Separate Bedrooms

by Anne Weale

  Next morning at breakfast, he said, ‘I think today we’ll have a look at some furnished apartments where we can live for a few months while we’re getting our permanent home organised.’

  By lunch-time they had looked at three apartments, none of which satisfied him. After lunch, the agent took them to see two houses and the second, in tree-lined Campden Hill, with a pleasant garden behind it, Cal liked and decided to lease.

  ‘I want to move in tomorrow. Can that be arranged?’ he asked the agent.

  That night, their last at the hotel, he said to Antonia, ‘We shall need some staff. I wonder if we can find a Spanish couple? I think for the time being you’d be more at ease with a Spanish woman in the kitchen rather than an English one, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I expect I should, but that would probably mean a Spanish cuisine. Wouldn’t you rather have English food?’

  ‘Spanish, English, French, Indian ... I have a catholic palate. As long as it’s good of its kind, I don’t mind what you put in front of me.’

  While he was speaking, he had picked up the telephone and dialled a number. Then, to her surprise, he offered the receiver to her.

  Taking it from him, she said uncertainly, ‘To whom shall I be speaking?’

  ‘To your mother, if she’s at home.’

  Antonia had sometimes been present when her father had made a call to another country, but she had never spoken on an international line herself, and was astonished and delighted to discover how clear the line was. Her mother was in the house and she had only to close her eyes to feel herself transported to Dona Elena’s boudoir on the first floor.

  Presently Cal indicated that he would like to have a few words with his mother-in-law, after which she had some more conversation. When she had said goodbye, and replaced the receiver, she said, ‘That was a kind thought, Cal. Thank you.’

  ‘I should have thought of it on our first night here. No doubt your mother would have liked to hear that we had arrived in good order. But I expect, she made allowances for the fact that newly-married couples tend to be preoccupied with each other to the exclusion of everyone else.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure she did.’

  For most of the day she had been fairly at ease with him. There had been some periods of unease when the agent had shown them the master bedroom in the various places they had looked at; but on the whole it had been a tranquil day until now when Cal had chosen to remind her of the abnormality of their relationship.

  During the second week of their supposed honeymoon the weather was perfect, and he took her on several expeditions to places he thought would interest her.

  One day they motored into Kent, visiting Chartwell, formerly the home of Sir Winston Churchill, and later returning to London by way of Cobham so that Antonia could see the timber-fronted Leather Bottle inn with its fine collection of Dickens prints. Another day they drove north from the capital to Hatfield Hall where she was fascinated to see a pair of Queen Elizabeth I’s stockings and her garden hat.

  It was May now, and everywhere the trees had put out their tender new leaves, the lilac bushes were in blossom and the hedgerows were foamy with cow parsley. Accustomed to spring in February, Antonia found this second spring in England incomparably fresh and beautiful.

  ‘Yes, this country in May, when the weather’s good, is something to see,’ Cal agreed, when she spoke of it to him. ‘The impact is-greater, of course, because of our long grey winter.’

  The most memorable of these outings—for more than one reason—was the day they drove down to Brighton to see the onion domes and fantastic Chinese interior of the Prince Regent’s seaside palace, the Royal Pavilion. Cal had told her to bring some evening clothes with her as they would be going on to Glyndebourne where evening dress was obligatory. The name meant nothing to her, and it was not until later in the day that he explained that Glyndebourne was the brainchild of John Christie, a science master at Eton whose passion for music had inspired him to build an opera-house on to his ancestral home. For nearly fifty years, every summer from May until August, leading singers and conductors had performed there, making it world-famous among music-lovers. A feature of the performance was the long supper interval when members of the audience could bring picnics to eat in the splendid grounds, or dine in the restaurant which had oaks growing through its roof, and other trees rising from the floor like columns.

  Antonia found she thoroughly enjoyed her first-ever opera—a delightful performance of The Marriage of Figaro—and was just as enchanted by the superb gardens surrounding the Opera House, where she and Cal strolled for a while before returning to the restaurant for supper.

  It was halfway through the meal that Antonia became conscious of being looked at with more than casual interest by a woman at another table. Several times their eyes met and the woman pretended to be glancing at everyone within her line of vision, but Antonia felt certain she had been looking at her. Perhaps something about Antonia seemed vaguely familiar, and she thought, mistakenly, that they had met. Antonia knew they had not, for she would not have forgotten that striking, rather Slavic face with its broad forehead and cheekbones narrowing down to a pointed chin, and the close-cut cap of blonde hair. The woman was dressed in black with a high polo neck and long sleeves which concealed her skin but clung to the outlines of her shapely figure. She was at a table for six, but gave the impression of being rather bored by the conversation among her friends.

  Suddenly, towards the end of the meal, Antonia saw her coming towards them.

  ‘Good evening, Cal.’ Her voice had an unusual timbre, low-pitched and husky, which might have been natural or the result of too many gins and cigarettes.

  She had come from behind him. He stood up. ‘Hello, Diana. How are you?’

  ‘I’m well, as always. And you?’

  ‘Very well, thanks. Antonia, this is Diana Webster whose name, had you been here longer, you would probably recognise. She’s the brain behind a number of prize-winning television series.’

  Before he could complete the introduction, the other woman said, ‘How d’you do? Do I gather you’ve come here from abroad?’

  ‘How do you do? Yes, from Spain.’

  ‘What brings you to England?’

  ‘I brought her,’ intervened Cal. ‘Antonia is not a career girl like you, Diana. She’s my wife.’

  Diana Webster’s eyes widened. They were grey eyes, the lids skilfully painted in the latest fashion of eye make-up.

  ‘Really? When did this happen? There’s been nothing in the papers, has there?’

  ‘We were married in Spain, and there didn’t seem any necessity to announce the fact here.’

  ‘Except to give your friends and acquaintances the enjoyment of discussing such a surprising turn of events,’ she remarked, smiling at him. She turned again to Antonia. ‘The only thing which would surprise them more would be to hear I had married! I must rejoin my party, but I expect we’ll meet again before long. Meanwhile my congratulations to you both.’

  As she turned away, Cal sat down and Antonia waited for him to tell her something more about the other woman—how long he had known her, where they had met, and so on—as most people would after such an encounter.

  But he said nothing until she asked, ‘Why would people be surprised to hear Miss Webster had married? I was surprised she was single. But perhaps she’s divorced?’

  ‘No, Diana is neither Miss nor Mrs. She prefers the title M-stroke-S. Living in Spain, you may never have come across it. It’s a designation introduced by the proponents of sex equality because they disapprove of women being branded as spinsters or wives when men are styled Mr. whatever their marital status. Diana is a friend of my sister, another believer in Equality—which is part of the reason why her marriage broke up.’

  By then it was nearing the end of the interval, and there wasn’t time to discover why Laura and her husband had separated. Antonia contained her curiosity until they were driving back to London.

  ‘She h
ad a job in television which required her to work at night,’ said Cal. ‘Bill became fed up with warmed-up suppers and solitary evenings. One night she came home from work to find him entertaining an attractive French widow from one of the other apartments. Bill denied that the relationship had gone any further than a few kisses, but Laura was furious. She refused, and still does, to see that what happened was largely her own fault. If a couple have incompatible working hours, then one of them has to adapt to the other’s convenience. It needn’t always be the woman. But in this case it was logical for Laura to make the adjustment.’

  Antonia said, ‘It must be very hard for a woman to have to give up an interesting job which she enjoys because she is married.’

  ‘Certainly it’s hard. But life is a matter of priorities. Laura should have faced the problem beforehand. If her job meant so much to her, she should have realised that she could only have a marriage as well by finding a man who also worked unsocial hours.’

  They had been man and wife for two weeks when Cal said, ‘I think we can emerge from seclusion now. I’ll ring up some of my friends and give them our number. When they’ve had us to dinner, you can try your hand at playing hostess.’

  She might have been daunted by this statement but for the fact that their manage now included a Spanish cook called Rocío, and her husband Marcos who valeted Cal and did some of the housework. There was also a daily help who came in every morning, and a gardener who came twice a week. All four had been found by an agency and interviewed by Cal. But having procured a staff for her, he left it to Antonia to establish the routine of the household.

  She found it a strange and very agreeable sensation to be mistress of her own establishment; at liberty to come and go as she pleased without anyone asking where she had been and with whom.

  She occupied the principal bedroom, and Cal had a smaller bedroom on the same floor. What Rocío and Marcos made of this arrangement she could not imagine.

  She and Cal no longer had breakfast together. Apparently it was his custom, in the ordinary course of his life, to rise at five in the morning, prepare his own breakfast and, from six to eight, work at home before arriving at his office not later than nine, and an hour before many of his staff.

  ‘I’ve never needed much sleep. Six hours is ample for me, and four will do,’ he had told her.

  In Spain, Antonia’s day had ended at midnight or later, and begun at ten with a breakfast tray brought to her in bed. In England she felt she should change this, and had her tray brought at eight, and her bath at eight-thirty.

  Her only experience of cooking was helping her father with the barbecue at the finca, but she had it in mind to enrol for a Cordon Bleu course so that, on Rocío’s day off, she could take over in the kitchen.

  Although she had grown up in a country where the wives and daughters of rich men had no need of any domestic skills because, as yet, there were not enough more attractive jobs to lure all the female workforce away from domestic service, she had long felt an urge to learn how to do these things which, in the past, had been done for her.

  One afternoon, a few days later, she was in the garden writing a long letter to her mother, when Laura called to see her.

  While she was showing her sister-in-law over the house, Antonia mentioned that they had met a friend of hers at Glyndebourne.

  ‘It must have shaken Diana when she found out who you were,’ said Laura.

  ‘Why should it have done that?’

  Laura shrugged. It was her most frequent and characteristic gesture. ‘We all have a streak of the dog-in-the-manger in us, don’t you think? Although Diana turned Cal down, it probably gave her a pang to find she no longer had the distinction of being the only woman he’d ever wanted to marry.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  They were going upstairs to see the bedrooms. Antonia was leading the way. When she made no response to this statement, Laura said, ‘Cal told you about Diana, I imagine?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh? Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it?’

  Antonia reached the landing and, turning, gave her sister-in-law what she hoped was a nonchalant smile. ‘Why not?’ she said lightly. ‘I daresay Cal would have told me if I’d ever asked about his past, but I never have. It seems so much less important than the present and the future.’

  In the master bedroom, Laura looked around her and said, ‘I suppose, not being a career girl, it won’t be long before you start a family. Do you want lots of children?’

  ‘Four would be nice. Two boys and two girls.’

  Laura stared at her with a puzzled expression. ‘Is that really all you want from life? My brother, and babies?’

  ‘They’re my main objectives, not my only ones. Since Cal took me to Glyndebourne, I’ve realised how little I know about music, and what a pleasure it can be. I want to learn to cook superbly, I’d like to speak French more fluently. Does that seem very tame and dull to you?’

  Laura looked thoughtful. ‘No, I suppose it doesn’t really,’ she conceded, after some moments. ‘But nowadays most women want to have a career as well as to be a wife.’

  ‘If I were clever enough to be a doctor or maybe an architect—something of that sort—I might want to have a career, too. But what’s wrong with being a wife? To arrange a household where people are always comfortable and well-fed; to give good parties; to dress well; to teach one’s children to be kind and mannerly—surely that’s quite an achievement?’

  ‘But small children are so boring,’ said Laura, pulling a face. ‘Pestering one all day long with “Why this, Mummy? Why that, Mummy?” Some of my friends have been driven half crazy by it.’

  Antonia said, ‘But that’s only for a short time, and surely even in your job you must meet plenty of grownup people who are boring in a different way?’

  ‘Oh, God, yes—I’ll say one does! All the same, my threshold of boredom is higher with adults than tots. Anyway, you’ll have a nanny and other domestics to give you a respite from your four. For most of my girl friends there’s no escape from their brats. One of them has an au pair who’s almost more trouble than the kids, but the others have no help at all.’

  ‘Don’t their mothers help them sometimes?’

  ‘Very often now, in this country, people’s mothers aren’t living near enough to baby-sit. Or, if they’re in the same town, they’ve gone back to work to help pay off the car and the freezer.’

  ‘Cal says people can’t have everything in life, and they have to make up their minds what are the things they want most.’

  ‘Yes, it’s easy for Cal to pontificate. Being a man, he has it all his own way.’

  ‘Not always, if he wanted to marry Miss Webster and she wouldn’t have him because her work was more important to her.’

  As soon as she had made this remark, Antonia regretted it, the more so when her sister-in-law answered, ‘She turned him down as a husband, but not as a lover. He had six months with her. It may be that he made the break, and she put it about that she’d turned him down to save face. No man is going to spread the word that he’s been rejected, least of all Cal. But he couldn’t deny the story because to humiliate her would have made him look a rat.’

  Antonia put an end to the subject by suggesting tea in the garden. Laura said she would prefer something stronger than tea. They spent the rest of her visit discussing clothes. Although she felt a duty to be friendly with her husband’s sister, Antonia was relieved when she left. It was obvious that Laura was unhappy and dissatisfied with life, and it made her an uncomfortable companion.

  However, later that day she met another, much older woman with whom she felt an immediate rapport. She was Fanny Rankin whose husband, Tom, was the chairman of a haulage company. They were the first people to invite the newly-weds to dinner, but when Antonia asked her husband about them, apart from telling her Tom’s occupation, Cal said he would prefer her to form her own impression of them.

  The Rankins lived near Kew Gardens, in a large old hous
e with a drive winding round to the side away from the road. When they arrived the drive was blocked by a small red bicycle left lying on its side. As Cal stopped the car and got out to move it, a teenage girl came flying round the corner of the house and said breathlessly, ‘I’m sorry, Cal. That’s Freddy, the little monster. He’s supposed to put his bike in the shed before he comes in for supper, but half the time he forgets.’

  She would have taken charge of the bicycle, but Cal had picked it up by the frame and said, ‘No, I’ll take it round to the shed. Go and introduce yourself to Antonia.’

  The girl came towards the car and, as Antonia got out to greet her, said, ‘Good evening, Mrs. Barnard. I’m Rose, the youngest of the Seniors, as Pa calls us. I’m afraid it will take you some time to sort us all out. There are seven of us, you see. Four Seniors and three Juniors. I was supposed to be the last, but about the time I started school Mummy decided to have a second batch. Coming from Spain, I expect you’re used to large families.’

  ‘I’ve often wished I were part of one. I have no brothers or sisters, but a great many cousins.’

  ‘What a lovely dress,’ said Rose warmly, looking at their guest’s buttercup crepe-de-chine shirt-dress which had diamante cuff-links and a narrow diamante belt. Her high-heeled evening sandals were of buttercup kid, and her bag was a small envelope.

  ‘Thank you.’ Antonia was impressed by the girl’s ready friendliness. She looked about fourteen or fifteen, an age when teenagers were sometimes ill at ease with strangers.

  However, it was soon apparent that hospitality and laughter were the keynotes of the Rankin household. Antonia first saw Fanny Rankin in her kitchen, with an apron protecting her evening clothes, and several of her children helping with the final preparations for the meal, the most noticeable being a small boy who was vigorously pounding with a rolling pin the contents of a brown paper bag.