The Shortest Journey (2 page)

‘Ah, yes, of course,’ I said.

Thelma and her husband Gordon owned a high-powered,
very successful advertising agency and had the sort of lifestyle
that I only knew about from television commercials.

‘I see you’ve brought some of your things with you,’
I said. ‘It’s nice to have something familiar around you – it makes
it seem more home-like.’

‘Yes, just a few odds and ends. As Thelma said, I
don’t want to clutter up the room with too much stuff.’

‘Yes, it’s not very big, really, after all those
enormous rooms at the Manor.’

‘Oh, I’m very comfortable,’ she said hastily. ‘And
it’s got a lovely view – I do so love the sea.’

‘I’m glad you brought that little Regency desk,’ I
said. ‘It’s so pretty – I’ve always admired it, ever since I was a
child. I remember, when Mother and I used to come to tea – when I
was very young – I used to sit on the floor and stroke the
sphinxes!’

She smiled. ‘Your mother was so kind to me, I used to
love your visits. You were such a solemn little thing, very quiet
and shy – not like Thelma.’

I remembered Thelma as a child. She always took the
lead in any activity, as if by right; I always felt that her
peremptory manner was displeasing and unsuitable in one who was
several years my junior. Alan was younger still, despised
accordingly by his older sister, and never allowed to participate
in any of our games.

Mrs Rossiter laid a loving hand on the desk. ‘It is
charming, isn’t it? Fancy you loving it all those years ago. I
shall leave it to you in my will.’

‘Oh, no, you mustn’t,’ I said, deeply embarrassed. ‘I
mean, I couldn’t possibly...’

‘Nonsense, my dear, I would like to think of it
having a loving home when I am gone.’

‘No, really, you can’t – Thelma...’

‘Thelma took all the pieces she wanted when the Manor
was sold.’

‘Well, Alan might...’

‘Alan’s abroad so much and when he is here he’s got
no proper home to put anything in, just that tiny flat in Earl’s
Court.’

I never quite knew what Alan did – something to do
with helping the Third World, digging wells or advising on crops.
It all sounded very worthy but I got the impression that he hadn’t
been inspired by any burning desire to help the underprivileged,
but had simply drifted into it when he couldn’t think of anything
else to do.

‘No, Sheila dear, there’s no one else I would rather
have it. Accept it for your dear mother’s sake, if for nothing
else!’

My mother always had a soft spot for Mrs Rossiter.
‘That poor little soul!’ she called her. So we would quite often go
to tea at the Manor – a gloomy seventeenth-century house with dark
panelling and heavily leaded windows through which the light
filtered greenly. I was a nervous child and Thelma used to delight
in reminding me that the house was said to be haunted. I can still
feel the slippery polished wood of the great staircase under my
feet as I scuttled down the stairs from the gloom of the nursery
passage to the blessed lights of the ground floor below and the
reassuring presence of the grown-ups.

‘Well,’ I said hesitantly, ‘it’s very sweet of you
... but you mustn’t start talking about wills, you know.’

‘At my age, my dear, it is quite natural. I’ll drop a
line to Mr Robertson.’

To change the subject I said, ‘I’ve just been to see
Mrs Jankiewicz. She was in splendid form!’

Mrs Rossiter laughed. ‘She certainly keeps everyone
here on their toes – I do envy her positive attitude to
everything.’

‘I suppose, after all she’s been through, she simply
takes each day as it comes and gets what she can out of it. And she
certainly seems to enjoy life, even now.’

‘It is a great gift – almost the greatest. I had
thought that now I’m old life would be simple, there would be no
problems – but, somehow there are...’

She sat by the window looking at but not seeing two
figures in raincoats battling along the promenade against the wind,
while a small dog ran round them in circles.

She suddenly recollected herself and asked, ‘How is
Michael?’

‘He’s in London now, at the College of Law. I was
delighted, as you can imagine, when he said he wanted to be a
solicitor. Peter would have been so pleased.’

‘He’s a dear boy – you’re very lucky.’

‘I know. I honestly don’t know how I would have got
through when Mother died, and then Peter, so soon after, if it
hadn’t been for Michael. When you have children you know you’ve got
to carry on, for their sake.’

She gave me a warm smile but didn’t say anything and
I recollected that that had hardly been the situation when her
husband died. It was Thelma, then, who had taken charge. As she had
done ever since.

We chatted a little about the old days and I was just
on the point of leaving when there was a tap at the door and, not
waiting for a reply, a small, sturdy figure came into the room.

Annie Fisher was what used to be known as a
‘treasure’. She had been employed at the Manor for all of Mrs
Rossiter’s married life. Beginning as a kitchen maid before the
war, she had ended up running the whole establishment practically
single-handed, since the Manor was really quite isolated and it was
impossible to get any sort of living-in help. She had even nursed
Colonel Rossiter during his last illness and that couldn’t have
been easy, because he was difficult and tiresome enough when in
full health and I couldn’t imagine that he was a particularly good
patient. After he died, it was her energy and devotion that had
made it possible for Mrs Rossiter to go on living at the Manor as
long as she had done. A really admirable person, then, who had
given her life selflessly to the care of her employers – and yet I
always had a slight feeling of distaste whenever I met her. I can’t
explain it – a sort of Dr Fell thing, Peter used to say, when I
told him, and really it was as irrational as that.

She crossed the room, moved a chair near to Mrs
Rossiter and sat down beside her. ‘Well, m’dear, and how are you
today? Got company, I see. That’s nice.’ She turned her rather
prominent pale blue eyes towards me. ‘Isn’t it good of Mrs Malory
to come and see you?’

I began to feel my customary irritation.

Annie Fisher started rummaging in her large
shopping-bag. ‘There, m’dear, I brought some of those biscuits you
like and a refill for your pen, like you asked me to get. And shall
I take those nightdresses back and wash them? I don’t think they do
them properly here. I mean, they do their best but that very fine
cotton does need proper ironing...’

I got to my feet. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ll leave you in
Annie’s capable hands.’

‘It was lovely to see you, Sheila dear. Come again
when you can...’

Because Annie’s chair was pushed right up against Mrs
Rossiter’s, I couldn’t get near to give her my usual farewell hug
so I simply waved goodbye from the doorway. Before I had shut the
door behind me I could hear Annie once again in full flow.

I walked along the impersonal corridor towards the
front door, feeling rather crossly that I had been edged out. But
as I stepped out of the hothouse temperature of West Lodge and into
the brisk, not to say chilly, breeze blowing in from the sea-front,
I pulled myself together and reminded myself that poor Annie had
nothing else in her life; it was very mean-minded of me to begrudge
her Mrs Rossiter’s time and attention. After all, when the Manor
was sold she had gone to live in a small council flat in
Taviscombe, and how she employed her still considerable energies I
didn’t really know. I knew that Mrs Rossiter would have made sure
she had a good pension, but she had no family near – just a brother
in Australia whom she used to talk about with pride, since he had
‘got on’. But time must hang heavily on her hands, and what could
be more natural than that she should pop in quite often to see her
old employer? Not that one could really think of Mrs Rossiter as
anything as positive as an employer and I am sure that after
Colonel Rossiter died (he had been decidedly imperious and treated
all servants as potentially mutinous troops who had to be kept
under strict control) Annie had run things more or less her own
way. Thelma, at that time, was only too thankful to have a reliable
person to look after her mother. Anyway, Annie always made a great
fuss of Thelma and, in the old days, had waged fearful feuds with
Thelma’s Nanny Philips.

I walked through the Jubilee Gardens, noting that a
lot of the beds were bare now and freshly dug for the winter; just
a few contained some sad late chrysanthemums that the early frosts
hadn’t bitten off. My mood of irritation was now replaced by one of
melancholy.

It seemed today that everything was drawing to a
close, not just the year. Mrs Jankiewicz and Mrs Rossiter were
almost the last of Mother’s friends – so many others had died – and
when they were gone yet more links with my past would be broken;
one day soon there would be no one who still thought of me as a
child. Then I would be forced to feel really grown up at last. I
felt somehow diminished and sad.

An elderly man, walking rather unsteadily and being
enthusiastically pulled along by a small grey poodle on a lead,
greeted me as I approached.

‘Hello, Mrs Malory – splendid day, isn’t it? Nice and
fresh, blows the cobwebs away. It’s grand to be out!’

Mr Sewell was a retired accountant, a widower, who
had been one of the most active of our Red Cross helpers until he
had a stroke six months ago.

‘Well!’ I said. ‘You’re looking marvellous! How nice
to see you out and about again!’

‘Oh yes, nothing wrong with me. I’ll soon be back in
harness again – you tell them! Got to get on – Bijou likes her
walk, doesn’t like to be kept standing about.’

Bijou gave a little plunge forward, like an eager
horse at the starting gate, and they were away.

I turned my head to see them go and smiled. My
animals would be waiting, eager to hear the sound of my key in the
lock, the dogs rushing into the hall barking ecstatically, Foss, my
Siamese, picking his way delicately downstairs as if to
disassociate himself from the over-exuberance of their welcome. I
walked briskly towards the market to buy Foss’s coley and perhaps
some potted shrimps as a treat for me. Soon it would be December
and Michael would be home for the holidays. My mood lightened at
the prospect.

I didn’t see Mrs Rossiter for several months after
that. I was away for a bit and then there was Christmas and then I
had flu and then she had flu – quite badly – and, before I knew
where the winter had gone, it was spring and the primroses were
out all round the banks of the orchard. I thought that I really
must take some in for her – she always said that they were her
favourite flower. These thoughts were going through my mind in
Smiths as I stood looking at the primroses and violets, which
together with lambs and stylised silver crosses decorated the
Easter cards.

‘Aren’t they pretty!’ a soft voice said and there was
Mrs Rossiter standing behind me. She was wearing a tweed winter
coat and, although it wasn’t a very thick one, it seemed to hang
heavily from her shoulders. She had lost weight and her thin neck
looked painfully fragile inside the deep collar.

‘How lovely to see you!’ I exclaimed. ‘And how
marvellous that you are out and about again.’

‘Well, it’s my first little visit to the shops but I
wanted to get a birthday card for Thelma – she’s fifty-one on
Wednesday. Can you believe it!’

‘Only too well, since I’m four years older! Look,
have you got half an hour? Shall we go and have some coffee?’

Her face lit up. ‘Oh, that would be nice. You can
help me choose a card; I’m never really sure what Thelma likes
these days! I never seemed to get her presents right, even when she
was a little girl – so now I just send her a cheque to get herself
a little something.’

‘Well, it is rather fun to have some extra money just
to splurge with,’ I said, though I knew very well that Thelma was
not the splurging kind.

We pondered long over the choice of a card – Mrs
Rossiter leaning towards idyllic country landscapes (To remind her
of the country now she’s shut up in London) while I felt that
Thelma would like those rather smart ’thirties cards, all glossy in
black and white with just a splash of scarlet. Eventually we
compromised with a delicious Tissot boating scene and made our way
out into the street.

‘Now then,’ I said, ‘where shall we go?’

‘Oh, do you think we might go to Baxter’s? It’s where
we always used to go with your dear mother in the old days, when we
used to meet out shopping. I haven’t been there for ages. Thelma
likes that new place in Fore Street – she says that the stairs at
Baxter’s would be too much for me, but I’m sure I can manage them
if you lend me your arm, dear, and we take it slowly.’

We negotiated the stairs successfully and found a
table by the window, just as we always used to do.

‘I remember once,’ Mrs Rossiter said, ‘when you were
such a little mite, you sat under the table and wouldn’t come out.
Your poor mother was quite in despair. But you whispered to me that
you were being a bear in a cave so I said that bears always came
out of their caves for buns, and I got the waitress to bring you
one of those very sugary buns and so you came out. Do you
remember?’

Fortunately I am now of an age when I am no longer
embarrassed by such revelations of childhood misdemeanours, only
touched that anyone, outside the family, should remember them
affectionately after all this time.

‘How extraordinary that you should remember that!’ I
said. ‘I was a tiresome child, I’m afraid. An only child, too much
with adults – that’s what Mrs Dudley used to tell Mother.’

‘That woman!’ Mrs Rossiter almost snorted. ‘Bone
selfish and always has been. How she managed to have two such nice
children as Rosemary and Martin I shall never know – and she still
leads them a terrible dance. How anyone who loved her children
could be so selfish and demanding! Of course, now Martin’s gone to
live in Doncaster it all falls on poor Rosemary. That woman is a
saint! She waits on her mother hand, foot and finger.’