A Tale of Two Families (4 page)

Robert, who had never wanted to do anything but write, arrived now holding a copy of the
Onlooker
– a most distinguished paper, Baggy considered, and he always read Robert’s book reviews with pride, but he never had any desire to read the books Robert reviewed. But Baggy wasn’t much of a reader nowadays. He had been once, oh yes, he had been, when Mabel was alive. They’d often read aloud to each other. But books weren’t what they used to be.

Robert had not before made the journey by train and at first found the crowd confusing. But once he had got into the right queue, some yards behind George and Baggy, he surveyed the scene with great pleasure. So many lives, so much to stir the imagination! Now that he was leaving London he wondered why he had never wanted to write about it. But the country would be even better. That gloomy Hall, home of the Stranges, was beckoning. Ideas had been crowding his mind.

The queue moved. Robert caused a delay by not having his ticket ready. George, waiting for him inside the gates, said, ‘Sometimes I think you give a performance of the absent-minded literary man.’

‘I don’t. I’m afraid it comes naturally,’ said Robert, who was always trying to give a performance of the non-absent-minded, non-literary man.

Baggy said anxiously, ‘We must hurry or we shan’t get seats.’

But there was plenty of room in the diner and still quite a long wait before the train started. George decided he would in future arrive two minutes before the train was due to start – though
of course he would come by an earlier train and have dinner at home. He did not favour meals on trains.

But he was glad to see how much his father enjoyed this one. Baggy had soup, steak and kidney pie with vegetables overflowing on to the tablecloth, and apple pie with ice cream – the latter a mixture new to him. Robert had bacon and eggs, his favourite meal. George, himself, had a chop and rather wished he hadn’t.

Still, he found the journey pleasant. Baggy and Robert were so obviously happy (what dull lives they must lead if dinner on a train with a bottle of wine was such a novelty; well, things would be better for them from now on). He also enjoyed watching some of his fellow-diners. There were two very pretty girls, with an almost equally pretty mother, just across the gangway. Probably one often saw the same people when commuting. And perhaps this attractive trio would get off when he did. But they did not – and just as well, he reflected as he helped Baggy down on to the platform. Interest in local femininity was out.

Once in the taxi, Baggy had a sudden attack of nerves. Suppose he hated his new home? He had refused to inspect it, feeling that having welcomed the idea of living with George he didn’t want to be put off. Perhaps it would turn out to be a mistake. But if so, he must hide it from George and May. And in the country one could always go for long walks. He peered out at the twilit countryside. Yes, he’d go for long, long walks and get his weight down, as his doctor was always advising him to.

Robert was concentrating on seeing the Hall. There was a place where you could catch a glimpse of it in the distance – but you had to watch out for it. Yes, there it was and behind it one last flush of afterglow, most dramatic, ‘Look, look quickly,’ he implored George and Baggy. But by the time they looked, trees had cut off the view.

George was feeling slightly tired. He’d found it irritating to have Baggy at his elbow all afternoon and since then he’d had to play the host – not that one ought to grumble at that. And the girls would be pretty exhausted and need bucking up. He mentally shook himself – and was rewarded by sudden exhilaration as the taxi drew up at the Dower House and the front door was flung open revealing the lighted hall. May was in a blue dinner-dress, June in dark red – bless them, they’d dressed up to celebrate. With any luck, May would have chilled some champagne. He wished Hugh and Corinna were already here – well, they’d be down for the weekend.

Having hurriedly paid the taxi he dashed in to kiss May and June, then turned to Baggy. ‘Welcome home, Father.’

As a rule, Baggy liked to be called by his nickname, but tonight he found the word ‘Father’ valuable. And how like George to have thought of using it.

But George had not thought about it at all; his use of the word had been purely instinctive – as his words and his acts so very often were when he did the absolutely right thing.

Corinna, returning from a late class at her Drama School, expected that Hugh would be outside the flat waiting to be let in. She was relieved to find he wasn’t. With luck she could now get time to change her clothes, which she greatly disliked.

She was wearing a sloppy tweed coat, a black sweater, a plaid mini-skirt, thick black tights and heavy shoes. Her own tastes were for the pretty clothes that suited her prettiness but whenever she wore these her fellow-students greeted her with cries of ‘Dainty Doris’ and ‘Corinna’s going a maying’. All the really talented girls at the school dressed hideously and sloppily and seemed to do it without effort. She had to work hard at it.

The flat looked slightly denuded but her bedroom was intact. She hastily put on a short, fluttery nightgown and negligée; never before had she had the chance to wear these for Hugh. It flashed through her mind that he might not think the outfit respectable, but it was a sight more respectable than some of her day clothes. There were layers and layers of nylon net between herself and the outer world. And this was the kind of thing that suited her.

Sometimes she wondered if her eternal battle to be with-it was worthwhile. Only today Sir Henry Tremayne, who sometimes amused himself by taking classes at her school, had said to her, ‘Dear child, you are invincibly a sweet, old-fashioned girl who will make a devoted wife and mother, but I more and more doubt if you will ever make an actress.’ And she did so desperately want to make an actress; she’d grown keener and keener, ever since she’d begun training.

Sir Harry (he liked to be called that) when talking to her after the class, had said that her work might benefit by a fuller
experience of life and hinted that he’d be willing to supply it. Of course he’d only been joking – he was old enough to be her father, older than her father, actually, just a few years. (But Sir Harry looked younger and he really was a marvellous actor.) Still, there might be something in what he said. And there were several of her fellow students who were more than willing to provide her with experience – and
they
weren’t joking. Their offers had been expressed far more crudely than Sir Harry’s. (And she wasn’t quite sure he had been joking.)

Not one word of this did she intend to tell Hugh. It would be like asking him to do something about it. And she was sure he wouldn’t want to, at present. Nor did she want him to… really. Only if there ever came a time when she felt something had to be done, then it obviously had to be done by Hugh. Anything else was unthinkable.

The doorbell rang. She delayed only long enough to run a comb through her short, fair hair, trying to soften its rigid cut. Hugh still pined for the days when it had reached halfway down her back.

When she opened the door to him he said, ‘Darling, how sweet you look!’

Then they kissed, as they had kissed at every meeting of their lives. Even as babes in arms (born in the same week) they had been held out to each other.

Hugh then said, ‘Now let me look at you properly. Oh, you’re not going to a party, are you?’

‘In a nightgown?’

‘
Is
it a nightgown? It’s not like the kind my mother wears.’

‘Surely you’ve seen them on television?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Hugh vaguely. ‘But I didn’t realise women actually slept in such things.’

‘Well, it’s a negligée, too, of course. I just thought you’d like it better than any of my dresses.’

‘I do – I like it madly. Am I sleeping in Dickon’s room?’

‘Yes, just dump your case in and then we’ll have dinner. We’ve been left a kind of casserole thing, to warm up. I’ll put it in the oven.’

Hugh, having deposited his suitcase, looked round his cousin’s bedroom with interest, not having been in it for some time. It struck him as very luxurious for a schoolboy’s bedroom; when he sat down on the bed it seemed to him almost funnily soft. But the decorations reflected an austere personality. The only picture, quite a good abstract, was positively bleak. It was signed ‘Dickon’. Hugh would have greatly disliked to own such a name but his young cousin thrived on it. Any attempt to shorten either Dickon or Corinna had always been heavily frowned on by their mother.

Corinna came in and sat watching Hugh unpack. He asked if Dickon was pleased about the move to the country.

‘Well, he doesn’t
mind
,’ said Corinna, ‘which is the nearest he gets to being pleased, these days. Which reminds me, I had a postcard from him this morning saying he’d ring up tonight to find out if he and Prue can sleep here tomorrow and Saturday. Brian’s bringing up a party to the National Theatre.’

Brian was the headmaster of the co-educational school at which Hugh and Corinna had been, and Dickon and Prudence now were. George was paying Prudence’s fees, as he had once paid Hugh’s.

‘Well, that’ll be all right, won’t it? As we’re going to the country.’

‘I did mean to wait until Saturday morning – Sir Harry’s taking an evening class tomorrow. But we can go by a late train.
Brian’s letting Prue and Dickon spend the whole weekend here. There’s a lot they want to do.’

‘
We
used to come up for that kind of jaunt.’

‘I know. I wonder if they’re getting dependent on each other, as we did. If poor Mother has them to worry about as well as us, she’ll go out of her mind. She’s terrified that she’ll end up with two-headed grandchildren. I suppose there is nothing in her ideas?’

Hugh said equably, ‘Darling, we’ve talked this out again and again. Of course there’s
something
. But our families on both sides are so very sane and healthy; I can’t see any harm in duplicating that. Nobody’s deaf or dumb or demented.’

‘Great-aunt Mildred’s quite a bit demented.’

‘She’s not. She’s just maddening without the excuse of being mad. I think she’s the one person in the world that I dislike.’

‘You’ve never forgiven her for calling you “Little St Hugh”.’

‘Well, who would?’ And the damn name had stuck. He never did anything halfway decent without someone digging it up. ‘Anyway, she’s sane enough and outstandingly healthy, looks years younger than she is, just as darling Fran does.’

‘Fran’ was their shared maternal grandmother, Frances Graham, always called ‘Fran’. Hugh, in extreme youth, had confused ‘Gran’ with ‘Fran’ and a very ungrandmotherly woman had preferred to be ‘Fran’ to all her grandchildren.

‘Fran’s all for our getting married,’ said Corinna. ‘But she favoured an experimental period.’

‘One gathers she had an experimental youth.’

They had never even discussed the possibility of an experiment. Always, always they had been determined to
marry
. But they’d been in no particular hurry about it. Hugh needed to consolidate his position in his uncle’s business and was pretty sure he could
– in fact George, never niggardly with praise, had already made that clear. And Dickon had made it clear that he wouldn’t be joining his father. (To Dickon, the City was a dirty word.) Hugh hoped to end up as his uncle’s partner.

Corinna said, ‘Anyway, nobody can stop us marrying once we’re twenty-one.’

Hugh looked at her quickly. They would be twenty-one in less than a year. Had she then decided she wanted an early marriage? He was relieved when she went on, ‘Not that we’ll get married so soon, will we?’

‘No, indeed,’ said Hugh heartily. ‘I need to make more money and you want to have a bash at the stage.’

‘Oh, that! Sometimes I wonder if I shall even get started. No one ever gives me a word of praise. It all goes to the girls with huge noses and hacked hair.’

‘Well, your hair’s quite a bit hacked, love. Not that you don’t look very pretty.’

‘I don’t want to look pretty. Sir Harry told me that I’m invincibly an ingénue – and nowadays there aren’t any ingénue parts. I think I’ll dye my hair black.’

‘If you do, I’ll divorce you before we marry.’

He had finished unpacking and was setting out a few possessions on the dressing table. She came and stood beside him, looking at herself in the glass, and then at him. ‘Our children will certainly be blonds,’ she said. ‘Or if there’s anything in Mother’s theories, they’ll have snow-white hair.’

‘Very attractive,’ said Hugh. ‘Let’s have supper.’

‘It won’t be hot yet. But we can have a drink – unless Mother’s taken it all down to the country.’

They found some sherry and drank it while Corinna laid the kitchen table and ground coffee beans.

‘Why not Nescafé?’ said Hugh. ‘Saves so much trouble.’

‘Mother says all instant coffee tastes of Bovril. Nonsense, really. I’ll ask Mrs Whatsit to get us some.’

‘Isn’t it time you stopped calling her Mrs Whatsit – after all these years? One day you’ll do it to her face.’

‘Oh, we do – didn’t you know? She likes it. That’s because Father did it once by accident and then made a joke of it. She adores him. Like so many women, one rather fears.’ Corinna’s tone had become worldly-wise.

Hugh made no comment. He couldn’t, with honesty, refute the implied criticism of his uncle and had too much grateful affection for him to endorse it.

The telephone rang.

‘That’ll be Dickon,’ said Corinna, answering the call at the kitchen extension. But she found herself talking to her mother, who sounded extremely cheerful.

‘Darling, are you all right? Has Hugh come?’

‘Yes, of course I’m all right, and he has. We’re just going to have supper.’

‘Put some sherry in that casserole – Mrs Whatsit always forgets. Oh, I wish you were both here. Everything’s marvellous. We’re all celebrating with champagne.’

‘Lucky you.’ Corinna intended to sound politely envious.

‘Well, you must celebrate too. I’ve left plenty of wine for you. – What, George?… Your father says you’re not to get tight.’

‘We won’t,’ Corinna assured her mother.

‘No, of course you won’t. It was a joke, darling.’

Corinna then listened while her mother described the move in full, sent messages to Mrs Whatsit and the Hall Porter at the flats, and ascertained what train Corinna and Hugh would be coming by next day. Considerable laughter could be heard on
the telephone and May several times said, ‘What did you say, darling?’ when Corinna hadn’t said a word. May finally ended the conversation by saying, ‘Love to Hugh. And mind you have a good time.’

Corinna, hanging up, said, ‘Mother seems to have gone terribly young. And she was using her talking-to-America voice like when she talked to Fran last week. Fran told her not to shout.’

‘When’s Fran coming back?’

‘Not till May.’ Corinna got the casserole from the oven and dutifully put some sherry in it, then said, ‘Do you want to bother with wine?’

‘Might as well. Though I believe I like the idea of wine better than the wine itself.’

Corinna, not wishing to put him off, refrained from saying it didn’t mean a thing to her, either way. It was one of the occasions when she was reminded of how much more luxurious her upbringing had been than his had. As children they had called their respective families the Clares and the Poor Clares – but had had the tact to keep this from their parents.

They settled down to supper at last and greatly enjoyed it. Corinna, over their second glass of wine, said, ‘It is fun that I can have you here at the flat. It’s almost as if we were married, isn’t it?’

She had mentioned marriage again and now he felt sure she wasn’t speaking casually. She was looking at him intently. Was it that she already knew she’d no chance as an actress and therefore wanted an early marriage? If so, of course he would agree – he couldn’t conceivably deny her anything he was able to give her. He looked at her with love and said, ‘Darling, are you sure you wouldn’t like to be married soon? It could be managed. Uncle George could persuade Aunt May – or we could elope to Gretna Green.’

She laughed delightedly. ‘Would Mother come chasing after us? No; I’m sure we’re wise to wait quite a while before we marry. But if you should ever find the waiting difficult…’

She gave him a blue-eyed, questioning stare which he found disturbing. Never before had she even hinted… and it was now more than a hint surely, more like an invitation. And that nightgown… Good God, he’d been bloody simple, imagining it was early
marriage
she wanted. And he mustn’t, he simply mustn’t humiliate her.

He said, untruthfully, ‘Darling Corinna, of course I find it hard to wait. I thought you wanted us to – and I thought you were right. But if you ever change your mind, we needn’t wait – not even another minute.’

She was instantly happy, now she knew he was willing.

‘Well, at least let’s have coffee first,’ she said gaily, springing up to clear away the plates. Then she added seriously, ‘I was only thinking of
you
, darling, truly.’

‘Then you want things to go on as they are?’

She brought the percolator and some peppermint creams to the table. ‘I do, if you do.’

‘And I do, if you do.’

‘But if we change our minds – either of us – it’s all right?’

‘Fully understood.’ He now thought he had misinterpreted her look of invitation – and the nightgown. Anyway, all he could actually see was the negligée.

‘But let’s try to go on being idealists – if that’s what we are.’

‘Most people these days would call us freaks,’ said Hugh. ‘Anyway, good luck to us.’

Happy though he was that she required neither early marriage nor instant seduction, he was a little sad that they had merely talked round the subject, not discussed it frankly. People who
loved each other as they did ought to be able to share their thoughts fully. He hadn’t fully shared his with her and he doubted if she’d fully shared hers with him. Why not? Embarrassment, fear of hurting each other…Well, at least she was looking happy.

As indeed she was, having made sure of his availability. She hadn’t dared count on it because, much as he disliked being called Little St Hugh, he always had been very good. Darling Hugh, to put his feelings for her before his principles. And she didn’t really want him to seduce her. It was just that if Sir Harry and her fellow students kept putting ideas into her head, one never quite knew… and sometimes one did get a bit worked up. Well, she wasn’t worked up now. She was happy and peaceful, as she always was with darling Hugh.