Running to Paradise (23 page)

In
a despairing effort to try and find the answer, I decided to go down to Maple for a couple of days; I might even drop in on old George, see how he was getting on. It helped, so people said, to revisit the scene of the crime. My love for Char hadn’t been a crime, I knew that; it simply existed, neither right nor wrong, only there. But my marriage to Beth had, though, hadn’t it: the ultimate treason indeed, the right thing, as Auden said, for the wrong reason. At least it was I who was paying for it now, not Beth. It was Beth, though, who’d paid for it throughout our marriage, there was no doubt of that.

Why
was it only now I felt guilt, long after there was any need for it? Beth was happy now, happier than she’d ever been probably. I knew the answer to that one even before I asked the question. It was because, since her death, Char had deserted me; there simply seemed no way that I could reach her. I couldn’t remember the sound of her voice, she wasn’t even a ghost. And because she wasn’t there to help me, I’d begun to doubt whether her love for me had ever existed, and even to half believe Sophia was right.

Suddenly,
I felt such hatred for Sophia, for myself, even for Beth, that for a moment it seemed a waste of effort to continue the struggle at all. Why couldn’t I just let go, take an overdose, slip away in a nice, clean, painless sleep? No more tears, just wipe the slate clean.

I
didn’t, though; that evening I rang the hotel in Corsham and booked a room for the following weekend.

15

‘A man was shot dead outside a Post Office in West Belfast last night; two men are being detained for questioning...’ I leaned forward and switched off the radio as I turned the car off the A4 into the once so familiar lane that leads up the hill to Maple. The oft-repeated announcement of sudden death in Ulster smacked too much of
déjà
vu
; besides, I wanted to concentrate.

I
had arrived in Corsham the night before, and after a tolerable dinner, gone to bed early. I’d toyed with the idea of ringing George; Belton was only eight miles away, but decided not. I’d call in, perhaps, on my way home on Sunday. He’d only get suspicious if he heard I was ‘snooping’ around Maple. Since his marriage to ‘the Welsh woman’ his paranoia, far from going away had, if anything, become more pronounced.

I
had forgotten how narrow the lane was and how steep. There should be a patch of grass round the next bend, where for a few yards the ground levelled out before the lane began to climb once more for the last mile to the hamlet of Maple Ashley. Masses of primroses covered the patch of grass in the spring, and Beth and I would sometimes stop the car there and have a last cigarette before braving whatever perils awaited us on our arrival at Maple. I rounded the corner, and there it was, just as I’d remembered. I drove the car on to the grass and switched off the engine. The day was mild for early December; grey sky with now and again a hint of sun. The bare branches in the hedge bordering the lane rustled gently in the faint breeze, and in the distance an express roared out of the tunnel on its way to Bath.

*

I first met Beth in 1958, that period of Skiffle, early Elvis Presley and duffle coats, when coffee bars were all the rage and anyone you didn’t agree with was ‘a peasant’.

Having
done two years’ national service in the Army, followed by three years at university (red brick), where I achieved a modest 2(2) in History, I’d decided, mistakenly as it turned out, I had a vocation for teaching and just started as a junior master in a large South London secondary school. My home, a comfortable pre-War, three-bedroomed semi in Epping, I considered to be too far away to commute from. An only child, I accepted without question my role as the most important single thing in my parents’ life, but after five years of freedom, I had no desire to return full-time to my mother’s own particular brand of cherishing. I therefore decided to find digs where I could live during the week; returning home to number three Walnut Avenue at weekends, to sample the delights of my mother’s incomparable Sunday dinners and, if pressed, allow her to do my weekly washing. A colleague had hinted that Chelsea was where it was all happening, so I took his advice and found myself a bed-sitter — cooker on the landing and bath two flights up — in a house in Oakley Street, at a rent of £2 l0s a week.

Upon
such trivia hangs one’s destiny. My first evening I accidentally dropped a bottle of milk on the tile surround to my gas fire. Jug in hand, I tapped timidly on the door next to mine on the small landing: a girl with long, pale, blonde hair draped in a towel, and a shy, diffident smile, opened it. The girl turned out to be Beth.

For
a time we maintained a rather loose relationship: the occasional visit to the cinema, the odd party on a Saturday night. All I knew of her family was that there were a lot of them and they all spoke with upper-crust accents. They would ring her, usually, it seemed, when she was out, and I frequently took the call. At that time I was having an affair with a married colleague called Sheila something-or-other — I’ve even forgotten her surname. Sheila’s husband, a lecturer in English, was on sabbatical leave in the States: they were, I understood, having a trial separation. I took the affair very seriously, but she didn’t and whenever she had let me down too badly, or my fear of her absent husband overcame me, I would turn to Beth, who always seemed to be around when I needed her.

She
was, in those days, quite pretty, but rather too passive for my taste. The only time she exhibited any real animation was on the subject of her parents — I didn’t then know that George was only her step-father. Then anger would flicker in her pale, blue eyes and her normally soft voice would take on a strident note. They were, she claimed, continually letting her down in some, never very clearly defined way. Her constant aim in life, it seemed, was to become entirely independent of them, but on her present meagre salary of nine pounds a week as junior secretary in an advertising agency, this was, for the moment, impossible. In my preoccupation with Sheila, I took little interest in this side of Beth’s life, preferring to use her as a convenient sounding board for my opinions on the state of the film industry or the current political situation. I do remember, however, vaguely wondering why, if she disliked her parents as much as she claimed, did she so frequently return home and appear to be so very much involved with them.

Then
early in 1959, Sheila’s husband returned and she told me tearfully, but firmly, our affair must finish. Shortly afterwards, Beth and I slept together for the first time. Our friends began to regard us as a couple, and I took her down to Epping to meet my parents. The latter was, to my surprise, a great success. Why I should have been surprised, I don’t know; Beth and my parents were made for each other. At their first meeting Dad unbent sufficiently to show Beth his stamp collection, an honour never normally bestowed upon strangers, and Mother got out the family photo album and offered to teach her crochet.

‘
Guy, you are lucky to have such lovely parents,’ Beth said after that first meeting. I remember that quite clearly. We were seated on the front seat, upstairs, of an empty number eleven bus speeding through the City on our way from Liverpool Street to Chelsea. I also remember being surprised at her words: until that time I’d never thought about other people’s parents: did I assume they were all like mine? I can’t recall; too much has happened since and it was too long ago.

I
did not, however, suggest we visit hers. Although I was fond of Beth and happy in her company, I was not in love with her and such a visit would, I felt, in some way commit me to our relationship. I soothed my slightly pricking conscience on the matter — by now I was sure that Beth was in love with me — by telling myself that in the light of her feelings of hostility towards her parents, the last thing she would wish to do would be to introduce us. I was wrong.

‘
It’s my mother’s birthday on the 23rd June,’ she said one evening, as we sat in the bar of The Six Bells pub in the Kings Road, having our customary half pint of bitter. ‘There’s to be some sort of grisly celebration. Would you like to come?’ I took a couple of sips of my beer: I had no option, really, had I?

‘
I’d love to,’ I said. ‘Ought I to buy her a present?’

George
met us off the London train at Bath. A tall, shambling figure in baggy, grey flannels and a tweed jacket patched with leather at the elbows. His rather grubby cotton check shirt, I noticed, hadn’t been properly tucked into his trousers, and a greyish stubble covered his chin. He was smoking.

‘
Hullo, hullo, how are you?’ he shouted, as one bestowing some sort of benediction. He clearly didn’t expect any answer, but strode ahead of us down the station steps and out to the waiting Cortina. As we drove through the city, he barked out two further questions — the nature of our train journey and whether it was hotter in London than in Bath — but again it appeared that these were of a purely rhetorical nature, no answer being expected. He didn’t speak again until we had turned off the main road into the lane that led to Maple; the lane in which I now sat in my parked car remembering it all. Then, in a sort of hushed mumble very different to his previous booming tones, he said: ‘Mama hasn’t been feeling too good the last couple of days. Her back’s playing her up again and she’s got a bit of a tummy upset.’

‘
Oh God!’ I jumped. Wasn’t Beth over-reacting a bit? ‘It’s because I’m down, of course, or because I’m bringing Guy. Have you had the doctor?’

‘
He’s given her some pills and told her to rest. Sophia’s doing the cooking, she’s got a few days holiday.’

‘
Poor old Sophie, she would be.’

No
more was said until we turned into a short gravel drive bordered on either side with overgrown laurel bushes, and came to a halt at the front door of Maple. It was larger than I had expected, built of grey Cotswold stone with mullioned windows on the ground floor and three gables along the front. The date above the porch read 1665. It was beautiful. Despite myself, I was impressed.

‘
Mama’s upstairs, she says she’s having her dinner in bed,’ George shouted. ‘See to Guy, will you? Mrs Bodkin’s made up his bed in the railway room. I must get some more gin from the pub.’ Pausing only to dump our luggage on the front doorstep, George climbed back into the car and drove rapidly away.

‘
You’d better see Mum first,’ Beth said. ‘She’ll only go on if I don’t take you to meet her.’ Once inside the house we were greeted enthusiastically by a swarm of dogs. Beth kissed each one in turn — there were three — and her hitherto sulky expression faded a little.

‘
Come on,’ she said, as one about to lead her men over the top, ‘we’d better get it over with. Why they’ve put you in the railway room I can’t imagine. It’s miles from the loo and the bed’s like cast iron.’ Smiling bravely, I followed her up the beautiful Caroline staircase, wondering with some foreboding what was the significance of the word railway in connection with my proposed sleeping accommodation. Once upstairs, still pursued by assorted canines, we turned into a large bedroom on the right of the square landing. I blinked: the floor of the bedroom was painted a dazzling white, the evening sun streamed in through three long windows on to a small figure wearing large dark glasses, sitting propped up by pillows, in the middle of a huge, brass, double bed.

‘
Happy birthday, Mum.’ Beth’s voice was wary, as though the figure in the bed might bite. ‘This is Guy.’

I
stepped forward nervously and cleared my throat. ‘Happy birthday, Mrs Seymour. I’ve brought you a small book on Wellington’s peninsular campaigns; Beth tells me you’re a fan of his and, as a matter of fact, so am I. I do hope you haven’t got it.’

The
small figure sat up briskly and removed the dark glasses. Char looked straight into my eyes and smiled her lovely smile. ‘How terribly clever of you,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t have given me anything that would have pleased me more. How clever, too, of Beth to find you; you’re not a bit what I expected.’ I found myself smiling idiotically, and then and there knew that I loved her and would do so always.

Later,
as we sat round the big, scrubbed table in the stone-flagged kitchen having dinner, Char said to no one in particular — she had by this time miraculously recovered — she wondered whose idea it had been to banish ‘Beth’s young man’ to the railway room. It was miles from the bathroom and what’s more smelt of damp. ‘Yours,’ said George, with his mouth full of steak. ‘You know it was, you said—’

‘
The girls will make up his bed in the yellow room and he can use my bathroom,’ Char said. ‘Cheese anybody?’ She waved her arms in an imperious gesture, indicating that we should collect up the plates. The matter was closed; I slept in the yellow room.

I
enjoyed that first weekend, I remember, very much. It was while the rather haphazard preparations for her birthday cocktail party were in progress that I had my first real
tête-à-tête
with Char.

It
had been discovered that I was much better at the finicky job of rolling smoked salmon and cutting sandwiches into the tiny, useless triangles deemed necessary at these sort of affairs, than anyone else in the family. Sophia plainly regarded the whole business as a waste of time, and Beth preferred to wash up. The latter, shouting exaggerated endearments to the slobbering canines prancing round her feet, plunged each newly dirtied item noisily into the washing-up bowl as soon as it became available, with the air of aggressive disapproval that seemed a permanent adjunct to her normally passive personality whenever she was in the company of her mother or George. Meanwhile, George, smoking heavily, padded silently to and from making his ‘punch’. Someone suddenly switched on the radio, and Char appeared at my elbow, secateurs in hand: she had, it seemed, been ‘doing the flowers’.

‘
My dear, how clever you are,’ she said. ‘When I do that the bread always falls to pieces. Let’s take this lot into the dining-room and I’ll help you do the rest.’ I agreed, albeit rather doubtfully: I was still a bit afraid of her.

Once
in the dining-room, now full of sun and the scent of the evening stocks growing underneath the open windows, rather to my surprise, Char settled down to help with a will. We were silent for a moment or two while she battled, somewhat ineffectively with a recalcitrant piece of smoked salmon, a determined expression on her face. Then, aware of my eyes on her, she looked up suddenly and smiled her enchanting smile, a hint of self-mockery in her own.

‘
Such a waste of time, all this, isn’t it? No one likes the stuff anyway. But Georgy says everyone else round here has it at parties, so we must. Making sandwiches for bores, what a way to spend one’s birthday.’ Horrified, I hastened to assure her that I could easily finish the job on my own. There were only the sticks to be put in the chipolata sausages and...’