The Golden Lion

by Pamela Haines

  The club was in Furneux Green, ten miles away, and about twenty-five from Colin and Christine’s. It was just possible one way by bus. The return journey around two in the morning would have to be done otherwise. The first few times Dermot drove her there, although he would not come in. (Babysitting had to be arranged. They had no au pair now.) But it seemed obvious she should accept Colin’s offer for them to collect and return her. They came only a little out of their way to do so.

  Dermot did not like the arrangement. He did not like either Colin or Christine (whom Helen had taken to at once, so small and plump to Colin’s gangling height, so warm, bubbling with life, and lately, so excited and so tactful about their baby, expected in the spring of 1961.) He had never got over his unreasoning jealousy of Colin, who had so kindly driven her back from a dinner party and come inside to see the children were all right.

  She might never have stopped, the singing came back so easily. A change of style. A more mature voice. New, different people to work with. A small resident group.

  She sang standards. She sang as she had sung with Eddie. So many of their old numbers. And it did not hurt.

  Some of her old troubles came back. But only if she was nervous. Transposing her words, worrying about her hands. She was nervous the night Dermot brought her and agreed to stay. He had with him an advertising colleague who was staying the night with them, and wanted to hear her.

  Transposing her words: (‘Pass it off,’ Eddie had said, ‘we all do it, don’t notice it.’)

  ‘A hard man is good to find,’ she sang. It didn’t go unnoticed. Someone clapped. Someone else cheered.

  Dermot was furious. Embarrassed too. ‘How could you be so vulgar,’ he said, when they were back home again. ‘How could you be so coarse?’

  ‘I didn’t do it on purpose.’

  ‘Really? I got the impression it was thought the smart thing to do. In that sort of world.’

  ‘What sort of world?’

  ‘You know … Your sort of world.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she said lightly, annoyed, upset, the tears not far away, ‘a hard man is good to find.’

  ‘If anything is meant by that –’

  Perhaps her remark had been deliberately cruel. Better not to think of, much less speak of that side of life. She had scarcely been able to bear it since the death. As if death were here in the bed with them.

  The advice of friends did not help. ‘Make another baby. Make another baby as quickly as possible.’ But the idea filled her with dread. When she heard the well-meant advice for the third time she felt only a dumb anger. A new child would not be Daisy. Might it not be, worse still, a reminder? She could not explain her morbid fear of this intruder, for intruder it would be, who would sleep in Daisy’s cot, sit in the high chair, play with her toys …

  Dermot felt differently. Although never mentioning Daisy by name, he spoke of Benedict’s loneliness. Giving her twinges of conscience. He worded it always, ‘Darling, you want us to be a family again, don’t you?’

  And so for his sake she put aside the thermometer. And worried. But when after two unguarded months, no child had appeared, she made other arrangements. She could not make a moral issue of it. I must survive, she told herself. And this is how. It would be no good to have a cap fitted – the likelihood of discovery was too great. Finally in early June, on the pretext of buying an outfit for Colin and Christine’s wedding, she had gone up to London for the day and had a ring fitted.

  She had felt ashamed not only of her deceit, but of her reluctance to be touched. The feeling had grown worse over the months since the death. Shame, self-disgust, pity for Dermot (it is I the bad one), all warred within her. How long too before her fertility would be questioned? Fortunately, in late September, in one of his gentler moods, he suggested they wait a little after all. ‘Until you feel more able to cope, until you’re ready,’ he said. And so it was back to the (pretence now) of the thermometer.

  Benedict – what of Benedict? He had become very withdrawn after Daisy’s death. For several days after, it seemed, Helen and he had clung together. He asked her over and over why Daisy had gone to Heaven. ‘What’s the hurry?’ he said. Using an expression which was often used to him. (‘Don’t rush so, Benedict, what’s the hurry?’)

  ‘Why’s Daisy had to go? What’s the hurry?’ he asked Helen, again and again.

  Perhaps she needed to be of help to someone, perhaps it was at that moment just the right thing for her. But Bridget’s arrival, tired and a little emotional but calming down remarkably quickly, was good for them all.

  In the twenty-odd years since she had entered the Carmel, Bridget had not walked down a country road, let alone a busy street. Even a small town like Shalford Pelham was full of strange sights and sounds. Her third day she was almost run over by a bright red Heinkel three-wheeler – a novelty to Benedict, but to her an amazement – stepping out of the way only just in time.

  Some of the changes were less than might be imagined. Clothes after all she had seen worn by visitors. There had been family photographs. But a visit to a London theatre to see Fings ain’t wot they used to be had her bubbling over with excitement and animation: on the Underground back to Liverpool Street, feet tapping, half-whistling. She wanted, like a child, to do everything she hadn’t done for years. At first clothes didn’t bother her much. She had not been interested before, she said. She went out dutifully with Helen and was kitted out with winter coat, skirts, jumpers, nylon stockings. Then looking at shoes, she became intrigued. Even ones with medium heels were strange – she practised at home with them, asking for Benedict to take her arm, ‘in case I take a header’. Soon after she bought a pair of very high stilettos, of two-tone leather with a strap for support. Her feet were rather large. At the same time she decided on impulse to change her spectacles, ordering blue plastic frames in a swept-up style which didn’t really suit her.

  It had been agreed she spend at least three months and preferably six with them, while she thought about her future. She of course visited her family. But since they were amazed and critical that she hadn’t gone there in the first place, the visit was not a success.

  Food – there was a small delicatessen in Shalford Pelham – she wanted to try everything. And after the first few weeks to cook it herself. ‘I’ll cook for you all,’ she would announce. ‘Tonight is Spanish night.’

  Helen had thought Dermot might be shocked or upset by some of this. That Bridget should leave at all he had found disturbing. The whole point of the Carmel brought into question. (Helen’s being the first to hear had shattered him. ‘Why a letter to you, who are always so critical?’) Helen had pointed out that nothing was altered. The Carmel was the same, neither better nor worse – it was just that Bridget was not suited to it, and had found out before too late. ‘It’s still the powerhouse of prayer it was yesterday,’ she said, remembering a convenient phrase.

  But after the first few difficult weeks, he seemed to be coping well, sometimes even entering into the spirit of the fun. Watching the two of them together one day, struck suddenly by a fleeting family resemblance – she thought: If only I loved him. A thought that filled her with such sadness that it overrode for the moment the death of Daisy and all the accumulated gloom of a dark November afternoon.

  Bridget was learning to drive. She allowed Dermot to teach her – then changed her mind. He was too anxious, she said. ‘As soon as I’ve passed a test, dear, I could take Dermot to the station, and then we’d have the car for the day. I could drive you to your jazz club too.’

  She came and listened to Helen three times in those first few months. She was amazed. ‘How do you do it? How do you stand up there and sing alone? And Scat, those lovely meaningless noises you make, I love them.’ To an ear attuned to plainchant only, the rhythms must have seemed amazing, but Bridget took it, like everything, it seemed, in her stride. (Although Dermot had said about the stiletto heels, ‘I think you’re taking too much in your stride …’)

  She a
nd Bridget talked a lot. Just as Bridget confided in her the history of her spiritual turmoil, her hopes and fears for the future, so Helen felt she could speak to Bridget, about everything. Confidences about thermometers and Dermot, contraception, the ring. ‘Ah well,’ Bridget had said, ‘it has to be between you and God, doesn’t it? Only you know, dear, what you can cope with.’

  But perhaps the greatest benefit of her stay with them was the improvement in Benedict. Every excitement, novelty, they must do together. And there was so much he could show her. Not least, of course, television. Sitting him on her knee to watch Bootsy and Snudge (‘Did you get that joke, Aunt? I’ll explain later’), she brought him back to life in a way Helen could not. (Perhaps he and she were too alike, too united in their grief?)

  And yet, oddly, she would feel sometimes that it was she, not Bridget, who was waiting. Waiting to decide.

  She found that she needed now to get away at regular intervals. Going away helped. If she could get away everything fell into perspective, became on her return a little more bearable.

  Just before Christmas she spent three days with Jenny. She did not take Benedict, who was still attending school – she would be back in time to see him as the surly innkeeper, saying ‘No room at the inn,’ in the school nativity play. Jenny, who still missed Dulcie fearfully, told her all about the farming ideas, project. They planned to begin in the spring.

  Christmas was a difficult time. How not? When she had to lay out not two stockings, but one – when everything was a reminder. When toys and presents, and excited children seemed everywhere.

  There was an expedition of the four of them to see Oliver, since Bridget had so enjoyed the earlier Lionel Bart show. On Boxing Day they went to Peter Pan and Bridget held Benedict’s hand while he squeaked with pleasurable fear at Captain Hook. Home again, he woke in the middle of the night, screaming about crocodiles. Bridget arrived first on the scene. Helen, pulling on her wrap, found Benedict’s head already buried in her ample bosom. She waited to feel jealousy, but none came.

  ‘Ain’t no sweet man that’s worth the salt of my tears,’ she sang. Bridget had come to listen and led the clapping in an embarrassingly enthusiastic manner. Dermot was there unwillingly. She knew he was jealous of her singing (the only thing I have, she thought – my singing), but that he would never admit it. He sniped in the car going back. So much so that Bridget said, ‘Oh, you two …’

  Somehow the quarrelsome uneasy mood followed them home and upstairs into the bedroom. She was tired yet over-stimulated, as always after these evenings. He said:

  ‘I suppose you’re waiting for me to say you sang well. For those who like that sort of thing, that’s the sort of thing they like … I’m sure you’re very good at it – but now that Bridget … It’s a nuisance Bridget wanting to come along. Making Benedict-sitting problems –’

  She said, ‘He could have come too.’

  ‘A child. Into an atmosphere like that. You must be mad –’ She said, ‘Anyway, if Bridget hadn’t happened to leave the convent, we’d have needed a sitter tonight.’

  ‘Hardly. I wouldn’t have come.’

  ‘At least,’ he said a few moments later, ‘those problems will be over when he goes off to prep school –’

  ‘That’s not for quite a while.’

  ‘Next September.’

  ‘So little – Seven, Dermot. Does he have to?’

  ‘It did me no harm. He’s down for it, so he’d better go. He’s too clinging anyway. First it was you, and now it’s Bridget.’ He said next, ‘Unless of course a baby comes.’

  ‘Unless a baby comes.’

  ‘You are going to get over this – feeling, about replacing … about conceiving again?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said tiredly. ‘Eventually.’ She said then, meaning it. ‘I’m sorry.’

  For what was she sorry? For everything. She wanted to apologize just for being Helen. She said it several times, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  In the end he said, ‘I don’t know what about. Come to bed. I’m sorry too – if it’s something I said. Or didn’t say.’ He sounded gentle, but exasperated too.

  She was standing over by the bow-fronted chest of drawers, where there was a bowl of blue hyacinths. In winter Maria grew these in pots all about the kitchen and sitting-room at Moorgarth. The sweet and almost cloying smell evoked the farmhouse. Suddenly she wanted desperately to be there.

  Thackton, Moorgarth. Maria – who had said she would always be welcome.

  She said to Dermot, ‘I thought of spending a few days up with Maria, now that school’s started again. Benedict –’

  ‘Bridget will look after him.’

  Of course Bridget would look after him. And in the morning when it was suggested, she was only too glad. Benedict, eating cornflakes, thought it a good idea.

  Five days, a week, ten days, Helen thought. If I could just be away, at peace. She thought more and more often now of peace.

  She would leave the next morning. That evening when the cheap rate came on, she tried to ring. But the operator told her the number was engaged. She tried again later. And then didn’t bother. In the morning before she left, it would be too early to call anyone. I shall be a surprise, she thought. Imagining Maria’s welcoming arms.

  It was already after four when the small train pulled into Thackton. The January light, poor all day, had gone completely. Electric lights had come on in the rows of cottages backing on to the station. (Oh, dark station of my wartime childhood.)

  Carrying her bag, she began the long walk up. The wall glistened with frost. There was a bite in the air, a smell perhaps of snow – the air which smelled so different from Shalford. The cold set her teeth on edge.

  Turning into the village (sudden twinge as I see the sweet shop, lighted, the chime of the doorbell as someone goes in), walking up past Park Villa. Then at last, the welcome sight of Moorgarth.

  The sitting-room light was on, and as she came into the courtyard, she saw the kitchen light through the half-drawn curtains. If the door is unlocked, I could walk in and surprise her …

  She decided to ring. The door opened. Guy stood there.

  ‘What a lovely surprise,’ he said. He was in shirtsleeves. The warmth of the kitchen came to her like a blessing. ‘Maria never said. I’d have met you at the station.’

  ‘She doesn’t know. It was an impulse, I came on an impulse.’

  ‘Let me take your bag … I’m afraid,’ he said, smiling, ‘you’ve travelled in the wrong direction. Maria’s in Montpelier Square. They’re sorting out some legal matters before Jenny winds everything up there.’

  ‘I never thought. I tried to telephone –’

  ‘She’s back tomorrow evening. Want to wait?’

  It wasn’t so much disappointment she felt as a sort of shocked surprise. The order of things was wrong. There came over her a sudden unexpected – and quickly checked – proprietary feeling about the kitchen, about the whole of Moorgarth. Maria and I, we kept it going as a home all through the war. We looked after and loved Uncle Eric …

  He had hung up her coat. She took off her hat, shook out her hair.

  ‘Do you want to go upstairs first? There are two bedrooms to choose from. They’re both made up. One’s always ready for Jenny.’

  When she came downstairs:

  ‘Could you give me a hand tomorrow? I’ve got a brace of partridge for Maria. Hung just right. I want to have a meal for her but I’m pretty inept at cooking. And the Aga – but you’ll remember – it has to be wooed. I don’t seem to know the way to its heart.’

  ‘But of course. Of course.’

  She was sitting at the kitchen table. He was making her a cup of tea. She asked:

  ‘Are you in England for long? You haven’t told me what you’re doing, or anything –’

  ‘Running away, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That makes two of us.’

  He was busy over by the dresser, getting cups and saucers.

 
; ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  ‘Oh well, it’s nothing. Just everything …’

  He said slowly. ‘I was terribly sorry – about Daisy. I wrote, I know, at the time, but one can’t – in a letter. It’s … Not that anything I can say now would be any better. But, well – you are talking to the father of daughters.’

  She bit her lip. To hide the flood of feeling. The desire to rest her head now on the table and weep for dead Daisy.

  ‘Thank you. I know – and thank you. Thank you, Guy.’ Absentmindedly, she stirred her sugarless tea.

  ‘How are they, Silvi and Titi?’

  ‘Well. Beautiful. And very fluent in French now.’

  ‘It’s not them you’re running away from?’

  ‘Dear God, no.’

  ‘Who then, what then?’ She said, ‘It’s not fair to say “Tell me” when you never say anything about you.’

  ‘My marriage is over. That’s all.’ He said it quickly, sadly.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘To put it in the simplest terms, it’s Laura. Laura needs other men. She needs to be unfaithful. It’s a pattern, apparently. Not unfaithful occasionally. But constantly. Regularly. It doesn’t worry her. And when I knew nothing – it didn’t worry me. It was all right – until I discovered. And then … You knew about my – our – getting out of Sicily in a hurry? I got into deep water –’

  ‘Maria didn’t say much. Just that you were in Paris, and that Laura and the girls had gone ahead.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have wanted to awaken your memories of Marcello. Nor of course do I –’

  ‘No, please tell me. Please go on.’

  ‘… I got into deep water. Laura and the girls were already in Paris for safety. When I joined them there in May, I thought at first … I wanted to give it six months or so, to see if everything would be all right. Could perhaps be all right … And at first there was my gratitude just to be alive, to be with them all again.

  ‘But it was if anything worse than before. Because I knew – I knew and felt a fool for knowing. Just as I’d felt one for not knowing, before. I found it impossible not to be suspicious. Not to be always wondering. And I was right. Alas, I was too damn right …’ He paused. ‘And simply – I cannot live like that.’