“Did I say it was charming? I don’t remember that.”
She brushed my cheek fleetingly with the back of one gloved hand. “Not in so many words, perhaps—but you can never hide from a mother how her little boy feels about the things which are important to him.”
My great-aunt also expressed her admiration.
“No, I’ve never seen anything like it! Norma, I think we can admit it now: weren’t we both a little dismayed when we first set eyes on it in August? But tell me—what other boy do you know who could have done all this?”
I said: “I am nineteen, remember.”
“Oh, you sound as though you think you’re very old at nineteen!” declared my aunt. “Well, listen to this, Master Methuselah. You’re not even on the threshold of life! You’ve hardly been born yet! Ah, my dear, what wouldn’t I give to be nineteen again … except, possibly, my smart new overcoat?”
I helped her out of that smart new overcoat—which I’d already complimented her on, sincerely, almost as soon as she’d stepped off the train. She was wearing her old but still elegant dove-grey costume, which together with her matching hat and pretty, high-heeled shoes had the usual effect of making my mother, about thirty years younger, appear dowdy by comparison. My mother had the looks; Aunt Clara, the élan. And now, having sat down, my aunt opened her handbag—her equally well-worn handbag—and took out an envelope containing a cheque for three pounds. “You can use it to start decorating your flat with.” She made a bulge in her left cheek.
“Bless you. How timely! I was planning to begin on it in just a day or so.”
“And I thought the best thing I could do,” said my mother, “was take you to the shops this afternoon. As you know, I’d been meaning to wait until you came to Folkestone but this would be nicer. Oh, I see you’ve received our cards. When did they arrive?”
That was anybody’s guess. I’d not been at the flat for at least a week and since I’d recognized the writing on the envelope I hadn’t thought to study the postmark.
“With impeccable timing,” I declared. “This very morning!”
“Oh, I am pleased. It occurred to me after I’d put the phone down that you hadn’t mentioned them. How lucky that I sent them early!”
Before she finally took a seat she looked at the inscriptions on the few other cards I’d put out and she briefly asked a question, or made a comment, concerning each. “You didn’t mind my sticking our two into the one large envelope, did you? It seemed so silly to pay twice the postage when they were coming to the same address.”
“It would have vexed me most terribly if you had.”
“Well, it’s all very well to pull my leg, you rascal, but if only you knew how much we’ve spent on sending out Christmas cards—it’s really no laughing matter! Already we’ve received thirty-five, haven’t we, Clara … half of them from people who probably find it just as tiresome as we do. It’s such a foolish practice. We say so every year.”
She went on to explain that they wouldn’t be sending me a Christmas card unless I’d truly like to have one; and that the assorted boxes from W.H.Smith’s were surprisingly good value if I still had many to send out myself—“although, of course, I’ve been including your name on most of those I’ve been writing. And I warn you: don’t leave everything until the last minute as you generally do. The post really is worse than usual this year.”
When the subject of Christmas cards had been fully exhausted—which wasn’t the case for a while yet—and it had also been explained that they’d both forgotten to put in Clara’s cheque until my birthday envelope had been licked down and the stamp stuck on (and then my mother had thought I’d be as happy to have the cheque in Folkestone as I would in London)—after all this I gave them a glass of sherry and started putting the lunch together. From a nearby grocer I had bought a lot of their favourite things (and, quite unknown to me, Oliver had sent James out early that morning to buy a quantity of smoked salmon—he had also supplied two bottles of wine) and they repeatedly enthused over all of it. Everything was perfect. “Except that I’m sure you’ll be living on nothing but bread-and-scrape right up till Christmas! You said a simple meal. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known it was going to put you to so much trouble and expense!”
“More fool you!” exclaimed Aunt Clara. “I, on the other hand, am seriously considering staying.”
“No, I’m not joking, darling. You really must allow me to contribute.”
“And I’m not joking either, Mother dear. I should be dreadfully insulted if you did—please put away that purse! Now tuck in, enjoy your lunch, and stop being quite so daft.”
However, I didn’t produce any of the liqueur we’d smuggled back from Spain. I’d felt that this might have been overdoing things.
But I’d bought real coffee. We left the table and settled back in the three more comfortable chairs with our cups and saucers resting on our knees. “Do you realize something? This is the first time, the very first time in my life, that I’ve ever done any real entertaining.”
“Is it, darling? Well, I do feel flattered. Don’t you, Clara? And, Johnny, do you realize something! You never need do it a jot more beautifully than you have today.”
“Yes,” agreed Aunt Clara. “As to the manner born!”
“Good gracious,” sighed my mother. “Isn’t this an occasion! I shan’t want it ever to end.”
“Well, it’s scarcely begun,” I told her. “But what I was really trying to say: it’s so very nice to have you both here. A place you haven’t yet entertained your family in, no matter how pleasant it may be in every other way, is somehow still missing one key ingredient. It hasn’t wholly come to life.”
I was aware this sounded schmaltzy but I meant it. It must have been the mellowness of the after-lunchtime mood—with the gas fire hissing peacefully and the plants outside the window looking green and soft against their white distempered wall and Oliver’s good wine—of which, naturally, I’d drunk by far the largest share—being happily absorbed into my system. The world seemed extremely kind and gentle.
“Oh, what a sweet thing to say!” exclaimed my mother. “You make me want to cry.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake, please don’t.”
“How old is he?” suddenly inquired Aunt Clara.
“Nineteen,” I said, “as you perfectly well know! But why?”
“I was just thinking how mature you seem … much older than your years. And how lucky, too! What wouldn’t I give to be nineteen again! You’re hardly yet on the threshold of life. You’ve hardly yet been born.”
I saw my mother frown. She looked at me significantly but I pretended not to notice. I stood up, ostensibly to refill the coffee cups, yet then I gave a small start of surprise.
“Oh, my goodness! I’ve forgotten the Cointreau! I thought we’d all like some liqueur.”
“No, no—not another thing!”
I coaxed but they were adamant.
“And when we accompany you to the bankruptcy court,” added Aunt Clara, “it would hardly do for us to totter.”
“This afternoon? That would be fast! I wonder—shall I get time off for good behaviour?”
“Yes, of course. It’s your birthday.”
I wiped my forehead, in evident relief, then sat down again.
And fortunately my mother had now remembered something else.
“Your manager didn’t mind giving you the day off?”
“No, not a bit.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘I don’t mind giving you the day off. No, not a bit.’”
“I mean, you silly chump, when you told him it was your birthday. What did he say then?”
“‘Many happy returns!’”
“But didn’t he ask how old you were or what you were planning to do with your day?”
“Nope.”
“That would have been friendly. But at least it was lucky for us you should have had all these hours owing. How did it happen?”
I was prepared for this.
“There’s been a lot of stocktaking. I’ve had to give up my last three Saturday afternoons.”
My mother turned to my aunt.
“Of course! That’s why Johnny hasn’t been able to get home recently! I said there was bound to be a good reason.”
“But, Mum, it’s only been a month or so.” I’d gone to Folkestone the weekend following our return from France.
Her remark, though, had been somewhat ill-timed. It made me feel even guiltier than I already did—being mindful of the news which I still needed to impart. “In any case,” I said, “I’ll be coming home this Friday.”
“This Friday? How lovely! I hadn’t expected that.” She did some rapid calculations. “So, afterwards, only a matter of three days! You’ll be travelling down again on the Wednesday evening?”
I then had to explain that I’d be spending Christmas elsewhere. To find the courage, I’d needed to keep remembering how dreary past Christmases had sometimes been at home, how different and exciting this one promised to be in London. But such reminders couldn’t stop me feeling wormlike: I knew that neither my mother nor my aunt had ever thought of Christmas as being in the least bit dreary, not so long as I’d been there to help them celebrate. However, I broke the news as gently as I could and hoped to heaven that it wouldn’t ruin our day.
“But Johnny. I was counting on your being at home!”
Yet it wasn’t half so bad as I’d imagined. My mother rallied. “Then what will you be doing instead, while we couple of old hens—?”
“Speak for yourself,” said Aunt Clara. “You can be whatever you like. I admit to being nothing more than a spring chicken!”
“And quite right, too,” I grinned. I was truly aware, at that moment, of how much I loved them.
“I’ve already ordered the usual-sized turkey,” remarked my mother.
“An old hen, a spring chicken and the usual-sized turkey,” commented Aunt Clara. “Did you ever hear of such a delicate trio?”
There was a lengthy pause.
“I have these friends, you see, and it’s not for a single instant that I place any of them above yourselves—”
“But one of them at least happens to be a little younger and a little prettier than we are?” Aunt Clara patted the back of her well-coiffed head, in which there wasn’t even a glimpse of grey. “Hard though that is to imagine.”
I smiled but didn’t say anything.
“Younger and prettier than your mother is, anyway. Norma, my dear, didn’t I always say he’d leave a trail of broken hearts?”
“Is there anyone in particular?” asked my mother. “Darling, you would tell us?”
“No one in particular,” I said.
“You won’t go and do anything silly now, will you? Remember, the very last thing you’d want—at your age—is to be tied down.”
“You’re telling me!”
“Isn’t it ridiculous? I feel I want to cry again. It seems only yesterday you were my little boy.”
But then—it struck me as a miracle—she suddenly cheered up.
“Yes, only yesterday! Do you remember how we used to go to the cinema on Saturday afternoons? Your father didn’t like the pictures. We always went to Fuller’s for tea, then caught the four o’clock performance. I was your girlfriend then.”
“‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’,” I said. “I saw it again quite recently.”
“‘Miranda’,” she answered.
“Was that the one about the mermaid?”
“‘Spring in Park Lane’!”
“Oh, not that thing which—” I suddenly jumped up; I put my hand to my heart. “‘The moment I saw you, I heard a skylark sing…’”
“Fancy your remembering that!” My mother also jumped up, in evident delight. “‘November was April, and down the street came spring…’ They danced to it on the balcony; I can see it clearly. Here. Pretend you’re Michael Wilding.”
“Oh, spoilsport! I wanted to be Anna Neagle.”
Twenty seconds later we were giggling like children, too helpless to continue in our waltz. Aunt Clara watched us indulgently. “Sometimes I think I’m the only sane person in a crazy world. Besides, Norma, you weren’t his only girlfriend. What about ‘Peter Pan’? What about ‘Where the Rainbow Ends’? What about ‘Goody Two Shoes’? Eh, Methuselah? Just tell me that!”
“Oh, kid’s stuff!” scoffed my mother. She looked pretty and full of sparkle and about ten years younger than she had looked a minute ago.
We sat down amid the remnants of our laughter, and I again held out the box of Bendicks.
“I couldn’t! I couldn’t! No. We must now go and do the washing up.”
“No, we mustn’t. There isn’t much. I’ll see to it later.” I laughed. “Oh, God! I’m getting to sound like you!”
“And you could do a lot worse for yourself!” pointed out my aunt, with mock severity.
“What a treat this is—eh, Clara?”
“I can’t recall when I last enjoyed anything so much!”
I hoped this wasn’t true. During the next couple of seconds, however, I actually thought my mother was setting out to remind her.
“Do you remember,” she asked slowly, “do you remember how he used to throw his pyjamas out of the window and as often as not they’d catch in the branches of the apple tree? You and I would do everything we could not to be seen laughing but it always made Nickie so very cross.”
“Well, he was the one who had to get them down!” Aunt Clara turned to me. “Oh, you naughty boy! I remember how you found that pathetic fledgling. The way you sobbed all night when the poor thing died.”
“Oh, stop it, please,” I cried. “You’re breaking my heart. Both of you.”
“And that other time you just sobbed and sobbed, after no one came to your birthday party.” My mother again. “We’d invited at least three of your little friends, yet for one reason or another … But then you seriously thought there was no one in the whole wide world who really liked you.”
“And look at him now—that great strapping lad who’s so much in demand he’s not even coming home for Christmas.”
“Good gracious, Clara! Can you believe it? Fifteen years ago, to the very day!”
“And then seven years ago—or was it eight?—we weren’t either of us very happy, were we, when he had to go off to boarding school for the first time?”
“The first time? Every time! We always dreaded the end of the holidays even more than he did!”
It was a lovely afternoon. We went shopping and my mother bought me a stunning crystal bowl. It cost her well over ten pounds—which was at least twice as much as she had spent on me the year before—and I thought this was her crafty way of paying me back for the meal and for the taxi. Although at first I tried to stop her, I eventually gave in.
“Which is what we all knew was going to happen right from the beginning,” observed Aunt Clara, with a moue.
I ignored this, loftily. I kissed my mother on the cheek and said, “But, of course, this present has to be for Christmas, too, not just today—absolutely the finest I’ve received in ages!”
Which wasn’t quite the case. At breakfast Oliver had given me an engraved Rolex wristwatch. ‘With so much love, for all time.’ (“Look,” he’d said anxiously, whilst watching my expression, “somehow, in the shop, that seemed like an amusing notion but now I can’t think what possessed me! But every word of it is true.”) At first I hadn’t been going to wear it immediately, yet then found I couldn’t bear not to. Naturally I’d been very careful to keep my cuff down.
Aunt Clara had wanted to take us to tea after we left Selfridge’s but everywhere was so crowded we went back to the flat. No sooner arrived, though, than she offered to sally forth again in search of cakes. I set the table and made toast while, after all, my mother did the washing up.
“Tell me, darling, how do you find her?” The question came the moment I had returned from closing the front door.
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“Absolutely as normal. In brilliant form.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“Don’t you?”
“Yes, I think that maybe—when I wrote you that very gloomy letter—I was imagining things. I was a bit run down, possibly. But you did notice, didn’t you, how she repeated herself after lunch. I tried to catch your eye.”
“Well, but everyone repeats themselves on occasion. We certainly do. I recall this exact conversation when I was last at home. Or, no, not the last time—the one before it.”
“Perhaps we’re all growing senile.” She laughed.
“Perhaps we are. But honestly, Mum, I don’t think you need worry. I really don’t.”
“No, I’m sure you’re right. Yet it’s such a relief to hear you say so. It’s good to have a son like you.” She spread the dishcloth on the drainer and turned around and smiled. “And try to forget what I said earlier. I’m glad you’ve found a girlfriend. One of these days—although there’s certainly no rush!—I look forward to your providing me with grandchildren. Is she nice?”
“Very! She’s a bit like you.”
“Ah,” said my mother. “Flatterer!”
“Not at all.”
“Mutual admiration society.”
“That’s right.”
It was nearly five o’clock. With the curtains drawn and the lamps lit it was even cosier than before. I put on some records: evergreens from the thirties and forties: the sort of thing we all liked. We had tea and toast and then the lemon curd tarts and Eccles cakes which Aunt Clara had picked out at the U.D. Watching them both sitting there, wiping their mouths one last time, in each case an almost reluctant, vaguely wistful gesture, I was suddenly engulfed by an ache of sadness for the pair of them. In a couple of hours or so, while I’d be sitting next to Oliver in a warm theatre, with the prospect of a good dinner in an expensive restaurant still in front of me, followed by a comfortable taxi-ride back to a modern, luxury, double-glazed apartment and a finish to the day which would embrace sex and togetherness and lazy conversation, they, my poor mother and great-aunt, would still be travelling home in a rattly, cheerless train, thinking of that cold walk down from the station, their celebration all behind them. I wondered if there wasn’t any way of our soon repeating this outing—on a regular fortnightly basis, maybe. Or monthly at any rate. I pictured my mother filling their hot water bottles, in a sparsely heated house.
The Man on the Bridge Page 8
