Nowhere Girl Page 10

  I stood there without moving. Through the blackness of the windows I could see my reflection, quite still. Then I began to walk about the room in swerving patterns. My walk felt very heavy, as if I pushed against a strong current in the sea. I touched things with a floppy hand – the backs of the sofas, the window sill, the picture frames. In the other hand I felt myself crushing the slice of cake in its greaseproof paper.

  I stood still again. I began to blink very slowly, to see how heavy I could make my eyelids feel on my eyes. I blinked like a slow mechanical doll. Forty-one times, I counted. Then I went into the bedroom. No-one had been there. No cigarette ends in the ashtrays.

  Back in the sitting-room I put the slice of cake on top of a cushion. It balanced for a moment, then fell on to the sofa. So I sat on the sofa and put it on top of the cushion again. The same thing happened. I began to repeat this sliding game faster and faster. Then I heard the key in the lock. Joshua came in.

  I stood up. He stopped as soon as he saw me. His eyes bore into mine and held them there, unflinching.

  ‘What?’ he said at last.

  ‘Who?’ I said. He shrugged.

  ‘It’s been a difficult enough day,’ he said, carelessly. Then his face turned into three faces, his eyes into two black holes that covered all three faces. I grabbed the still-wrapped slice of cake and threw it at the heads with all my force.

  ‘A bad enough day! So it has. You lousy, stinking, thoughtless idiot. Mrs Fox goes and does this whole party for you, and you just don’t turn up. You just don’t turn up!’ My shriek filled the room, raw, ugly. ‘She goes to all this trouble. All her best friends, a huge cake, everything decorated … and then you just don’t turn up.’ He was shaking me now.

  ‘Stop that noise. Shut up, Clare. Shut up – .’

  ‘I won’t shut up!’ Children’s playground chants in my ears. ‘I won’t shut up, I won’t shut up! It’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to anybody.’

  He slapped me hard on the cheek. It stung; it shocked. But I shut up.

  ‘I’m sorry about Mrs Fox’s party,’ he said quietly. ‘I quite forgot about that. I’ll do something about it.’ I backed away from him. Tears from the pain seemed to have blurred my eyes.

  ‘I’m sure you will. You’ll send her flowers – very expensive flowers, I expect, and imagine that will make up for everything.’ His face was one face again now, taut and cruel.

  ‘Of course they won’t make up for anything, you idiot. I’ve said I’m sorry.’ He took a step towards me, but I backed farther away. ‘Do you want me to explain?’

  ‘There’s no need. It’s quite clear. Who was she?’ A scream again.

  ‘Please don’t shout any more.’ His voice was a monotone.

  ‘I said: who was she?’ Control, this time.

  ‘She was once my secretary. Annabel Hammond.’

  ‘What was she doing here?’

  ‘We had lunch, then we came back here and talked.’

  ‘Talked?’

  ‘Yes, talked.’ The sting in my cheek was dying away, comfortably, but there was a constriction in my throat. It spread across my chest.

  ‘Have you and Annabel Hammond always just-talked?’

  ‘No, we haven’t always just talked.’ I undid the bottom button of my mackintosh then did it up again. Two, three times.

  ‘I see,’ I said at last.

  ‘So what do you want to do about it?’

  ‘What could I want to do about it – her? There’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘I’m sorry if you minded, but there was nothing to mind about.’ A feeling of great weakness swelled through my body. I dropped on to the sofa.

  ‘Why did you want to have lunch with her?’ I asked. Joshua sighed, trying to be patient.

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. The idea suddenly came to me. I just wanted to see her. She was the person I rang this morning, in front of you, but there was no reply. So I didn’t mean it to be a secret. If I had, I would have cleared up the ashtrays, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ The warmth of relief.

  ‘She makes me laugh. I wanted to be laughed out of my mood this morning.’

  ‘Did she succeed?’

  ‘In a way. But how can I keep it up, if you go on like this?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He sat beside me.

  ‘For heaven’s sake. You must meet her some time. You’d like her. She’s a great girl.’

  ‘She’d got it all ready for you,’ I said. ‘So much effort.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Mrs Fox.’

  ‘Oh, we’re back on Mrs Fox. I’ll go and see her later on this evening, I promise.’ He took my hand. I marvelled at his picking it up, it was so heavy. ‘Does this mean you want to leave me, just because I had lunch with Annabel? – It’s difficult to talk to someone with their eyes shut.’ I kept them shut.

  ‘Don’t you realise?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you realise at all?’ Under the lids, complete darkness.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he said. ‘Is there anything to eat?’ The darkness behind my eyelids broke into flares of scarlet. A plummet swung about the ragged patterns, then tell deeper.

  ‘Mrs Fox sent you a slice of your cake,’ I said.

  I heard him look about the sofa, then stretch down to the floor to where the package had fallen. I heard him snap off the elastic band, unwrap the greaseproof paper and screw it into a ball. Then I heard him cursing the crumbs and currants that fell into his lap as he ate his piece of birthday cake.

  Chapter Nine

  Jonathan was dressed up as a pantomime fairy. He wore a wig of long blond ringlets, a white net ballet dress that sparkled, and goose-feather wings. On his feet, pink satin pumps whose laces criss-crossed up his legs to the knees, cutting into the flaky flesh. Over his arm he carried a huge basket covered with a white cloth.

  He stood in the centre of a circle of very old men and women, all dressed in pinafores, mortar-boards and tapshoes. They applauded him and he began to sing:

  ‘I’ve got gooseberry jam for you,

  Jam for you,

  Jam for you.

  I’ve got gooseberry jam for you

  On a cold and frosty morning’

  He began to skip round the circle, stopping briefly at each old person and handing out a tiny pot of jam, like the pots of jam on trains, from the basket.

  ‘Here I come with my gooseberry jam,

  My gooseberry jam,

  My gooseberry jam.

  Here I come with my gooseberry jam

  On a cold and frosty morning.’

  They applauded him again, and began to shuffle their feet with quiet metallic taps. Then they joined in the chorus, their voices croaky and out of tune.

  ‘Here he comes with his gooseberry jam.

  His gooseberry jam,

  His gooseberry jam.

  Here he comes with his gooseberry jam

  On a cold and frosty morning’

  I woke up with a headache, a sore throat, and aching everywhere. Last time I had had flu, Jonathan had given up any pretence of writing for a whole week, with the excuse of nursing me. He had done it very well. Flowers. Books. A portable television at the end of my bed. He never left the house, except briefly to buy food. He did the cooking himself: steamed soles and baked custards neatly laid on trays with tray cloths. He remembered what medicines I had to take when, and read to me out loud. The fact that he felt he was positively helping someone else seemed to suit him. He became more vivacious than usual. We had no arguments; we were content.

  ‘I feel awful,’ I said to Joshua, who stirred.

  ‘Need a doctor?’

  ‘No, but I don’t feel much like getting up.’

  ‘You’d better stay in bed, then.’ He frowned. ‘I won’t be able to be with you much. I’ve a meeting at ten and viewings most of the day. But I’ll leave my number wherever I go.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be all right.’

  When he was dressed Joshua brought
me a cup of tea.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right ?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Take care of yourself. I’ll – ring Mrs Fox and tell her to come round and see you.’ He kissed me on the forehead. ‘Don’t want to catch anything. ‘Bye.’

  When he had gone I went back to sleep, but the fairy Jonathan danced no more.

  *

  Mrs Fox arrived later in the morning. She pulled up a chair by my bed and kept her hat and coat on.

  ‘It’s very Decembery out,’ she said. ‘Frost in the air. All the shops are filled with Christmas things.’ She patted a crumpled paper bag. ‘I don’t suppose you feel like eating much, but I’ve bought a few little bits that might tempt you.’ She pulled from the bag a honeycomb, six tangerines and a jar of gooseberry jam.

  ‘How funny,’ I said. ‘Gooseberry jam.’

  ‘It was always Henry’s favourite. I used to make it for him myself, in a good gooseberry year. But then he was most particular about what he liked and what he didn’t like. He never could stand liver or spinach. My sister Edith was the same about raw onions. She didn’t like scarecrows, either. You couldn’t get Edith into a field with a scarecrow, not for anything. Not even walking right round the edges.’ She patted the Poppy Day poppy in her hat. ‘But then there’s no accounting for other people’s tastes, and there’s never any hope of changing them, is there? I never could get Edith or Henry to like music – not in the same way that I do. Edith did try, mind. They both tried, to please me. But they could never get the hang of it. I suppose I got it from my father, myself. He was what you’d call an artist, in his way. He did beautiful little silhouettes of people’s profiles – he could have sold them for a fortune, but he never asked for money. He said you couldn’t take money for a hobby. He was good on the violin, too. He used to practise in the front room on a Sunday afternoon, all in his best clothes.

  He was a very upright figure of a man, my father. Dignified, you’d call him. It was after he died that Edith went so quiet.’

  She was quiet herself for a while, fussing kindly about me, shaking the pillows and fetching me a drink.

  ‘I’m no Florence Nightingale,’ she smiled. ‘I should be, I know, after all those years married to Henry. But to tell the truth, I never got used to illness. It always affected me. I’m ashamed to admit it, but each time a patient of his was near to dying, I was afraid. I’m a religious person, but imagining an after-life is past me. Where are Henry and Edith now, I ask myself? What are they doing? Do they know we’re thinking of them? You can drive yourself mad with such questions.’

  ‘So what did you do when Henry died?’ She seemed to stiffen, remembering.

  ‘It was all very quick, in the night. A heart attack, it was and’ – she snapped her fingers – ‘out like a light, before his partner could get to him. Then all his patients began coming in. I don’t know what made them come, or how they heard. But they came, and they took over. They arranged everything except for the music. I don’t think it was disloyal, really, letting them do it. I mean, he was dead, so what did it matter? Though I often wonder, even now. But I don’t think he would have minded. He loved his patients.’ She lowered her eyes to her hands. They lay in an unconscious position of prayer on her lap.

  ‘What you must do when people die,’ she said, ‘is to treat it like an ordinary day. The funeral, too. It must be an ordinary day. You must have the same things for breakfast, and the same things as usual for supper at night. The weather was very ordinary the day Henry was buried. I can’t even remember what the sky was like. The Salvation Army – he’d always supported them–played quieter than I would have liked out in the graveyard – their form of respect, I suppose, but it was nice. They were completely silent, though, when his coffin was lowered into the grave. They must have misunderstood me. I had said music all the time. Anyway. They gave me this handful of earth to throw, and I threw it, and I just said “thank you.” I think it must have been out loud, because people looked at me. But that’s what I was thinking, so that’s what I felt like saying.’ She sighed. ‘It was a very ordinary funeral, and a very ordinary death, Henry’s. I realise that.’

  It was still only midday when Mrs Fox left. I wondered when Joshua would ring. I had his number, but didn’t want to disturb him. I would give him till three o’clock.

  I wanted him to be here.

  The room had become familiar so quickly. The morning after he had carried me in from the bathroom, leaving behind my toothpaste flowers, it was already familiar. Square, white, unadorned. A few shelves of books, a pine rocking chair, a Spanish rug, a carved wooden tree on the chest of drawers – something Joshua had done last week before his work had started up at this pace again. An immemorable room, but I would never forget it. Now, it was the roses on the pelmets in the bedroom in the mews house that were unclear in my mind; the exact placing of the ornaments that were never moved on the fireplace. And I had slept there six years.

  The telephone rang. I felt myself smiling.

  ‘Clare? It’s David.’

  ‘I’m ill,’ I said, making my voice sound worse than it was. ‘I can’t really talk.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Anything serious?’ He sounded concerned. It was something he and Jonathan had always had in common. Instant concern.

  ‘No, no. Just ‘flu.’

  ‘Is there anything you need?’

  ‘No thanks. Just sleep.’

  ‘I won’t keep you talking then. Ring me when you feel better.’

  I slammed down the receiver. I wanted Joshua to be here.

  I had never become used to waiting. When Richard first went to sea I was very bad at it. I would space the days out between the arrival of postcards – he seldom wrote me a letter – and the rare events of a long distance call. There was nothing to do with the days in Portsmouth. It was almost unbearably boring and I disliked the hotel life. I hated eating dinner by myself in the dining-room at seven every evening, barely protected by my book from the fresh young headwaiter. I was intolerant of the young wives who tried to be friendly with their offers of coffee mornings and organised outings to a historical place – to keep their minds alive, as they explained. My lack of enthusiasm soon stopped their offers, and on many days I spoke to no-one but hotel staff.

  I wrote to Richard every day. I liked writing letters, and believed he would be interested in my dull news if I could make a good story of the non-events. I told him about how I drove about the countryside in our Anglia, and how petrol had gone up, and how I was trying to teach myself Spanish from one of those do-it-yourself books, and how I’d like a baby, next time he came back. I told him I missed him, but I understood about his career.

  Sometimes, though, when I tried to remember him, I became confused. I had no photographs, and at one time the picture of his face completely eluded me. I panicked. I lay awake night after night willing myself to remember. His backview was clear: the high, bony shoulders, the upright back, the neat line of hair beneath his cap. I made him turn round, slowly, in my mind, but he had no face.

  I went down to the harbour one afternoon to re-enact his last departure. There was a ship close by, much like his. I walked to the gangway and stood there, holding the ropes. We had both stood at an identical gangway two months ago, holding a small case between us. He had lowered his head close to mine.

  ‘Good-bye, little one,’ he’d said. ‘Take care of yourself. I’ll send you some chocolates.’ Those were always his parting words. He kissed my cheek just below one eye, so lightly that the inner wet part of his lips did not touch me. Then he drew back and looked down at me from his skinny height.

  I looked up now, to the width of dappled sky. Funnels, in the distance. Cranes. Two seagulls croaking, humped in slow motion on an invisible wind. Then, at last, the slow recollection of eyes, nose, mouth, the shape of a head with its gold banded cap.

  It had worked. I ran back to the town. I ran into a tea shop and ordered home-made brown bread, doughnuts and coffee. I f
elt myself smiling idiotically at the other customers in their wheelback chairs. I didn’t care. I had remembered Richard’s face, and there were only three weeks till he came back again.

  *

  Lunchtime came and went. I sipped very bright orange juice. Still Joshua didn’t ring, but the door bell did. A boy handed me a huge bunch of pink roses, prim and cultivated, arrow-pointed buds. Jonathan’s mother had spectacular roses in her garden in Dorset – great shabby things with dappled petals that darkened towards their centres. It was in her rose garden, in fact, that he had proposed to me, one June evening, as we walked one behind the other, because of the narrowness of the paths, between the beds of Queen Elizabeth and the Golden Glory. He had obviously laid his plans for the proposal most carefully: he had resisted my attempts to take secateurs and a basket to the garden, and I had had no suspicions. When I said yes, all right, I would, he had pulled at a fat scarlet bloom, trying to pluck it for me in some appropriate symbolic gesture: but he tore the stem and the petals fell to the ground.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘what matters is that now we’re going to be together, together, together for the rest of our lives.’ He hitched up his trousers, gave a little skip, and an instant tear ran from one eye.

  *

  Joshua had never sent me roses before. I ripped at the cellophane and slit the envelope to get the small card. Unmistakably, it was written in a florist’s hand. Clare-cheer up! Get better soon. Love, David.

  I rammed the roses into the kitchen sink, uncaring, because there was no vase deep enough to hold their long, anæmic stems, and no scissors to cut them with. Then I went back to bed and watched the hands of the clock till three.

  Joshua wasn’t at the number he had given me. They hadn’t seen him and didn’t know when to expect him. How to get through the long afternoon?

  Find a flat, or a house, that was it. Do something useful. I wouldn’t ring agencies, in case Joshua tried to ring me, and he never tried again if a number was engaged. But I could go through the papers. – In one glance, there were an amazing amount of suitable places for us. It would be easy when the time came. The small Georgian terrace house in Kennington, for instance. Joshua liked that side of the river. It would be quiet, and quite convenient. Probably not too good for shopping, but there would be plenty of time to go elsewhere. It would be an unhurried life. Time to read, to learn to cook, to find bargains in junk shops for the house. Even to have a child, perhaps, one day. I would go abroad with Joshua on his filming trips, and we would come back to find a pine grandfather clock still ticking in the hall, and expensive frozen things in the ice box because we could afford to spend a lot of money on food. The house had a small back-garden, it said, with two apple trees. Eating apples, perhaps. We could have windows on to the garden leading from one of those kitchen-dining rooms. It would always be untidy, with an old sofa and telephone books and strings of onions. I would cook breakfast there, go into the garden and pick an apple, and shine it on my apron. But perhaps Joshua would like better this studio flat near Ladbroke Grove with a spiral staircase to the bedroom? I marked the paper with huge crosses. My head began to thump.