“We can’t have her in this house!” the ogress cried to Dan. “We can’t! Put her out! Tonight! If you don’t I shall!”
Yes, it was frightening—frightening—the more so, of course, since she couldn’t guess what Dan was thinking. His presence between them was possibly what saved her from being struck, she admitted that, but all the same he appeared to be letting his demon-possessed sister rant on and on, almost as though he believed she might be justified. It was nightmarishly unimaginable, yet it really did seem that he aligned himself with Marsha.
Eventually, however, she was able to make it to the stairs; she vaguely assumed Dan must have mildly remonstrated with the vixen. And the moment she gained the potential sanctuary of her bedroom she wedged her fireside chair beneath the doorknob. She didn’t know where she had found the strength.
Then she sat trembling on the edge of her bed and covered her face with her hands. It was only by the way her hands moved up and down that she became aware of how quickly she was breathing.
But did you ever witness such a terrifying performance? The woman had gone berserk. Quite literally berserk. Stark, staring mad.
And did they really mean to throw her out before she’d even had a chance to arrange something?
Of course she wouldn’t want to stay. Not after this. But she’d need a little time to think where she could go.
She wished that Malcolm hadn’t left. Bill was now too frail to assist her much. And—besides—that termagant of a wife of his! (Why was she beset on nearly every side by termagants and harpies?) And Edgar and Vera…their little flat in Blandford Street was hardly any larger than a lift in Selfridge’s and anyway poor Vera was no longer in the best of health. And Madge? No! Daisy wouldn’t be able to stand it! No, she’d rather be living with a Barbary ape! Almost would be, in fact: a chocolate-guzzling, inanity-drivelling, dowager-humped Barbary ape who lay on a sofa the livelong day gawping at TV! And Mr Patrick…? Well, at the moment he was on holiday in Greece with one of those nice but slightly fey young men who sometimes came prancing into his shop with flowing scarves and hysterical exclamations. Mr Patrick had promised to send her a postcard but she didn’t suppose it was ever going to reach her, not now. She had no idea of how she was possibly going to cope.
And even if she’d had some money she couldn’t have stayed at the club. The club had never been residential. Apart from that, the very thought of being made to wash out her dirty linen there… No, unthinkable! She had to be permitted to hang on to a vestige of her pride, no matter how much warmth and sympathy she knew she would receive.
But it was all so…extraordinary! What had she done? Only played the giddy goat a little and performed—let’s face it—quite the funniest, most entertaining piece of nonsense that could have enlivened that dull and somniferous sitting room in the past six thousand years or so. (Oh, beg its pardon, lounge!) If only the other participants could have seen the delightfully madcap humour of it all!
Yet what did you expect? In Hendon?
Oh, but how they would have laughed about it at the club! The shenanigans, of course. Not the subsequent shemozzle.
No, it was no good. She would somehow have to manage to get down there again, even if it was a question of two buses in either direction and of having to hang around late at night for God knew how many hours on windswept corners and hard pavements waiting to be mugged and have your handbag stolen. And this was to say nothing of the likelihood of driving rain and the near-certainty of having to harangue a coal-black conductor for ringing the bell too soon, long before you’d reached your seat.
But she would have to deal with it somehow! She must! She must! There was just no alternative. Although the underground station was close Daisy couldn’t use it. She had once seen an old man throw himself under a tube. She had never recovered from that.
In any case. Underground station close? Only a couple of buses in each direction? She didn’t know where she’d be living yet.
And abruptly she brought her fists down on the bed, one on either side of her, in a despairing attempt to release at least a little of her frustration. She suddenly felt so very much unloved and isolated and homesick. Homesick for the club. Homesick for those many old-time friends, some of them now living overseas but most of them long dead, who would at once have understood. Homesick, above all, for Marie.
Oh, Marie, she thought.
Marie!
She thought of Jimmy, too. Jimmy would be in his forties now. She often wondered where he was, how he was getting on. She fantasized about his charming wife, his talented and lively children, what it was like for him at Christmas and on birthdays.
She hoped that he was happy.
She heaved herself up from the bed, moved to her wooden chair beside the table, sat with both arms on the tablecloth, cheek resting on her hands. She hadn’t meant any harm. She truly hadn’t. She knew she sometimes did upset people but it was never because she actually wanted to. It was only some devilry which wouldn’t let her stop. She wished she could get to know herself better; learn what made her act the way she did.
Half an hour later Dan came up.
44
He had to knock a long time before she realized he was there and he quickly grew alarmed, calling out her name with mounting urgency while trying to believe she was merely sulking and hadn’t suffered a stroke or a heart attack. But Daisy in fact, just before making her escape, had finally had the presence of mind to switch off her hearing aid and thus reduce the ogress—magnify her?—to a grotesquely moving mouth and a dingy set of spittle-glinting teeth, almost Hogarthian. Yet she had afterwards forgotten, in all her misery, to switch the aid back on. In any case what point? Eventually, however, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the rattling of the knob.
“Who is it? What do you want?”
“Ah, thank God!” He’d heard her voice, had heard the rhythms of her questions and guessed what she was asking. “Daisy. It’s me—Dan! Are you all right?”
“I said—who is it? Have you come to harass me again? I can’t take any more of it. Do you hear me? I can’t stand any fresh persecution.”
“It’s Dan. Please let me in, Daisy. Turn on your—”
“Go away! Don’t think you can unsettle me by stealth and silence and testing the handle of my door. This is my home. I’m sticking to it. I won’t allow you to throw me out.”
“Turn on your hearing aid!”
“Go away! I know that you’re still there.”
She remembered her hearing aid.
“Is it Dan?”
He had caught the screech and whistle. “Daisy, I want to talk to you.”
“Are you alone?”
She had to repeat the question.
“You’re quite sure you’re alone? No she-devil lurking round the corner waiting to lambaste me?”
“Yes, I’m alone. Completely…utterly…alone.” Even she could detect the weariness.
“Wait, then. Hold your horses.”
She pulled back the chair. Dan stood inside the doorway, florid and fat and somehow a little absurd, breathing hard from his exertions, or apprehensions, yet exuding that air of kindliness and bewilderment which was as much a part of him as the Harris tweed jacket he always wore.
Also an air of tiredness and uncertainty and loss.
“Are you coming down to supper?” he asked; making a desperate bid to smile—even, ideally, to convey some impression of normality. It was as if he were saying: Let’s all pretend this has been an evening much like any other. No caterwauling and no barricades. As far as I’m concerned, Daisy, that’s the only way we’ll ever manage to get through it.
But Daisy glared at him defiantly. “Do you think that I could swallow a crumb? With her? That harridan downstairs? If you think that, you must be just as mad as she is!”
“You know, old girl, it wasn’t entirely her fault. You’ve got to come clean and own up.”
“Old girl? Come clean? Where do you find these up-to-date expressions?”
“I really feel you should apologize.”
“Because it’s not as if you even read much, is it? No. How often do I see you sitting down with a book? Weren’t you ever taught to appreciate good literature? I mean, before they put you into hairnets? Your world must be an exceedingly drab one. No television. No colour. Nothing but that crackly old wireless. Which I daresay half the time you can’t even hear.”
“Please, Daisy,” he said. “Please, old girl.”
“A household without books! Just a few small shelves: Agatha Christie and Dornford Yates and Gone With The Wind. Henry was the same, of course. He may have had a book in his hand the first time I encountered him but that was by no means typical—oh, no—you only have to ask Miss Austen about the dangerousness of first impressions! Thank heaven I came from a more cultivated background. My father may not have been up to very much, all-round, but at least he was a man of letters. A schoolmaster. Did I ever tell you that?”
Dan didn’t answer. But he met her gaze and held it, until she looked away in irritation.
She sat again and sighed impatiently.
“Apologize? For what, I’d like to know? For getting myself practically beaten up?”
“What was that, Daisy?”
“Apologize for what?”
“Well, in the first place for having lost her, as she says, another pair of friends. She thinks they might have been good ones. You know how she loves to have people to talk to. And they’re the only neighbours we’ve had in a long while who have taken any interest.”
“Interest? They were almost peering into our account books.”
“And I must say they did seem fairly pleasant.”
“It’s next time they’ll want to see the private correspondence!”
“But Marsha doesn’t imagine they’ll ever want to come again.”
“Why not? She can tell them I’m an actress, can’t she? She can tell them I was learning the lines of my new play. There! It isn’t true but it’s inventive. Would you or she have thought of it? No, of course not! Which shows again how much you need me! And to make it more convincing I shall give them Juliet. ‘O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet.’ Etc, etc, and so forth.
She can tell them I’m Edith Evans. I’m sure they won’t know the difference. And perhaps that way when they do come again we could even charge admission.”
The prospect of it, for a moment, seemed to brighten her.
“Though it goes without saying—Juliet was your original prize ninny! I certainly wouldn’t have messed things up in the dopey fashion she did.”
Dan smiled too—less dreamily than Daisy—and with relief.
“To begin with,” she went on, “I’d never have taken that dose. No fear! Not even to end with, either!”
“That’s right, old girl. That’s right. We could all get on so well together if only…”
There was a pause.
“If only what?” The smile had disappeared.
He was annoyed with himself. He answered slowly and consideringly. “Well, if only you were occasionally just a little more careful about some of the things you said. That’s all.”
“No, it isn’t. No, it isn’t, not by a long chalk!” She pursed her lips. “You don’t mean occasionally, do you? You mean always. You don’t mean some of the things. You mean all of the things. I’ve got to live in a straitjacket. Is that your implication? Well, I can’t do it. The straitjackets of this world are for Marsha—perhaps even for yourself as well—who knows? But this morning I thought we understood each other.”
“And now?” Dan propped himself against the doorjamb, weighty with disappointment. He still hadn’t caught everything she’d said but at least his ear seemed more attuned. “And now?”
“And now? And now?” she parroted. “‘And now’ we’d better all of us take a dose!—have done with it,” she said.
Dan again breathed heavily. “If anyone in this family is in need of a straitjacket, Daisy, probably a lot of people would say it’s neither me nor Marsha.”
“I see,” said Daisy, very quietly (for her). “I see. So already you plan to have me certified, the pair of you?”
“Oh, don’t be so stupid! Just come and eat your supper. Without another word.”
“Ah, ha! From censorship to suppression! That was fast. But I’m sorry. I can’t eat in a straitjacket. I can’t reach for the condiments.”
Fast? Yes! This whole thing was proceeding much too fast. She realized that. But as always at these times (things were often going too quickly for her, getting out of hand, bumping down the hill like a crazed toboggan, when all she wanted out of life was interest, not speed), as always at these times she was totally powerless to do anything but step on the accelerator.
“And possibly I’d be better off in an asylum. At least I could stare at the white walls and perhaps find a modicum of entertainment there. At least it would get me away from this loony bin and its two keepers—who ought to be its inmates; it’s a very odd reversal. At least it would get me away from Erica’s wallpapers! My God. I wouldn’t use those to wipe my bottom on, let alone decide to put them on display!”
She added: “I apologize for the crudity. But there are some things which can positively drive you to it. Those wallpapers make up a good proportion of them.”
She added further: “Credit where credit’s due, however. This one in here isn’t actually so bad. You must both have had an off day.”
Dan’s face had gone a deeper shade of red; and he spoke thickly, as though he were suddenly having trouble with his enunciation.
“All right, Daisy. If that’s the way you feel.”
“Where are you going?”
“Downstairs.”
“Yes! Just slope off! Why does nobody in this house ever stop to finish a conversation?”
“Probably because they can’t wait to get away from you! I’m going downstairs to telephone.”
She had heard the second part but not the first. “Oh, that’s nice,” she told him. “Who’s going to have the privilege, on this occasion, of enjoying such a stimulating exchange of ideas?”
“The doctor,” he exclaimed. “I shall now do what I ought to have done years ago! But you see, Daisy, I hadn’t then had the benefit of one of your own stimulating ideas! I’m going to take the first steps towards having you committed.”
45
And he thought he really meant it, too. He certainly lurched downstairs in the enraged belief that the hall table, which had the telephone on it, was his proper destination. He had even pulled out the table drawer and extracted their leather-bound address book; had opened it up under B and laid it face down on the runner while he took out his glasses.
But by then his vindictiveness—and therefore his momentum—was already on the wane. He considered the unopened spectacle case, weighing it absently in his palm, then returned it to his pocket. He shut the address book and likewise returned it to its place.
Whereupon, he gave a start: even as he was closing the drawer the telephone had shrilled. It didn’t often ring and he’d been so alarmed by its abruptness—the mechanism set at full volume—that now for several seconds he merely stared and wondered if some jerking of the drawer might have activated it. Marsha walked towards him, woodenly, coming from the lounge. Dan picked up the receiver as though experiencing a dream.
He intoned their number.
“I’d like to speak to Mrs Daisy Stormont,” said the voice at the other end of the line. “This is long distance.”
The woman sounded very clipped; there’d been no ‘good evening’ or anything like that. For some reason Dan assumed she was the operator. This didn’t please her.
“I happen to be one of Mrs Stormont’s nieces,” she informed him acidly. “You can tell her that it’s Colleen.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Dan suddenly emerged out of his trance. “You’re speak
ing from Ireland.”
“No. Not from Ireland. We haven’t lived in Ireland for fifteen years. If it matters I’m speaking from Bournemouth. Is
Mrs Stormont there?”
But in fact she sounded quite relieved to hear her aunt couldn’t come to the telephone.
At first Dan wondered, though, if he might have made a mistake: at least it could have been a means of persuading her downstairs. Then, almost immediately, he realized he had done the right thing.
The woman’s father—Daisy’s brother—had just died.
The death had taken place in a nursing home in Bournemouth. Dan offered his condolences. “Had your father been very ill? I don’t think Daisy knew about it.”
“No, he was hardly ill at all. He was lucky.” He’d been eighty-four years old. He’d had a fair crack of the whip. It was a blessing in disguise.
The funeral would be next Friday. The niece doubted that Daisy would be able to come but she and her sisters had supposed she ought to be given the opportunity. If she did come, the woman continued, she herself could put her up on the Thursday night but unfortunately she and her family had arranged to leave Bournemouth for the weekend early on the Friday afternoon. Would he make this very clear to her?
Dan also doubted that Daisy would be able to go but he didn’t reveal this. The niece’s tone and manner did more than even her news—perhaps more than anything else within reason could have done—to arouse his feelings of partisanship for the woman who had just ridiculed his dead wife; or at least his dead wife’s choice of wallpaper; it amounted almost to the same thing. He said: “Yes, I should think she’d like to come. It would make a break for her.”
It crossed his mind as he said it that it would also make a break for Marsha and himself.
When I Was Otherwise Page 25
