A Start in Life (10 page)

One morning it teemed with rain and she darted out of the house in the rue des Marronniers with her hands apprehensively sheltering her newly coiffed hair. His car was waiting at the kerb. Once he walked into the
brasserie
where she ate her evening meal, made her finish it all up, and then drove her out into the Bois; they had coffee and brandy at a flashily discreet hotel with a log fire and a huge dog stretched out in front of it. Once he took her out to lunch in the Place de la Sorbonne; they trotted over a sea of cobbles to reach the restaurant and when they arrived the waiter kissed her hand. There were no other diners. For the very first time she ate lobster, forbidden on her father's side. Once she got back to her seat in the Bibliothèque Nationale and found on her papers a bunch of Parma violets, their leaves still wet, sprayed from a watering can by a flower seller in the Place de l'Opéra. She kept them for ten days.

He was married, of course. He had a wife called Noémi and two grown-up daughters. He had told her this and by mutual consent they never referred to it again.

‘What can I give you,' she asked him, ‘when you give me so much?'

‘First you must learn to take,' he answered. And he continued to give.

As she emerged from the bathroom, Rhoda said, ‘Oh, by the way, a friend of yours telephoned. Althea. Would you get in touch with her at the Hotel Madison? I have written it on the pad. But not now, please, my dear; I
cannot have Humphrey disturbed. This hour before dinner is so precious to him.'

Humphrey, pen in hand, was standing watch by the telephone, his eyes fixed on Ruth's bare legs.

Anthea! She was actually here, her dearest friend. Ruth dressed, smoothed her hair, and ran out to the nearest café and the nearest telephone. Yes, Anthea was free. Of course, Ruth would come over straight away. They were longing to see one another.

But each was surprised by the other's appearance. Anthea had put on weight, looked warm and untidy in the more purposeful Parisian atmosphere. Ruth, Anthea remarked, looked almost human. She could think of no further recommendations to make. The words ‘Why don't you?' died on her lips.

But there was masses to tell. Once more Ruth described her peculiar lodgings, protesting that she did not intend to stay there, that the room was cheap, that it was not too far out. Anthea gave her a withering glance.

‘I'll see for myself,' she said. ‘We'll take you back after dinner.'

‘Dinner,' said Ruth with rather more authority than she had displayed before to Anthea, ‘is on me.'

‘Fine,' said Anthea, unmoved. A rush of waters from the bathroom signalled the imminent arrival of Brian.

‘Are you happy?' Ruth asked directly.

Anthea hesitated for only a fraction of a second.

‘Of course,' she said. ‘We always suited each other. And he's got a future. Besides, I'm used to him.'

She looked at her friend, trying to reconcile her protégée of recent years with this expensive and assured looking creature in her mackintosh, her normally anxious eyes calm under her beautiful fringe.

‘And what about you?' They were speaking in lowered tones. ‘There's a man, I take it?'

Ruth nodded.

‘At last,' said Anthea grimly. ‘Well,' she added, more
as a matter of form than anything else, ‘did the earth move?'

Ruth did not even blush, as she would have done before.

‘Oh yes,' she replied. ‘Yes, it did.'

Anthea's eyes widened. ‘Now, for God's sake, Ruth, don't make a mess of this. Don't give in too easily. String him along. Keep him guessing. Break the odd appointment. How do you think I got Brian after all these years?'

Ruth looked sadly at her friend.

‘Is it all a game, then?' she asked.

Anthea looked sadly back. ‘Only if you win,' was her reply. ‘If you lose, it's far more serious.'

George, much to his annoyance, seemed to be going deaf in one ear. He went down to the doctor's surgery, thinking to have some wax removed, but was met with a kind of hearty complicity he did not greatly appreciate.

‘Nothing to be done,' said Dr Maxwell. ‘One of the penalties of getting on a bit.' He never spoke of growing old and always pretended to be the same age as the patient he was treating.

Nevertheless, George was put out. Getting on a bit? He was no age at all, and twice the man he had been a mere two years ago. From five to six thirty every evening he took his ease in Sally's flat, which he also liked to think of as his flat. ‘Let's go back to the flat,' he would say. She would cook him a little something and enjoin him to relax, as if he had performed some immense labour. The shop was left increasingly in the care of Mrs Jacobs's sister's boy, Roddy, who was waiting to hear if he had got a job at Sotheby's and who would otherwise have been working as an assistant at Harrods. The arrangement pleased everyone concerned.

In Bayswater George rediscovered the delights of his youth. Mrs Jacobs behaved just like his mother. ‘You look tired,' she would say. ‘You do far too much.' His towelling bathrobe hung next to her own and a variety of lotions and powders had pride of place in her hitherto unsullied bathroom. Signs of his presence, actual or intended, were everywhere to be seen. In the teeth of Mrs
Jacobs's protests he had rigged up a machine for making morning tea by the side of her bed. The only time she had used it, steam had squirted out sideways, damaging the valance of her satin counterpane. Some of the furniture in the sitting room was placed on the slant because of the size of the speakers from the record player. George's sun lamp was in the spare room and his portable grill was in the kitchen. Sally had put her foot down when she had seen him plugging it in, although the corners of her mouth had only seemed to contract with disappointment as the other items were introduced. George had taken no notice. But, ‘I do all the cooking that goes on here,' she said. ‘You can take that back and get a credit note.' But George had never got around to it somehow.

The delights of his youth. A little bit of smoked fish as an appetizer. Cold meat loaf and horseradish. Cucumbers in sour cream. And cheesecake, which Sally made herself, and which was so rich that he had to eat it with a spoon. And all the while he ate she would sit at the table and watch him sternly, her face propped in her hand, to see that he left nothing on his plate.

She loved to have a man to feed again. The disruption of her flat, the intrusion of all the devices, which she never used, seemed a small price to pay for the pleasure of seeing George every evening. When the time came for him to leave, she would brush his collar and become slightly tearful. It was not that she desired any further physical contact; she just hated to go to bed uncomforted.

‘Couldn't you at least telephone me to say goodnight?' she sniffed as George prepared to revert to his real life in Oakwood Court and she was faced with the washing up and the preparation of the next evening's snack.

‘Well, darling, it's a bit difficult. I suppose I could take the telephone into another room but I'd hate Helen to get wind of anything.

Mrs Jacobs sniffed harder. ‘If you really loved me,
you'd try,' she murmured.

So every evening, by dint of sending Mrs Cutler in with a hot milk drink which Helen barely touched, and by turning up the volume of the television very loud, he telephoned Mrs Jacobs to say goodnight.

‘Where were you just now?' asked Helen one evening.

‘Ringing Mrs Jacobs about an order,' said George, quite truthfully.

‘That woman doesn't seem to be able to do anything on her own,' said Helen, shaking her sleeping pills out of the bottle.

‘We find it works better if I ring her up in the evening to remind her what to expect the next day,' said George, half terrified at his own daring.

‘Silly bitch,' sighed Helen, closing her pale blue eyelids. ‘She must be losing money hand over fist.' Her eyes snapped open again. ‘Make sure she pays you properly,' she admonished George. She was being quite serious.

George was delighted. By dint of beginning his conversation very heartily and modulating it to a dying fall, he found that he was almost telling the truth to Helen and pleasing Sally as well. He liked to think of Sally sitting up in bed in her expensive nightdress, her special little pillow behind her neck, her satin curtains (five hundred pounds, she had told him, and she had sent them back twice) pulled fast against the night. Reality awaited him next door where Helen prepared to retire by brushing the crumbs off her cardigan, removing her denim cap and slinging it into a corner, and placing her book face down, spine cracking, on the cluttered bedside table. After getting into bed beside her, George reflected on the virtue of his behaviour. No sin, no
act
had been committed. He remained a faithful husband, didn't he? Sally loved him. And he was eating better than he had for years.

So that when Dr Maxwell told him that he was getting on a bit he was disagreeably surprised.

‘It's my wife you really want to take a look at,' he protested. ‘She hardly ever gets out of bed these days. And she never goes out.'

He had a reason for wanting to re-animate Helen apart from the uneasiness he felt when he saw her stick-like arms and legs. If Helen rose from her bed and somehow, miraculously, recovered her command, he could get rid of Mrs Cutler and find someone slightly more menial. And he wanted to do this because he had an idea that Mrs Cutler knew what he was up to. Technical innocence would be no weapon to withstand Mrs Cutler's condemnation. And she would make a point of telling Helen, who would make scenes and take more sleeping pills, simply because she had been given her cue. It was not to be contemplated.

Dr Maxwell looked grave. ‘That of course is much more serious. Her circulation will begin to suffer very soon. Is her mind all right?'

George shrugged. Had Helen's mind ever been all right? She had always been a mythomaniac, fascinated by her own legend, recounting it to everyone. To think of the years he had spent just listening to her. But of course he could not leave her now. He stirred uncomfortably. He wished he had not come to the doctor in the first place if he was just going to be made more depressed about everything. His ear, Helen's circulation, Sally's loneliness, which he did not take very seriously. Mrs Cutler's watchful eye. With an effort he concentrated on what the doctor was saying. Helen's mind?

‘Yes, her mind's all right,' he replied. ‘She reads most of the time. Our housekeeper sees that she eats a bit. Not much, you know. Snacks. Perhaps you could give her a vitamin injection or something?'

He looked and felt suddenly helpless.

‘Of course,' he added, ‘if this goes on much longer I may have to send for my daughter.'

He wished that he had not thought of that. But on
reflection, it might settle things all round.

Helen herself was in a curious state of mind, sometimes invalidish, sometimes masterful. She felt that she was saving herself for some tremendous come-back, would be discovered, behind closed doors, for the part of a lifetime. At the same time she was dimly aware that her energy had run out in some irreversible fashion which she could not identify. She was almost glad to regress, spending the days in her nightgown, looking like a haggard girl. ‘The rest is doing me good,' she maintained, but they could not see what had made her so tired. She was still beautiful, still cleverly made up, although her hair was now long and untidy. She had altered in the sense that she now demanded to be amused rather than to dominate the conversation with anecdotes of her former fame or some screamingly funny incident that had taken place when they were on tour. Helen read a novel a day, preferring those that she had read before, and twice a week Mrs Cutler had to set out with her wheeled trolley for the public library to bring home six nearly identical stories. These had to do with maidens in the nineteenth century, taking posts as governesses and losing their hearts to the rakish son who was also the black sheep of the family. Helen, her blue eyes dreamy in their huge sockets, murmured, ‘They never go to bed with them. I wonder if that's where I went wrong.' Mrs Cutler said nothing. It disgusted her that Helen should still be thinking about sex. She had got over that sort of thing herself.

But it was in fact Mrs Cutler who was bringing the matter to life again. Mrs Cutler had made an unexpected hit at the Hazel Kilpatrick Introductions Agency, which operated from a small room up a flight of stairs off Kensington High Street. Hazel Kilpatrick herself, a retired social worker, took the application more seriously than Mrs Cutler had done. Grimly parting with a fee of ten pounds, Mrs Cutler had decided to let her get on
with it. So far, five answers to her application had been received. Helen bestirred herself to patter to the door every morning to collect the post, which she ripped open and then spread all over the bed. ‘I like the sound of this one,' she would say to the resigned Mrs Cutler who now, in addition to doing her own chestnut lights, had to do Helen's as well. ‘Recently retired,' she read out. ‘That means he's knocking on seventy. Just about right for you, Maggie.' Mrs Cutler thought seventy was too old. Helen, who when she thought about it found most men too old these days, reprimanded her. ‘There's no point in being starry-eyed about this sort of thing. It's not as if you were in it for a roll in the hay.' Mrs Cutler winced. George, who had put his head round to door to say goodbye, also winced. Helen's language was getting coarser. She sometimes referred off-handedly to the financial habits of Jews. George found this unmannerly and said so. There had been several unharmonious evenings, complicated by the consumption of a little too much whisky. Mrs Cutler, her head throbbing the following morning, vowed that it could not go on; she might have to get married after all. George, seeing both women equally afflicted, hoped that they had learnt their lesson and went off virtuously to Mount Street, where Jews were never mentioned and liquor never consumed.

It could not in fact go on. Mrs Cutler retrieved the papers of Leslie Arthur Dunlop, recently retired, from Helen's bed, and wrote secretly to him, arranging a meeting at the Mexicana coffee bar. He turned out to be a cheery elderly man, very spruce and clearly very lonely. He had thin sleeked-back pepper and salt hair and he wore a blazer with the insignia of what Mrs Cutler thought was his regiment on the pocket. He had come up from Folkestone, where he had a bungalow, for the day. The Mexicana was just about his mark. Mrs Cutler wore her jade green coat and skirt, a silk blouse abstracted from Helen's wardrobe, sling-back court shoes which were
murder after half an hour, and her pearl earrings. She was careful not to smoke too much or even to say too much until it became clear that Leslie Arthur Dunlop wanted to light his pipe. Hesitantly, she suggested that they go next door to the Black Lion; he cheered up immediately. He ordered a pint of beer and she had a vodka and lime. His good humour reminded her of George but she reserved judgment. After the pub he took her out for a Chinese meal, which neither of them enjoyed. ‘Wait till you taste my cooking,' said Mrs Cutler imprudently, ‘you won't know you're born.' Mr Dunlop cheered up even further. ‘My late wife wasn't much of a cook,' he reminisced, ‘but she kept a lovely home.' ‘I do that too,' said Mrs Cutler.

‘That agency seems to have given you up as a bad job,' said Helen in disgust, as nothing further came through the post. ‘They probably think you're too old.'

Mrs Cutler, who was meeting Mr Dunlop again on her next afternoon off – they were going to the first house at the Palladium – did not reply. Better to let them think what they liked. What she did was her own affair. She had reapplied her chestnut lights and varnished her nails: she held them out from her stiffly while they dried. Then, with exaggerated distaste, she removed the bottle of whisky from its resting place on Helen's bedside table and made a shepherd's pie for lunch.

‘You're going to eat this whether you like it or not,' she shouted from the kitchen. ‘You've got as thin as a rake.' She was a little uneasy about Helen who seemed to take a delight in making herself helpless these days. She would totter to the bathroom, but would not take a bath on her own. Mrs Cutler, pressed into service, did not like the look of her white knobbly spine curved over into an old woman's position, her fleshless arms, her narrow unused feet. With a gesture unconsciously retained from earlier days, Helen held a towel to her disappearing bosom as she stepped unsteadily out of the bath. Her
shoulders were still good, her face beautiful, but so pale, so lined until she had reapplied her make-up: the face of a beautiful old woman.

Mrs Cutler, whose initial attachment to Leslie Arthur Dunlop was as a pretext for leaving Oakwood Court, had developed a rather more reasoned liking for the man when he insisted on calling her Margaret. She in turn called him Leslie, although he had always been known as Les, he said. That was what his first wife had called him. ‘Not me,' said Mrs Cutler. There was a moment's silence while each digested this exchange. Had they committed themselves? They looked at each other. It seemed as though they had. ‘We can't live on your pension,' said Mrs Cutler, her cheeks highly coloured by rouge and emotion. ‘We'll have to get a job somewhere. Living in, so that we can let the bungalow. What about one of those old people's homes? You can save all your wages there.'