Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart (10 page)

“No, you're right, it doesn't. We're going to get the answer anyway. And if we don't have it by Tuesday we'll think about hypnosis.” But he sounds dispirited and I actually pray for the telephone to ring.

It doesn't.

Instead, there comes a knock at the door.

Again the atmosphere grows tense.

Again there follows anticlimax.

On the threshold stands a chambermaid.

Tom bids her good evening but has a job concealing his impatience. “If you're here to turn the beds down—thank you but please don't bother. We can see to it ourselves.”

“No, I'm here because I saw that programme on the telly.”

A moment of stillness. Of suspension.

“I couldn't get away quicker because I wanted to wash my hands and tidy up a bit. Try and make myself beautiful.” She gives a nervous snicker. “I hope I didn't keep you.”

She's an elderly rawboned woman with bleached hair and too much lipstick, too much eye shadow, too much mascara. They don't go with her uniform. They don't go with her demeanour. Even now, when she's surely on her best behaviour, her expression indicates that life has been a disappointment.

Tom's voice already holds excitement. “Then did that snapshot seem familiar?”

She gives him a coquettish glance. Maybe she thinks she looks about forty years younger than she does.

“I'd be surprised if it didn't,” she answers. “Seeing as I'm the one that took it.”

12

During our return to East Anglia we decide to make a short detour; the weather has stayed warm and it's only mid-afternoon. Back to Southwold, then. “Shall we inquire,” suggests Matt, “into their plans to change the name of the church? In memory of our meeting?”

“My, they
do
breed them ambitious in Connecticut! What's wrong with just a wall plaque?”

From the back of the jeep Trixie answers us lugubriously. “And that won't take them long! Four measly little words!
They met
.
They parted
.” It's been growing more and more obvious that following all our recent excitement a reaction has set in.

“Oh, come on, babe, that's the Monday morning blues catching up with you on Wednesday.” Walt, who's sitting beside her, sounds uncomfortable and Trixie's reply isn't going to reassure him.

“Monday morning blues?” she exclaims, bitterly. “Rest-of-my-life blues, more like.”

“Nah, don't say that. And, anyhow, it's still possible Matt and I have something up our sleeve. Eh, buddy?”

“What sort of something?” Already a faint display of interest.

“Oh, nothing much. Just a dance at the camp next Saturday. Even if people do say it's going to be a dilly.”

“Dance! Next Saturday?” Trixie has the maybe enviable ability to coast along breezily from one highlight to another and not look much beyond the next in line, so long as there actually is a next in line. “But why didn't you tell us sooner, screwball? The idea of it! Keeping a surprise like that all to yourselves!”

“We only heard about it Monday.”

“So? And today's—”

“And we decided,” puts in Matt, overriding her, “that we wouldn't mention it until tonight. In case things felt a bit flat by the time we got back from London.” There's no trace of irony, but there is a note of worry, and he looks at me without a smile. “Rosalind? You'll come to it, won't you?”

“Of course she'll come!” cries Trixie. “Think she's barmy or something? You try to stop her, that's all! Eh, Roz?”

“We really weren't taking the pair of you for granted.”

But he's misread my hesitation.
It's a farewell dance, isn't it?
That's really what I want to say.

Yet instead: “You bet I'll come. It will be wonderful.”

Walt is wholly at his ease again. “You and the rest-of-your-life blues!” he teases. “We ought to go and see that woman we noticed the other day—her signboard, you remember—Madam Something-or-Other.”

“Oh, yes, let's! That would be a giggle. I'd forgotten about her.”

I feel perverse. “But what makes you think she'll be open?” The shops around Leicester Square most certainly were—Matt and I went looking for those souvenirs I'd promised the young Crawfords—but suddenly it seems to me Walt's being insensitive. It's just too easy to fob Trixie off with a dance and with having her palm read.

Yet on the other hand, if he can't respond to her cri-de-coeur in the only way she'd wish, I suppose there's not much else that he can do.

“Oh, pooh!” says Trixie. “At the seaside! It'll be like August Bank Holiday! Like how it used to be. Course she'll be open. Everywhere will.”

“Madam Trix…!” says Walt, proudly, even proprietorially. And indeed she turns out to be right—if ‘everywhere' doesn't include places like the ironmongery in the High Street, over which Madam Sonia has her premises.

“And what about us?” asks Matt. “Rosalind, would you like to have your fortune told?”

“I don't know. Do you think she might come up with a tall dark stranger and travels to a distant shore?”

“Bound to.”

“Well, I don't mind lashing out five bob for that. What I couldn't stand is spending hard-earned cash and having to listen to the truth.”

It's providential that when we get there Madam Sonia doesn't have a client. She suggests she see Trixie first, that Walt sit in the waiting room, and that Matt and I come back in an hour.

So we again go searching for presents for the children and this time we're lucky: we find wonderfully right Dinky Toy models of a red double-decker bus, a tram and a taxi. “And God forbid anyone should mention,” smiles Matt, “that on V-E Day there wasn't so much as a single cab allowed out on the streets of London!” He attempts to pay for these three purchases himself—I don't see why he should pay for even one—but eventually settles for our going halves. Then we saunter back through the town, which probably has never known a Wednesday quite like this. But from a distance we see that the pier is even more crowded. (Red, white and blue are still the colours of the day.) It's not an especially appealing pier; in fact we both think that Southwold deserves better. Leaning against some railings for a while, we study the coastline, which is a lot more rewarding, despite the quantities of barbed wire.

We arrive at the fortune-teller's only a minute after Trixie and Walt have left. There's a message to meet them at the tearooms.

Madam Sonia looks about thirty. Apart from her shawl and earrings and allegedly Gypsy dress, the two most striking things are her voice and the flawlessness of her complexion. Her voice is loud yet melodious, each word so carefully enunciated you might think her a pupil of Professor Higgins.

I go in first and—when she's finished with me—sit waiting for Matt while abstractedly gazing at the sentimental picture of a pre-Raphaelite beauty bending over her image in a lake. It's called ‘Fair Reflections'. I rather wish someone would come along and give her a hearty shove.

But perhaps this has less to do with
her
reflections—no matter how complacent—than with the practically unbearable nature of my own.

Later,
en route
to the tearooms, we compare notes.

I remark as cheerfully as I can: “She isn't bad, is she?”

“Why? What did she tell you?” Am I imagining it or is he as well—now that our two days of diversion are nearly at an end—experiencing a growing weight of depression?

“Well, I have to admit, not enough about tall dark strangers or trips to foreign shores. The future got short shrift. But she was fairly good about the present and the past.”

“Same here…but we already know about the present and the past.”

“For instance, she told me I was working on the land, which, if it was a guess, was reasonably inspired. There isn't any straw behind my ears, is there? You can break it to me gently.”

“Not behind yours,” he answers. “I don't know about Trixie's.”

“Well, that's a point, of course. But then she spoke about my home situation. Was there a stranger in the house? Was one of my parents dead? It struck me that she truly has a gift.”

He nods—though only after hesitation. “What else? What about…well, what about next week? Next month? Next year?”

I laugh and shrug and hold on tightly to his arm. “Oh, all the usual.”

“What's that?”

“Plans in a state of flux… Uncertainty about the course one's life is going to take… At this point, however, wouldn't that apply to most of us?”

Besides, she'd already seen Matt and knew he was American; had probably sensed how much I cared for him.

“She also prophesied a change of job—well, naturally. A change of scenery—well, again, I'd never have guessed that, would you? As I say, she was far less good about the future.” (And I certainly don't want to burden him with her predictions of approaching hardship.) “Oh, look, we're nearly there and you haven't given me one hint of what she said to you!”

“Nothing of any interest!”

He kicks a pebble into the gutter.

“Oh,” he says, “she was okay about a lot of it. Strained relations with my dad. Death of someone very close.” The need to be fair gradually wins out over his humour to be grudging. “Better than okay, in fact. She even told me that I come from a town where she could see a large university, lots of water and, listen to this, a theatre I often attend that she thought was named after a well-known composer.”

“And?”

“I guess she meant the Shubert.”

However, with a slightly lopsided smile, he then adds: “But it wasn't named after the composer. It was named after the Shubert Brothers. S-H, not S-
C
-H. It's a chain of theatres all across the States.”

“Well, that's quite good.” And it is, too, despite the woman's error, surely understandable in someone not conversant with life in America. I try to remember if in London (or anywhere else I know) there's a theatre which sounds as if it might have been commemorating a composer.

“So why,” he asks, “if she's so blasted hot on some things, can't she be a bit more informative about others?”

“Oh, they never are. Never are. Damn 'em!”

I'm not actually sure if that's true, but anyway I've said the right thing. Suddenly he grins and gives my arm a squeeze. “Yes, that's right. Damn 'em all to hell!”

But already I've had second thoughts. I rapidly recant. “No. It's as I mentioned before. What sane person would seriously want to know the truth about their future? I mean, if they were powerless to change it.”

Why not admit it? I don't even want to know the truth about next Saturday. Not any longer. Is the dance really a prelude to departure? Is the date all settled for the pulling out of the entire squadron? Earlier—if only in my thoughts—I may have been patronizing about Trixie: about her not looking much beyond the next highlight. If so, I apologize. Now I decide I'll follow her example.

13

As Tom stares at the chambermaid she takes a picture from her pocket.

“Look. I been carrying this around now for more than forty-five blinking years.”

Tom misunderstands her.

“No, I don't mean always in my overall. I live here, you see. Got a tiny bedroom on the top floor.”

“Well—good God—this is great! I don't know where to start.”

He smiles.

“Oh, first by asking you to sit down, obviously. My name is Newman, Tom Newman. And this is…well, this young man is a good friend of mine who may have some connection to the lady in the photograph…” I nod at the chambermaid, who by now is seated, a little stiffly, in a small armchair with a striped cover. “It's all a bit complicated, but… Well, now then, you are Ms—?”

“Morris. You can call me Trixie if you like.” She folds her arms, unfolds them. She lets her hands rest limply in her lap. They look stringy and uncared for.

“Right. Trixie. And the name of your friend there?” The photograph is safely back in Trixie's pocket. “At least I take it she's your friend?”

“Oh, yes, we used to be—quite close we were—you see, we both worked on the land. Land girls. That's where we met.”

“And her name.”

“Rosalind. Sounds fancy, doesn't it? Rosalind Farr. We called her Roz, though, and she didn't mind—she was never stuck-up or anything.” But then a touch of asperity enters a tone that in any case is slightly shrill. “Though probably the Farr bit got changed to Cassidy—and that's what I hope it still is, of course.” She adds: “Well, naturally.”

“Then you've lost touch with her?” I can hear Tom's disappointment.

“And that's putting it mildly! Haven't seen her since 1945. There were a couple of letters after that but she'd even stopped writing by early '46. I suppose she went off to America; forgot about her old friends.”

“America?” Tom gives me a meaningful glance.

“There was this Yank she was in love with.”

Trixie pauses and seems to be struck by the undercurrent of disapproval she catches in her own voice.

“Well, I don't know if I ought to say this, not to strangers, though I suppose it can't do no harm. Water under the bridge and all that. She got herself knocked up. And so I thought…well, maybe you're too young to know about it but there was this American war brides scheme…”

Tom nods. He bites his lip. “And the American's name, you say, was Cassidy?”

“That's right. Lieutenant, he was. Lieutenant Matt Cassidy.”

“Matt? Matthew…” Tom repeats the name in full, slowly. He looks at me with hopeful eyebrow raised.

I only shrug and shake my head.

Trixie also looks at me. It's the first time she's given me her close attention. “You're a Yank too,” she says, rather matter-of-factly. “That right?”