Getting It Right (42 page)

There was another aspect to her coming home that he thought about in the train the whole way to London, which was that her return put paid to Jenny’s cultural visits. There was no
way
that he was going to be able to persuade his mother that having a girl in his bedroom to listen to records was because they wanted to listen to records . . . She would take an instant
dislike to whoever he invited upstairs. Poor Jenny wouldn’t stand a chance. Even if he was
engaged
to somebody, she wouldn’t countenance it. If he
did
try it, she
would probably keep coming up with cups of tea, but really to see how they were getting on. If she happened to come up when they weren’t actually listening to records, were perhaps simply
talking, she would instantly believe the worst. And if she found out that Jenny had had an illegitimate child – well, he’d never hear the end of it. The possibilities seemed many,
likely and awful. This led him to experimenting with the idea of moving out; getting a place of his own: ‘Thought I’d move out – get myself some sort of flat,’ he said to
himself – as though he was telling someone about it. It sounded all right. It
sounded
all right, but what would it be like actually to do? He hadn’t got enough money to buy
anywhere; he’d have to get a mortgage. Would that mean that he was laying cork tiles every night and having five-year plans like Peter and Hazel? No, it bloody well wouldn’t. All he
wanted was one room – quite simple – and a bathroom – and, he supposed, somewhere to cook: Harry might have ideas about where to look for that – supposing that he should
ever want such a thing. Anyway, he’d only been casually wondering about it: it wasn’t the kind of thing he would decide in a hurry.

Walking from the tube to work, he thought about Joan. Last night, he’d considered writing to her, but almost immediately had felt defeated about what to say. Better to ring her and sort of
see how things were. An irrepressible part of him began to wonder whether things would be at all as they were last time, but he squashed that part as selfish, unpleasant, arrogant, shameful and
heartless, and altogether like
him.
Even saying he was surprised at himself didn’t carry conviction but, once having said it, he was well away.

By the time he reached the salon, the Courts had had a field day with Gavin Lamb, who had been tried, and found wanting or guilty about practically everything. The worst thing about him was his
shallowness: the moment something wasn’t in front of his nose, he stopped caring about it. Take Minnie, for instance. He’d been in a fair old state about her last night, and look at him
now! A clear case of out of sight, out of mind! And his only reaction to his mother’s news had been to worry about not having the house to himself. It hadn’t occurred to him to send a
wreath for Timmie.
She’d
had to think of that: even to send a wreath on his own seemed beyond him. And yet, when he’d heard about Timmie, he had felt deeply sad – or so
it had seemed at the time. And Joan: sacrilegious to be thinking about sex when she’d just been left by the person she adored. (Here there was a vestige of stuttering defence: she
had
, after all, spent the night with him while she was in love with someone else. He didn’t understand why – but the fact remained that she had done so.) The summing up was
that he simply didn’t seem to have enough concern to go round – even for the sort of ordinary life
he
led. He wished a few things would happen that he didn’t have to care
about: Mr Adrian breaking a leg, for instance – both legs . . . By the time he was walking up the stairs to the salon, Mr Adrian had been in a really quite serious accident: broken his jaw
(so he couldn’t speak), and got two black eyes, a broken nose and a fractured right arm as well as his legs. He was going to recover, but it was going to take a very, very long time, and
suffering would radically change his nasty nature into something quite different – humility and gratitude would be to the fore. ‘I can’t thank you all enough for the loyal way in
which you have kept my business going, but the least I can do is to make all four of you partners . . .’

‘Better wipe that smile off your face – the boiler went out in the night, the water’s stone cold and his Lordship’s on the warpath.’ Iris made a small
throat-cutting gesture.

Daphne said: ‘He’s sending the juniors down to the basement to get buckets of hot water off the caretaker.’

Just then, the salon door was kicked open and Jenny staggered in with two brimming buckets. Gavin took one look at her: her arms – like little sticks – looked as though they would
break; she was breathless and she looked more than usually like a disgruntled owl.

He relieved her of the buckets; took them over to the basins, and then – his heart hammering with rage – went to beard Mr Adrian.

He found him with his feet up in his cubicle, telephoning on his private line, ‘. . . and finally, at fifty to one, twenty each way on Nepalese Boy,’ he was saying.

‘And what can I do for you?’ he said when he had replaced the receiver. His tone implied that there couldn’t be anything.

‘I understand that the boiler went out.’

‘You understand correctly.’

‘Well, if water has to be carried up from the basement – we should be doing it – not the juniors. It’s too much for them.’

‘And who is we?’

‘The men. Me, Peter, Hugo – and you.’

There was – what was meant to be, Gavin recognized – a dangerous and frightening silence. But he was too angry, fed up, to be frightened.

‘Are you suggesting that these young people are utterly unable to do any physical work at
all
? Are you suggesting that someone with a heart like mine should jeopardize it, solely
because young people whom I am
paying
to train should not soil their hands with any menial job whatsoever?

Is
that
your case?’

‘I’m just saying that I don’t think young girls should be made to carry weights like that when there are people who are physically stronger and perfectly able to do it.
That’s all. And I’m also saying that I won’t have
my
junior made to do it. That’s final.’

And he swept out before Mr Adrian could retaliate.

He heard Mr Adrian calling him back, but luckily for him Lady Blackwater had come in and Daphne was loyally claiming his attention at the desk. This time, though, she really wanted him.

‘A friend, calling you,’ she said.

It was Harry. ‘You wanted Joan’s telephone number. Got something to write with?’

Daphne gave him a pen and he wrote it down.

‘Thanks, Harry. No more for now.’

Jenny was washing Lady Blackwater, so he went to Peter and said what he thought about the buckets. Peter agreed, but said that Hugo had varicose veins and he didn’t think carrying heavy
buckets would do them much good. ‘The water should be hot in about an hour and a half: or hot enough. Iris needs water too, for washing the tints off,’ he added. ‘So I’ll do
Hugo’s water, if you’ll do Iris’s.’

Mandy came through the door with steaming buckets. She was flushed, and said that the caretaker was a dirty old man and he’d pinched her bottom and she didn’t fancy going down there
again.

‘Isn’t Sharon in yet?’ she said. ‘Trust her to get out of anything.’

‘You won’t have to do any more. Take a bucket through to Iris – she’s been asking for you.’

Gavin set Lady Blackwater, with Jenny handing him the rollers and pins. Lady Blackwater said how tiresome it must be for them having no hot water, and wasn’t it interesting how one took
things for granted until one was without them, but that she supposed that that was simply human nature, something that she, personally, had never got to the bottom of . . .

Gavin, glancing in the mirror as he finished the last roller, saw that Jenny was looking at him. When she caught his eye, she grinned faintly and rolled her eyes. The message was something like,
‘Cor! How boring!’ and her expression so quickly reassumed its look of choirboy innocence that he wanted to laugh.

‘A net on Lady Blackwater, and put her under the dryer,’ he said, and went to collect a couple of empty buckets.

It was a hard morning – Thursdays were usually busy, and the water wasn’t hot enough to use before noon. Gavin tried ringing Joan in his – rather late – coffee break, but
there was no reply.

He tried again in his lunch hour and got what he presumed was one of the Filipinos, as a voice answered and said: ‘Madam out – no answer.’

‘Is she in this evening?’

‘Madam
en
gaged this evening – no answer.’

‘Thank you.’ He rang off. Afterwards he thought it had been silly of him not to leave his name; next time he rang, he would.

At some point in the afternoon, Jenny said: ‘I’ve read that book.’ She paused expectantly.

‘Did you like it?’

‘I loved it! It was just what I’d like Andrew to have.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You know: a secret garden that he could do wonderful things in. I thought it was going to be sad – about Colin, you know, but it wasn’t. If you ask me, they were very silly
about him in the first place. I loved Dickon best. I had a bacon sandwich for supper last night – just like him . . . It was a
lovely
book. As soon as Andrew’s old enough,
I’m going to get a copy and read it to him.’ She paused again – expectantly. And when he didn’t immediately say something she said: ‘When will you give me another
one?’

‘Tonight, if you like,’ he found himself saying. ‘I’ll play you some Mozart and find you another book. You could come back with me, if you like. We’d have more time
that way.’

‘I’d have to see whether my mum could put Andrew to bed. If she’d mind, and if she thinks he’d mind.’

She rang from the station after work and he stood outside the box. After a minute, she opened the door and said: ‘She thinks it’d be all right. She doesn’t mind at all, but she
thinks she’d better have your telephone number in case Andrew starts to kick up.’

It was rather enjoyable travelling on the tube with a girl. They had to stand the first bit and he put her in a corner and stood in front of her so that she didn’t get bashed by other
people. Then when they got seats – opposite each other – he played the game of pretending that he didn’t know Jenny, that she was simply a girl sitting opposite him. He decided to
look at her quite dispassionately, and see whether, if he didn’t know her, he would think she was an interesting girl to know. This wasn’t as easy as it would have been if he
hadn’t
known her, because she kept meeting his eye, and when she did gave him one of her little grins before she resolutely read the advertisements above his head.

He started with her hair. It looked more like curly and silky fur than hair. It was the colour of darkish honey, and he thought might be much improved by adding some red highlights – Iris
would do it beautifully. He tried to imagine it longer because, cut like that, her hair and her round specs dominated her appearance – had been the reasons why ages ago he had dubbed her a
cross between an owl and a young choirboy and thought no more of it. He looked at the rest of her face: she certainly had a marvellous complexion – fine and fresh, she wore no make-up and
there was not a blemish in sight – her best feature, really; the only other noticeable thing about her was her mouth, which turned up at the corners when she smiled – which she was
doing again to him – only this time he realized that she smiled because she was excited – she was looking forward to her evening. There was something childlike in her lack of
concealment about this that touched him: the reason why he’d added the choirboy to the owl; she was a very, if not completely,
un
sexy person who happened to be a girl. Ever since
he’d reassured her that he wasn’t the dread kind of person she had worried about his possibly being, she had seemed utterly trusting: she must like him, if she could trust him as much
and as easily as that. The thoughts he had had about her after the first evening dimly recurred – enough to make him feel uncomfortable, but after all he had only
thought
them
– had no intentions: there was no law about what you thought about anyone, and in a way they had been pretty general ideas and not
particularly
connected with Jenny. He wondered
whether she had found anything more out about her mother – to change the subject.

He asked her this as they were walking from the station.

‘I haven’t said anything to her. But he’s gone: went yesterday evening and she didn’t mention it, so I think I was imagining things.’ She sounded almost carefree
about it.

When they got home – having bought some bananas and some cream to have after Mrs Lamb’s pies – he warned her that the kitchen would be in a bit of a mess. ‘That’s
something I
can
do,’ she said. ‘I’m always clearing up after Andrew: he can make a room look as though he’s been in it for
weeks
in about half an
hour.’

In the narrow, stuffy little hall, she said: ‘Would you mind if I used your phone? I’d just like to make sure that Andrew has settled down all right.’

Of course he didn’t mind. While she was doing it, he got two pies out of the freezer, put them in the oven and started clearing the table. He felt light-hearted.

She helped him do the washing-up, and then they tried the remains of the wine from Tuesday. It was not bad, but not so good as it had been: still, there wasn’t anything else to drink and
they agreed that it was nice to have a drink.

‘It’s lovely to go out, really,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been out since Andrew. I mean of course I go to the shops and things, and once I went to the pictures on a
Saturday afternoon, but I didn’t enjoy it by myself, and my mum couldn’t come because of Andrew.’

‘You’ve given up a lot for him, haven’t you?’

‘Well, he has to be looked after, doesn’t he? And I’ve had ever such a lot from
him.
I look at him sometimes and I think: “You wouldn’t be here, my boy, if
it wasn’t for me,” and I feel so proud I want to laugh and find someone to tell.’