silky handbag a silky tenner said that all three had known Dench for a very great number of years. Probably better than anyone else. The quality of the niece’s pale silk shirt made her flush suddenly with fury (By God, nursing homes!).
‘Dench was an excellent servant,’ she said.
The niece raised her glass. ‘To Dench,’ she said.
They drank.
‘D’you remember The Times?’ said the niece.
‘Only just. We gave up our idea of that sort of tribute. The Telegraph is somewhat not—’
‘No, no—I mean Dench and The Times? How she wrapped herself in The Times all the way from Perth when there was no room for her with you in the first class and there was no heating in those days in the thirds?’
‘I don’t think—’ said Mabel.
‘I never really believed in that frost-bite business,’ said Fanny.
‘Do you remember the roses?’ said the niece.
Nobody remembered the roses.
‘I think it was one of your daughters, Lady Benson, when Denchie had been looking after Simon and Sara and Simon kicked her. Your daughter said, “Denchie, you must have some roses” and took the secateurs and a basket and led her out into the gardens and cut three. Three roses—wasn’t it priceless? D’you remember those gardens—there were two thousand rose trees. One of the sights of Persia. Oh how Denchie laughed!’
‘I don’t suppose,’ said Nelly Benson, ‘that Dench had much room for displaying roses.’
‘Oh no. No, no of course not. She was in the attics. She wasn’t minding. It just made us both laugh.’
‘I felt personally very sorry,’ said Mabel after a moment, ‘about the business of the nursing home. I would have liked to help Dench, even taken her myself for a week or two, just to help the family out. But we were abroad.’
‘Oh, but she refused. Didn’t you know? You mustn’t worry. It was all arranged for the nursing home without your kind help but she was so miserable. She said, “Oh do let me stay at home.” She liked being in the sitting room. So of course we let her. I promise you she never knew you had been asked.’
Lady Benson who had let the Dr Scholl’s stray under the table tried to retrieve them and said, ‘She always had my shoes. It’s the thing I miss most if you want to know—good shoes.’
‘The shoes are still there,’ said the niece. ‘Rows and rows. They are very old-fashioned but if you wished I could let you have them back I’m sure. Dear Denchie never wore them—they were too big, though she was a lamb and I’m sure she never told you.’
‘And these,’ she said stretching out to the window-sill (the waiters leapt) ‘are the little mementoes—all I could find and I do feel so sorry, just little brass things, Benares trays, a hand bell, an elephant’s foot—it could be adapted as a boot scraper.’
They held their gifts.
‘It is very good of you to bother,’ said Mabel at last, ‘to bring them all this way.’ The full horror of the presents had made her turn quite pink. Pink with triumph. She knew that had she discovered Dench to have had anything really—
‘I feel very honoured,’ she said. ‘To think that this sort of thing was all she had. All Denchie had.’
‘Well, except for the money,’ said the niece.
‘Money?’
‘Yes. The South America money. Mr. Salteena’s money as we children used to call him.’
‘Did he leave her—? You mean he did exist?’
‘Oh yes. Mr. Salteena existed. He left her four hundred.’
‘Oh but how nice!’
‘Thousand, that is. He left her four hundred thousand. She left two hundred thousand of it to me and the other two hundred thousand to her niece.’
‘You,’ said Lady Benson with a void and wallowing noise in the throat. ‘You then are not the niece?’
‘The niece! Darling, darling Lady Benson—didn’t I say? Didn’t you recognise me? Oh dear I thought you’d recognise me. I was fussed being late. Oh how silly! I forgot to say—the niece said no. She couldn’t face it, she said, not Harrods. And—the money’s not altered her a bit—she said she had the ironing.’
‘But who then—?’ said Mabel.
‘Well, but I’m Polly Knox. You must remember me. I’m Polly Knox. I’ve never lost touch with Dench. She left me half and I’ve been astounded and quite speechless ever since. He only died a short time before she did, Mr. Salteena, but she was absolutely in her right mind and all that, when she heard. She quite understood. Her niece said she just lay there in bed with the solicitor’s letter on the counterpane and she smiled. And she said—to the niece—the niece told me—she’s very straight and she told me this—she said, “Why Polly Knox, Auntie?” and Denchie said and, well, we’ve all been wondering what on earth she meant, she said—’
‘What did she say?’ asked Mabel Ince with unmoving lips.
‘Well, she said a funny thing. She said, “Tell Polly she shall have half my egg.”
THE PIG BOY
Veronica smelled the pig boy before she saw him and the smell was the essence of her loathing and hatred of Hong Kong.
A wet, grey, bad-tempered, blowy day and cold. She was wearing a new warm jersey under her white summer suit. Back at the hotel were all the thin summer clothes she had brought with her, still unworn. She had felt the room-boy’s disdain as he unpacked them. Here was a first-time-out wife. She didn’t know a thing. Didn’t know that as late as March it could be cold and wet and bleak. Colder than England.
Colder than Barnes, she thought. She had left London with the grass on Barnes Common brightening and long and all the candles shining on the avenue of chestnuts that crosses the pretty railway line. London had had the smell of summer—airy and fresh. Here there was grit in the air and rubbish blew about the streets like rags.
Her husband was at work. He would be at work tonight until eight o’clock. Then there would be the usual drinks party. Perhaps two parties. Then the usual meal in a restaurant with friends. Then the usual wander in the streets among the stalls. Then bed. At the weekend—her last weekend—the firm had offered them a hired car.
But it wasn’t being much of a holiday, alone all day. Well, of course it was not meant to be a holiday. She was just there. There as a wife. A brought-out wife, paid for by Geoffrey’s firm. She was to be brought-out (tourist class) every six months for a few weeks until he finished the job. Like most other wives with husbands working abroad she was safety-valve procedure against executive breakdown.
The air must be full of flying wives, thought Veronica—airlines to Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Colombo, heavy with wives flying husbandwards: oil wives, lawyers’ wives, army wives—complacent on the journey out, glum or tense or relieved on the flight home again, leaving their husbands not necessarily to any great amusement. Geoffrey had said
, ‘Look round. Look at all the men sitting eating alone. Not exactly the glossy life, is it?’ ‘Yes—my wife’s at home,’ said the husbands. ‘No—well she can’t really. Children’s education.’ Or, ‘No. She can’t. She has her job. No, it’s not much fun, but it’s not forever. You learn to manage.’
And the world was full of people pitying the wives, thought Veronica. In Barnes the drinks parties glittered with sharp eyes—if you were lucky enough to be invited to any without a man. ‘Yes, I’m married,’ you said, ‘my husband’s working in Hong Kong. Oh yes—but I do get out there you know. Several weeks twice a year.’
‘That sounds terrible.’
‘It’s very usual. Very usual nowadays. After all, it’s not new. Look at army wives and sailors’ wives—they’ve always done it. One’s independent after all.’
‘Not much fun though.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
The guarded look behind the eyes which said, ‘Is she faithful? I’ll bet she’s not. I’ll bet he’s not either. Asking too much—alone six months of the year.’
Then would come the invitation—or no invitation. Whichever happened, it was insulting.
And for Veronica, even in the liberated streets of Barnes, staying at home was harder to explain than for many because she had no children. Being a painter she could have worked anywhere.
‘No—we have no children.’
‘Don’t you think of being with him then?’
‘Oh—I think I’d hate Hong Kong. And there are things here I can’t really leave.’
‘What is it she can’t leave?’ they thought. ‘She’s probably just found that she could never really stand him. There’s probably trouble. I wonder what her lover’s like?’
But there was no lover and there had never been trouble, and it was a surprise to find that when she arrived in Hong Kong this first time she found herself thinking, ‘What if he’s changed? What if I don’t like him?’ Dazed still by the idiot film she had watched on the flight and a couple of magazines the woman sitting next to her had loaned her, she thought, ‘I wonder what his woman’s like? Chinese? They’re very pretty. Doting, too. Everyone will know about her except me. They’ll think nothing of it. It’s the custom of the job, the times. Probably always was. Insane to be chaste. I wonder why I am?’
