The Jealous One (7 page)

Lindy looked incredulous. So, to her dismay, did Geoffrey. Was she really remembering it all wrong, as mothers were said to do? Or——?

‘Oh, I daresay discipline is more difficult as they get older,’ Lindy was saying. ‘I’m not denying it. But it just goes to prove what I was saying before: At just the point when the father could and should be the major influence,
disciplinary
and otherwise—at just that point the mother begins to cut him off from his son. To put up the barriers. So he can no longer get discipline, or anything else, across to the boy.’

Geoffrey was looking horribly thoughtful. Rosamund frantically tried to think of some come-back that would be
kind, polite, good-humoured, and would knock Lindy
sideways
.

But all she could think of was a rather dull change in the conversation, but one that at least would put Lindy and her carefully aimed insights out of the picture for the moment.

‘Don’t you think we ought to phone your mother?’ she asked Geoffrey, once again. ‘And let her know that we’re coming this afternoon?’

‘Oh. Ah. Of course.’ Geoffrey looked uneasy, and turned to Lindy. ‘You won’t mind, will you, Lindy? I shan’t be able to start on the crazy paving this afternoon after all. I’d forgotten this was the Sunday for Mother’s.’

‘Oh, but it needn’t be!’ Rosamund fell over herself to release her husband for Lindy’s exclusive use this sunny afternoon. ‘Next Sunday will do just as well. She’s not specially expecting us….’

‘Oh, but Geoff, you mustn’t upset your plans because of me! …’ For a moment the battle of self-effacement
ricocheted
between the two women, both of them talking
together
, and the sound was like the whirring of wings in the small sunny kitchen. And Lindy won.

‘Well, actually,’ she admitted. ‘If you
did
decide to put off going till next weekend, I could drive you there. I’ll have the poor old car in running order at last—at least I trust so. How’d that be?’

She looked brightly, generously, from one to the other of them; and even Rosamund couldn’t see undercurrents of malice in the suggestion. For Lindy, of course, couldn’t possibly know of hers and Geoffrey’s little prejudice against cars; couldn’t know how much they enjoyed the walk from the station, right through the little sunlit town where Geoffrey’s mother lived, past the churchyard, and up the long, tree-lined road that was very nearly country, and where the hawthorns still bloomed in the spring: where every step, every gateway, reminded Geoffrey of his
boyhood
; might, at any moment, inspire him to some anecdote, some memory, which even now, after all these years, could still show him to his wife in a new, an excitingly different,
light. Half the point of going to Mother’s was this walk. They wouldn’t give it up for anything.

‘Well, that
is
an idea!’ said Geoffrey enthusiastically. ‘Save our old bones for once, eh, Rosamund? Ashdene can’t be much more than an hour away by car, do you think Lindy …?’ He and Lindy fell to animated discussion about routes, and Rosamund was left smiling. ‘I wish she was dead!’ she said to herself, clearly and distinctly, as she smiled. And it was only long afterwards, when the time had come for her to subject every tiny shred of memory to a panic-stricken scrutiny, that she noticed that this was the very first time that the thought of Lindy’s death had come to her in so many words.

‘You really should learn to drive, Geoff! You’d be good.’

Lindy had been explaining, with the greatest of
good-humour
, exactly why it was that she had changed gear on this hill but not on the previous one. Why couldn’t she lose her temper, like other drivers, thought Rosamund crossly. Why must she remain bright and serene in the midst of this chaos of Sunday traffic inching its way out of London, and at the same time answer fully and sympathetically all Geoffrey’s eager, amateurish questions?

For after all these years of anti-car prejudice, Geoffrey had overnight become as excited as a schoolboy over the idea of learning to drive. Excited as schoolboys were
supposed
to be, that is to say, thought Rosamund wryly, from her corner of the back seat. Not like the two schoolboys she had left sitting side by side on the kitchen table, slowly finishing an entire tin of rock cakes while they discussed the gloomy future of the world: just like a pair of vultures,
Rosamund thought, hovering arrogantly over the entire
decaying
universe as if it were their rightful prey. Still, they’d probably be better once they got out on their bicycles; and with any luck they wouldn’t be back for hours and hours. Why, it might even happen that Peter stayed the night with the other boy for once, instead of the other way round.

Rosamund realised that her spirits were rising, though goodness knew why, with her husband and Lindy talking cars non-stop in the front seat, and the whole Sunday trip to Mother’s spoilt, perhaps for ever. Perhaps Geoffrey would always want to come like this, in Lindy’s car? Perhaps he would want to buy a car of their own? And this afternoon would have been so specially lovely for walking. Already, within a week, the sad, tattered, end-of-summer look was gone from the countryside, and the still, blue September skies were back. But you could not feel the stillness from the car, nor smell the stubble fields. The golden, gentle sunshine became a mere metallic beating of hotness through the car roof, and you couldn’t even talk. That is to say, Rosamund couldn’t talk, not from this solitary corner.

She had chosen it, of course. Of her own accord she had urged Geoffrey to sit in front with Lindy, to help her with the map-reading, she’d said. As always, her status of odd one out in their trio was of her own deliberate choosing, and thus could not be felt as a humiliation. But it
looked
like a humiliation. Rosamund had been shocked, as they set out, to find how much she was hoping that the neighbours weren’t peering out from the Sunday somnolence behind their curtains; weren’t noticing how Lindy and Geoffrey were paired off in the front of the car, for all the world like a married couple, with the spinster sister of one of them
lurking
at the back.

But probably the neighbours were already talking,
anyway
. Every time Geoffrey went over to help Lindy in her garden, a dozen upstairs windows must be taking note,
setting
one Saturday afternoon beside another, drawing gleeful conclusions. If only there was some way of
telling
them that she, Rosamund, wasn’t the neglected wife at all; that, on the
contrary, it was all just a beautiful family friendship, with Rosamund herself freely encouraging all these visits and exchanges. She would have liked to label her husband, when he went over to Lindy’s, with a huge gaudy card
saying
: ‘A Present From Rosamund’, because that’s what it amounted to, and it would be so nice if the neighbours could know.

Nice, too, if her mother-in-law could know, she now realised, as they turned in to the short gravel entrance of Geoffrey’s old home; welcoming as always with its warm brick, its square, unpretentious windows, and the jasmine round the front door.

Wondering briefly at her own disproportionate anxiety not to be seen on the back seat, Rosamund scrambled
ungracefully
to the ground almost before the car had stopped, went round to the front, and stood smiling in at the window while Geoffrey and Lindy discussed arrangements for the return journey. Lindy was being admirably tactful about not expecting to be invited in to meet the elder Mrs
Fielding
. She wanted to explore the town, she declared, and the neighbouring countryside; to examine the old tombs in the churchyard…. This and that…. She would call back for them at about seven—and brushing aside their protests and expressions of gratitude, she drove quickly away, leaving them to walk up to the front door together, just as always.

Except that it wasn’t as always, and perhaps would never be again.

Jessie, Mrs Fielding’s old servant, answered the door to them, neat and invulnerable in her cap and apron, her kind old face lighting up with discreet pleasure at the sight of them. Jessie knew how to ‘keep her place’ with such
exquisite
skill and dignity that you quite forgot that her ‘place’ no longer really existed in the world today: the niche which she had occupied for fifty years had to all intents and
purposes
been swamped and obliterated long ago by the
swirling
tide of the twentieth century. And yet she occupied it still, like an old, smooth stone, impervious to battering waves, immobile among the shifting sands.

Her mistress seemed much more modern, although several years older. Mrs Fielding looked up briskly from the Journal of Hellenic Studies as they entered her book-lined drawing-room, gathered her papers together, and at once entered into eager conversation, mainly with Rosamund.

‘You’ve just come at the right time!’ she declared. ‘I’ve just finished the draft of a letter I’m going to send them about this Henriksen man’s findings. “Findings” indeed! It’s “Guessings”, as always in this Linear B racket …! Wait a moment…. I know I had it…. Just here somewhere….’ She perched her gold-rimmed glasses precariously back onto her nose as she shuffled through the tangle of
documents
. ‘Ah, here we are——’ She drew out a sheet of
closely-written
, tissue-thin typing paper, and handed it to
Rosamund
. ‘I’d like you to look through it, dear, if you will, and give me your opinion. Have I expressed myself too strongly do you think?’

She had, of course. She always did. But all the same, the curt, uncompromising phrases, the fire of genuine
indignation
, gave a special flavour of her effusions, which perhaps explained why the editors of these so learned journals did occasionally print them. It was odd, really, that she should choose Rosamund as her confidante on these highly
specialised
matters—Rosamund, who knew not one word of Greek, and whose initial knowledge of Knossos and all
appertaining
thereto did not extend beyond a sketchy recollection of the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. But after all these years of regular visits to her mother-in-law she knew a great deal more about it all now; and what she lacked in
scholarship
she made up for by an affectionate sensitivity towards the way the old lady was likely to feel towards a given incomprehensible inscription or scholarly statement or
whatever
it might be. And, dominating all else, was the
enormous
admiration she felt for a woman who had been able, after the age of sixty, to set herself to re-learn a language she had not set eyes on since she was in the fifth form at school, and within the next fifteen years to reach such a standard of proficiency in the whole subject as to be able to
squabble, however wrong-headedly, with the recognised experts in the field.

Geoffrey, Rosamund was well aware, found it all rather boring; but he was an affectionate and dutiful son and was only too delighted that Rosamund was able to get on so well with his rather thorny and opinionated mother, and
apparently
to share her interests. So he roamed contentedly enough about the room, looking at a book here, a magazine there; and Rosamund, sitting in consultation with her mother-in-law over the letter, was aware of his slow,
familiar
movements as a part of the peculiar peace of this room, this house. In her mind, the decipherment of Linear B would be for ever simply a part of this gentle, shining
drawing
room, with its small fire crackling, its fire-irons bright gold with daily rubbing, and every mahogany surface polished, speckless; gleaming from Jessie’s lifelong care.

At four o’clock exactly, Jessie knocked discreetly on the door, and wheeled in the trolley of tea-things. ‘Thank you, Madam,’ she murmured, as she set the final cup in position beside her mistress and turned to go: and ‘Thank you, Jessie,’ replied Mrs Fielding, clearly and formally. It occurred to Rosamund that within this rigid, formalised
relationship
there flowed, perhaps, a warmth, a closeness, far deeper and more binding than many that flourish so demonstratively in the outside world.

The Palace of Minos was forthwith abandoned for the time being. Mrs Fielding’s upbringing made talking shop at mealtimes out of the question: so while she poured out from the silver teapot, and handed round the lovely, delicate survivors of the old Rockingham tea service, the talk
became
general; that is to say, it concentrated on News about the Family. They got Peter over first, and quickly.
Rosamund
always found it rather a strain to think of something both new and vaguely creditable to say about him every fortnight or so; and as soon as possible she got the old lady switched onto Cousin Etty and the Boys—the Boys being by now middle aged and elderly men, in and out of hospital,
and with daughters getting married, that sort of thing. It so happened that Rosamund had never met any of that branch of the family; and so Cousin Etty and the Boys had joined Linear B in her imagination as the gentle concomitants to an endless vista of tranquil old-world teatimes. They had become as one with the hand-made lace cloth; with the silver sugar-basin and sugar-tongs; with the home-made jam in cut glass dishes; everything softly shining;
everything
perfect of its kind.

Before they left, Rosamund found time to slip into the kitchen and talk to Jessie for a few minutes. As always on Sunday evenings, Jessie was using her free time after tea to write a letter to one or other of her nieces in Australia. Already, for her, it was a cosy winter’s night. She had the curtains closely drawn against the September sunset, a thick green cloth spread over the scrubbed wooden table, and in the background the Aga cooker murmured softly, as the old kitchen range had done long ago. This was Jessie’s sitting room, and she would have chosen no other. Every pot and pan, every cup and plate, stood dry and shining in its appointed place; every working surface lay scrubbed and clean, ready and inviting for tomorrow’s tasks. On the top shelf of the dresser stood photographs of all Jessie’s nieces’ weddings, together with the shells and ornaments they had sent her from the other side of the world; and in the drawers below were collected a lifetime’s store of magazines, newspaper cuttings, old letters; and also more utilitarian oddments like string, stamps, and sewing materials, any one of which she could have laid her hands on in the dark, even one of the newspaper cuttings.

For a second, Rosamund stood in the doorway, gazing at the familiar scene, a vision of changeless, absolute security, which had no counterpart anywhere else in her experience. Only Jessie’s glasses, familiar sight though they were, created a very slightly jarring note. She only wore them for this special task, just once a week, and so they still looked a little like fancy dress on her; just as the very ordinary
paraphernalia
of letter writing—ink, writing-pad, blotting paper—managed
to look, in this setting, a little bit like stage properties: not quite a part of the whole.

But in the next moment Jessie had noticed her visitor in the doorway, had removed the glasses, and looked like
herself
again. They went through the tiny, unchanging ritual of Jessie’s making a move as if to stand up respectfully, and Rosamund hastily urging her to remain seated, sitting down herself at the opposite side of the table, and asking after the niece who had most recently had something happen to her. This time, it was the one whose husband had recently been put on night shift, which unsettled his stomach.

‘A raw beaten-up egg in milk, that’s what he should have, first thing when he gets in of a morning,’ said Jessie firmly, and with an absolute certainty which must surely carry its healing sureness across eight thousand miles of troubled lands and heaving waters. ‘I’m just telling her, she should keep him to that for a couple—three—weeks, and then work him along to a nice brown egg
lightly boiled…. They can get lovely eggs out there, you know, Miss Rosamund. Real, big, new-laid eggs.’

‘Miss Rosamund’ was perhaps not the most suitable title for a married woman of eighteen years’ standing; but long, long ago Jessie had decided, quietly, and entirely on her own, after months of uneasily not addressing Rosamund at all, that ‘Madam’ simply couldn’t be paired with ‘Master Geoffrey’; that an address of manifest incorrectness was the only solution; and ‘Miss Rosamund’ it had been ever since.

‘See here,’ continued Jessie, sliding a stiff, glittering square of cardboard from an envelope. ‘She’s sent me my birthday present ever so early this year. I suppose the posts and all, she wanted to be sure…. Pretty, isn’t it?’

She handed Rosamund a rather over-ornate calendar, covered with blue and silver flowers interwoven with blue and silver good wishes and worthy sentiments.

‘But I wouldn’t use it,’ went on Jessie carefully. ‘I’m going to put it away all nice, perhaps it’ll come in another time. I wouldn’t want to change my old one, that’s the truth….’

‘Change what?’ Geoffrey had at that moment entered the
kitchen, and was beaming on the two of them: ‘What are you two girls gossipping about now?’

Although he seemed to be laughing at them, Rosamund knew that he loved the way she fitted into his old home—fitted better, in a way, than he did himself: loved to find her chattering like this with old Jessie in the kitchen.