Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard
Perhaps I should say here that approaches to women have by the natures of the latter to be different. There are women who need to be teased into wanting; there are women who respond to an almost
brutal display of need; there are women who simply want their sexual attraction emphasized: but my Daisy was none of them. Everything that I had read about her, things that Katya had let out this
day, the first impression I had had of her, all confirmed that hers was a gentle nature made wild by betrayal. The thought of taming her – of her ultimate surrender – was intensely
erotic and I could see that my patience might have to be rewarded by fantasy for an unknown amount of time. What comfort fantasies can be! What safeguards they provide; what intimate power they
engender!
Before I set about clearing up the detritus of our lunch, I made some notes of what Katya had told me, and then, as an afterthought what I had told her. Nothing very much. It had been faintly
unnerving that she had got on to Rackham so quickly, but I reflected that there could be nothing and nobody left there who would even have heard of me. My father had died some time ago; Daphne
would have been married off to some dull swell, and her ladyship would never divulge to anyone what she had actually told me. All the same, it had been foolish to answer Katya Moreland’s
questions so freely, although it would have looked odd not to have answered them at all.
I worked on the path for a while, then cooked myself a good supper of eggs and bacon. I was sorely tempted by the red wine, but nobody gives anyone five bottles of wine and I could not afford to
replace it.
A week, I thought to myself before I slept. It can’t be much more than a week.
2 May
I am here at last. Anna brought me down as I am not able to drive yet. She said that she would stay the weekend and made me promise beforehand that I would not stay on
alone if she, Anna, thought that I would not be able to cope. I told her that Katya had said she’d been down and met Mr Kent, who seemed to be most handy and willing. I did not tell
Anna that Katya had also said that she thought he was rather an unusual man to be a gardener: ‘Very odd, Ma, not like anyone I’ve ever met before.’
I asked if she had not liked him, and after a moment’s silence I said, ‘You didn’t.
I
don’t mind, darling, I was only asking you.’
Then she said, no, it wasn’t that at all. She
had
liked him. He was rather charming, she had said, and actually quite bright. ‘A bit mysterious, though.’
I was very touched that she had taken the trouble to drive all that way to see the cottage.
When Anna came to fetch me, she brought mail that had been forwarded from the studio and the hospital. Among them was a letter from Mr Kent. I had a momentary urge to open it at once, but
desisted. For some reason I did not want to be with anyone else while I read it.
Anna was marvellous – as always. I had laid out my things to take to the cottage, but my cases had been in a top cupboard above my wardrobe and I simply could not get to them. Just
as well. I had left out half a dozen vital necessities – socks for my wellingtons, a winter dressing-gown, more jerseys, and my anorak with a hood. I had become so used to warmth that
it was hard to imagine what late spring in a damp cottage might turn out to be.
By the time we had packed and shut up the flat and loaded up the car, I was exhausted. Everything tires me – suddenly – and I find this curiously depressing. It is as though in
return for my bones and tendons healing, I leak energy or use it all up on that – I don’t know. Anna says anaesthetic takes a great deal out of one and that it can take months to
recover. It has certainly played havoc with my sleep. I told the doctor in London all that: Anna made me go and see him; she actually took me although I could perfectly well have got a taxi.
She nannies me; I told her it was bad for both of our characters, and she said that it was very good for hers.
The doctor, who had been sent my X-rays, said that the Americans had done a marvellous job, but I couldn’t expect to recover from such injuries overnight at my age. I pointed out
that it was three months. Anyway, he gave me a prescription for sleeping pills and told me to come back in a month. I may not do that, at least, not until I can drive again.
On the way down, she asked me whether I intended living at the cottage. I wasn’t sure; I would spend a summer there and then decide. It will be expensive to have two places; on the
other hand I don’t want to
live
in London any more.
‘It’s quite charming, but not very
convenient,’
Anna remarked.
I remembered that she had already seen it, and felt childishly disappointed.
‘I think you might find the winters rather lonely.’
I did not say that I found the winters lonely in London. Ever since Jason, I have been extremely bad at meeting people. I loathe large parties and they tend to be what one gets asked to if
one is single and no longer young. I did have a few friends who had been mine before I married him, and a couple I liked very much whom I met after he left – but they have gone to live
in Australia. The others have married, had children who take up all their time, and then there is Anthony, a really close friend who has fallen in love with a man who can’t stand me.
There is nothing that makes no difference to friendship. I think everything does – sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. But the chief enemy is time, or the lack of it. I
have time, too much, and, it seems, more than most of the people I know.
Why on earth am I writing this? Because, I suppose, I’m beginning to feel the itch again; the curious, restless, wasted-time feeling that starts me writing. And this scribbling is a
sort of cop-out.
She shut the notebook and put the cap on her pen. They had arrived in time for the picnic lunch that Anna had prepared.
The place had a delightfully lived-in feeling. The tea chests were gone and she noticed at once that their contents had been neatly stacked on the shelves. On the kitchen table was a jam jar
filled with primroses.
‘Did you tell Mr Kent we were coming?’
‘No. I thought it would be rather a good thing not to.’
‘You sound as though you don’t trust him.’
‘I don’t trust or distrust him.’
Later, Anna said, ‘Katya must have told him that your return was imminent when she came down – and that was about ten days ago.’
When she came down from carrying the bags upstairs, Anna said, ‘Did you leave the beds unmade?’
‘From the last time? No, I stripped mine. I didn’t make the other one.’
‘Well, yours has been made. Presumably by Mr Kent.’
‘That’s thoughtful of him, don’t you think?’
‘Possibly. A bit intrusive. Gardeners don’t make beds as a rule, do they?’
‘Oh, Anna! I think he just means to be kind. Don’t be against him. I’m sure he means well.’
She noticed that Anna did not answer. She had been about to tell her that she knew more about him than she did, that he wrote interesting letters that revealed him to be someone with an unusual
and subtle mind, but she didn’t. She did not want to argue – let alone quarrel – with Anna over him, and decided to shut up at least until she had read his forwarded letter.
This she did in her bedroom after they’d eaten, when Anna decreed that she should have a rest. ‘I haven’t even looked round the garden yet!’
‘You can do that when you come down for tea.’
So she lay down on her bed and when Anna had gone downstairs, she read the letter. Again she was struck by his capacity to make her
see
whatever scene he was writing about. When he
described his Charley’s death, she felt tears hot in her eyes. At least the poor girl must have died happy, and she was touched that he was able to be grateful for the time with her rather
than simply lamenting its brevity. She was also struck by his truthful account of his marriage – no sentimentalising or absconding from blame. She liked him from that letter, but she
also realized that he was clearly extremely lonely and that he might become – as Anna had said he was – intrusive.
It did also cross her mind that he seemed to be rather disaster prone. But then she reflected that she’d only had two letters with accounts of his life and that there must be much of it
that had been happier. He had, and really at her request, given an account of some salient events, and if she were to do the same to anyone, she would have to say that her parents were killed when
she was three, that she’d lost her beloved Jess at a time when it seemed she most needed her – after the break-up with Stach and Katya to bring up on her own. (But, of course, she would
always have loved and needed her.) Then – Jason. Yes, it would certainly sound disaster prone to an outsider – and, indeed, perhaps it was, although she suspected it was more like the
wear and tear that are most people’s lot: the most cruel moments blurred and distorted by the repetition of memory, which meant for her that she could not remember exactly how she felt
because an element of shock was not there; it too was a memory, no longer an ambush, but the recollection of one.
She put away the letter and began to imagine her life in this cottage after Anna had gone back to London. She would walk every day to strengthen her leg. She would get the cottage really
comfortable and pretty. She would read; for her next piece of work she had it in mind to attempt a series of plays about the Brontës, the only play she had read seeming not to be comprehensive
enough. And so she must read not only all the novels again but Clement Shorter, Winifred Gerin, Margaret Lane, Mrs Gaskell, etc. She fell asleep in the middle of a mushrooming crowd of
biographies.
After tea they made a tour of the garden, which surrounded three sides of the cottage. There had been a shower – single drops sparkled in the grass and the air smelt of moss. There were
two clumps of narcissi, forsythia, and a dark red polyanthus against the end wall of the cottage. Roses had been planted and manured, and six small lavender bushes were in place each side of the
cottage door. The beds were clear of weeds, and looked orderly and bare. It was clear that Mr Kent had done his job well.
Then it began to rain again and they went in. Anna lit the fire and opened a bottle of wine, and they listened to Chopin mazurkas while the stew was heating in the oven, and she watched the sky
fade to an aqueous dusk. Supper was to be by the fire, and while Anna, refusing all help, was getting it, she suddenly realized the extraordinary luxury of lying with the firelight and hearing
someone else, this loved and loving friend, making ordinary kitchen noises next door. This was what loneliness was not; or, rather, what much of it was about. It was not necessary – or, for
her, necessary any more – to be wrapped in someone’s arms: friendship, living with a companion, would be a living contentment. And Anna was also alone.
Before they went to bed, she opened the door to smell the garden once more and heard the soft seductive hoot of an owl.
‘Oh, Anna! It really
is
lovely here. I wish you could live with me.’
‘You know I’m a London bird. And, anyway, I have to work. But I’ll come and visit you regularly. Tomorrow morning we’ll make a list of all the things you need and
I’ll find out how practical it is for you to be here when you can’t drive.’
‘Perhaps Mr Kent could drive me.’
‘Driving Miss Daisy, I daresay he can do that as well.’
‘As well as what?’
‘All the other things he seems to have done.’
But as they parted on the landing, Anna said, ‘Mind you, I can see that this place could be very good for work. As long as you don’t get too lonely.’
Again she thought of saying that she had felt lonely in London, but did not.
When she opened her bedroom window, she heard the owl again, and stood waiting for him to hoot, breathing in the sweet dark air. She looked towards the wood where the owl must be: the high
branches of the trees were black against a sky that was, as she watched, momentarily illuminated by the appearance of a half-moon emerging from small scudding clouds, then fitfully obscured by more
of them. She thought for a moment that the blackness of the wood shifted, but when the moon went out, there was no way of telling.
Before she slept, it did occur to her to wonder why she had been so sure that she wanted to buy this particular place. It had been the first that she had seen. It had not looked especially
promising: a smudged black-and-white photograph photocopied with its ill-typed details before it. ‘Detached period cottage with three-quarters of an acre of garden. Large living room 28ft x
15ft, kitchen and toilet on ground floor. Three bedrooms (one of good size, 16ft x 13ft, with double aspect. Bathroom and toilet on half-landing. Garage; garden shed. Village V mile. Nearest market
town 10 miles approx. The building has a slate roof. The front facade is of plaster over brick and the other three walls of brick and flint. Mains electricity and water. Open fireplace in living
room.’ Oh, yes, and ‘small larder off kitchen’.
This description, which she did not remember in the right order, contained no sales hype: no ‘beautifully presented’, no ‘wealth of period detail’, no ‘mature and
well-stocked garden’. And yet she had picked it as the first to see and, having seen it, saw no point in looking further. It was an honest, unremarkable little building, but it was all of a
piece: had not been corrupted by louvred doors, open risers on the staircase, the dreaded brown windows or nasty little front door with ersatz fanlight. It was on a road, but a minor one and she
liked the proximity of the wood, which edged one side of the garden and was clearly a good protection against an east wind.
She had gone straight back to the agent in Banbury and offered the asking price (which Anna told her afterwards was
mad.
‘You could at least have tried to negotiate’). But she
had the money saved from two films and had not thought. ‘And if I
do
decide to live here, I can sell the flat in London, or perhaps buy a one-room flat and still have something to live
on if work goes badly.’ She had the inside walls painted, and some bookshelves made for the sitting room, and had pillaged the London flat, bought some stuff at an auction and moved in. She
had the bare essentials, but it would be enjoyable to hunt for the right pieces, as much as making a pretty garden would please her. Aunt Jess had taught her to use her eyes in junk shops, and she
would learn about gardening from Mr Kent. She began to make lists in her head as she drifted into sleep.