Marnie

  Forio. I don’t think I even liked Mark talking about him that way. Because Forio was a personal possession, a personal companion and friend. I wanted him here but I wanted him still to myself.

  I said: ‘Is he coming alone? This man, I mean, to dinner.’

  ‘I thought we’d get Mother over. She hasn’t been since we came back, and it will make it more of a social evening.’

  ‘Very social for me, feeling like a maggot under a microscope.’

  ‘He isn’t that sort of man.’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t promised even to see him.’

  ‘Well, if you hate the sight of him we can always try someone else.’

  I looked at him, thinking, Should I try to persuade him out of it, say, You don’t want me brooding all day over my symptoms, people like Roman always do more harm than good. But I knew this was a bargain he’d hold me to.

  ‘Mark, I want to go out myself on Saturday night. I’m going out with Dawn Witherbie. We were friends before I married you. I can’t suddenly drop her.’

  ‘There’s no reason why you should. Where are you thinking of going?’

  ‘We haven’t decided. Probably only to her house. It’s after dinner. But I may be late.’

  ‘I turned down an invitation for Saturday. From Terry. He asked us over to his flat.’

  ‘Why? Didn’t you want to go?’

  ‘. . . There aren’t a lot of people who get under my skin, but Terry’s one of them. Don’t you feel it – or does he appeal to you? Honestly I can’t bear the sight of him, and I have far too much sight of him in and out of the office every day – anyway too much to want to prolong it into the evening.’

  He went across to pour himself a drink. ‘It might be a good idea to ask Rex and his mother for Friday as well, if you can bear it. We need their moral support in the firm, so it would be politic as well as polite.’

  ‘In the firm?’

  ‘Yes. The Newton-Smiths have a big minority holding, but with their help I have enough of a hand usually to do what I want. Only about eighteen per cent of the capital is owned by the public, and usually the public never turns up at meetings or uses its votes. The rest, about thirty-five per cent, is in the hands of the Holbrooks.’

  ‘Well, then, you’re safe enough,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not cast-iron. There’s been a good deal of traffic in the public shares recently and the price has rocketed. I know the Newton-Smiths have had an offer from a merchant bank for part of their holding, and they’re tempted to cash in. I’m trying to persuade them not to. A merchant bank sounds innocent enough, but they may be acting as nominees for some other firm or person.’

  ‘Do the Holbrooks know about this?’

  ‘Well, of course; they’re part of the board and part of the family, even though I sometimes wish they weren’t.’

  All Friday I was in a flap. I suppose I wasn’t geared right for social life after the way I’d grown up. I got more butterflies in my tummy over a meal for a few elderly people than over taking seven hundred and forty-six pounds from the Roxy Cinema, Manchester.

  One you could do in secret, nobody knowing a thing till it wasn’t your business any longer. But this. I mean, did you go to the door when they came or wait till they took their coats off; what did you talk about, the weather wouldn’t last for ever; who offered drinks and when; and when you got to the table did I have to start eating first or did I wait for Mrs Rutland?

  In the end I got through it somehow. Mrs Leonard as usual did most of the work. At the last minute the zip of my frock stuck when someone was already ringing the doorbell, and I wouldn’t ask Mark for help, so I had to wriggle out of the frock again and half zip it up and then wriggle back. And then the soup was salt and the drawing-room fire smoked.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if you had just been having Mark’s family for the evening. But Roman on top of it was too much. I’d got to be hostess for the first time to three high-grade relatives and at the same time keep a wary eye on him.

  In fact when it came down to rock, Dr Roman wasn’t so frightening. I expected somebody like Dracula, so it was a kind of a relief when this tired-looking baldish man came in in a brown suit that needed cleaning and long pants that showed when his trouser-leg worked up. He talked about his two children who were at a coed school, and about his holiday abroad and about the diet he was on, not as if these were a front for his secret microscopes but as if they were what chiefly interested him. We talked a half-dozen times during the evening, but he didn’t seem the least bit curious about me. You got the feeling he was just out for a good dinner and nothing more, and he certainly ate it.

  If I’d wanted a sympathetic, all-understanding, father-confessor figure I should have thought, well I can write off Roman. But as a person to go to only to fix my end of the bargain with Mark, he looked just the right answer.

  I couldn’t help liking Mrs Rutland in spite of her disadvantage of being Mark’s mother. She was just that much helpful to me without ever being patronizing, and though you’d never mistake her for anything but a lady, she wasn’t stiff-backed and awful like many old women of her class. They really are awful, so many of them: about nine feet tall and big-busted and thin-ankled, and they never mix with any but their own kind, and they talk about their shopping at Fortnums and Harrods, and they’re always frightfully poor, which means they can’t afford caviare, and they have voices like the high notes of a Welsh tenor. Old Mrs Newton-Smith was a bit like that, and it was an ordeal when I had to take the two women upstairs and help them to powder their noses. God, I was glad I had had those elocution lessons, even though perhaps that made me the most counterfeit of the three.

  When we got downstairs again things were helped because Mark told them about my horse, and it turned out Rex was mad about horses, and right off he wanted to know all about Forio. Of course it sounded wonderful me having bought him in a sale and keeping him on a farm in Gloucestershire; it put me right alongside them among the landed gentry. Anyway, it turned out that Rex hunted regularly with the Thorn – heaven knew what size horse he would need to get him over the gates – but, as that was only about eighteen miles from Little Gaddesden, he said would Mark and I go over one day for a Meet. I said yes out of politeness, but thought I could probably slink out of it later as I’d never hunted and didn’t like the notion.

  When it was all over and the last of them had gone Mark said: ‘That was pretty good, Marnie.’

  ‘Good?’ I said, looking for sarcasm or something.

  ‘Yes, I thought it could hardly have gone off better. Didn’t you?’

  ‘I was nervous as a nit.’

  ‘You didn’t show it.’

  ‘We must have this chimney swept,’ I said, jabbing at the remnants of the fire.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘dinner parties were one of the things Estelle could never manage. I’m so very glad you can.’

  I straightened up, and for a minute thought he was going to touch me. So I edged round out of his reach and asked: ‘Did Dr Roman say anything?’

  As usual he was too sharp not to notice the move, and his face cooled off. ‘He made an appointment for Tuesday at two.’

  ‘Just that?’

  ‘Not much more. You’ll go?’

  ‘I haven’t decided.’

  ‘He suggested you might go first for five or six weeks as a preliminary period. By then he should know whether he can help you.’

  I straightened the photo of Estelle on the grand piano. I might not want her husband, but it was nice to know she hadn’t been perfection in everything.

  ‘And the shares?’ I said. ‘Did you persuade Rex and his mother not to sell?’

  ‘I’ve persuaded them to hold on for the time being. I think if they really make up their minds about it I may have to buy them myself. But I’d have to borrow heavily from the bank to take the lot at the present inflated price.’

  ‘You say the shares have been going up. Why, if you made a loss last year?’

&nbsp
; ‘We made a loss the year before. There’s quite a big profit in the new accounts that have recently come out. But all our premises and stock are much undervalued, that’s really the answer. People are buying the few shares there are on the market as a long-term speculation.’

  I thought, maybe not so long term, thinking of those letters I had read.

  When I got to Terry’s about nine on the Saturday night the same round-the-clock top-of-the-pops were playing, but I didn’t know any of the people there except the Macdonalds. Gail said vaguely, ‘Why darling, such a long time,’ and patted her urchin cut. Alistair raised his eyebrows across a lot of bottles and sandwiches and nattering people. Terry introduced the others. There were six of them, and they were an odd lot. One was a Jewish film director with a disillusioned expression as if he’d gone right through the alphabet and there wasn’t anything more; two were hard-bitten women in their forties, with thin silly lines for eyebrows and the sort of faces that look ancient because they’re trying to look young. The other three were all men and they’d all got plenty of money. You could see that right off.

  As soon as we got playing, which we did about ten, I saw this was a different game from the last. Last time it had been ordinary middle-class folk having fun and a gamble. This time it was serious. And there weren’t any beginners, except me.

  And the maximum raise was one pound. I had brought five pounds with me, but I saw from the stuff the others were handling that this wasn’t going to count for much if I lost. So I began very cautiously, dropping out every time when I didn’t have much and not bluffing at all. I watched the others and tried to learn from them. And I tried to work out the odds, the way I’d done before. But it was all nerve jarring, and if the cards hadn’t come slightly my way I should have lost. I was mad when I got out on a limb playing against the film director, and knew in my bones that I had a better hand than he had but didn’t dare to call his bluff.

  By one o’clock I was two pounds to the good, and by three I’d made nearly nine. Then I had two nasty jolts, and in the second, when I was sure the film director was bluffing again, I found he wasn’t and went down eleven pounds on one hand. I played safe as hell after that, and when we stopped at four I was only thirty shillings out of pocket. But I felt sick to the stomach, and even thirty shillings seemed a fortune.

  I’d forgotten completely about the time and about Mark, and when I looked at my watch I jumped and said I must go at once.

  Terry gave me one of his smooth lop-sided glances. ‘The old man likely to cut up rough? Well, I hope it’s been worth it.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve enjoyed it ever so. Thank you, Terry.’

  ‘Come again. I have a party once a week. No needy person ever turned away.’

  I thought, no, but sometimes they’ll be needy when they leave.

  I drove home in Estelle’s car, trying to tell myself I didn’t mind being a loser.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘Do sit down, Mrs Rutland,’ said Dr Roman. ‘Over here, if you don’t mind. Can I take your coat? That’s better. Not a very pleasant day. Did you come by car?’

  He lived in one of those tall narrow houses looking on Regent’s Park. Everybody raves about them and it just beats me why.

  ‘I want you to look on this first meeting not so much in the light of a consultation as of a friendly chat. Indeed, as I expect you know, much of our time together will be very informal.’

  Roman was different now you met him on his beat. I suppose he had a ‘manner’ that he lifted off a nail and wriggled into before the patient came. From the plate outside it seemed he shared the house with another doctor, a consulting surgeon. A manservant had let me in, and I wondered how much all this was costing Mark.

  ‘What has my husband told you?’

  ‘Very little, Mrs Rutland. Except that you agreed together that you should consult me.’

  ‘I’m only coming because he wants me to.’

  ‘Well, yes, I gathered that the idea was his. But I assume that you’re not unwilling to see me?’

  We’d been for Forio over the weekend. ‘No . . .’

  ‘Of course it’s necessary to make that clear at the beginning. I can do very little to help you without your willing co-operation.

  I tucked my blouse in at the waistband.

  ‘I shall sit here just behind you,’ he said. ‘I don’t make notes, so nothing you say will be recorded. What I would like you to do today, if you will, is just give me the general factual background of your life, i.e. where you were born and that sort of thing. That will give me a chance of getting the broad picture.’

  I thought he was sure to want to be put in the picture sometime or other. Nobody ever talks any other way nowadays. I was sitting on the usual black leather couch. But it was fairly wide and there were two green cushions on it to give it the glamour treatment.

  ‘What, now?’ I said.

  ‘When you’re ready. No hurry.’

  Naturally no hurry, I thought, at X guineas a visit.

  I thought of Forio. We had driven down to Garrod’s Farm on Sunday morning, almost before my eyes were open. (Mark must have guessed I was late back but he didn’t mention it.) It had been a lovely drive because the sun was shining, and for miles and miles at every church we passed the bells were ringing. Sort of royal procession.

  ‘I’m twenty-three,’ I said. ‘I was born in Devonport. My father was a draughtsman in the dockyard. When war broke out he joined the Navy and he was drowned at sea. The same year my mother was killed in the Plymouth blitz and I was brought up by a sort of aunt called Lucy Nye. I went to the North Road Secondary Modern School for Girls. Then my Uncle Stephen paid for me to go to St Andrew’s Technical College, where I learned shorthand and typing and bookkeeping and accountancy.’

  I didn’t much like the idea of him being behind me. I was telling him exactly the same mixture of truth and make-up that I’d given Mark, but I couldn’t see how he was taking it all. When I stopped he didn’t speak, so I waited. I waited while a clock somewhere chimed the quarter hour and I thought, well, that’s fifteen minutes of the first visit gone already.

  That cheered me up, so I went on with the rest of the stuff, about going to work and Lucy Nye dying and leaving me a house, and me getting a job in Bristol. Then I said I’d used all my money and taken work in London. Then I moved to Rutlands and met Mark and we got married. It all sounded so straightforward that I believed it myself.

  When it was over he said: ‘That’s excellent. That’s exactly what I wanted – a brief biographical sketch. Now, what I would like you to do for the next few minutes is to tell me about some of the personalities involved in your life.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, starting with your mother and father. Do you remember much about them? What they looked like, for instance.’

  ‘My father was a tall man, with greyish hair and a quiet voice. He had very strong hands with the nails cut short and keen grey eyes that seemed to know what you were thinking before you said it. He was the one who first called me Marnie, and it has stuck ever since.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  It was pretty well only as I stopped speaking that I realized I hadn’t described my father at all, but Mother’s brother, Stephen.

  There was a long pause. ‘I don’t remember my mother so well.’

  ‘Anything at all?’

  ‘A bit. She was smallish, with high cheek-bones, rather strict. She worked very hard, always; when we were poor she did without things to give to me. Everything was for me. I always had to be respectable. That was the most important thing. She took me to chapel, three times every Sunday.’

  After a wait. ‘Anything more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve already told me far more about your mother than your father.’

  Another wait. He said: ‘I don’t quite understand one thing. Why were you poor?’

  ‘Why not? We hadn’t any money. That’s the way you are poor.’

 
‘But your father was in work?’

  ‘As far as I remember. I was too young to remember much.’

  ‘You’d get a pension, of course, as the orphan of a sailor killed in the war?’

  ‘I don’t remember. I expect Lucy Nye drew it for me.’

  ‘After your father died, how long was it before your mother was killed?’

  ‘About nine months.’

  ‘And then this aunt, this Mrs Nye, took you in?’

  ‘Miss Nye. Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me about her?’

  I told him about her.

  It really wasn’t bad, talking like this. Three-quarters of the time you could tell the truth, and the other quarter was already fixed in your mind and you could play around with it as you pleased.

  If he asked you a question you didn’t want to answer, you simply said you didn’t remember.

  If I stopped he didn’t hurry me on, and once or twice I was able to go off into pleasant little day-dreams about Sunday. When we got to Garrod’s, a loosebox Mark had ordered was already waiting. I’d gone running through the yard and out into the field to find Forio, and he had come galloping across at the first sound of my voice. Mark had really done his best to be nice all the time, and I could see the Garrods liked him. He seemed to know a bit about horses and he didn’t hurry me to start back. In the end we left about three, driving slowly behind the horsebox; and just before dark we got home and let Forio loose in the paddock, and I rode him round bareback half a dozen times just for the sheer pleasure and just to let him know we were going to be together again.

  ‘Were you not an only child, then?’

  I dragged myself back and heard a clock striking. It was all over for this afternoon anyway, and I could forget it till Friday.

  ‘I had a brother but he died at birth.’

  ‘How old were you then?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘You don’t remember anything about it?’