The Woman at the Window (16 page)

There were several ways of interpreting the scorn in her smile and he knew them all. They went back a long way. At Cambridge Raymond had become obsessed with the theatre and decided to become an actor. It was too awful. The boy was overgrown and gangling and he had never learned to speak properly. He had developed a silly habit of whispering under his breath, as if everything he said was some aesthetical revelation, and he'd never really grown out of it. It was all she could do to restrain herself from some reprimand about it now, before anybody turned up and they would need to raise their voices. Father was appalled and so was Victor, the handsome Hungarian refugee who was transforming the business at a time when it surely needed transforming. Father was too rooted, bogged down Victor said, in pre-war custom and practice. All was poised to expand on a grand scale and there was a place reserved for Raymond. Instead he dropped out before graduating and joined a miserable Repertory Company in Eastbourne. The silly boy found satisfaction knitting in the wings while waiting for his cue to go on playing a butler at least twice his age. Father's strength was failing and it seemed inevitable Rosamund should marry Victor. That might not have happened if Raymond had joined the firm. Not that Victor was a bad husband. Far from it. But he was pushing forty when they married and she might have married somebody younger. And of course he had a Past. Who didn't at that time, and at that age?

‘Retire!' he said. ‘Yes I suppose it's time I thought about it.' 

He restrained himself from a prolonged whisper on the theme that old theatre men never retired only faded away. 

‘I could do worse than Glanaber couldn't I? That blessed retreat from the world's alarms.'

‘I've no idea what it's worth,' Rosamund said. ‘I expect it needs a lot doing to it. You could always sell it and book yourself a place down here.'

‘It's half yours, Ros. I wouldn't do anything without your approval, would I?'

It pleased her to hear him call her ‘Ros'. After all there was no-one else left who would do it. But it was a bit much hearing him talk about ‘her approval'. Raymond had been no great shakes as an actor, but he blossomed forth as an impresario. Or at least he did until Sybil came along. His enthusiasm and unselfish dogged devotion brought success to a number of West End shows. Writers, directors and particularly actors enjoyed working with him. The spectacle of this tall, thin man advancing towards them in rehearsal rubbing his hands together and whispering streams of admiring comments that they only half understood, warmed all their hearts. At first, that Sybil was so ingratiating. She had aristocratic connections and she had a way of dropping illustrious names that did not at all seem like name dropping. It was an oblique skill and Rosamund had admired it. It certainly impressed Victor to the extent of being one of four guarantors of a Shakespearean tour of Eastern Europe that proved ruinously expensive. This was all Sybil's fault. She planned the itinerary and the company found themselves in towns where scarcely anyone understood English simply because she wanted to visit some obscure archaeological site. And an unsympathetic creature too. When some spiteful competitor spread a rumour that Victor had collaborated with the Germans during the war, the family should have rallied around to defend his good name. They owed it to him. It was the least they could do. Instead that sinister Sybil made sure that Raymond was unavailable when his sister most needed him. It was unforgivable. It gave rise to an estrangement that lasted many years. She was gone now, but it was still hard for Rosamund to forgive. She could best cope with her brother now by being sorry for him. He was basically weak as well as being naïve. She had to make an effort to remember how loving and trusting he had been as a child. Perhaps she herself should take some of the blame for having spoilt him? That was possible.

A frail old woman with abundant white hair propelled herself on her spindle-thin legs into the centre of the Common Room as if she were late for an appointment. She stood stock-still to study the brother and sister sitting opposite each other across the low table. She stared at them with frank, blue-eyed curiosity. She pointed a finger at Raymond, who seemed to think he ought to offer her his chair. Rosamund placed a restraining hand on his arm.

‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!'

Her voice was clear and surprisingly youthful. Having delivered the line she lost interest in the visitor and began to wander around the room in search of something she seemed to have lost.

‘She's not supposed to be in here,' Rosamund said.

A burly woman in white nurse's uniform appeared. She had prominent teeth and appeared to be constantly smiling. ‘Now Millie dear, we shouldn't be in here, should we

Now…'

She spoke with a distinct Scottish accent. She had her own way of exercising her authority. Her arms were out- stretched to offer guidance and direction in case the patient were to collapse under the burden of her frailty. In fact the old woman called Millie was surprisingly agile. They made a circle of the Common Room like children playing an indoor game.

‘It's my ring,' the old woman said. ‘I've lost my ring. I've got to find it.'

‘Of course we'll find it, Millie dear. Of course we will.' 

They trotted out the way they had come in. Their voices

could be heard drifting down a corridor, agitated and soothing by turn. Rosamund looked at her brother. He appeared unduly disturbed.

‘She knew me,' he said.

‘Of course she didn't,' Rosamund said. ‘She's like that with every visitor if she gets the chance. Not that she does get a chance all that often. She's an inmate of another part of this establishment. Another part of the forest.'

Rosamund was prepared to take the incident lightly. They had far more important family matters to discuss. Her brother remained agitated.

‘The awful thing is, I think I know her.'

‘You think she could have been an actress?' she said. ‘Just because she quotes Shakespeare. Even I remember that bit from school.'

‘Excuse me.'

Raymond was on his feet.

‘I must find out more about her.'

‘Oh really!' Rosamund said, ‘your imagination.' He ignored her insistence that he should sit down.

At reception he found the director's assistant seated at a computer screen some way behind the counter. He shifted the visitor's book to one side with his elbow and coughed politely to attract her attention. She was quick to her feet ready with a smiling response.

‘That little old lady, wandering about,' Raymond said. 

‘Such a sweet creature,' the young woman said.

She was smiling as though to demonstrate she herself shared the same quality.

‘Quite harmless really. She has a lovely nature. And we think she is very well connected. I know she has a title. Lady something. She was here before I arrived. We call her ‘Millie' and she seems to like that. After all we are all the same in the end, aren't we?'

‘I think I know her,' Raymond said. 

‘Do you really? How interesting…'

The tone of voice also suggested how potentially awkward. The smile was still there, but her grip tightened on the propelling pencil in her hands.

‘She was saying something about losing a ring.' ‘Oh the ring…'

The young woman relaxed a little.

‘Sometime it's the crown as well, but we think that must be Shakespeare. Usually it's the ring. We keep it here.'

She opened a drawer under the counter and produced a gold ring with a single small diamond.

‘It's nothing very special, but it means an awful lot to Millie obviously. Her little hands are so thin it keeps falling off. We always find it before the day is done. So she wears it going to bed and nurse says she sleeps like an angel.'

‘Could I see it?' 

‘Yes of course.'

With the ring between his trembling fingers Raymond moved to the doorway so that he could examine it in the bright sunlight. He could make out an inscription, two names and a knot symbol. Meleri & Raymond. Still clutching the ring in his fist, he sank into a deep leather chair in the reception area like a man exhausted after a journey. With his head lowered and his eyes screwed up he saw Mahmood the watchmaker in his tiny crowded shop in the alley off Hammersmith Grove engraving the letters inside the ring.

This was the day when Meleri told him she was pregnant and he so gallantly said it would make no difference. It was she who insisted on having an abortion. For the sake of her career. And it was he who insisted they should escape to Glanaber where she could recover. ‘Regroup' was the cheerful word he had used. He could hear it now. And he had remained unremittingly cheerful for the whole period, until she insisted on going away and making a fresh start. He had been heartbroken, ‘devastated' would be the current word, until Sybil came along and the whole tragic episode was blotted out of his consciousness by the force of her powerful personality. It had no more reality than an alcoholic dream; but now the thoughts were facts, as substantial as the ring clutched in his hand.

‘Are you all right?'

The director's assistant expressed her concern. She was uncertain whether to leave her side of the counter and get closer to the bent length of the thin man in the leather chair. 

‘Can I get you something?' she said. ‘Should I go and call your sister?'

He shook his head and raised a hand to restrain the young woman. He murmured something about being all right in a minute.

‘Just a bit of a shock,' he said. ‘That's all.'

But was it? Coincidences could be like earthquakes, you could never anticipate them: only once they happened they took on the mantle of inevitability, rather like the course of history, always there, waiting to be explained, waiting to be given a meaning. What did this mean? He was a man at the end of a career in the theatre, waiting and wondering what on earth he should do next. He had always seen himself as a man with a mission. This had driven him through all the vicissitudes of a career with as many ups and downs as a figure eight at a fair. His pulse was racing as he considered the possibility of a new chapter beginning: a fresh start even. He could hear the voices approaching again. Millie appeared to be in flight from her benevolent captor.

‘Millie dear. It will be eating time soon. Let's get back to our rooms, shall we? There's a lovely programme on the television. All about red squirrels. You know how you love them.'

‘I must find my ring.'

She seemed well aware she would find the ring some- where in the region of the reception area. She stood still to look up at the tall man who confronted her, her eyes dashing about filled with fear and suspicion.

‘Who are you?' she said. ‘What do you want?' 

‘Meleri.'

He spoke the name as tenderly as he could. He repeated it. 

‘Raymond,' he said. ‘Glanaber. Long ago.'

She was shaking her head. He opened his hand so that she could see the ring.

‘I'm Raymond,' he said. ‘I gave you this ring. You can read our names inside it.'

She turned to her nurse who advanced to put her arms around her. She needed support.

‘That's my ring,' she said. ‘What's this man doing with it? He's stolen it.'

‘Meleri. Meleri. I gave you this ring. Don't you remember?'

‘I want my ring back.'

The patient was getting increasingly agitated.

‘Better you give it her,' the nurse urged in her quietest voice. Once the ring was on her finger, the frail woman calmed down. She straightened up ready to adopt a role.

‘Set this down, that one may smile and smile, and be a villain…'

‘Now come along, Millie dear. We've got such a lot to do.' 

Clutching the ring on her finger, meekly enough, Millie allowed herself to be led away. Raymond collapsed into the deep leather chair and held his head in his hands. Alarmed, the director's assistant rushed to the Common Room to inform Rosamund of her brother's distressed condition. Rosamund rose to her feet with some difficulty. As she said herself she had reached a stage when she much preferred sitting down to walking. The Home provided routine consultations with a doctor and he had recommended that Rosamund should take more exercise. She did so grudgingly. And she did not take kindly to her brother staging an emotional collapse on his first visit. Whatever ghost from the past he imagined he had seen, she had no intention of taking the young woman into her confidence about it. It seemed to her the most appropriate way of dealing with this crisis was to ask the director's assistant to provide them with more tea in a sheltered corner of the south terrace. It was within easy reach and should not cause the busy young woman undue trouble.

‘Could you be so kind…'

She was a thoughtful, understanding girl and Rosamund would commend her to the director when he returned. She was a woman already pledged to endow the establishment on her demise: so she would have the best attention when she needed it.