Virginia Fly is Drowning Read online

  When Virginia arrived home she found her father locking the garage doors on his mini van, a car he treated with a care quite out of proportion to its value. When he saw Virginia he began unlocking the door again.

  ‘I’ll run you into the station.’

  ‘Don’t bother. I can easily get the six o’clock bus.’

  ‘It’s no trouble.’ He liked doing small things for her.

  ‘Well, that would be kind.’ She smiled at him, knowing he had secret hopes of the professor.

  Indoors, in the warm steamy kitchen, she helped herself to a new baked scone and a glass of milk. Her mother was a good housekeeper and had managed to make their 1914 house – white stucco and Tudor beams on the outside – reasonably bright inside. ‘A pleasantly average home,’ her father called it. In fact, it was probably inhabited with more ornaments than the average house: hundreds of glass animals, china birds and miscellaneous souvenirs crowded every shelf and window ledge, so that it was dangerous to draw the curtains without extreme caution.

  Virginia’s bedroom Mrs Fly had had decorated one weekend ten years ago as a ‘surprise’, which really meant she firmly believed there was no point in consulting someone else about something you were better at. The surprise was pink walls straight off a chart, and blue and white striped curtains with pink roses trailing across the stripes. A fluffy nylon rug by the bed, a picture of a storm at sea over the bed, and a narrow shelf running along one wall intended for glass animals – at which point Virginia had rebelled and put her paperbacks and the photograph of Charlie.

  The lattice window looked on to a rather dismal strip of garden, balding with paving stones, thin grass growing round the edges. Each summer Mr Fly became increasingly provoked by the act of mowing, and covered up a bit more grass with a few more paving stones, saying it was the area that counted, not the greenness. Beyond the dark hedges of the garden were lumpish Surrey hills, bracken covered, spiked with gloomy pine trees. Virginia knew every inch of the view by heart. She had stared at it for hours over the years, watching it tinged with the gaudy golds and salmons of a semi-suburban sunset, or heaving in a storm, or covered with unprinted snow, or feeble spring sun. It had never become more cheerful, and yet she was fond of it.

  She looked out of the window now, at the straight heavy rain, and realised she could not risk her Hush Puppies. Boots, she thought. Pink chiffon scarf, and a change of cardigan. The professor, always immaculate himself, never seemed to notice her clothes. He only cared that she was neither too warm nor too cool – that she was always comfortable.

  Kicking off her wet shoes, she pulled the candlewick bedspread off her bed and lay down, legs apart. She had often, at the end of despairing days, lain in such a position, speculating on what she would do if a man appeared at the window, climbed in, and seduced her. She imagined she might make some small, formal show of protest, so that he would respect her, then give in wildly and happily. When it was all over she would get up, go over to the mirror and look disbelievingly at the sight of herself – dishevelled, pink, and glowing as she had never been before.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she imagined she would say. ‘Please come again, any time.’

  The familiar daydream over, Virginia rose and went to the window, half to check that there really was no ladder and no man there. Then she went to the dressing-table and studied her reflection, unusually critical. With a sudden gesture of defiance she pulled off the elastic band that strained her hair back into a dull switch, and shook her head until the hair fell untidily about her shoulders. Then she dabbed her face, rather greasy from the long day, with a cloud of yellowy white powder, pinched her cheeks, and ran a beige lipstick over her mouth. ‘That should surprise the professor,’ she thought, smiling to herself, ‘he won’t recognise me.’ She realised her timeless tweed coat and gumboots would somewhat minimise the effect, but she had nothing else, and anyhow they gave her a feeling of security.

  In the car her father appraised her in his own way.

  ‘What is it to-night?’

  ‘Mozart piano sonatas.’

  ‘You’ve got yourself up for them. I like your hair loose like that.’ Virginia tossed her head silently. Mr Fly, for comfort’s sake, returned to a pet theme. ‘I did it back from the station to-night in exactly eleven minutes fourteen seconds. In these weather conditions, skiddy roads, that’s not bad going, you know.’ For twenty years he had been timing his journey to and from the station, for ever trying to work out a precise average. He had records in all weather conditions, traffic conditions and times of year.

  ‘That’s only a minute or so longer than average in the rain, isn’t it?’ replied Virginia, who knew most of the records by heart.

  ‘One minute five seconds, to be exact. But then the tyres are a bit down. That accounts for it.’

  ‘Oh.’ Virginia looked at her father’s long profile; the pale eyes clutched in a grip of lines, the grey hair neatly shaved over the skinny neck, the collar of the old Viyella shirt minutely darned, and she felt an unaccountable affection for him. She knew she had not fulfilled many hopes he had for her, and yet he never chided her. Just kept on hoping, in his quiet way.

  ‘The professor hasn’t been down for a long time.’

  ‘No, not for ages,’ she agreed.

  ‘Your mother would be delighted to have him down to lunch any Sunday, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He was so interesting last time about Salzburg.’

  ‘He’s an interesting man.’

  ‘Well, I’d be pleased to meet him again, myself.’ He turned on the windscreen wipers, clearing away the thick drizzle that had gathered over the view. Tall black trees now sharply lined the road. ‘“Conifer county of Surrey”,’ he said to himself, quietly. (He had always been a Betjeman man.) ‘We don’t have a very adventurous life, do we, Ginny? I hope it’s not too dull for you.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Virginia, thinking again of the way the man with the black moustache had left her, ‘I wouldn’t want adventure.’

  An hour and a half later Virginia met the professor outside the concert hall in Wigmore Street. He was waiting for her under his umbrella. At the sight of her damp bare head a look of concern crossed his face, but was quickly replaced with one of mild surprise. She looked quite different with her loose hair.

  ‘Good evening, Miss Fly.’

  ‘Virginia, Professor, please.’ She smiled.

  ‘Then I am Hans to you.’

  Virginia and the professor had been meeting every four or five weeks – according to concerts – for almost three years now. Every time they met their relationship progressed a little, warmed a little towards the end of the evening (he had only been once to lunch, and that had not been an easy occasion), but the lapse of the next few weeks drained that ease away again, leaving the sharp formality with which they newly greeted each other. However, they were both now accustomed to the pattern of their reactions to one another, and although they recognised that they must start off formally, they weren’t ill at ease.

  They walked, as usual, a few paces to a high-class coffee shop with low red lights. The professor ordered a Danish pastry for Virginia, a slice of Sacher Torte for himself, and two frothy coffees.

  Virginia swung her hair. The gesture provoked the professor out of his customary habit of making no comment on her appearance.

  ‘It is the first time all these three years you have let it loose,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Virginia. ‘It’s the end of a significant day.’ In her heart she knew it hadn’t really been a significant day, just dismal, but she didn’t want him to feel sorry for her.

  He didn’t ask about the significance of her day, or indeed anything much about her life. In turn, she knew little of him – at least, of the last twenty-five years in London. About the first thirty years, in Vienna and Salzburg, she had heard a hundred vivid stories.

  They had met on a train, Guildford to London. As they drew into the station, with infinite caution and
politeness, so that she would not feel he was making any form of advance to her, the professor had asked her if she could tell him how long it would take to walk from Waterloo to the Festival Hall. It so happened that Virginia, weary of waiting for someone to ask her out, had begun going alone to concerts in London, and she was in fact on her way to the Festival Hall herself that night. So, feeling a little daring but at the same time utterly safe – he didn’t look like a murderer and she wasn’t in search of a seducer in those days – she suggested they should go together.

  In return for her kindness, the professor bought her a cup of coffee in the interval, talked brilliantly about Mahler, was an arrogant but amusing critic of the performance, and took her address. A few weeks later he wrote her a formal note asking if she would care to go with him to Verdi’s Requiem at the Albert Hall, and the pattern of their future began.

  Back at the concert hall the professor bought Virginia a programme which she read with a touching enthusiasm from cover to cover. Later she would store it in the bottom drawer of her dressing-table, along with several dozen such others, and a pile of the professor’s polite invitations. (He never telephoned.) These were the only tangible proof of the one constant, if unadorned relationship she had ever had with a man. – Letters from Charlie, despite the occasional paragraphs of lust which burst from him between girl-friends, were not the same.

  The Mozart audience wasn’t a colourful one, but it was prepared to be responsive. The pianist, a fat woman in a cross-over bodice satin dress, which did nothing for her bust or arms, pounded her way through the pieces with a lot of head shaking but little else. She insulted the sonatas, and this annoyed the professor.

  ‘A thoroughly bad evening,’ he muttered. ‘A real disgrace. I’m sorry, Virginia.’

  Outside, it was still raining and had turned very cold. ‘Would you like a hot drink?’ he suggested. ‘There’s time.’

  Why, Virginia wondered to herself, was she the kind of girl to whom people always offered a hot drink rather than just a drink? What was it about her that stopped people imagining she could do with a double whisky? For the first time in her life, that cold November night, she turned down the idea.

  ‘I’d like some brandy, please,’ she said, swinging her hair again. The professor raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Oh, you are wild to-night. Very well.’

  They went to a warm pub, shadowy with amber light, and drank cognac in a corner. The professor appeared a little perplexed by the unusual situation.

  ‘You are very jumpy to-night. You are not relaxed. It was the bad music?’

  ‘No, no. It’s just that – this sort of life, my present life, is coming to an end.’

  ‘Oh?’ His dark eyes were dignified, briefly hurt.

  ‘Charlie’s coming over. You know, my American pen-friend. He’ll be here in a couple of months. Maybe less.’ She smiled to herself. ‘I don’t know how long it’ll take. A week or so, I suppose, to sort things out. We know each other so well already – that won’t be a problem. And then we’ll go back and live in Utah.’

  ‘You mean, you are planning to marry this Charlie?’ The professor ordered himself another drink.

  ‘Well, we haven’t actually planned anything, but it seems to have become a kind of unspoken agreement over the years.’

  ‘And what happens if it doesn’t work out? If you and this Charlie, it turns out you hate each other’s guts?’ There was almost a snarl in the professor’s voice. A tiny triangle of high colour had appeared on each of his cheeks. Virginia wrapped her hands round her glass. She felt unusually warm.

  ‘He is very handsome and has a very interesting life,’ she said, quietly. ‘I think we will be very well suited.’

  ‘Oh, you child,’ said the professor. ‘You dear child.’ He pulled his huge cloak closer round his shoulders, although he couldn’t have been cold. ‘Now this has happened, I can tell you something. But first, let me wish you every happiness.’ He smiled formally, politely at Virginia. She bowed her head. Nobody had ever wished her that kind of happiness before. ‘From time to time it has crossed over my mind,’ the professor was saying, ‘that one day I should make you a very honourable proposal. I have postponed the hour because I have always felt in my bones I am not to be recommended as a husband. You could be my daughter. I am not suitable. And yet, you do not have to be suitable to be compatible, do you?’ He smiled, his handsome teeth widening across his face and causing a reflex action of interlocking lines to shift round his eyes, cheeks and mouth. ‘However, it was always a good idea to live with, and now at least I may be spared a refusal from you.’

  At this point, Virginia realised she was quite drunk, because the importance of what he was saying skidded across her mind with only half the impact it would have made upon her had she been completely sober. She smiled kindly, stupidly at the professor. She wanted to giggle, but controlled herself.

  ‘Dear Hans,’ she said, ‘I must catch the train.’

  ‘Very well.’ He followed her, taking her arm more firmly than usual.

  At the station, as was his custom, he saw her safely into a carriage. Just before he left her a thought occurred to him.

  ‘There’s the Bach Choir coming up in a couple of months. You remember, we went last year and enjoyed it? I wonder, would you allow me to take both you and this Charlie?’ Virginia was unconscious of the flicker of sarcasm in his voice.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ she said, the words still a little unsteady. ‘I’m sure Charlie would enjoy that, although he doesn’t know very much about music.’

  The professor kissed Virginia’s hand, raised his hat, and bowed – the ceremony he always performed when he left her.

  ‘Then that would be my pleasure,’ he said, and walked down the platform without looking back.

  The carriage was cold. Rain slid faster and faster across the windows. Virginia took the programme out of her bag, unfolded it, and read it all over again. She had had many enjoyable evenings with the professor. She would miss all the regular music. Of course, she could take Charlie to concerts, but it wouldn’t be the same. For some unknown reason she found tears coming to her eyes. Crossly, for something to do, she found another elastic band in her purse and scraped her hair back again. She began to wish she hadn’t had the brandy.

  Back at home she found the orange lantern glowing in the porch. It gave a nice welcome, as her mother said. It also gave a nasty glow to the rhododendron bushes that clustered near the front door, Virginia thought, for the first time. Strange how she had never noticed how ugly they were before.

  In the kitchen her mother had set out, as Virginia knew she would, a mug, spoon, and a tin of drinking chocolate already opened. On the stove milk stood ready to boil in a saucepan, and against the saucepan was propped a note.

  I have put milk ready for boiling in saucepan, it said. Biscuits in usual tin. I have quite a little surprise for you in the morning. We’re all going to be famous, hope you had a good evening. Love, Mother.

  Wearily, Virginia made herself hot chocolate, from habit rather than desire. She knew the nature of her mother’s surprises. Probably they were to be interviewed by people doing a house to house survey on soap powders, or her mother had found another dreadful old picture which she had mistakenly taken to be a Rembrandt. Certainly the news of a surprise did not mean that there was any reason to look forward to the morning.

  When she had undressed and brushed her hair fifty times, Virginia knelt by her bed. She said her prayers out loud, as she had done for twenty-five years, as her mother had taught her.

  To-night, when she had been through all the family and friends she wanted blessed, and the request for the professor to be happy, she suddenly added, with a fervour that surprised her:

  ‘And please God, about Charlie. – If it’s your will he shouldn’t want to marry me, then please God, make it your will that he should want to seduce me. That, I pray you.’

  Chapter 2

  ‘They want us on television,’
said Mrs Fly, finally, over the washing-up next morning. She was confused by the fact that Virginia hadn’t asked what the surprise was to be. She was a funny girl, in some ways, Ginny. None of the ordinary things seemed to excite her.

  ‘Who want us on television?’ Virginia had, indeed, forgotten all about the surprise.

  ‘That Geoffrey Wysdom, you know. The one who does all the serious documentaries, true to life.’ Virginia had heard of him, but as she rarely watched television she had never seen one of his programmes.

  ‘Who does he want on his programme?’ she persisted. Once again Mrs Fly seemed confused. She clattered some plates noisily in the bowl.

  ‘Well, not so much us, your father and I. It’s you they want, actually.’

  ‘And what do they want me to do?’

  ‘That,’ said Mrs Fly with a sudden determination, probably caused by fear of breaking the point of the news, ‘is what I’m going to leave the researcher to tell you. She came round here yesterday evening. That’s what she said she was, a researcher. A very nice girl. Very quiet voiced. I said it would be all right for her to come round about eleven this morning. I said you’d be in, and might be able to help her …’ Mrs Fly trailed off.

  As it was Saturday morning there was no school, only a pile of essays to be corrected. Virginia went up to her room to make her bed. She had had a good night, no dreams, and felt light-hearted as ever she could hope to feel on a dun-coloured winter morning with the prospect of an empty weekend ahead. The television news, though she would never admit it to her mother, caused a mild flicker of anticipation within her. It was probably something to do with education; views on teachers’ lousy pay, perhaps. Well, she knew her subject. She could be fluent about that, and the idea of cameras gave her no sense of fear. In fact, it could be interesting. It could be a breaking point in her life. Someone might see her, and invite her permanently on to an educational programme or fall in love with her, write to her care of the B.B.C.—Dearest Miss Virginia Fly, I saw you on the box the other night. I hope you don’t mind my writing but it seemed to me you are the girl I have been looking for all my life…