When I Was Otherwise

by Stephen Benatar

  The only other time she’d done that was at the moment Daisy’s Lot had passed the winning post. Then she’d thrown her arms about him, too. In retrospect it seemed the consummation of their love.

  No, not of theirs. Only of his, apparently. Only of his.

  They heard the slamming of car doors—at first, almost without realizing they did. The ringing and the knocking was resumed.

  “Open up! Open up! This is the police!”

  The voice came through a megaphone and was appalling in its clarity.

  “Attention, please! We are ordering you to comply in the name of the Law! Failure to do so—”

  But Daisy didn’t wait to hear further.

  “Quick!” she snapped. “Yes! You go out the back. I shall open up in front!”

  “No,” he protested.

  “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Yes!”

  This was reinforced. The voice on the megaphone renewed its warning. But now with a difference.

  “Attention! Mrs Daisy Stormont! We are instructing you to open up, please! In the name of the Law! The police are presently outside!”

  “There,” she said. “There! You see!”

  Triumphant.

  And by this time she had actually pushed him from the room—was virtually propelling him downstairs—although the full focus of her verbal energies was now directed at the front door.

  “All right, all right! Just hold your horses; I haven’t got wings. I’m on my way!”

  The hammering didn’t cease.

  “Coming!” They were halfway down the stairs. “If you can’t hear me,” she cried, “it’s your own fault. And, besides, you may damage your eardrums. I’m giving you fair warning.”

  “But, Daisy, what are you going to tell them?” Andrew asked. “I can’t let you take all the—”

  “Oh, never mind that. I’ll think of something.” Her whisper was imperious—in fact it was a whisper only in relation to the recommendations she was making to those on the front doorstep. “They’ll have no idea what’s hit them, I promise you. Coming!” she called.

  “But I can’t. I can’t just leave you to—”

  “If you spoil things, Aguecheek, I shall never forgive you. I can’t stand a man who acts like a mealy-mouthed twerp. I don’t prize nobility; I prize sound common sense.”

  So it seemed he had no alternative. It was she who unlocked the back door at the end of the tiled passageway. “Coming!” she called again—flung it back over her shoulder—hoping to cover the sound of the key being turned.(Annoyingly, the knocking had stopped once more.)

  It was she who shoved him out into the dark.

  “Good luck, my friend!”

  “Thank you, Daisy. I—”

  She shut the door. Relocked it. Slipped the key beneath the mat.

  He heard her shout: “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Have a little patience! I’ve stubbed my toe. Quite probably it’s broken.” He heard the swift addendum: “I may be forced to sue!”

  In spite of this, he was sure they must have heard the grating of the key, the closing of the door. Anyway you’d suppose they would have anticipated such an exit? He’d half expected to be met by pairs of waiting arms.

  Arms uniformed blue and dressing-gowned red.

  He had expected, at the very least, to hear the thud of running feet.

  And he wouldn’t have cared about it either, not in the slightest. That’s how he’d prepared himself; and he had really thought he’d meant it.

  But as soon as he realized there wasn’t in fact anyone waiting for him, that they all appeared to be still at the front, his instinct for survival reasserted itself. From one back garden he clambered over the fence into another; and from that into the one beyond; equally unmindful of torn trousers or of any minor damage to flowers and fencing. More lights; more opened windows. A further barking dog added his own chaotic mite; other barking dogs at once responded. But even as Andrew made good his escape he was aware of the sound of voices raised in altercation; and amongst them he was sure that he heard Daisy’s. He prayed she wasn’t piling up more trouble for herself. At the thought of the trouble she was undoubtedly disseminating he again felt such a tug at his heart he could practically have wept; have sunk down on the grass and sobbed.

  And during the next few days, indeed, he wanted desperately to phone her. Several times he reached for the receiver. But he felt bound by that promise she had tried to exact. He couldn’t have borne to hear her disappointment. Her exasperation.

  He scanned the local newspaper; yet to his frustration—and relief—discovered nothing.

  He eventually gave Marsha the packet of Passing Cloud that he’d had in his pocket all evening.

  He never saw Daisy again. One of his colleagues took over her business, which in any case she soon placed in the hands of another company. He never knew what inspired extravagances she might have uttered to Mr Queechy or the police.

  In the early days he thought about her a lot: with longing and regret and the wistful conviction that he had let something rather precious pass him by.

  In later years, however, he used to hear about her from his sons: uncharitably from the one, with laughing toleration from the other. And on one occasion, when he and Janet paid a flying visit to the latter, deliberately picking a day when they knew Phoebe wouldn’t be there, for neither he nor his wife approved of couples who cohabited—on that occasion the telephone rang and Malcolm shouted from the kitchen asking him to answer. It was Daisy; he recognized the voice at once. While Malcolm was on his way to speak to her Andrew adjured him, in a whisper quite unnecessary, not to divulge his identity—“I met her in a different life, you know; my God, how that woman could talk!”—but he felt a little shaken none the less, forcefully reminded of the miraculous escape he’d had one night some forty years earlier: not merely from the arms of the Law and the possibility of unimaginable humiliation before the magistrates; nor from the arms of Daisy’s obese and unattractive landlord; but more particularly, of course, from the arms of Daisy herself, who’d been bent on acquiring a luckless successor to poor old Henry—and who might, so very nearly, have managed to catch herself one, at that!

  Part Five

  39

  It was a Saturday. Marsha was having lunch at Notting Hill but had left a cold meal in the fridge for her brother and sister-in-law and some chicken soup in a saucepan on the stove. “So all you’ve got to do is warm it up, very carefully,” she’d said to Dan. “Only turn the heat on low and remember to stir, so that the soup won’t catch. I’ve put a lid on top of the saucepan and the wooden spoon is lying across the lid. You may need a little salt and pepper. I rather wish I wasn’t going.”

  On departure she reminded him again. “Whatever you do, Dan, check afterwards you’ve turned the stove off properly. I haven’t left a line of makeup, have I? Now, are you sure I can trust you with all that?… I hope it isn’t going to rain.”

  Daisy sat down in a peevish mood.

  “Well, you’d think they would have picked her up, wouldn’t you? His own mother! And you’d even think they might have popped their head around the door to say hello!”

  “But they always drive her back,” said Dan.

  “Oh, yes, and then leave her at the gate! Well, I ask you! They’ve probably forgotten what this house looks like from the inside. I suppose they must take fright at the thought of all these wallpapers.”

  Yet it didn’t end there. Not by any means.

  “And, anyway, you’d think they could have asked us all. That would have been the obvious thing, the only decent thing, wouldn’t it? But some people just wouldn’t recognize the only decent thing, not if it pulled up right in front of them on horseback—wearing a mask, waving a pistol, politely demanding their money or their lives.”

  “Oh, I think I’m really quite thankful, old girl, to be stopping here at home.”

  “Yes, well, you may be, but I most certainly am not! After all, you were born a Stormont; I wasn’t—praise the Lord!”<
br />
  “Even poor Marsha didn’t much want to go,” smiled Dan. “Especially as she had to have all the bother of preparing our own meal first—though she always does that, of course. It wasn’t worth it, she said. But she could hardly get out of it this time: it must be a good four or five weeks since she last went. More.”

  “Weeks, did you say? To me it feels like years—centuries—I can’t even recall when I… And, no, it certainly wasn’t worth it, if you ask me!” She glared at what was set in front of her.

  “In fact,” she said, “I can’t think why they didn’t leave Marsha out of it altogether. Why they didn’t just ask me and have done with it. Then we’d all have been satisfied. Except for one thing.”

  “What?” Dan had the feeling that she might have said something which unfortunately required an answer.

  “What? Well, that I don’t suppose I would have gone—naturally! There’s only one way, in my opinion, of teaching people not to be so casual: turn down all their invitations, let them realize what they’re missing! What is this muck?” It was tinned macédoine, mixed up with salad cream. “Is it vomit?”

  “Omelette?”

  Dan would not get himself a hearing aid! No more would Marsha. They were both of them so stubborn: even when they had her own long-term example before them. In Dan’s case, however, it was as much laziness as obstinacy. He would shrug equably and say, “Oh, Daisy, what will any of it matter ten or twenty years from now?” It made her feel so angry. “It’s today that counts; today—today! What sort of fun do you suppose it is for me?” Yet all the same Dan was marginally less irritating than his sister. At least he owned up to his defect. Sometimes.

  “Talk about the deaf leading the deaf!” she said. And you could! Nobody would hear it! “I asked if this were vomit,” she enunciated with poetic, almost drama-school diction.

  “Oh? One rather hopes it isn’t,” answered Dan.

  “Ah—hope,” she observed cryptically. “Well, hope makes a good breakfast but it won’t be so hot for your supper. Didn’t you ever hear that proverb?” She failed to say where lunch fitted in, exactly. “‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here!’ That one’s equally as apt. Yes! Did Dante come from Hendon? Or perhaps I should say—did Dante come to Hendon? Alderton Crescent. Number ten.”

  She smiled at him, sweetly.

  “Daisy’s Inferno.”

  Dan responded to her smile. He gave a satisfied laugh. “Do you know, I was just thinking it must be such ages since you and I last had a meal together in this room? I mean, of course, without Marsha.”

  “Why? Have we ever?” All other times over the past six or seven years, when Marsha had gadded off to Notting Hill or Harrow, Daisy herself had probably been out. “Have we ever?” she repeated.

  “No—perhaps not.” He relapsed into his normal silence, a shell-like cave of peace and gentle murmurings, from which he’d amiably stick out his head from time to time in the sanguine yet unfounded expectation that he would not encounter problems.

  Daisy gave a sigh. She said: “Without Marsha? No. There’s always been Marsha. There always will be Marsha. There always will be about to be Marsha. For ever and ever, amen! And heaven help the lot of us! But quite right, too—and very nice—and that’s what I say, dear, don’t you?” It had seemed, for a moment, that Dan might be on the point of raising some objection. “Her brother’s keeper. Her sister-in-law’s keeper. Tell me, dear, did she always—as a child—show an exceptional interest in going to the zoo?”

  “But, no, this can’t be the first time that you’ve eaten in this room without Marsha. Did you and Henry never dine with us? Oh, you must have.”

  “I did come here once—I do seem vaguely to recall—there was a cake, some sort of cake—but no, dear, I don’t suppose I’m meaning Henry—” she chuckled—“now why on earth should I remember that?”

  40

  “Then, Daisy, you must come to lunch!” Dan cried. “Ah, there’s a box just over there.”

  But his number was engaged.

  He tried at a second box halfway up the hill and again when they arrived at Hampstead underground. “I suspect she must be talking to Mother!” He laughed, a shade uncertainly.

  This uncertainty, however, had nothing to do with whom Erica might or might not have been talking to. It was because he was now worrying that he could have acted a little rashly. People often told him he was inclined to be impulsive.

  At Hendon Central there seemed no point in ringing up a fourth time: the house was barely minutes from the station. When they got there Erica had finished on the telephone.

  “Darling,” Dan called. “Darling, we have a visitor!” He attempted to radiate optimism, confidence and cheer: goodwill toward all men and a reminder that it was the duty of God-fearing people everywhere always to bear in mind the Ten Commandments. “Darling, you’ll never guess who I’ve just bumped into: Daisy, of all people! And I’ve invited her to lunch; I hope we can do something with the loaves and fishes? Knowing you, I’m sure we can!”

  “Yes, the Germans always make such excellent hausfraus,” nodded Daisy encouragingly; “at least one’s always heard they do; no matter what their other deficiencies may be,” she added, with a tactful lowering of the voice.

  Erica arrived from the kitchen. She had caught Dan’s silent plea and had responded to its urgency. She kissed Daisy on both cheeks and held her warmly by the hand.

  “Daisy, how wonderful to see you! It seems like years and years!”

  “That’s probably,” she replied, “because it is years and years!” She always thought of Henry when she said anything like this. Well, I suppose one reason might be, just might be… It still had the power to make her chuckle.

  “But how well you look! Marsha wasn’t exaggerating, was she?”

  “I don’t know, dear. You’d better tell me what she said. Fit to be the guest of honour, no doubt, at a chimpanzees’ tea party?”

  Dan laughed. “My word, Daisy, it’s not like you to fish.” He felt relieved and happy. “Or is it?”

  It was the questioning of it which annoyed his sister-in-law. “Oh, I do believe you’ve got fish on the brain!” she announced, acerbically. “Or else it may be water!”

  “Why?” Dan was disconcerted by this sudden alteration in mood.

  “Well, you started off with loaves and fishes. And as if that wasn’t enough…,” Daisy’s attempt at self-justification floundered, “…well, I shouldn’t think poor Erica would even understand the reference! And why should she, indeed?”

  “Oh, but I do understand the reference, Daisy; though it’s more a question of ham and salad this particular lunchtime—and that will surely stretch. I hope you like ham and salad?”

  “Ham?”

  “Yes, the Sabbath, you see. We’re strictly kosher on a Saturday.”

  And also somewhat heavy-handed in the humour department, thought Daisy. Or in a word: strictly Teutonic.

  However. As it was now after one and the meal was ready and Erica obviously hadn’t enough savoir-faire to offer any guest a drink, they went straight into the dining room and took their seats at the table—some silly ass of a maid having already set another place.

  “Speaking of such things,” said Daisy, aware of the visitor’s obligation to entertain, “do you ever encounter any kind of anti-Semitism, dear? I mean, here in the backwaters, away from Oswald Mosley and that fearful gang of his.”

  “No, not a great deal, Daisy; not in its more overt forms, anyway.”

  “Well, I’m pleased to hear it. I can’t stand people who harbour that sort of prejudice. It quite infuriates me. Besides, dear, you don’t really look Jewish, you know.” Daisy smiled at her, reassuringly.

  Then she put her head on one side and dispassionately considered Erica’s appearance: fair hair—rather lifeless, not at all like Andrew’s, clearly she ought to brush it a little more!—too large a chin, heavy features that would soon become a copy of her mother’s (why, in the beginning, had she given it tw
enty years?); pretty enough in their way, she supposed, if you didn’t mind insipidity or, not to put too fine a point on it, vacuity; an almost Junoesque figure that made poor Dan look even more of a spindleshanks than he already did; and—particularly unfortunate of course—an aura of unEnglishness which somehow left you with the impression that, when you’d last set eyes on her, she might have been wearing traditional peasant costume and had her hair coiled up in braids and yodelled.

  “Well, do I pass?” asked Erica, with a gentle smile.

  “You do,” said Daisy. Because, for goodness sake, what else was there to say? Yes, through the eye of a needle! With flying colours! Every time!

  But she had far more respect for herself when she didn’t feel the need to deal in even small hypocrisies. She went back to what they had been saying. It was a topic which didn’t promise very much in the way of entertainment, but for the moment it was all they had, and she must simply do her best with it.

  “No, I just can’t abide the prejudices of narrow-minded people,” she continued. “I daresay I’m a bit off my noddle in that respect. But I truly can’t.”

  “Attagirl!” applauded Dan. “That’s our Daisy!” He discovered that he spoke with pride—and secretly smiled to recollect his earlier apprehensions.

  His sister-in-law felt gratified but wanted to show she could handle praise maturely; by not letting it destroy impartiality.

  “Mind you, dear, at the same time you do have to be fair and admit that in some neighbourhoods—take this one, for instance—whilst not at all condoning it, you can better understand how people occasionally do feel twinges of anti-Semitism.”

  “Can you?” asked Erica.

  “Oh, yes. My word! On any busy morning you’ve only got to spend two or three minutes in the Golders Green Road—which I grant you isn’t quite such a backwater as Hendon—two or three minutes being jostled and elbowed and all but trampled down by hoards of screeching fur-clad matrons, most of them nearly bent double by the weight of diamond rings and noses and nail polish—particularly I mean, Erica, when you’re just a little shrimp like me, not a great big Amazon like you who can no doubt always give every bit as good as you get—and make no mistake about it, dear, I admire it if you can, indeed I do…well, where was I now?…yes, that’s the kind of thing that really gets the Jews a bad name, if anything does.”