Deftly, she broke an egg into the pan, looked at it, and then broke another. She knew, of old, that feeding Sam was like pouring water down a well. His appetite was enormous, but he never seemed to put on an ounce of weight.
He made no comment on this last remark. In order to keep the conversation going, she asked, “When is the marquee going up?”
“Tuesday, or Wednesday, depending on the weather.”
“Are you going to be roped in to help with that?”
“No. I offered, but the hire firm do the whole thing. However, Felicity said she’d want furniture to be moved in the house, so doubtless I’ll be there, heaving sofas as to the manner born.”
“And you’re going to the party tonight?”
Again, he did not reply. Mrs. Lowyer turned to look at him and saw him lean forward to tap out the pipe in the ashtray. He was looking down, his expression shuttered. She said in sudden concern, “You have been asked, haven’t you?”
“Yes, and I said I’d go. But I don’t know. I’ll have to see.”
“Sam, you have to go.”
“Why?”
“Christabel would be so hurt if you weren’t there.”
“I don’t suppose she’d even notice.”
“Don’t be so ridiculous, of course she’d notice. And of course she’d be hurt. Besides, you’ve never met Nigel. This is what the party’s all about; so that everybody can meet Nigel before he’s suddenly produced at the wedding. He’s made a special trip up from London just for this occasion, and it would be very rude if we didn’t all turn up.” She put the bacon and eggs and the sausages onto a plate and set it, with a steaming mug of tea, on the table before him.
He looked at the spread with satisfaction and some surprise. “What’s this? A second breakfast?”
“I’m quite sure you haven’t even had a first breakfast.” She pulled out a chair and sat down, facing him across the table.
“Well, no, I don’t suppose I have.” He began to eat.
“You’re impossible. No man can do everything for himself, certainly not when he’s working from dawn to dusk on the farm.”
“I’m all right.”
“But it must be so cheerless…”
“Aggie Watson comes in most mornings.”
“And what does she do? Scrub a floor and peel a pot of potatoes? That’s not what I’m talking about, Sam. You should get a housekeeper. Or a wife. It’s time you were married.”
He said, “I can’t afford a housekeeper.”
Mrs. Lowyer sighed. “And there’s nobody you want to marry.”
After a long pause, Sam said, “No.”
“Nobody except Christabel,” said Mrs. Lowyer. She said it very quickly, before she had time to think, before she lost the courage to go treading in where she was obviously not going to be welcome. But she knew that it had to be said. It had to come out into the open if Christabel’s wedding day was not to be clouded in any way by any person.
He said, as she knew that he would, “What makes you think that?”
“I suppose I’ve always known.”
“She’s just a little girl.”
“She was a little girl when you first knew her, but she’s twenty now.”
Their eyes met across the table. Sam’s eyes were a very pale blue, like winter skies. When he was in a cheerful mood they sparkled with good humour, but now they were cold, guarded, giving nothing away.
He said, “She’s getting married on Saturday,” and went on with his meal.
* * *
It was as though he had slammed a door in her face, but Mrs. Lowyer knew that this was no time for moral cowardice. She said, “I think you’ve always loved her. I don’t think there was a time when you didn’t love her. And she was always so fond of you. I remember you helping her with her first pony, and the way she was always under your feet, trying to do things on the farm, holding the staples when you mended fences…”
“Losing the hammer…” said Sam.
“She was never remotely interested in any of the young boys who grew up with her. She even took your photograph when she went away to boarding-school. Did you know that?”
“Things change,” said Sam.
“Do you mean that you’ve changed, or that Christabel’s changed?”
“Both, I suppose. As I said, she was just a little girl. She grew up, and I grew older. Then she went away down to London, got a job, a flat of her own…”
“Met Nigel,” finished Mrs. Lowyer.
“Yes. She met Nigel. And now she’s going to marry him.”
“Do you blame her?”
“I’ve never met him.”
“He’s a very nice, very suitable young man. Any sensible girl would have been a fool to turn him down.”
“Christabel never was a fool.”
“But I’m beginning to suspect that you are.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s patently obvious that you’re in love with her. You’ve always loved her, but you’ve never asked her to marry you.”
“I couldn’t,” said Sam.
“Why not, for heaven’s sake?”
“For every reason. That’s why not. For every reason. What did I have to offer her? A little farm that doesn’t even belong to me. A little house with two bedrooms and no form of central heating. And what about money, material things, all the things that a girl like Christabel deserves? I could never give them to her.”
“Did you ever ask her if she even wanted them?”
“No.”
“But…”
Sam looked despairing. He pushed the empty plate away from him and leaned his arms on the table. He said, “Please. Don’t go on about it.”
“Oh, Sam.” For a moment she wondered if she was going to cry. She hadn’t cried for years. She laid her hand over his and felt the horny, calloused skin.
He said, “It’s too late, anyway.”
She knew that he was right. It was too late. She smiled firmly and gave his hand a little pat. “All right, I won’t talk about it any more. But you must come to the party tonight. We’re going to be given a buffet dinner, and then there is to be dancing. Disco, I think they call it.”
He grinned. “Can you disco dance?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried. But if anybody asks me, I shall have a good shot at it.”
* * *
The day progressed, the morning taken up with small day-to-day chores. After lunch, Mrs. Lowyer got her modest car out of the garage and drove to the neighbourhood market town where she had her hair done at the only hairdresser’s, which was called Huntleys of Mayfair. Miss Pickering, who owned this establishment, had never been near Mayfair in her life, and had chosen the name Huntley because she thought it added a touch of class. Here, Mrs. Lowyer endured being alternately frozen and scalded by a terrified junior and then had her hair wound around rollers, her scalp speared with plastic pins, and the torture finally rounded off by being put under a red-hot dryer which she was unable to make cooler, however much she turned the knob on the dial.
At last the ordeal was over. Feeling scarlet in the face and totally exhausted, she drove herself home. She would have a cup of tea and then go to bed for a couple of hours to relax before the evening’s festivities. But no sooner had she been greeted by Lucy and put on the kettle than the back door opened, a voice said, “Granny,” and it was Christabel herself.
“Darling,” said Mrs. Lowyer, and kissed her.
“Are you making tea? Can I have some with you? Gosh, you’re looking smashing. Miss Pickering’s pulled out all the stops this time. Is there any fruitcake?” She began opening her grandmother’s cake tins, found a chocolate biscuit and started to eat it.
* * *
She was forever eating. Potato crisps, bars of chocolate, ice-cream in cones, snacking away on all the worst sort of junk food, but not a blemish marred her milky skin, and, if anything, she seemed to be more slender than ever. Today she wore her oldest jeans, scuffed cowboy boots, a s
agging sweater with darns in the elbows. Her hair, that beautiful hair that was a shade somewhere between chestnut and chocolate, was braided tightly into two pigtails. Her face was innocent of make-up, and she looked like a leggy fifteen-year-old. Impossible, thought Mrs. Lowyer, to believe that next Saturday she was going to be married.
She said, “Has Nigel arrived yet?”
“Heavens, yes, he got here for lunch. He left London about four o’clock this morning. That wasn’t bad going, was it?”
“Why isn’t he with you now?”
“Oh, he and Pa are having a great crack about shooting pigeons and how many of Nigel’s relations are coming to the wedding. You haven’t seen Sam, have you?”
“I think he’s still combining the barley field. Didn’t you see him?”
“No, I went along by the river. There wasn’t anybody at his house, not even Aggie.”
“What did you want to see Sam about?”
“I wanted to thank him for my wedding present.” She pulled out a chair and sat at the table, much as Sam had sat this morning. “Do you know what he gave me? It’s simply beautiful and he made it all himself.”
“No. What did he give you?”
“A walking-stick.”
Mrs. Lowyer said faintly, “A walking-stick,” and tried not to sound too astonished.
“Yes, and you know how he used to carve horn handles for walking-sticks. He hasn’t done it for ages, poor man, because he hasn’t had the time, but he’s done one for me, and it’s all carved with flowers and sheaves of wheat, and it’s all polished and gorgeous. And then around the stick there’s a little silver band with my name on. Don’t you think that was the most lovely thing to give me?”
“Yes, darling, lovely,” said Mrs. Lowyer, privately deciding that if Sam had considered the problem for a year, he could scarcely have given Christabel anything more unsuitable. A walking-stick, for a young girl, who was going to get married and go and live in a flat in London.
“I mean, it’s so personal. Not just having my name on, but his making it for me with his own two hands.”
“I must say, that does make it rather special.”
“I hope he’ll come tonight. That he won’t go on combining after dark, or make some excuse.”
“Of course he’ll come. He was in this morning having a cup of tea with me, and he said he was coming.”
“I can’t tell you the spread Mother’s laying on. She’s put all the leaves in the dining-room table and pushed it against the wall of the dining-room, and there are the best white table-cloths, and so much to eat you just can’t imagine.”
Mrs. Lowyer smiled. “She’s in her element,” she told Christabel.
* * *
She found the cake tin with the fruit-cake in it, put the cake on a plate, and set the plate in front of Christabel. She poured tea for Christabel into her own mug, the blue-and-white-striped one that she had used whenever she came to tea, ever since she was a little girl.
“And we’re going to have a disco. That was another thing Pa wanted Nigel to do—buff up the old playroom floor.”
“I don’t quite know what I’m meant to do in a disco.”
“Oh, snake around, you know, like they do on the box.”
“Couldn’t I just sit and watch?”
“Oh, heavens, Granny, don’t be so old-fashioned. Just get with it, man.” She shrugged her shoulders, tossed her plaits, tilted her chin, looked cool.
“Is that what I’m meant to do?”
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” said Christabel, cutting a wedge out of the fruit-cake and beginning to eat it. “I’ll make sure we have at least two Viennese waltzes, and you can whirl away to your heart’s content with Colonel Foxton.”
“Oh, really, Christabel…”
“Now, you know he’s madly in love with you. I can’t think why you don’t marry him.”
“What, go and live in that freezing house with all the pitch pine and stained glass?”
“He could come and live here.”
“There wouldn’t be room.”
“You’re terribly unkind about Colonel Foxton,” Christabel told her. She had been teasing her grandmother about Colonel Foxton ever since the old gentleman had asked her to tea with him and had spent the time showing her his collection of photographs taken when he was a young subaltern in India. “After all, he’s exactly the right age for you.”
“No, he’s not. If I were to marry someone exactly the right age for me, he’d be over a hundred.”
“How do you work that out?”
“Because the perfect age for a marriage is for the girl to be half the man’s age, plus seven years. So if the man is twenty, he marries a girl of seventeen. And if the girl is sixty-seven, then she would have to marry a man of … um…” Mrs. Lowyer’s arithmetic had never been her strong point. “A hundred and twenty.”
Christabel gazed at her. After a little she said, “But I’m twenty, and Nigel’s only twenty-three. That’s all wrong. I should be marrying somebody of twenty-six.”
“Well, you’d better hurry up, because you’ve only got a week to find him.”
“Do you really think twenty-three is too young for me?”
“No, I don’t think it matters at all. It’s just a stupid sort of joke people make. It doesn’t matter what ages a man and a woman are, provided they are truly fond of each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together.”
“You don’t say love,” said Christabel.
“Darling, I never talk about love at tea-time. And now eat up that cake and drink up that tea, because I’m going upstairs to have a rest before the party. I wonder what time I’m expected?”
“Oh, I should think about eight. Do you want someone to come and fetch you?”
“Of course not. It’s going to be a beautiful, fine evening. I shall walk up the lane. And I shall enjoy seeing the house, all lit up and festive. There’s something very romantic about a house all lit up for a party. Especially a party that’s being given for such a happy reason.”
“Yes,” said Christabel. She did not sound very certain. “Yes, I suppose it is romantic.”
* * *
At exactly five to eight, wearing her best sapphire-blue velvet dinner dress and a cashmere shawl over her shoulders, Mrs. Lowyer bid Lucy good night, turned off the lights, and made her way down the garden path and up the lane that led to her old house. There was a half-moon sailing high in the sky, and overhead the branches of the ancient beeches laced their arms together like the flying buttresses of some great cathedral. Ahead of her, lighted windows shone through the dusk, and the air was filled with the scent of dying leaves and moss, and the strains of music.
Already cars were arriving, parking on the gravel in front of the house, and as Mrs. Lowyer went up the stone steps to the open door, she was joined by other guests, the women holding up their long skirts, the men in black ties and dinner jackets.
“Oh, Mrs. Lowyer, how lovely to see you. Doesn’t the house look pretty coming along the road, through the trees…? How does Felicity manage even to arrange that the weather is perfect? It never seems to rain when she has a party.”
“Let’s hope her luck holds for next Saturday.”
The hall was filled with people. Mrs. Lowyer kissed her son and her pretty daughter-in-law and then made her way upstairs to leave her shawl. She laid this on Felicity’s bed and then went to the dressing-table to check that her coiffure was still a credit to Miss Pickering’s hands. Her reflection gazed back at her from the antique triple mirror. It was the mirror that had always stood on that dressing-table—Mrs. Lowyer had inherited it from her own mother-in-law. She remembered reflections of herself as she had been, slender and shingle-headed. Now she saw, beneath the careful make-up, the wrinkles of age, the crêpey neck, the silver hair. Her hands, touching that hair, were the hands of an old lady. I am a grandmother, she told herself. In a year or so, I may be a great-grandmother. The prospect she found unalarming. If she had learned not
hing else, she had learned that every age brings its own rewards.
“I’ve caught you preening!”
Mrs. Lowyer turned from the looking glass and saw Christabel behind her. She was laughing at her grandmother, her eyes sparkling with amusement.
“I’m not preening. I’m thinking how glad I am that I’m not young any more, that I don’t have to worry if some man will dance with me. That I don’t have to worry if my husband dances with some other pretty woman.”
“I bet you never had any of those worries. And now you look gorgeous.”
“Oh, darling, you look lovely too. Is that a new dress?”
“Yes.” Christabel straightened up and whirled around to show off her finery. The dress was white, layers of soft, floating lawn. The neck was low, and her hair, released from the plaits of this afternoon, was romantically looped and swathed about her head. Her eyes swam and sparkled.
“Where did you get it?”
“In London. Mother saw it when we were trousseau-shopping and said I had to have it. It’s meant to be part of my trousseau, but I thought I’d wear it tonight.”
Mrs. Lowyer gave her a kiss. “It’s perfect. You look lovely.”
* * *
From outside the open door, from the landing, a voice said, “Christabel!” Christabel went to open the door, and Nigel was revealed, standing outside, looking both embarrassed and faintly put out.
“What are you doing?” Christabel demanded. “Lurking around outside the ladies’ room? You’ll get a bad name for yourself.”
He smiled, but not as though he thought the joke particularly funny. “I’ve been looking for you all over. Your mother’s waiting for you. She sent me to find you.”
“Granny and I are having a mutual-admiration session.”
“Hello, Mrs. Lowyer.”
“Nigel. How very nice to see you again.” She went through the open door and planted a light kiss on his cheek. With his dark hair and his formal clothes, he looked, not sophisticated as he should have, but like a young boy dressed up for a party. “And I’m sorry Christabel and I have kept you all waiting. Perhaps now we should all go down and join the others.”
* * *
Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories Page 9
