“A break? That seems rather an odd choice of word, doesn’t it? Under the circumstances.”
“I’m sorry. Could you repeat what you said?” He pressed the receiver closer to his ear.
She did repeat it, more or less.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Yes, you’re right. I know this is going to be a most unpleasant shock to her.”
He looked at Marsha. She too, he could tell, had caught his feelings of hostility towards the woman on the phone. Or was that just wishful thinking on his own part; she could certainly have heard little that the niece had actually said? But earlier Marsha had cried, “I’d like to push her under a bus; I truly would; I mean it!”, referring, of course, to Daisy. Any transference of such hostility, thought Dan—and so very speedily at that—could only be a miracle.
“I’m really not sure how we’re going to break it to her,” he said into the mouthpiece.
“Oh, she’ll be all right,” replied the woman. “She’s tough as old boots. Besides. They hadn’t seen each other for donkey’s years. There was no love lost between ’em, not a jot.”
“But even so. Memories of youth…of shared experience …”
“Oh, you’ll forgive my saying so, I’m sure, and perhaps you know her better than I do, but I think that’s pure malarkey.”
It sounded like something her aunt might have said; and yet—not quite.
“Has she got your number?” asked Dan.
She probably had (change-of-address cards had been practically the sole correspondence between brother and sister; or, more accurately, between nieces and aunt) but this particular niece now repeated it three times over. Dan just couldn’t get it right, although Marsha held the paper for him. In the end he pretended that he had. The woman’s tone reminded him: long distance.
“Well, anyway, I hope the funeral goes smoothly,” he said at last, “and that afterwards you’ll all have a nice weekend away to get over it.” He winked at Marsha. He was glad he’d thought of this retort in time—it was the sort of thing which usually only occurred to him too late, and he knew that Daisy would appreciate it. “At least it ought to make a break for you,” he said.
46
She had been rude, of course. She realized that. But they had deserved it in a way, with all their mealy-mouthings and their namby-pambiness of spirit. Nothing of any moment to say for themselves. And she hadn’t been told they could hear; that was the point. Naturally, if one of them had only mentioned it when they first came doddering into the room, none of this would ever have happened. It was a mix-up, a misunderstanding. You couldn’t strictly say, she supposed, that it was anybody’s fault.
And they had in fact talked—be fair—even if they hadn’t said anything and even if scarcely any of it had been addressed to herself (which was remarkably impolite, as nobody with any pretensions to breeding would dare to deny for one moment). But it had hardly made the party swing, their conversation; it hadn’t quite had that fizzing, champagne quality beloved of Noël Coward.
Some of the topics:
The weather here.
The weather in Australia.
The friend of the son of an acquaintance who had at one time emigrated there; or had at any rate thought about emigrating there—they seemed to recollect now that he might have changed his mind.
The eating of Christmas pudding in the summer.
August Bank Holiday in the winter.
Why had they moved it?
“What—Australia? I didn’t know they had.” (Daisy’s own contribution; and by far the most amusing line of the entire evening; apart from the monologue.)
“No, you big chump. The August Bank Holiday.” Marsha.
“It used to be on the first Monday of the month, you see. Now it’s on the last.” (Mrs Nosy Parker, naturally—wouldn’t you just know it!)
“Which month?”
“August.”
“Ah? How interesting.”
“Oh dear. I think you’re teasing me. Have I been teaching my grandmother to suck eggs? Denny says I do it all the time! Don’t you, my sweetheart?”
“Why is Easter never constant?” Marsha again. “It’s something I’ve so often wondered.”
None of them knew of course. They waffled on ludicrously—was it the moon, was it the sun, could it be something to do with the tides?—no doubt believing that they all sounded highly intellectual. And wholly unsurprisingly not one of them dreamt of consulting her.
(Not that she would have known either.)
“But here’s a thought! Can any of us even be sure they keep the August Bank Holiday in Australia?” Easter was dismissed, clearly, as being of somewhat less importance.
(Besides, that woman’s grandmother would probably have taken them all the way back to Boadicea! Earlier! To a time most likely before they’d even thought of boiling eggs, let alone sucking them!)
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do! I shall ask Andrew in my very first letter—I shall write it tomorrow—and let you know the moment I’ve received an answer!”
“Yes, he’d be the sort of person able to find out, wouldn’t he? Oh, how fascinating! And what fun to have someone reliable like that right across the globe, right on the other side of the world!”
“You’re right,” said Daisy. She felt this had been almost worth breaking her vow of silence for. “Yes, indeed. Right on the other side of the world.”
“Oh dear, but only in a manner of speaking, I mean. Poor Mrs Poynton. We do know what you’re going through. And wouldn’t anyone—anyone who’s ever been a mother? One beloved fledgling leaving the nest; followed so very shortly by another. Oh, how you’re going to miss them! It must be such a wrench for you all. We know so well ourselves what it feels like to be left behind.”
“Yes; oh, yes!” said Marsha, with a grateful nod.
“Poppycock!” muttered Daisy, with her sweetest smile.
No.
Hardly what you’d term a shindig!
Hardly what you’d term a satisfactory wake. (All of the lamentations. None of the merrymaking.)
How typical.
Yes, and how she despised that tepid sort of nothingness; that total lack of any finer feeling. The fact that people could fritter their lives away in such everlastingly paltry exchanges—oh, it was pitiable, just pitiable!
And yet…
Well, of course, that was precisely what it should be. Wasn’t it? Pitiable. Hadn’t she been told by Marie, time and time again, that perhaps her greatest failing was her inability to suffer fools gladly?
“Everyone has his own special niche in life, Daisy, even those whom you dismiss as fools.” It was funny how Marie could say things like that and somehow they became acceptable.
“Yes, dear, I know. But why does it so often have to be round me? Why am I surrounded by these niches?”
“And God loves us all quite equally.”
“Yes, dear, I know that too. I don’t believe it—but I know it. (Seriously, though, don’t you think he really ought to have just a few preferences tucked in here and there? For his own good, I mean—naturally—certainly not ours!) But you should have been a man and been a vicar, Marie! So should I; we’ve both missed our vocation! I should have liked more than anything to be able to push people in the right direction—wouldn’t you? And I don’t mean just the fools either!”
Daisy chuckled again as she thought about it.
But Marie was right of course.
And what were fools to do, then, if they didn’t possess a talent for being entertaining?
Shun all invitations? Pay no calls?
“Yes!” cried Daisy; the irrepressible, the unsinkable.
But perhaps it wasn’t quite so simple as that; as even she felt duty-bound to admit. Apart from anything else—fools were clearly entertaining in the eyes of other fools.
All right. She had been rude. Unforgivably rude. And those poor people hadn’t deserved it. She confessed it all, freely and humbly. “It’s as true now, M
arie, as it ever was. Truer! (Who ever said that we grow nicer or wiser with age? What an unconscionable ass he must have been! We mostly get aching bones and bunions, to eradicate intentions!) It totally hits the nail: I haven’t got much charity! I do realize, dear.” But perhaps she could do something as a peace-offering—write them a letter, buy them a packet of biscuits?
Yes.
Yes, she must obviously do something. And into the bargain it would please Marsha. She had always done her best to please Marsha. She had never wanted to be a nuisance. One of her chief regrets, indeed, was provided by her demoralizing inability ever to be of any real use at times when Marsha seemed to be especially busy. You’d think that a clubwoman who’d had her portrait painted by Augustus John (she often wondered on whose wall that portrait might be hanging now and exactly how much, in hard cash terms, that person might have thought it worth to have her ugly little mug staring down at him!), a woman who at other times had been told that her fingertips felt like the brush of angels’ wings and who had been both the terror and the pride of her wartime colleagues and superiors, not to mention the much-loved heroine, in the war before that one, of so many luckless lads in the trenches—you’d think that such a woman would at least know how to operate the washing machine, wouldn’t you, without letting the soapy water flood onto the newly polished floor; or how to put away just two bottles of milk without letting one of them slip from her nerveless grasp? She had felt so sorry for the poor soul, having to clear up after her on top of all her other chores.
(Of course, the washing machine was antediluvian; and why did the milk bottles have to be given a wipe, almost a baptism, before being fit to be placed in the fridge? But she had only pointed out these not unimportant details afterwards—well, a little afterwards—and she hadn’t, in any case, been thinking simply of her own good. It certainly hadn’t invalidated the sincerity of her apology, as they had somehow got it into their heads that it had. No. Why on earth should it? That’s what she could never understand.)
However, she remembered saying once—or thinking once, she couldn’t be quite sure—that Marsha should have been called Martha; a possible implication being that she, Daisy, had elected to play the other sister. Mary. But if so what had she learned at the Master’s feet? Not tolerance, it seemed. Not up to now. (Even that slippery milk bottle could still rankle!) Then how about forgiveness—if only in the hope that she herself might also be forgiven? She looked up at the lady in the crinoline with all those lovely flowers in front, the butterflies above and lollipops behind. There would never be (she trusted!) any more suitable occasion than this, both to sue for forgiveness and simultaneously to grant it.
And Daisy rose while the spirit was still upon her. She would go downstairs—at once—and practise all the Christian virtues.
She would turn the other cheek.
She would not become as sounding brass, or as a tinkling cymbal.
And she would eat her supper at the same time.
(She hoped that it was something tasty.)
She left her bedroom and started down the stairs, holding on to the banister with one hand, supporting herself against the wall with the other, her stick, which was hooked over the sleeve of her green jacket, softly knocking the ferrule on it as she went. Below her, by the front door, Dan replaced the telephone receiver abruptly, with a satisfied smile and an almost mischievous look of daring. She had forgotten about his threatened telephone call; or, rather, after a period of reflection, had paid it no very serious attention; he had simply been upset. (“I must say something extremely nice about those wallpapers,” she had decided. “Beyond the wit of any mere mortal to think what, though, so if ever a piece of genuine inspiration were going to be most desperately required…!” She hadn’t finished the thought but had known that if she showed herself willing to leave it in the right hands such inspiration would surely be forthcoming.) Now she saw that the row had been merely an excuse—wholly trumped up most likely. Now she saw how pleased they were to have found a way of removing her. It wasn’t just his smile that announced this; it was also the manner in which Marsha was suddenly gazing up at her, as though at Lazarus taking everyone by surprise after a possible moment of eavesdropping; Marsha looked dismayed, discomfited—guilty.
And small wonder, either. It was Marsha, of course, who was really at the bottom of all this. Dan was just her dupe; nondescript, weak-kneed like the majority of men, good-natured in a way but at any time ready to surrender his integrity in exchange for a life of peace; no better than a lump of putty in the hands of an unscrupulous woman.
Yes, it was Marsha.
Daisy now unhooked her walking stick and pointed shakily with it—stern, vengeful, uncompromising—as if the Oracle of Apollo had been transported, telekinetically, from Delphi and set down halfway up their stairs.
She cried out:
“When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male!”
She allowed those ringing words to fade majestically into the silence. Marsha turned to Dan, seeking clarification. For still—still!—neither of them had ever bought a hearing aid. Daisy had to raise her voice yet further.
“There!” she declared. “There! Oh, how I wish I could have written that! Did you ever meet Kipling? Or—rather—did Kipling ever meet you? No matter: he may have viewed you from the top of some passing bus, in Baker Street or wherever: the only thing necessary. At any event, he knew absolutely what he was on about, did Mr Kipling!”
But Marsha continued only to stand there and look stupid. She didn’t know what he was on about, clearly—nor what Daisy, speaking through him, was on about either.
“Oh, what’s the use?” exclaimed Daisy. “I might just as well pack up and go home and call it a day! Haven’t you even heard of Kipling?”
How in God’s name did you make contact with somebody who hadn’t even heard of Kipling?
Then, like a shot, she knew.
She knew!
She knew!
“You did realize, I suppose, that once upon a time Andrew wanted to leave home and marry me instead?” The Oracle’s words—and the medium’s tone—had grown quite conversational.
Silence.
“What?” asked Marsha. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand you, Daisy. How old was he?”
Daisy affected a laugh. “Good old Marsha! Running true to form! Always the one reliable question.”
“I mean—of course it must have been when he was little? Children often expect to marry the grown-ups whom they love.”
“Your husband, idiot; your husband, not your son—I never saw your son when he was little! I always thought it was a singularly daft idea anyway: two Andrews in the same household. And arrogant beyond! No doubt it must have been Andrew’s—how very like him!” She added: “Your husband’s, not your son’s.”
She was still holding court from the staircase. She hadn’t come one step further down.
“Yes, there’s something to puzzle the Brains Trust! More arrogant than it was daft or more daft than it was arrogant? Because what happened when a letter arrived for Andrew Poynton, Esquire? Did they take it in turns to open them: one for you, one for me, one for you…? Oh, I forgot. Your husband wasn’t around long enough for it ever to develop into a major issue?”
She was, by now, actually enjoying herself.
“No!… Somebody else got to him; somebody with less of a conscience than I had, plainly; and with considerably more of an iron fist than either of us, you or I.” She shrugged. “But I’ll swear he never loved her more than he did me.”
Marsha’s face looked old and very drawn in a way that it hadn’t looked earlier, when she had been filled with fiery anger. One of her legs had started trembling spasmodically; her shoe beat an involuntary tattoo against the polished tiles
. Yet her voice remained steady, even if it sounded odd. Not merely toneless. In some way odd.
“But you don’t know what you’re saying, Daisy. You only met him once. Or maybe twice. You scarcely knew him.”
“No, dear. Correction. You were the one who scarcely knew him. He and I had quite a little love affair. He said I was the most exciting woman he had ever met. He said that he’d do anything for me. Anything! I told him in that case just to take his punishment like a man—and run off home to you!”
Outside, in the crescent, a horn hooted—there was a tremendous squealing of brakes—a dog barked; none of them was aware of it; not even Dan, who simply stood there motionless, gazing at the floor.
“He was a nice lad,” said Daisy; “he had depths—which you, I’m sure, had never seen! But just the same what use would he have been to me? No, I didn’t want him. Not in the least. Yet it was good to know I could have had him. That all I had to do was raise my little finger!”
She chuckled.
“Oh, I wasn’t quite as beautiful as you; I admit that. But there was something else I wasn’t, either—and that was a poor fish, a poor sad little fish swimming all unloved around her poor sad little bowl. You’d only been married such a short time too; yet you obviously couldn’t hold him—not for all your vaunted loveliness! Me, I just had a funny little mug.” She pulled a face at them, to illustrate. “And that’s why, now, you want to take your revenge. Turn me out. Lock me away. Bedlam.”
Her tone had turned to bitterness again. Memory of the present had come back to strike out triumphs of the past.
“And do you know what William Congreve said?”
They either already knew what William Congreve said, or else at that moment were in no tearing hurry to find out. But Daisy enlightened them anyway.
“He was another man who knew what he was on about. Plainly. You naturally won’t have heard of him! What William Congreve said was…”
She paused. They respected her pause. But it lasted so long that Dan had even raised his eyes to look at her in the second or so before it ended.
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!”
When I Was Otherwise Page 26
