At Freddie's

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  The difficulties of the project – of getting her out of her office, or even out of her chair, and into the back yard, where he had never even seen her, on a dark cold evening – these hardly occurred to him. It was forty-six hours to his first professional appearance. He was confident that if she was reminded of this she would never reason the need.

  ‘I’m afraid she won’t have time to think about it tonight,’ Miss Blewett said. ‘She’s going out.’

  ‘She can’t be,’ Jonathan replied. ‘She never goes out at night.’

  ‘She’s going out to dinner tonight, dear. I’m on my way now to look through her wardrobe and see if I can find her something dressy to wear.’ And both were silenced for a moment at the enormity of the task. Even Jonathan was side-tracked by genuine interest and amazement.

  ‘But she hasn’t even been to see King John.’

  ‘I know, dear.’

  ‘She hasn’t got anything dressy.’

  ‘You don’t know everything she’s got, dear.’

  ‘Where’s she going? Is she going out by herself?’

  The Bluebell was glad to have anyone to share her amazement. It had only been a short while ago, when she was checking on the supplies of Ovaltine, that Freddie had announced that she was dining at the Ristorante Impruneta with Joey Blatt.

  ‘I must admit I was rather taken aback. Over the years there have been so many, many invitations declined, and I should have thought if there was going to be an exception it wouldn’t have been … I mean, she even declined the Master’s little supper party … of course she hasn’t forgotten your first night, dear, but that’s Friday, and this is only Wednesday. You must come to the office first thing tomorrow, whatever it is, and tell her about it.’

  ‘Does she like Mr Blatt?’

  The Bluebell patted her curls. ‘He’s a business man, dear.’

  But by now Jonathan’s self-protective politeness had returned. ‘Well, I don’t think I’ll worry her about it tomorrow morning, thanks all the same, Miss Blewett. It’s just something that I have to do this evening, something out in the yard, really.’

  ‘But it’ll be quite wet there, dear, I expect. What are you doing with that straw hat? You’ll put on your windcheater, won’t you?’

  Their diverging obsessions gripped them, and they parted.

  Jonathan went outside to consider various methods of reaching the top of the wall. The snow still fell but was not troublesome to him. There were no toeholds in the brick, but the hutch stood in the dark corner of the yard and would give him a good step up. However, he didn’t want to start there because from the top of that wall he could be seen from the street. Someone passing by might interfere, and, worse still, to be seen by a stranger would be unlucky. If anyone saw your performance before your opening night, that was unlucky.

  The hutch must be moved, but it was very heavy; this was because its base was a small mahogany sofa-table from the salon, turned upside down. Now, warped by the London winters, it clung solidly to the dank ground. No shove, no pushing and pulling, on Jonathan’s part would unwedge it. However, Mr Carroll was probably still somewhere about the place. Nowadays he was often there quite late. Some people said he was economising and didn’t want to go home and put shillings in the meter. But Jonathan knew that Carroll was above that kind of thing.

  Miss Blewett, hurrying past, but still unable to keep her news to herself, told the doorman that Miss Wentworth would probably require a taxi later. In superstitious terror, Baines damped down his boiler and left the building, not feeling himself until he saw the slanting square of light which the Nag’s Head windows threw across the pavement. To do him justice it was not the unknown he fled from, but the unexpected. ‘Why? Why?’ Miss Blewett murmured, and Freddie, majestically waiting in the bedroom for her assistance, replied: ‘We change completely, you know, every twenty-one years.’

  Into this bedroom Miss Blewett had very occasionally been, in times of illness – on the afternoon, for example, of Freddie’s collapse to pack her case for the hospital – but she had never looked into the wardrobe. She knew the bed, yes, a narrow mattress such as nuns and prisoners die on, covered with a red hospital blanket and over that a fine cashmere shawl which was not quite large enough, so that a space had to be filled by a rug of sacred monkey fur. Beside it a chair waited piled with cushions, since Freddie, who made it known that she had not slept for more than an hour at a time since 1935, often passed the night half sitting up, as though holding an audition for those no longer present. A lamp with a long fringed green silk shade, a Bible, a dictionary, a tin kettle with a long spout, of the kind that used to be kept ready in cases of pneumonia. There was in the room no comfort, no welcome to the tired, only the absence of freshness and the indisputable suggestion of Freddie’s presence. The room seemed colder than it could possibly be outside.

  Freddie had a dressing-table, with a mirror secured by two wooden knobs which did not function as perhaps once they had, so that the glass swung backwards and reflected anyone who looked into it only below the waist. On the dressing-table a small white china hand spread out its fingers to receive its owner’s rings for the night, but Freddie never took hers off.

  As Miss Blewett struggled hesitantly with the wardrobe her employer shoved in impatiently behind her and executed a subtle turn of the key which made both doors creak loudly and fly wide open. Hardly knowing what she expected, Miss Blewett peered into darkness. Very little was hanging there, but what there was looked stately. She detected a glimmer, and the rank odour of neglected fur.

  ‘Is that gold?’ she asked.

  ‘Peer’s robes,’ Freddie answered carelessly. ‘Mount-pleasant gave them to me, in case we ever wanted to put on Henry VIII.’

  ‘When was that? Didn’t he want them himself?’

  ‘He was the last person to call me Girlie. There’s no one left to do that now.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of wearing them tonight?’

  The dresses, also, had been presented by various well-wishers. Miss Blewett lifted one from its hanger; it was entirely crocheted from black silk with a deep border of what she recognised at once as real beetles’ wings. The great Maria Casarès, it appeared, had worn it as Lady Macbeth, when she appeared before an audience of three thousand in the sleepwalking scene.

  ‘But it’s black,’ Miss Blewett cried, outraged. ‘You can’t sleepwalk in black.’

  ‘You’re right there, dear, for once. Sleepwalking is much more innocent than sleeping. It’s a proof of conscience. But I shall need to keep awake this evening.’

  To wear the black crochet would be the assumption of the superb. Whatever size it was it would, or should, stretch. But what ought to go on underneath it? While Miss Blewett’s mind circled round this problem, unwilling to approach it too directly, she found it solved. Freddie raised her arms, impressive in volume beneath her dun cardigan, confidently waiting.

  Miss Blewett understood, but hesitated.

  ‘Your jewellery, Freddie dear. That should come off, surely.’

  This evening it was a heavy cameo from which depended, at the end of a short gold chain, a jet medallion carved with a view of Whitby. Lower down, more jet brooches were scattered.

  ‘My beads may stay,’ Freddie declared in a hollow tone. ‘You may draw them outside the neckline when the dress is on.’

  Miss Blewett, who had worked more than once as a dresser, made no comment, but lifted the musty shining garment up to its full length and lowered it like a tent over her employer’s head and on to her shoulders. Freddie’s face emerged and was seen in all its absolutely uncompromising plainness, while her spectacles flashed above the dark pavilion. The brooches were repinned.

  ‘It’s a pity you’ve never managed to pick up any jewellery, dear,’ said Freddie complacently.

  ‘We’re still short of a coat,’ said the Bluebell. ‘It’s snowing outside, you know.’

  She was expecting to be asked for the loan of her coney full-length, and was mildly l
ooking forward to refusing it, as she had an engagement (for which she was already late) herself. But Freddie now recalled that in 1952 she had been made an honorary doctor of the University of Leeds, and demanded, from the very depths of the wardrobe, her furred gown and mortar-board.

  Miss Blewett emerged half-smothered.

  ‘These will scarcely be warm enough. If we can’t get a taxi to come we may have to walk a bit before we find one.’

  ‘Call no cab, dear. Blatt, of course, is fetching me.’

  ‘But why Mr Blatt? Why? Why?’ Miss Blewett wailed.

  17

  JONATHAN was right in thinking that Carroll was still in the building, but was surprised to be asked what he was doing there himself, and why he hadn’t gone home yet. He felt that Carroll would know this without being told. Enchanted by his own difficulties, he had overlooked the fact that, so far, nobody had been told.

  ‘Sir! I want you to come out into the yard.’

  He spoke as a prince should speak, and ‘Sir’ was right for the occasion. Really this was his best bet after all, because they had already discussed the Jump quite seriously between them, and Carroll was presumably strong enough to move the hutch. Suppose, however, that he wasn’t? It struck Jonathan now, as he turned his clear bright unembarrassed chorister’s gaze on the schoolteacher, that Mr Carroll had gone off terribly. You couldn’t say it was gradual, it had stepped up over the last few weeks. There was more leanness, more bentness, one or two less shirt buttons, less ability to get it together in any way, less shape, less hope.

  When he had first come into the classroom Carroll, who was standing at the window looking down into the street, but not doing anything of any perceptible use, seemed almost glad to be interrupted, and certainly ready to listen. But as Jonathan repeated his request, varying it a little – please, Sir, I want you to come down to the yard straight away – he started violently away from the window as though he’d been hit with an air-gun pellet.

  ‘I’m very sorry, I can’t do anything for you now. I’m going out.’

  ‘Have you got to go out at once, then?’

  ‘Yes, I may be too late already.’

  He snatched down his raincoat which was huddled on the back of the classroom door.

  ‘Is it Miss Graves?’ Jonathan asked, with no pretence of belief.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘She isn’t here, she left ages ago. Where are you meeting her?’

  ‘Outside.’

  ‘Will she know she’s supposed to be meeting you?’

  ‘She will know.’

  Jonathan followed his teacher out of the room and saw him making a fool’s progress down to the hall while his raincoat, only half on, flapped and swept each stair in turn. Carroll had gone off work, but Jonathan was left with his.

  The slamming of the front door reminded him that he would have to be careful about the back. When Miss Wentworth left for her dinner party she would presumably lock up at the back or see that it was locked, so that he would have to hurry. No hope now of moving the hutch, so the best thing would be to borrow a couple of fruit crates from the market, dragging them back one by one. There were piles of the ones he needed, the large size, all along Floral Street. If challenged on the subject, he could say they were needed at Freddie’s. His faith in those words, as a charm or spell, was absolute.

  Carroll had seen Hannah on the other side of the street. Out of all the girls wrapped up against the weather, out of all the young women in existence, it only took him a second to recognise her, he had made so deep a study. He issued from the Temple School with all the force of his purpose, and caught up with her by Covent Garden Underground Station. Sometimes she travelled the one stop back to her room by tube.

  The rush hour was not quite over and the two of them standing there on the pavement were a great inconvenience to everyone else. Treated as an obstacle, they were spun round now and again almost in a quarter circle away from each other and back again by those hurrying past, avid for the foetid homegoing warmth of the Underground. Sorry … sorry … sorry … sorry.

  ‘I’m not sure that I can discuss anything with you here, Pierce.’

  ‘I daresay you don’t want to discuss anything with me anywhere,’ said Carroll, taking her elbow in his gentle grip.

  ‘Why does it have to be now, Pierce dear? Couldn’t you have told me about it today at the school, I mean if it’s anything important?’

  ‘I saw you from the window. I didn’t know till then how important it was.’

  ‘You must have been staying late again then. Hadn’t all the children gone?’

  ‘All of them only Jonathan.’

  ‘You ought to have sent him home.’

  ‘The school is his home, you know that.’

  ‘Did he want anything?’

  ‘Don’t put me off, Hannah. Standing there I had a fancy that you might pass but I knew it was very unlikely as good as impossible and when I saw you I knew I ought to speak at once, just to make something clear. I thought of it, really, as a last chance.’

  Hannah suggested – because she knew they always closed at seven – a Lyons teashop. She had taken so readily to Boney’s heartwarming shifts and evasions that by this time she couldn’t face more than half an hour of sincerity. But then, she told herself, how could she tell what was coming next? Perhaps all Pierce wanted was to know what she’d like for Christmas. Far from being reproachful or demanding, he had never referred in any way to his suggestion of marriage since the day he made it. At first she had thought that he had taken it very hard but had concealed it and would be pleased if he thought she had been taken in by the concealment. Then she had begun to find it possible to believe that the whole notion had been a kind of freak and hadn’t in the end meant so very much to him; after all he’d put all those bits of paper of his away again with scarcely a word, and since then he’d gone off quite calmly, for instance, to the Nonesuch with Miss Blewett. He had never said a thing about the night they’d had together or as to whether he felt more or less of a real person; he had never so much as called round at her place again, and she thought the more of him for that, or perhaps, to be honest, she thought less. As to the sad look the Bluebell had been on about, what did it amount to, he looked much the same, not thinner or neglected. At this point it came to her that she was not good enough for Pierce, and nobody can bear this feeling for any length of time.

  Lyons teashops might almost have been particularly designed for the resolution of such awkward situations, and perhaps when, fifteen years later, the teashops were discontinued as uneconomic the situations disappeared with them. In a Lyons, as Hannah had reflected, the limits of communication had to be reached by seven o’clock, while at the same time it was necessary to share a table or at all events to sit very close to other customers, so that although everyone restricted their elbows, their bodies and their newspapers and by a long established convention showed no signs of understanding what they overheard, they provided all the same a certain check on human intimacy. The rosy-tinted looking-glasses on every wall also acted as a restraint on the undemanding clientèle who would rather keep their eyes on their plates than be caught looking at their own reflexions.

  At Lyons, the females, if escorted, sat at a table and ‘kept the place’ while the males queued for what was needed and carried it back, as their remote forebears had done, with difficulty. During this process the tea overflowed into the saucers. Later the sugar, which was only put out on every fourth table, had to be borrowed and exchanged. There was always a good deal of apologising at Lyons.

  The surface of the tables was covered with a material imitating green marble, and on this Carroll, having fetched their tea, planted his elbows, careless for once of the wear on his jacket.

  ‘It was good of you to come, Hannah.’

  She felt a longing, more for his sake than her own, to cut the whole thing short.

  ‘Oh, Pierce, I thought you were getting over it.’

  Carroll considered this.
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  ‘It’s a way of describing it, but it doesn’t appeal to me because it suggests that what I feel for you will be left behind at an ever increasing distance. That I am quite sure won’t happen.’

  ‘But it must happen in time.’

  ‘No, that won’t be the way of it,’ he replied with that terrible quiet decisiveness which should have been able to move mountains.

  ‘You don’t want to keep thinking about me, Pierce. It’s a waste of time.’

  ‘Time is not money, Hannah. You talk too freely about wasting it.’

  ‘It’s gone in either case,’ she cried.

  ‘Not at all. It isn’t gone. I could tell you everything you said to me and how you looked, and, I think, what you wore on any given day since I had the good fortune to meet you at the beginning of the autumn term.’

  By common consent, and without looking round them, they both lowered their voices which had been raised above the teashop pitch.

  ‘Hannah, I’ve tried to see to it that I only think about myself a certain fixed amount every day, and that would include talking about myself. But, all the same. I’d be interested to know why you think that I shouldn’t feel very much.’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t mean that there’s anything lacking in you, quite the contrary, I’d give the world to be the same.’

  ‘The same as what, my dear,’ he asked.

  ‘Well, I admire the way you always keep the same face, and won’t let yourself be put out when the classes play up, and the way you talk to Jonathan Kemp just as if he was no different from yourself, and as to anything else, I’m talking now about personal relationships, there I think you’re quite right too, by far the best thing is to accept what comes and not to go on about it.’

  Carroll sighed. ‘I expect you’re referring to the 17th of November, the morning on which I asked you to be my wife. If I had my time over again I think that I should put it in a different way. The upshot would be the same no doubt.’

  ‘All you did was to explain about the farm, and the land, and the golf course, and you put it very well, and I appreciated it very much.’