On Sunday morning he packed a single suitcase. Had they been going on tour she would have packed for him but many years ago he had made it clear that, on occasions such as the present one, he wanted no help. This was all part of the secret mood which took possession of him: if she helped she would have to be told what clothes to pack and that might have indicated where he was going, which she was never allowed to know. Nor was she told how long he would be away. And while away he would not write her so much as a postcard.
He excused himself from lunching with her, went out, and did not return until the late afternoon, when he did some last-minute packing. He then bade her a more affectionate farewell than she was expecting – often he merely smiled and said, ‘See you soon.’ This time he kissed her, asked if she was sure she would be all right, told her to take care of herself, and finally said, ‘See something of the Thorntons, won’t you? Why not give the girls some outings? They’ll be company for you. And tell them how much I admired their flowers.’ He then kissed her again and, with surprising swiftness for a heavy man burdened with a suitcase, whisked himself out of the flat.
She had never before seen him go without experiencing a mixture of regret and resentment, the resentment quickly censored and transmuted into a loving tolerance. Today, she was only conscious of relief.
About to telephone Geoffrey, she was smitten with nervousness in case Miles came back for something. So she waited an hour – and was then deflated to find that the whole Thornton family was out. (The wraith-like voice that told her so would be that of Mary Simmonds.) She left a message, but not until nearly midnight was she rung up, by both Robin and Kit, one of them on an extension line. On hearing that Miles had gone away they were ecstatically excited. Their father had driven to his constituency and would not be back until Tuesday evening. But would Jill come to them the first thing in the morning – or would she come now, and spend the night – or should they come and spend the night with her? Was she sure she wouldn’t be lonely? Jill, who wanted a good night’s sleep, was quite sure. But she would be with them by eleven in the morning. ‘Such ages Father’s been holding us at bay,’ Kit complained. ‘But it’ll be all right now, won’t it? And soon we’ll have you for good.’
Jill protested that nothing was decided yet, but was so heavily over-borne by both girls that she hastily brought the conversation to an end and rang off. In the ensuing silence, she found that she was lonely. Oh, she wasn’t missing Miles or even, at the moment, Geoffrey. She just felt regretfully cut off from the girls’ happy voices.
When they opened the door to her next morning they were wearing tights and sweaters patterned with black and white lozenges. Tartan kilts, barely a foot long, were slung round their waists.
‘You look like harlequins,’ said Jill.
‘All but the kilts. Robin calls them minus-skirts.’
‘For once I’m trying to get ahead of fashion,’ said Robin.
‘Oh, darling Jill, how marvellous to see you.’
As on her previous visit, Jill found her progress upstairs painful. Kit edged her into the banisters. Robin bumped her from the rear. They were all three laughing in a way that unco-ordinated their movements.
‘It seems like months since you were here,’ said Robin.
‘Actually, it’s two weeks and three days,’ said Kit.
To Jill, it felt like light-years.
This morning there was a fire in the attic sitting room.
‘We thought it was just cold enough for one,’ said Robin.
The little room, in morning sunlight, looked even more attractive than Jill’s memories of it. Beyond the roof tops of the houses opposite, white clouds were scudding across patches of blue sky. A pigeon on the window sill had just discovered crumbs put out for it.
Jill, steered to an armchair, sat back and inspected the girls’ outfits more fully.
‘You should have one like them,’ said Kit. ‘And look like our sister.’
‘Oh, do, Jill! We could get the tights and sweater in your size, and me and me dressmaker could fix you up with a minus-skirt.’
‘Tights are so marvellously comfortable. And so decent when one feels the need to lie on one’s back and wave one’s legs in the air.’ Kit, on the divan, performed some contortions which looked liable to break her neck.
‘I’m much too old,’ said Jill. ‘Both for tights and waving my legs in the air.’
‘What, at thirty-four? That’s young enough for anything,’ said Robin.
‘Oh, how awful that we thought you were so much older! We can see you’re not now. Perhaps you were thinking elderly thoughts, trying to reconcile yourself to being married to dear Mr Quentin.’
‘But I didn’t need to reconcile myself, Kit. I love him very much.’
‘Of course. So do we. And I’d be honoured to marry him myself in a year or two, if he’d have me. Really, it might be a good idea, seeing I’m more and more sure I’m going to be frigid. But not you, dear Jill. You’re the last woman to be married to a homosexual.’
Jill said uncomfortably, ‘I can’t get used to your knowing about such things.’
Kit, bringing her feet down and sitting cross-legged, regarded Jill judicially. ‘Will you kindly tell me why? Do you consider homosexuality an unmentionable crime?’
‘Of course not, Kit, darling. But somehow …’ She shook her head, at a loss for words.
‘Just not a suitable subject for little girls,’ said Kit, with a cat-like grin. ‘And should they also be debarred from discussing colour-blindness, or left-handedness, or – for that matter – genius? Should nothing that isn’t one hundred percent normal be mentioned by pure little lips?’
Robin said, ‘It seems to me that homosexuality is neither a wrong thing nor a right thing. It’s merely something that exists. Children should learn about it at the same time that they learn about normal sex – and they should learn about that jolly early. And they shouldn’t be told that normality is necessarily right.’
‘We’re not convincing her, Robin. She still thinks homosexuality’s wrong. You do, don’t you, Jill? In spite of being married to such a very good and kind homosexual.’
She would have liked to say she didn’t. But these children deserved complete sincerity. The best she could manage was, ‘Not wrong, exactly. But I do think it’s a pity. Surely you agree with me about that?’
‘I don’t,’ said Kit. ‘That is, not unless it’s making people unhappy. Considered objectively, I think it ought to be encouraged. Everyone knows the world’s population’s exploding. There should be dedicated homosexuals, much honoured.’ She flung herself backwards on the divan and executed a somersault.
Jill, laughing, knew that the girls had freed her of inhibitions far more than ten years of marriage to Miles had. But were things quite so simple? To the pure all things were pure … but only to the pure.
‘How soon can you marry Father?’ said Robin.
‘Oh, Robin, darling –’
‘Don’t worry her, Robin. Father said we weren’t to. We rang him up this morning, Jill, and he said we were just to give you a happy time. There’s a thrilling exhibition at the Tate – we could go this afternoon – and a good concert tonight; you did enjoy that concert in the Pump Room.’
‘And I thought we might take you to a dress show tomorrow. But of course you must say if any of our ideas bore you.’
‘Nothing is going to bore me,’ said Jill, with conviction.
Already the girls had new possessions to show her, new interests to discuss. Their energy, both mental and physical, was infectious and she was suddenly aware that she was feeling particularly well. Idly, she picked up the kaleidoscope which had delighted her on her first visit. But she put it down without looking through it, succumbing to the quick clutch of superstition. Soon after she had last looked, the pattern of her life had changed so drastically. She did not now want it to change again. Already happiness was hinting at its inbuilt snag: fear that it might not last.
When it
was lunch-time Robin said, ‘We hope you won’t mind that we’re having it in the basement breakfast room. We always do when we’re on our own and Mary Simmonds has it with us. Father’s told you about her, hasn’t he? We’ll all be very grateful if you can manage to like her.’
‘Of course I shall,’ said Jill, with histrionic heartiness. She found herself unwilling to meet Mary. It was as if the link with the late Mrs Thornton cast a shadow across the day’s brightness. And the shadow intensified when, in the breakfast room – which opened on to the small back garden – she met the thin, pale woman who seemed incapable of taking part in the general conversation. Try as one could, Mary Simmonds again and again relapsed into silence. But it was not a gloomy or sulky silence. It suggested rather that she only wished to speak if others wished her to; there was nothing she wished to say. Only at the end of the meal, when she took scraps of food out to the birds, did she show signs of animation.
Robin, starting to clear the table while Mary was outside, said, ‘She loves birds and flowers – she works quite hard in the garden. Do tell her she must have green fingers. It’s a frightful cliché but she loves to be told it.’
Jill obliged, and talked about flowers and birds extensively. Mary seemed pleased but volunteered no information, merely answered questions. Jill eventually ran out of them, and then she and Mary went through into the kitchen where the girls, having stacked the dishwasher, were tidying everything up. They did not leave until Mary was settled in her armchair – Jill saw that the breakfast room was also Mary’s sitting room. She had television, a radio and a stack of magazines. Robin, setting a tea tray beside her, said, ‘Now you’re not to do a stroke of work until six o’clock, and we’ll be back in time to help dish up dinner.’
‘They spoil me,’ said Mary.
It was the first statement not elicited by a question Jill had heard her make.
When they had mounted the narrow stairs from the basement Robin said, ‘Do you find her very depressing?’
‘No,’ said Jill, wondering why she didn’t. ‘Perhaps she’s not definite enough to be depressing. She’s like a whisper.’
‘We think she’s fairly happy,’ said Kit. ‘She enjoys quite a lot of things, particularly children’s television. I used to feel I ought to watch it with her but we’ve discovered she likes to spend a lot of time alone. It’s tricksy, making sure she isn’t lonely and yet not making demands on her by being there.’
‘And it’s tricksy about work,’ said Robin. ‘One has to let her do enough to feel valuable but not enough to tire her. She’d be at it from morning till night if we didn’t stop her. By the way, she’s a very good cook, provided one writes everything down for her. Oh, there’s a lot to be said for Mary.’
It dawned on Jill that Robin was trying to sell her Mary, was nervous for Mary’s future. This brought home to her, as nothing else quite had, that she would eventually be living in this narrow, intimate old house. She said reassuringly, ‘I can imagine getting very fond of her.’
‘Oh, can you?’ Robin positively sighed with relief. ‘Kit and I have had to work hard at it, because we somehow linked her with Mother. But the poor dear had nothing to live for when Mother died, so we just had to have her here. At first we only pretended to like her, but now we really do.’
‘And so shall I,’ said Jill, knowing she meant it. There was so much love in her heart, for the girls as well as for their father, that there’d be some overflow for Mary.
She found the exhibition at the Tate Gallery immensely stimulating, partly because the girls were stimulating companions but also because she was in the mood to be stimulated. Indeed, her enjoyment was so intense that she became a little exhausted and the girls, instantly motherly, decided that a concert that evening might be too much for her. ‘Father said we weren’t to overdo it,’ said Robin. ‘Besides, there’s so much to talk about.’
They had a good, rather feminine dinner, in the dining room, minus Mary. ‘Mary,’ Kit explained, ‘does not dine. She sups, on a tray. Incidentally, she would be shocked at the idea of sitting down to a meal with Father. She accepts us – just – because she knew us as children; but she considers Father should be served, not hobnobbed with. She’ll probably feel the same about you, once you’re married to him. At present she thinks you’re our friend.’
‘The classless society will never get any kind of boost from Mary,’ said Robin. ‘And yet she’s never obsequious. She has a sort of dignity which belongs to the country, not to towns.’
At ten o’clock Jill considered going home and found she disliked the idea. She had a mental picture of the flat waiting for her, empty, aloof, a home that had never been a home. And when she reached it – not much before midnight, as the girls’ unwillingness to let her go equalled her dislike of going – it was even worse than she expected. All day she had kept thoughts of Miles at bay, but now they rushed at her. How was she going to tell him? Should she receive him back as if all was well and then, gradually … She imagined it as a scene in a play and thought, ‘But it’s unwriteable, unplayable.’ Then she wrapped herself in the day’s happiness and the prospect of the next day’s. Whatever happened, she was going to enjoy her holiday – and, damn it, presumably Miles was enjoying his. For the first time, she encouraged a resentment she had never fully admitted to feeling.
She had invited Robin and Kit to lunch with her and suggested they might bring Mary but they assured her Mary would die with embarrassment if she had to lunch in a restaurant. The girls arrived at twelve o’clock and were greatly impressed by the flat in daylight.
‘I suppose you’ll go on living here,’ said Kit, ‘and Mr Quentin will go somewhere else. You can’t stay here together or you’d never get a divorce.’
‘It would be nice if you could move in with us,’ said Robin, ‘but I suppose you’ll have to wait till the divorce goes through.’
This conversation raised problems which were even more to the forefront of Jill’s mind during the dress show the girls took her to after lunch. She saw several dresses she would have liked to buy – but what with? She and Miles had a joint bank account and, within reason, she bought anything she wanted. She could not go on using Miles’s money but she had no access to Geoffrey’s. Robin chose that moment to say, ‘That dress would be splendid on you, Jill – just right for your trousseau.’ Who was going to pay for that trousseau? It might be distinctly inconvenient to be between husbands. She was thankful that at least she had no shortage of ready money, having recently cashed quite a large cheque. Of course the money in her handbag was just as much Miles’s as the money in the bank but it somehow helped that, when she cashed the cheque, she hadn’t decided to leave him.
Geoffrey got home shortly before dinner, when she and the girls were together in the doll’s size drawing room. He kissed her, but in much the same way that he kissed his daughters. And even when she was alone with him, after dinner, he did not so much as hold her hand. No doubt he was digging himself in for a long, respectable engagement. And sitting there in the little panelled room, occasionally hearing the girls’ voices from below, she felt she could happily accept the respectability.
When he saw her home, he excused himself from coming up to the flat. She said, ‘You’d be safe enough. I’ve given up hope of seducing you.’
He smiled and said, ‘Thank God for that. If I gave in I still might not get you away from Miles.’
‘Yes, you would. Truly. I’ll promise you now, if you like.’
‘I do indeed like. Still, I shan’t feel quite safe until you’ve told him. Good night, my love.’
The next morning, she woke later than usual and found herself likely to be late for an early appointment at the hairdresser’s. There were, she noted, a fairly large number of letters, all for Miles and most of them forwarded from the theatre. She glanced at the envelopes while she was hurriedly drinking some coffee. No handwriting was familiar. Probably they would all be fan letters. Anyway, they could wait until after lunch, when she would ha
ve time to cope with them. She was not due at the Westminster house until late afternoon as Geoffrey would be tied up till then and the girls, they had regretfully admitted, were booked to meet some ex-school friends.
She got back to the flat soon after three o’clock and settled down at her desk. Miles liked his fan mail to be answered without delay; and as she had no idea when he could deal with this batch it seemed best to send short notes saying he was on holiday.
She had finished the job and was about to put her typewriter away when she saw one last letter, which had fallen to the floor. It was addressed to the flat, not the theatre, but judging from the handwriting it, too, was from a fan and a very young one. And the writing was so illegible that she doubted if she could read it. She turned to the signature, which was ‘Cyril’. Oh, dear! Well, she would just have to wrestle with the writing. What she eventually made out was:
Dear Mr Quentin,
I would not write this if I could help it, after you been so kind, though my brother says no credit to you, seeing’ what you wanted. But I still think you were kind except that day at your flat – and my brother says what makes it worse is that I just told you how young I really was. You said not to tell what happened but my brother got it out of me when he saw how upset I was. And now I don’t know what to do as Mr Albion says no work for me and my brother is out of a job. He says I should go to the police and you would have to pay me damages. But they might send you to prison and that would ruin you and you such a great actor. And if I could have a hundred pounds it would see us through for a long time. But not to send a check or write. Put the money in an envelope and bring it to that pub behind the theatre on Friday night at nine. And someone will be there, no one you know but he will know you. Then everything will be O.K. And I am truly sorry, Mr Quentin, but have no other course. But not to worry, I know you could not help it. I hope you are well.
CYRIL
Even when she understood the sense of the letter, it took her a moment to realize its full meaning. Master Cyril-Doug Digby was implying that he had been assaulted, and he was attempting blackmail.