Sensible Life

  Then she thought, Perhaps I can tell him about Pietro, the stud groom my mother arranged I should visit in the afternoons that summer before I came to school, so that I could converse in Italian with him and his sister, keep up my Italian. No, she thought, Felix might ask what the man actually did. He might not understand that he frightened me; that he was like the man Cosmo bought the revolver from, although he did not actually smell, or that I let my mother send him money for my visits when I had only been there once. If I could not tell my mother how the man had disgusted me, I could not tell Felix. Perhaps, Flora thought, I just feel guilty at letting my mother pay the man money for nothing. Then she thought, How clever of Felix to say that he was a friend of my parents. In all her recollections of Felix there were none of him exchanging a single word with them, though he must have done, out of common politeness. Had he searched long and hard for her? Her heart swelled with excitement; the dream she had cherished since Dinard was about to come true; she was going to see Felix.

  By the Saturday evening she had started a cold. By Sunday morning she was running a temperature. She was ready waiting in the hall before eleven; he might come earlier than he had said. Her stomach was a ball of nervous excitement; she alternated between bouts of shivering and feeling too hot. By eleven-forty she despaired of his coming. When he arrived at a quarter past twelve her handkerchiefs were soaked, her nose raw, her head aching. Felix was much shorter than she remembered. He had had his hair cut so that it was unruffled and neat. She remembered his smile.

  He said, “Hop in.” He had come by car, a different car from the one he had had at Dinard; that had been a red open two-seater. Today he drove a black saloon. “I am sorry to be late,” he said. “I didn’t allow enough time.”

  Flora said that it did not matter.

  He said, “I thought we’d have lunch out in the country; there’s a hotel under the downs which has a good restaurant. Would you like that?”

  Flora said, “That would be lovely.” Her tonsils had begun to swell at the back of her throat, which made swallowing painful.

  Felix drove down the hill and along the promenade. “I imagine you walk along here in a school crocodile.” He was amused by the thought.

  Flora had meant to tell him how she loathed walking in pairs along the concrete prom beside the angry sea, to describe how the girls eyed passersby with critical appraisement, speculating as to whether they were “gents” or “common”, their clinical eyes deducing from the cut of a person’s garments his or her social status; how they played a game called “Sahib”, awarding themselves points for sightings, the highest being an old Etonian tie or that of the Brigade of Guards, rare sights fiercely espied. But now, with her blocked nose and sore throat, she did not think Felix would find her schoolmates’ obsession with class amusing so much as distasteful, as she did herself.

  “Do you like this place?” Felix asked.

  “I loathe it.”

  “Do you like the other girls? Have you made many friends?”

  Flora said, “No.”

  Felix said, “My sisters were lucky at school. Since there were five of them they could do without friends if necessary, and contrariwise this made friendship easier. Of course we were all at day schools in our country. Ah,” he said, “we are leaving the town, getting into the country. It is lovely at this time of year, is it not?”

  Flora said, “Yes.”

  Felix said, “If there is too much air, close the window; myself I like to feel it blowing in.”

  Flora left it as it was; her cold was making her deaf in the ear next the window. Later she would imagine she could smell the autumn leaves rotting on the road.

  Felix drove in silence until they reached the hotel where he proposed to lunch. “You’ve got a nasty cold,” he said as they got out of the car.

  “It’s nothing,” said Flora.

  “I hope I don’t catch it,” said Felix.

  Flora did not answer.

  “Would you like to eat straight away?” asked Felix. “I know I would, I am starving. And schoolgirls are always hungry.” He led the way into the restaurant. “I reserved a table,” he said. “If we run out of conversation we can look at the view.” He remembered how monosyllabic Flora had been in France. I should have brought a friend, he thought, to make a third.

  They sat at a table in the window; the view was pastoral, rolling fields, sheep gently grazing, distant downland. The waiter spread a napkin across Flora’s knees, presented the menu. Felix ordered himself a martini and asked for the wine list. “A glass of wine will do your cold good,” he said and, “Why don’t you go to the ladies and have a good blow before we eat. Here, take my handkerchief, it’s dry.”

  Flora took the handkerchief. In the ladies she blew profusely into a paper towel. The flow from her nose seemed inexhaustible; she thought if she sniffed very hard she could stem it; she would keep Felix’s handkerchief. When she got back to their table Felix said, “I have ordered for us both: roast pheasant, red currant jelly, brussels sprouts and thin chips. I am starting with oysters. What about you?”

  Flora shook her head, refusing a first course, mindful of his remark about schoolgirls’ appetites; also, she had never eaten an oyster. But when, presently, Felix offered her his last, she accepted it and thought she had never tasted anything so delicious, fiercely regretting her lost opportunity.

  Felix chatted cheerfully as he ate. He was visiting friends, he told her. He had left university, had gone into business; his sister Anne was married, Elizabeth had finished her thesis and was working on a dig in Asia Minor. She was engaged to a fellow archaeologist. All three of his other married sisters had at least one or two babies; his mother was in splendid form. “And how are your parents?” he asked.

  “All right,” said Flora dubiously.

  “They come home from India every year to be with you?”

  “No.”

  “I believe I had heard that. Irena Tarasova told me. It was she who gave me your address.” (So that was it.) “She is happy in London. You write to her, I think? She much prefers it to Dinard.” (What was she doing in London? Why had she left Dinard? How long was it since she had written? Six months?) “You knew she had come to London?”

  “No.”

  “I expect she has not had time to tell you. She has parted company with her husband, you know. The pheasant is good, isn’t it?”

  “No.” Slowly Flora chewed her pheasant as she thought of Alexis. Did he still drive a taxi in Paris? “I didn’t know.”

  “They lived more or less apart even when we first met them in Dinard. Bit of a gambler.”

  “He drove a taxi.”

  “Still does.” Felix laughed.

  Flora sniffed, drawing air in through her clotted nose, releasing it through a mouthful of pheasant.

  “You are not drinking your wine; it will do your cold good,” said Felix, watching her. Irena had said, Spare the time, take the child out, bring me news of her. Tell her I will write to her soon. “Irena told me to tell you she will write to you soon.”

  “He played terrific backgammon.” Flora’s mind was on Alexis. “Please thank her.” She reached for her glass and gulped some wine; it stung her tonsils as it went down but warmed her insides.

  “How old are you now?” asked Felix.

  “Fourteen.” She would be fourteen in six months; she was in her fourteenth year.

  “You have grown a lot.”

  (At least a foot. I get the curse now. I have got pubic hair, and hair under my arms.) “Yes,” she said.

  “Nearly four years since Dinard.” Felix impaled a brussels sprout and forked it into his mouth. “How fast time—”

  “Crawls.” The wine, while consoling her gut, was making her head throb. “It crawls.” Flora gulped again at her wine.

  “Where do you spend your holidays?” Felix ate the last bit of pheasant and ranged his knife and fork together.

  “Here. At school. All the children have parents in India. If you
have no relations to go to you can spend the holidays in the school. It’s what’s called a Home School.” The wine had freed her tongue. “They talk about India all the time. About how many servants their parents have. Polo. Tigers. Dances at the Club. Leave in the hills. Simla. Kashmir. They call breakfast Chota Hazri and lunch Tiffin; they say Mahatma Gandhi is turning the natives into Communists; they call the Indians natives. They make a difference as to whether their fathers are Political, Indian Civil, Army, or Police. They can’t wait to get back and get married.”

  “It’s their background,” said Felix, laughing, “and for that matter it’s yours, too, is it not?” Flora was restraining her sniffles rather well; her face had flushed with the wine. (I must not get a schoolgirl drunk.) “Don’t you look forward to growing up and returning to India, to your parents?”

  “They all do.”

  “And you don’t?”

  Flora shook her head. How to explain to Felix, so devoted to his mother and sisters, that she dreaded such a reunion? “I may have to,” she said, her voice rising.

  “Oh,” said Felix, startled by a note of desperation not necessarily due to the wine. “Oh.” Then, “Would you like some pudding?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “I shall have some cheese. We don’t get your delicious stilton in Holland.” Felix asked the waiter for the cheeseboard.

  Flora watched Felix eat. She felt sore, sodden, heavy. Surreptitiously she looked at her watch. It would be wonderful to crawl into bed, to ask Matron for an aspirin. Felix filled his glass and poured the last of the wine into Flora’s. “Oh, by the way, I almost forgot. I spent a few days with the Leighs, d’you remember them?”

  “Cosmo?”

  “Yes, he was there, and his friend Hubert. Everybody called him Blanco. I can’t remember why. They are both at Oxford.”

  “His name was Wyndeatt-Whyte, it equals Blanco—a sort of joke.”

  “So it was, so it is.” The girl’s cold makes jolly heavy going. I can’t think why I let myself in for this. I should have made Irena come with me. “Cosmo’s sister Mabs is prettier than ever. D’you remember her?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m taking her out next week; we are going to a play. She’s attractive; I remembered her as rather tiresome and silly at Dinard.”

  Flora tossed back the last of her wine; if it anaesthetised her tonsils, it made her nose race. “Excuse me, I must—” she stood up.

  “Of course.” Felix pulled back her chair. “I’ll ask for the bill,” he said. “I should be thinking of—” He thought that his intention of taking her for a walk on the downs and ending up somewhere for a cream tea was altogether too much. “My bill, please,” he said to the waiter. Memory had tricked him. The expedition was a mistake.

  In the car Flora remained silent; all she wanted now was to get back to school and to bed. In the cloakroom she had unbuttoned her shirt—the wine had made her feel hot—and made the discovery that her chest was covered by a rash. She looked forward to covering her head with the sheet and letting the agony of disappointment wash over her. When the car crunched to a stop outside the school, she scrambled out. “Thank you, thank you very much,” she said.

  Felix caught her by the hand: “I have just remembered something,” he said. “We were talking at the Leighs about Dinard, that time we all met. Cosmo said that you were the prettiest girl in Dinard.”

  “Cosmo?”

  “And Hubert said of course you were.”

  “Hubert?”

  “She has the most extraordinary eyes,” Felix said to somebody later. “There she was with the most disgusting head cold, totally stewed with it, a little stewed perhaps with the wine I’d given her at lunch. I’d been wondering what possessed me, why I had taken the trouble to take her out; there are plenty of other miserable schoolgirls, after all. Then, just as we parted, she flashed me this look and—”

  “What?”

  “It almost made the day worthwhile.”

  In the san Flora shivered and shook, snuffled and streamed; her head ached, her body burned. Matron brought her bitter lemonade. “What a silly girl,” she said reproachfully. “I hope nobody else catches it. Why should you, who never go away for the holidays, catch measles?”

  “I don’t know, Matron. Can I have some dry handkerchiefs, please?” She pushed Felix’s handkerchief, unused, pristine, further out of sight.

  “In a moment.” Matron drew the curtains. “You mustn’t read,” she said, confiscating Kidnapped and Wuthering Heights. “Measles can affect the eyes. Doctor will be here tomorrow.”

  “Can I have my writing case, please, it’s got—”

  “And you mustn’t write, either; you must lie in the dark, my girl.”

  “Just my writing case. I promise I won’t write.”

  “When I’ve time. I’m too busy at the moment.” Matron went away to eat her supper.

  Flora felt both hot and cold. I hate that woman, she thought; I’m not her girl. I want my writing case.

  The postcard was in the writing case framed in leather; it blotted out the legitimate occupants, Denys and Vita, posing side by side on a photographer’s sofa. All the girls kept photographs of their parents perched prominently on the lockers by their beds. Flora was the exception. “Why don’t you have a photograph of your parents, Flora?” I can see them better in my mind (and smell them, too).

  If I lay against Felix as the marble girl does I would be cool, she thought. Sometimes she lay against Felix; at other times it was Blanco or Cosmo who held her in that tender embrace. Since she was in love with all three, she lay in rotation in their marble arms: Monday Felix, Tuesday Cosmo, Wednesday Blanco; today, Sunday, was Felix’s turn. Tossing hotly, she pulled the pillow round and stuffed it along her back, but marble Felix became confused with Felix eating oysters, lending her his handkerchief, driving away relieved.

  He had looked relieved. Flora blew her nose into the pristine handkerchief, scrunched it into a ball and threw it onto the linoleum floor.

  Returning from supper, Matron said, “Here’s your writing case. What have you done with your pillow? This won’t do, my girl. You’ll never get well if you don’t keep tidy. Look at that hankie chucked on the floor. There’s no need to be untidy just because you have measles.” She removed the pillow from Flora’s back. “I’ll get you some more lemonade. D’you want to go to the WC? You’d better use the pot, the passage is chilly. Hurry up, I can’t stand here all night.”

  “Please don’t.” (Verging on insolence.)

  Flora crouched on the pot. Matron smoothed the sheets and plumped the pillow. “What are you doing, tearing up your Mummy’s photograph? You must have a temperature.”

  “It’s not my mother, but while I’m at it I might as well.” Flora ripped Denys and Vita from the frame and tore, ripping Denys diagonally from Vita. She dropped the pieces on the floor to join the scattered shreds of the postcard from the Thorwaldsen Museum.

  “You’ll be sorry you did that, my girl,” said Matron. “If you weren’t ill I’d make you pick up that mess yourself.”

  “I won’t be sorry and I am not your girl.”

  “Amen to that,” said Matron, bending to pick up the scattered bits. “Get back into bed and go to sleep.”

  “Alone?”

  “What d’you mean, alone?” Matron tucked in Flora’s bedclothes.

  Flora did not answer.

  “Goodnight, then,” said Matron. “Sleep tight.”

  Flora kicked the bedclothes loose as Matron left the room, closing the door with a snap.

  Listening to Matron’s footsteps squeaking along the corridor, Flora gulped with rage and mortification. Never again would she take out the postcard and imagine herself as the girl, tenderly cherished. It stood to reason, ipso facto, that if Felix looked relieved at parting so would the other two. She could not trust them, would not think of them again. She would blot them out. Daydreaming about Felix,
Cosmo and Blanco was as silly and childish as sucking your thumb or wetting the bed, things small children recently left at the school by parents from India frequently did. Felix had been nice, of course, very kind.

  She did not want kindness.

  He had looked bored, eating his pheasant, sticking his fork into the brussels sprouts, and relieved as he drove away.

  “Oh.” Flora tossed and turned. “Ach!” She was miserable and sweaty. He only said that about Cosmo thinking me pretty as a sop, she thought. “A sop!” she cried out loud, yelling in the school sanatorium. “A sop. Nothing but a sop.”

  Eventually asleep, she had nightmares and screamed because Matron, of all people, had turned into a marble bust which yet incomprehensibly and terrifyingly had arms, hands which held her in a throttling grip, shaking her awake. “You stupid girl, look what you’ve done to your bedclothes, all tangled up and all over the floor. No wonder you are shivering.”

  “Sorry, Matron, I was—”

  “I’ll get you a hot drink. Doctor will be here in the morning.”

  “Is he marble?”

  “What d’you mean, marble? Been dreaming you dwelt in marble halls?” Matron straightened the sheets and blankets.

  “Marble arms—”

  “Not arms, halls. I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls, is how it goes. I’m not totally uneducated, my girl.”

  “And I am not your girl.”

  TWENTY

  FLORA STOOD ON THE platform, her suitcase at her feet, gripping her tennis racquet and the book she had not read in the train. All round the small station were green fields and rolling hills. The letter in her bag said, “Get out at Coppermalt Halt”. This name was written large in black letters on a white board; she had obeyed instructions.

  The train which had deposited her responded to the guard’s whistle and started chuntering noisily off. The guard tucked his flag under his arm, swung himself into the van and slammed the door. Far down the platform a porter rolled milk-churns out of the sun into the shade. The train, dwindling down the track, shrieked as it sighted a tunnel in the side of a hill. The platform was long and empty, the afternoon hot; Flora wished fervently that she was still on the train.