The Day of the Storm (2 page)

“I haven't got a father, and my mother's abroad. She's living in Ibiza. That's really why I want somewhere of my own.”

“I am sorry. I should have known, you spending Christmas with the Forbeses … I mean, I should have guessed.”

“There's no reason why you should guess.”

“Is your father dead?”

She was obviously curious, but in such an open and friendly way that all at once it seemed ridiculous to close up and shut up the way I usually did when people began asking me questions about my family.

“I don't think so,” I said, trying to sound as though it didn't matter. “I think he lives in Los Angeles. He was an actor. My mother eloped with him when she was eighteen. But he soon got bored with domesticity, or perhaps he decided that his career was more important than raising a family. Anyway, the marriage lasted only a few months before he upped and left her, and then my mother had me.”

“What a terrible thing to do.”

“I suppose it was. I've never thought very much about it. My mother never talked about him. Not because she was particularly bitter or anything, just that when something was over and in the past, she usually forgot it. She's always been like that. She only looks forward, and always with the utmost optimism.”

“But what happened after you were born? Did she go back to her parents?”

“No. Never.”

“You mean, nobody sent a telegram saying ‘Come back all is forgiven'?”

“I don't know. I honestly don't know.”

“There must have been the most resounding row when your mother ran off, but even so…” Her voice trailed away. She was obviously unable to understand a situation which I had accepted with equanimity all my life. “… what sort of people would do a thing like that to their daughter?”

“I don't know.”

“You must be joking!”

“No. I honestly don't know.”

“You mean you don't know your own grandparents?”

“I don't even know who they are. Or perhaps who they were. I don't even know if they're still alive.”

“Don't you know anything? Didn't your mother ever say anything?”

“Oh, of course … little scraps of the past used to come into her conversation but none of it added up to anything. You know how mothers talk to their children, remembering things that happened and things they used to do when they were little.”

“But—Bayliss.” She frowned. “That's not a very usual name. And it rings a bell somehow but I can't think why. Haven't you got a single clue?”

I laughed at her intensity. “You talk as though I really wanted to know. But you see, I don't. If you've never known grandparents, then you don't miss them.”

“But don't you wonder…” she groped for words … “where they
lived?
”

“I know where they lived. They lived in Cornwall. In a stone house with fields that sloped down to the sea. And my mother had a brother called Roger but he was killed during the war.”

“But what did she do after you were born? I suppose she had to go out and get a job.”

“No, she had a little money of her own. A legacy from some old aunt or other. Of course, we never had a car or anything, but we seemed to manage all right. She had a flat in Kensington, in the basement of a house that belonged to some friends. And we stayed there till I was about eight, and then I went to boarding school, and after that we sort of … moved around…”

“Boarding schools cost money…”

“It wasn't a very grand boarding school.”

“Did your mother marry again?”

I looked at Maggie. Her expression was lively and avidly curious, but she was kind. I decided that, having gone so far, I may as well tell her the rest.

“She … wasn't exactly the marrying type … But she was always very, very attractive, and I don't remember a time when there wasn't some adoring male in attendance … And once I was away at school, I suppose there wasn't much reason to go on being circumspect. I never knew where I was going to spend the next set of holidays. Once it was in France, in Provence. Sometimes in this country. Another time it was Christmas in New York.”

Maggie took this in, and made a face. “Not much fun for you.”

“But educational.” I had long ago learned to make a joke of it. “And just think of all the places I've seen, and all the extraordinary places I've lived in. The Ritz in Paris once, and another time a gruesomely cold house in Denbighshire. That was a poet who thought he'd try sheep farming. I've never been so glad in my life when that association came to an end.”

“She must be very beautiful.”

“No, but men think she is. And she's very gay and improvident and vague, and I suppose you'd say utterly amoral. Maddening. Everything is ‘jokey'. It's her big word. Unpaid bills are ‘jokey' and lost handbags and unanswered letters, they're all ‘jokey'. She has no idea of money and no sense of obligation. An embarrassing sort of person to live with.”

“What's she doing in Ibiza?”

“She's living with some Swedish man she met out there. She went out to stay with a couple she knew, and she met this guy and the next thing I knew I had a letter saying that she was going to move in with him. She said he was terribly Nordic and dour but he had a beautiful house.”

“How long is it since you've seen her?”

“About two years. I eased out of her life when I was seventeen. I did a secretarial course and took temporary jobs, and finally I ended up working for Stephen Forbes.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yes. I do.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

Maggie smiled again, shaking her long hair in wonderment. “What a lot you've done,” she said, and she did not sound in the least bit sorry for me but even slightly envious. “At twenty-one I was a blushing bride in a beastly busty white wedding dress and an old veil that smelt of mothballs. I'm not really a trad. person, but I've got a mother who is, and I'm very fond of her so I usually used to do what she wanted.”

I could imagine Maggie's mother. I said, resorting to the comfort of clichés, because I couldn't think of anything else to say, “Oh, well, it takes all sorts,” and at that moment we heard John's key in the lock and after that we did not bring up the subject of mothers and families again.

*   *   *

It was a day like any other day, but it had a bonus attached to it. Last Thursday I had worked late with Stephen, trying to complete the last of the January stocktaking, and in return he had given me this morning off so that I had until lunchtime to my own devices. I filled it in cleaning the flat (which took, at most, no more than half an hour), doing some shopping and taking a bundle of clothes to the launderette. By eleven thirty all this domesticity was completed so I put on my coat and set off, in a leisurely way, for work, intending to walk some of the way, and maybe stand myself an early lunch before getting to the shop.

It was one of those cold, dark, damp days when it never really gets light. I walked, through this gloom, up into the New Kings Road, and headed west. Here, every other shop seems to sell either antiques or second-hand beds or picture frames, and I thought I knew them all, but all at once I found myself outside a shop which I had not noticed before. The outside was painted white, the windows framed in black, and there was a red and white awning pulled out as protection against the imminent drizzle.

I looked up to see what the shop was called and read the name
TRISTRAM NOLAN
picked out in neat black Roman capitals over the door. This door was flanked by windows filled with delectable odds and ends and I paused to inspect their contents, standing on the pavement bathed in brightness from the many lights which burned within. Most of the furniture was Victorian, re-upholstered and restored and polished. A buttoned sofa with a wide lap and curly legs, a sewing box, a small picture of lap dogs on a velvet cushion.

I looked beyond the windows and into the shop itself, and it was then that I saw the cherrywood chairs. They were a pair, balloon backed, with curved legs and seats embroidered with roses.

I craved them. Just like that. I could picture them in my flat, and I wanted them desperately. For a moment I hesitated. This was no junk shop and the price might well be more than I could afford. But after all, no harm could be done by asking. Before I could lose my nerve, I opened the door and went in.

The shop was empty, but the door opening and closing had rung a bell, and presently there was the sound of someone coming down the stairs, the woollen curtain that hung over the door at the back of the shop was drawn aside and a man came into view.

I suppose I had expected someone elderly and formally attired, in keeping with the ambience of the shop and its contents, but this man's appearance rocked all my vague, preconceived notions. For he was young, tall and long-legged, dressed in jeans—faded to a soft blue and clinging like a second skin—and a blue denim jacket, equally old and faded, with the sleeves turned back in a businesslike way to reveal the checked cuffs of the shirt he wore beneath it. A cotton handkerchief was knotted at his neck and on his feet he wore soft moccasins, much decorated and fringed.

That winter the most unlikely people were drifting around London dressed as cowboys, but somehow this one looked real, and his worn clothes appeared as genuine as he was. We stood and looked at each other, and then he smiled and for some reason this took me unawares. I don't like being taken unawares, and I said “Good morning” with a certain coolness.

He dropped the curtain behind him and came forward, soft footed. “Can I help you?”

He may have looked like a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool American, but the moment he opened his mouth it was clear that he was no such thing. For some reason this annoyed me. The life I had led with my mother had left me with a thick streak of cynicism about men in general, and phoneys in particular, and this young man, I decided then and there, was a phoney.

“I … I was going to ask about these little chairs. The balloon-back ones.”

“Oh, yes.” He came forward to lay his hand on the back of one. The hand was long and shapely, with spade-tipped fingers, the skin very brown. “There's just the pair of them.”

I stared at the chairs, trying to ignore his presence.

“I wondered how much they were.”

He squatted beside me to search for a price ticket and I saw his hair fell thick and straight to his collar, very dark and lustrous.

“You're in luck,” he told me. “They're going very cheap because the leg of one has been broken and then not very professionally repaired.” He straightened up suddenly, surprising me by his height. His eyes were slightly tip-tilted, and a very dark brown, with an expression in them that I found disconcerting. He made me uncomfortable and my antipathy for him began to turn to dislike. “Fifteen pounds for the pair,” he said. “But if you'd like to wait and pay a little more, I can get the leg reinforced, and perhaps a small veneer put over the joint. That would make it stronger and it would look better too.”

“Isn't it all right now?”

“It would be all right for you,” said the young man, “… but if you had a large fat man for dinner, he'd probably end up on his backside.”

There was a pause while I regarded him—I hoped coldly. His eyes were brimming, with a malicious amusement which I had no intention of sharing. I did not appreciate the suggestion that the only men who would ever come and have dinner with me would necessarily be large and fat.

I said at last, “How much would it cost me to have the leg repaired?”

“Say five pounds. That means you get the chairs for a tenner each.”

I worked this out, and decided that I could just afford them.

“I'll take them.”

“Good,” said the young man and put his fists on his hips and smiled amiably, as though this were the end of the transaction.

I decided he was utterly inefficient. “Do you want me to pay for them now, or to leave a deposit…?”

“No, that doesn't matter. You can pay for them when you collect them.”

“Well, when will they be ready?”

“In about a week.”

“Don't you want my name?”

“Not unless you want to give it to me.”

“What happens if I never come back?”

“Then I expect they'll be sold to someone else.”

“I don't want to lose them.”

“You won't,” said the young man.

I frowned, angry with him, but he only smiled and went to the door to open it for me. Cold air poured in, and outside the drizzle had started and the street looked dark as night.

He said, “Goodbye,” and I managed a frosty smile of thanks and went past him, out into the gloom, and as I did so I heard the bell ring as he shut the door behind me.

The day was, all at once, unspeakable. My pleasure in buying the chairs had been wrecked by the irritation which the young man had generated. I did not usually take instant dislikes to people and I was annoyed not only with him, but with myself, for being so vulnerable. I was still brooding on this when I walked down Walton Street and let myself into Stephen Forbes's bookshop. Even the comfort of being indoors and the pleasant smell of new paper and printers' ink did nothing to dispel my wretched mood.

The shop was on three levels, with new books on the ground floor, second-hand books and old prints upstairs, and Stephen's office in the basement. I saw that Jennifer, the second girl, was busy with a customer, and the only other person visible was an old lady in a tweed cape engrossed in the Gardening section, so I headed for the little cloakroom, unbuttoning my coat as I went, but then I heard Stephen's heavy, unmistakeable footsteps coming up from downstairs, and for some reason I stopped to wait for him. The next moment he appeared, tall, stooping and spectacled, with his usual expression of vague benevolence. He wore dark suits that always managed to appear as though in need of a good press, and already, at this early hour, the knot of his tie had begun to slip down, revealing the top button of his shirt.