Keith made the grade first. A play staged in an out-of-the-way theatre catapulted through the hoop of please-see-it! reviews into the West End and kept going like some beautiful, lucky-star-guided missile to land smack in the middle of Broadway. That’s all it took. And as at the wave of a wand, the beaming Regans were whisked from an unheated, cold-water flat and a diet of spaghetti and potato soup into the luxuriant green pastures of Kensington with a backdrop of vintage wines, sports cars, chic furs and, ultimately, the more somber decor of the divorce courts. Nancy simply couldn’t compete—in looks, money, talent, oh, in anything that counted—with the charming blonde leading lady who added such lustre to Keith’s play on its debut in the West End. From the wide-eyed adoring wife of Keith’s lean years, she had lapsed gradually into a restless, sharp-tongued, cynical woman-about-town, with all the alimony she could want, but little else. Keith, of course, had soared out of their orbit. Still, whether out of pity or a sort of weatherproof affection, Ellen kept in touch with Nancy, who seemed to derive a certain pleasure from their meetings, as if through the Ross’s happy, child-gifted marriage she could somehow recapture the best days of her own past.
*
Ellen set out a cup and saucer on the counter and was about to pour herself a large dose of scalding coffee when she laughed, ruefully, and reached for a second cup. I’m not a deserted wife yet! She arranged the cheap tin tray with care—table napkin, sugar bowl, cream pitcher, a sprig of gilded autumn leaves beside the steaming cups—and started up the steeply-angled steps to Mrs Frankfort’s top-floor flat.
Touched by Jacob’s thoughtfulness in lugging her coal buckets, emptying her trash bins and watering her plants when she visited her sister, the middle-aged widow had offered him the use of her flat during the day while she was at work. ‘Two rooms won’t hold a writer, his wife and a bouncing baby! Let me contribute my mite to the future of world literature.’ So Ellen could let baby Jill creep and crow loud as she liked downstairs without fear of disturbing Jacob.
Mrs Frankfort’s door swung open at a touch of her fingertips, framing Jacob’s back, his dark head and broad shoulders in the shaggy fisherman’s sweater whose elbows she had mended more times than she liked to remember, bent over the spindly table littered with scrawled papers. As she poised there, holding her breath, Jacob raked his fingers absent-mindedly through his hair and creaked round in his chair. When he saw her, his face lit up, and she came forward smiling, to break the good news.
*
After seeing Jacob off, freshly-shaven, combed and handsome in his well-brushed suit—his only suit, Ellen felt strangely let down. Jill woke from her morning nap, cooing and bright-eyed. ‘Dadada,’ she prattled, while Ellen deftly changed the damp nappy, omitting the customary game of peekaboo, her mind elsewhere, and put her to play in the pen.
It won’t happen right away, Ellen mused, mashing cooked carrots for Jill’s lunch. Breakups seldom do. It will unfold slowly, one little telltale symptom after another like some awful, hellish flower.
Propping Jill against the pillows on the big bed for her noon feed, Ellen caught sight of the tiny cut-glass vial of French perfume on the bureau, almost lost in the wilderness of baby-powder cans, cod-liver-oil bottles and jars of cotton wool. The few remaining drops of costly amber liquid seemed to wink at her mockingly—Jacob’s one extravagance with the poem-money left over from the pram. Why had she never indulged wholeheartedly in the perfume, instead of rationing it so cautiously, drop by drop, like some perishable elixir of life? A woman like Denise Kay must have a sizeable part of her salary earmarked: Delectable Scents.
Ellen was broodily spooning mashed carrot into Jill’s mouth when the doorbell rang. Darn! She dumped Jill unceremoniously in her crib and made for the stairs. It never fails.
An unfamiliar, immaculately-dressed man stood on the doorstep beside the clouded battalion of uncollected milk bottles. ‘Is Jacob Ross in? I’m Karl Goodman, editor of Impact.’
Ellen recognized, with awe, the name of the distinguished monthly which only a few days ago had accepted three of Jacob’s poems. Uncomfortably aware of her carrot-spattered blouse and bedraggled apron, Ellen murmured that Jacob wasn’t at home. ‘You took some poems of his!’ she said shyly, then. ‘We were delighted.’
Karl Goodman smiled. ‘Perhaps I should tell you what I’ve come for. I live nearby and happened to be home for lunch, so I thought I’d come round in person….’
Denise Kay had phoned Impact that morning to see if they couldn’t arrange to publish part or all of Jacob’s play in time to coincide with the performance. ‘I just wanted to make sure your husband wasn’t committed to some other magazine first,’ Karl Goodman finished.
‘No, I don’t think he is,’ Ellen tried to sound calm. ‘In fact I know he’s not. I’m sure he’d be happy to have you consider the play. There’s a copy upstairs. May I get it for you …?’
‘That would be very kind.’
As Ellen hurried into the flat, Jill’s outraged wails met her. Just a minute, love, she promised. Snatching up the impressively fat manuscript she had typed from Jacob’s dictation through so many hopeful tea-times, she started downstairs again.
‘Thank you, Mrs Ross.’ Abashed, Ellen felt Karl Goodman’s shrewd eyes assess her, from the coronet of brown braids to the scuffed, though polished tips of her flat walking shoes. ‘If we accept this, as I’m almost sure we shall, I’ll have the cheque sent to you in advance.’
Ellen flushed, thinking: We’re not that desperate. Not quite. ‘That would be fine,’ she said.
Slowly she trudged upstairs to the shrill tune of Jill’s cries. Already I don’t fit. I’m homespun, obsolete as last year’s hemline. If I were Nancy, I’d grab that cheque the minute it dropped through the mail slot and be off to a fancy hairdresser’s and top off the beauty treatment by cruising Regent Street in a cab loaded with loot. But I’m not Nancy, she reminded herself firmly, and, mustering a motherly smile, went in to finish feeding Jill.
*
Thumbing through the smart fashion magazines in the doctor’s office that afternoon, waiting for Jill’s regular checkup, Ellen mused darkly on the gulf separating her from the self-possessed fur, feather and jewel bedecked models who gazed back at her from the pages with astoundingly large limpid eyes.
Do they ever start the day on the wrong foot? she wondered. With a headache … or a heartache? And she tried to imagine the fairytale world where these women woke dewy-eyed and pink-cheeked, yawning daintily as a cat does, their hair, even at daybreak, a miraculously-intact turret of gold, russet, blue-black or perhaps lavender-tinted silver. They would rise, supple as ballerinas, to prepare an exotic breakfast for the man-of-their-heart—mushrooms and creamy scrambled eggs, say, or crabmeat on toast—trailing about a sparkling American kitchen in a foamy negligee, satin ribbons fluttering like triumphal banners….
No, Ellen readjusted her picture. They would, of course, have breakfast brought to them in bed, like proper princesses, on a sumptuous tray: crisp toast, the milky lustre of frail china, water just off the boil for the orangeflower tea…. And into the middle of this fabulous papier-mâché world the upsetting vision of Denise Kay insinuated itself. Indeed, she seemed perfectly at home there, her dark brown, almost black eyes profound under a ravishing cascade of coppery hair.
If only she were superficial, empty headed: Ellen was momentarily swamped by speculations unworthy of a resourceful wife. If only….
‘Mrs Ross?’ The receptionist touched her shoulder, and Ellen snapped out of her daydream. If only Jacob’s home when I get back, she changed her tack hopefully, his feet up on the sofa, ready for tea, the same as ever…. And, hoisting Jill, she followed the efficient, white-uniformed woman into the doctor’s consulting room.
*
Ellen unlatched the door with deliberate cheerfulness. Yet even as she crossed the threshold, Jill drowsing in her arms, she felt a wave of dismay. He’s not here….
Mechanically she bedded Jill for her afterno
on nap and started, with small heart, to cut out the pattern of a baby’s nightgown she planned to run up on a neighbor’s hand-wind sewing machine that evening. The clear blue morning had betrayed its promise, she noticed. Looming clouds let their soiled parachute silks sag low above the small square, making the houses and sparse-leaved trees seem drabber than ever.
I love it here: Ellen attacked the warm red flannel with defiant snips. Pouf to Mayfair, pouf to Knightsbridge, pouf to Hampstead … she was snuffing out the silver spheres of luxury like so many pale dandelion clocks when the phone rang.
Red cloth, pins, tissue pattern pieces and scissors flew helter-skelter onto the rug as she scrambled to her feet. Jacob always called if he was held up somewhere, so she wouldn’t worry. And at this particular moment, some token of his thoughtfulness, however small, would be more welcome than cool water to a waif in the desert.
‘Hallo, darling!’ Nancy Regan’s cocky, theatrical voice vibrated across the wire. ‘How are things?’
‘Fine,’ Ellen fibbed. ‘Just fine.’ She sat down on the edge of the chintz-covered trunk that doubled as wardrobe and telephone table to steady herself. No use hiding the news. ‘Jacob’s just had his first play accepted….’
‘I know, I know.’
‘But how…?’ How does she manage to pick up the least glitter of gossip? Like a professional magpie, a bird of ill-omen….
‘It was easy, darling. I ran across Jacob in the Rainbow Room tête-à-tête with Denise Kay. You know me. I couldn’t resist finding out why the celebration. I didn’t know Jacob went in for martinis, darling. Let alone redheads….’
A crawling prickle of misery, rather like gooseflesh, made Ellen go hot, then cold. In the light of Nancy’s suggestive tone, even her worst dreads seemed naive. ‘Oh, Jacob needs a change of scenery after all the work he’s been doing.’ She tried to sound casual. ‘Most men take the weekend off, at least, but Jacob …’
Nancy’s brittle laugh rang out. ‘Don’t tell me! I’m the expert to end all experts when it comes to newly-discovered playwrights. Are you going to have a party?’
‘Party?’ Then Ellen remembered the spectacular fatted calf the Regans had served up by way of commemorating their first really big cheque—friends, neighbours and strangers cramming the small, smoke-filled rooms, singing, drinking, dancing till night blued and the dawn sky showed pale as watered silk above the cock-eyed chimney pots. If bottles with awe-inspiring labels and dozens of Fortnum and Mason chicken pies and imported cheeses and a soup plate of caviar were any measure of success, the Regans had cornered a lion’s share. ‘No, no party, I think, Nancy. We’ll be glad enough to have the gas and electric bills paid a bit in advance, and the baby’s outgrowing her layette so fast….’
‘Ellen!’ Nancy moaned. ‘Where’s your imagination?’
‘I guess,’ Ellen confessed, ‘I just haven’t got any….’
‘Excuse an old busybody, but you sound really blue, Ellen! Why don’t you invite me round for tea? Then we can have one of our chats and you’ll perk up in no time….’
Ellen smiled wanly. Nancy was irrepressible, you had to say that for her. No one could accuse her of moping or wallowing in self-pity. ‘Consider yourself invited.’
‘Give me twenty minutes darling.’
*
‘Now what you really should do, Ellen …’ Stylish if a bit plump, in the dressy suit and fur toque, Nancy dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper and reached for her third cupcake. ‘Mmm,’ she murmured, ‘better than Lyons. What you really should do,’ she repeated, ‘if you’ll pardon me for being frank, is assert yourself.’ And she sat back with a triumphant expression.
‘I don’t quite see what you mean.’ Ellen bent over Jill, admiring the baby’s clear gray eyes as she sipped her orange juice. It was getting on toward five, and still no word from Jacob. ‘What have I got to assert?’
‘Your inner woman, of course!’ Nancy exclaimed impatiently. ‘You need to take a good, long look at yourself in the mirror. The way I should have, before it was too late,’ she added grimly. ‘Men won’t admit it, but they do want a woman to look right, really fatale. The right hat, the right hair-colour … Now’s your chance, Ellen. Don’t miss it!’
‘I’ve never been able to afford a hairdresser,’ Ellen said lamely. Jacob likes my hair long, a small, secret voice protested. He said so, when was it? Last week, last month….
‘Of course not,’ Nancy crooned. ‘You’ve been sacrificing all the expensive little feminine tricks for Jacob’s career. But now he’s arrived. You can go wild, darling. Simply wild….’
Ellen entertained a brief vision of herself leaning seductively out of the window of a Silver Wraith, swathed in furs and studded with priceless hunks of jewelry, green eyeshadow heavy enough to astound Cleopatra, one of the new pale lip colours, a coquettish feathercut complete with kiss curls…. But she wasn’t deceived—at least not for more than a few seconds. ‘I’m not the type.’
‘Oh rubbish!’ Nancy waved a ring-winking, vermilion-tipped hand that resembled, Ellen thought, a bright, predatory claw. ‘That’s your trouble, Ellen. You’ve no self confidence.’
‘You’re wrong there, Nancy,’ Ellen returned with some spirit. ‘I’ve about two bob’s worth.’
Nancy dumped a heaping spoon of sugar into her fresh cup of tea. ‘Shouldn’t,’ she chided herself, and then rattled on without looking at Ellen, ‘I don’t wonder if you’re a tiny bit worried about Denise. She’s a legend, one of those professional homewreckers. She specializes in family men….’
Ellen felt her stomach lurch, as if she were on a boat in a gale. ‘Is she married?’ she heard herself say. She didn’t want to know. She wanted nothing more than to put her hands to her ears and flee into the comforting rose-patterned bedroom and find some outlet for the tears that were gathering to a hard lump in her throat.
‘Married?’ Nancy gave a dry little laugh. ‘She wears a ring, and that’s covered a good deal. The current one—her third, I think—has a wife and three children. The wife won’t hear of a divorce. Oh, Denise is a real career girl—she always manages to land a man with complications, so she never ends up drying dishes or wiping a baby’s nose….’ Nancy’s bright chatter slowed and began to run down, like a record, into an abyss of silence. ‘Pet!’ she exclaimed, catching sight of Ellen’s face. ‘You’re as white as paper! I didn’t mean to upset you—honestly Ellen. I just figured you ought to know what you’re up against. I mean, I was the last to know about Keith. In those days,’ and Nancy’s wry smile didn’t succeed in hiding the tremor in her voice, ‘I thought everybody had a heart of gold, everything was open and aboveboard….’
‘Oh Nan!’ Ellen laid an impulsive hand on her friend’s arm. ‘We did have good times, didn’t we!’ But in her heart a new refrain sang itself over and over: Jacob’s not like Keith, Jacob’s not like Keith….
‘“The days of auld lang syne….” Huh!’ With a delicate snort Nancy dismissed the past and began to draw on her admirably classic mauve gloves.
*
The moment the door closed on Nancy, Ellen started to behave in a curious and completely uncharacteristic fashion. Instead of putting on her apron and bustling about in the kitchen to prepare supper, she stowed Jill in her pen with a rusk and her favourite toys and disappeared into the bedroom to rummage through the bureau drawers with sporadic mutterings, rather like a female Sherlock Holmes on the scent of a crucial clue.
Why don’t I do this every night? she was asking herself half an hour later as, flushed and freshly bathed, she slipped into the royal blue silk Japanese jacket she had been sent several Christmases ago by a footloose schoolfriend circling the globe on a plump legacy, but never worn—an exquisite whispery, sapphire-sheened piece of finery that seemed to have no business whatsoever in her commonsensical world. Then she undid her coronet of braids and swept her hair up into a quite dashing impromptu topknot which she anchored precariously with a few pins. With a couple of tentative waltz ste
ps she accustomed herself to her holiday pair of steep black heels and, as a final touch, doused herself thoroughly with the last drops of the French perfume. During this ritual, Ellen resolutely kept her eyes from lingering on the round moonface of the clock which had already inched its short black hand past six. Now all I have to do is wait…
Breezing into the living-room, she felt a sudden pang. I’ve forgotten Jill! The baby was sprawled sound asleep in the corner of her playpen, thumb in mouth. Gently Ellen picked up the warm little form and carried her into the bedroom.
They had a wonderful bathtime. Jill laughed and kicked until water flew all over the room, but Ellen hardly noticed, thinking how the baby’s dark hair and serene grey eyes mirrored Jacob’s own. Even when Jill knocked the cup of porridge out of her hand and onto her best black skirt she couldn’t get really angry. She was spooning stewed plums into Jill’s mouth when she heard the click of a key in the front door lock and froze. The day’s fears and frustrations, momentarily brushed aside, swept back over her in a rush.
‘Now that’s what I like to see when I come home after a hard day!’Jacob leaned against the doorjamb, lit by a mysterious glow that didn’t somehow, seem to stem from martinis or redheads. ‘Wife and daughter waiting by the fireside to welcome the lord of the house…’ Jill was, in fact, treating her father to a spectacular blue ear-to-ear smile, composed largely of stewed plums. Ellen giggled, and her desperate silent prayer of that morning appeared close to being granted when Jacob crossed the room in two strides and enveloped her, sticky plum dish and all, in a hearty bear hug.
‘Mmm, darling, you smell good!’ Ellen waited demurely for some mention of the French perfume. ‘A sort of marvelous homemade blend of Farex and cod liver oil. A new bedjacket too!’ He held her tenderly at arms’ length. ‘You look fresh from the tub with your hair up like that.’