Nowhere Girl Page 13

  ‘You exaggerate,’ he said, no longer smiling. On my own plate the flames fizzled out round a fiery mound of fluff. I held on to the solid mahogany underbelly of the table.

  ‘I exaggerate? Absolute nonsense.’ So concerned was she with her own pace, that Annabel was unaware now that Joshua had fallen behind her. ‘Don’t say you’ve forgotten that time – where was it? God knows, England somewhere, I think – that time you ran off for hours leaving me on some God-forsaken beach. And when at last you came back you didn’t care a damn that I was perished. You were very pleased with yourself, in fact, because you’d managed to get us ice creams, two bloody choc bars if I remember – ’

  ‘Shut up, Annabel!’ My scream ripped into her. She stopped. In silence, everyone looked at me. I trembled, I burned. ‘You reminiscing bitch. What are you trying to do?’

  ‘What have I done?’ Her voice cool, concealing a smile. Her head tipped up towards me now, innocently. Then all the heads tipped up, so that shadowy cheeks suddenly flared with gold light from the candles, I was standing. I looked at Joshua and the others faded.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ Pause. No answer. He still held my eyes. ‘Quickly. Please. It’s time for us to go.’ He got up, came to my chair and pulled it away, freeing me from the trap between it and the table. Then he went to the door, opened it for me, and gestured to me to go through. He didn’t follow. I turned round to wait for him. He was shutting the door.

  ‘That was a pretty scene,’ he said, so quietly I could hardly hear, and the door closed.

  I began to run through corridors – close-carpeted, hunting scenes on the walls, dimpled light from chandeliers. I chose a door with an ornate brass handle. An unused room, cold. Very high leather chairs. Grey walls, guns, a stuffed labrador in a glass cage, a steel-framed photograph of a man with Annabel’s eyes, one of them was widened behind a monocle. Leather arm-chair very cold behind my knees, very cold arms under my hands. Directly opposite my chair the labrador, its flinty pink tongue painless on icicle teeth, smiled its dead smile.

  *

  About half an hour later there was a tap on the door. I didn’t answer. Mrs Fox came in.

  ‘Heavens, child, you’ll catch your death in here,’ she said, going to the small electric fire that stood dwarfed at the foot of the huge fireplace. She switched on its two thin bars. ‘Typical meanness of these sort of people. Henry was always having to go to people who’d caught pneumonia by economising on the central heating when they needn’t have. They’d cut out a radiator here, a radiator there, just to prove to themselves they weren’t extravagant. But then the rich have some funny illusions about cutting down, don’t they?’ She went over to the dog and tapped at the glass case, her back to me. ‘What an awful creature! Joshua said I should tell you we will be leaving shortly. I wouldn’t have liked to have a dog like that alive, let alone dead.’

  She turned to me. In this room her sequined cardigan glittered deep violet, navy, and dull silver, subdued. She still wore her black hat with its silver painted goose feathers and, as usual, one hand rubbed at the lumpy rings on the other.

  ‘They put on Stravinsky in the drawing-room when we went through,’ she said. ‘Well, I thought, if you start listening to that, you’ll never leave. So I thought I’d come and find you. Joshua saw me going and gave me the message.’

  ‘Mrs Fox,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said. She went now to the huge desk in the corner. It had a carved roll-top which she fingered gently. ‘Very like ours,’ she said, ‘very like ours. I mean, like the one I was telling you about where Edith used to write her Christmas letters. Do you think anyone would mind –?’ Gently she pushed up the lid. Underneath, polished brass handles shone on a pattern of small drawers. There were no papers, no pens, no ink. Mrs Fox was disappointed. ‘It’s all deserted,’ she said, pulling back the lid. ‘I’ve never liked an empty desk.’

  Through the door came the distant sound of Joshua calling us. I didn’t move.

  ‘Come along now, up off that chair.’ Mrs Fox spoke with the same voice she had used to Edith on the park bench. ‘We must go, and about time too.’ Still I didn’t move. Mrs Fox moved slowly towards me. She seemed to sag a little. ‘Come along, please.’ She put out her hand, the one with the rings, so that they flashed like a morse code back at her sequined sleeve. ‘Take my arm, if you would. You’d never believe it, but I’m a little tired.’ It didn’t matter whether or not she spoke the truth. I got up, and took her arm. The sequins felt splintery under my hand. We walked past the smiling dog and out into the passage.

  ‘I didn’t turn the fire off on purpose, of course,’ said Mrs Fox, ‘it just might make that little difference to Mrs Hammond’s bill, mightn’t it?’

  We turned the corner. At the far end of the passage, in the brightly lit hall, the Hammonds, Joshua and Bruce, unaware of us, were talking and laughing round the Christmas tree, pulling on coats, kissing Mrs Hammond, saying they’d love to come again; saying, yes, really, it had been a lovely time, a lovely Christmas Day.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘There’s something about your quietness,’ said Richard Storm, ‘that never bores me.’ We were driving along country lanes looking for another cottage which Richard didn’t want to see, but had agreed to for my sake. It was a Saturday morning. Spring. Primroses on the steep banks of the lanes. A hotel picnic, or ‘wrapped lunch’ as they called it, in a basket on the back seat. A day full of anticipation, full of promise. But weighing against it, a familiar heaviness of limb: a solidity of heart where there should have been lightness. But never mind. Excitement, when we found the cottage, was just round the corner.

  ‘No, I can never understand it. It never ceases to puzzle me.’ Richard was talking quietly, almost to himself. He steered our light Anglia with heavy solemnity, as if he guided a huge ship. ‘When I’m away at sea, I picture you sometimes –’

  ‘Oh, you think of me?’ I smiled at him. He looked back seriously.

  ‘Of course. What do you imagine? You’re my wife, aren’t you? Sailors think of their wives when they’re away at sea.’

  ‘I wasn’t being very serious.’ He was never a receptive person to joke with.

  ‘Well, I was. I think of you often. I think of you as my child wife, far away from me, waiting for me, and it makes me sad.’ He paused.

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Mostly, that we’re wasting time. Not just wasting time by being apart, but that I’m wasting time when I could be – educating you.’

  ‘When you could be what?’ He coughed, and steered elaborately round a gentle corner.

  ‘Perhaps I haven’t chosen the right word. But you know what I mean. You know what I said I’d always do – I’d make my child bride grow up. As I’ve always said’ – now it was his turn to joke, his small mouth cracked appropriately – ‘you’re good potential material.’ A long pause.

  ‘How am I coming on?’ I asked. He didn’t seem to notice anything about my voice.

  ‘You’ve come on a lot, in just a year, but the hard way, I’m afraid. Waiting about in hotel rooms for your elderly husband has inevitably matured you, but we’ve a long way to go, haven’t we?’ He patted my knee. ‘Now don’t look offended. You want me to tell you my fantasies, don’t you? You’ve never minded before.’

  ‘I don’t mind now. What fantasies?’

  ‘Well, you know, my ridiculous dreams. My old man’s dreams, if you like.’

  ‘You’re not that old. What are these dreams?’ A few dots of sweat had gathered on his aquiline nose, and he licked his lips. Under the thin grey flannel of his sporting trousers I could see the muscles of his scraggy thighs gather and tighten.

  ‘Oh, what do they matter on a lovely morning like this? I’ll tell you some other time. We’ve only about a mile to go.’

  The cottage, once pretty, now dirty and decaying, stood in an acre of garden over-run with briar roses and apple trees. There was a rotting chicken house at one end
of a small orchard, and mushrooms in the grass.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I said to Richard. His eyes narrowed as if to scan a far off horizon, although he stood only a few yards from the cottage.

  ‘Hardly lovely,’ he said. ‘Totally impractical. Miles from anywhere. It would need a fortune spending on it.’

  ‘We haven’t looked, yet.’

  ‘A fortune, I can tell you.’

  ‘It might not. Anyway, it’s good potential material.’ He didn’t smile.

  ‘You’re childishly stubborn when you want something.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s two, already. Let’s eat first, then look. Not that looking will take long. It can’t be more than two up and two down, whatever the agents say.’

  I fetched the basket from the car.

  ‘Let’s eat in the garden,’ I suggested.

  ‘It’s much too chilly, and there’s nowhere to sit.’

  ‘On top of the chicken house?’

  ‘And I wouldn’t be surprised to find a wind getting up. It’s only April, after all.’

  ‘I know you know about winds,’ I said, ‘but I think it’s lovely and warm, the sun.’ He didn’t hear me, but walked impatiently towards the tattered front door. I followed him.

  Inside, bulging walls were streaked with damp, and a pool of water from some old shower had leaked through the window onto the red tiled floor. A smell of rotten apples.

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Richard, crossly. ‘So much you could do with it for ten thousand pounds.’

  ‘I like it,’ I said, ‘and I’m the one who would have to be here most.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘soon I will arrange not to be away so much.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Really?’

  After one egg sandwich he had rejected a fishpaste sandwich, a chocolate biscuit and a Swiss roll, and now he hungrily ate an apple. We sat on the only piece of furniture, an old chest, mildewed at the sides, with the food spread between us on a paper napkin.

  ‘It could be so nice,’ I said. ‘Imagine: I would be cooking your breakfast at this window. Birds on the lawn outside. Roses – .’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ he said. With every bite of the apple his own Adam’s apple jerked up and down, in and out of the slot made by the crisp white collar of his open shirt, which in turn fitted into the V neck of his blue jersey, all the pieces fitting into each other like a puzzle. His thin, neat hair shone, still dented by the cap which for once he wasn’t wearing. In mufti Richard looked naked, ill at ease. ‘There’s one thing,’ he said, looking at the damp, ‘my child bride will never be able to provide me with, no matter what I do.’ The sweat had returned to his forehead.

  ‘What’s that?’ He turned to me and ran a finger from my shoulder down to my waist.

  ‘I’ve always liked big breasts.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’ I laughed. He got up and went to the corner of the room. Tested the wall with the flat of his hand.

  ‘Mushy. Come here. Feel.’

  I went over to him and put my hand near his. He took me in his arms and crushed his mouth down on to mine. Peppermint and apple breath. Briefly I struggled.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What do you think, little one? You’re my wife, aren’t you?’ His bony thighs jiggled against mine. His hand ran up my jersey. ‘Will you ever have big breasts for me? Will you?’ His voice was breathless.

  ‘Of course not.’ I pulled back my head to look at him. There were white spots like cuckoo spit at each corner of his mouth. He grabbed at my waist, screwing my jersey in his hand as it if were loose wool.

  ‘But you could – pull in your waist a little, couldn’t you? Wear clothes that show you off more. Eat more and put a little weight on your bottom, couldn’t you? Couldn’t you?’ He panted slightly. One of his claw hands circled round and round my back. ‘You could wear more on your face. Your eyes. I like lipstick – .’

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Richard?’ I heard my voice from a long way off, trying to be gay.

  ‘What’s the matter, little one? Nothing’s the matter except that I want you. And do you know what? I’ll want you even more in a few years time, when you’re riper, fuller….’ His face crushed down on to mine again. His hand hurt in my back. I began to cry. Immediately he let go of me and stepped back. ‘Now what’s up?’ Impatient rather than concerned.

  ‘Nothing. I mean, you frightened me.’

  He sighed. So tall, so neat, so pale. His white collar hadn’t moved even in the scuffle. A man with sea charts in his head and horizons in his eyes. My stranger husband.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I suddenly wanted you very much. Don’t you want me?’ A long pause.

  ‘No, not just now,’ I said.

  ‘Very well, then, we’ll go.’ His hands moved almost imperceptibly at his sides, just scuffing his trousers. I put my hand on his arm and felt it stiffen.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t seem to be what you want. You seem to be stimulated by the thought of older women. Is that what you think of when you’re making love to me?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. Then he touched my hair quite gently. ‘Men have their passions, little one, and a woman’s job is to welcome them. But you have a lot to learn.’ He began to pick up the picnic things, humming to himself, ‘Lady of Spain’.

  With me, that was the nearest Richard Storm ever came to passion, and it was the last cottage we ever saw.

  *

  ‘You realise it’s January, I suppose? Time’s nearly up.’ David Roberts on the telephone again. ‘Have you decided anything? What you’re going to do?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hadn’t you better be making up your mind?’

  ‘There’s time,’ I said. It was only eight thirty, still dark outside, but Joshua had left at six this morning. Hadn’t said why. He was out so much now. Working very hard sorting things out before going to Mexico next month. Mexico.

  ‘I suppose I’d sound like a sentimental old fool if I said I can’t help imagining a lovely homecoming,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You’re pessimistic about the chances of a happy ending, then?’

  ‘Not pessimistic. Not anything.’

  ‘At the risk of interfering, I think you ought to think, soon. Make a positive decision one way or another.’

  ‘There’s time? I repeated.

  ‘Not much.’ David coughed. ‘Anyway, old thing, as an old friend, I think there’s something I ought to tell you – you ought to know.’ He paused, coughed again. ‘He’ll never marry you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Joshua.’

  ‘Why do you assume I want to marry him?’

  ‘In the end, like most other women, you’ll want to settle for that sort of security.’

  ‘You might think,’ I said, ‘that after two marriages I might not feel inclined to that sort of security any more.’

  ‘You might, but I don’t. – But anyway. Don’t take any notice of me. Who am I to advise? I just don’t want you to say I didn’t warn you. Joshua does not marry people, I’m telling you. Usually, he doesn’t love them, either.’

  ‘Thank you for the warning,’ I said.

  He forced a laugh.

  ‘By Christ, is there anything more touchy than a separated woman? I don’t know why I bother to go on ringing you. I’m only trying to help, you know.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘So perhaps it would help to tell you that I have in fact spoken to Jonathan lately?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And he sounded much more cheerful. Resigned to the situation, at last, you might say. Very friendly about you. He asked how you were, what you were doing and so on. I told him you were getting on fine, without giving anything away.’

  ‘That was nice of you.’

  ‘He sounded – maybe I got this wrong, we only spoke on the telephone – but he sounded as if he was looking forward to February. That’s what gave me hope. That�
�s what got the old imagination going, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘So that’s all the news, really. I just wondered how you are, and if you had made the big decision. And I thought you’d be pleased to hear about Jonathan’s change of heart, as I know you couldn’t want him to be positively unhappy, could you? I mean, hell, he may have his faults. But he’s the heck of a loving man, isn’t he? Which is more than you can say for Joshua.…’

  *

  ‘Oh, I’m happy, happy, happy,’ said Jonathan, ‘aren’t you, Suki Soo?’ This was his name for me at moments of supreme happiness.

  We lunched at the hotel, restricted by our demi-pension terms, at the balcony restaurant under a striped awning. Jonathan was grateful for the shade. In his determination to stay by my side he had refused, that morning on the beach, to allow himself the protection of the parasol. Instead, he had spent an agonising couple of hours on the glaring white sand. The sun shrank and burned his pale skin, and frizzled up the many oils he dabbed himself with continually. Now, sweat bubbled over his scarlet face and his hair hung in damp peaks under his small straw hat. He looked down on to the beach below us, crowded with browning sunbathers.

  ‘There’s something about the Italians, isn’t there?’ he said. ‘I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt something very special towards the I-ties.’ He helped himself to a couple of strips of green pepper from the plate of horsd’oeuvres. As he leant forward, his cotton shirt strained over his chest and a button flew off. He didn’t notice. ‘I wonder what it is? So many Englishmen – creative Englishmen, that is – seem to have it in common. I suppose I’m smitten with the same bug as Keats and Shelley and Lord Byron. I have whatever they had – in that respect.’ He bent down to scratch, under the table, the dry skin of one of his legs.

  Lunch over, we went to our air-conditioned room because Jonathan, like Shelley, felt he was capable of some of his best work in Italy. His typewriter and papers were spread over the dressing-table. In a week he had typed a couple of pages, the ‘outline’ for some new play.