Good Behaviour (24 page)

‘No. No,’ he said. ‘Awful. Awful.’

‘But, Papa, think what fun. You could fish for mackerel from the pier.’

‘Shan’t.’ He looked at me in a very funny way. ‘She’d come for me.’ It was quite a long sentence. He really was improving.

I encouraged him to try further: ‘Who, Papa? Who would come for you?’

‘Whosit. Whosit—’ He seemed really upset. ‘Walkin’ on the water.’

‘You don’t mean Jesus, Papa?’

‘I know who I mean.’ He shut his eyes and didn’t say another word.

‘I could untangle your line.’ He only glared at me. ‘And if you felt like a little snooze in the car I could go and prawn
the rock pools.’

‘Poor thing,’ he said distinctly.

‘No. I’d love it,’ I answered. ‘And we could buy fresh lobsters when the boats come in.’ I did so love fresh lobster. Their
taste in my mind brought clearly into the present winter bedroom that day of clear September light when Richard and I ran
between the cornfields and the sea: when I was so light on my feet, so sure in my wonder. The ends of my salty hair were in
my mouth; his lean cold hand in mine. Now, with all my winter clothes heavy on me (it is the greatest nonsense that fat people
don’t feel cold) I could sustain my truthful memories and fill the time till he came back to me, as he must. Then, of course,
I would put my hand in his again, and drift lightly down the aisle beside him, dressed in white satin. (No.
Parchment satin perhaps, for a big girl.) Hubert’s near grave, and Papa’s efforts to speak to us would be faraway things that
day.

It was in November, when the hours light enough for painting were short, and the weather was always too wet or too frosty
for gardening, and the restoration of the Crowhurst girls’ side-table as good as completed, that Mummie opened for herself
a new occupation – a campaign for economy.

That was the morning when I was late in meeting the postman. Rose had called me to help her lift Papa while she changed his
under sheet. When that was done, I hurried across the gallery to look down through the circle to see if Richard’s letter,
or any letter, had come for me. I saw Mummie then, looking into the empty drawer, a bunch of unopened bills in her hand. She
stood so still that I could see her breath sigh out, making a neat little haze as she looked and considered. Then she shut
the drawer carefully – she was gently considerate to all furniture – and went floating down the length of the hall, the letters
still in her hand, and lightly up the stairs.

‘Nothing for you,’ she said, as she passed me by. That was all for the moment. But at lunchtime it began. It began with
the dogs’ dinners. The dogs’ food, meat and brown bread, soup and proper green food, was brought into the diningroom. Papa
had always mixed up the dinners himself, sure of the correct quantities, and showing deference towards individual likes and
dislikes. At times when he had an uninteresting guest beside him, or the talk was too boring, this rite provided him with
a wonderful means of escape; it avoided bad manners, and it avoided the intolerable guest. We had no guests now. We did try
to speak to each other a little, especially when Breda was in the room.

When the time came for me to mix up the dogs’ dinners I knew Mummie was looking at me in the oddest way. ‘What enormous dinners
you are giving those dogs,’ she said.

I was quite surprised. ‘You must be thinking of cats’ dinners. These are quite small dinners for dogs.’

‘They are only twice the size of the dogs!’ She spoke so sharply that I stood looking at her, and the dogs sat, looking at
me. ‘
The
most appalling bill came from the butcher today,’ she went on. ‘I’m quite used to dishonesty, but this is unbelievable.’
She was looking at me across the dry white chrysanthemums in the silver potato ring, and across the icy white distances of
tablecloth. ‘Well, why don’t you feed them?’

‘All right, Mummie. I’ve still got to chop up their spinach.’

‘And another thing –’ She leaned towards me, looking upwards. My enormous size, as I stooped above the dogs’ dinners, filled
my mind like guilt. ‘Another thing I should like to know: where are all the business letters which I have so carefully put
away in their usual place?’

‘I gave them to Mr Kiely.’

‘Do I understand that you gave them to your friend the solicitor? Don’t you think you take rather a lot on yourself?’

‘But you wouldn’t see him, Mummie.’

‘How did he know the letters were there?’

‘I must have told him.’

‘So I should imagine.’ She tapped out the words. ‘After that you proceeded to dismiss your father’s nurse.’

‘You know he’s been much better since she left, much happier.’

‘The nights are far too much for Rose.’ It was like a cry coming from her.

‘Rose doesn’t mind,’ I reassured her. ‘She’d do anything. She gets up three times in the night.’

‘Yes. Between you, you’ll kill him – rather sooner than you think, perhaps.’

It was such a terrible thing for her to say, so unbelievably wrong, when we were doing everything for Papa. But I kept calm
and reasonable.

‘The trouble about nurses,’ I reminded her gently, ‘is that they have to be paid. And we don’t seem to have the money for
that.’

‘Which particular fool told you so? Your Mr Kiely, I suppose.’

‘Well, yes. And he says—’

‘I don’t wish to hear what he says. I only know that he has done little or nothing since your father’s illness except by-pass
my authority. As for finding any ready money, which is what he is there for, and what he is paid to do – that’s the last thing
he thinks of. And who economises, I ask you? Who cuts down on anything? Look at the size of those dogs’ dinners –’

‘Mostly brown bread.’

‘– and the size of the butcher’s bill. I can’t look at it. It makes me quite sick.’

‘I expect it goes back for years. And we do have to eat.’

‘Perhaps if you were willing to eat just a little less, we wouldn’t have this appalling bill; of course you happen to be a
big girl.’ She might as well have said: You happen to have three legs. I went on talking to the dogs. ‘And all for red meat
– why does it say that? What meat is not red? I ask myself.’

‘Rabbit,’ I told her.

‘Rabbit? Then we might have rabbit more often. Not that I can eat rabbit.’

‘Neither will the maids.’

‘Why do we have so many maids? All eating their heads off. A little brown bread and butter is enough for me. Thin bread and
butter. Perhaps you and the dogs could sometimes manage with rabbit? I’ll speak to Rose … ’

Things went on from there, fluttering attempts at economies, projects envisaged and unfulfilled; penance for all was her final
object. She felt we must all suffer.

‘I sometimes wonder,’ she said when I came into the library one evening, changed into my warmest blue velvet and wishing I
owned twin silver foxes, ‘where you think money comes from?’ She was sitting in her own little chair. The flowers of her tapestry
made a ghost summer, falling round her to the floor.

I let the question pass, changing the subject with easy diplomacy. ‘That idiot Breda has let the fire out,’ I said. Although
I should have rung the bell, I stooped for the logs myself. I know I’m quite silly about doing the work servants are paid
for.

‘Stop,’ Mummie said.

‘But, Mummie, she’s just bringing in dinner, and the fire will be out.’

‘One can’t help noticing how very determined you are on your own little comforts.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as oilstoves burning in every conceivable corner of the house. I imagine it must have been your rather unpretty idea
to put one in the
PLACE
.’ She spoke the word bravely. ‘Don’t you realise that paraffin oil, like most things, costs money?
And economy means a little, just a very little, self-denial.’

‘The tank in the yard is full of oil, Mummie.’

‘So you may think – and what about the lamps?’ She went on in her most practical tone of voice. ‘What happens when one can
no longer see to read? Tell me that.’

‘I’ll tell you when it happens.’ As soon as I said it I knew I should have kept quiet.

‘That will be very kind, but quite unnecessary. I don’t intend to allow it to happen. I’m determined to put a stop to some
of this extravagance and I’m making a start with the oil-stoves. From tomorrow.’

‘Won’t that mean more fires?’

‘Not for me. No more fires in my bedroom, or only fircones and sticks which I will pick up for myself. And I advise you to
do the same.’

‘My bedroom chimney smokes too dreadfully.’

‘Perhaps then you will have to do without.’ From the way she considered me I guessed she was longing to say: Fat people are
supposed not to feel the cold.

‘It’s a total lie,’ I said before she spoke. ‘They do feel the cold.’

‘My poor girl – don’t let’s talk about your size. There are some subjects I do avoid.’ She put a final stitch into the stem
of a sharp green leaf. ‘They say whales can live for months on their own fat – do they call it blubber? Or is it seals?’

‘Seals, I think.’ The memory of a summer day came to me, unlocked and visible in that word ‘seal.’ It was Mrs Brock, diving
and plunging and playing in the water. Kindness was the word linked with seal. Under my hand, tonight, the texture of my blue
velvet dress stood up, electric with cold; this was the present, and that time, before I knew I was ugly, was a myth. Careful
love, milk and biscuits, her feet buried in sugary sand, her best hat with all the roses were false assurances. Such things
as they gave or promised had no material body. Tonight was real, with my cold hands on my cold dress and my longing for food,
coupled to the certain prospect of Mummie’s comment on my appetite. The size of anything appalled her …

‘And who,’ she was saying, ‘bought that magnum of 4711 eau-de-cologne I noticed in your father’s bedroom?’

‘Rose needs it. It’s against bed-sores.’

‘Bed-sores,’ she murmured. ‘What disgusting thing will you think of next?’

‘But it happens. Dr Coffey warned us.’

‘Yes.
And
Dr Coffey’s bill – can you imagine what that will amount to?’

‘Dr Coffey never sends in his bill.’

‘That’s all you know. He charged ten pounds when you were born. It was quite a ridiculous price.’ She looked through me, and
back into the past. ‘Nothing’s worth it,’ she said.

She could do it all. And she did it. The fires and stoves went out. Maids were sacked. Food became impossible. She stopped
painting. She stopped gardening. She prowled the house, bent on economies. It was a game in which every vantage point represented
a new economy. But as Christmas and the season of hunt balls came closer she grew solicitous for my entertainment. It was
a new tease.

‘Naturally I like to be alone, but I mustn’t be selfish. Why don’t you try to see more of your young friends? Who are your
friends? What about the Hunt Ball, isn’t there anyone you can ask for it?’

‘But I don’t want to go.’

‘And you don’t want to hunt – what
do
you want to do … ?’

What did I want to do, or to have? I wanted, beyond everything, a letter to illumine my life. I wanted Papa to depend on me
more than on Rose (except for bedpans). I wanted the kind of food we used to have when he did the housekeeping. And I wanted
to be warm.

Mummie kept on about the Hunt Ball, and the pity of it that I had no friends or partner. She had a list of the most inaccessible
social contacts, and she whined on endlessly about people who might ask me, and probably wouldn’t … ‘I came out the same year
as their mother.’

‘That’s some time ago.’

‘Your father always went to their shoots.’

‘That’s not quite a hunt ball.’

‘No. Of course there is a difference – they have to find men to dance with you.’ The fruitless teasing went on: ‘What about
those Barraway girls?’

She knew that the Barraway girls lived in a sphere that was out of my reach. Even with Hubert as a talisman there was never
more than a nodding acquaintance between us, a faint recognition at a race-meeting. When an invitation to a hunt ball, to
be held at Ballytore Barraway, coupled with a dinner party before the dance, came for me, I was suspended between horror at
the idea of going by myself into that unknown world and the longing to let Mummie know I had been invited there. I might never
have told her – I was, in fact, composing my refusal – if she had not commiserated with me so gently, one evening, on my lack
of friends and invitations to balls and Christmas parties.

‘Poor child,’ she said, stitching into the ragged edges of a pink carnation – carnations have a barbed look, sharp against
the intoxication of their scent and texture – ‘what are we to do about you?’ She lifted her tapestry so that the weight did
not pull from her hands, and settled back into her little chair. ‘Without Hubert, and without Papa, what can we expect?’

I caught hold of my resolution to tell her nothing, but it escaped from me like the tail of a flying bird. ‘Actually,’ I said,
‘I was just wondering whether I felt like going to the Barraways’ party.’

Her surprise was total. She even dropped her tapestry and pretended to lose her needle while she found a reply. ‘I do see,’
she said, ‘that you wouldn’t know anybody there.’

That decided me. The next day I posted my acceptance and bicycled away to Mrs Harty, with two of my horse show ball dresses
in a cardboard box strapped on the carrier behind me. One dress was pink chiffon, the other was gold lace. I brought them
both because when I tried them on I found they had shrunken miserably in cleaning.

I leaned my bicycle against the wall of Mrs Harty’s house. A winter jasmine grew at the door. Flowerless, only its tight,
fish-shaped buds had survived the frost. As I knocked I could hear her lurching across the kitchen floor, and I shared her
pause at the thick net curtains before she let me in. After my morning in the starved spaces of Temple Alice, Mrs Harty and
her warm house pleased me as though she and her kitchen were a refuge and safety from wolves.