Possession (7 page)

I’m not blaming her. I’d have been the same in her place. In fact, I very nearly was, for my children were clever, too.
So I know what it feels like. But what with Janice’s tantrums, and Sarah’s passion for Noddy books, as well as the glasses she had to wear to correct her squint, I had the smugness knocked out of me early, at a stage when a mother is still malleable and able to accept her humble position in the Cat-Race without too much injury to her pride.

Not so poor Liz.
Her
troubles came to her too late, and for a long time we knew nothing about them, for she was too proud to tell us. The first time I realised that something was wrong was when I saw her in the street one Saturday morning, just after her youngest son, Tony, had passed his O-levels brilliantly in ten subjects, and yet she didn’t rush across to ask me how Janice and Sarah were getting on. That is a sure sign that something is wrong, when a mother doesn’t manoeuvre you into a position where you have to ask after
her
children. It means that she no longer has
anything
to boast of; and this, for Liz, was strange indeed.

Slowly, over the ensuing months, the truth about Liz’s changed status began to leak out. First that her eldest boy, Giles, had come down from university without a degree: then that the second one, Pete, was refusing to go back for his second year, in spite of having passed brilliantly all his first year exams: and finally it transpired that
seventeen-year
-old Tony had run away from school and was living with some girl in Wolverhampton.

Not for long, though. Not for long in Wolverhampton, I mean; because Liz’s family seem to suffer from an irresistible urge to bring their disorderly problems home and sort them out under the parental roof. We are continually hearing that one or other of the boys has left home to get married, or to live with some girl or other, and then, the next time you visit the house, there the three of them still are, sitting round their parents’ well-filled table, as if nothing had happened: and yet another skinny young woman with huge eyelashes and a smokers’ cough is being introduced to you, and you do the best you can to distinguish her from the one who has just edged resentfully past you on the stairs; from the one who
was sobbing down the telephone as you came in through the hall; and from the one who is lying asleep on the sofa in a pair of purple trousers, and whom people refer to in hushed tones as Poor Sonja.

Well, that is how Liz Hardwick is living at present; and I am telling you about it in such detail so that you will realise that the next development was not an extraordinary coincidence. On the contrary, it was almost a statistical probability, given the high turnover of girls in the Hardwick household, that one or other of them should sooner or later turn out to know something of the Redmaynes.

I
T WAS THE
Wolverhampton girl who started it all. That is to say, it was because of her that I found myself, the next Saturday morning, sitting on Liz’s stairs and receiving the unsought confidences of two overwrought and vociferous young women who were both under the impression that they were staying here as Tony’s fiancée. The young gentleman who might have been able to resolve the problem was (understandably) nowhere to be seen, and Liz had escaped to the launderette. She does this when things get too much for her, just as people used to escape to church, as being the one place which gives one the undisputed right to be sitting down, and out of it all, for a whole hour.

But let me begin at the beginning. I had come that morning to help Liz with the Scouts’ Jumble. As if she hadn’t enough troubles already, Liz allows this stupefying burden to fall on her year after year, either because she is too
distracted
to say No, or, possibly, because it has nostalgic associations for her. Associations, I mean, with the dear dead days when her boys were keen little Scouts passing their Woodcraft tests and doing a Good Deed every day, instead of the kind of Deeds they go in for now.

I don’t know; anyway, whatever Liz’s motives, the
outcome
is every year the same: either the van turns up and the jumble isn’t ready, or else the jumble
is
ready, but there is a muddle about the van. Thus I arrived with no great
expectations
of a profitable morning’s work, but full of benevolent impulses for soothing Liz’s never-failing astonishment at the miscarriage of her arrangements. It was thus somewhat disconcerting to arrive and find her not there at all. I felt like a doctor called out to an urgent case only to find that the patient has gone to a party. I walked in—no one ever rings
the bell at the Hardwick’s, the front door is always ajar, even first thing in the morning—and across the mounds of jumble in the hall I observed a young woman, sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, and sobbing.

As I have already indicated, this is no unusual sight in the Hardwick household; but all the same, you can’t just turn round and walk out on such a scene. You have at least to clear your throat, and look concerned; and no matter how much you hope the answer will be “No!”, you still have to murmur “Is there anything I can do?” or words to that effect.

Besides, this particular girl looked so young; not nearly as hard-boiled and hag-ridden as most of those who appear under this roof: and even though all I could so far see of her was the crown of her bowed head and her laddered stockings, I already felt sorry for her. When I spoke she raised a round, tear-stained face, and instead of putting me off with the conventional pretences—“It’s nothing!” “I’m all right, just leave me alone,” she responded at once with heart-broken, childlike candour.

“It’s Tony,” she sobbed. “He—he says…. I mean, I told him….” Sobs drowned the rest of the sentence, and what could I do but go and sit beside her on the stairs and encourage her to proceed with her tale of woe?

It seemed to be rather a mixed one, the first part of it being that she hadn’t got the fare back to Wolverhampton. She didn’t even
want
the fare back to Wolverhampton, she’d
walk
there, so she would, carrying her great suitcase every step of the way, if that’s what Tony wanted! She’d probably die on the journey, and then he’d have no problem any more, would he? Then he’d be able to have his precious Sonja and never have to bother about her, Susan, ever again. That’s what he wanted, wasn’t it?—here she appealed to me with great gulping sobs—That’s what would
really
make him happy, wouldn’t it, if she just simply
died.

With singularly little data on which to base an opinion as to this conjecture, I gave her such consolation as I could.
This Sonja, she probably flirts with
everyone,
I said. Tony was no doubt flattered by it, as any young man would be, but it didn’t follow that it really
meant
anything to him…. And after all it was she, Susan, whom he had chosen to bring home to meet his parents, had he not? Whereas Sonja just happened to be here. Didn’t she? Or was she supposed to be Giles’ girl friend? Or what? I felt that if I only knew a few facts, I might be able to be more help.

More sobs. The point was (sniff) that that Sonja had a broken heart. Supposed to have. That was what was so unfair, the boys all finding her broken heart so fascinating. Because she didn’t have a heart at all, as she, Susan, well knew. But how could you convince Tony of this?

“He says I’m j-j-jealous!” sobbed the poor child. “So I said, Well, if I’m jealous, you’d better not marry me, had you, because a jealous wife is a dreadful thing, isn’t it, I said. You see, the point is, Mrs Erskine, I’m
not
a jealous person. He knows I’m not. He’s always said how marvellous it was to find a woman at last who is never jealous, never possessive. It was like a miracle, he said, the wonderful sense of freedom I give him! And now … and now he says….”

The tears streamed afresh. I could think of nothing either adequate or new to say, so I put my arm round the quivering shoulders, in a slightly awkward gesture of sympathy. At once she collapsed against me in helpless, impersonal longing for comfort; her wet face pressed against my shoulder, and at once I was all the mothers in the world, and she was all the daughters.

“And what did he say then?” I asked gently—the ancient, useless, irresistible question.

“N-nothing.” Louder sobs. “I mean, he—he said—he just said ‘God!
Women!
’ and slammed out of the room! Just as if I was an ordinary, jealous woman, making a scene! I
couldn’t
let him go like that, so I rushed after him down into the hall, to explain…. And there he was, flinging on his coat to rush out into the rain! And so I started trying to tell him just how I felt about him, but then his arm got caught
up in the torn lining of his sleeve, and he just kept cursing and trying to push his fist through it; and when I tried to remind him how wonderful our relationship had once been, he just turned round and
yelled
at
me! So then I said, Very well, he’d better look for a girl who
liked
being yelled at like that; perhaps Sonja would like it, I said, and he’d be pleased to hear that I was going to catch the very next train back to Wolverhampton, and he’d never have to set eyes on me again! And I did wish then, Mrs Erskine, that I’d had a ring, so’s I could have handed it back to him, all cool and off-hand. We’d been going to buy one with Daddy’s eight pounds, but it all went on that awful little room and on driving up to London because it hadn’t any petrol in. The car Tony borrowed, I mean. The girl said it had enough petrol to get us to London, but it d-d-didn’t …
Oh
…!”

I couldn’t help feeling that the child would be better off back in Wolverhampton, especially if there was a Daddy there who could produce sums like eight pounds on demand. I offered to lend her the fare; but this only produced a renewed outburst of grief. And now a door opened on the landing above, and a voice, husky and cracked with sleep and exasperation, enquired over the banisters what in Heaven’s name was going on?

Susan stopped crying instantly. She drew in her breath with a little gasp, and began to scrub desperately at her eyes with a sodden ball of a handkerchief. I looked up, and beheld the limp, languorous figure of Sonja draped against the curve of the stairs. Her face was pasty, her hair a mess, dangling unbrushed to her shoulders. She looked like a witch, and a haggard one at that—crows’ feet, bags under the eyes, the lot. The remains of yesterdays silver lipstick clung corpse-like to her cracked lips, and not for the first time I cudgelled my brain in utter bewilderment, trying to divine what it was about her that held all the three Hardwick boys in thrall. I could understand Susan’s resentment. Here she was, young, pretty—even nice—and yet it was daily made plain that her youthful charm was as nothing compared
with the mysterious attraction of this haggard, nervy,
half-drugged
looking creature who looked forty if she was a day—though I believe she was really only twenty-eight or
twenty-nine
: twenty-nine years of soul-searing experience on which she would enlarge in a slow, querulous voice whenever the audience warranted it—that is, when it was attentive and exclusively male.

Even her hypochondria seemed to fascinate her adorers: she would lie on the sofa and explain to them in slow, reluctant detail exactly what her headache was like, or her night-sweats, or even her heart-burn, than which (I would have thought) there could hardly be a more unromantic complaint. Yet the young men of the household listened to it all enchanted. Normally as inconsiderate and unhelpful as three youths could be, they nevertheless vied with each other to fetch her glasses of water, and pills, and plasters for her corns. It was beyond comprehension. Beyond female comprehension, anyway. A man, I suppose, might be able to explain it.

Slowly, with dragging feet, Sonja moved down the stairs towards us. A torn nylon nightdress showed beneath the old coat she had thrown round her shoulders, and her battered fur mules flapped dismally against the linoleum. By now Susan had scrambled to her feet; with a dreadful pleading look at me, she grabbed her bulging suitcase and staggered back up the stairs with it, edging past her rival with a frantic toothy imitation of a cool, sophisticated smile.

“God!” Sonja toiled down the last three steps and
collapsed
into the hall chair. “It’s not the Tony thing again, is it? The kid must be bonkers!”

“She’s very unhappy,” I ventured reprovingly; and at that Sonja gave a huge, exhausted sigh, and passed her hand across her brow.

“I don’t know how anybody can be so
immature
,” she complained. “They ought to come and fetch her in a
pram
!”

“Don’t forget that she is supposed to be marrying Tony,” I pointed out, stiffly. “She has a right to be concerned.”

“
Marrying
him? She must be off her rocker!” Sonja gave a scornful little laugh. “Does she think he’s kinky, or
something
? I mean, it would be like marrying a
toddler,
wouldn’t it? He’d have to be the kind of man who lurks about outside the entrance to a
kindergarten
!
The poor, sexless little drip! She must be mad to think that a grown man like Tony would even look at her! God, it would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic!”

But I can be spiteful too, when I feel the occasion warrants it. I chose my words carefully.

“Don’t forget,” I said sweetly, “That
Tony
is young, too. Only a year or two older than Susan. To women of
our
age young love like that may seem rather pathetic and amusing, but to
them
….”

She measured me with her sleepy, half-closed eyes, like a hangman calculating the exact length of rope he would be likely to need.

“Of course, I forgot: you have a daughter in the same position,” she observed. “I mean, planning to get married when she’s only just out of school. Still, if
you’re
happy about it, why should
I
worry?”

“I certainly am happy about it,” I retorted. “It all seems ideal. Her fiancé is everything we could have hoped for. Solid, reliable, devoted—”

“Oh; I’m so relieved! I really am!” For a moment I thought the congratulatory tone was sincere: but then her eyes slid away from me, and she went on: “So it’s all right then, is it, after all? It was just a rumour, was it? It’s amazing, isn’t it, how the gossips manage to twist
everything
, and give you quite a wrong impression.”

Well, could
you
have kept your poise, and your pride, and bidden her a chilly ‘Good morning’ and left the house without learning what it was that she was insinuating? My fingers were already reaching for the handle of the front door, but now I paused; and in that pause she saw (correctly) that her triumph was assured.

“You see”—she moved in to the kill—“I
did
hear a
rumour that the man she was engaged to was a Mr Mervyn Redmayne. Of course, I was sure it must be a mistake; I
knew
a daughter of yours would never let herself get involved in something like that.”

“Like what? What do you mean?” My defeat in our elegant duel of spite and counter-spite now seemed trivial. I did not mind her knowing that she had drawn blood. Even the slow, smiling pause during which she savoured my anxiety annoyed me only in that it delayed by a few irritating seconds the answer for which I was waiting.

“You don’t mean it
is
Mervyn?” She stared at me in feigned astonishment. “Mervyn
Redmayne
? And you’re letting her marry him? Actually
marry
him?”

“We are!” I said stoutly. “Why not? Why ever not? What have you got against him?”

“Against him? Why—nothing! Nothing against
him!
”

Lazily revelling in her power to prolong the suspense, she selected a cigarette from her case, lit it, and drew a long, smoke-laden breath. “I’ve nothing against
him
at all. But I suppose you know, don’t you, that his father was murdered? Well, of course you do; I’m sure Mervyn wouldn’t have kept a thing like that from his future in-laws: it wouldn’t be honest.”

Her glance licked hungrily across my face, savouring in advance the look of shock and dismay that should now be suffusing it. But thank goodness I had the self-control to disappoint her.

“Suicide—not murder,” I corrected her lightly. “Yes, of course we know. It was very sad. Very tragic for them all.”

“Suicide? Oh. Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose that
was
the official verdict. That’s what all the papers must have said at the time. But it wasn’t what everyone else was saying. Those of us, I mean, who really knew the family.
We
knew, you see, that this quiet, contented, middle-aged couple hadn’t been as contented as all that. There’d been girls, you see, young schoolgirls—under sixteen, some of them—and this Mr Ever-so-happily-married Redmayne used to be seen
driving them around in his car late at night. One of them in particular happened to be quite a friend of mine, we were at school together. And the funny thing is that
she
had committed suicide too, only three weeks before he did! Funny, wasn’t it? Two suicides in less than a month, in a little town like that! Suicides by hanging, too. Not the sort of death everyone would choose, is it? Besides, why would a kid like Avril commit suicide at all? She was on top of the world, Avril was. Fellows with money. Fellows with cars. Little trips up to London for the weekend. She had
every
thing
!
”