by Nina Bawden
I telephoned Louise at midday to say I should be home in the afternoon to change and pick up some notes. Julia answered. She had just ‘popped in’for coffee and stayed to do a little ironing. There was such an enormous pile and Louise looked ‘so tired’. Our twice-weekly daily hadn’t arrived; her husband was ill again.
‘That’ll save the gin,’ I said. Mrs O’Connor was a charming, always beautifully turned-out but alcoholic Irishwoman who had buried three husbands and would shortly be burying the fourth. (This is no comment on her adequacy as a wife; she was just one of those women who are naturally attracted to the weak and ailing.)
‘Oh, Tom – I’m sure she doesn’t,’ Julia said, righteously scoring me off for being uncharitable.
‘Oh, yes, she does, old dear. Gin is mother’s milk to her. My gin. Where’s Louise?’
‘What a shame, you’ve just missed her. Reggie’s in London, so I sent her off to have lunch with him. I thought it would be nice for her to have a little fun.’
‘Poor Louise, she has a hard life,’ I said, but she didn’t rise. This was unusual. She had said her piece about the pile of ironing and Louise being ‘so tired’ but the words hadn’t carried the normal flavour of enjoyable rebuke. She had spoken them because they were in our script, as it were, but without much feeling or energy, like a tired actress. Perhaps she was tired, or depressed. It was possible that even Julia could sometimes be depressed.
I said, ‘I hope you’ll find yourself something to eat.’
‘Don’t bother about me. You know I don’t eat more than a bird!’
‘Boil yourself an egg, then. Will you be there when I come home? I’ll be back around four. I’ve got to change.’
‘Oh.’ She paused and then said quickly, ‘No, I won’t be. I’ve got a bridge tea.’
That’s not true, I thought suddenly, not sure why since it might well have been.
She said, ‘How’s your mother, Tom?’
‘Much as usual. She’s never ill, you know.’
‘Yes.’ There was a pause. ‘It must be rather a strain for you, this journey every week.’
I said warily, ‘It’s tiring, sometimes.’
‘You’ve been a good son, Tom,’ she said, almost as if she meant it, but her compliments always had a sting in the tail. ‘I’m an interfering old woman, I know you’ll say that, but wouldn’t it be better, really, if she went into some nice place where she could be properly looked after? Better for her, I mean, as well as for you?’
I said nothing.
‘Some of these places are really quite nice – just private houses with lovely gardens. And properly trained people to look after her. She’d be able to get out and about much more than she does now.’
‘Have you been discussing this with Louise?’
‘No. You know I wouldn’t do that. She’d be angry because she’d think I was doing this for her sake. But Reggie and I did have a word this morning. That’s why I’m mentioning it now. Reggie handles my money as you know, and some of my shares have gone up quite a lot. So I could manage to help you with the fees.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Julia. But its not the money. As a matter of fact, Augustus once offered to get her into some Home for the unwanted relics of the professional classes. It was run by a charity he had to do with, so he was not only offering to step up my mother’s social status but making sure it didn’t cost us a penny.’
‘I’m sure he meant it kindly, Tom,’ she said reproachfully. ‘He wasn’t thinking of himself.’
‘He was, in a way. Tidying up his family’s affairs.’
‘Of course, he was always very fond of Louise.’
‘That’s what I meant. The answer was “no” then. It still is.’
I shifted the telephone receiver from my right hand to my left. I was sticky with absurd, irrational anger.
She said, after a pause, ‘Well, I’m sure you know best, Tom.’
She sounded so humble, so almost nervous that I felt sorry. She only wanted to help. It was just that her ideas weren’t mine.
I said, ‘Have a good time at your bridge tea. It’s nice of you to help Louise out with the chores. I hope she enjoys her fleshpots with Reggie.’
‘She will. You know, she doesn’t find him quite so much of a grotesque as you do.’
This was more in her usual vein. I smiled as I replaced the receiver though afterwards I wondered why she had not pressed her point more forcefully. It was unlike her. Almost as if she were anxious to placate me.
At twelve o’clock I had an unexpected visitor. Georgiana, muffled to the eyeballs in musquash and clutching an enormous black handbag. She was waiting in the vestibule – not, of course, sitting on the leather-covered bench beneath the notice-board, that would have been too presumptuous – but standing against the wall, near the swing door. In spite of her rotundity, she had the air of a nervous, woodland creature, poised for flight at the first hostile movement.
As soon as she saw me, she started to apologize for her appearance. She was dreadfully sorry to bother me, she wouldn’t keep me a minute, but she was on her way to the Tower of London (what for, I wondered wildly, looking at that kleptomaniac’s handbag, to steal the Crown Jewels?), and she knew where I worked because Louise had once pointed it out to her the day she came with her to buy a new costume at the Civil Service Stores and since she was passing she didn’t think I’d mind. Hopelessly bogged down, she went crimson and blinked.
I said, ‘Georgie, of course I don’t mind. I’m delighted. You must have lunch with me.’
She was horrified. ‘Oh, no Tom, I wouldn’t dream – I mean it’s very kind but I shall be quite all right, I usually have a little bite at Lyons – really, I wouldn’t have come at this time if I’d thought—’
‘Of course not.’ Whoever would imagine that Georgiana would invite herself anywhere? ‘I’d love you to have lunch with me. Honestly.’ I steered her out through the door, keeping a tight hold on her elbow. ‘Where would you like to go?’
‘I don’t know. Oh, Tom, I really can’t—’
‘Where do you usually lunch?’
‘Lyons – or an A. B.C.’
‘With Augustus, I mean.’
She looked surprised. ‘Oh, I never meet Augustus in town.’
‘Why not?’
She looked at me shyly. ‘We never have. Augustus doesn’t like it.’
I hailed a taxi, bundled her in and, a bit to my own surprise, gave the name of a rather expensive restaurant; small, not too smart, but where I knew there was a dessert trolley laden with ice-cream and rich, gooey cakes. I guessed that would be the sort of thing she liked.
It was. She looked round with unaffected pleasure as I helped her out of her awful, shapeless coat and settled her on a plushy, crimson bench against the wall. I ordered her a large, sweet sherry; she sipped it and beamed at me. ‘This is lovely, Tom. The sort of place I’ve never dared to go into by myself, because of the waiters.’
Her maiden-aunt innocence was sweet, slightly saddening. It made me feel magnanimous. It was a feeling I would have expected Augustus to enjoy.
I said curiously, ‘What did you mean when you said Augustus didn’t like meeting you in London? Is he always so busy?’
‘Well – yes, he is, of course. He has to entertain business people. But it isn’t that.’
She took off her glasses and wiped them on a corner of the atrociously patterned silk scarf she wore round her neck, blinking at me myopically. Her lashes were ridiculously long and curly; uncovered, her eyes looked shy and defenceless.
‘Come on,’ I coaxed. ‘Tell me.’
‘It’s just that – in the beginning, you see, he didn’t want to. He was frightened we might meet Julia when we were together. He didn’t know what he would say to her, I think. It really did worry him terribly. He said she might be anywhere – any restaurant or theatre or cinema. So of course, in the end, we never went anywhere.’
This seemed an interesting sidelight on Augustus. ‘D
id it worry you? That you might meet Julia, I mean?’
‘No. Only because it worried Augustus. It really did. He used to lie awake and think about it at night. It seemed sort of funny to me. I mean in the office he’d always seemed so … so.…’
Her voice died away. She sat looking at her soup with a perturbed expression. Then she said, ‘One of the reasons I came to see you Tom – I should have explained – was because I wanted you to ask Mr Nbola if I could take little Philip out on Sunday. Augustus says he’ll drive me to the school, if I like. He’s got a friend who belongs to a golf club quite near and he could have a game and I could take Philip out to tea.’
‘I’m sure Jay would be delighted. You don’t have to ask.’
Surely, she hadn’t sought me out just for that? Perhaps the absurdity had occurred to her too; she gulped down the rest of her sherry and said quickly, ‘He’s such a dear little boy, isn’t he? Do you know, he wrote me a little letter when he got back to school, saying thank you for the lunch and the skating. He called me Aunty Georgie.…’
We went on talking about Philip, as if we had no other subject in common. I ordered a bottle of wine with our main course and Georgiana drank her full share of it. Her cheeks became flushed.
She said suddenly, ‘When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a children’s nurse, but my mother disapproved. She was very ambitious, she wanted me to have a better chance, she said. She was a dressmaker – she’d gone to work in a garment factory when she was fourteen. Awful places they were then. She worked in a little room right up under the roof, stitching buttons to start with. She said it was terrible in summer – you sweated and you had to keep wiping your hands to keep the clothes clean. She wanted to be a dress designer – she went to the Tech in the evenings for lessons – but then she had me, and she couldn’t. She wanted me to get on instead. I used to have dancing lessons, ballet and tap, and then a neighbour said, why didn’t I go on the ice? It caught Mum’s fancy, I don’t know why, and she took me to the rink one Saturday. I was about eight, then. Mum hired some skates and we went round once or twice and then I went on my own. I thought it was lovely, like flying. It was easy, too, I mean I didn’t fall over or anything. We went once or twice more and then one day a man came up to my mother and said I ought to be trained. He was one of the instructors. She said she couldn’t afford it and he said he’d teach me for nothing. Mum was awfully pleased and we went a lot that summer. It was after that she got the idea I could be a big skating star.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’ I said softly. I had never heard her talk like this before. Was it the wine, or just that Augustus wasn’t here?
‘It was fun, at first. I mean Mum made me some pretty dresses and for a while the lessons were easy. But then they got harder and my muscles hurt. My back and my legs and ankles – that’s what I remember most, after the beginning. Something was always hurting. Mum said I’d get used to it. She said skaters and dancers had to get used to pain. My Granny – we lived with her – said it would get better in time and she used to rub me with wintergreen. It didn’t get better, though. It got worse, really. I was a terrible coward – I got so I hated the training and especially the competitions. I used to get a pain in my stomach before and I couldn’t keep anything down. But I had to go on. Mum was so keen, she’d spent so much money on fees and the dresses and having my hair permed. I used to feel awful about all the money she’d spent. It was better when I got a job – I mean, the money side was better but the skating was worse. I got so tired. Mum used to meet me from the office and we’d go straight to the rink. The other girls laughed at that. They said she was afraid I’d get off with a boy. I think she was afraid of that a bit. She used to talk to me about boys. She said I must keep away from them, I’d got my career to think of. Though it wasn’t just that, of course, it was partly because she …
I didn’t dare tell her what I really wanted was to get married and have babies.…’
While she talked her voice slipped, rather like an ill-fitting dress borrowed for a special occasion, and became slightly common. No more common than mine, I hasten to add. I only mention it because it made all that she was saying more real. You could hear, in that flat, London voice, the thin, shy, underfed girl she must have been.
‘Is your mother still alive?’
She shook her head. ‘She died about ten years ago. I hadn’t seen her after – after I left home. Augustus didn’t want me to; but I should have – I blame myself, really. But one of our neighbours used to write, she wrote and said she had cancer. Augustus offered to pay for a private nursing home but she wouldn’t have it. I went to see her once or twice, at the end, but she didn’t know me. Perhaps it was just as well, perhaps Augustus was right, really. She was very straight, she thought what I’d done was terrible. But when I went – it seemed such a little thing to have kept away for, all those years.…’
I said, ‘Did you think you and Augustus would get married?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She flushed. ‘Mum had always brought me up – I mean, he’d left Julia. He thought she’d divorce him, that there wasn’t any question.… Of course, when she didn’t it didn’t make any difference, except we couldn’t have a baby.’
‘You could have done, surely? Thousands do, in your position.’ I grinned. ‘Augustus is rich enough for it not to matter.’
‘I would have done,’ she said, surprising me. ‘It wasn’t as if – I mean, the baby would have had a father. And I didn’t feel not married, really. I used to walk down the street – once we’d moved out of London, I seemed to have so much time – and look at the babies in the prams.’ She hesitated, but only for a moment. I think she was more than a little drunk. She leaned across the table. ‘Once, I took one, Tom. It was a dreadful thing. I just wheeled it down the street and round the corner. I didn’t mean to take it away, I just wanted to hold it and cuddle it for a little bit. It was a very small baby, I meant to take it back quickly so it wouldn’t be missed. But the woman came after me, she was shouting and crying and I saw what a cruel, wicked thing. I’d done. I tried to say I was sorry but she called a policeman and he took me to the station. He was very kind, really, he gave me a cup of tea and later on Augustus came to fetch me. He – he took me to a doctor, who was very nice, he told Augustus that there was nothing wrong with me except that I ought to have a baby of my own. After that, I thought Augustus would agree, but he didn’t. He was angry with, the doctor and said it would be a terrible thing to bring an illegitimate baby into the world. I didn’t think it was so terrible, I mean we would have loved it and anyway I.… But it wasn’t any good my arguing, really. You see, what really worried Augustus, was what Julia would say.’
She blinked, as at the remembrance of pain, and I felt suddenly angry with Augustus, with Julia. As that last, bleak, sad, frightening sentence had shown, the tussle had, all along, been between them. They were the important people, the ones who counted, not this poor, gentle creature who, it seemed now, had merely inadvertently been present when the struggle between the two main protagonists was at its height. Of course Augustus had loved her, it would have been a point of honour with him to do so, but she was a minor character part, destined to be kept waiting in the wings while the main action took place on-stage.
She said, ‘Augustus took me on holiday, after. We went to Greece. He was very kind.’
Then she looked at me, and said, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have talked to you like this.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘No, I mean it. I mean it was wrong. What would Augustus say?’
‘My lips are sealed. Fear not,’ I said and she giggled, just like a little girl.
It wasn’t until I was putting her into the taxi that she said what she had really come to say. She leaned forward just as I was about to close the door.
‘Wait a minute. Tom, Reggie came down last night. I thought you ought to know.…’
‘Why, dear?’
‘Well – it’s just that – I don’t suppose it matters �
� but Augustus.…’ She drew a deep breath and gabbled. ‘They got to talking about Veronica. And, and Mr Nbola. And Reggie said—’
She stopped and looked at me nervously, clicking the clasp of her handbag.
‘I can guess what Reggie said.’
‘It’s so silly.’
‘Irrelevant.’
‘But I thought you ought to know. I mean, it would be terrible if he.…’
‘Did he say he was going to do anything?’
‘He – he said he was going to have a word with Louise. Find out the truth of it, was what he said.’
‘That won’t do any harm.’ I smiled at her, relieved.
She said sadly, ‘You don’t think it was silly of me to come? Only Reggie.…’
‘I know. Bless you for coming.’ I kissed her soft cheek. ‘Don’t worry, Georgie, dear. There’s nothing to worry about. Louise’ll give Reggie his come-uppance.’
Chapter Nine
I believed it. Even when I got home, at three-thirty, and found Reggie and Louise together in the sitting-room, I still believed it.
‘Nice to see you, Reggie,’ I said untruthfully as I walked in. ‘What are you doing in town?’
I had that feeling – always unmistakable – that my arrival had broken off an intimate conversation. Both their faces were flushed with food and alcohol and unspecified guilt; both pairs of eyes had a dark, glittering look. Louise’s met mine in a quick, sliding glance; almost at once she averted her gaze and fixed it, in pointed withdrawal, on the open door behind my head.
Reggie looked at me with lowered head. He was chewing on his fleshy underlip. ‘I came to take My Daughter home,’ he said with portentous emphasis, after a long, heavy-breathing pause. (This could not, originally, have been true, of course. In fact, as I found out afterwards, he had come to London for a couple of days on some business with a foreign drug firm. But like his mother, Reggie had an instinct for the dramatic which he could not resist indulging. Even when the dramatic was banal.)
