Wish Her Safe at Home (8 page)

She was a gentle thin-haired deferential lady who offered me a jam tart with my cup of tea. On the telephone I had invited
her
to have tea with
me
but after a good deal of hesitation—and even some apparent reluctance that we should meet at all—she’d finally admitted she would much prefer to stay at home. So I’d taken her a box of chocolates and half a dozen roses and once I was actually there it was pathetic the way she kept on telling me how glad she was to have a visitor, and the way she kept on thanking me—surely five or six times—for those two extremely simple gifts; saying how I shouldn’t have done it, oh I
shouldn’t
have done it! She was quite endearing but how I hoped that I myself, as I grew older, would be spared from being pathetic.

“There was a painting,” I said, “which Mr. Wallace mentions. ‘The portrait that now hangs above me as I write.’ Do you know what became of it, Miss Eversley?” I had hoped I would see it as she ushered me into the sitting room of her flat (however, her home turned out to be entirely more modest than that: purely a bed-sitter) but this time it had been only a
hope
, nothing stronger.

“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed. “That great big monstrosity of a picture!”

I was surprised. “But Mr. Wallace said he had a nice good-natured face with a most intriguing smile.” I remembered it precisely: “‘A smile that somehow grew more pronounced, increasingly captivating, the better that you came to know the painting.’”

She was nodding even before I had finished. “Oh, I’m not saying anything against it, please don’t think that. I’m sure he did have a nice face just like the Reverend Wallace wrote. But somehow it was all so dark; so, I don’t know, so...
”

“Sombre?”

“Yes! It was all so sombre that in certain lights you couldn’t even see it
was
a face. Not if you were standing in the wrong position.” She raised her hands. “And the dust it used to collect!

But in some ways I wish I was still dusting it today. It wasn’t such a bad life. All in all.”

I had a vision, briefly, of the past she was remembering. To me it seemed quite dreadful: daily ministrations to some prosy and pedantic old clergyman. Grey, all grey. Yet nearly anything was better, I supposed, than—what?—to be in your middle-to-late eighties. Wrinkled fingers; dewlapped throat. No hope of change. How terrible no longer to have any hope of change. No hope of finding love.

“More tea?” she asked. “Another tart?”

“Not a thing. It was delicious.”

I wiped my mouth on my lace-edged handkerchief.

“Do you happen to know what became of it? The picture.”

“Well, you’d have to ask Mr. Lipton who came and cleared the house for me. I kept one or two little things of course”—she gestured towards a chest of drawers, a wardrobe and her bed—“just enough to meet my needs in this place, but otherwise Mr. Lipton bought it all; a very fair gentleman, I will say that for him, a very fair gentleman indeed.”

“Is he a local man?”

“Oh, yes. The Reverend Wallace said his shop was better than any Aladdin’s cave. He bought me this old tin-opener at Mr. Lipton’s, the best I’ve ever had.” And she rose with some difficulty, her cup of tea unfinished—expressly, as it turned out, to show me this very ordinary tin opener. “10p,” she said. We both stood and admired it.

Then she gave me detailed directions on how to get there. “But if you’ll forgive me, Miss Baring, asking you something you’ll maybe think
much
too personal...
?”

I told her the reason for my interest was that I now lived in Mr. Gavin’s house: a fact which seemed to cause her a good deal of gratification. “And I’d love to return your hospitality,” I said. “I’m hoping that you’re shortly going to visit me there.”

But she began to shake her head.

I gently coaxed. “I would arrange for a taxi to fetch you and to bring you home.”

“That’s very kind,” she murmured. “Perhaps...
when the days draw out a bit. When it gets a little warmer.” We were coming to the end of July.

“I see you’ve got no television.”

“No. I never cared for it. Nor the wireless either.”

“I was just wondering, then, if you’d like to come and watch the Royal Wedding with me. Make a day of it. In colour.”

I could see that she was tempted. “I’ll have to give it a little thought,” she told me.

“Shall I phone you next Tuesday?”

“Well, we’ll see. I don’t know if I shall be able to come to the telephone next Tuesday.”

I nodded and experienced a great surging wave of gratitude. Gratitude for being somebody like me, not somebody like her. Gratitude for having so many good years still temptingly in store, so much sheer quality of life!

And I vowed that I was going to make the most of every minute. I was young! I had time! Today was the past I’d be looking back on in another thirty years. Thirty or forty or fifty. And looking back on with such serenity. Such pleasure. I could have hugged her!

However, apart from my sudden desire to express an all-embracing tenderness, I felt relieved that she probably wouldn’t accept my invitation. I had no wish to see the Royal Wedding. None whatsoever.

“Well, if you can’t come to me,” I suggested, “shall I come to you? I don’t mean that day in particular. Any time. We could read the newspapers together or simply sit and talk?”

“That would be nice,” she smiled—with an expression, I thought, of genuine appreciation. “I’ll let you know when it’s convenient.”

She held her finger to her lips.

“But sometimes they don’t like it here if you get too many visitors. They’re a bit funny that way. They get jealous and say some very nasty things. One has to be so careful.” She was still whispering.

“Who? The other residents?”

“And the wardens. But they’re really very fair. On the whole. I will say that for them.”

Oh dear.

Yes, it was frightening to see how people’s already tiny worlds could contract yet further, into something so engrossing that neither pestilence nor flood nor royal wedding could intrude. And it was as sad as it was frightening since those tiny worlds were in any case so full of whisper and of menace. So immensely far from the haven you’d believe the elderly ought to have found. Despite myself, I had to smile.
The rays of the evening sun reflecting on the water.
Wasn’t that how Mrs. Pimm had put it?

I said: “But to return to what we were speaking of...
”

For some reason she looked hopeful as if I might supply the answer to a question which either she hadn’t dared ask or hadn’t known how to.

“I’m also wanting to write a book on Mr. Gavin.”

“Ah?”

“Though I don’t think it will be a biography, not like the Reverend Wallace’s. It’s going to be a novel. Don’t you feel that’s wonderfully exciting?” I had forgotten to keep my voice down.

She returned her finger to her lips. “How very interesting!” she said. “But I was never a big reader.”

Oh, Miss Eversley! No novels, no television, no radio. The greyness of her life appalled me. This self-imposed greyness even in a land of colour. No escape. No possibility of escape.

“Yes—all my life I’ve hoped to write a novel!” I laughed. I was so much wanting to infect her with a little of my own gaiety. “And now it seems I’ve found my hero!”

She didn’t laugh but she certainly did smile. “Oh, I’m sure a lot of people may have seen him in that way.”

I was impressed.

“And myself, too—I think of him whenever I look at this tin-opener and remember all that junk in Mr. Lipton’s shop.”

“Oh, I see, no—”

“But thank you for coming, Miss Baring. And thank you for all those lovely flowers and chocolates you brought. You really shouldn’t have.”

She was sweet in her appreciation. “I know what I shall do,” I cried. “I shall go right out and buy you a jigsaw!”

“A jigsaw?”

“Yes. They’re such absorbing things. And you don’t paint, do you? You don’t work tapestry? Then you simply must have a jigsaw.”

“But I wouldn’t know what to do with it.” She gave her head a puzzled shake.

“I shall get you one with mountains and a lake and a little village nestling on the slopes. And a castle and a church spire and a café. And a woman with a barrow selling flowers.”

She seemed a trifle overwhelmed by this.

“And an organ-grinder with a monkey!” (I was trusting I might find something roughly like it in either W H Smith or Woolworths.) “Why, Miss Eversley”—it suddenly came home to me—“you haven’t even got a record player!”

“Oh, no, please,” she said. “What should I want with an organ-grinder and a monkey?”

I was delighted by her sense of humour.

“Please not,” she said.

But when she actually opened the door she had her finger pressed to her lips again. And then we only mimed the rest of our goodbyes.

I had hardly been home ten minutes and was just wondering whether to make myself a
proper
cup of tea when the doorbell rang and I had a visitor. What an eventful day! The employment exchange in the morning, followed by coffee and a scone at
The Good Hostess
, Miss Eversley in the afternoon, my stroll back through the park singing, “Ten cents a dance, that’s what they pay me, oh how they weigh me down...
” (and doing my best
not
to think of the Reverend Lionel Wallace as I did so!) and now this. A visitor. Or, rather, two visitors. Even three. Standing on the pavement in the sunshine were a tall young man in a smart brown suit and a slim and pretty woman who had in her arms a sleeping baby. The three of them made a charming tableau.

“Roger!” I exclaimed.

“Don’t say you recognize me with my hair brushed!”

“What a lovely surprise.”

“May I introduce my wife, Miss Waring? This is Celia. And
this
—this normally rather noisy newcomer to the southwest—is Thomas.”

“How lovely. Oh, how lovely.” My vocabulary seemed limited. “And I didn’t even realize you were married. Do come in. I was just about to make some tea.”

“What terrific timing!” laughed the young man. “I’m parched.” In a moment he was filling the hallway like a glowing Dane. “But perhaps that wasn’t very polite. I am sorry. Perhaps I should be saying I do hope we’re not disturbing you but that we were just passing and—”

“We
were
just passing,” said his wife. “Please, Miss Waring, pay no attention to my exuberant husband.”

“I assure you I won’t,” I said. “Is he always like this?”

“Yes!”

“Oh, how unbearable! But at least you must get him to wear off
some
of his energy by taking Thomas from you—because I’m afraid my sitting room is on the next floor and you can see the stairs are somewhat steep.”

He said, while obediently taking his son, “But tell her, Miss Waring, I don’t need to be all stiff and formal with you, do I? Tell her we’re old buddies.”

“We’re old buddies, Mrs. Allsop.”

“Celia,” he said.

But it seemed she was too busy looking about her even to have heard. “Oh, this is gorgeous, Miss Waring. It’s delightful. Have you done it all yourself?”

They were my first real visitors to my first real home. I felt very proud yet tried my hardest not to show it.

“Well, I may not have done it all myself but at least I’ve had it all done...
myself.”

“And in the ability to delegate,” said Roger, “lies the hallmark of genius.”

She exclaimed over nearly everything she saw. So did her husband. It was the most intoxicating stuff. And I too exclaimed: over their bright-eyed adorable baby. We all appeared very well pleased with one another. I went away to make the tea. The baby had awoken on his journey up the stairs and in my absence Celia fed him. She changed his nappy in the bathroom. She seemed so terribly organized and efficient. While we drank our tea and they ate the dainty iced cakes that I’d dashed out to the teashop for, Thomas cooed and gurgled contentedly—this noisy little newcomer to the southwest—and clutched his father’s finger. How I wished that Sylvia could have seen us. “Oh, you are such a
strong
little boy, aren’t you?” said his mother. “Such a powerful little grasp already!” I visualized that sea of tight golden curls beneath the crisp beige shirt on which his head reclined; and, feeling myself begin to flush, had to look away abruptly.

He said: “Darling, we haven’t told Miss Waring the reason for our visit.”

“My goodness,” I exclaimed confusedly, “does there need to be a reason?”

“Well,
now
I realize not,” he answered. He grinned apologetically. “But anyway I was boasting to Celia about that garden we’d created—”

“You created.”

“No,” he contradicted firmly, “very much a team effort: you the brain, me the brawn. And I suddenly thought how much I’d like to see it again. And I’d like Celia to see it too; to appreciate my cleverness.”

“Our cleverness,” I cried merrily, aware of having scored a telling point.

“Yes, I swear it. Cross my heart.”

“But you’re saying you’ve only come to see the garden?”

I felt like a dreadful flirt but the flirtation came quite naturally, even here under the eyes of his smiling wife.

“The garden?” I said. “Not me?”

He bowed his head. He answered: “I’d forgotten how nice you were.”

It was one of those crushing moments when you’re wholly taken aback by simple sincerity and you can’t think what to say.

“Of course you may come and see it,” was all that I did say.

We sat out there for some while close together on the wrought-iron bench—Roger in the middle—and I was most terribly aware of the contact of our thighs.

“I remember you’re a student,” I said, my voice sounding wholly unnatural to myself, “but for the life of me I can’t remember what you’re studying.”

“Law.”

Had I never asked him? I didn’t think I had. How utterly remiss. “That must be very interesting.”

He nodded. “But another three years to go. That’s the hard part. I just can’t wait to get started.”

“Yes, it must be hard.” I leaned forward slightly, looked across him to his wife. “How ever do you manage?”

She replied easily, “Oh, we do manage. Somehow. Roger gardens of course during the spring and summer vacations.”

I smiled, not quite so easily. “What it is to be young,” I thought. But I hadn’t realized I was going to say it right out loud.

“Well, we’ve got our health,” she said. “And we’ve got Thomas. And we’ve got each other. Money doesn’t really seem all that important.”

Yes. And during the night it mightn’t seem important in the slightest.

I wondered if he wore pyjamas.

And I wondered how often...
and how it...
Sitting there in the balmy evening air I felt momentarily sick again with deprivation and jealousy and the bitterly recurring knowledge that I would never know now what it felt like, that one experience which above all others was alleged to be...
Oh God, I thought. Oh God, oh God, oh God. For a second I was afraid I’d said all that aloud as well.

But the desperation of the moment passed. We talked some more about the garden. Celia said, “I think in time it will be beautiful. But—and this may sound blasphemous within my husband’s hearing—it’s the house I truly go for. It’s one of the loveliest I’ve seen. Not only that, it’s got such a wonderful atmosphere.”

“Ah? So you’ve really noticed?”

“Well, who could fail to?”

She had gone a long way towards making it more bearable, that retreating minute of desolation. I liked her. I liked her despite the gleam of loving pride whenever her eyes were resting on her husband.

“Then you must come and see me often.”

“We should love to,” she said. “And you must come and see us, too.” She added impulsively: “What about lunch on Sunday?”

But Roger broke in. “Darling, didn’t your parents say they might be driving over next Sunday with Ralph or someone?”

“Oh, damn—”

We left it in abeyance for the time being. In all honesty I was just as glad. Although extremely moved to have been asked, especially with so much warmth and spontaneity, I felt there was absolutely no rush. I should get a lot of enjoyment simply from thinking about it.

She made a face. “My parents want us to have young Thomas christened.” He was making happy little noises and sucking his thumb while drumming his heels on the plaid rug that I had brought out and arranged on the turf which his father had laid. (How I had liked the way his back muscles had rippled as he was lowering each section into place.) “We ourselves can’t see the urgency. But I suppose”—she laughed—“anything for the sake of a quiet life...
”

“You know, Celia, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more contented baby.”

“Would you like to hold him?”