Such Visitors Page 18

  Anyhow. I don’t imagine anyone will want to read my story, let alone publish it. But I keep at it. Can’t do nothing but garden in retirement. Have to keep exercising the old brain. Besides, one or two of the family might be interested once I’m dead. They never care to listen to me much in life.

  I put on my specs. Telephone rings. Dammit. Very unusual. Not many people ring me these days and those who do are of the economical kind, won’t lift a receiver before six o’clock.

  ‘Hello? Gerald?’

  Petronella – my sister. Petronella is a bossy, interfering, loud-voiced and large woman. She lives in Petworth and swanks about Sussex. She’s married to a boring husband in commodities, and has four exceptionally dull and tiresome grown-up children married to suitably dull –

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Seen The Times?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Despatches,’ she snaps.

  ‘Who?’

  Not Laurence, I hope. My oldest friend, Laurence, in a Home near Folkestone. Been meaning to ring him …

  ‘You look. Old friend of yours’s husband.’

  She gives a barking laugh, slams down the receiver. Petronella has always been of the mistaken belief that not to say goodbye lends a woman mystery. Silly cow.

  Relief it’s not old Laurence, though. I find the Deaths column. Eyes slip down. Bit slow, bit nervous.

  Macdunnald, Vaughan Robert. Peacefully in his sleep after a long illness. Couple of days ago.

  So, Mrs Vaughan Macdunnald, Mary Macdunnald, is a widow. That’s what that means.

  Mary, Mary, Mary Jay.

  I put my hands flat on the desk, steady myself. Brace up, General, greet the morning. ‘Don’t hurry over the weighing up,’ my Commanding Officer used to say – sound man, admirable fellow – ‘then make the decision snappy.’ His barking voice in my ears. I shut my eyes. Prepare to obey. This, being something of a special day, dear Lord, forgive me for abandoning the military side of my memoirs this morning …

  The winter of 1947, you may remember, was cursed with some of the worst snow of the century. I had recently moved in here, and pretty primitive it was, too: no heating, hot water on the blink, garden a jungle. I had bought it for its potential, but was uncertain how to proceed with the transformation. What it needed was the hand of some imaginative woman. As it was, it took me some time to get the place shipshape with the help of a solitary builder. That first winter was pretty grim. I had to sleep in my greatcoat, chip ice off the windows every morning. I was grateful to have only a few days’ leave at a time.

  Still, I did have a woman vaguely in mind. Veronica. We met at a dinner dance given by Laurence – who’s very rich – to cheer his remaining friends after the war. It wasn’t much of an occasion by today’s standards: food pretty drab, rationed clothes not up to much. But we enjoyed ourselves. Veronica and I took the floor for several quicksteps, and a fast waltz to end the evening. I was quite a dancer in my day, could see she was impressed. I gave her a lift home to a mansion block in Victoria. She talked about Byron. She had quite a thing about Byron. ‘Brains as well as a good looker,’ Laurence said.

  Few weeks later, I took her to lunch at Browns Hotel. More Byron. She drank lemon barley which she said was a real treat. Not a bad girl, not bad at all. On the big side, but friendly. Back here in the cottage, I allowed myself to weave a few fantasies about Veronica. She’d be the right sort to bring a house alive, I thought. And good, child-bearing hips. I spent a few sleepless nights – the cold, to be honest, more than the thought of Veronica. After a week or so, I decided to make the next move.

  Another evening at the Savoy? I suggested. Where we met, after all, I said, thinking I’d have a stab at a show of romance. The idea went down very well. We planned to meet the next Friday evening. I would be in a black tie. She would be in a long blue dress.

  That afternoon, I trudged through the snow to the village (not deep enough, then, to deter my gallant old Wolseley from getting to London) with Ralphie (Jacob’s ancestor) at my side. I exchanged many saved-up coupons for a box of chocolates, and began to anticipate the evening with considerable pleasure.

  I set off in plenty of time, punctuality being my byword. It had begun to snow again, lightly, and was bitterly cold. But the Wolseley started with its beautiful, reassuring purr. I drove cautiously down the lane, windscreen wipers doing their best against the dark flakes. A full moon, there was, I remember. In two hours I would be with Veronica in the warmth of the Savoy.

  The snow fell more thickly. After three miles, the car whimpered to a halt. I tried everything, but the engine was completely dead. Snow piled up quickly on the bonnet. By a stroke of luck, I was fifty yards from my friends, Arthur and Janet Knight, both doctors. They lived in a farmhouse set a little back from the place in which I had come to a halt. Nothing else for it: I must call upon them for help.

  Janet opened the door, light from the hall gushed on to the slippery step where I stood. She looked in amazement at my black tie and snow-covered greatcoat. Behind her, packing cases rose almost to the ceiling: she and Arthur were leaving for a spell in Canada the following week.

  ‘Gerald! Whatever – ? Come on in.’

  The door shut behind me. The warmth of their house lapped up at me like a welcoming animal. Arthur came hurrying out. I explained the problem. He responded with absolute conviction.

  ‘Tell you what: give up. It’s not the night to try to get a car going, and with the snow getting worse it’d be daft to try to get to London. Ring your date, tell her what’s happened, and stay to dinner with us. There’s plenty of rabbit stew and we need someone to entertain a friend of ours.’

  The suggestion was practical, tempting. Before I could protest, my coat was taken from me and I was hustled into the sitting-room, a cosy, dingy room with a huge inglenook fireplace. Logs shifted beneath lively flames. Dense shadows, out of the fire’s reach, confused my eyes for a moment. There was a distinct smell of apples – I observed a plate of lustreless Bramleys sitting on a bookshelf – and lavender. Bunches of the stuff, dried, were laid by the fire. Sitting near them, on a low stool, was the Knights’ friend, Mary Jay.

  She was quite small, I noticed at once, with a pale serious face, devoid of make-up, and huge brown eyes. She wore a dull brown dress of some wollen stuff, the colour of milk chocolate. It had a prim lace collar. Rather Lyons Corner House waitressy, I thought, as she stood up to shake hands.

  Janet introduced me as Colonel Arlington. Mary smiled – a smile so slow, so contained, so enchanting that I felt the huge mass of my hand tremble as I briefly held hers. Then she sat down again, huddling her arms round her knees, as if my entrance had done nothing to interrupt her daydream.

  In the forty years since that evening, I must have gone over every word, every look, every moment, a million times. With the assumption of old age (I hesitate to call it wisdom) I now understand that there are moments in our lives when some being within us craves something so amorphous it is not strictly definable, but the force of craving puts us into a state of readiness to receive. I believe that is how it must have been, for me, that night. After a life of almost chaste bachelorhood, I longed for something not yet experienced, the warmth of a fellow spirit, the notion of giving everything I had to a fellow creature. Veronica, I knew, was irrelevant to my search. To her, I made conventional overtures with a kind of vague, unanalysed sense of duty, but with no conviction.

  In my state of readiness, perhaps, any woman who had been sitting by the Knights’ fire that evening might have had the same impact upon me as did Mary. But I think not. It’s impossible to imagine another woman igniting such devastating, instant effect. I felt ill, cold, terrified.

  As a fighting soldier, I had lived so recently with daily fear, was accustomed to its manifestations: freezing blood, disobedient limbs, loosening bowels. I had learned how to switch on the automatic button in the brain that commands the body to go forth in strength, in faith, with calm. I had learned, as a leader of men, th
e necessity to inspire courage in others by disguising one’s own fear in a guise of courage. Looking down at that small, still woman in her brown dress, I felt more afraid than on any battlefield. Here was someone who was about to change my life. (Ah, little then did I ever guess how.) I was giddy, weak, confused by the total unexpectedness of this break in my journey, by flames replacing snow, by warmth instead of cold. My heart was beating like a wild thing because of the presence of this stranger; had I reached the Savoy, it would have remained quite regular on the dance floor. I sat on a chair as far from Mary as I could manage. I hoped she would not be able to observe me well in the shadows.

  Arthur went off to ring the garage, Janet to get me a drink. Mary Jay and I were left listening to the fire. I didn’t feel there was any need to speak, but then I heard my own voice, all awry, blurting out some mindless comment.

  ‘That dress you’re wearing,’ I said. ‘It’s the colour of a Mars Bar, isn’t it?’ Did my voice sound as peculiar to her as it did to me? ‘Not my favourite colour,’ I added, cursing myself as the words escaped.

  What devil made me say such a thing, so rudely, to a woman I’d met just two minutes ago? Was it self-defence, resenting the shock she had caused me? Mary swivelled round to face me, fingering the stuff of the skirt, smiling slightly again.

  ‘I know. It’s pretty awful, isn’t it? I was trying to find a real chestnut. But you know what it’s like, still. No choice. Nothing.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I was wringing my hands. ‘That was terribly rude of me. I don’t know what – ’

  She looked at me as if she really did not mind, perhaps hadn’t even noticed.

  ‘That’s all right. I like people to say what they think, don’t you?’

  And those huge brown eyes, each sparkling with a minuscule candle of flame from the fire, looked straight into my soul.

  Arthur returned. Mary and I both shifted our positions. Arthur noticed nothing untoward, which was strange: I could have sworn the recognition between Mary and me was tangible, visible to the naked eye. The garage would fetch the car in the morning, snow permitting. Hadn’t I better ring …? suggested Arthur.

  Lumbering to the telephone in the hall, I felt as if each step was pushing against a heavy sea, so great was my reluctance to move. But the good soldier within me explained with military precision the situation to Veronica. She was very nice about it, quite understood. I said I would be in touch, knowing this was not true. What was the point of Veronica, now Mary … ? Janet put a large whisky and soda into my hand.

  We ate bowls of rabbit stew round the fire, the kitchen being too cold. I asked no questions, but learned that Mary, whose home was in the Borders, was staying in The Black Swan, a small hotel near Henley. She was a painter, it seemed, but the purpose of her visit was not explained. She was here tonight to say farewell to the Knights before their departure for Canada. Janet was an old schoolfriend.

  Our supper finished – an excellent sago pudding with tinned greengages and a small piece of Cheddar followed the rabbit – Arthur put Schubert’s ‘Trout’ on the gramophone. Mary was still on her low stool, arms huddled round her knees again. The rest of us lay back in our armchairs, listening. I positioned myself so that she should not see me watching her. In that room as warm as fur, the musical water twinkled as never before, while the trout leapt, irrepressible, against calmer flames of the fire. My eyes never left the small, still shape of Mary, with her downcast lashes.

  At eleven, this bewitching woman looked at her watch. She offered me a lift home, assured me that her Austin Seven would not let us down. It was on her way, she said. Had my head been clearer, I would have realised at once that my path lay in quite the opposite direction to Henley.

  Mary wrapped a long scarf round her neck, put on a huge coat, woolly hat and gloves. Her farewells to her friends the Knights were prolonged. Mine were grateful, but brief. Still unsure of my voice, I was, and distracted by the glorious sensations searing through my body.

  The Austin Seven was very small inside, but gallant. It snuffled through the deep snow, wonderfully slow. Mary concentrated on her driving. We did not speak. I concentrated on her profile – what there was left of it, between hat and scarf – the delicately tipped nose, the short curling upper lip pursed in concentration, and giving no hint of the smiles it contained. The sky was clear, but dark as those blackout nights when people crouched in shelters waiting for the siren to howl All Clear. It had stopped snowing. There was an infinite are of stars above us, and a powerful moon. Its light encased Mary’s side view in a glittering frame. Every strand of escaped hair was visible, iridescent as cobweb threads. The fluffed outline of her childlike hat sparkled richly as silver fox fur.

  At my gate, all too soon, I congratulated my driver. Congratulations! How steeped we are in convention: how it props us, clumsily, in heightened moments. So inappropriate, my congratulations in the midnight snow: would I had a poet’s art of the right word. But again, she didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Oh, it was nothing. I’m used to such conditions. Scotland

  She smelled of sugared violets, the sweet iced cakes of childhood.

  ‘I won’t ask you in,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I must be getting back.’

  ‘It’s perishing, when my fire’s out.’

  I felt I owed her some kind of explanation in case she was the sort of girl accustomed to being offered late-night champagne.

  ‘I can imagine.’ Her small smile snapped the last thread of my discretion.

  ‘How long are you here for?’ I asked.

  ‘Another week, perhaps.’

  ‘Would you like – well, lunch or something, one day?’

  She hestitated. Then she said, Yes, that would be nice, and I should ring her at her hotel.

  ‘Any special time?’ My heart was racing, racing.

  ‘Any time’ll do. I’m not painting much. Just – thinking things over.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll be in touch.’

  I took from my pocket the box of chocolates destined for Veronica, and gave them to her. She smiled again, said nothing. I thanked her for the lift, got out of the car. It trundled off down the snowy lane. The moon burnished its tiny roof. Its tyres left very narrow tracks in the snow. Neither of us waved.

  In bed that night, frozen, shivering, wide awake, I began to think about the concept of romantic love. I had always been sceptical of its existence and was certainly innocent of its ways. Yet here I was, plainly seized by some extraordinary force, some unfamiliar form of madness, that made the rest of the night almost impossible to endure. I thought of the poets I loved – Shakespeare, Browning, Byron, Shelley – was this the sort of thing those chaps had been through? Was this the inspiration that had driven their genius? And to what measures would it drive me? My mind slithered, ineffectual as confused eels. Despite the cold, I was feverish, unable to lie still. Eventually, thank God, dawn paled the sky.

  By mid-morning, I had established the nature of my brainstorm. It concerned love, and it was firing me with uncontainable restlessness. – The car, it seemed, was ‘serious’. At least a week, they’d want it, with one man off, they said. I could not wait a week. I could not wait another moment.

  Some instinct, though, forced me to endure two days. The weekend was the longest of my life. At last, on the Monday afternoon, in another snowstorm, I set off for The Black Swan with Ralphie. I had contemplated ringing Mary and asking her to come over in her car, but, after a thousand changes of mind, had decided that a surprise would be better. There were only two days left of my present leave. Already the weekend had been wasted, and Mary would be gone by the time I was back again.

  Despite the deep snow, Ralphie and I made the seven miles to the hotel, across woods and fields, in less than an hour. A superhuman energy pressed me to keep up a wicked pace. By the time we arrived, I was sweating. Poor Ralphie was exhausted.

  I saw Mary at once, through the glass door of the lounge. She was alone, reading a book b
y a small gas fire, a tiny glass of sherry on the table beside her.

  ‘I’ve walked,’ I said. ‘The car won’t be ready for a week. I couldn’t – ’

  ‘Oh, Gerald,’ she said. ‘I thought you were never coming.’ She looked abashed, as if she had not meant to say what she thought so quickly. ‘But you’re both frozen, soaked through!’

  She patted Ralphie’s head. At once the room, for all its emptiness, swirled with warmth and life, and I found myself sitting beside Mary in front of the pallid fire, shoes off, feet craning ungainly towards its pathetic heat, icy hands rasping together, speechless. As Mary seemed to be, too. At last, I said I was sorry I hadn’t telephoned.

  ‘I like surprises,’ she said.

  ‘Lunch?’ I asked a while later. ‘I’m ravenous.’ This was a lie.

  ‘Why not? Do you know, I’m the only guest here. God knows why they’re open at this time of year. They say they have quite busy weekends, people coming to visit some home for disabled soldiers nearby. It’ll be just us, and disgusting food.’

  In the bleak, cold dining-room we ate the disgusting food and did not care: there was plenty of wine. An old woman with chilblained hands waited sullenly upon us, sniffing. Mary talked of her recent stay in Florence, and of her painting – ‘not very good, but comforting’ – and of her own labrador in Scotland, ‘fatter than Ralphie’. Much of the time we ate in silence. There seemed no particular need for talk.

  But come the castle pudding, with its smear of raspberry jam and skin-topped custard, and I could contain my curiosity no longer.