‘She must have been very different from me.’
‘She was.’
‘Did you love her?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you loved her, don’t you still love her? If so, then why me? How can you change?’
‘I haven’t changed.’
‘Can you love two women at the same time?’
‘Yes. Differently. However hard you try you can’t love a memory in the same way you love a living person. I tried . . .’ He stopped.
‘Yes?’
‘You were the first person I’d looked at in that way for eighteen months. I knew that, living the way I had been living, one can get dangerously myopic—’
‘What does that mean?’
‘In this case ready to fall for the first pretty face . . .’ His fingers moved on the wheel. ‘I sometimes think one’s feelings and motives are like a succession of Chinese boxes, one within the other, and Lord knows which is the innermost. Anyway, they are with me. So I tried to be dispassionate about you.’
‘And did it work?’
‘No, I’m afraid it didn’t. I soon couldn’t get away from the fact that you were the woman I wanted – and no other.’
He said this in such a quiet voice that for a moment I felt touched and pleased. Perhaps this idea about the Chinese boxes was a good one for me to think of, because God knows a third of the time I was a bit flattered because he was so gone on me and a third of the time I hated him deeply, and a third of the time I was sorry for him, and all I could be sure of was that if I married him it would be the biggest mess alive for both of us and that I couldn’t stand the thought of it.
By now he was feeling much more sure of me, and when I said I had to go to Plymouth to see the lawyer who had settled up Lucy Nye’s estate he said all right. I’d mocked up a gorgeously detailed story to tell him, proving why I must go, but it wasn’t needed and I was slightly disappointed at the waste. I got the feeling that now I’d given him some proofs, he was making a point of not asking for more. You know, a sort of love-and-trust gesture.
All the same I did not go straight to Torquay. I went first to Plymouth, then back to Newton Abbot, then to Kingswear. By the time I walked up Cuthbert Avenue I was sure I wasn’t being followed.
It was the first time I’d been home since they moved, and Lucy Nye, my dead auntie, was waiting on the doorstep for me so that I shouldn’t mistake the house.
In the last two weeks I’d had this awful worry over what to tell Mother. I mean, I could say nothing to her at all – or I could give her a sort of Revised Version, I mean the Gospel of Mark according to Marnie – if that isn’t a bad joke. Or of course I could tell her everything – but that was out from the start.
I didn’t think I wanted to go through the rest of my life tied to the secretarial strings of Mr Pemberton. In any case he was getting to be a nuisance. If I broke it to her now that I was getting married to somebody I had just met, a Mr Rutland, a wealthy printer, though not so wealthy as Mr Pemberton, she might not take it too hard.
Or she might. You never knew with Mother. And that way there was the frightful danger that she might demand to meet Mark. That could never be, because if once they got together, however careful Mark might be not to mention me stealing from his firm, Mam was dead certain to tell him what a good daughter I was and all the money I’d given her in the last three years, and that would start him asking questions again, and in no time he would have found out about Manchester and Birmingham and Newcastle etc.
I wondered if I could take the risk of telling her and still be certain of keeping them apart.
When I got in Mother was dozing in the front sitting-room and I thought she looked younger asleep. When she woke she seemed to take a minute or so to remember where she was.
Then she said: ‘Why, Marnie, I told Lucy to look for you; we didn’t wait tea but there’s a tasty bit of ham cooking, I always believe in bay leaves, it adds just that to it; Lucy shut the door, this house is colder than the other, more outside walls.’
One thing about Mother: even if she hadn’t seen you for six months she took up the conversation as if you had just dropped in from across the way. First I had to be shown the house. It was miles better than the other, with a sitting-room in the back, and a sun porch and a kitchen, and three cream-painted bedrooms with new fawn curtains and a toilet separate from the bathroom, and an attic with a view of Torbay between the chimney-pots.
It really was nice, only all the time I couldn’t help but see how different it was from Mrs Rutland’s flat with its lamps and its pictures and its arched recesses and its damned good taste. The two places weren’t really in the same world. Neither were the two women. My mother had been the better looking of the two, but it was like comparing Forio with a horse that has been used to pull a dust cart all its life. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. But there was nothing more I could do about it than I had done or than I was doing.
Mam said: ‘How do you like this black marocain? Got it in the summer sales, model, reduced to four guineas, just my fit, isn’t it. You’re thinner, Marnie; been going easy on potatoes? I like that way you done your hair; more classy than last time.’
‘I’m all right,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’
We talked for quite a while, and then suddenly without being asked she answered nearly all my questions.
‘Your cousin Doreen was here last week – first time for two years – I said to her she might not have an aunt; what with her own mother being dead and her father in Hong Kong, you’d think she might have some thought for me. But no. She’s a Sister or something now; gets a better screw, but d’you know what she came down to tell me; she’s getting married. And to a doctor of all people. I had to pretend, of course, say yes, yes, fancy, but at the end I couldn’t help but put in my spoke; I said, Marnie never thinks of marriage – or of men; I said Marnie’s a model daughter to me, and I said she makes more in a month than most people make in a year. And d’you know what she said? She said, well, I hope it’s honest. I could have slapped her. I said, in one of my sudden tempers, don’t go raking up that filth that happened thirteen years ago; I said Marnie’s as honest as the day. I said God took much from me but he gave me one jewel and that’s my daughter!’
‘Jewel,’ I said. ‘Woolworth’s best.’
‘No, Marnie; the very best there is. A real jewel if ever there was one.’ She dabbed one corner of her right eye with a bit of lace. I’d never known Mother cry anywhere else but just out of the corner of her right eye.
‘How’s your rheumatism?’ I said to change the subject.
‘Well, not but what it couldn’t be better. Mrs Beardmore in No. 12 recommended sour milk. Dear Heavens, I said, if it’s that or knobs I’d rather have my knobs. This weather doesn’t suit it, of course, and what with the chimney smoking. How’s Mr Pemberton?’
‘All right. Mother . . .’
Mother’s eyes had been looking absent-minded but they sharpened up like pencil-points at something in my voice.
‘What is it?’
‘You said I never thought of getting married. Well, maybe I don’t. But what would you say if I changed my mind ever?’
We were at the top of the stairs from the attic. Down below Lucy Nye was clattering about trying to hurry on the supper. Mother buttoned her cardigan.
‘Have you got to?’
‘Got to what?’
‘Get married.’
‘No, of course not! What ever makes you say that?’
‘Tell me if you have. Now tell me.’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘No!’
‘Women often go like you, go thinner when it begins. I did. It’s what I’ve often been afraid of with you. You’re too lovely looking. A lot of men must have wanted after you.’
‘Well, they’ve got nothing for their trouble,’ I said, angry with her now. ‘I was only asking you a straight question and I thought I might get a straight answer. Women do get married sometimes, you know. Surprising, but t
here it is. Even you did. Remember?’
She looked shocked. ‘Marnie! We’ll not go into that.’
‘Why not?’ I said. ‘You talk as if getting married was a disgrace! If you felt like that I wonder how you ever came to have me!’
She didn’t speak while we got down the stairs. But at the bottom I saw her hand was trembling on her stick.
‘I went into it not knowing,’ she said. ‘It was my duty to submit.’
There was a ghastly silence as we went down the next flight. The sizzling noise of chips came from the kitchen. Mother led the way into the sitting-room.
‘That new telly is giving trouble,’ she said in a queer voice, and I could see she was trembling all over. ‘Keeps snowing. When I twiddle the knob the picture goes round like Ernie stirring the Premium Bonds. There was a wedding on it last night in one of those plays. It’s all a sham. I said to Lucy, all that giggling and screaming and laughing; marriage isn’t like that, marriage is what happens under the sheets, pawing and grunting, you don’t giggle then. Marnie, you won’t let me down?’
‘Let you down?’ I said, really angry, but holding her drumstick arm. ‘What’re you talking about? Who’s talking about letting you down?’
‘You were. You were. Even in a joke it don’t do. I bank on you, Marnie, you’re all I’ve got. You’re all I’ve ever had.’
‘All right, all right, don’t get so excited. I was only asking a simple question. Can’t I ask a question without you going off the deep end?’
‘If you ask the questions it shows you’ve been thinking of it.’
‘Get away, don’t be silly!’ I patted her face. ‘You live alone here with Lucy and fancy too much.’ I went across and switched on the TV and waited for it to warm up. ‘Sit down here till supper’s ready. And if I ever think of getting married I’ll pick a millionaire and then he’ll be able to keep us both!’
Mother lowered herself into her favourite chair. She looked better now. As the picture came on she said: ‘Don’t joke about it, Marnie. I’d rather have you as you are. I can’t picture my little girl – that way.’
On the train back to London next day I worried about it. It would have been an awful lot easier if I could have just faced them both out with the truth, like it or leave it. I suppose I might even have looked better to Mark as the only support of a widowed mother, stealing for her.
And in a way all my life I had stolen for her, though it was too easy just to leave it at that. I’d taken money for myself too. It was all mixed up.
On the train I thought of my Uncle Stephen paying for my lessons in elocution and accountancy, and about my first few jobs – where I’d been honest enough – after all it’s hardly worth being anything else behind the counter of an electricity shop, our home didn’t even get any free bulbs. And then the job in Bristol – two pounds a week more and prospects – but I’d hardly settled there before Mother got this varicose ulcer, and the first I heard was a dirty bit of paper from Lucy saying she was in hospital and probably had to have an op. I hung on then waiting for news, but after a week I couldn’t wait any longer and got two days off to visit her.
She was in the South Western General, and a flu epidemic was on, and she was in a ward as long as a railway platform and she was just by the door and had just caught flu herself and she looked like death. I’d only the one day really to see her, and I wanted to know what was wrong and nobody had any time for me at all. Mother said they’d done nothing for her in nearly three weeks and that she was getting worse and that she was in a perishing draught and the door beside her bed slammed a hundred and twenty times a day, beginning at five o’clock in the morning, and she thought for all the nurses cared she could very well die there before they did anything for her.
Well, I had words with a sour-faced sister and then a short interview with the matron who acted as if she’d just come from the presence of God; so then I really lost my temper and demanded to see the surgeon and there was a row because he was busy on some other case, but in the end I got to see him.
I told him just what I thought of his hospital and the way they were treating my mother, and he listened with a sort of tired patience that really got me raging. Looking back now, of course, I can see just what I must have looked like to him. I hadn’t learned how to dress at all, and my new accent was too new to stick with me when I was mad. I remember I was wearing a print frock that was a bit too short and nylons that were cheaper because they only just reached above the knee and unsuitable white shoes, and my hair had been permed and I was carrying a big plastic handbag. I expect he thought I came from a snack bar or an amusement arcade or something – if I wasn’t actually a tart.
Anyway when I stopped for breath he said: ‘I quite see that you are feeling anxious, Miss – er – Elton, but I can promise you your mother is in no danger of dying just yet. Perhaps you don’t realize that a varicose ulcer is caused by overwork, too much standing and by general neglect. The skin gets into poor condition, it breaks down and an ulcer forms. We can’t operate on the vein until we’ve cleaned the ulcer up. The time your mother has been in hospital, when you wrongly suppose we have been neglecting her, has been necessary to give her rest and to help the ulcer to heal by seeing she gets proper food.’
I said: ‘Is it much rest when she can’t sleep for the slamming of the door behind her? And she says the food is terrible.’
At least that took the look of strained patience off his face.
‘Young lady,’ he said, ‘I don’t know if you are aware that an influenza epidemic is raging in this city. We can’t find beds for all the urgent cases of one sort and another that exist, and most of the staff of this hospital is run off its feet. In an ideal community your mother would have a private ward, but it doesn’t run to that; nor will it in my lifetime or yours. So we do the best we can with the present material and in the present circumstances. I’ll try to get your mother moved from the door. I shall hope to operate on her next week. The sooner you have her home the happier we shall be. But – she’s in a shop, isn’t she? – I’d warn you that in future she’ll have to take sedentary work of some sort. She’ll just have to keep off her feet or she’ll be back here in three months with the same trouble or worse. And although she’s in no danger of dying she’s certainly in danger of becoming permanently crippled. Now I’ll have to ask you to excuse me.’
I went back to Mother, feeling I’d done what I could but still boiling.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said to Mother. ‘They’re going to move you soon from this door. I seen to that . . . I have seen to that. They’ve got to keep you here for a bit to get your leg healed, but it’ll be all right, I promise you.’
I sat on her bed thinking over what the surgeon had said at the end. Just then the nurse came along.
‘You’ll have to go now,’ she said. ‘This isn’t a proper visiting day, you know. You’ve only been allowed in as a special favour.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, and added ‘for nothing’ under my breath. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said to Mother. ‘We’ll soon have you out of here. Did I tell you, I’ve got the promise of a marvellous job?’
‘You have? Where?’
‘Swansea. I don’t know the details yet. I only heard of it last week but I think I’ll get it. If I do . . .’
‘Is it respectable?’
‘Of course it is. What do you take me for? But as a secretary. I may get paid quite a lot. Anyway it may mean you won’t have to go to work right away when you come home.’
When I got back to Bristol I gave in my notice at Deloitte, Plender & Griffiths and went to live in Swansea. I took a job in a store in the name of Maud Green. Three months later I slid out with three hundred and ninety pounds. That was my first haul and I was pretty nervous about it then.
At the time I was dead sure I was doing it all on account of Mother. Now it seems to me I was doing it mainly to satisfy myself.
CHAPTER NINE
‘Well, really, I always said you were a deep one,
’ Dawn said, picking at a tiny mole on her cheek. ‘Well, really, and how long has it been going on? Don’t tell me. I really believe it was love at first sight, wasn’t it? I thought one time it was Terry: you remember after the dinner; and I am sure he was interested in you; but of course you’ve done better. Mark – Mr Rutland I’d better start calling him to you, I suppose – oh, very well, dear, thank you, just between ourselves – Mark is a different kettle of fish. More serious, if you know what I mean. With Terry you put it on the slate and it washes off again. Where are you going to live, Little Gaddesden? We shall miss you, you know . . . Tell me, do these things grow? I’m sure it’s bigger than it was last year. Of course some men call them beauty spots . . . Are we all coming to the wedding? Oh, very private. Well I know how you must feel. And I expect with you both having been married before. You are lucky, you know, two men before you’re twenty-four; some girls have to slog it enough getting one.’
Sam Ward said: ‘Well, Mrs Taylor, so we have to – hm – congratulate you, I suppose. Such efficiency – business efficiency – should make you a very successful housewife, shouldn’t it. Naturally I hope you’ll be very happy. But then I’m sure you will be. Would you get me the costing report on the Kromecote? We want to see what the danger is of killing the gloss.’
‘My dear,’ Terry said, brushing a hand over his suede waistcoat. ‘My dear, you have done it this time.’
‘What have I done?’
‘Well, my dear, Mark of all people. Not really your style, I should have thought.’
‘What is my style?’
‘A rather tortuous type. A man with a few wrinkles in his soul. Mark’s too downright.’
‘Have you told him?’
‘He knows what I think, I’m sure. It would be unfair of me to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.’
He was breathing through his nose, the way he did at poker sometimes. And he was at his most cissyish – which was queer, because sometimes he wasn’t that way at all. I thought he doesn’t really care all that much for me, but he cares that Mark is getting what he hasn’t had.