High heels clacked in the distance like gunfire to warn us of my mother’s approach. We both started, both glanced at the door. I was quite beyond speech by this time, but fear galvanized my father into action, and shoving away my hands he struggled to his feet.
‘Not a word, Charles.
Not a bloody word.
’ He spoke in a fierce whisper, his face set in its hardest lines, every muscle of his frame rigid with determination. ‘Your mother’s not to know you know. Absolutely not.
Never.
And if you so much as breathe one syllable of this conversation to her, I’ll –’
My mother tip-tapped through the conservatory doorway before he could complete the sentence. ‘Well, really, you two!’ she exclaimed in exasperation. ‘What are you up to? I’m waiting to drink champagne cocktails! Eric, go and change out of those filthy clothes and let Charles escape from this ghastly hell-hole of yours!’
I somehow achieved a smooth intervention. ‘Was that Peter on the phone?’
‘Yes, he sent his regards to you and said he was so sorry he wouldn’t be able to see you before you rushed back to Cambridge but he and Annabel were just off to a garden party at Richmond.’
‘Typical!’ said my father. ‘No time for his family!’
‘When’s he going to come and see Father?’ I said before my mother could put all the blame on Annabel.
‘Tomorrow evening at six. You see, Eric? I knew it was nonsense when you said yesterday he’d forgotten you!’
‘He’s just coming to keep me quiet. “Better keep the old buffer sweet,” he’s saying to that awful Annabel, “or he might do something nasty with his will.” Well, I don’t care if he comes or not. It’s all the same to me.’
‘Silly old man!’ said my mother, grimacing at me to convey he was irritating her beyond endurance. ‘What nonsense you talk!’
But my father elbowed her rudely aside and stumbled off at a rapid pace into the garden.
‘Well, of course he’s become absolutely impossible,’ said my mother. ‘I’m at my wits’ end – have been for some time actually – and really, darling, when I heard you were coming today I almost started believing in divine providence because I feel that if I don’t talk to someone soon about how awful life is at the moment I’ll start climbing the walls. Quick, come to the terrace and let’s have a drink while he’s changing.’
‘He seemed fairly pleased to see me –’
‘So he damn well should! I said to him this morning: “You’d better cheer up before Charles comes or he won’t come down here again in a hurry,” but he only said: “He won’t come down here again in a hurry anyway, so why should I bother?” Ghastly old man, moping around like death personified, and it’s so frightful for
me
being tied to someone who spends his whole time looking as if he’s trying to find a coffin to lie in. Heavens, I’m not even sixty yet, and he makes life so dreadfully depressing … I wish to God he hadn’t retired. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, apart from pottering around in that frightful conservatory – and I’m sure the heat there’s bad for him. He could have a heart attack. Maybe that’s what he wants. I don’t know, God knows what he wants, but I know what
I
want, and that’s a decent holiday. Peter and Annabel are taking the children to the south of France, such a lovely idea, but Eric poured cold water on it and as good as told Peter he was an unpatriotic nitwit for wanting to take a holiday outside England – well, no wonder Peter took offence, I don’t blame him, although I do think Annabel stirs him up. There’s something very
common
about Annabel, but then we all know, don’t we, that her father made his money out of trade.’
We had by this time reached the wrought-iron table shaded by a white umbrella, and I was pouring the cocktails from the jug. ‘I’m sorry things are so difficult,’ I said as I sat down beside her and lit her cigarette.
‘Never mind, darling, let’s drink to a happy visit – mmm, what lovely champagne! Now don’t let me rattle on about all my ghastly problems – tell me about yourself. I must say, you’re looking a little thin and peaky! I do hope you haven’t been working too hard.’
‘I’ve just concluded a long retreat with the Fordite monks at Grantchester.’
‘Poor darling, no wonder you’re looking peaky! It’s a miracle you’re not worn to a frazzle – like me. Honestly, Charles, I can’t get over how amazing it is that you should turn up. I kept hoping and hoping you would and I was going to write but I didn’t want to pester you and I was so afraid of being one of those ghastly mothers who
cling
– and everyone knows nowadays that clinging mothers can do so much damage. Of course Eric’s always accused me of spoiling you but I’ve tried so hard to be sensible, I really have, and the last thing I want is to be a nuisance or a burden or – oh hell, I’m embarrassing you, I can see I am, I’m saying all the wrong things but I’m so nervous, in such a state, please, please don’t be cross …’ And she began to cry.
‘My dearest Mother …’ I dragged my chair around the table so that I could put my arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m so very sorry – how dreadful to think you were afraid to write to me and how appalling to think I’ve left you alone for so long –’
‘Oh, I’m all right,’ she said, drinking half her cocktail. ‘Heavens, I don’t want to make you regret you’ve come! Everything’s absolutely fine really – except that sometimes I think I can’t go on any more –’ She broke down again.
‘How difficult is he? Is he just surly or –’
‘No, he doesn’t hit me, not nowadays. My God, he used to get so angry – but I did try so hard to be a good wife to him, I really did … It was just that whatever I did never seemed to be enough. Sometimes I used to despair so much that I’d tell myself I’d leave when you and Peter were grown up, but when it came to the point I was too frightened. He’d have been beastly about the divorce and I couldn’t face being socially ostracized … Perhaps if I’d met some decent man … But I never did. All the decent ones were happily married.’
‘All of them? What about earlier in your life?’
‘When you and Peter were little? Yes, there were one or two men who were very keen – although I was never unfaithful because I was so afraid Eric would find out and he’d already threatened me about that. “If you’re once unfaithful to me,” he said, “that’s it. Finish. And don’t think you’d ever see either of your sons again.” Well, that settled it, didn’t it? Actually I think Peter might have managed without me, but you … oh, I couldn’t have left you. No, no, that was quite impossible. I stayed with him because of you in the end – it was like some ghastly punishment but it didn’t matter, I accepted it, I’d have done anything for you and you needed me, I knew you did, especially as Eric could be so … oh, how I hated him sometimes! But there was no question of leaving, and besides, I never in fact met anyone whom I could love as I wanted to love … as I knew I could love –’ She stopped.
‘You mean,’ I said after a pause, ‘there was a memory which acted as a yardstick?’
‘Yes, I met a man once … before I was married … first love … and no one I met later ever measured up to him. It was as if I could see them only in black and white whereas this memory was in glowing colours.’ She drank deeply again from her glass.
‘What happened to him?’
‘I don’t know. He had to go away, but it was so strange, Charles, because I always thought … I always thought –’
‘– he’d come back.’
She nodded, struggling with her tears again. Her mascara had smudged. The powder was streaked. I could see the deep lines on her face. ‘But he didn’t,’ she said levelly. ‘Stupid of me to indulge in romantic dreams, wasn’t it? But Eric always says I’m a stupid woman.’
‘Father makes a lot of wild statements that are unjust. Perhaps he feels that life’s been unjust to him and he wants to hit back.’
‘Life unjust to him? But he’s had a wonderful life, so successful! He’s had everything he’s ever wanted!’
‘Yes, but … well, never mind Father for the moment, I’d much rather talk about you. Tell me more about this first love of yours.’
‘Oh, darling, I can’t. Eric would be so angry if he knew I’d even mentioned it to you, and besides … some things really are better not discussed.’
‘Are you sure? I’ve just spent days discussing my life with the clerical equivalent of a psychiatrist and I feel much better.’
‘Charles! Darling, what’s wrong? Oh, if only you knew how much I worry about you – is the trouble to do with Jane? I know how terribly her death upset you, I’ve sensed you bottling up your grief all these years, never speaking of her – oh Charles, I did so long to help, but somehow I never knew what to say … I loved Jane. I cried and cried when she died –’
‘My dearest Mother –’
‘I did, Charles, I did! Such a good nice girl she was, always so kind to me, not like bloody Annabel who treats me like a drunken hag. Well, I know I do drink too much sometimes – and particularly when I have to face Annabel, but I’m all right, Charles, I’m all right –’
‘I’m going to come back here next week and stay for a couple of days. I think it’s very important that you should talk to me in detail about all your unhappiness –’
‘Oh, if only you knew how much I long to confide in you!’ she said. ‘But I mustn’t. Eric would make life hell if he thought I’d been confiding in you behind his back.’
‘Eric’s already making life hell. Let’s see if we can change the gramophone record. Come on, Mother, we probably have at least another ten minutes together before he reappears – have a second cocktail and tell me all about this first love of yours who affected you so deeply for so long.’
‘I mustn’t say his name,’ said my mother, ‘because Eric said it was never to be mentioned again, but when I was a young girl still in my teens I thought it was the sort of name every romantic hero ought to have … Now I know what you’re thinking, darling. You’re thinking: what fools young girls are about men! But it wasn’t as simple as that. I was going through a ghastly time and it was as if this man’s wonderful glamour and his whole great spirit of high romance were in some magical way a negation of all the dreadful things that were happening to me.
‘You’ll remember me telling you that when I was eighteen I went to Germany for six months to be “finished”. Well, I always pretended it was great fun but the truth was I hated it. I hadn’t wanted to go but Great-Aunt Sophie said it would be better if I went away from home for a while because my mother was so ill by that time with her TB and my father was keeping this mistress … My dear, nobody would think anything of it now, but this was 1898 and Aunt Sophie was deeply Victorian. Nobody explained about the mistress, of course, and I didn’t understand why I was being sent away – oh, I was so unhappy! But in the spring of 1899 I was allowed to come home again because the mistress had left Epsom and now not only my mother was at death’s door but my father was dying of cancer. I expect you remember hearing most of this before, darling, but I wonder if you’ve ever stopped to think how absolutely frightful it was for me.
‘Well, Papa eventually died – I think old Dr Barnes killed him with morphia in the end – and there I was, nineteen years old, in this house which was exactly like a morgue. My mother went on dying by inches and Aunt Sophie creaked around in her corsets and everything was prayer-books and hushed whispers and I used to feel as if I were suffocating.
‘And then … that summer … old Dr Barnes broke a lot of bones in an accident and this young doctor came to Epsom for three months to take his place.
‘I soon met him. He came to attend my mother in her illness. I remember I was embroidering yet another useless sampler when I heard the noise of wheels in the drive and on going to the window I saw this young man jump down from the pony-trap with his Gladstone bag. Then he caught sight of me – but he didn’t just touch his hat and move on. He swept off his hat and he raised his hand and he smiled and … It was the breath of life, Charles. I ran all the way to the front door to let him in.
‘He was a tremendous success in our set. Everyone liked him except Eric but everyone knew Eric was jealous. I’d known Eric for years … and respected him … but he seemed so terribly old, over thirty – imagine! – and although I wanted to marry to escape from home. I honestly couldn’t see myself marrying an old man. I didn’t truly know Eric then, of course. Later I discovered all his wonderful qualities and … well, I married him, didn’t I? But earlier … after I’d met this other man … I couldn’t think of Eric at all.
‘Eric said I was just infatuated with the man’s looks but he was wrong. Of course this man was divinely attractive. But I fell in love with him mainly because he was the only person who seemed to understand what hell I was going through. He said he’d been going through hell himself because someone he loved very much had recently been certified insane. He said, “Life’s so frightful in so many ways, so many terrible things can happen even to the best people, and that’s why it’s so important to live to the hilt while one can and snatch all the happiness that’s available.”
‘I said, “That’s how I feel too.”
‘It was rather a solemn moment, but then he kissed me – for the first time – and he laughed and he said, “I have this
irresistible
urge for champagne – let’s raid the cellars and filch a bottle!” Oh, he was such fun! It was only three in the afternoon – a preposterous time to drink champagne, but Aunt Sophie always took her afternoon rest till four so no one was breathing down my neck. We crept down to the cellar and found a bottle of champagne and sneaked off to drink it in the summer-house – oh, how we laughed and oh, what fun it was! But terribly naughty, of course – Aunt Sophie would have died. I said: “I feel terribly naughty!” and he said, “So do I! Isn’t it amusing?” and he laughed again and began to recite some lines from Browning – that poem about how one mustn’t miss one’s opportunities – “The Statue and the Bust”. I can remember him lounging on the summer-house love-seat with the glass of champagne in his hand as he quoted: “The sin we impute to each frustrate ghost is the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin …” Then suddenly he set down his glass and said, “I feel a delicious urge to start lighting lamps and girding loins!” Oh God, how romantic it was, how exciting, I adored it, I was absolutely swooning …