Out of the Blackout (16 page)

He turned towards her inquiringly. Simon had already noticed the dull gleam in Len's eye—not the gleam of an alcoholic, but the gleam of a person who likes getting something—anything—for nothing.

‘Well, I won't say no,' Len said.

‘That's the ticket,' said Teddy, with his imperturbable jollity. ‘Hear that, Ma? I'll just pour you a little nip. Warm the cockles of your old heart—that's what I bought it for. And I brought along young Simon here to toast your health.'

‘Hmmm.'

‘Oh, pour one, for Christ's sake,' said Connie, under her breath. ‘You know damn well she always drinks it.' Aloud she asked, hostessly: ‘And how will you have it, Mr Cutheridge?'

‘Simon. With a little water, if I may.'

‘With a little water,' said Connie to Teddy, making no effort to get up. ‘Neat for me, and a bit of warm water in Mother's.' Teddy bustled off to the kitchen, and there was a clink of glasses on a tray, and the sound of running water.

‘Well,' said Len, who had been lurking angularly in the shadows. ‘This is a real little party. We should have done this before. Fancy you running into Teddy.'

‘Oh, I was in the Colonel Monk,' said Simon casually. ‘I often go.'

‘Do you now? Thought you hadn't been upstairs so much
recently. Well, I'm glad you did run into him. I'd been meaning to ask you down for a long time.'

‘I'd
hoped to ask you down for a meal,' said Connie, trying on him a practised smile such as she might use on a customer who bore the marks of gentry-hood. ‘It's the least we can do.' For Simon's ears only she added,
sotto voce,
‘Considering the rent you pay.'

‘Here we are, then. Here we are,' said Teddy, bustling back into the room with his Cheeryble good humour. Imperviousness to atmosphere must, Simon decided, be his way of dealing with the Simmeter ill-humour and mean-mindedness. ‘Here's your neat one, Connie. Bit of warm water for Ma. Water for Simon, soda for me and Len. Right you are, everyone. Down the hatch and don't give up hope. Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead.'

They drank.

‘In the circumstances, Teddy,' said Connie, honey-sweet of voice, ‘I think “Bottoms Up” might have been a happier toast.'

‘Why?' said Teddy. ‘What did I say?'

‘Well, we may have time to enjoy ourselves while we're living, but in the nature of things Ma won't have that long, will she?'

‘Connie!' said Teddy, shocked out of his good humour.

‘They want me dead,' announced the old woman bitterly, the voice heavy with regret at her own enfeeblement, regrets for the victories she had won over her children in the past. ‘Any excuse to rub it in they take. They're sitting around waiting for me to die!'

‘Lay off it, Ma,' said Len, sharply. ‘Tonight of all nights. Can't you see we've got a visitor?'

‘
I
didn't invite him. I'm just making it clear to Teddy what I have to put up with. These two want me dead, and I'm not going fast enough for them.'

‘Well, you're going a lot too fast for me, Ma,' said Teddy, sounding more than a touch desperate. ‘You want a bit of feeding up—not to mention brightening up. You don't look a patch on when I was here last.'

‘Is it surprising, with this lot rubbing their hands at every little sign of weakness?' The old woman's voice took on the tones of a particularly doleful contralto. ‘They want me gone so
they can get their hands on the house and money. They're scared to death I'll change the will and leave it all to you.'

‘You silly old biddy,' snapped Len, ‘you're making this up. Nothing of the kind's ever been said.'

She turned on him with a formidable, effortful gathering of strength.

‘Don't you give me barefaced lies in my own house. It's been said often enough. And when it hasn't been said it's been thought. You sit there, the pair of you, thinking who's going to get what when I'm gone.'

‘Now
that's
your imagination, Ma,' said Teddy.

‘I've
got better things to think about, I know that,' said Connie coolly. ‘I couldn't speak for Len.'

Len swung round.

‘We can do without your insinuations. Showing us up before guests.' He turned back, and toned down his manner to a filial concern. ‘It's a real nightmare, you going on like this, Ma. After all the years I've been with you, looking after you. None of the others have done the same, that you must admit, Ma.'

‘It wasn't done for love,' said Mrs Simmeter dismissively.

‘By-y-y Christ!' exploded Len, savage again. Simon could see he would like to have added: ‘How could it have been?'

‘Anyway, Ma, that property business was settled years ago,' said Teddy, trying against the odds to re-establish a comfortable tone. ‘Len gets the house, Connie gets the bit of money in the bank, I get a little something to remember you by. That's how I wanted it. I'm not complaining, and if I'm not, who is? I'm the one who left the nest—and I've done very nicely for myself on the whole.'

‘You won't go on doing if you throw your money around on drink the way you do,' observed his mother sourly.

‘Stow it, Ma. Drink it down and warm yourself up.'

‘I think this discussion could well be brought to a close,' said Connie, stretching herself comfortably in her chair. ‘Teddy, Mr Cutheridge's glass is empty. Get him another one, do.' And as Teddy bustled up, she handed him her own glass, as if he were the bar waiter. ‘You must wonder at us, Simon, really you must. Do all families go on like this, or is it just us?'

‘In our family there's nothing much to leave,' said Simon. ‘We
live in a tied cottage, and there's little or nothing put away. Quite apart from the fact that I'm an only child.'

‘There you are, you see. Very sensible, your parents. No problem at all if there's only the one.'

‘Unless you lose him,' said Len, bitterly. He came to sit by Simon on the sofa. ‘My David was an only son. Perhaps we should have had more. I'd have felt the loss less keenly. But it wasn't to be.' He gazed down at the carpet, seeming genuinely to be sunk in thought. ‘If only he'd lived . . . Things would have been different . . . Now there's only Teddy's two, and we hardly know them.'

‘You can always leave the ancestral home to the British Union,' said Connie, waspishly breaking in on his thoughts. ‘I'm sure they could find a good use for it. As for me, if I survive Ma—which I'm
not
banking on, because you're tough as old boots, Ma, you know you are—if I get that little nest-egg I'm going to use it to have a good time. A bit of moderate whoopee, that's what I'm going to give myself.' She giggled spitefully. ‘So don't worry your heads as to who's going to get it after me. There'll be no pickings when I pop off!'

‘I wasn't, Connie, I wasn't,' said Teddy with a sigh, returning with the refreshed glasses.

‘Oh, I wasn't referring to you, Teddy. You know that. You've always been good to me, and I'm grateful. If I had anything to leave it'd be you I'd give it to, but somehow I don't think there will be. I think I'll branch out. I can't see myself stopping here in this dump with just Len. I could get myself a nice little service flat . . . meals sent up . . . It might just run to that. I have a gentleman friend in property who could advise me. He says they're not expensive, when you consider the convenience of it.'

Suddenly the voice of Mrs Simmeter rang out in a wail.

‘You're all sitting round here waiting for me to die!'

‘Whatever gives you that idea, Ma?' asked Connie sweetly.

‘Teddy—it's like this every night of my life now. They're trying to worry me into the grave. If only you'd stayed. You're not like them. If only you'd stayed—not joined up, not married that painted creature.'

‘Now then, Ma: I'm not staying if you start in on that.'

‘All right, I won't, Teddy. But you can't deny that we were in trouble, and you got out.'

‘Children do, Ma. This isn't India or somewhere. Kids leave the family home. I wasn't to know you'd be in trouble. I went because there was a war on.'

‘Teddy fought for his country,' said Connie meaningfully.

‘Ah well—' said his mother.

‘Ah well,
you'd rather I hadn't. I know that by now, Ma. We had that out often enough, then and since. You'd rather I'd fought for the other lot, if the truth be known. But you and Len never succeeded with me there—not with me, nor with Connie.'

‘Here, hold on, Teddy,' said Len, whose characteristic caution seemed to be reasserting itself. ‘We've got guests.'

‘All right. Enough said. But don't think I don't remember all the mullarkey we had about it at the time. With me only eighteen, and you two going on at me day and night. It was no fun, living at home those last eighteen months before I joined up, with only Mary I could talk to about it. She was the only one in the family with a grain of human feeling. And you'd have been a damn sight worse, Len, if you hadn't been shit-scared of being investigated—taken in and interned.'

‘I told you, Teddy, belt up about that.' Len's face had become a deep pink, in perturbation.

‘That's you all over, Len,' said Connie, still aggravatingly relaxed and comfortable in her chair. ‘All big aggressive talk, like you were about to lead the troops into battle and become Gauleiter of London. Then at the first sign of anyone fighting back, you go nose first down your burrow. One minute you're screaming revolution, the next you're diving for cover.'

‘Shut your mouth, Connie. A lot you know about it.'

‘I know plenty. I was back home by then, remember. I remember the way you made us scuttle out of Paddington, half way across London, just because when the chips were down you hadn't the nerve to face things. I remember plenty about you and your wartime doings . . .' She took a swig from her glass. ‘And don't you forget it.'

Len shot her a glance, half cowed. But then his sense of grievance got the better of him.

‘I didn't notice you taking up your country's struggle,' he said,
his mouth twisted satirically. ‘Spent most of the war on your back, as far as I remember. As you'd spent the peace.'

To Simon's surprise, Connie merely giggled. The whisky was beginning to have an effect.

‘Golly, Len, you must sound prehistoric to Simon here. Positively out of the ark. As if I ought to be ashamed of giving a bit of warmth and comfort to a few boys who'd be out on a bombing raid in a few hours' time, or on the Normandy beaches. Well, I can tell you, I'm not ashamed at all.'

‘My own daughter,' moaned Mrs Simmeter.

‘Shame was never exactly your line,' sneered Len.

‘It never needed to be. As to spending most of the war on my back, that's just your sex-ridden little mind. I'd rather take pleasure from that, anyway, than from what you got your kicks from. You got more pleasure from roughing your wife up, so far as I could see, than from the other thing.'

‘Don't give me that!' roared Len.

‘Poor wet little sap, to take it from you.'

‘You hold your tongue. We was happy—deliriously happy. Till you came back home, to put a spoke in the wheel.'

‘Oh, very happy, provided she did every blind thing you told her to, and she agreed with every word you said.'

‘Mary knew what her duties were, and she did them. That's something you'd never understand. She wasn't one of your rackety modern women, to flop into bed with the first man who asked her.'

‘Too bloody scared, you saw to that,' said Connie, her good humour unabated. She sat at ease in the chair, smiling cat-like over her whisky, obviously intent on mischief. ‘You were always first-rate at terrorizing the weak and sickly. And of course Mum did her bit as well, as per usual. If Mary hadn't been under the thumb of the pair of you, she might have had a bit of life of her own. If I'd been her, I'd have fancied Teddy here a damned sight more than I would you. And Teddy was around—nice and available.'

‘Cut it out, Connie,' said Teddy, his cheerfulness now entirely vanished, and seeming to be genuinely outraged. ‘It's sick, that sort of talk. I was only in my teens, and Mary was well over thirty. There wasn't anything like that, and you know it.'

‘I didn't say she
did
, did I?'

‘It was quite different. I appreciated her.' Teddy's eyes had glazed over, and for a few moments Simon caught a touching glimpse of the young, uncertain teenager who lay buried in the flesh of the jolly proprietor of a slightly dubious business. ‘She was very understanding. Always. I think she suffered herself, so she had sympathy. I was young—younger than my years, because I'd always been leant on, kept under. And those two had me all knotted up . . . they near drove me to a breakdown. And she . . . just let me talk to her. Talk it through. I told her everything, how I wanted to join up . . . to get away . . . to do something for my country. It sounds old-fashioned now, and perhaps that was partly imagination. What I really wanted was to get out. It's no use looking like that, Ma, because that's how it was. It was my only chance of growing up. And she listened to me . . .'

‘You ought to be ashamed of making my wife listen to drivel like that,' said Len. ‘If she'd had any sense she would have sent you away with a flea in your ear.'

‘But she didn't. She understood. She knew how it was from . . . from her own situation. But she had the little boy, little David, and she couldn't break out.'

‘She never wanted to break out!' spluttered Len.

‘Well, have it your own way, Len. Perhaps you're right. Certainly she never said as much, because that wasn't her way. The main thing was I felt she sympathized. She let me talk, encouraged me to do what I wanted to do. It wasn't that she wanted me to join up. She thought I was too young. But she saw I had to get away, and she couldn't see any other way. In the end I was one of the first in.'