Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) (17 page)

The guide had his old jokes and the crowd its dutiful laughter. Gareth listened to every word, as attentive as Nick would have been, standing close to the red wool rope which separated
hoi polloi
from Regency furniture, except when he stood aside to allow some equally enthusiastic woman to see better. He had his hands clasped behind his back, as at Anna’s funeral, Amy, briefly turning, noted.

“Lovely sofa table,” he said.

Anna had been informed about antiques, and had often said that she would open a shop instead of having to keep opening the door to dreary surgery people, who expected her to remember their names and to discuss the weather with them. But, as with Gareth’s golf, nothing had come of the idea. Amy began to think that we all leave everything too late.

On a landing window-sill was a bowl (cracked) of pot-pourri, and in one passage into which she wandered (out of the guide’s surveillance and out-of-bounds, too) Amy came upon shelves of modern books still in their jackets, and old paper-backs. These she examined with more interest than the sets of leather-bound volumes in the library. There was even a melon ripening on another window-sill.

The garden, where they could go unguided, was pleasant and not too tidy. They went up a camomile walk towards an obelisk. On either side in the long grass were narcissi, Solomon’s seal and white snakes-head fritillaries, and the leaves above them were in their first tender green. Along the way, there were
statues, rather pitted, and stained by the weather.

“This is good,” Gareth said, stopping by one of a girl arranging a chaplet of stone flowers on her head. “I like them to be doing something – like carrying a calf, or driving a chariot, or wrestling with snakes. That’s why I don’t like that Hermes of Praxiteles or whoever’s supposed to have done it…”

“Nick said not.”

“… .or Michelangelo’s David. Everything invested in being themselves, like the Albert Memorial – nothing outwards; just standing there being emperors, or simply being pretty.”

“I like prettiness, but Nick hated it. Well, you know as well as I do.”

“I’ve no right to say so to you of all people, I suppose, but I miss him very badly.”

“Last night I was watching the telly, and I suddenly took it for granted that he was sitting there, too, in his chair; like old married things, we always sat in the same chairs… well, you also know that… and I turned to him. I almost saw the shape of him out of the corner of my eye. ‘What rubbish!’ I said aloud, meaning the television. Can you imagine it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, of course you can.”

“Much too early for both of us, I suppose. Not to have such experiences, I mean. One expects…”

“Did you hear that?” she interrupted.

He listened, but too late.

“I heard a cuckoo. I love that wicked bird.”

And then the call came again, farther away, echoing through beechwoods.

“Oh, I love it,” she said. “It seems to me the most English sound – Chaucer and Shakespeare, and that Reading monk’s song. Yet it comes all the way from Africa, doesn’t it? To be so English.”

“They are also heard in Wales.”

Missing his sarcasm, she seemed surprised. “It’s put the finishing touch to the loveliest day,” she said.

When they reached home, it was drinks time. Ernie was complimented on the picnic and given Gareth’s bunch of cowslips, now rather limp. But he would revive them, if anyone could, Gareth assured him.

On the hall table was a letter from Martha. Amy picked it up, then put it down again – a little dreariness to be deferred, news, no doubt, of novel going badly, marriage going badly, the town of New Ludlow going very badly indeed.

“What a pleasant way of spending an evening, and with a nice day behind us.” Gareth said, settling down with his whisky.

“Do you remember those awful dances we used to go to – the four of us, and Nick so unwillingly? Anna used to make us. Things for the hospital or the Red Cross or the Cruelty to Children? Awful music. ‘People will say we’re in love’. Men used to sing it very softly into one’s ear, while clasping one’s back, sawing one’s arm up and down, steering one clear of couples doing tricky steps. Then that drum roll at the end, clapping, lucky spot. Paul Jones was like one of those dreadful games children were made to play at parties. I hope little Dora doesn’t have to.”

“Amy, not soon, of course, but later, when you’re readier… at any time you choose…”

She looked up.

“Would you marry me — give me something to look forward to?”

Her eyes became wide with surprise. “Oh, no, Gareth. I should be far too embarrassed. But awfully nice of you to ask. May I topple you up? as Dora says,” she added, taking up the decanter.

Amy had taken a fancy for having Dora to stay with her – the docile, serious child, so like her father as a little boy. Isobel whence?

So sometimes James would bring Dora on a Friday evening to stay until Sunday, and Ernie would do mince and carrots, and children’s puddings. Dora slept in the
art nouveau
room with the chrysanthemum wallpaper and the white furniture. She liked it, though it was not as pretty as her room at Auntie Dot’s. She would get up early and sit quietly drawing at the table where Martha was to have done her writing, but had not.

Isobel seemed to welcome Dora’s absences; she played with her sister’s toys, wore her too-large clothes, and sometimes slept in her bed for a change.

Dora settled down happily with Amy and Ernie. She seemed to like adult company, and Amy could see that she might have had too much of the other kind. On Friday evenings, with the promise of potato cakes and crisp bacon for supper, she would sit at the kitchen table on which newspapers had been spread and help Ernie to clean the silver, taking great pride in some tiny coffee-spoons, and a dolls’ tea-set Amy had had as a child. The teapot was smaller than a thimble and had a proper lid.

“There is nothing worse, in my opinion, than a tarnished gravy-boat,” said Ernie, busily adding lustre to one.

“And now we’ve done the silver, shall we start on the gold?” Dora had once asked, and wondered why he smiled. She thought her grandmother very rich, living in a quite large house, having someone to do the work for her, and cream on her – Dora’s – porridge every morning. She could not think why Amy did not spend much more of her great wealth, on such things as dogs and cats and hamsters which Dora could play with; or on jewellery, some of which she might later inherit, as she very much hoped to inherit the dolls’ tea-set.

Unfortunately, James did not have the same idea of his mother’s financial position, and one evening when Dora was helping Ernie … who talked to her as child to child – he, James, over a drink tried to discuss his fears – about Amy’s income staying the same, while rates, for instance, in fact everything, did not.

“I don’t want to move,” she said, as pettishly as if it were all his fault. “I love this house, and where it is. I spend hours looking out at the river, and I should miss it terribly. And, then, I must have room for my
things,
and room for Ernie, too, and for Dora when she comes.”

“But the other empty rooms. And while on the subject of Ernie, I should tell you you don’t pay him nearly enough, you know.”

“How
do
you know?”

“You told me yourself.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, as you’re so interested, I put him up ten shillings, I mean fifty pence, only a fortnight ago.”

“I wonder he didn’t graciously hand it back.”

They were quarrelling, she realised, and it was obvious that there was more to come. Perhaps it had always been between them but he, being mild, like Dora, had avoided it.

“Of course,” he said, rather soothingly, “you’ve had a lot of unexpected expenses. Father dying like that, and it wasn’t a cheap holiday; or a cheap illness, for that matter. It cost so much, too, to bring him back.” (Just to end up in Golders Green crematorium, he thought) “I’ve wondered why you did that. I wish I could have been there to advise.”

“I wonder, too; but at the time it seemed the natural thing to do. I had an instinct to do it. I couldn’t bring myself just to leave him there. I don’t know how they go about things… and that place is so very dreadful. He was….”

“It’s nothing to blame yourself about, or cry about” (For she was dabbing her eyes with a crushed-up handkerchief.) “That’s all in the past and paid for.”

“You brought it up. Not I.”

“I mentioned it to try to explain your financial state. It’s
now,
and the future I’m worried about. You see, these days, even Maggie and I find ourselves in severe difficulties, though I have an earned income and she is economical. We have cheap holidays. I make my own wine, and that’s about our only little luxury. Maggie does her own house-work.”

“So did I at her age.”

“You still could, in some nice labour-saving flat.”

“Did you say ‘flat’?” Her voice rose, trembling.

“It wouldn’t be the end of the world…plenty of women…”

“Like Auntie Dot. Have some more of this expensive gin. I will, too. This sort of talk tires me. I don’t even have a car. Remember that, and stop talking of extravagance. Cars cost a great deal of money. And I don’t have one.”

“Only because you don’t drive.”

“Oh, I was waiting for you to sneer at my bad eyesight.”

“I am trying to help you,” he said, extra quietly. He also closed his eyes, as if this might help him keep his patience. He forbore the expensive gin.

“Then you are doing it in a very depressing way.”

It had been like trying to have a conversation with an ostrich, he would tell Maggie when he got home.

Dora asked, “Are you going to have potato cakes, Ernie?”

“No, I’m afraid that though I like them, they don’t like me.”

Dora understood this, from her relationship with her ‘best’ friend at school.

“Then what will you have?”

“Something light and tasty, no doubt. A little scrambled egg, perhaps.”

“Are you ill? We get scrambled eggs sometimes when we are ill, Isobel and me.”

“I am neither ill nor well, I should say. I just maintain an amount of care. I’m afraid that at times my liver
does
cross my mind. I was saying so to Dr. Lloyd the other evening. We have a history of liver in the family.”

“I loathe liver.”

“I wasn’t referring to the animal kind.”

But poor Dora thought the human kind would be much worse.

“The last time, if I was sick once,” Ernie said, “I was sick a dozen times.”

“Were
you sick once?” Dora asked with interest.

“You look a trifle upset, madam,” Ernie said in a low voice, as Amy came into the kitchen, having seen James off. “No bad news, I hope.”

“Did Daddy go without saying goodbye to me, then?” Dora asked, with more curiosity than resentment.

“He thought you were busy, and he was in a hurry.”

As if throwing away some inconsequential remark, Amy said to Ernie, “Depressing talks about money. Oh, dear, when I was young, we saved up for what we wanted, and knew how much we could afford to spend. Now, it appears, no one could hope to save up fast enough.”

“To the poor, madam, all things are poor, as I believe Jesus put it.”

Dora stacked her coffee-spoons neatly, bowl in bowl, and Ernie cleared away the dirty newspapers. Then he began to heat the griddle for the potato cakes and the grill for the bacon. On Friday evenings, Dora always had supper in the kitchen. Later, Amy would have something on a tray while she watched the television, while, below stairs, Ernie, reading a cookery book, ate buttered crackers.

On Saturday morning, Dora wanted to draw, but
had run out of paper before breakfast.

“Let’s go up to the studio and see what we can find,” Amy suggested. And lay a few ghosts, she thought. Once or twice, since Nick’s death, Ernie had been up there, dusting round, as he put it; but she had not. To her, it was too much Nick’s private room, where he had been alone so often, fighting his private battles, and which on few occasions she had entered. They went upstairs, she and Dora. “I’ve never opened this door,” the child said, as if it were Bluebeard’s sinister chamber. She put out a hand and touched Amy’s skirt.

“You have, darling. You’ve just forgotten.”

“I think I’ve forgotten Grandpa, too.”

So much for early memories, Amy thought. And she loved him so much.

The studio was full of light. On an easel was a canvas, looking abandoned, sadly unfinished, hardly on its way. It was of some old-fashioned creamy roses against a dark background. Or that was what it had been intended to be one day. Ernie, too sensitive for words, had not removed a decaying array for a still-life. There were shrivelled lemons, dried magnolia leaves, a wrinkled apple or two. It would never have been the sort of thing Nick could have brought himself to paint. He had probably deluded himself into thinking that the very arranging of it was work. There wasn’t much to look at. Amy turned from the wall old stretched canvases, painted over white, and waiting for something of more importance to be created on them. Just before, during, and after his illness, Nick had made excuses not to work, with an eagerness that
suggested he had been looking for the illness all his working life. He had used the word ‘stamina’ a great deal. “It’s very hard for a painter,” he had said “One hasn’t always the stamina. Writers can spin it out of themselves, like spiders; and composers… well, it’s all there in the air already; they can simply snatch at what they want. Yes, I think that’s probably the easiest job of all.” He would begin to whistle. He had few tunes, even if the air around him
was
full of them. For some reason, he would always begin with the
Internationale,
which then drifted quite naturally into
God Bless the Prince of Wales.