Letters From an Unknown Woman (38 page)

The revelations concerning Mrs Head took her several weeks to digest, during which time she could barely put her mind to the question of
Letters To Her Husband
— not least because it appeared that somewhere on the Kent marshes a retired major was hoarding a stash of her own mother’s letters in a similar vein. Mrs Head had been writing letters of that kind even into the years of her infirmity, an idea that Tory found very hard to stomach. In fact, she felt physically sick if she dwelt on the thought for too long. She couldn’t help but linger on the observation made by Major Brandish:
you have only become a proper woman since the day you ate Mr Dando
.

It should be written on my tombstone, thought Tory. Then the feeling of sickness, which she realized had lingered somewhere at the back of her stomach ever since that day, went.

*

The first time she decided to deprive Donald Pace of food was on the occasion of their traditional Sunday lunch. In fact, this meal had more or less disappeared from the weekly routine of the house until that particular day, and as such was staged as a conscious revival of that special tradition. She had also invited the young men she recognized to be the girls’ suitors, dapper young chaps in drainpipe trousers, who had begun calling at the house every other evening to take them to dances. Tory didn’t know what young people did these days, or where they went. She hadn’t ventured into a ballroom for twenty years, and the dance halls now were giant palaces lit with gay, coloured lights, from which frighteningly rhythmic sounds came. And the girls did look like princesses: for the first time she could even find little Albertina, with her bulging eyes, beautiful. Those frocks they wore, with the sharp busts. The elbow gloves in salmon-coloured satin. They were just like characters from a fairy story, Tory thought. It was not a comforting notion. The conscious emulation of a fictional world seemed, to Tory, a very shallow enterprise. They would be travelling in a coach shaped like a scallop shell and pulled by a team of white dolphins, if they had their way. The house was often clammy with scent and powder, and the two girls elbowing each other out of the way of the passageway mirror, which was the only decent mirror in the house, applying lipstick to their pinched mouths.

Although the young men seemed fine, Tory was not quite sure she approved of the girls having regular boyfriends at such a young age. Albertina was only just out of school, after all, but times seemed to be changing, and girls seemed to be growing up faster than ever before.

For the Sunday lunch, furniture had to be specially shipped in, the dining-table being moved to the sitting room and a smaller table borrowed from Mrs Wilson next door, then added to the end of the table, along with extra chairs. The exceptionally long surface extended diagonally from one corner to the other.

The young men sat at the table with too much familiarity and self-assurance for Tory’s liking, although she tried not to show it. They had the loud, unwarranted confidence that distinguished their generation from all the preceding ones. Too young to have fought in the war, they seemed to have dismissed it already as an historical event, of no lasting importance. Though she was quite sure that both men were hard workers, they seemed also to take it alarmingly for granted that work was available and always would be. Paulette’s boyfriend was a baker with big ideas, and dreamt of being a millionaire bread manufacturer (as he liked to call it). The future of bread was in mass production, he believed. The days of rising before dawn to prove the dough and face the torture of the red ovens would soon be over. Loaves in the future would be made in huge factories, ready sliced, ready wrapped, for distribution nationwide. He intended, one day, to own one of those factories

Albertina’s boyfriend was working his way up through the building trade.

‘Houses for all, Mrs Pace,’ he said. ‘The government is building ten new towns and more are planned. With any luck there’ll be a house for every family in the country by 1960.’

‘I could never understand why they were so determined to build houses after the war,’ said Tory. ‘Surely the population has decreased drastically as a result of the fighting.’

‘But what about all the houses destroyed in the Blitz?’

‘Well, you’d think it would probably match the number of lives lost, and be in proportion, at least.’

‘That’s very silly, Mother,’ said Paulette. ‘Everyone knows there aren’t enough homes.’

‘Well, I don’t see hordes of homeless refugees drifting past my windows. Everyone seems to live somewhere, just as they always have.’

‘But maybe in overcrowded conditions,’ said the housebuilder, then hesitated, for fear that he had inadvertently insulted his host’s household. He tried to make up for it by belittling his own background. ‘We lived twelve to a room at one time …’

It suddenly occurred to Tory that the housebuilder was too old for Albertina. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘after all, how much space do you really need? And where on earth are they going to fit all these new town? What I say is, just stop building so many blooming houses, and just squeeze everyone in where they can.’

‘And stop having babies,’ added Donald, then, looking at the young sweethearts, ‘well, for a few years anyway.’

‘We’re set for a population explosion, Mrs Pace. Haven’t you noticed all the prams?’

‘Oh, I’ve noticed them all right.’

‘Mother, are we going to actually get anything to eat?’

‘Why, of course.’

A joint of pork had been roasting in the oven all morning.

‘Well now,’ Tory said, ‘which one of you two fine young men would like to carve?’

There was a moment of hushed embarrassment as the two young men glanced at Donald, as if unsure of whether they were permitted to take the head of the house’s role in such a way.

‘It’s no good looking at me,’ he said. ‘I could never stand the sight of blood.’

‘Mr Pace is excused carving duties on health grounds,’ said Tory.

The baker, to everyone’s surprise, deferred to the builder, and so it was he who accompanied Tory to the kitchen.

‘Shouldn’t I carve at the table?’

But Tory had everything carefully planned. The meat was to be carved up and everything served in advance, including vegetables and gravy, and the plates taken in and served individually. By this means Tory was able to strictly control the distribution of food during the meal. Before long, everyone had a roast dinner before them, except Donald, who had a plate on which was an upturned stainless-steel dish – an improvised serving lid.

‘What’s all this?’ said Donald, lifting the dish to reveal a pointlessly empty plate. Empty but for one thing: a torpedo-shaped pellet of a shiny deep-reddish-brown colour.

‘The food of the future,’ said Tory, in a half-singing voice.

Donald bent down to look closely at the pellet. Then, sitting back, he flicked it off his plate with his finger and thumb, in the same way that a child flicks a marble, and said, ‘Well, you can bring me the food of today.’

The pellet had landed close to Branson’s plate, and he was about to pick it up to look at, before Tory, who had not yet sat down to her own meal, placed it carefully back on Donald’s plate. It chinked against the china. ‘This is very special food, for a very special man …’ She picked up Donald’s cutlery and put it in his hands, ‘You can even eat it with a knife and fork. You know how to use a knife and fork, don’t you?’

As if realizing for the first time that his wife was being serious, and sensing danger, he said, more cautiously, ‘What’s going on?’

‘These pellets contain all the nutritional value of a full roast dinner – not just protein but all the vitamins and minerals as well.’ Tory said this as she took her seat at the opposite end of the table to Donald.

‘Really?’ said the baker, who seemed genuinely interested. and peeved that he hadn’t been given one. ‘You mean in the future there won’t be any need for all of this …’ He waved his knife vaguely at the loaded plates around the table.

‘No, not at all. No more carrying heavy shopping bags of food, no more peeling potatoes or shelling peas, no more trips to the butcher’s shop, no more cutting up bloody beef …’

‘That’s incredible.’ The baker was clearly preparing to say something like, Can’t we all have one and be done with proper food? But attention was drawn towards Donald, who had caught Albertina’s eye and had said, in more or less an undertone, ‘Be an angel, sweetheart, and go out to the kitchen and get me some grub. Your mother seems to have flipped her lid.’

Albertina obediently began to leave her seat.

‘Where are you going, Albertina?’ Tory voice had acquired a new edge, a sort of sawing sound, sharp and abrasive. No one had ever heard it before.

In contrast Albertina’s voice seemed to have reverted to her childish piping, as she tried to explain.

‘Sit down, Albertina,’ Tory said, with that unsettlingly authoritative tone still in her voice. Having made to sit down, Albertina decided to try to continue her errand, mumbling that her mother was being silly.

‘I said sit down!’ Tory banged her palm on the table, making everyone, apart from Donald, visibly jump. She noticed Paulette glance at her boyfriend then roll her eyes upwards, as if to suggest that this was a regular occurrence, one of Mummy’s little scenes that they had to put up with.

‘No one is leaving this table until they have eaten their food.’

‘What food?’ said Donald, with a derisive chuckle.

‘I don’t mind swapping with Mr Pace,’ said the baker, nudging his plate towards Donald’s.

‘What I don’t understand,’ said the builder, ‘is if these little pills are supposed to replace shopping and cooking, what are our wives going to spend their time doing?’ He gave Albertina an endearing glance.

‘You keep your food,’ said Donald to the baker, in a comradely way, as if they were both suffering at the hands of his wife’s foolishness. ‘Tory, will you get me something to eat, or do you want me to limp all the way to the bloody kitchen on my bad leg?’

‘You’ve always kept your appetite, haven’t you?’ she said.

‘Even when you came back from the war all shell-shocked and simple, you could still stuff your face until it was running down your chin.’

‘At least you won’t have to blow on it to cool it down,’ said the baker, who didn’t seem to have heard his hostess speak. And it seemed, as Tory stood up and walked around the table towards her husband, that the joke was now over, and that she was going to take away that silly little pill and bring him his real dinner. Nothing was said. Donald looked at his wife with a resigned expression on his face that said,
All right, you’ve got me, you’ve had your fun, you’ve made your point, now let’s get back to normal
. But that was not what happened. Instead of taking Donald’s plate, Tory took hold of Donald’s head, the head that, for several years now, she had balmed with a soothing lotion to ease the scars that he himself had inflicted in a moment of madness, and yanked it back.

‘You want some help, Donald, you want me to feed you?’

She had pinched his nose so that his mouth gaped. His arms came up, waving pathetically in their attempts to pull his wife’s hands off, but he was held in such a way that there seemed to be nothing he could hold on to. Others at the table gasped and began to stand up, not sure what to do. With a deft movement Tory took the pill and put it into her husband’s throat, but in a particularly rough way, jabbing, almost stabbing it into his gullet, then vigorously rubbing his pitifully exposed neck.

‘You want some water?’

She picked up the full glass and splashed it in, so that half went into his mouth, half down his shirtfront. Then she released his head, which catapulted forward so that Donald banged his forehead on the empty plate. He was making no sound but for a quiet gasping noise. Tory began to return to her seat.

‘Are you all right, Dad? said Albertina, as shocked as everyone else by what had just happened. Donald was now writhing around in his chair, his mouth wide open, as though trying to vomit, but failing.

‘He doesn’t look too good,’ said the baker. ‘I think he’s choking.’

‘Your dinner is getting cold,’ said Tory. ‘All of you, eat up before it gets cold.’

‘Daddy, are you choking?’ said Paulette.

Donald was hooking fingers into his gaping mouth, trying to pull out the blockage. As he bent forward, brown liquid poured from his nostrils. The baker stood up, began hitting him in the back.

‘I’m choking,’ said Donald, with a voice that lacked any human quality, but which sounded like a dog growling. Suddenly he leant back hard in his seat so that it tipped over and he was on his back on the floor, his face a deep red, his mouth still gaping.

‘Get him on his side,’ said the builder. ‘Try and shake it out of him.’ The room had transformed: the girls had stood up and were uncertain of what to do: the men were down on the ground with their host, shaking him like a dummy. Eventually the blockage was expelled, like a champagne cork, nearly hitting the ceiling, and Donald breathed in with a rush of suction so desperate it felt as though the whole room would enter his mouth.

*

Tory never fed Donald again. Any meals she prepared for the family were carefully measured out so that there was not enough for Donald, even if he went himself to the pot or the pan. He could get by, making himself toast, opening tins, but with his leg, it was difficult. The girls helped him, despite their mother’s insistence that they should not, and Branson sometimes offered his father food from his own plate. It led to terrific rows, not just between Donald and Tory but between Tory and her daughters, who couldn’t see the point of excluding their father from every meal, of reducing him to eating bread and butter while they ate stews and pies. They would have gone as far as cooking a full meal for their father, but they didn’t dare cross the kitchen threshold while their mother was in residence.

No one asked why Tory had taken this peculiar stance. While none of the children was the least bit fond of their father, they had a certain amount of respect for him, Branson especially, and didn’t think that any marital dispute warranted what seemed to be on Tory’s part a systematic attempt to starve her husband out of the house.