Apparently it was, because three weeks later Friedrich Gutheim and I were married by the registrar at the civic offices of West Hampstead. Phrynne had recently become acquainted with the young diplomat, Arthur Wing, who was destined to become her first husband some eighteen months later. Arthur Wing was tall and lean, with eyes of such a penetrating blue that you could not help staring at them. He also turned out to have a powerful opium addiction. Whether Phrynne knew this at the time of her marriage she never told me.
They were married at the Church of All Saints, Spitalfields. The couple became divorced in the late summer of 1969, almost exactly three years to the day.
Now, as the sluggish little train eased itself through the pallid sunlight towards West Runton, I remembered Phrynne’s first meeting with Gerald Banstead, in the sitting room of our house in Highgate. Phrynne had arrived with someone else—a television actor, as I recall—but she seemed to set her sights on Gerald from the moment she saw him.
Her determination was a mystery to me, even at the time. Gerald was Freddy’s colleague, and of a similar age. He was precisely the type of man Phrynne would normally have labelled dull at twenty paces. I would have judged the chances of any attraction between them as non-existent, at least from Phrynne’s side.
“I’ve often wondered what made you fall for Gerald,” I said to Phrynne. “He was never exactly your type, was he?”
“Fall for Gerald? Ha!” She laughed, a short, sharp report, like a gun going off. “Gerald wasn’t the type you fall for so much as settle for. Hardly a dynamo, in any sense, I’m sure you’d agree.” She raised her glass to her lips, seeming to forget that it was empty.
“That’s not fair,” I said quietly. I felt sick to my stomach. It’s the drink, I told myself. Just the drink. She’s been under such a strain, what with the funeral and everything. This was bound to happen.
Phrynne threw me a look. “But I’m not fair, Iris, you should know that by now. I don’t mean anything by it. Buck up.” Her voice was softer than before, as if whatever demon had been goading her was now assuaged, at least for the moment. She wiped the rims of both glasses with a tissue then stowed them back in her carpet bag. “We’ve arrived.”
It was true. Even as she spoke, the train was juddering to a halt. I looked out upon a square red station building, with even, well kept flower beds to either side. A second building housed a cafe and public conveniences. The platform sign said Holyhaven. So far as I could remember I had never heard of it. A number of passengers stood waiting at the platform edge.
“What is this place?” I said.
“It’s the quaintest little town, you’re going to love it. Gerald and I came here on our honeymoon.”
As we hurried to shift our luggage from the compartment and on to the platform, I asked myself repeatedly what on Earth could have persuaded Phrynne to return here. If there was one thing Phrynne detested it was backwaters like this.
It can only be because of Gerald, I thought. Gerald and me. She’s brought me here to be humiliated.
I immediately dismissed the idea as ludicrous.
Phrynne had booked us rooms at a pub called The Bell. Driving through the streets of Holyhaven in the station taxi I could not help noticing that there were other, somewhat grander accommodations available in the town—classier, Freddy would have said, a word I hated. A seafront hotel called The Esplanade in particular, boasting a Michelin-starred restaurant and ‘all rooms ensuite’, seemed much more Phrynne’s kind of place, but when I mentioned to her that they were advertising vacancies she shook her head decisively and proclaimed that The Esplanade was guilty of inferior service.
“They don’t have time for you any more, these big places,” she said. “The Bell is completely different—a real find. They’ll light a fire in your room of an evening if you want one, and the food is superb—the best kind of home cooking. None of this stingy nouvelle cuisine horror. You’ll see exactly what I mean from the moment we get there.”
My own experience of staying in public houses—travelling around for Freddy’s work, mainly—told me they were cramped, noisy places where the comfort of the overnight guests invariably came a poor second to the demands of the regular drinkers. I had the uneasy feeling that Phrynne’s fond memories of The Bell at Holyhaven stood little chance of measuring up to the reality. She had been on her honeymoon, after all, when she had last stayed there. How could our game middle-aged widows’ enterprise possibly compare with that?
I was pleasantly surprised by the exterior of the pub, however, a sprawling cob-and-thatch, bright with new whitewash, the freshly blackened porch steps flanked by a retinue of stone and terracotta planters packed with wallflowers and geraniums. The taxi man deposited our bags at the kerb then tugged on the bell pull to summon attention. The door was opened by a youngish, fresh-faced woman with her dark hair gathered in a loose ponytail.
“Mrs Banstead and Mrs Gutheim,” she said. “Welcome.” Her voice was clear and confident, with just a trace of the local accent. She bent down, grabbing my weekend holdall and the larger of Phrynne’s two carpet bags and lifting them off the ground with apparent ease. “You can leave the rest of your things just inside the door there. Robbie will bring them up for you in a moment. I’m Danuta, by the way.”
“Danuta,” Phrynne said. “What an unusual name.”
“My dad was Polish. Came over to fight with the RAF. He died last year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“No need. He had the life he wanted. He loved this place.”
“You’re new here, aren’t you?”
The woman—Danuta—looked confused for a second, then nodded and smiled. “You mean the pub? Depends what you call new. Robbie and I, we took the place over about ten year ago now. It was in a horrible state when we bought it, I don’t mind telling you. But we’re pleased we stuck with it.”
She shouldered her way through a doorway leading off the main saloon, leading us up the stairs to the floor above. The staircase was narrow and creaky, obviously ancient. There was a pleasant smell of cigar smoke and wood polish.
“I’ve put you in the two rooms at the back,” Danuta said. “You’ll find it’s quieter. And one of you will have a view of the sea.”
“Oh, Iris must have the view,” Phrynne responded immediately. “I insist on it. I want her to see the town at its absolute best.”
“Well, let’s hope we can give you the weather to go with it, then,” Danuta was saying. I was aware of their conversation, but distantly, as if it were going on in another room. My mind kept circling back to something Danuta had said earlier—about The Bell being in a bad state of repair when she and her husband Robbie became the proprietors. Something about her words didn’t make sense, and after a moment or so I realised what it was. Gerald and Phrynne had been married twelve years—twelve years and six months, to be precise. That meant they would have come to Holyhaven at least two years before Robbie and Danuta took over The Bell.
Phrynne had said nothing about the pub being run down when she was here. Quite the opposite. Could we be in the wrong pub? I thought it at least possible that Danuta had her dates mixed up, although that hardly seemed likely. What did it matter anyway? We were here now, and Phrynne seemed happy. I decided to leave it at that.
“Wouldn’t you, Iris?” Phrynne said. I jumped, startled. Phrynne was looking at me expectantly, and I realised belatedly that she had asked me a question that required an answer.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“You were miles away! I was just saying to Danuta that we would probably like to eat dinner here this evening, if that’s all right with you? Seeing as we’ve been travelling for most of the day?”
“Yes, of course, that would be lovely.” Danuta was eyeing me with what looked like concern. I smiled in what I hoped was a reassuring manner. “Phrynne’s right. We’ve been on the train so long I can still feel the motion.”
Our rooms were at the end of the first floor landing, the two
doors abutting one another at right angles. In the confined space of the low-ceilinged corridor there was barely enough space for the three of us to stand together without colliding. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable, not simply on account of my own small lapse in concentration but because of Phrynne. She seemed excited, nerved up, the same as she had been after the funeral. Whether this was the result of being cooped up in train carriages for so long or for some other reason I didn’t know, but she was in one of those moods where she was liable to do or say anything.
I didn’t want her to embarrass herself in front of Danuta, who I thought seemed nice.
“I think I’ll have a rest in my room, if you don’t mind,” I said. “It’ll give me a chance to unpack.”
“Let’s both do that,” Phrynne said, seeming to seize on the idea. “We can have a drink in the bar later. A celebration.” She smiled at Danuta, one of what Freddy always used to call her winning smiles. Like sunlight at the top of a volcano.
“Robbie’ll bring the rest of your things up,” Danuta repeated. “The bathroom’s at the end of the hall.” She pointed towards a doorway at the opposite end of the landing then retreated downstairs. Phrynne watched her go. The unnatural brightness that had animated her face just a few moments previously seemed to have ebbed away entirely. A smile still flickered about the corners of her mouth, but it seemed empty somehow, just a residue, like the encrustation of mud that gets left behind on kerbstones in the wake of receding flood waters.
“What a pleasant woman,” I said. “Were she and her husband managing the pub before, when you came to stay here?”
“Goodness knows. Why on Earth would I remember something like that?” Phrynne spoke without looking at me, still gazing off down the empty hallway as if she were expecting someone to appear there at any second. “Not much of a place, is it? I’d forgotten how poky it is up here.”
“Oh, nonsense. I think it’s lovely. Deliciously quaint, just as you said, and so much cosier than one of those white elephants down on the sea front. You’re tired, that’s all.” I placed a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll both feel a lot livelier once we’ve had a sit down.”
“You’re right, as always.” Phrynne yawned. “And I suppose we really should unpack.” She lifted the carpet bag across the threshold of her room and then closed the door. I felt aggravated but not surprised by the change in her mood. Phrynne had always been like a child in that way—brimming with enthusiasm one minute then grumpy with boredom or impatience the next. I considered knocking on her door and asking if she would like the room with the sea view after all, but decided against it. She was probably best left to herself for a while.
As it turned out, the sea room was large, occupying one whole corner of the building and with pale gold afternoon sunlight spilling in from both sides across the polished floorboards. A large four-poster bed, piled high with starched white pillows and covered with a hand-sewn patchwork counterpane, stood at the centre. There was a wash hand basin in a curtained alcove, and a selection of tourist information leaflets had been neatly arranged on a low table before the fireplace. It was indeed a lovely room, and for the first time since stepping into the taxi I felt a rush of genuine gladness at our arrival.
I unpacked my holdall, hanging my clothes in the small built-in wardrobe and placing my two library books—a biography of Rosamund Lehmann and the new Patricia Highsmith—on the night stand beside the framed photograph of my son Ian that I always carried with me whenever I travelled. The photo showed Ian at the age of sixteen, just before he won the scholarship to Beeston and while he was still living at home in Highgate with Freddy and me.
There was a transparent, otherworldly look about him at that age that still breaks my heart. It was as if he had not yet joined the world, not properly. Of course age has altered him, as it changes us all.
“Gorgeous, wasn’t he?” Phrynne said when she first saw that photo. Her use of the past tense hurt me, especially the subtext—Ian looks just like his father now—although naturally I never said so.
It is strange, but whenever I look at that picture of Ian I cannot help but think of Phrynne at the same age, although Ian and Phrynne are not even remotely alike.
One of the room’s two windows looked down upon the pub’s back garden. The other—the side window—overlooked the narrow lane that led down the hill into the town. The last of the sun’s rays glanced off cottage rooftops, turning their dove-coloured slates momentarily to violet. Beyond the cottages, as promised, the sea, like a swathe of grey-green taffeta, lay plainly in sight.
I rested my elbows upon the window ledge and gazed out. It was not quite warm enough to have the window open, but I found I could easily imagine the brisk cries of gulls, the refreshing aroma of sea salt and tamarisk. I forgot about being tired, and I forgot about Phrynne. I breathed deeply of the phantom scents, imagining myself once again a young woman, unmarried, with a world of choices ahead of me and only insignificant mistakes behind.
No Phrynne, no Freddy, no Gerald. For the first time in a long time I felt completely happy.
“Do you fancy a walk?” Phrynne said. “Just down to the sea and back—there’s still time before dinner.”
Phrynne after an hour’s rest seemed a different person, restored to the mood of optimism and excitement in which she had greeted me that morning at Liverpool Street. More, she seemed touchingly eager to spend time with me, and I was reminded of the day we first met, as thirteen-year-old schoolgirls in our form room at Queen Charlotte’s. I noticed Phrynne at once, because she looked so confident, so imperious, like the infanta in that famous painting by Velasquez. Even the dowdy Queen Charlotte’s uniform, with its frumpy knee-length skirt and boxy blazer, did nothing to diminish the glamorous impression she made. I watched her and waited, expecting her to be taken up more or less instantaneously by the Dawson twins and Corinne Montagu. Like Phrynne I was new at Queen Charlotte’s, but you only had to be there five minutes to understand that the Dawson twins and their chosen cohorts held the form room and our end of the school yard to ransom with their sartorial superiority and ironclad sarcasm. But it was my desk Phrynne wanted to sit at, me she wished to confide in, right from the start. This seemed so unlikely and so inexplicable that for a while I even wondered if she was playing a trick on me, luring me into her confidence so she could spill all my most fiercely guarded secrets to the Dawson twins at some later date. When a term and a half passed and nothing of this sort had happened I was forced to concede that Phrynne genuinely wanted to be my friend.
I never was able to decide why she had chosen me.
“She’s using you, you know,” Freddy said to me once. This was early on in our marriage, when we were living just off the Archway Road and Phrynne was still married to Arthur Wing. “Women like that, they can’t stand not to be the brightest light in the room. They need a backcloth to shine against. Don’t tell me you’ve never realised?”
That was quite a speech, coming from Freddy. I supposed there might be some truth in what he said, but then Freddy never did like Phrynne much. I thought it just as likely that he was jealous.
“A walk would be perfect,” I said to Phrynne. “You can show me the town.”
“Hardly a town,” Phrynne said with a smile. “About the most exciting thing you can do here is post a letter.”
“Then I for one intend to post lots,” I retorted. “Let’s go.”
We set off down the hill, proceeding along the same cobbled lane that I could see from my bedroom window. At ground level the lane seemed narrower and rather dank, the cottages more bunched together and less picturesque. It was the dusk, I supposed, that made them seem that way. Big cities come alive at night. Small towns and villages—especially the more secluded kind—tend to fold in on themselves. The biggest disappointment was the sea. The tide was going out, and instead of the opalescent turquoise banner I had glimpsed from my window we were confronted instead by a murky vista of claggy sand. What I could see of the water was the colour
of clay.
What a dismal little place, I thought. And then, the oddest thought: we should never have come here.
I shivered inside my jacket. “Perhaps we should think about heading back,” I said. “It’s getting cold.”
I thought she would agree at once—if there is one thing Phrynne won’t tolerate it is physical discomfort—but she turned to me with bright eyes and the same exuberant smile she had used on me when she suggested we should go for a walk in the first place.
I could see in the last of the light that her cheeks were glowing.
“Not yet, surely? I’m enjoying the fresh air. All those hours cooped up on trains.”
“All right,” I agreed reluctantly. “Let’s go this way.” I pointed along the front. I could see lights, and as we set off towards them a woman’s laughter rippled across the terrace of a tall, whitish building I recognised as The Esplanade hotel. Quite suddenly and for no reason I found myself craving the company of that unknown woman. I wanted to learn her name, to discover the source of her laughter. She sounded so carefree, somehow, so full of life.
I pressed my hands deep into my pockets.
“Did Gerald like it here?” I asked Phrynne. I said it more for something to say than anything else. I did not particularly want to know what Gerald had thought of his stay at The Bell, the dingy seafront parade, his honeymoon with Phrynne. I remembered the way Phrynne had laughed when she told me that she and Gerald were getting married. The way I’d exclaimed and hugged her and kissed her cheek.
“Apparently. It was Gerald who insisted we come here, anyway. I wanted to go to Marbella.” She linked her arm through mine. “I’m sorry, Iris. I should have said sorry years ago.”
“What on Earth for?”
“You know.” She glanced at me quickly and then looked away. “Gerald was a good sort, but I was never in love with him. We should never have married. It was a disaster for both of us, but that was my fault, not his. I just hope I didn’t make life too awful for him.”
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