Something in Disguise (26 page)

‘That seems a peculiar word to use.’

‘Well, striking as well. You’ve got such a lovely reading voice, it wouldn’t matter what you read. A really lovely voice,’ she repeated. Her mouth opened in the perfect O
of a yawn and she laid the palm of her hand over it before any sound could come out.

Of course she’d been asleep; he wasn’t easily fooled. It had been foolish of him to ever think that she had the intelligence to be interested. He decided to be getting along. Where?
The thought of tooling back to Surrey and a quiet supper with poor old May was suddenly depressing. He didn’t
enjoy
her feeling so under the weather, dammit, it was just that some
things could not to be helped. It wasn’t much fun for
him
sitting it out week after week, but you couldn’t always do things just as you wanted to – had to take a long view
and all that.

He got to the door before Hilda reminded him about the money. Then she reminded him that it was an extra thirty bob – she wasn’t one to forget the money, was our Hilda! He said this
as he chucked her rather painfully under the chin before she shut the door. What he would do was have a spot of dinner at the club and see if anyone felt like a game of billiards. He could
telephone May from the club: women always appreciated little thoughtful gestures of that kind . . .

‘The worst thing is, you see, that I don’t – I can’t – I simply feel terribly guilty about her. All the time. As though the whole of her was my
fault.’

They were lying in bed, both of them still and Elizabeth silent as well.

‘Most fathers love their daughters:’ he gave a short, unlifelike laugh, ‘sometimes they’re supposed to love them too much. The trouble is that I never have.

‘I never meant to say any of this to you, in fact, I meant very much
not
to say it. The fact is that you only really feel guilty about people you don’t love. The other thing
is that if you feel guilty about somebody, something sad and knowing in them finds out
and
knows the reason why. Then there is the shady little game of trying to compensate them.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Oh giving them things, and putting up with being bored or inconvenienced by them, and hating anyone else to criticize them – all that. And of course they play that game: why not?
Nearly everyone settles for what they can get in the end.’

‘Do they?’ The thought appalled her, but she felt that she must remain non-committal.

‘If she’d had a normal sort of mother I suppose the whole thing would have been less emphasized –’

‘Do you feel guilty about
her
?’

‘Daphne? Oh, years ago, I did; before we parted company. But I got so cross with her for always letting Jennifer down that there stopped being any
ought
about loving her –
Daphne, I mean –’

‘Well I don’t think there should be any ought about loving Jennifer now. I can’t see why she shouldn’t see her mother if that is what either of them wants, and if they
don’t, let them sort it out on their own.’

‘You think the whole thing is a storm in a tea-cup,’ he said coldly, a minute later.

‘I think you’ll simply turn Jennifer into some sort of monster if you go on protecting her
and
letting her bully you.’

‘Perhaps that is what I want. To prove that she’s a monster, so that I am excused for never having loved her. That’s a convincing little by-way psychologically speaking,
wouldn’t you say?’

‘I don’t know.’ She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. ‘I don’t see why you have to be so determined that she’ll bring out the worst in you.
I’m sick of psychology anyway and the way people keep falling back on it. I thought we were going to talk about what we were going to
do
– about – everything, not just go
on and on about what you and Jennifer feel or don’t feel about each other.’ She realized rather belatedly that she was naked, which somehow didn’t go with feeling angry, so she
seized his dressing-gown and started cramming her hands into the armholes.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Have a bath.’

He sat up and began getting out of bed. ‘It’s no good, Elizabeth: girls
do
feel strongly about their fathers – nobody can get round that.’

‘I wouldn’t know: I never even saw mine.’ She tried to slam the bathroom door, but it shut and then swung open and he was standing there. They stared at each other: it had
never been like this before and the horrible novelty made both of them speechless. But only a few seconds later, he said,

‘I think we’ll postpone the ugly rush to grovel.’ It was going to be all right: not the same – but all right.

Oliver had been relieved when John Cole had rung up inquiring for Elizabeth. He had been extremely resourceful about getting the Bristol telephone number, which Elizabeth had
written with her finger on the greasiest bit of kitchen ceiling just above the gas cooker without telling him that that was where she had put it (he’d worked out at lightning speed where she
had been when she’d taken the number) and he’d finished the conversation with what he hoped was just the right degree of nonchalant friendliness: ‘Good-bye, then: hope you find
her,’ was what he had said. But then, noticing that he felt relieved that
that
was all right, he began to feel slightly irritated; either he had to keep on feeling sorry for Liz, or
else she was having a bloody marvellous time. On the whole, he preferred being sorry for her, partly because he saw more of her then. But what about
his
life? When anyone else asked this
question, he would airily shut them up (that was one thing he liked about Ginny; she only ever asked him what he was going to do that evening) but sometimes, like
this
evening, he started to
wonder about the whole business and found it difficult to stop. Bitter little tags after Housman (after all,
he
was twenty-
four
); famous men with melancholia; philosophy seeming to go
on
finding out that man was vile; the revolting expense of the slightest luxury; the rank bad luck of not knowing exactly what he was for; the frightful lack of saints or anyone seriously
different from and better than anyone else (he could keep his discontent on quite a high plane if he tried); the feeling that though he was not particularly happy or well off things could quickly
get infinitely, alarmingly, much worse; the sensation he sometimes had of peddling his own life endlessly uphill – having to keep at it all the time or at the best nothing happened; at the
worst one could slide with unearthly ease into some abyss – the alternative to which certainly didn’t seem to be a bloody marvellous time. Sometimes he thought it was because she
wasn’t very clever that Liz nearly always seemed to feel all right; sometimes he thought that perhaps he was simply living in the wrong time. In what other century would he be sitting on a
cramped and crumbling balcony looking on to a dull, dusty street whose air was thick with diesel fumes, eating a Mars Bar that had clearly been kept too long, while from some open window or other a
gobbled Oxford voice roved suavely round the world remarking on its chaos, and
he
wondered what the hell to do that wouldn’t cost too much or be too boring? He began thinking how else
it might have been at various times and ages . . . Hock and seltzer with Oscar and Robbie – a delightful dinner for about seven and six (he decided not to bother about inflation: calculations
about which would ruin imaginative nostalgia) . . . or he might be lying in a hip bath in front of a coal fire in a huge bedroom, frequently waited on by pretty young maids with rosy cheeks and
tiny waists, then dressing for the house-party dinner before the ball where he would dance with a delightful young creature called Maud or Gwendolen – in white, of course, with ivy leaves in
her hair. There was a bit of a gap here, but there he was again, or could be, downing his second bottle of port (unfortified, naturally, in those days) with a group of chaps who knew a thing or two
about the army, the navy or the Church, with whom he would have dined by now, before riding to drink tea with some delightful sisters called Mary and Ann and Elizabeth and Jane, whose simple life
in the wilds of Hampstead had all the charm that reflects upon true elegance of mind and refinement of nature . . . they would run to greet him on little slippered feet, muslin skirts flying
– the youngest barely fifteen but already proficient at all the sweet and useless accomplishments that were thought proper and desirable: netting, fan- and table-painting, making pens and
embroidering anything they could lay their hands on. Earlier – he was getting hazy about how much – he would be riding back from a jolly good day’s hawking – a castle this
time, but nice and clean – they’d only have been there about a week: the smells would be merely festive, roasting wild boar and hare, perhaps a swan or two; a serf would run to his
stirrup with a beaker of spiced – ale would it be, or mead? – and up some tortuously twisting stair would be someone with immensely long hair called Margaret or Philippa, who’d
had nothing to do all day except wait for him . . .

When the telephone rang, he was so physically wedged in the balcony that quite a lot of plaster fell on to the dustbins in the area by the time he got out, and he had time to get excited about
who might be ringing him up.

It was May: not even a girl he wasn’t particularly attracted to or had got tired of, but his mother. He snorted and she immediately asked him if he’d got a cold.

‘Good God, no!’

‘All right, darling; I only asked.’

‘I should have thought you’d had enough practice at being a mother not to ask that sort of thing.’

‘Clearly not.’

That was better. He smiled, and said, ‘Where are you and what do you want?’

‘Well, I thought we might have a drink together.’

‘Where
are
you?’

‘In a call box. Is Elizabeth there, because do bring her if she is.’

‘She’s in Bristol.’

‘Well get into a taxi and come straight away, darling, because I’ll have to catch a train – hurry up –’

‘We’ll never meet if you don’t tell me where you are –’

‘Knightsbridge tube station: don’t be long because there may not be anywhere here to sit down . . .’

She was standing anxiously at the Sloane Street entrance: she looked as though she could do with a drink. He paid off the taxi and took her to a pub in Kinnerton Street. When they were both
established with glasses, he said, ‘What have you been doing all by yourself in London? Isn’t it a bit risky to be seen after shopping hours in Sloane Street?’

She blushed faintly, but retorted, ‘It has always amazed me the way the moment you have a life of your own you assume that I can’t possibly have one. You behave as though I should
only come to London for the dentist and Peter Jones. I might easily have friends and interests of my own, you know.’

‘Oh, I doubt it. At your age I should have thought –’

‘And what are
your
interests may I ask?’

‘You really mustn’t try to change the whole
tone
of a conversation with no warning like that. I’ve got no news. No news is bad news with me as you’ve probably
noticed, and as I find it very depressing, I’ve nothing to say about it. It really is awful,’ he went on a moment later after he had refused to meet her eye, ‘the way you keep on
wanting me to start something and I keep on wanting you to stop.’

They looked at each other; both knew which way the conversation was going; but the familiar challenge – the routine reluctance – was too much for either effectively to resist.

‘You want me to set about almost
anything
from nine to five – and I hope you jolly well realize that at no other time in history would your maternal instinct take such a poky
and squalid form – while I simply want you to stop living with such a preposterous bore. I want your life to be nicer while you seem to want
my
life to be harder – harder and
even more boring.’

‘You’re bored because you
don’t
do anything.’

‘Am I?’

‘Everybody has to have some sense of direction.’

‘Do they?’

‘After all, we all know that externals don’t matter in the least.’

‘Is that so? And if it is – so, I mean – why do you care whether I’m doing anything or not?’ Then, lowering his voice, he added, ‘I suppose you realize that
everyone is so fascinated by the thrust and parry of this conversation that they’re not only not talking to one another – they’re not even
drinking
. I won that round. While
I get us a refill, you think of three reasons why you should go on living with Daddo.’

He was quite right; it was a small bar and the few customers all had that glassy air of covert attention to someone else’s business. Even the landlord put down his paper with a hearty
start when Oliver reached him with the glasses. Three reasons . . . But the moment there
had
to be reasons for being married to somebody there weren’t any. When Oliver came back with
their drinks she smiled firmly and said, ‘It’s ridiculous of you to blacken poor Herbert in this silly way. Anyone would think he was some kind of
criminal
. I admit he’s a
weeny bit – old-fashioned in his ways; staid – what you doubtless call dull, but he means well – in fact he’s really very kind and protective – he
minds
what
happens to me . . .’ To her discomforted amazement, she seemed to be crying: tears that could not have come from anywhere but her own eyes were slopping on to the drink-rimmed table and
Oliver seemed enormous and blurred.

‘. . . a dry eye in this family’s a full-time job. Sorry, darling. Darling May, I swear I’ll never criticize him again: if you don’t stop crying you’ll qualify for
a short which I don’t have enough cash for. So do try to stop because you know how mean I am.’

‘Buy us both brandies,’ she said when she was over it.

‘Let’s have dinner,’ he said when the brandies were gone.

‘Oh darling – I would love to, but I can’t. Poor Herbert would feel so abandoned if he gets back and I’m not there.’

So he took her to the station and she caught the seven fifty-five. The cab passed Herbert’s club where he was drinking gin and peach bitters and reading the
Evening Standard
.