Dubious Legacy (3 page)

‘Named for their godfather—’ said the larger man, complacent, irritating.

Henry slammed his fist on the table, knocking a plate to the stone floor, where it broke. ‘I’d like to break another,’ he said angrily.

‘Feel free, help yourself,’ said the larger man, looking at the broken plate.

Henry said, ‘I’ve come without a book to read in the train. Can one of you lend me something?’

T. S. Eliot? Agatha Christie?’ suggested the thin man. ‘Why don’t you grind the plate into the floor? It’s past mending. They say bottling up rage is bad for you.’ He spoke with concern and a trace of shame.

Henry thought, These two know something; it is making them feel awkward. There’s something funny here.

‘So you’ve come to tell us all about your marriage?’ said the larger man courageously.

‘Who is in a china shop now?’ his friend murmured.

Henry, who had come to do precisely that, said, ‘No. No, I haven’t,’ and leaned down to pick up pieces of broken plate. ‘Tell me about your lives,’ he said. ‘Your pigs, geese, chickens. Are you still in the Observer Corps? Do you still do ARP?’

When, later, he had to catch his train, they walked with him in the dark to the station; they had lent him
The Screwtape Letters
and a Dorothy L. Sayers.

‘We hear Aragon has written some wonderful poems,’ they said. ‘Will you send them to us?’

Henry said that he would.

Halfway to the station, he said, ‘You neither of you liked my mother—’

‘She used to say things like, “That man has Eton blue eyes—”’ said the older man.

‘Never pale blue,’ said his friend.

‘Snobbery is incurable when it’s unconscious,’ said Henry.

‘Of course,’ they said. ‘Absolutely.’ Then they said, ‘We loved your father,’ and one of them (Henry later could not remember which) said, ‘He had the highest possible motives,’ excusing the dead.

Just before they reached the station, Henry said, ‘Will you go and meet my wife? Get to know her? See what you can do?’

They said that of course they would, they couldn’t wait to meet her. Nothing they would enjoy more.

Henry said, ‘Here’s my train. I must run. Take care of yourselves. Goodbye,’ and ran through the dark to the train.

The Jonathans waited outside the station until they heard the train leave.

In the train Henry sat alone in the dim light of a blacked-out carriage and reproached himself for being surly, for breaking their plate, a pretty plate. Minton, probably irreplaceable. Then he remembered the phrase ‘a misplaced act of kindness’ and mulled it over as it refuelled his suspicions.

Morosely he opened the books they had lent him, riffled through the pages, laid them aside, sat with head bent forward staring at his shoes; they had been his father’s. I inherit my father’s shoes and the results of his quixotic generosity, he thought wryly. The shoes fit, a lot of the rest pinches. Staring at his feet, he remembered his father’s efforts to communicate, his own longing to reciprocate and their joint failure after his mother, seized by pneumonia, died.

He had been rushed from school, fetched by Trask just in time to see her die. She had struggled for breath. He had a miserable cold caught at school; when he kissed her, her breath smelled horrible. He had tried not to let her see his disgust. At the funeral his father had worn black. Friends and relations and all the village people had crowded the church, which reeked of lilies and chrysanthemums. The Jonathans singing in the choir had tried to catch his eye—they were his best friends—but he had stared at his feet. Back at the house the funeral guests crowded round the fires, warmed their hands, drank tea and whisky, ate cake; survivors.

He should have handed round plates of gentleman’s relish sandwiches, been polite. But the Jonathans were looking for him; he did not want their sympathy, feared he would cry. He had escaped to the stables, where the dogs had been shut in for the afternoon, and in one of the loose-boxes he had wept with his face pressed against a horse’s neck, gripping its mane with manic fingers.

That night his father said, ‘I am taking you away. We will go to Italy; you can miss a term.’ In the train his father had worn these brown shoes.

Together they climbed up and down the cobbled mule tracks in the hills behind Carhogli, gazed down at the sea, boated round the cliffs to San Frutuoso, visited Portofino with its line of ill-used horses with drooping disconsolate heads in the long cab rank; eaten fried sardines and pasta in the piazza, drunk strong and bitter coffee. Communication was stilted and awkward; his mother had always bound them together. Could he have tried harder? She would have loved the flowers, long-stemmed, sweet-scented, purple-and-white violets, blue hepaticas, white anemones, pink cyclamen, sweet-scented narcissi, orchids, and the steady clop of the mules carrying their loads on the cobbled paths up through the olive groves. It was a relief to get back to school, and in the holidays his father talked more easily with the two Jonathans, recounting to them in copious detail the course of his various acts of philanthropy, from which in advancing years he derived as much pleasure as he had from the girls he seduced in the company of the Jonathans’ fathers in their pre-marital heyday.

‘None so dangerous as a reformed rake.’ Henry chuckled in affectionate recollection. ‘I must get some new shoes,’ he said out loud. ‘These are past repair.’

Tramping back to their cottage, guided by a flickering torch, Jonathan said, ‘I think somehow there’s been a bit of a boomerang.’

‘I didn’t care for his tone of voice when he said “philanthropy”,’ said the other.

‘And yet with Pilar—’

‘But the old man saw Pilar, found her himself. This isn’t the same thing; this was by proxy.’

‘Seemed such a good idea.’

‘Brilliant at the time.’

‘I can’t wait to meet her.’ Jonathan burst out laughing. ‘It’s awful to laugh,’ he said, chuckling. ‘Awful. But I would have loved to have been there when she blacked his eye.’

The younger man joined in the laughter. ‘What a mess! Let’s go over as soon as we can.’

‘Should we have meddled?’ queried the older man.

‘A bit late to ask that now,’ said his friend.

It was years before the Jonathans spoke of their first visit to Margaret, and the subsequent visits which led to a relationship founded not on friendship but curiosity.

Henry had asked them to go, they told Calypso, when he left to go back to the war that autumn of 1944. (They had chosen Calypso for their saga in the knowledge that anything told went no further, not so much because she was discreet as that she had no interest in garbling. Gossip regaled to Calypso stopped there.)

They had dressed for the occasion, they told her, put on suits, shambled round by the road rather than cut across the fields, carried roses bought from a florist.

Margaret had received them in bed. They were impressed by her beauty, impressed that she was neither ill nor trying to keep warm. This was before Margaret and bed became synonymous. Searching for a subject, they asked whether she liked Cotteshaw, liked the bedroom she had chosen. She had said, ‘It will do well enough,’ dampingly. They enthused that they loved the place, had known it all their lives, had had happy times, been befriended by Henry’s parents, loved Henry. Margaret had said, ‘Really?’ as though this was surprising, suspect even. It had been hard to find anything to chat about until they hit on her wish to have her room other than it was. They had offered then to help redecorate, told her they were interested ‘in style’, ‘in matters of taste’. She said so had her ex-husband been interested; he was the same sort of person, ‘a queer’. She used the appellation as an insult. Even so, they told Calypso, they rallied; had not Henry asked them to befriend his wife?

They had helped rearrange the room, brought mirrors and chairs from other parts of the house (Henry’s mother had had many lovely mirrors), found wallpaper and paint, scarce for ages after the war. It was something they could do for Henry, they told Calypso—and, they readily admitted, an interest for themselves. And, too, it helped Pilar, who did not find Margaret easy, and of course it helped Ebro. But that all came later when a rapport had been established, when she knew that they knew—she had let it slip—that she had money of her own. Not that she used it to pay for decorations; only to buy clothes by mail order.

They had never expected Margaret to stay in bed; they had supposed she would get up, take an interest in the house. They had supposed that she would play the role of wife. These suppositions, hopes, if truth were told, died on their first visit. In Margaret’s mind there was no question of love, sex or friendship; she made this clear. At first they thought this was some sort of act. ‘We laughed,’ they told Calypso. ‘We thought she was having us on.’

Jonathan corrected this. ‘Not so. We laughed because we were so shocked—we never expected Henry to get caught in such a terrible trap.’

Calypso was startled to see that he had begun to weep. ‘It was so sad,’ he said. ‘She sneered at love; she thinks it disgusting. We came away blaming ourselves.’

To cheer him, Calypso said, ‘But you have befriended the woman, done what Henry asked. How could you be to blame?’ and she handed him a tissue, she being one of the first to give up the use of handkerchiefs and blow her nose on paper.

Jonathan said, ‘Oh! A tissue! What a sensible idea!’

Calypso said, ‘Saves laundry,’ and as he ceased to weep she said jokingly, ‘Come now, admit, you have had a lot of entertainment over the years. You arranged for her facials and massage as well as the redecorations. It’s not all gloom.’

‘Of course not,’ they agreed. The unravelling of Margaret’s past was a constant delight; she was such a liar. One week she would have been born in the Levant, the next it would be Bexhill-on-Sea. Her stories about her ex-husband were a joy. By then they had lost the temptation to bare their soul.

‘One day,’ they said, laughing, ‘this husband was a brute, a Hercules who wrested her from her family and ravished her. On another she was raised by nuns in an orphanage and found a situation as a servant to a priest. Or conversely the ex-husband was a mouse, or again a burly homosexual who only cared for the rough trade. She makes up her past as she goes along,’ they said, happy again, forgetting the tears.

It was all much more interesting than the truth, they told Calypso; they were almost sure from titbits she had let slip that she had been a manicurist at the Ghezira Palace Hotel, picked up by the German husband who needed a wife for cover.

When they had gone Calypso wondered why they had lost their nerve and not told her what they intended. Then, since gossip did not interest her, she forgot.

J
AMES MARTINEAU AND MATTHEW
Stephenson, meeting in the Fulham Road and exchanging the time of day, discovered that they were both invited to Cotteshaw for the coming weekend.

‘Henry suggested I should bring a girl,’ said Matthew. ‘Wants to make it something of a house party. You bringing a girl?’

‘I was thinking of asking Barbara,’ said James. ‘Who shall you bring?’

‘I have asked Antonia,’ said Matthew, ‘but she’s being difficult. Says she wouldn’t know anybody, and that anyway she’s been invited by the Grants and would rather go there.’

‘That’s a tiny untruth,’ said James, a kind man unwilling to call a lie a lie. ‘Hector and Calypso are in Italy, I happen to know. Tell Antonia that if she comes, she will know Barbara.’

‘That might do the trick,’ said Matthew, ‘they are great chums. Naughty of her to lie,’ he said uneasily.

‘Oh, girls!’ said James indulgently. ‘Why don’t I give you a lift down? My car is roomier than yours.’

‘I think I’ll stick to mine, thanks all the same,’ said Matthew, who hoped to be alone with Antonia. ‘I like to be independent. If we find the atmosphere too difficult we might want to push off before you and Barbara.’

‘Oh, the atmosphere!’ said James.

‘What was it like when you were there last?’ asked Matthew. ‘Dire?’

‘I wouldn’t say dire,’ said James kindly, as he sought for another word, but failing to find one pursed his lips and said, ‘Not exactly.’

‘Is this house party of Henry’s supposed to jolly things up?’ Matthew enquired, grinning.

‘I gather it is. Henry’s father used to give dinner parties every June; Henry wants to revive them. Long tables on the grass, backed by tulip beds and yew hedges, lilac in bloom, good nosh and lots of booze. Candlelit, of course, and a full moon. Sounds fun.’

‘Supposing it rains?’ suggested Matthew.

‘It never rained for Henry’s parents.’

‘But that was before the war,’ said Matthew.

‘The war has changed much, but not the climate. Gosh, look at the time! I must fly, see you there—’ James broke into a run to catch a bus thundering towards the bus stop.

‘Hoffentlich,’ said Matthew, who had recently spent a week in Dusseldorf on business. ‘One must give old Henry full marks for trying,’ he shouted as James leapt on to his bus.

‘I hear you are coming to Henry Tillotson’s bash,’ said Antonia on the telephone.

‘Oh, so Matthew persuaded you.’ Barbara’s voice was muffled by a mouthful of marmalade and toast. ‘Look, I’m in the middle of breakfast—got up late.’

‘I
was
going to the Grants,’ said Antonia, ‘but—’

‘They are in Italy, darling.’ Barbara swallowed her toast and reached for her coffee cup. ‘You couldn’t go to the Grants. Are you playing hard to get?’ she asked, not expecting an answer. ‘They don’t ever seem worried by currency restrictions.’ She gulped her coffee. ‘Nice to be rich.’

‘I thought all that was over,’ said Antonia. ‘Anyway, a little thing like currency restrictions wouldn’t worry Calypso. My mother says she stuffs her bra with fivers. I admire her panache.’

‘She rather intimidates me,’ said Barbara. ‘Look, love, I must fly or I shall again be late at the grindstone. Oh! Do you suppose Matthew will make you change your mind?’

‘He might,’ said Antonia. ‘And what about James?’

‘Ah,’ said Barbara, ‘James—’

‘Their being such friends would be nice for us,’ said Antonia.