In any case, my answer seems to do. She gets to her feet, puts the cat back in the chair, offers me a drink.
“A cup of tea if you want it, but we could always pretend the sun has sunk below the yardarm. At this stage in my career I’m seldom without a drop of gin.”
“That would be great,” I say.
“Well, at least I see he taught you manners.” (I guess she’s referring to the fact I too have risen.) “Or perhaps it was your mother. Would you like to be the barman? You’ll find all you need in that cupboard over there—except the ice. Oh, and you Americans are always so mad-keen about the ice!”
“Not me, ma’am. Bad for the digestion. Never touch the stuff.”
“May God forgive you. And I don’t mean for the lie; I mean for being such a nauseating charmer like your father… And don’t be stingy with that gin or I won’t forgive you—far more to the point. You can be as stingy as you like with the tonic.”
While I fix the drinks (trying to ignore the smeary appearance of both tumblers) Mrs Farnsworth moves across to a glass-fronted cabinet in one corner, full of porcelain and knickknacks and flanked by two tall plants in saucers on the floor. “Here’s something which I think might interest you.”
I can’t see what it is but when I’ve put the glass into one hand she stretches out the other and uncurls her swollen and arthritic fingers.
I let out a startled exclamation.
In her palm lies a black-enamelled ring.
“Then evidently this is something which he told you about?” Yes. Evidently. My memory may be starting to come back to me. “But why so shaken?” Her eyes are the eyes of a china doll, wide and blue and scarcely even faded.
“I’m not quite sure, ma’am. Disappointment?”
“Disappointment? And at what, may one inquire?”
“That finally it must have meant so little to her.”
“Oh, stuff! Your father jilted her, of course.”
Her hand is still held out to me; she now extends it even further. She repeats: “I thought you might be interested.” I have to steel myself to take the object from her.
I say, “It’s a mourning ring, isn’t it?” Always. Emily and Robert. May 1, 1840. Somehow I’d foreseen I would discover an inscription.
She sips her drink and goes back to her chair. Even with just the one free hand she picks up the cat so deftly I barely have time to think about assisting her.
“Do you know something?” Reflectively, she holds her tumbler to the light. “On the very first occasion I saw Rosalind it could have been out of this selfsame glass—out of these two selfsame glasses—that we drank our gin-and-tonics then.”
She laughs and adds some comment about how rarely she ever breaks things, despite the clutter she unfailingly creates around her. But although I hear her voice I gradually lose track of what she’s saying. She’s left me in possession of the ring.
I return to my chair, nearly falling over Henry, the disposed and wheezing, still contented tabby. I sit and set my glass down on the floor. Then I place the ring upon my finger. I do this impulsively. The fit seems well-nigh perfect.
“It must have been too loose for her?”
Though did I actually say that or just think I did? Suddenly I feel confused. I don’t know where I am.
Not only where I am but who I am.
Okay. Don’t panic. You’ll soon make sense of this.
You’re in a room. There’s a voice. A woman’s voice.
Talking about ice.
Ice?
I make a real effort. I concentrate. I whisper.
“Rosalind…?”
Then I try it again but this time with considerably more authority.
This time it’s practically a shout.
“Rosalind…!”
18
“I’m sorry? What was that?” My mind had wandered for a moment. Suddenly I’d thought I heard my name being called, though from a distance. Maybe it was a father or a brother summoning home one of those girls who’d been bouncing a rubber ball against the side wall of the house (there’s a gap caused by bomb damage). As I came along they’d been chanting tirelessly, in time to every bounce, “Deanna—Durbin—wore a—turban—of red—and white—and blue.” But it would be quite some coincidence if one of the girls happened to be called Rosalind. I must’ve imagined it.
“Only that if I had a fridge,” she repeats, “I could offer you some ice. But I haven’t, so I can’t. And who needs ice, anyway?”
She passes me my gin.
“Thank you. What a treat!”
“Question of priorities,” she says. “And contacts.”
From her appearance you’d never suppose she had that kind of contact. Nor indeed that kind of priority. Although she must be in her middle forties she looks too delicate, too childlike. It’s only her voice—a bit gravelly—which somehow prepares you for this far more vigorous note.
Certainly the kitten doesn’t. Under one arm she carries a Siamese. Sometimes—when, for instance, she’s dispensing gin or lighting cigarettes—he climbs up on her shoulder. “Can you believe it? I thought I didn’t like cats! But then along came Rex.” Often she raises one of his front paws to place a quick kiss upon its pad. “Cheers!” she says. “And to the length and happiness of your stay here!”
“Cheers! Thank you.” Rex watches with interest the death throes of a bluebottle trapped on the flypaper overhead; his hind legs are planted in her lap. “But, Mrs Farnsworth, I don’t want to mislead you. I’m not really sure for how long—”
“Not Mrs Farnsworth. Jane.”
“Rosalind.”
“Ah. ‘From the east to western Ind there is no jewel like Rosalind.’” A misquote but she recites it with a flourish; although, when she waves her tumbler, she has the sense to do so carefully. “Well, anyway, at least we can drink to the happiness of your stay here.”
“There is one other thing,” I remark, slowly. I’d been hoping for a few more sips of the gin before I had to bring it up, but I suppose that, if I’d been strictly honourable, I’d have broached it before accepting the gin in the first place. This is the one point on which I don’t intend ever to be underhand. “You see…well, the fact is…”
I laugh. This is ridiculous.
“The fact is: well, I’m pregnant.”
It suddenly occurs to me that perhaps I oughtn’t even to be drinking gin. I tell myself I’d better not finish it.
Jane Farnsworth claps her hands. “My congratulations!” Although I’ve taken off my gloves and she’s admired my black engagement ring it’s possibly escaped her notice that I’m not wearing any other. “When’s the baby due?”
“Mid-February.”
“About six months.” She extracts a further cigarette from the open packet of Passing Cloud on the arm of her chair. “But these days, what with the housing shortage, it takes a long time to get settled. You mustn’t worry that anybody here will object to having a baby on the premises.”
“You’re very kind,” I say, “but I hope that before he’s born I shall have joined his father in the States. Matt’s an American, you see.”
Soon afterwards my landlady conducts me upstairs. The journey may inspire some reservations—a passing glance at the lavatory and bathroom proves a bit dispiriting and the stair-carpet could definitely do with a brush—but the room itself isn’t bad. I’ve been lucky. I came to Hampstead on the merest whim. But when I’d started walking down the hill I saw a board on which this room was advertised, the only room on it, and at just thirty-five shillings a week. The newsagent told me he had put the card there scarcely ten minutes before.
So after Jane leaves I stretch out on the divan and do little else but count my blessings. Eventually, though, I get up to inspect drawer linings, wardrobe space, the number of hangers provided, exciting things like that—and then to unpack my suitcases. This done, I carry the rickety table from the centre of the room, set it under the window and bring across a chair. Later I shall go out to e
xplore a bit, start to stock up, maybe buy myself some flowers. But for the moment I want to finish the letter I began this morning on the train.
To Matt, of course.
I haven’t told him yet about the baby. For one thing, I have only just found out myself—well, had my suspicions verified. (Suspicions? Certainties!) Partly, maybe, I do feel a little nervous about telling him. My own initial reaction, already a good two months ago, wasn’t by any means unmixed. And obviously I want to do it in the right way, not just hurl it at him in a postscript. But today the first priority is to send him my new address. Perhaps I’ll give the matter a bit more thought after I’ve got this current letter posted. I feel it’s never too soon to start on another one.
I wish he felt the same. But with the best will in the world some people—when it actually comes down to it—are simply lousy correspondents. Hmm. At least six times a day! Lootenant, are you sure I can have caught that quite correctly?
I must write to Amy, too, to let her know I’m settled and to apologize for being peevish—I’d been so hoping to have another letter before I left. Also, of course, I want to tell her where I am, in case there’s anything to be sent on (pray God!). My peevishness found outlet in something of a diatribe over the raw deal we land girls have received from the government. It’s particularly unfair when compared to the way the women in the armed forces are being treated. People like Trixie and me have been demobbed with practically nothing. In fact, you should have heard how Trixie was going on about it only a few days back, while cheerful philosophical old me was then shrugging it off in a manner that must have been infuriating! Poor Trixie. I ought to write to her, as well. She’s now working in a restaurant run by an aunt of hers in Norwich.
But what letters I do receive from Matt—well, this goes entirely without saying—are delightful. For quantity, his performance can only aspire to five percent. Quite pitiful! For quality, it has to score a hundred! Yet how I wish he’d get a move on. I’d like to know what arrangements regarding my transport he considers best. The other day there was a demonstration outside the London hotel where Mrs Roosevelt is staying. U.S. war brides who’d marched there to petition her had paraded up and down carrying their babies, a mute proclamation (or not so mute) more eloquent than the traditional type of placard: “We want our daddies!” I envied them the opportunity of being able to do even that much.
I suck the top of my mottled pen cap. Next door the girls are still playing on the bombsite but have now combined with a gang of boys to play tag. Having told him a little about the house and about Jane, I start another paragraph.
“I’m sitting by the window, which overlooks a strip of horribly neglected garden. Tomorrow I’d probably be out there digging this up for vegetables if I didn’t have to be out instead finding myself a job. Something totally frivolous and undemanding! I shall ask to spend my days spinning endless daydreams (‘All I do, the whole day through, is dream of you!’) and thinking up excuses to work you into every conversation, whilst patiently awaiting the photograph which I’m beginning to think you never mean to send (!!)…”
But suddenly I realize it’s five o’clock and that in half an hour the shops will all be closed. I acquaint him with this daunting fact, scribble a typically loving farewell, then rush to the postbox on the corner of Pilgrim’s Lane—where, having first prayerfully kissed the envelope, I follow it into the opening with my dopily protective fingers…trying to reassure myself it hasn’t crumpled already (it’s only a very thin little envelope) or somehow taken a wrong turning, or got itself stuck in a crevice, right at the start of its journey.
“In the whole course of my life I’ve never kept anyone in reading matter as prodigious as this—and since I don’t guarantee to keep it up, my darling (particularly with so signal a lack of response!), I suggest you make the very most of it while you may. On a bus this morning I actually heard some fellow saying to his mate there’s no such thing as love—only lust—and you can imagine how superior and pitying I felt as I sat there straining to hear more… I was on the bus en route to find that job I spoke about yesterday—and find it I most incredibly did! You remember Oxford Street, the bit of it between Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road, which we mistakenly drove along with Walt and Trix when we first arrived in London? Well, in that part of it there stands a large and dignified department store called Bourne & Hollingsworth. And in this large and dignified department store there happens to be a large and dignified perfumery department. And in this large and dignified perfumery department there yesterday existed a splendid opportunity for a…no, quite wrong!…for a slim, smart, invariably soignée—and, indeed, wholly wonderful—young woman like me. I wrote, of course, that I would go for something frivolous, yet little did I know how cleverly I prophesied! From muck-raking to attar of roses in one fell swoop! Can anybody stop this girl? I start on Monday. The money isn’t much but neither thankfully is the rent I pay Jane, and the members of staff I met today all seemed pleasant and helpful. What’s more, there are the perks of the trade—perhaps from now on these little billets doux will be discreetly scented? What about your own little billets doux, my darling—although the scenting of them, whether discreet or otherwise, may remain optional? Already, even if I know it doesn’t make sense, I look wistfully at the table in the hall every time I pass, and half-expect a miracle. I know what will happen the moment I see an airmail envelope addressed to me—my throat will go all dry and my pulse will start to race as though you’d just walked through the door. I think I’ll even begin to get these symptoms as I leave my room each morning…as I start running down the stairs…”
I still haven’t told him about the baby. What is it I think? That for some reason he’ll be so upset he won’t want anything more to do with me?
Oh, yes. Sure thing. That’s my Matt.
That’s the boy I fell in love with.
19
The next morning there could be something for me. If a letter had arrived at the farm yesterday, Amy would have readdressed it immediately.
Nothing in the first post.
There’s always the second, though.
And the final one, mid-afternoon.
But if it doesn’t come by then it may not come for ages. Matt knew the date on which I’d be leaving Suffolk; he also knows how long a letter takes to get to England. Well, roughly. So if I don’t hear today, it must mean he’s waiting for my new address—which he won’t receive till Monday at the earliest. Oh God, dear God.
So my first full day of exploration is marred by constant fretting, although it’s a good day by and large and I keep having bursts of sanity when I realize how I’m getting all worked up over nothing—one tardy letter in the context of a whole life? And possibly, too, he’ll turn out to be blameless: mail can get held up even in peacetime. I suppose it can get lost as well. Which would be upsetting, naturally, but hardly a tragedy. And Hampstead with its intimate, artistic atmosphere, its network of irregular back streets, its charm and history and interesting shop windows (yes, even now), not to mention those acres and acres of rolling, wooded countryside…Hampstead is enough to offer consolation.
Or, anyway, distraction.
Nevertheless, when I return to Worsley Road and find that the hall table holds nothing for me, I put in a trunk call to the farm.
And after Amy’s surprised, enthusiastic greeting, I explain I thought she’d like to know I’d found a job. “And how are Fred and the children? And is everybody missing me, most dreadfully?” But what I really want to hear, of course, is something very different. Oh, and by the bye, Matt’s letter came today. I’ve sent it on.
When it seems there’s nothing left to say, I ask if there’s been any mail.
Before I phoned I told myself I’d rather have certainty than suspense. Now I wish I’d stuck with the suspense.
After a supper of Welsh rabbit, a meal I generally enjoy but this evening find difficult to finish (and even getting down my sweet and sticky orange juice seems hard), I d
ecide to make another call.
“Oh, hello, my darling.” Thank God it’s usually my mother who answers. If it isn’t, I instantly hang up. “I’d been hoping you might ring.”
“You’ll get a letter in the morning. But having told you all my news in that” (Dearest Mummy, your loving daughter’s pregnant…) “I suddenly thought wouldn’t it be nice if we could spend the day together. I mean tomorrow, because I’ve found a job that starts on Monday. I’ve got a room near Hampstead Heath, so I can easily meet the train at Finchley Road…”
“Oh, my sweetheart, I’d love to. But this weekend…it’s really such short notice…”
I suggest that, even if he can’t manage for himself, she could surely leave him a sandwich, or something cold, or something he could warm up.
“No, darling, it isn’t that. Truth be told, I’m feeling a little tired and you mustn’t be offended, but…”
I’m not offended. Just disappointed. And sulky. (Even though it’s probably better she should have time enough to assimilate my bombshell.) She asks about my job—and the room—but doesn’t want me, she says, just to repeat what I’ve written and make the call needlessly expensive. “Anyway, the main thing is you’re well. And Matthew? How are things with him?”
“God knows. I haven’t heard a word. I feel cross.”
“Oh, please don’t, my darling. I remember when your father and I were engaged and then he suddenly had to go away. Only for a month but I wrote him fifteen letters, would you believe! I got just four in return. There was nearly a divorce before there was a marriage.”
I laugh and find it helpful being reminded. But even so my moodiness persists. I mention very pettishly that he hasn’t even thanked me for a silver hip flask which I sent. I recognize that I, too, am tired. (Besides, I’m pregnant; pregnant women are allowed to be moody.) Earlier in the day I’d been planning to spend my evening telling him about the baby. But now I think—well, no, I don’t feel like it. Four letters in exchange for fifteen still seems about the going rate. So maybe two can play at that game. Yes, Mr Cassidy. Two can start to agitate and wonder.
Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart Page 11
