Casting Off (64 page)

‘She is the most extraordinary girl! He could come down with Nannie to Hatton for the summer. Wouldn’t that be a good plan? And you, of course, darling, whenever you feel like it.’ She dipped a strawberry into some sugar and then some cream and held it out to him. They were having tea in the small, sunny back garden.

‘Of course
you
will have to divorce
her.’

‘Yes. She has agreed to that.’

‘And she will go back to her mother?’

‘No. She’s going to live in the flat that belonged to her cousin – the one who’s getting married next week.’

‘To poor Lettie Fakenham’s son? The plain one?’

‘That’s it.’

‘I haven’t heard of her since I wrote when her elder boy was killed. Poor lady, she was absolutely devastated. To be marooned in that monstrous house with the plain son and that husband who was a
howling
bore, and she was really rather glamorous – when she was young, at any rate. But, Mikey darling, back to you. What are you going to do about money? Is she being very greedy? She was very haughty and extravagant when you were in New York.’

‘I know she was. But an awful lot of that was presents for everyone, and she’d never had a chance to buy clothes – I think all shops and no coupons went to her head. Anyway,’ he added, ‘I told her she could.’

‘But what happens now?’

‘She doesn’t expect me to keep her. She asked for very little, really.’

‘I suppose she has some new lover.’

‘No, I don’t think so. She says not and I believe her. You mustn’t be too hard on her, Mummy. For Sebastian’s sake, if for nothing else.’

‘You’re quite right. I mustn’t be. You’re a much nicer character than I am. I have something of the tigress in me.’

This made her laugh. ‘Well, my darling,’ she said, when he was leaving, ‘we must look on the bright side. You have the most adorable son, my grandson. I think the most difficult thing I have ever had to face was the possibility that you might not. I am a happy woman. And grandmother.’

‘What sort of news?’

‘Like most news, I suppose, it depends upon how you look at it.’

‘How do you feel?’ she asked, after he had told her.

‘I don’t know. In some ways a kind of relief. Of course, a feeling of being a failure as well.’

They had dined in Rowena’s house, and were still in the dining room. The windows were open, but there was not a breath of moving air; the flames of the candles on the table were motionless and upright. Between them lay a bowl of cream and the palest pink roses voluptuously near their end. The maid had brought the coffee tray and been dismissed for the night. She leaned towards him and he saw her breasts move charmingly in the low-cut dress.

‘I’m so sorry, darling Mikey. It must have been an awful time for you. For her as well.’

‘Yes. I suppose it must.’ He had not really thought about how Louise felt about it: she was doing the leaving, so he hadn’t felt the need to consider what had brought her to it.

‘What about the child?’

‘She’s leaving him with me. My mother is going to have him down at Hatton for the summer.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m glad I’ve told you.’

‘Tell me as much as you want to.’

So he did. He told her how Louise had sprung it on him that morning, how he had gone to his studio but found himself unable to work, how he had called in on his mother and how good she had been about it, and how glad he had been to find, when he telephoned Rowena, that she was free that evening.

‘It must have been a shock. I mean, even if one is half expecting something it’s a shock when it happens,’ she said.

She had got up from the table once while he had been telling her, but only to get the brandy which she poured for them.

‘When is she going?’

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I was wondering . . . I mean, the thought of going back there for a ghastly last night, I don’t feel I can face it.’

Her face lit up. ‘Darling Mikey! You don’t have to beat about the bush. You would be very, very welcome.’

If anyone had told him two years ago that he’d find work the easiest part of his life and almost everything else about it the most difficult, he wouldn’t have believed them.

He was on his laborious journey back to Tufnell Park from the Wharf, which was near Tower Bridge, at the end of an arduous week. The weather had been alternately stifling and stormy and whatever he wore at work got soaked with sweat. Bernie had said she was sick of washing his shirts and he’d taken to doing them himself. The trouble was, he thought, that whenever he gave way to her about something, she thought of something else. He had the uncomfortable feeling that she was losing respect for him, although she still liked him in bed. That had become, or perhaps it always had been, their best time: when she was demanding without being rancorous – she was even affectionate. But he was beginning to find, or to notice, that the nights were taking a toll. She wanted so much of it, and his saying that he was tired only provoked her into arousing him yet again. She was too jolly good at that. But often now he woke tired, and unless he nipped out of bed pretty fast she would be awake wanting him to do it to her one more time. This had sometimes made him late for work, and more often meant that he left without any breakfast. He had to admit that she was definitely not domesticated. She kept the bathroom clean, though cluttered with make-up, but the rest of the flat was a mess. She loathed cooking, although in Arizona she had boasted of all kinds of American dishes that she could make. Here, her excuse was that she couldn’t get any of the ingredients. She was such a rotten housekeeper that he had taken to doing the shopping on Saturday mornings.

And she was absolutely hopeless about money. Dad had bailed him out once to pay the main bills, and Mum had also come up with the odd fiver, but he felt wretched about asking them. He
had
put the rent and a small amount in a separate account which meant, of course, that he had less to give Bernie. She couldn’t understand it. ‘You told me your parents were rich,’ she said. ‘You went on and on about having two houses, and servants, and that means rich-rich, and I come over and you land me in a dump like this!’ He didn’t think he’d gone on about these things. It was only when she questioned him – cross-examined was more like it – about his family and home that he’d told her anything. He was sick of apologizing for the flat, for the lack of money to go dancing or to night-clubs – in taxis, for God’s sake, since she was always wearing shoes in which she said she couldn’t walk a step although she could
dance
for
hours
in them. She expected to go to the hairdresser every week, in the West End where, of course, they were more expensive, and she was always buying make-up, and complaining about not being able to buy clothes. ‘You’ve got tons of clothes!’ he had exclaimed.

‘I’ve worn all of them. In America, we don’t
keep
clothes, like a lot of old antiques, we throw them out and get new ones.’ She went to the cinema a lot on her own because she said she was bored with nothing to do all day. This cost money as well. He’d been reduced to pawning – well, selling really, because he was never able to redeem them – his gold cuff-links that Dad had given him when he was joining up, and a set of fish knives that the Duchy had given him for his wedding present, and several other portable things like that. He had begun to dread getting back to the flat to find her sulking, sometimes not even dressed, with nothing to eat for dinner and having to have an argument about not going out to a restaurant and then having to go out and buy fish and chips.

Tonight was a Friday and a hot uninviting weekend lay ahead. The flat was awful in hot weather: it faced south and some of the windows didn’t even open. He’d try to persuade her to go to Hampstead Heath with him, and they could take a picnic. She liked lying in the sun and he would be able to go to sleep because she couldn’t expect to be made love to with all the people about.

He got off his last bus in Holloway Road and tramped up Tufnell Park Road to the street off it where they lived on the top floor of a tall, narrow house. He let himself in at the front door – there was always a smell of cat on the stairs and sometimes of cooking: there were four flats in the building – and climbed to the top and his own front door. How exciting that had been at first! Being married, having a home of his own . . .

The flat was quiet. Usually she had the radio on.

‘Bernie! I’m back!’

There was no answer. She was not in the sitting room, which opened on to the kitchenette, which meant that she must be in either the bedroom or the tiny bathroom. But she wasn’t in either of them. It was unlike her to be out, unless she’d gone to a later show at the cinema than usual.

Then he noticed that the bedroom wardrobe – with its doors open – was empty of her clothes. The bed was unmade, but on the pillow, pinned with a safety pin, was a piece of paper. He pulled it from the pin and read it.

I’m off. I can’t stand it any longer. I didn’t want to tell you this morning not to hurt your feelings. I called Ma weeks ago to send me some money to go home. It came yesterday. I’m sure this is best for both of us. Hope you will understand and no hard feelings. Bernie.

He read it twice trying to take it in. She’d gone? She’d
gone
. Just like that! She must have known she was going ever since she’d called her mother, whom she always claimed to have disliked, but she hadn’t said a word to him. He had the curious sensation of a surge of emotions without having the least idea what they were. She’d gone, without the slightest warning. Which meant in a way that she had lied to him, because only last night they had discussed what she would wear to his cousin Polly’s wedding (she liked him to take an interest in her clothes), but all the time she must have known that she would not be going to it. They were
married
, and she’d left him with just a
note
! Bloody awful cheek! He knew what he was feeling now. He was angry – at being made such a fool of, at her caring so little for him that she hadn’t been prepared to do
anything
to make the marriage work. She
was
a liar. She’d lied to him about her age – when they’d left America he saw her passport and she was more than ten years older than she’d said she was. He’d forgiven her for that because she’d been so pathetic about it.

He was wandering about the flat now, with the piece of paper screwed up in his hand. The kitchen sink was full of dirty cups and the remains of their supper from the night before. Her cup had a big lipstick mark on it. He picked it up and hurled it across the room where it hit the top of the gas stove and shattered. She’d never cared for him – he saw it now. Except for sex, she’d had no use for him. Obviously she’d thought she was on to a good thing in marrying him: she’d thought she’d have a big house and servants and any amount of money. Nothing he’d said to her about that had sunk in. She’d been all lovey-dovey with him, saying she’d go to the ends of the
earth
for him – and she hadn’t even
tried
to survive Tufnell Park. Then he had to sit down on the chair that had no springs because he found he was crying.

The rest of the evening was awful. He longed for someone to talk to – but the telephone had been cut off because he couldn’t pay the bill. He was hungry and tired and thirsty and there was nothing (of course!) in the flat to eat. He went wearily out to a pub and had a pint of bitter, but he couldn’t bear the other people talking and drinking and smoking and laughing as though nothing whatever had happened. He went to the fish-and-chip shop and got himself some food to take back to the flat. But the fish, deeply encased in greasy batter, nauseated him. He ate some of the chips, and then he went and lay on top of the unmade bed. It smelled of
them
, and this made him miserable. He got up and cleaned up the kitchen and some of the sitting room until he was so tired that he didn’t even care what the bed was like, fell upon it still clothed and passed out.

He woke up very late and remembered that he was alone. He had some faint stirrings of relief, but he banished them. He was an abandoned husband – relief was not in order. He got up and had a bath and shave, which made him feel much better. Then, just as he realized that he’d have to go out before breakfast because there wasn’t any and even the remains of the milk was off, the doorbell rang. They must have rung the wrong bell, he thought. Nobody had ever come to visit them. He went down to answer it.