‘Well,’ I said slowly. ‘I suppose she is a memorable woman.’
‘That’s it, dear. Memorable. You always did have a way with words. We did have some laughs, didn’t we?’
I put on a cardigan to go to the office. After all, I was an elderly woman and it was incumbent upon me to look after myself. I think that day marked the beginning of my real old age, although all things considered it has not been too bad. I sat in the office, taking comfort from my pale blue cardigan, with Doggie by my side, reasoning with myself. I was free now, free of encumbrances, free of hope, that greatest of all encumbrances. The idea was not particularly terrible. I was surprised at how little I felt. It was not until I was preparing to lock up and go home, when a shaft of late sun pierced the heavy cloud, that I felt a little pain. I thought of a house on the Isle of Wight that I should never see. ‘No, I shan’t be going away,’ I said to Mrs Harding. ‘I can carry on here, if you feel you can trust me.’
‘Then I can tell my sister that I shall be coming to her,’ she replied. ‘What a treasure you are, Fay. Have a good weekend.’
Old times, sad times. I feel better about them now than I did then. Then I felt like a girl, bewildered, although I was of an age to know better. This girlishness of mine, persisting in spite of the evidence of my body, had proved my enemy to the end. For it was the end of something, and I knew it. No more excitement, no more expectation, no more power. The old are disempowered. I caught sight of myself in a plate glass window as I walked slowly, more slowly than usual, towards Drayton Gardens. I reminded myself of someone, but someone I had not seen for a long time. It was not until I was in the flat and smoothing my hair in the glass that I recognized myself. I looked like my mother.
SIXTEEN
PEARL SAT OPPOSITE me in the other chair, the chair that was meant to be occupied by a companion, the chair that I had placed by the hearth in a facsimile of domestic contentment. And yet I was glad of her company. I had become humble and quiet since what I thought of as the débâcle, and desirous of simple affirmations of goodwill. The smallest cliché pleased me, for I saw it as a counter in a game of conversations which admitted of no ambiguity. Conscientiously I played this game as if I were a beginner, a novice, as indeed I was, for I had graduated in an academy where words were used as a disguise and where the whole object was to divine the unspoken intention. It was an utter relief for me to observe to a neighbour that the nights were drawing in or that it was cold enough for a touch of frost and to have these observations accepted and confirmed.
Pearl was of inestimable comfort to me since she thought and spoke in such terms but did so as if they were new minted: it was a measure of her peculiar innocence that she believed eagerly and passionately in those statements that obviate the need for originality of thought. ‘Dear old London,’ she said, as she sank down into the other chair. ‘Although I understand that women are not too safe on the streets now. And the transport doesn’t get any better, does it? I waited twenty minutes for a bus. I could have taken the underground, but I’m a bit nervous. You read such terrible things, don’t you? All these young unemployed people with nothing to do. I wonder they don’t bring back National Service.’ She accepted a cup of coffee from me, her colour high, her trusting eyes bright with the anticipation of a day in town. Exile had not diminished her enthusiasm, although I sensed that she was much lonelier than she had thought possible. Her humility and her loyalty forbade her from ever mentioning this in other than well-worn phrases, with humorous references to getting old and to her salad days being long past. The truth was that she had nothing to do. The little flat, the little bit of shopping were not enough to keep her occupied. Her son was at the mercy of his wife, and her grandsons came only on alternate weekends, with a lot of dirty washing and the occasional girlfriend. Without her telling me I knew that Pearl was endeavouring to make herself useful to this family of hers, and that she paid for the Sunday visits with a multiplicity of small services, mostly of a stay-at-home nature. Part of her enthusiasm, as she took a shortbread biscuit, was due to the fact that she was once again enjoying a life of her own. She had escaped, she had been welcomed, and was now being entertained. She was such a decent woman that these factors were sufficient to make her happy; she did not look beyond them.
I too was glad that she was there. One returns to the company of women when any blow falls, when the lump in the breast or the unexplained smear of blood are discovered, when the threats which are peculiar to a woman’s life come uncomfortably close. Then, only one’s own kind will do. After that one turns with weary tolerance to the problems of men, and the problems that men cause, as if they are unimportant, as perhaps they are. Perhaps one needs a viewpoint of such terminal exactitude in order to get it all right in the first place. This, however, is rarely available. Before me Pearl, her pebble-dash coat open on to a dress printed with red and purple flowers, breathed the satisfaction of one who has come through. She had the innocence of a nun, or of someone who no longer has any truck with men, who finds men to be irrelevant, unless they happen to be sons. I remembered how she had always been a little uneasy in Charlie’s presence, as if he were an intruder, a foreigner of some sort whose language she did not speak. Her loving attitude to women was that of a girl, before the unity with her friends is destroyed by love, marriage, and other defections.
I had prepared a simple lunch of cold curried chicken and the fruit salad from the previous evening which was still intact. My pleasure in doing this was amply rewarded by Pearl’s delight. As if by mutual consent we kept off the subject of Julia until the table was cleared and she was back in her chair with a cigarette and another cup of coffee. This seemed to us the behaviour appropriate to the occasion, although we were both anxious to get down to the matter in hand. Finally, with a look at the clock, Pearl said, ‘I mustn’t monopolize you, Fay. I’m sure you’re busy. Just put me out when you want to and I’ll make my way over to Julia’s. You’ve seen her recently, have you?’
‘I saw her the other day,’ I said. ‘And frankly I’m very worried. She can’t go on living there alone, Pearl. She’s never done a thing for herself, and by now she’s probably quite incapacitated, although one never knows, with Julia, how much she wants to do, as opposed to how much she can do.’
‘I’ll never forgive Maureen,’ said Pearl. ‘Sneaking off like that without preparing her, and not even asking her to the wedding.’
I must have looked surprised, for she explained, ‘I telephone her every weekend, you know. On a Sunday evening. I think that’s when she feels it most.’
‘What are we to do?’ I asked. ‘She can’t stay there on her own. I’ve even wondered whether she has enough money.’
Pearl lowered her voice, as if Julia might overhear us. ‘I’ve thought about that,’ she said. ‘I doubt if Charlie left much. He was pretty extravagant, I understand. There were other women, you know. Don’t ask me how I know this. I don’t even know if it’s true. But years ago, before I met you, Fay, I heard him on the telephone, and I had my suspicions. Later he became more careful.’
She paused delicately, and I looked out of the window. Finally I said, ‘Has she no one left? What about that brother of hers? The one she dotes on. Although I’ve never seen him there.’
‘Well, that’s it,’ she said excitedly. ‘They’ve fallen out. The old lady left him all her money, even though he never deserved it. He was never any good, you know. He lives abroad somewhere. Spain, I think it is.’
I imagined this character as seedy, hearty, with ruined teeth and an expensive watch. His drink would be gin and tonic, and it would always be to hand. After an undistinguished and possibly fraudulent career in the motor trade his mother’s money must have seemed like a gift from the gods, for although Julia appeared to dote on him he was not similarly devoted to her, or so it seemed. Maybe she bored him. She had once shown me a photograph of a handsome enough young man in an open-necked shirt; the photograph, which had been taken some time ago, was faded, but on
e could see that the teeth were bad even then. He was part of Julia’s personal mythology, the young man of infinite promise but with certain forgivable weaknesses who had, in some unspecified fashion, let himself down. I had known, in looking at the photograph, that he had probably cost them a great deal, not only in anxiety but in terms of hard cash, and I had wondered whether Julia’s marriage to Charlie was entirely disinterested. For at the beginning, when I first knew them, Charlie had been, or had appeared to be, a man of substance.
I had written off Gerald, as the brother was called, although in the early days of our acquaintanceship his name was frequently invoked as the acme of masculine perfection. Julia too had her weaknesses, although not many were apparent. She had loved Gerald, rather more, it had seemed to me, than a sister need love a brother. She was one of those women who make an enchanted garden of their childhood memories and frequently parade them for the benefit of those who rarely give their childhoods a second thought. Her eyes would stray to the photograph, and one would hear, with a certain amount of impatience, the familiar words, ‘Did I ever tell you about the time when Gerald and I …’ got lost, or nearly drowned, or ate all the cake at someone’s birthday party, reminiscences which were to me frankly embarrassing but which caused an unfamiliar look of tenderness to cross her face. She and her mother had, on many occasions, lamented his lack of good fortune, and had assumed jealousy of his looks and charm to be the reason why others inexplicably failed to help him on his way. He did not get on well with Charlie, I remembered, which was why he was such an infrequent visitor. ‘I’m afraid there’s a bit of jealousy there too,’ Julia had once said with her appalling and unconscious honesty. ‘You mean that Gerald is jealous of Charlie’s success?’ I had once asked. ‘I mean,’ she had replied, ‘that he’s jealous of Charlie for being married to me.’ I had blushed at the implications of this, but she seemed to think the situation entirely understandable.
The clue to Julia’s wintry heart, therefore, must be in her childhood, when the sexes divide, but before they decide to interact. Two children, admired for their beauty and their boldness, petted by a weak and possibly foolish mother, and encouraged by their mutual recklessness, had had a love for each other that no other love could efface. At least this may have been true of Julia, though not necessarily so of Gerald. I did not understand this myself, for I had always thought adult emotions more interesting than the childish variety. Although my own childhood had been a contented one I now felt no nostalgia for it, no wish to return to days of infancy. But Julia’s bitterness, so frequently directed against present circumstances, must have been occasioned by the knowledge that childhood was past, and that she was no longer one half of an indulged pair. Gerald must have been the only man to whom she felt equal, for to all other men—and women too—she felt superior. All this, of course, was supposition on my part: I had no means of confirming it. Yet as I thought about it the final piece of her enigmatic personality seemed to fall into place.
‘Pearl,’ I said. ‘Is there no way of bringing them together again? Could she not go out there and live with him?’
‘Well, he’d be the problem, wouldn’t he? Would he want her? He’s got his own life, and a bit of money at last. He lives with a friend, I understand, another man.’
He would, I could see that. Our voices were now low, conspiratorial, although there was no one else in the flat. Yet there was a new purpose in my mind. If there had been happiness at the beginning, might there not be a chance of the same happiness at the end? I saw this Gerald as essentially dubious, or perhaps not so much dubious as unreliable, with a heartlessness about him that only one other person could match. I saw the two of them in the sun, endlessly reminiscing about their childhood, while the companion made himself useful with the drinks. With money there would also be servants, which meant that she could live her life as she had always intended to live it. And age and infirmity are always easier to bear when the sun shines every day and life seems like an endless holiday. I looked again out of the window. The day was grey, chill, with an air of sullenness about it, as if it would never end, never change.
‘How do we get in touch with him?’ I asked.
Pearl was shocked. ‘You’re not thinking of going straight to him, are you? Behind Julia’s back? Anyway, I haven’t got his number. I had it when he was living in Baron’s Court, but he’s been away for four or five years now, maybe longer. Julia knows where he is, of course. We could put it to her, I suppose. But it’s not really any of our business, is it?’
‘Pearl,’ I said. ‘She can’t live alone. You know what she’s like. She only eats if someone else puts the food in front of her. Maureen’s gone. Mrs Wheeler, unless I’m very much mistaken, won’t come back. I don’t know when Julia last paid her. That leaves me. I can’t look after her, Pearl. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t, but I’m not going to do it. I’m tired of Julia. I don’t enjoy her company and she doesn’t enjoy mine. Within a few weeks—what am I saying? Within a few days—we should hate each other. And the idea of two old women quarrelling sickens me. I want a bit of peace. After all, I’m alone too, you know. And I’m getting used to it, or I will soon.’ I turned my head at this, to hide the moisture in my eyes. ‘She had better go to Spain,’ I said, dabbing at the tears that would not stay in place.
‘Well, of course, dear. If you think it best.’
Pearl was uneasy. I was ruining her day. She gathered up her bag and her scarf and made preparations to leave.
‘I’ll join you later,’ I said. ‘You go round and have a nice chat with Julia, make a cup of tea, if there is any. She’ll be delighted to see you. I’ll come round after work and put the idea of Spain into her head. I take full responsibility,’ I added. ‘If it doesn’t work out she can always come back. But at least Gerald will have the name of that place her mother was in. Why didn’t I think of that before? She seems not to mind the idea of going there. But she must be looked after. Someone must look after Julia.’
I saw her off, and walked to the office, deep in tangled thought. Getting it right was what mattered, I saw that now. Once I had got it right I should go away myself. For some reason I felt broken-hearted. Julia’s plight had brought me face to face with my own: I too should grow old, and there was no brother, however problematic, to care for me, or to pay others to care for me. The events of the previous evening had made it quite clear that no one would rescue me from what suddenly seemed a frightening solitude. The presence of a man at one’s side—or not even at one’s side, but in the wings somewhere—reassures one that life is a normal, manageable business: his disappearance signals the beginning of the dark days, days when one doubts one’s own durability. And however reassuring the company of other women one longs to break out of the prison of female preoccupations in order to get back to the business in hand, the continuity of life itself. I have been in the company of women who greet one with delight but who, after fifteen or twenty minutes, become restless, not because one’s company is unsatisfactory but because it is beside the point. Such patent inattention was never within my grasp, and now it never would be. Waiting to be chosen, I had incurred my own disgrace. There was no alibi for me. I must go on as best I could, into that old age that already had me by the arm. All that I could do for myself lay in the direction of lightening the burden. And if I could at the same time lighten Julia’s burden I should feel cautiously relieved. It was not that I could bring about a happy ending. There was no question of that now, for either of us. My efforts would be motivated by a desire for tidiness, reduction of pain. They might be—probably would be—misguided, but there was no indication that they were utterly wrong. With myself as prime mover in this affair I felt extremely vulnerable. Glancing above me at the curdled sky I invoked help, but none came.
After my work was done, and the office locked up, I set out for Onslow Square with my usual mixture of exasperation and dread, grateful only that I should not be alone to enjoy Julia’s company. No Mrs Wheeler answered the door. I
t was Pearl who let me in, her features bunched into a grimmer expression than had been there earlier in the day. Mrs Wheeler’s absence was already noticeable, in the film of dust that covered the many small tables, the sour smell that came from the unchanged water in which Julia’s favourite yellow lilies were obviously dying, and the discarded pages of The Times which eddied round the legs of her chair. A glance into the bedroom revealed, as I had expected, that the bed had not been made. I thought I saw signs of neglect in Julia herself, but a closer look told me that I had been imagining a decay of which there was no trace, unless it was in the heightened colours of the face, brilliantly applied on to a waxen ground. How long was it since she had left the flat? Her movements were somehow not on record; she was always immobile when one saw her, so that one assumed that she had been in her chair since the beginning of time, awaiting one’s arrival, as a potentate awaits emissaries. Although her appearance was now frail she must have been immensely strong to withstand a regime which consisted mainly of privation, for, as she was so fond of saying, she ate practically nothing and never, or rarely, breathed fresh air.
On this afternoon, which I already thought of as the final afternoon, she was well put together, if not as immaculate as usual: the hectic face on the thin neck rose too sharply out of the collar of a silk blouse, and the shoulders in the tweed jacket were a little hunched. She looked like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. The gaunt frail hands were clasped round a cup of tea. Pearl had already been busy in the kitchen, but her frightened expression told me that she had not expected to find the mess that Mrs Wheeler had left. I could imagine it: the sticky plates bearing ancient crusts of toast, the dishcloth soaking in brown scummy water. The drawing-room windows badly needed cleaning; a brighter day would have sent shafts of dust motes onto the carpet. Pearl was not the only one who was frightened. Something told me that Julia herself was frightened, but was too proud to show her fear, certainly to one such as myself.
Brief Lives Page 22
