Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (5 page)

She was scarcely aware of a door opening in the area below the railing. Light streamed out across wet stones and ferns and a dustbin, and up the steps a young man came, hurrying. He took her in his arms and held her to him, like a lover and without a word, and a wonderful acceptance began to spread across her pain, and she put herself in his hands with ungrudging gratitude.

She felt blood making its way slowly down her leg, but dared not look.

After a time, the young man propped her against the railings while he picked up her handbag, the library book, her walking-stick; then he put his arm round her shoulders – she was taller than he – and helped her slowly down the steps. She went without protest, because there was nothing else to do, and she was glad to be got out of sight, and the possibility of being looked at lumped against the railings, disorganised, disorderly.
If he would give her a glass of water, she could take one of her pills from her handbag, collect herself and make a plan.

‘I’m sorry!’ she gasped, sitting down in the room. Her lips, all her face felt numbed and drained of blood.

‘I shouldn’t talk yet,’ he said. He went away and came back with a cup of water and it was as if she had no need of words. She pointed to her handbag and he brought it, unclasped it for her and held it open, kneeling before her. Then, seeing her torn stocking and bleeding leg, he went away again and came back with a bowl of warm water and a dirty towel. She was rather shocked by the sight of the towel, but this shock came too soon after a greater one to make much difference, and she submitted. She was completely in his hands and glad to give herself up. She felt no sense of outrage when he lifted her knicker elastic over her suspenders and unfastened her stocking. Most tenderly he swabbed her knee and dabbed it with the dirty towel. She felt no pain. Her leg seemed not to belong to her. He fetched a handkerchief from a drawer and tied it round her knee, drew up her torn stocking again and then sat back on his heels and looked up at her and smiled.

‘I could make you a cup of tea,’ he said.

‘I couldn’t give you so much trouble.’

He seemed to consider this, then said, ‘It wouldn’t be
much
trouble.’

‘You have been so kind.’

‘Yes, I’ll make some tea,’ he said, having decided.
‘My name, by the way, is Ludo. Ludovic Myers, Rather something, don’t you think?’

‘And mine is Palfrey – Laura Palfrey,’ she replied, feeling so much better.

‘Then we both have ridiculous names,’ he said, getting up and going to fill a kettle.

Never in her life had she thought Laura Palfrey a ridiculous name, but she was not at all cross. She even smiled.

‘How far do you have to go?’ he asked.

‘To the Cromwell Road, the Claremont Hotel. Do you know it?’

‘No.’ He looked amused at the idea of knowing the Claremont Hotel. ‘I can get you a taxi, if you like,’ he said. ‘It shouldn’t cost too much from here.’

‘I should be so grateful,’ she said, feeling exhausted.

At last she was able to take in her surroundings – a bare deal table with books, a gas-fire turned low, a dark suit hanging on the back of the door. The curtains did not meet properly across the window and were pinned together with two large safety-pins.

‘It was lucky I was here,’ the young man – Ludo -said. ‘I had only just got back from work. Was just pulling the curtains together.’

‘Where
do
you work?’ she asked, making an effort at conversation.

‘In Harrods.’

The kettle began to sing on the gas-ring, and he brought out a tin mug for himself. The mug had a Union Jack printed on it. The young, Mrs Palfrey had
noted often with surprise, had a passion for the Union Jack. All those long-haired, long-skirted girls seemed to carry Union Jack carrier-bags. She had wondered if they were sincere – and if it was quite suitable even so.

‘Which department of Harrods?’ she asked.

‘Oh, no, I don’t work
for
Harrods. I work
at
Harrods. In the Banking Hall. I take my writing and a few sandwiches there. It’s nice and warm and they’re such comfortable chairs. And I save lighting this gas-fire, which eats up money. Milk?’ He held up a bottle, and she bowed in acceptance. The bottle was half-full and had a curdy deposit up its neck.

‘You are a writer?’ she asked.

‘Well, at present that’s what I’m trying to be, although I
have
had other jobs.’ Gallantly, but reluctantly she felt, he turned up the gas-fire, stood staring down at it, his hands round his mug of tea. Such eyelashes! Mrs Palfrey thought – they threw a long shadow down his cheek-bones, and when he turned to smile at her, she thought his face mischievous, crinkled by a slight smile; his eyes narrowed considering her, almost as if he had hit on a joke to play on her. The word ‘glee’ came to her mind. There was glee in him, and she was both fascinated and uneasy.

‘I am keeping you from your writing,’ she said, putting down her cup. Her knee was beginning to hurt, and she was worried now about that dirty towel.

‘I’ve been working all day. I told you that, Mrs Palfrey ma’am,’ he said. ‘Now I’m going to have a little read and open a tin of something.’

He was obviously hard-up and hungry, as she had wistfully thought her grandson might have been.

‘You have been so kind,’ she said. ‘But now I feel that I could make a move.’ She shifted her leg stiffly.

‘Then I’ll pop round the corner and whistle up a cab.’

He drained his mug and made off. She heard him tearing up the area steps and along the pavement. Listening to his footsteps dying away, she sat back and thought of her adventure, and she went on to imagine him after she had left here, turning down the gas-fire and opening a tin of something.

Presently she heard the taxi draw up and Ludo running down the steps. She had her speech all ready. ‘I should be delighted if you would have dinner with me at the Claremont one evening. I should like to repay your kindness in some way.’

He looked quite astounded at the idea – really appalled; and then the look of glee came back into his eyes.

‘Well, that would be very grand;’ he said.

‘Would Saturday suit you? On Saturday, there is usually a rather better menu.’

‘Saturday would be lovely.’

He helped her up the steps and into the taxi and when it had driven off, he returned to his room and, leaning over the table, wrote in a notebook ‘fluffy grey knickers … elastic … veins on leg colour of grapes … smell of lavender water (ugh!) … big spots on back of shiny hands and more veins – horizontal wrinkles across hands.’

Then he turned down the gas-fire and began to open a tin of spaghetti.

Mrs Palfrey managed to get to the lift without meeting anyone. She went to her room and felt sick and shaky, unsticking the handkerchief from her knee and seeing the damage for the first time. She was a long while putting herself to rights. Her leg throbbed, and stiffness was setting in.

When at last she came down to the lounge, Mrs Burton had already rung the bell and Mrs Arbuthnot was waiting impatiently for her library book.

‘I had begun to think you were lost,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid I had a fall on my way back and had to bathe my leg.’

‘It looks as if my library-book has had a fall, too.’

‘I’m sorry. I dropped it. But I have tried to sponge it.’

‘Well, it was none the less very kind of you. Are you all right now?’ Mrs Arbuthnot asked the question lightly, as she began to turn the leaves of the book.

‘Only a little stiff. All the same, I think I shall have a glass of sherry before dinner.’

She limped towards the bar, and Mrs Arbuthnot watched her go, as if to a damnation of her own choosing.

When he had finished the spaghetti, Ludo took his suit from the back of the door and went round to the
launderette. Under the harsh light, he sat and wrote up some notes, describing a young man sitting alone in a launderette at night. Sometimes, he stared gloomily across at his suit turning slowly over and over in the dry-cleaning machine, which looked as if it were trying to digest it, and would have disgorged it if it could.

O
N Saturday evening, Mrs Palfrey put on her best beaded dress and sprinkled lavender-water on her handkerchief. Before going downstairs, she took a sealed envelope from a drawer and slipped it into her handbag. Although her movements were slow and deliberate, she felt flurried and anxious.

It was on Thursday evening that she had told the waiter – well within Mrs Arbuthnot’s hearing – that she expected a guest to dinner on Saturday.

‘So your grandson is coming to see you at last,’ Mrs Arbuthnot had said on her slow way past Mrs Palfrey’s table and, for some reason she searched for later, Mrs Palfrey let her go without a word.

It was the first time since she had become a widow that she had been involved in an untruth. In fact, since early childhood, she had not lied at all except on her husband’s behalf – to get Arthur out of cocktail parties which he abhorred, or to stave off importunate natives when he was tired. Now – by omission – she was trying to get away with what she thought of as a whopper, and she wondered if either she or Ludo would be equal to it.

He had seemed ready enough to fall in with her; had had no scruples as she herself had; had thought it all rather a lark.

She had tracked him down in Harrods Banking Hall.
He was reclining in his comfortable chair, beautifully warm – and it was a bitter, gusty afternoon – scribbling away, oblivious to the slack or tense resting bodies about him. Nervously, Mrs Palfrey approached him, stood before him and coughed. His eyes, when he raised his head, seemed still to be viewing another world, an inner world in which he had been alone.

‘I am sorry to interrupt you,’ Mrs Palfrey said, more put out than ever by his dazed look.

He stood up then, with a fan of papers in his hand. He smiled.

There was a vacant chair next to him and she sat down and began to speak of her plan in a low and hesitant voice. He soon grasped what she was suggesting and took her side at once against Mrs Arbuthnot and her dreaded condescensions. ‘I let her go without a word,’ Mrs Palfrey said. ‘And now it is too late.’ She looked about her at the resting shoppers, and felt a deep embarrassment at what she had had to say; but it was nothing to the humiliation Mrs Arbuthnot would have had her suffer. In just being with Ludo, she felt a certain ease.

He had listened to her with a curious expression on his face, as if he could not believe his ears: his eyebrows had shot up and stayed there. He was almost beautiful, she thought, and the idea so alarmed her that her glance flew away from his face and fastened on one of his shoes, as it swung back and forth, the thin sole flapping.

‘We will keep ourselves to ourselves,’ she promised. ‘It is just in case I am obliged to introduce you – in
passing, you know. They are rather an inquisitive little set. Is it too much to ask? Or must I go back and make some explanation to Mrs Arbuthnot?’

‘Goodness, no! I shall enjoy myself no end.’ ‘At seven-fifteen, then. I shall be sitting in the lounge. We will have a glass of sherry before dinner.’ She flushed a little at her sophistication, at the idea of entertaining this young man, and of their shared guilt. She stood up and held out her hand. Once more, he bunched up his papers and got to his feet. ‘I shall call you Desmond,’ she said.

‘Christ!’ was all he had replied.

Mrs Palfrey, crossing the lounge towards the bar, felt herself watched. But not by Mrs Burton, who was with her brother-in-law again, laughing and drinking and heedless of anyone else.

It was the shoes Mrs Palfrey was now worried about. She had seen the dark, respectable suit hanging on the door in Ludo’s basement room, and was easy in her mind about that. But those old shoes he had worn in Harrods, with the sole hanging loose from one of them … suppose he had no others.

Her fears were realised. He had no others. He came into the lounge and almost fell headlong – that flapping sole curling back as it met the thick carpet.

His composure was amazing. He led everyone’s eyes away from his feet, by his gesture of outstretched arms towards Mrs Palfrey. She panicked, fearing lest he
might overact his grandfilial role; but, with just the right touch of fond familiarity and respect, he came forward and kissed her lightly on her cheek. At the same time, he registered the strange, tired petal-softness of her skin, stored
that
away for future usefulness. And the old smell, which was too complex to describe yet.