8
ROSE ON HER WEDDING NIGHT was grateful that Ned was a kind and caring man (he had that reputation). Aware of her inexperience, she crossed her fingers and hoped. She was anxious to co-operate, to make things easy for him, start on the right footing—though how feet came into what she vaguely termed as ‘things’, still shying from the word sex, she did not know.
Although she had put off a visit to the birth-control doctor, she had not been idle. On an afternoon when she was supposed to be running errands for her mother, she had searched the shelves of Foyles bookshop, found a sex book for beginners. This manual she had perused locked in the lavatory, puzzling over the diagrams which bore no resemblance to her memory of flesh and blood Mylo. She looked up words she did not know in her father’s dictionary, but was left little the wiser. Having memorised the necessary information, she disposed of the book in a rubbish bin in the park, not trusting her mother’s cook general who had a way of throwing kitchen implements, even silver forks and spoons, into the waste bin and later retrieving them. The book left her half-mystified, half-repelled, but she approved its lack of romance. Romance, joy, delight was left to the reader to practise and discover in his or her own good time. Rose felt she must rely on Ned to show her how this aspect of sex, this happy state, was achieved.
In bed with Ned, his arms around her, she tried to stop the nerves bunching her body into the stiffness of a cadaver. She bore in mind that the book stressed the need of relaxation for both participants. ‘Take your pyjama trousers off, Ned, you will get wound up in the cord.’ He had laughed, freed himself from the trousers, switched off the light, said, ‘That’s better,’ relieved, kissed her, she had kissed him back, felt him relax.
‘Where d’you get your hair oil?’ She sniffed at him, an unconscious delaying tactic, nuzzling his neck.
‘Trumpers, sometimes Penhaligon’s. Why?’
‘I like the smell. Smells matter to me.’
Ned stroked her, gently running his hand down her flank, pausing on her hip, letting his thumb halt near her sex. Had Ned also read the manual? Rose stifled a laugh, her tense muscles loosening. ‘You can’t be a very faithful man if you go to both shops.’ Still she put off the inevitable.
‘But I am faithful.’ Ned stroked some more. ‘Is that nice? Tell me.’
‘Yes.’ And it was quite nice.
‘If we stick a pillow under your bottom, it will be more comfortable.’
He had read that book. She reached for a pillow, fumbling in the dark, shaking with a mixture of amusement and fear. ‘That better?’
When Ned slept, Rose lay listening to the magnolia which grew against the house rustling and scraping its stiff polished leaves against the old stone wall. In her mind a voice spoke, ‘… and in bed with Ned you will wonder whether this curious act of sex would not with Mylo turn into something sublime.’
She was assailed by a sense of desolation.
Anguished, she had carefully got out of bed, leaving Ned deep in his private sleep, and leaned from the window feeling the night air cool on her hot cheeks, smelled the piercing scent of magnolia flowers, felt rather than seen the moths fluttering about them, felt pity and tenderness for Ned, shivered as the magnolia leaves stirred, climbed back into bed.
Half waking, Ned had clutched her. ‘Who? That you? Is it Rose?’
‘Yes. Yes, it’s me.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Just to the window …’
‘Rose, don’t leave me.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Promise never to leave me, promise …’
‘Of course not.’
‘Swear.’ He was sitting up now. ‘Say it, say: I swear never to leave you.’
‘Don’t be silly, Ned, you are half asleep.’ She felt protective, maternal.
‘No, I’m not. I am very much awake. Swear, say: I swear never to leave you.’
‘I did, at our wedding, in church …’
‘You weren’t paying attention, you were distracted, your mind was miles away.’ (How had he known?) ‘Come on, swear it to me now.’ He was insistent, almost bullying.
‘All right.’ She felt afraid. ‘I swear never to leave you. What about you? What do you swear to me?’
‘No need for me …’ He was content, slipping back into his sleep, leaving her later, much later, to find her separate sleep from which she woke to a sunny morning with Ned up and dressed, confident and cheerful, bringing their breakfast into the room on a tray. ‘Wake up, Mrs Peel, we have this one day to explore …’
‘And the other days?’ she asked, pouring coffee, handing him his cup.
‘The other days I must spend putting you in the picture for when I shall be away.’
‘And I am to stay here alone?’ She knew this, had she not agreed, liked the idea, seeing freedom from her family, insisted that she would manage, would be all right.
‘You said you would rather be on your own, but it’s not too late. We can find someone to live with you, a girl friend to share …’
‘Who, for instance?’
‘Emily.’
‘Why do you suggest Emily?’
‘Isn’t she a friend?’
‘Not particularly. What I’d like is a dog, or two dogs.’ Rose visualised a pair of companionable animals.
‘Or a pack!’ Ned laughed. ‘Remember the war, dear. We shall have food rationing soon; one dog should be more than enough.’
‘Oh, rationing,’ said Rose, privately deciding to have as many dogs as she wished.
‘Yes, rationing,’ said Ned, ‘we shall have to learn to live with it. Which reminds me, I must show you where the petrol is.’
‘What petrol?’
‘I’ve hidden a lot of jerrycans in a shed in the copse.’
‘Isn’t that illegal? You have a hoard?’
‘I did it before rationing started.’ Ned sensed disapproval. ‘I foresaw rationing so I laid in a store.’ (This may not be strictly true, he told himself, but she is not to know.) ‘If we are invaded, we might have to make a quick getaway, or you might if I am gone?’
‘Are you suggesting the Germans will invade us?’ she said incredulously.
‘If things go badly,’ said Ned, who had listened to talk in his club.
‘Golly.’
‘It will come in useful anyway,’ said Ned. ‘This isn’t going to be a short war, whatever people say, but what I am sure of is that everything will be in short supply; sensible people are stocking their store cupboards.’
‘Rich people! Well,’ said Rose, ‘I shall hoard tinned dog food for my dogs.’
‘You should have a dog,’ said Ned, as if the idea was his. ‘I would be happier when I’m away if you had a dog. I will buy you one.’
‘Let me find my own dog …’ cried Rose before she could stop herself, knowing that Ned’s choice of dog would not be hers.
‘All right,’ said Ned, ‘if you insist.’ He felt cheated, rather hurt, feeling that he had planned to buy her a dog, an alsatian or a labrador.
Feeling the drop in temperature, Rose said, ‘More coffee?’ holding up the pot (George III, recently inherited along with the house). Ned passed his cup. ‘Yes, please.’ Why not let her choose her own dog, he thought indulgently; it was a lovely day, last night had gone off well, he felt contented, uxurious, Rose looked very pretty sitting up in bed with the tray across her lap. He had enjoyed last night rather more than he expected. This marriage, entered into with care and consideration, was off to a good start. Uncle Archibald was a wise old bird. ‘We will choose a nice puppy,’ he said, ‘if you promise to be careful of the rugs.’
‘Rugs?’ She pretended not to understand.
‘When I take you on a tour of inspection, Mrs Peel, I will show you the rugs, some of them are very valuable, they should really be hung on a wall.’
Rose wondered how long it would amuse Ned to call her Mrs Peel. ‘I’ve read,’ she said, ‘that in Turkey they pen geese on new rugs to make them look old,
then, when they’ve been thoroughly shat on, they are washed in the Bosphorus.’
‘I don’t like you using that word,’ said Ned.
‘All right,’ said Rose, ‘I won’t. I’m going to get up now. There’s no hurry about the dog. I think I’ll have a bitch. A dog might lift his leg against the Chippendale chairs. Don’t look like that, Ned, I’m only teasing. Here, take the tray.’ She thrust the tray towards him. ‘Let me have a bath and then I want to be shown round the house, introduced to every stick of furniture, every picture, every rug.’ She laughed, pushing the bedclothes back, exposing her legs. Her nightdress had ridden up her thighs; Ned could see her dark bush as she kicked clear of the bedclothes. ‘Give me half an hour, I’ll meet you in the garden.’
Ned would have liked to catch hold of her but his hands held the tray; he watched her skip into the bathroom and close the door, shutting him out.
Carrying the tray downstairs, Ned told himself that Rose was very young, malleable, that loving him she would also love his possessions. He put the tray on the kitchen table where Mrs Farthing would find it, then walked through the house and out into the garden.
While delighting in his inheritance, Ned did not feel passionately about the garden. Flowers were insubstantial, they faded, got eaten by slugs, died. It was natural to feel strongly about pictures, furniture, silver and rugs. Ned winced at the memory of Rose’s vulgar use of English. The garden, while aesthetically beautiful, was of no intrinsic worth apart, of course, from its value at so much an acre. Ned had a sneaking feeling that here he was lacking in sensitivity, that he ought to feel as passionately about the garden as he did for the house and its contents. Sitting on a stone seat in the sun, he tried to puzzle out this lack in himself, to pin it down. He picked up a stick and swished at a late wasp buzzing near some Japanese anemones. The wasp put on a burst of speed. Ned watched it go. Putting a value on his garden, he ruminated, was as slippery—slippery being the unwelcome word which came to mind—as setting a price on Rose. But surely not, he thought, kicking at a pebble on the path at his feet. He had picked Rose, chosen her with care, taken advice, used his judgement, his wits. I kept my wits about me, thought Ned, sitting in the warmth of late September watching butterflies swoop and hover over a clump of michaelmas daisies. I decided to have her, I picked her out of the crowd at that party, I made up my mind.
‘What are you thinking?’ Rose joined him sitting at the end of the stone seat, turning towards him: ‘You look so serious.’
‘I was thinking of the Malones’ winter tennis party where I first met you and …’
‘And?’
‘And I fell in love with you.’
‘Ah,’ said Rose disbelieving, and then, ‘I remember, I remember it well.’ She let out her breath in a sigh.
They had sat, the newly married pair, each remembering the winter tennis party.
9
NED REMEMBERED UNCLE ARCHIBALD had said, ‘You have to start somewhere,’ holding out the invitation to the Malones’ tennis party. ‘There may be some possible girls. I know the Malones, they are old friends, they built that indoor court just after the war. Their winter tennis party is an event. They get people down from London and mix them with the local talent. It’s an annual do not to be missed, a compliment to be invited.’ He was enthusiastic.
‘I am asked because I have inherited Slepe.’ Ned turned the invitation this way and that with suspicious fingers.
‘Quite so, and I am asked because we are old friends. We played tennis before the war. His standard was high, almost Wimbledon.’
‘Does he still play?’
‘No, too arthritic, but he likes to watch the young people. Flora and I always go if we are down south. We will come along with you, if you like. Motor down for the day.’
‘I’m not fearfully keen.’
‘Come on, Ned, you have to get to know your neighbours at Slepe. The Malones have sons and there will, as I say, be girls.’
‘Oh.’
‘The sort of girls you should be taking out in London, suitable girls,’ said Aunt Flora.
‘I sense a trap,’ said Ned amused.
‘Good God, Ned, the girls won’t bite you, you play a decent game of tennis, you have to make a start, it’s a year since I advised you to marry, this tennis …’
‘On Boxing Day? In midwinter? So soon after Christmas dinner? I am more used to a Boxing Day meet or a day’s shooting.’
‘It’s an indoor court, Ned, marvellous to play on. It’s wood, makes the game very fast, even quite poor players put up a good show. When you are playing in there and it’s blowing and sleeting outside, you will be pleased you came. See more of the girls than muffled up to the eyes and miserable on a shooting stick or bouncing along on a horse they can’t hold when all you see is their bums. I’ve nothing against bums, of course, but a tennis dress in the warmth shows them off better …’
‘Honestly, Uncle Archie …’
‘I shall accept for you,’ said Ned’s uncle. ‘I have to ring him up anyway. You get a good lunch,’ he added consolingly, ‘as well as the exercise, and there’s a dance in the evening for those who stay on.’
There had been a men’s four, Ned remembered; he had been partnered by Richard Malone against Nicholas Thornby and a visitor from London. The court, as his uncle had said, was marvellous; he found himself playing well.
There were, beside himself, George and Richard Malone, three men from London staying in the house, four vivacious girls, friends of the Malone sons, Emily and Nicholas Thornby, and a very young, very shy Rose, brought in as a stop-gap to fill the place of a girl cousin who was down with flu. Ned enjoyed himself presently, partnering Emily in a mixed doubles. She played a spirited game. Ned noticed that she did not wear a brassière; he was used to girls wearing brassières and found its absence a little disturbing. Twice he missed an easy backhand while thinking about this. Nevertheless, or because of it, he later suggested she might come out to dinner when next she was in London, he not yet being properly installed at Slepe; would she like to dine and dance or go to a theatre?
Later, when Emily and three of the girls from the house party played a women’s doubles, Ned watched while Richard Malone sat whispering into his favourite girl’s ear, reducing her to fits of giggles. Of the women’s four, Emily had been by far the keenest player, leaping up and showing a lot of leg as well as the disturbing breasts, reaching up to smash difficult balls which did not necessarily land in court and might well have gone out if she had left them. Ned noticed Emily again when partnering one of the girls from London; he played against her and her brother Nicholas. They made a curiously cohesive team, giving no quarter.
Of the girls from London, Ned got to know two, later taking them out and receiving invitations back into their milieu. Emily came to London often and when she did she rang him up so that over a period of months he grew to know her fairly well. Imperceptibly she latched on to the group of friends he now saw most often.
It was quite untrue that he had, as he now told Rose, fallen in love with her at the winter tennis party. He had barely noticed her. In any case, during much of the tennis Rose, already rendered invisible by shyness, had absented herself.
It was much later, at another party—Ned had by this time become friends with the Malones—that Ned overheard Mrs Malone say to a friend, ‘Isn’t it extraordinary that a plain little thing like Rose Freeling should suddenly blossom into a positive beauty.’
‘She must be in love,’ said Mrs Malone’s friend, staring across the room at Rose.
‘The boys say not. They say she has no one in particular; both George and Richard find her unapproachable; they both find her extremely attractive.’
‘Who is she?’ asked Mrs Malone’s friend.
‘Nobody much,’ said Mrs Malone, ‘the family is all right, I suppose, but there’s no money. The father is a solicitor, not successful, rather ill, on the way out, they say. The mother is a stick. One feels sorry for the girl, she doesn’t
have much fun. We asked her to the tennis last Boxing Day when some girl fell out. She didn’t seem to make much of a mark, but we thought we’d give her another chance and then the boys found her quite ravishing.’
Mrs Malone’s friend said, ‘Being ravishing isn’t everything. One needs money to carry it off.’
‘True,’ said Mrs Malone, watching Rose across the room standing with a group of men. ‘It’s funny, though, she was so shy as a child, she was quite ugly, but now …’
‘I thought Emily Thornby was supposed to be the local beauty,’ said Mrs Malone’s friend, ‘not that she is exactly beautiful.’
‘There’s not much money there either,’ said Mrs Malone, ‘but she and that brother of hers have lots of push.’
Ned, overhearing this conversation, began to watch Rose and presently took the opportunity of asking her to dance, preparatory to getting to know her better.
Rose was not wearing anything under her dress, neither brassière nor knickers, but since she did not think about it Ned did not notice, yet he was suddenly anxious to make an impression. The ease with which Rose had stood among the group of men had annoyed him.
So it came about that when for their annual house party for the grouse shooting in Argyll, Uncle Archie and Aunt Flora invited two of Ned’s friends, Harold Rhys and Ian Johnson, to form a leaven of young people among their middle-aged friends, Aunt Flora added two of Ned’s cousins and let Emily and Nicholas fish successfully for an invitation. It was Uncle Archie who had noticed Rose at the Boxing Day party and been astonished that Flora had not added Rose’s name to the list. Although getting to know Rose, Ned was not moving fast enough. ‘Quiet girls like Rose Freeling slip through your fingers,’ he said, ‘get her under the same roof as Ned.’
‘But she has no money,’ said his wife, who had had none herself and knew this disadvantage.
‘In Ned’s case it doesn’t matter. I thought we were agreed.’
‘Very well, I’ll write,’ said Flora, who had only brought up the lack of money to test her husband. ‘You may be right,’ she added. ‘Ned is the sort of man who gets hooked by an unsuitable girl; I am not sure I should have invited the Thornbys.’