Joy and Josephine (24 page)

She walked very slowly up the hill. Jo tried to urge her on. ‘We’ll be late, Mum, and they’ll go off in the car without us. They said not to be late. Oh Mum, do buck up; you are a worry to me.’ She pulled at her arm.

‘Let me alone, dearie. I’m better on my own.’ Jo kept running ahead and then running back, like a dog making rings round a too staid master. Mr Abinger, who had called in at the Black Boy, overtook them before they had reached Clarence Lodge. He too tried to hustle his wife, not because he wanted to get to the golf club, but because he wanted his lunch. Between them, they had her in a sweltering flurry by the time they reached the boarding house. Maisie was pounding the gong, and they would not let Mrs Abinger go upstairs for a wash and a tidy. She had to go into the dining-room fumbling with her hairpins and imagined that Miss Lorrimer, with her cool Eton crop and piqué collar was wondering what Clarence Lodge was coming to when people came to meals in such a state.

Mrs Abinger could hardly eat any lunch, which was curried
mutton and suet hat on one of the hottest days in August. Josephine could always eat, however excited she was. What with the golf match and Billy, she could have sung aloud at the fullness of life. She was finished long before her father, who could not stop eating cheese and biscuits. Every time she thought that he was finished at last, the knobbly hand would reach out again for ‘just one more of those square fellows’.

Really, thought Mrs Abinger, you could have fried an egg on the back seat of the Morris to-day. If she had not been glad to sit down after being run down the hill by Jo, she would have jumped up again as the leather burned through her black silk dress to her legs and stuck to them. It made her sweat simply to see Mr Gray in his thick plus fours and the green socks with tabs below the knee. He was in tremendous form, and sang out-of-date dance tunes all the way to the Club until she thought her head would split open. George was wearing the cinnamon sports jacket which he had been exhilarated into buying at the local outfitters and would not admit was a mistake. Mrs Gray was wearing lemon yellow, with a matching bandeau worn low on the forehead like Lenglen. Pauline was wearing her school gingham, which Mrs Abinger thought too skimpy for a girl with her overdeveloped figure. The same dress looked quite different on Jo, who would always be slight, Mrs Abinger knew, because of her Nerves.

It was a wonder she had not been brought down with one of her Heads long ago in this weather. By the time they arrived, Mrs Abinger’s own head felt quite stupid, and she stumbled as she followed them out to the course. Without Mrs Gray’s hand on her arm, she would have staggered right on to the first tee, where Mr Gray was bending and stretching his knees like a policeman, and practising his swing, shading his eyes to gaze after an imaginary ball, much farther than he could possibly have hit it.

Mrs Gray now took it upon herself to shepherd Mrs Abinger about and instruct her in the principles of the game. Mrs Abinger would rather have been left alone without knowing what it was all about, but she said: ‘Fancy!’ and ‘Well I never’, because
it was kind of Mrs Gray to take trouble, and saved her thinking of conversation.

Pauline was caddying for her father, anticipating each club, very much the dutiful daughter, as she handed it to him handle first, like a knife, or removed her shadow, or stood by the flag when he was on the edge of the green as if she knew he could sink a twelve yards’ putt. Sometimes he could. He was playing well, with a solemn face and a tread that dented the turf so heavily that it did not spring up again until quite a while after he had passed.

Josephine’s association with the Grays had made her aware of the importance of golf. Although she was slightly bored, she followed along quite happily, chewing grass and thinking about Billy every time she glimpsed the sea through a dip in the cliffs.

Mr Abinger, watching critically from under the peak of his cap, had started by saying ‘Well played, sir!’ to show that he knew. Having said it once for an air shot and been glared at by Mr Gray’s opponent, he retired into the background and turned himself into a subversive element, criticizing the players audibly in terms of bowls.

‘Too much English,’ he grumbled as Mr Gray pulled a drive. ‘Centre your wood, sir.’

Mrs Abinger wished she could get to him to tell him to lower his voice, but it was all she could do to blunder along, trying to take in what Mrs Gray was telling her. It seemed to her that she had never walked so far in her life. Half-way round, she plucked up the courage to say she would like to go back and wait in the shade, but they would not let her. They said it was as far now to go back as to finish the course, and she would not find the way without obstructing the other players.

‘Jo can come with me then, and show me the way,’ she suggested.

‘Oh no, Mum,’ said Jo. ‘I want to see the match. You can’t go back now.’

‘Well, I’ll just sit here and rest a bit,’ Mrs Abinger said, and collapsed against the back of a bunker. ‘I’ll follow you on.’

‘You must get up, Mum,’ Jo insisted, looking round to see what other people were thinking of this stout dishevelled
woman, sprawling on the grass as if she would never get up again. ‘Everyone’s looking at you.’

Mrs Abinger felt too dizzy and exhausted to care what anyone thought of her. She only wanted to lay her head down somewhere in the cool. But Jo would not let her. She stood sternly in front of her, ordering her on.

‘You must come on; you’ll be hit if you stay there. And it’s just getting exciting. Don’t you want to see Mr Gray win?’ She tried to explain about all square at the turn. Where the child picked up all this knowledge was a mystery to Mrs Abinger, who neither could, nor wanted to understand.

They pulled her up, and she tottered on, trying to reckon how far there was to go. The flag on the clubhouse roof, a fluttering message of hope, advanced and receded in a haze, as Mr Abinger’s figure had done on the sands at the picnic. She began to hate Mr Gray for taking so long over every stroke. He shimmered before her eyes as he straddled on the tee, waggling his club behind the ball until she thought she would scream if he did not hit it. She could barely be polite to Mrs Gray, although she kept reminding herself that she must be, for Jo’s sake. She would lose Jo her friends, panting and perspiring like this, falling in and out of bunkers and needing two people to help her over a plank laid across a ditch.

The sun beat down remorselessly on the flat, treeless course. It must be miles round, and to think that people played golf for pleasure! George had more sense with his bowls. She thought with longing of the cool lawn in Avondale Park, with the seats in the shade and the unhurried old men in panama hats. She closed her eyes against the glare and the bowling green swam on her lids like a mirage.

Opening them, she looked round for George. She wanted his arm, but he had got tired of seeing other people do something he could not do himself, and wandered away. He had deserted her.

How she stuck it out, she never knew. She kept her eyes on the ground and concentrated on no more than putting one foot in front of the other. With each step, her feet seemed more difficult to lift. She felt like a clock, and her feet were the weights on the end of inadequate chains. Just when she had
decided she could not go another yard, even if it meant sitting down in her tracks and staying there until the birds came and covered her with leaves, she heard a sudden thin clatter of applause. Looking up, she saw that they were back in front of the clubhouse.

She had almost forgotten that she was following a competition. She had no idea who had won, but Jo was dancing beside her and saying: ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Mum?’ so it must be Mr Gray. Yes, there he was, trying to pass it off modestly, flanked by Mrs Gray and Pauline, smug-mouthed, as if they had known it all the time. There was his opponent, a round man like a tennis ball, in white trousers and a white shirt, being over-sporting, and trying to look as if he had not wanted to win.

There was George, sauntering out of the clubhouse as if he owned the place.

‘You do look rough, old girl,’ he said helpfully. ‘Never mind, there’s a good spread laid out. Bridge rolls and fancy cakes – ’

‘Don’t dear,’ she gasped. ‘I feel a little sick already.’

Then Jo had to come and say: ‘Mum, there’s éclairs! Come on, they’re all going in.’

‘Would you like to – er, wash?’ asked Mrs Gray.

Mrs Abinger shook her head. She could hardly speak, let alone get up from the bench on which she had cast herself, full in the sun, but she could get no farther.

Jo took her hand. ‘Come on, Mum.’

‘No, dear, I’ll just sit here for a bit.’

‘You won’t get any tea,’ said George. ‘What’s the matter with you? You’re behaving as if you were tiddly. What will Jo’s teetotal friends say? Come on. I know what these sporting folk are with their victuals.’ He pronounced it as it was spelt. ‘Jo and I won’t get any tea either if we don’t go in soon.’

That settled it. She must get up if it killed her. He took her other hand, and as they pulled, she made a great effort to rise, fell back on the edge of the bench, slipped to the ground, and lay there like a beached whale, with her black silk dress rucked up, her mouth askew and her eyes staring.

She could not close them. She could not move at all, yet she was perfectly conscious. That was the most terrible part; she
knew she was making a fool of herself, but she could do nothing about it. She could only lie there and see Jo screaming, and George wax-white and shrunken with fright, his clumsy hands hanging helplessly, and all the Grays come to stand in a line and stare at her as if she were a fish in an aquarium.

The Golf Club had not had such a sensation for years. Mrs Abinger’s attack was quickly over, but their discussion of it would go on for days, and perhaps be taken up again next year.

Something clicked, and she could move again, jerkily, although her eyes still would not stay shut against the throbbing glare. They flew open as she sat on the grass, propped against the bench like a doll. The young doctor with the salmon-pink holiday face, looking very unmedical in grey flannels and aer-tex shirt, said that she could be moved. He looked round to see who was to take her home.

George, whom shock had dumbed for a while, was voluble now from reaction, passing from group to group, theorizing about his wife’s health to people who were not listening. The Grays were backing away. They did not want to take Mrs Abinger home. They had not had their tea, and Mr Gray had not received his egg-cup sized replica of the championship trophy. In any case, they wanted no part in this crisis; it caught them out of their depth. Sure of themselves when all was humdrum, they were at a loss to offer help or even sympathy in an emergency. They could only stand and stare.

The young doctor took the Abingers home himself. Josephine cried in the car, and Mrs Abinger cried too, abandonedly, great tears rolling down her shaking cheeks. ‘Just an old nuisance,’ she kept moaning. ‘Just a burden to you all.’

‘Oh stop it, Ellie,’ George said, cross now in the backwash of his concern. ‘It’s over now. Don’t keep on.’

‘No, no,’ she sobbed. ‘Just a silly old fool – an old nuisance, I ought to be in my box.’

‘Oh come off it, Ma. Pull yourself together,’ the young doctor said over his shoulder. He treated her like one of the old dears in his out-patients’ clinic, because she was behaving like one. George did not like this. He did not like any doctors, and this one less than most.

At Clarence Lodge, Mrs Abinger created a minor scene, which brought guests to their doors and Maisie and cook from the kitchen. She realized on the stairs that George and Josephine had not had their tea, and refused to mount another step until she had seen them go off to the café for welsh rarebit.

‘All right, all right,’ said George, pushing her from behind. ‘We’ll get you to bed first.’

‘I’m all right,’ she argued. ‘You go off. I don’t need you. I
won’t
be a burden to you.’ She held back, and he laid his weight against her while the young doctor pulled from above, like furniture removers with a recalcitrant piano.

‘But you know you like welsh rarebit!’ she protested loudly all the way up.

‘Well really!’ murmured Miss Lorrimer, closing her bedroom door with a reproachful click as they passed.

They got her on to her bed and her eyes closed thankfully at last. George and Jo crept out of the room and Mrs Abinger lay there fully dressed, flat on her back with her toes turned up, mumbling herself into sleep, telling the pink-faced doctor over and over again: ‘You know you like welsh rarebit.’

There was no question about whether the landlady of Clarence Lodge catered for people who were going to be ill and want meals in their room. She did not. The young doctor said that Mrs Abinger was well enough to travel, and ought to go home and see her own doctor.

All the way home, Jo sat staring out of the window, as if she would never see England again. She knew she would never see Billy again. She had wanted to give Pauline a message for him, but the Grays had not enquired for Mrs Abinger, and Jo could not bring herself to seek them out. She had a feeling inside her that she would never see any of them again either.

She never did. Mrs Abinger’s doctor told her bluntly that if she did not give up most of her work in the shop, she would have a proper stroke – a serious one. He told George too, and scared him deliberately, realizing that Mrs Abinger had been called upon to do too much before, and might easily be again.

She was not allowed downstairs at first, and George was lost,
utterly lost. For something to do, he reopened the shop in a half-hearted way, but it did not take him long to discover that you could not gaily shut up a grocery and go off on holiday without paying for it when you came back. Stocks of everything were low. What margarine there was had turned to rancid oil in the case, and mice had eaten right through the old wire cheese cover and depredated a twenty-pound Cheddar. A beer bottle had blown its cork while they were away, and made a sticky, stinking morass in the corner.

He spent most of the first day going up and down stairs to ask Mrs Abinger where she had put things. It did not occur to him that she had been going up and down like this all her married life, and by the evening, he had an enormous grievance as well as a backache. The rapier-thin rasher knife had disappeared, and he had been hacking at a side of bacon with any weapon that came to hand. It hung now reproaching him like a mutilated corpse, as he revolved helplessly in the store-room with an order paper in his hand and a pencil behind his ear.