Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (21 page)

Mrs Palfrey’s neighbour turned and boomed a few observations at her between courses, while buttering pieces of bread.

Roast duck was served with frozen peas and whirls of duchesse potatoes.

Occasionally, the toast-master would bawl at them that their Worshipful Master and his Lady wished to take wine – with the visitors, or old friends from Potters Bar, or a contingent all the way from Ramsgate.

‘I think you must allow there’s not much wrong with this,’ Mr Osmond said, meaning the claret.

‘I’m afraid the Claremont doesn’t prepare us for such
enormous feasts,’ Mrs Palfrey said, striving not to flag.

‘What do you make of that?’ the man on her right asked her, pointing to the menu.
‘Pêches Denise, avec crêpes dentelle.
All Greek to me, I fear.’

‘Denise is the name of our hostess,’ Mr Osmond said across Mrs Palfrey, who drew back her bust a little as he did so.

They looked at the two figures in the centre of the top table – who appeared remote like Royalty, her pink bouquet placed before her. To have a pudding named after one! Mrs Palfrey marvelled. It was their big evening, those two. They had been rhythmically clapped in (it was rather like a savage rite, Mrs Palfrey had thought), and now presided. She had folded back long white kid gloves off her hands and, from Mrs Palfrey’s distance, looked as if her arms were clumsily bandaged.

The pudding in her honour was no more than half a tinned peach sitting on sherry-soaked sponge-cake, and covered with a scoop of ice-cream. From all sides, waitresses came hastening with it.

The Queen; the coffee; Mrs Palfrey declined a
crime de menthe,
which Mr Osmond’s late wife had been partial to, he said. She had also liked
petits-fours,
and always said that was the best part of the meal. ‘Fish bored her,’ Mr Osmond said.

This was really unanswerable, and Mrs Palfrey was glad that the toast-master suddenly banged on the table for the beginning of the speeches. People sat back, expectant, or resigned.

‘I mustn’t get squiffy,’ Mrs Post said, rather surprised at herself for bringing out such a modish-sounding word.

‘Now, come!’ said Mrs Burton’s brother-in-law. ‘You’re one of us, I know.’

In a draughty place near the door, sat a newcomer, a resident-to-be, if they had known.

Well, if it doesn’t suit, it’s not the only place in the world, Colonel Mildmay was thinking. He, like some of the others, had had vague ideas about the South Coast, but believed that, as his granddaughter said, London was where it all happened. Bournemouth, perhaps, in the spring. He had sent off for brochures about hotels for retired people, and had become increasingly depressed. ‘Standing in secluded grounds.’ ‘Almost entirely surrounded by trees.’ It was no use to anyone of
his
age.

He laid his hands calmly upon the edge of the table, awaiting his sherry trifle, and half closed his eyes at Mrs Burton’s coarse, fat laugh, and Mrs Post’s new trilling voice.

He would take the porcelain day by day at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Spode. Crown Derby. He would make notes. Here was his trifle – sopping wet, but not with sherry. He suddenly remembered his wife’s trifle, and laid down his spoon.

‘Not to your liking, sir?’ asked the old waitress.

He silently shook his head, as if to say ‘Yes’, or ‘No’, or ‘No matter’.

Waiting for coffee, he went over in his mind, to hearten himself, the list of inexpensive treats of galleries
and museums, auction-rooms, recitals in churches at luncheon-time; but he was not very much heartened by it.

Mrs Post was having a pleasant evening, Mrs Burton’s brother-in-law had been at first appalled by the prospect of her company, but soon began to play up very nicely – teasing, and winking, and aligning himself with Mrs Post against his sister-in-law. Mrs Burton seemed not to mind. She made them feel like children as they ate their ice-cream. She lit a cigarette, leaned back, and yawned out smoke, gazing indulgently upon them, with their smiles, and bent heads, and little spoons.

Later, after the speeches, Mrs Palfrey and Mr Osmond sat among the potted palms away from the bar in the Gainsborough Suite. She sipped lemonade, and he a whisky-and-soda. The dining-room had been miraculously cleared for dancing, and they could hear the band, but it was not too loud, they both agreed.

‘Mrs Post must have had a lonely evening,’ Mr Osmond said. ‘We seem to be a long way from the Claremont here: it’s an effort to imagine it all going on at this moment, Mrs Post doing her knitting and making for bed.’ At the mention of ‘bed’, Mrs Palfrey quickly stopped a yawn, took a sip of lemonade. ‘It’s a trivial little world,’ Mr Osmond went on. ‘Hum-drum. A funny place to end up in. Twenty years ago if I’d been told I should, well …’ He shrugged, for he could not think
what
he would have said, or done. ‘One has a sort
of loneliness there,’ he said cautiously, ‘and a lack of looking forward.’

‘Perhaps we are too old for
that,’
said Mrs Palfrey with a smile.

‘I am not a callow youth,’ Mr Osmond suddenly said. This also was unanswerable and, as no toast-master was there this time to come to her rescue, Mrs Palfrey paused, then took up her glass of lemonade again. ‘Delicious,’ she said, swirling the ice about. ‘So refreshing.’

‘But I can promise you devotion,’ Mr Osmond said firmly, ‘and a pretty fair sort of home.’

Mrs Palfrey was astounded.

‘I am asking you to marry me,’ Mr Osmond almost shouted. Everything had suddenly gone wrong. His voice was aggressive instead of tender. He was in a muddle, and things meant to be said later had too soon been blurted out. ‘Together’ (he did not say ‘with our pooled resources’) ‘we could lead some sort of a decent life, be company for one another. Potter about, or go out on the spree.’ This last sentence rose almost to a question, imploringly.

Mrs Palfrey said quickly, ‘Oh, no, I’m afraid …’

He could not allow her to go on. ‘A place of our own, a little cottage, perhaps a bit of garden … and a nice, homely sort of housekeeper – someone to run round after us on our off-days … there’s no one at the Claremont to do
that.’

Mrs Palfrey lifted a hand. ‘Mr Osmond, I beseech you: I shall never marry again.’

She was shocked. She had come with him this evening from kindness, for he was not the sort of man that she could ever take to. She had sometimes overheard snatches of stories he was telling to the waiter or Mr Wilkins, the manager, and had been repelled by his eager look. Her husband, Arthur, would have described him as a poor old man, and have set an example of tolerance for his wife to follow.

‘I thought the same once, when Hilda died,’ Mr Osmond said, suddenly lax and toneless. Then he rose and made off to the bar, returned with more lemonade and more whisky and, perhaps, some hope or courage, for he began at once, ‘Just think of some picturesque village – Rottingdean, for instance.’

This was a bad choice, from a bad memory.

‘No,’ she cried, and her hands flew up to her face like startled birds.

‘Or Norwich,’ he went on, trying to smooth over his mistake. ‘I have a couple of friends near Ipswich, who could keep their eyes open for some likely property. It would mean transferring from this Lodge to another, but no matter.’

‘Mr Osmond,’ Mrs Palfrey began firmly, ‘I am honoured, of course; but I am quite taken aback. I had no idea …’

‘Not of my respect, my admiration?’

‘I came this evening as your guest, thinking it simply a friendly invitation …’

‘Friends we must be,’ he declared. ‘We are on the other side of passion at our age. Friendship is the lasting thing.’

How did he know – she wondered – who seemed to have none?

As if guessing her thought, he said, ‘The two old friends I have in Ipswich, could probably find us something round there for next to nothing. We could entertain in a modest, pleasant way. Small dinner party, the odd cheese-and-wine set-to. I’ve often read of them, and wondered why we did not think of it in our day. Informal, simple. I have so wished that I could give one of my own.’

So I am to be there so that he can have a cheese-and-wine party, Mrs Palfrey thought tiredly. The band seemed to be getting noisier; the floor in there was bouncing to the thud of feet. She began to long for her narrow bed at the Claremont, and, so, an end to the fantastic, one-sided conversation.

‘Well, we have seen what
not
to do in the entertaining line,’ Mr Osmond said. ‘But a couple of decent wines -a Sancerre, maybe; or a Quincy – do you know that? No, it’s not widely appreciated.’

Mrs Palfrey closed her eyes.

He seemed to be talking against disappointment, obstructing her. Filibustering.

‘And a red one … you can leave that to me. And the cheeses – no old Claremont mousetrap or chalky Camembert for
us.
Black Diamond, with a bite in it, a wedge of Brie, half a Stilton if we can run to it.’

All this for a couple of old friends in Ipswich, Mrs Palfrey thought, and wondered if his eccentricity approached madness. He had become obsessed by his
imaginary party. Mrs Palfrey put up her hand, from a desire to stem this prattle about cheese. She then remembered her own pleasure of buying the cheese for the lovely evening at Ludo’s.

‘As I say, we’ve seen how
not
to entertain,’ he said. ‘Of course, no names, no pack-drill, not a word even within these four walls.’ He glanced about him at the palms. ‘I am not cut out to be a widower,’ he said in an exhausted voice, ‘I have tried it and have failed.’

‘It is difficult for all of us to be on our own,’ Mrs Palfrey said. ‘But that is what I am bound to be.’

‘Not
bound.’

‘Bound by my nature. I had one perfect marriage. That suffices.’

‘Mine was perfect, too,’ he said sulkily.

‘Well, then …’

She was being gentle with him, but he suddenly knew that they would never set up house together.

‘Some people are going,’ she said, seeing a few women appearing in fur wraps. ‘I’m afraid I can’t finish my second lemonade.’

‘No matter.’ He was staring down at the table.

‘We shall still be friends.’

‘But at the Claremont! At the Claremont!’ he protested impatiently.

‘It’s all been very pleasant, but I think I should like to fetch my cape now.’ She stood up with difficulty, feeling tired, so tired.

He was silent in the taxi. They sat looking out of the windows at different sides of the road. Sometimes she
made a remark, which he seemed not to hear.

The hall of the Claremont was hushed and dim. It must have been like this for Lady Swayne, returning from her revels long after the others were in bed, thought Mrs Palfrey.

They went up in the lift together, but she got out first. She thanked him for the evening, and set off down the corridor. She heard him closing the lift gates quietly, and then rising higher.

How he would behave to her in the morning was something she was too tired to worry about tonight.

T
HE next evening, early, Mrs Palfrey sat down at the desk to write to her daughter. All day, she and Mr Osmond had had little to say to each other, but she had felt his staring at her while she was talking to Mrs Post. Now he was sitting across the room listening to the weather forecast on his old transistor set, which he had turned down low, as radios were not allowed in the public rooms. The light shone through his ear as he bent over the set to listen, shone through his frail hand, too, so that it looked like a web bending his ear forwards.

‘I was a guest at a Masonic Ladies’ Night,’ wrote Mrs Palfrey, proud that, for once, she had something to describe.

Mr Osmond switched off the wireless in his usual spurt of temper. ‘This North Country fellow is the giddy limit,’ he declared. ‘Can’t manage to say “Forecast” properly. Might as well be an American.
“Conntinuing”
Did you hear that? You’d think there’d be a queue of English-speaking people lined up for such a job. Ten minutes a day or so, I suppose. I could do it myself. I should be very glad of a small, part-time occupation such as that.’

He was talking to Mrs Post, who sat near by, playing patience.

He got up and went to the window, watched the
evening clouds piling up, and said, ‘It seems very warm to me. Unsettled they said, didn’t they?’