Authors: Celia Fremlin
S
O HARD IT
is to remember a season gone, a way of life now over. To recall, while the wet white fog coils against the black branches of the winter trees just beyond the window, that only two months ago it had been a golden September day, an Indian summer, and Ivor out there in the sunshine, gathering up dead leaves for the bonfire he would never light. The first bonfire of the season, and he excited as a child about it—a child launching into its fifty-ninth autumn. Excited, too, about tomorrow’s lecture, which he had spent half the vacation preparing: the Hanfield Memorial Lecture, to be delivered two hundred miles away, to an audience of over a thousand learned colleagues from all over the world. It was a singular honour, this Hanfield Memorial Lecture, the culmination of a brilliant career. It was a prize, and Ivor had won it, as he had won so many prizes. Imogen, watching from the kitchen window, had seen the easy swing of his arms as he gathered up the leaves, the triumphant toss of his tawny hair in the sunshine, and had thought, “Thank God he’s in
a good mood”—and had gone upstairs to pack his things. Ivor could be terrible sometimes, when an important lecture was ahead of him; though no one would ever have guessed it. Even Imogen herself, watching him on the platform, relaxed, witty, utterly professional, holding his audience in the hollow of his hand—even she, herself, could sometimes hardly believe that this was the same man who had been tearing his family’s nerves to shreds only an hour or two before.
*
There wasn’t much to pack. Just the few things he’d need for a single night at the hotel where he was to stay when the lecture was over. Why he had decided not to stay there, but to set off, a little after midnight, on the two-hundred mile drive along the
wet roads, no one would ever know. Well, probably not, anyway. What was the point of knowing? What could anyone have done if they
had
known …?
*
If … if … if.
If
he had gone up by train, with Professor Ziegfeld.
If
Imogen had reminded him to take his proper driving glasses instead of relying on his bifocals.
If
she had insisted on
accompanying
him despite his nervous insistence that he needed to be alone.
If
the long spell of glorious weather hadn’t broken that very evening in floods of autumnal rain. If … if … if … By now, eight weeks later, Imogen’s brain was quite numbed by thinking of all the ways in which it mightn’t have happened.
Not at the beginning, though. At the beginning, her brain had seemed unusually alert, and curiously detached. She hadn’t even felt surprised to get a long-distance call from the hospital in the middle of the night: it was as if she had been expecting it all along.
“Yes,” she’d said. “Yes, I see. Yes, thank you very much. Thank you for telling me,” and she’d set down the phone and gone into the kitchen to look at the time.
Three forty-five a.m.: and presently, just as it was getting light, it all happened all over again. The police, this time.
“Thank you. Yes. Thank you,” she said once more and then, “No, I’m not alone, my son’s here,” she’d lied; and heard the relief in the bothered, unknown voice before it pinged into silence.
Ha ha! Foiled! She felt cunning, a bit of a devil, for having brought off the small deception. Now they’d leave her alone, stop pestering her. Stop trying to foist Ivor’s death on her like a wrongly-addressed parcel.
He couldn’t be dead yet, she wasn’t ready for it, he’d have to wait. He’d said he wouldn’t be back till the Sunday evening, and now here he was, dead, first thing in the morning. It was too soon, too early, how could she be ready at such an hour? Besides, she was busy, there was too much to do.
Like the jumble.
“Yes, it’s just about ready,” she said vaguely, bundling the last
oddments into a cardboard box while Mrs Fielding from the Red Cross stood, smiling and tired, in the damp sunshine outside.
“Yes, quite well, thank you,” Imogen heard herself saying, like a parrot, as she edged Mrs Fielding and the cardboard box, and all the bits and pieces, off the premises. “Yes, fine, thanks … Yes, we really must, mustn’t we? … Yes, one of these days … Yes, that would be very nice … Yes. Thank you. Yes …”
Gone at last. Again Imogen felt this flicker of sly triumph. Because, of course, all the while no one knew what had happened, then it
hadn’t
happened. Not quite. Not yet. It was like a game, this dodging about, putting them off the scent, not letting herself get trapped into telling them.
How long could she keep it up?
All day, apparently, while the tap dripped into the sink, and the tin clock ticked noisily, racing perilously onwards, heedless of its destination: until towards dusk, it faltered, and fell silent, because it hadn’t been wound.
“Very well, thank you,” she heard her parrot voice saying, quite brightly, to the two or three people who rang up about this or that during the course of the long afternoon, and then during the quietly encroaching night. Yes thank you. Yes, of course. And yes, the lecture had gone off very well, thank you, wasn’t that nice?
So it had, probably, very likely, for all she knew: but this time, as she laid the phone down, she felt, for the very first time, a tiny flicker of unease. Something, somewhere, was not quite as it should be.
The feeling passed, though, in less than a second: and she was sitting listening to the tap again, quite peacefully. It was like an old friend by now, restful and undemanding. She could have stayed in its company for ever.
It was a sort of laziness, really, putting-off Ivor’s death like this. Like putting-off the writing of a difficult letter. Tomorrow would be time enough.
*
But when tomorrow came, it came with a thundering on the door: with a sobbing, and a clamour, and tumult of questions and answers as they all surged in: and carelessly, through the
swinging
front door, they let Reality slip in past them. Out of the windy autumn morning, early still, with the clatter of milk-bottles, the thing came at her, like a gigantic wave, and sent her reeling.
“
Dead
!”
she gasped, staring at them. “Ivor
dead
?”
and such was her blankness, her total, unfeigned shock, that no one—until a little later, it was forced upon them—would ever have dreamed that she had heard the news already: had known it all perfectly well for more than twenty-four hours.
“
PROFESSOR’S WIDOW PRETENDS HUSBAND STILL LIVING
!” proclaimed one of the dailies a couple of mornings later; and really, you could hardly blame them, such a mix-up it all was of conflicting reports.
“I
wasn’t
pretending, I was only lying!” Imogen sobbed when she saw it: and “There, there” said her bewildered relatives, patting and stroking, and assuring her that they quite understood.
They didn’t, of course: and neither did Imogen: but quite soon the need for understanding was overlaid by the need to organise cars for the funeral, and to sort out the squabbles about the flowers. Someone who’d sent a huge wreath of lilies had had their name affixed to a meagre bunch of wilting chrysanthemums; and for a while, naturally, this had taken precedence over grief and loss.
*
But how to summarise all this for Robin? There he lay, lounging against the pillows, expectant, only thirty years old, and still thinking that there are explanations for things. He was waiting for his stepmother to tell him the true story in words—and not too many of them, at that. He was curious about the mystery, certainly, but on guard lest it should prove boring.
“I don’t know, Robin. That first day—I told you—I can’t remember much about it. The doctor said I was in a state of shock—”
As she spoke, she realised, for the first time, that the doctor
had been quite simply right. She
had
been in a state of shock. Until now, it had seemed like a guilty excuse.
Excuse for what? Heartlessness? Cowardice? Or simply for depriving Ivor of his first, exciting day of being mourned? He’d have resented that, certainly, and there was no way, now, of restoring it to him. First love, first job, first day of being dead—they only come once, and if you’ve missed them, you’ve missed them.
“Does it matter?” she asked after a moment, finding Robin’s eyes still fixed on her, thoughtfully.
He shrugged.
“Only to me,” he answered drily. “
You
’re in the clear, as you pointed out, because of all those phone calls, proving that you were innocently at home all night. But you see, Step, in the course of the night’s phone-in you seem to have mentioned to someone that your son was there with you.
“I wasn’t: and that’s made them curious, you see, to know where I
was
. And I don’t see why I should tell them.”
F
OR LUNCH, SHE
cooked apple pie, with a sprinkling of castor sugar on top, just as in the old days. It was funny to be feeling interested enough to bother with that sort of thing; but of course it was because of Robin being here. He deserved a nice pudding after obligingly working through all that pâté for his first course, and nothing to go with it but sliced bread. There weren’t even any tomatoes.
No more had been said about the unfortunate topic of Imogen’s first day as a widow, and she was beginning to hope that perhaps Robin was already bored with the subject, even though it
concerned
himself. The past and its tedious crop of troubles was something he’d always avoided when he could: he was a child of the future, for ever off into next week before yesterday could properly catch up with him. At the moment, he seemed all agog with his plans for moving back home.
“Listen, Step. Your old bedroom—yours and Dad’s”—here he gasped on a mouthful of hot apple, and had to snatch a cooling gulp of water from his glass—“I was looking around it this morning while you were down here, and I’ve decided it’ll do. It’s got everything. Painful memories (so that
you
won’t want it), and lots of cupboard space. Those cupboards are just what I need. If we could just get Dad’s junk shifted….”
“Your father’s manuscripts!” Imogen was shocked. “All his articles, poems, translations—right back to his schooldays! And a lot of it never published—no other copies in existence! You don’t understand, Robin: your father was a distinguished man. His manuscripts will be very valuable, one day.”
“Then let them accrue value elsewhere,” Robin retorted. “Let them acquire merit in some dark corner of the cellar, like
mushrooms
.
They don’t need a nice, big, sunny room like that just for growing valuable in. I need the space.”
“Robin—!” Again Imogen opened her mouth to protest: but what was the use? This subterranean current of hostility and ridicule which had animated Robin’s every mention of his father for as long as she could remember, was something that she had fought against vainly for years. Now that Ivor was dead, and beyond its sting, why go on fighting? It had never been the slightest use, even when he’d been alive.
And anyway, there was nothing wrong with Robin’s proposal in itself. In fact, it was a very practical one. It
would
be rather nice to have the empty, ghost-ridden room brought to life again: to draw its teeth and blunt its claws by daily, vigorous use. This way, it would no longer be a threat, lying in wait for her at the head of the stairs. No longer would she feel impelled either to avoid it or to wander into it, as she had done this morning: to hang about there, looking round, weighed down by memories and by the thought that, sooner, or later, she would have to do
something
about it. About the big, useless four-poster bed, for a start—Ivor’s folly, and his pride and joy. Where, now that Ivor was gone, would you ever again find folly on such a scale—the
spending
, on impulse, of eight hundred pounds at a country auction on an object which couldn’t even be got up the stairs until a firm of antique-dealers had come and taken it to pieces and
reassembled
it? And all just because he
wanted
it? Fools of this sort of stature just don’t exist any more.
Robin hadn’t said anything about the bed. Presumably that meant he liked it—or at least didn’t mind it. Maybe four-poster beds were the in-thing nowadays? All the same, he must have forgotten how much his father had loved it, or surely he’d be sneering by now, urging that the thing be put out for the dustmen? Not that the dustmen would have taken it: but it’s the thought that counts.
Meantime, the manuscripts. They could go in Dot’s old room for the time being. And why not, at the same time, clear Ivor’s
study a bit—get rid of some of the papers there—make a bit of space …?
Space for what? For whom? At the thought of Ivor’s study being used by anyone else, ever, Imogen’s mind shied like a bucking horse; then, as the shock subsided, she timidly and with infinite caution edged back to the notion, examining it curiously, from a safe distance.
A divan under the window, with bright cushions. A small, sturdy table, with perhaps a couple of drawers, in place of Ivor’s huge, mahogany roll-top desk, still crammed with papers. Some of them, surely, could be thrown away…. Holiday brochures … old receipts …?
Throwing things out. Moving things around. Apple-pie with castor-sugar sprinkled on it. Imogen was aware of something stirring in the numbed centre of her being. Something was cracking open a little, shifting, like ice at the coming of the Arctic spring.
A desire to move furniture is a desire for life.
“Right!” she said, getting briskly to her feet. “You shall have your cupboards, Robin. Let’s get started, shall we? It’ll be good to get
one
room clear, at least. And after that, we must think about the rest of the house. Everyone’s been on at me about it being too big, and it
is.
Even with you here as well—and I don’t suppose you’ll be staying here for ever—it’s still much bigger than we need. Five bedrooms—and three perfectly good attics. We must have lodgers, Robin. Students, or something. Some of Dad’s old students, perhaps … he’d have liked that….”
“You bet he would! Raving it up in his study all night. Standing bottles of Coke on the Bechstein. Using his first-edition Hazlitt to stop the windows rattling. You bet he’d have liked it! And what else, Step? What else would Dad have liked? We ought to decide, oughtn’t we, if we’re going to organise the house according to his wishes.”
“Robin, don’t!” The protest was futile, but it burst from her uncontrollably. “Why must you be so unkind, always, about Dad?
All fathers make mistakes occasionally … surely, now you’re a grown man, you can understand …?”
“Oh, I understand all right. I’ve understood perfectly, ever since I was four years old. Three-and-a-half, to be exact—I’ll tell you about it one day. But the point is, Step, where has it got me, all this understanding? Tell me that, Step:
Where’s
it
got
me?
”
Imogen did not answer. There were moments when she realised that she was not only shocked by Robin’s bitterness against his father, she was scared by it. As always, she sheered away, tried to change the subject.
“Come on; let’s get started,” she said, for the second time. “If you could fetch some of those big cardboard boxes, Robin, out of the dining-room—and I’ll start emptying the cupboards in … in the bedroom…. Get an idea of what’s really there….”
Robin had been right, actually—as he so often and so
undeservedly
was. It
was
junk, an awful lot of it. Many of the yellowing piles of typescript were mere carbons of other
yellowing
piles: five or six copies, sometimes, and the handwritten original as well—surely one didn’t have to keep
all
of them …?
And then there were the journals, hundreds and hundreds of them, going back over thirty years and more, and only a tiny proportion of them actually containing an article by Ivor himself. You had to be careful, though: sometimes there might be a letter of his among the Correspondence: or an erudite Latin pun, tucked away at the bottom of a page. And quite often, alongside some yellowing, scholarly paragraph, there would be a furious pencilled line, wiggly with long-evaporated rage, and flanked by exclamation marks—two, three, or even four of them, highlighting the ancient blunder whose heinousness no one would ever bother about again.
What was the point of keeping such stuff? How could you dare to throw it away?
Squatting on the floor, harvesting dust under her nails and in the cracks of her hands, Imogen worked and sorted, the piles growing and toppling at her side, while Robin padded in and out, gathering them up, following her directions—but patronisingly,
with a half-smile, as if he was above it all really, just playing with the grown-ups to oblige. Even though it was his cupboards that were being cleared.
It was always like this. Robin’s sudden enthusiasms would galvanise his friends into action on his behalf, they would throw themselves into the thing with a will, only to find, half-way, that he had shuffled off on to their shoulders the wanting as well as the working: it was
their
job to be enthusiastic now, not his.
Like a virus, really.
“You’re like a virus, Robin,” she complained, when he next came into the room: and he agreed at once.
It had been a mistake, though, to distract him: it only stirred up his already-simmering boredom with the whole project. In silence, she passed up to him another load of papers and watched him carry it out of the room. The great thing was to keep him going, get the task finished before his awful, uncontrollable
boredom
took over and left you stranded like a whale on the flat wastelands of his languor and unconcern.
“It’s no good going on, Dot’s room is full to the chandeliers,” he announced presently, yawning and throwing himself into an armchair: and Imogen, hurrying along the passage to prove that this couldn’t possibly be the case, was confronted by a small shock.
Dot had never taken her trunks after all! There they still stood, corded and ready, and stuffed as full as they would hold of all the bits and pieces that Dot had claimed were—or might be, or were jolly well going to be—hers.
Damn! Although the contemplation of so many of Ivor’s treasures disappearing under Dot’s magpie fingers had somewhat dismayed Imogen at the time, the thought, now, of having them all back again was immeasurably worse. The huge Chinese
willow-pattern
bowl—already its place on the hall table had become a useful—nay, an indispensable—resting-place of handbags, gloves, library books, telephone messages. The Persian rug, too, out of the drawing-room—already Imogen had noticed how much easier the
Hoovering was without it. The familiar landmarks of a lifetime—once they are gone, how swiftly is there no room for them.
Staring morosely at these unwelcome relics of Dot’s sojourn here, Imogen, after eight weeks of total lethargy, found herself racked by an intolerable impatience.
“She
must
take them away—I can’t have all this clutter
everywhere
!” she grumbled. “It’s nearly December already, and if we’re to have the students settled in by next term….”
The students—seriously contemplated only a couple of hours ago—had taken a strange grip on her imagination. Already she had the whole house peopled with them, and they were as
delightful
, uncomplicated a crowd as you could imagine. Two pleasant, open-faced girls with long fair hair sat studying at a big whitewood table in the spare room, the winter sun pouring in on to their bent heads. A dedicated, poverty-stricken music student was staring, awed, at Ivor’s treasured Bechstein—he was touching the notes wonderingly, incredulously—as Ivor would have wished him to be wondering and incredulous—and musing on what a wonderful man it must have been who had owned such a
wonderful
piano. And there was a classics scholar, of course—or maybe two of them—browsing round Ivor’s study, gazing at his splendid collection of books—three walls of them, right up to the ceiling—and they, too, would be thinking how lucky they were; would be handling the collection with reverence and love….
“I’d choose the Depressions rather than the Anxiety States if I were you, Step,” Robin was advising her. “From the point of view of a landlady, Depressions are a good bet because they lie in bed till midday and don’t eat breakfast. Whereas Anxiety States want grapefruit—All-bran—the lot. As well as picking at food all night and drinking coffee. And they have Troubles, too:
girlfriends
, and indigestion, and frantic phone-calls to places like Aberystwyth. It all costs money. And also, Step, as landlady it’ll all be your fault—you’ll be
in
loco
parentis,
which is the Latin for Heads-I-Win, Tails-you-lose. The Sociology Department at Leeds did a survey of landladies, and it proved conclusively that …”
“Shush, Robin, I’m trying to think. I must ring up Dot and insist that … I mean, I
must
get the rooms clear, mustn’t I? Once I’ve done that, then I’ll be able to decide exactly what I’m going to do.”
*
Any widow could have told her. Any property-owner, really. You don’t
decide
what happens to your vacant rooms these days, you just fight feebly against whatever does: and after a while, if you are sensible, you give in.
For they are stronger than you are. With their luggage, their determination, and the desperateness of their plight, you don’t stand a chance.
Thus it was for Imogen. Within a fortnight, Dot was back, in tears, and with yet more trunks, containing mountains of clothes and the boys’ electric train set. Herbert, apparently, was being impossible again, she just couldn’t face it, not over Christmas, and with the kids’ holidays starting. And besides—she hastened solicitously to add—she’d felt so guilty about going off and leaving Imogen alone in the empty house. She’d found (rather
conveniently
, in view of Herbert’s current impossibleness) that she couldn’t bear the idea of her stepmother being lonely over Christmas, and so—well—here she was. Vernon and Timmie too. They’d cheer Imogen up, wouldn’t they, bring a bit of life into the place … and Imogen, ticking off in her mind beds, rooms, blankets, food, had somewhat half-heartedly agreed.
Actually, Imogen’s loneliness seemed to be proving a godsend all round. Scarcely had Dot established herself in her own room—after a lot of fuss about the piles of papers and manuscripts that had been dumped there in her absence, and shrill insistence on them being moved forthwith to the attic lumber-room—than a telegram arrived from Bermuda announcing Cynthia’s arrival on Thursday. All love, and her plane would be arriving at Heathrow at a quarter to seven in the morning, please meet. She, too, had found that she couldn’t bear the idea of Imogen being alone over Christmas—evidently no one could who had any very compelling motive for escaping from his own festivities at home.