by MARY HOCKING
‘Your last train won’t have gone?’ he asked.
‘No. I checked on that.’
He said, ‘Well, goodnight, then . . .’ She was not sure whether he wanted to kiss her or not, and he did not seem to know himself. In the end, she squeezed his arm and turned and went through the barrier. He watched her as she went down the escalator.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Of course, I know that I must make a go of things with Clyde,’ Robin wrote to Kerren. ‘But somehow I can’t commit myself to it completely, it would be like closing a door. Life in Cheltenham is so narrow, I can’t bear to become a part of it. The danger is to take it seriously; but at times I find that happening and it gives me a nasty jolt. I wonder what will become of me. I used to think it would help to think about Con and say to myself, “At least I had that!” I thought it would be a kind of magic balm that would always heal. But it doesn’t work that way. The magic diminishes. Sometimes I can’t recall his face. And I’m left with Clyde, Clyde, Clyde . . .’
She was afraid that in order to make a success of her marriage she would have to kill something in herself. She could not express this, but Kerren understood. The flickering light at the centre that was the essential Robin was gradually being extinguished. It was terrible, but what could one say?
From her bedroom window Kerren could see a magnolia, its rose-tipped petals still against an old brick wall. It was the hush of late afternoon, the light was very clear. The scene belonged outside time, as much a part of eternity as Keats’s Grecian Urn. London offered so many of these moments; brutal, decadent, ugly, unbelievably serene and innocent, it was an immortal paradox and she loved it passionately. What could she say to Robin when her mind was full of these wonders? She lay down on her bed and the letter slipped unheeded to the ground.
It had been a hot day. Now, as she lay with the window open wide, she could smell the new sharpness in the air, a coolness spreading over the dusty streets and down the narrow cul-de-sacs, cutting through the tar and petrol fumes. She lay quite still, her jumper was pulled up and she could feel the air against her bare midriff; the sensation filled her with an indescribable, agonizing happiness. She watched the light thicken, the pearly sheen of sky framed in her window turn to a deeper and deeper blue. She put her arms above her head and sighed with the ecstasy of it.
On the back of a chair she could see the linen dress which she would put on when she went out with Adam in the evening. It was like a promise of something a long, long way ahead. The curtains moved slightly and the first evening breeze passed over her face. She felt supremely alive, as though a current had been passed from the tips of her fingers to the nerve at the back of her neck; and at the same time she felt very relaxed, as though all the tension had eased out of life. She allowed herself to lie there until the last possible moment, reflecting on the joy of being in London and in love.
She got up when the linen dress was only a dark shadow over the back of the chair. The movement broke the spell, the magic receded, and she stood shivering in the half-light, miserably conscious of a sudden drop in temperature, a drawing back as the moment for action approached. She was going to dinner with Evan and Jay Hughes. Over the past weeks she had met several of Adam’s friends and had not liked them. His world was a demanding one and his friends were tough and resilient, meeting the challenges of life head-on. They did not take offence easily, although they gave it without a qualm, and they were concerned with things like success and making money which Kerren considered altogether too brash. She was ill at ease with them. But Evan and Jay Hughes were important; Adam had known them for many years and Evan was his partner. Kerren was desperately anxious to like them.
She met Adam outside Sloane Street station. He greeted her affectionately and linked arms with her. Since the evening at his flat a greater intimacy had developed between them. When Kerren was with him, she was content; it was only when she was alone that she had an uneasy feeling that they were not getting anywhere. They passed a Chinese restaurant where she had had a meal with an American airman on her last leave; it looked smaller and dingier than she had remembered it. London was a little sad between the day and the dark. It was at this hour that she sometimes felt uneasy in this city which had been so proud and was now gaunt and grey and unsure of its future. She drew closer to Adam and he said cheerfully:
‘What tiny steps you take! You bob about like a cork in a rough sea.’
Evan and Jay Hughes lived just off Cheyne Walk. Kerren began to revise her estimate of the publishing company’s prospects. If you lived in Chelsea you had definitely arrived.
‘Are they very sophisticated?’ she asked uneasily.
‘I don’t know what you mean by sophisticated,’ he teased. ‘You use it to describe every other person to whom I introduce you.’
‘Your friends have a veneer of something, I don’t know what.’
‘Don’t be a goose.’
‘I never seem to say the right thing with them.’
‘You’ve never done that as long as I’ve known you!’
‘And most of them don’t like me.’
‘John likes you. So you really have yourself to blame for this evening.’
He was still teasing, but there was a slight undertone of disapproval now.
He took her arm and propelled her across the road towards a narrow Regency house that had a great deal of charm although it was badly in need of paint. But then the whole of London needed a coat of paint, Kerren thought as they waited in the porch. The door was opened by a thin woman with a grey cardigan slung round her shoulders whom Kerren took to be a maid but who turned out to be Jay.
‘I told Evan we said eight,’ she greeted Adam. ‘Not that it matters.’
The draught from the open door caught the small chandelier and a shower of dust fell on to the floor. Kerren had a quick look round while Jay waved Adam into the lounge and shouted to her husband that she had said it was eight. The interior of the house was not quite what Kerren had expected. Admittedly there had been little opportunity over the last seven years for refurbishing or redecorating, but curtains could have been washed and the stair carpet mended. As for dusting and polishing . . . Jay returned to lead her up the stairs. In spite of the dilapidation, the house had retained a kind of decadent grace, even the rags and tatters were in good taste. It was not, moreover, the kind of good taste which consists of avoiding making a mistake; someone had enjoyed planning subtle contrasts of colour and texture, integrating the old and the new in furniture, buying pictures which were not too predictably a part of the decor. Kerren wondered if it was Jay who had been responsible. There was no evidence of taste in her clothes.
‘You’re staying with Marjorie Neilson, aren’t you?’ Jay said as she opened the door of a bedroom. ‘You could eat off the floor in her house, couldn’t you?’ She looked around the room, not ignoring the cobwebbed corners, and said resentfully, ‘But then she likes housework. I always think a house is like a child, enormous fun at first and endless drudgery afterwards.’
The drudgery had not broken her spirit. She was a small, fierce woman who had tremendous nervous energy which was in marked contrast to the quiet solidity of her son. She had an air of constant exasperation, her fingers twitched and her eyes snapped; she seemed plagued with an irresistible urge to interrupt anyone who was talking in order to contradict or to take over the subject. She was the most expostulatory conversationalist Kerren had yet encountered.
‘Your hair looks perfectly all right,’ she said firmly before Kerren could attempt any repair. ‘I can’t bear this sleek, glossy style.’ Her dark hair was unruly as a wire mat. ‘I suppose it’s a sign of the times; we’re all supposed to be demure and feminine now that the war’s over. But it’s much too late, don’t you think? Women aren’t going to be content to sit around being womanly ever again.’ On the way down the stairs, she said, ‘It’s the men who can’t behave sensibly. John is going through the most maddening stage. After years devoted to killing pe
ople he can think of nothing but healing them.’ As soon as they entered the lounge, she said to Adam, ‘Can’t you do anything with John? He’s still set on this medicine nonsense.’
‘Medicine is a highly respected profession,’ John answered lightly, while saluting Kerren.
‘It won’t be respected when these people have finished with it.’
‘I think some sort of national health service is probably needed.’ The big man by the fireplace saluted Kerren with a polite nod of the head. Conversation was obviously never interrupted for anything so humdrum as introductions. He went on, speaking judicially as though discussing a matter which in no way affected his own family, ‘It will bring big changes for the medicos, I suppose; but I think it is probably needed.’
‘Oh, I don’t doubt that it’s needed.’ Jay snatched at a cigarette. ‘But I don’t want John to be a part of it. He’ll be too late to specialize and he’ll end up as a G.P.’
‘I don’t think I’d mind being a G.P.’
‘Darling, you have no idea what it would be like. Have you been to Dr. Vereker’s surgery in Church Road? You really should sometime. The place is full of workmen who want a few days off. It’s not like it used to be.’
‘You mean it’s no longer full of people who don’t work at all?’ John baited his mother affectionately.
‘You might find yourself a little out of your element, old chap,’ his father said with the same air of examining an abstract problem.
‘Out of his element!’ Jay interrupted impatiently. ‘He won’t have any chance to use his brain in general practice, he’ll be worn out with drudgery. The socialists mean business. Don’t they terrify you?’ she appealed to Kerren. ‘So stony and grey and humourless. Once they really get going they’ll grind all the zest out of everything they lay their hands on.’
Adam had picked up a copy of the Financial Times. Jay saw this and attacked. ‘I don’t get much support from you, do I? Time isn’t on John’s side, you should know that. Look how you and Evan agonized over the chances that had slipped by while you were defending the rights of man. Doesn’t that make you feel you ought to stop this foolish child making the same mistake?’
Adam shrugged his shoulders. It did not please him to be put in the position of adopted uncle; he was some twelve years younger than Jay and Evan. He said, ‘I wouldn’t have missed Cambridge for anything.’
Kerren, who had been sitting quiet for longer than she liked, exploded, ‘Oh, I’m sure Adam’s right! There’s so much time to make up, so much to do!’
‘That’s exactly the point I’m making!’ Jay retorted. ‘If John goes to Cambridge to do medicine he’ll have lost what remains of his youth. This generation isn’t going to have time for the mind to expand; they’ve got to sweat to win back lost ground. John will be thirty by the time he’s qualified and then he’ll have to do a stint in a hospital. He’ll have lost the knack of enjoying life by the time he’s got leisure to look around.’
Adam said quietly, ‘I think this is probably true.’
‘But you wouldn’t have missed Cambridge,’ Kerren persisted. It was not just ‘John’s future that they were denying, it was her own as well. ‘There’s something of youth left to us! We’re not old men and women yet. I don’t mean to forgo anything and I’m sure that John doesn’t either.’
Evan threw back his head and laughed. ‘Bravo!’ Adam was silent. Jay drummed her fists on the arm of the chair.
‘But John will forgo something! Can’t you see that? Now, if he was to take economics . . .’
‘Economics!’ John groaned and Kerren mirrored his dismay in her own face.
‘It’s the easiest and quickest way of getting a degree . . .’
Kerren said, ‘But it’s deadly, surely. Whereas medicine . . .’
‘Takes twice as long.’
‘But it’s my future. Mother dear,’ John said, while Kerren chimed in eagerly, ‘Nothing matters but the future!’
‘The future!’ Jay gave a cracked laugh. ‘You think the future is all that much? How can one argue with you! All right, go ahead, spend the rest of your life curing stomach ache.’
‘Ulcers have come to stay,’ John said.
‘That would be quite a title, wouldn’t it?’ his father mused.
Suddenly the battle was over, and Kerren was sorry. She felt wonderfully exhilarated. She looked across at Adam and found that he was watching her, his eyes dark as though he had not come through the argument as well as the others. He had been very quiet. She wondered why; he was not usually slow to give other people the benefit of his opinions.
Jay had gone into the kitchen. The summons to dinner came so soon that Kerren was reconciled to corned beef salad. But the smell from the big iron casserole was surprisingly appetizing. ‘Reindeer stew,’ Jay announced. ‘I hope it’s all right. We tried whale steak once, but it was horribly oily.’ The stew was seasoned with herbs and to Kerren it tasted exotic as something laid before the gods. Wine was poured into goblets which had been well-polished although the same could not be said of the table. Kerren drank slowly because she liked to see the burgundy glowing in the glass. Evan, noticing this, apologized for the poor quality of the wine. When she said, ‘It’s a beautiful colour, though,’ he gave her a quick, appraising glance. She was beginning to appraise him now that Jay was no longer dominating the scene. He had a high, broad forehead and a leonine head of hair, she could not think why she had not noticed these unmistakable signs of genius before. The eyes were notable, too, abstracted rather than absent-minded, as though he stood back from everything, even his wife and son, so that he had a clear view. In a moment of inspiration she realized that he was completely selfish and extremely gifted. The wine, if poor, was warm and she felt her cheeks burning. She looked down the length of the room to the long, graceful window, the curtains had not been drawn and beyond them she could see a riot of shrubs and tall plants which threatened to invade the house. Jay followed her glance.
‘My husband gave up gardening the day he discovered that grass grows again after it has been cut.’
But the general untidiness could no longer deceive Kerren. She had caught her first faint whiff of luxury, a sense of something retained over the years, mellowed, ready to come to maturity. The publishing venture was going to succeed and she was desperately anxious to be a part of it.
‘It was a wonderful evening,’ she said to Adam as they walked slowly down Cheyne Walk in the early hours of the morning.
‘They’re good company.’ His acknowledgement was a little grudging, she thought.
They walked along by the river, and Adam stopped, looking down at the dark water, moving sluggishly, wrinkled as the skin of a snake.
‘I didn’t know you felt so strongly about the future,’ he said.
‘But of course I do! Don’t you?’
‘Not in quite the same way. But then I’m older.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that. You’re living your forties before you’ve enjoyed your thirties.’
‘You and John make me feel every bit of forty.’
It occurred to her belatedly that Adam was jealous of John. Her heart sang. She squeezed his arm and said joyfully, but rather irrelevantly he felt:
‘Do you know, sitting there in the dining room I suddenly realized that the war is over. I don’t think I had really understood it before. Now we can get on with the business of living.’
Chapter Fourteen
The victory parade was to be held on June 8th and Kerren decided that she must get out of London. As far as war was concerned she had come of age with the dropping of the atom bomb. The victory parade was for children and politicians.
‘You don’t have to go to the parade,’ Adam pointed out. He was more secure in his beliefs, having held them rather longer, and had no need to make a gesture. But Kerren felt a strong urge to get away. John Hughes came to her rescue. He rang late one evening.
‘Come down to Wales next week-end. I’ve got a car and plenty o
f petrol.’
It seemed he had recently encountered an old army acquaintance. This week the man had had a road accident and was now in hospital. John had been to visit him.
‘It’s rotten luck that this should happen to him just now. He’s started a small business. Mechanical engineering. He had promised to deliver some equipment to a farmer in Breconshire and now he can’t do it. He was in such a state about it that I offered to take over.’
‘Hasn’t he got a partner?’
‘He would have to look after the London end of the business, wouldn’t he?’ John was a bit vague about the details. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. The important thing is that we can do this marvellous trip. With any luck we can have a couple of days walking over the Beacons. You’d better bring heavy shoes. Adam says the going can be tough.’
‘Adam is coming, then?’
‘Of course.’
But the invitation had not come from him. John had the car and it was his venture; nevertheless, she felt that Adam should have asked her.
Cath, in whom she confided, said, ‘I don’t think you will ever get what you want from Adam Grieve.’ Cath had become inexplicably disapproving of Adam. She had not disapproved of him when they were at Holly Green, Kerren pointed out.
‘I didn’t know him very well then.’
‘But you don’t know him any better now. You haven’t even seen him!’
Cath’s lips pleated tight as though the rack would not exact any concession from her. Kerren wished she had not mentioned Adam, but Cath, having been given the opportunity, insisted on offering advice.
‘I feel I’ve got to say this, Kerren, now you’ve brought up the subject. I think you’re making a great mistake. John is much more suitable for you.’
‘We’ve nothing in common,’ Kerren said angrily.
‘You have everything in common. Adam was married – I know you were married too, but that was different, you had so little time with Peter. Adam was married for years and he had children. He’s been everywhere and done everything; the shine has gone off life for him.’
