NINE
Ani Patel hoped it would work. Then she could stop her Tuesday-night visits to Miss Phoebe Glen, which she undertook as a matter of kindness and which she knew the lady relied on. She took her Tropicana, Miss Phoebe sipped her sherry and they listened to the serial on the radio. Bleak House. ‘Very appropriate,’ Miss Phoebe Glen said. ‘Seeing as how any day or night I could be out on the street . . .’ Ani Patel scarcely heard the radio. She suspected that, as she left the shop on a Tuesday evening through the front door, Ari let in his girlfriend through the back. She had no proof. But she was afraid. Very afraid.
Thus, with hopeful breast, she placed Miss Phoebe Glen’s card advertising for lodgers in the window and said, ‘No charge.’
Miss Phoebe Glen, in a burst of generosity, decided to stay on and talk.
‘No man is an island,’ she said firmly, eyeing the fat man as he approached the shop.
Mrs Patel bowed her head politely and went on measuring out acid drops.
‘Some of them are not far short,’ said a pale, shrivelled woman in a mackintosh, grimly.
Miss Phoebe Glen was keenly on the look-out for lodgers. ‘And do you own your home?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I do,’ said the woman positively. ‘My Ernie left me very comfortable.’
Miss Phoebe Glen lost interest. There were those who had Ernies and those who had to fend for themselves.
Miss Phoebe started to sidle towards the fat man. It was, she decided, the only way. So far she had been unsuccessful, but she hoped a little coquetry would oil the wheels. With a little coquetry, she could get him to look at the spare room. She used to be quite good at coquetry, if she remembered rightly. She just needed a little practice. Yesterday when she tried it out, she was unable to get anywhere near him. Whenever she approached, he gave a strange little bow, went red, and scuttled away. She very nearly pinned him to the magazine stand but he somehow managed to grab a copy of The Budgerigar and slip round her crying, ‘Ah, here it is,’ as if he had just found El Dorado. After he ran from the shop, Mrs Patel said that to the best of her knowledge, on balance, and all things considered, he did not keep budgerigars. Which made it all the odder.
Today, however, she would persist.
She rolled her eyes and puckered her lips. The fat man stared resolutely at an advertisement for Clarnico toffees.
Miss Phoebe Glen moved, rather unsteadily, a little closer.
Ani Patel watched.
Something must be done. Her customer could be unpredictable. The fat man was of a nervous disposition.
Diversionary tactics.
‘The dustmen were late yesterday. . .’ she began.
‘Dustmen?’ They took up the irresistible chorus. ‘Dustmen?’
And they were off.
Just to be safe, when that subject was exhausted, Mrs Patel added, ‘And then there are the buses. . .’ Which never failed.
‘Get one, you get six,’ said the fat man.
‘Get six, you get half a dozen,’ said Miss Phoebe.
‘At least,’ said the fat man.
Miss Phoebe Glen smiled at him vaguely and nodded at the magazine he held as if to defend himself. ‘I like a man with a hobby,’ she said. And left him to it.
Mrs Patel sighed. The danger was over. Under cover of the shop door opening, he fled. The new customer bounced in saying she was late, she was late, and she had to take her mother some mint imperials.
Miss Phoebe turned to her, focused as best she could and said, ‘And do you . . .’ But Ani Patel shook her head very slightly to dissuade her.
‘She has just lost her son,’ she said, after Pamela had gone. ‘And she is a homeowner on her way to see her mother in an old folk’s home.’
Miss Phoebe Glen shuddered as if someone had walked over her grave.
*
Mrs Hilda Hennessy, mother of Pamela, adjusted her skirt so that it was neat, leaned back in her fat blue armchair (brought from home on her daughter’s insistence and the only lively colour in the place) and, gazing out of the big picture window at the September day, posed for a picture entitled ‘Elderly woman still active waits graciously for her daughter’s visit to the well-appointed Surrey rest-home’.
If there were those out there who feared such institutions, Mrs Hennessy was not one of them. She welcomed the blandness, welcomed the peace and, of course, had the money to pay for it. While you had your breath and your wits, a place like this was no different from a friendly hotel, she told both her daughters. Why struggle against the inevitable, she thought, when you could pay other people, at last, to do all the struggling for you?
She was a happy inmate. Even, perhaps, a little smug. She had new hips, both sides, her hearing was still sharp, she could get up unaided and leave the room when the Jesus Band arrived for Guitar ‘n’ Clappin’. And did. And, what was more, she had chosen to be here. Grounds, indeed, for smugness. It also meant that she no longer had to struggle up to Scotland or into London for alternate daughterly Christmases. Once in an institution, you could invoke elderly fragility any time you liked. Invaluable.
She folded her hands in her lap and watched the squirrels performing on the smooth landscaped lawn. This was Surrey at its tamed and manicured best. She could be looking out on the gardens of Burlington Manor Residential Home – or at the Leith Hill Golf Course. Around here every homeowner’s aim seemed to be to have a garden that looked as much as possible like links. Husbands felt at home and could drive their little tractors, while wives fondly looked on. She had chosen Surrey and the Burlington for precisely that reason – it was hybrid town and country and it made no demands. This was neither sea nor nature untamed. The banality suited her very well.
Both her daughters were very shocked. They accused her of giving up.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is exactly what I am doing. I have spent a lifetime on active service and now I wish to retire.’
‘In the old days,’ Pamela said glumly, ‘you would have become a nun.’
‘Well, now – that’s a thought,’ said Mrs Hennessy.
Kay rolled her eyes.
Pamela said, ‘Oh, Mum!’
And Mrs Hennessy smiled to herself. What was the point of reaching this time of life and not keeping them all on their toes?
She sat in the Burlington, folded her arms on the girls’ disapproval and said it was either this or suttee. ‘You have both had a good education,’ she told them, ‘which is something I never had. So you mustn’t begrudge me this.’
In the end they acceded.
Kay returned to her Highland farmer and her three bonny bairns. Pamela returned to her world of interiors. And Mrs Hennessy settled in nicely.
She knew that if Harry Hennessy had lived, they would have looked after each other. But Harry Hennessy did not. Eighteen months after retiring, just when they should have been enjoying the dues of their longevity, he crossed the road and never reached the other side. Long Vehicle, it said. Must have been, by the state of him. Which made future efforts seem a waste of time and Why bother? Not quite so bad now – but she still felt it. All those years and to end up alone.
‘You don’t have to,’ said her sister Ida. ‘You could marry again.’ That had shaken her. She was shocked into swearing. ‘I’ll be buggered if I will,’ she said, poking her finger into her plump shoulder. ‘Buggered!’ Poke, poke went the finger, ‘What? Get a secondhand job that might conk out at any minute? And no past nor memories to back it up? No, thank you. Now, put the kettle on, my girl, and don’t be so wet.’
‘You’re a good-looking woman,’ said Ida mysteriously.
‘So was Queen Victoria,’ she snapped back.
But within the week, Nobby Porter from Gwendolen Avenue had started to call, bearing pansy plants and rhubarb and a screwdriver to fix the gate. She did not need his fixings – if she wanted a man with a screwdriver, she could pay for one.
She kept her distance, but he managed to kiss her a month or two later over the cake stall at the Twickenham Strawberry Fayre – and enough people saw to make the connection. She saw winks and nudges behind every raffle ticket, realized suddenly that she did not want to run a cake stall, did not want to be on a committee, and did not want to be kissed in public by a man whom she knew to have piles. In short she did not want to be In The Swim any more. She rang the admirable charity Help the Aged, who gave her the right advice, and, after many a secret trip out, she found the Burlington.
Mrs Hennessy then summonsed her sister Ida up from Bournemouth for a few weeks, introduced her to Nobby Porter, and left them to it. That didn’t take long. She liked to see people settled. Ida always accused her of being too controlling, but Ida did not complain about Nobby. Anyway, what was controlling but another word for concern? Once installed in the home, she had time to consider the vexed question of Pamela. Now that Daniel had left home, she wanted to discuss the vexed question of Pamela, with Pamela, today. That settled, she was really ready for the quiet life.
Not entirely quiet, of course. For she had made one new friend, Eileen, and one was quite enough. Eileen was something quite different. Eileen was once a fairly high-class call-girl. ‘Tart, dear,’ was how she corrected the euphemism. ‘I was a real tart – very fruity. But second eleven. They don’t get the husbands. So here I am.’
Mrs Hennessy felt pleased to have broken new ground in this way. She had led a decent and unremarkable life as wife and mother and had done nothing to set the world alight. It was interesting to be friends with a lady of the night. The sort of woman who knew everything while she, Mrs Hennessy, did not.
Eileen was also there for the peace and beigeness.
‘When you’ve had to wear as many red satin camiknicks as I have, ducks, a nice cream and biscuit wallpaper is very acceptable.’
She also came here for the food.
‘All my working life I had be dressed to the nines – and be undressed to the nines as well. And my regulars soon knew if I’d put a pound on. Now it’s the cream buns and the chocolate and anything I fancy. And the biggest treat of all – know what that is?’
Mrs Hennessy tried to guess. ‘Bread pudding? Butterscotch tart?’
Eileen nodded slightly. ‘Yes, dear, those, of course – but no, no, the real treat is wearing tights. All those years and years of belts and stockings and garters and whatnot – always at half-mast so they could see the tops – and now tights. Pinch me, dear, I’m in heaven.’
Mrs Hennessy, waiting for Pamela, thought it was like a little bit of heaven really. With just an edge of defiance in her and Eileen to make it interesting. She settled herself further into the blue armchair, glad again that Pamela persuaded her to bring it. You could not reject everything. It was as if a part of Harry was with her. On the day she moved in here she said this to Pamela, who burst into tears. Mrs Hennessy was amazed. ‘But it makes me happy, dear,’ she said. ‘Brings us close.’
‘That is real love,’ said her daughter solemnly.
‘Possibly,’ said her mother. ‘But it’s also to do with time and shared experience.’
She thought about Harry. Had she loved him? Hard to say, they had been so busy all those years. She certainly missed him. She missed him very much. Which was not quite the same.
Footsteps broke her reverie.
Pamela, hurrying down the corridor, suddenly envied the picture her mother made. Twenty-two years to go before such contentment would be hers. Her breathless greeting cut through the peace. ‘Hi, Mum – sorry I’m late.’
‘You’d be late for your own funeral, dear,’ she said. And she patted the regulation oatmeal tweed chair beside her. ‘How’s Danny? He hasn’t written to me once.’
‘Join the club,’ said Pamela ruefully.
‘Missing him?’
Pamela considered. ‘Not exactly,’ she said. And handed her mother the mint imperials.
The tea arrived, neat on a tray, beige and white cups and a cosy shaped like a cottage. Ginger snaps, digestives and chocolate fingers. Mrs Hennessy smiled at the display. ‘Every day’s a celebration here,’ she said, and offered her daughter the plate. Then, leaning back in her seat, she eyed Pamela up and down carefully and said, ‘All work and no play? You look a bit jaded.’
Thank you, Mother, she thought. This being entirely correct, and therefore Pamela’s rawest nerve, she opened her mouth to deny it. But before she could, Mrs Hennessy raised her hand to attract one of the staff. The helper, a pale undersized girl with beige check overall and a listless eye, brought a jug of hot water. There was barely the flicker of a smile at Mrs Hennessy’s thanks. It was less aggression than defeat. Somehow she always looked damp.
Pamela put down her cup. ‘Seriously, though, apart from the chocolate biscuits, I don’t know how you stand it here.’ And, without thinking, she added, ‘Why don’t you come and live with me now?’
They both looked at each other with fear in their eyes.
‘Don’t be daft,’ said her mother.
There was an audible sigh of relief from both of them. After which they sat in pleasant silence for a while, looking out upon the perfect lawns.
‘Don’t stay on your own too long, will you?’ said her mother eventually.
Pamela laughed. ‘I’m all right,’ she said.
‘And how’s Peter coping?’ asked her mother.
‘Peter?’ said Pam, thinking this was a bit thick. ‘Peter – coping?’
‘Yes, dear. Now Danny’s gone.’
‘He couldn’t care less,’ she said. ‘He couldn’t even get to the station to see them off.’
‘Never did like goodbyes, I remember that,’ said her mother, which was quite untrue. But she wanted to fly the flag.
Mrs Hennessy was fond of her ex-son-in-law. She did not really understand what he did, or like what she saw of it, but he had done well for himself, very well, and she could never understand Pamela leaving him just when things started to take off. When Pam said at the time, a little heatedly on questioning, that she just couldn’t stand the way he seemed to be disappearing up his own bumhole with the need to succeed, and trying to take her with him, Mrs Hennessy had no idea what she meant. Men went out to work and women went out to work when they were free to do so. It was the way of the world. And if you stuck by your husband, then eventually he brought home the bacon.
Well, Pamela went ahead solo and did quite well for herself – though not as well as Peter. She could be having such a comfortable life now. And he was very thoughtful, despite what Pamela said. He remembered Mrs Hennessy’s birthday and Christmas, and even visited her a couple of times, though Pamela did not know about that. Mrs Hennessy guessed that he was a bit lonely, and she was quite certain her daughter was too. It was simple common sense for them to get back together again. It would be so settled all round. Mrs Hennessy liked the idea of things being settled.
She refocused on her daughter, having been miles away. One of the nice things about being elderly was you had excuses for all kinds of rudeness. Pamela was staring at her very hard. She stared very hard indeed.
Mrs Hennessy only yawned innocently. ‘You are very tough on him, you know,’ she said. ‘He really wasn’t at all bad. And I expect he’s quite lonely now that Kirsty female has left him.’
‘Mother,’ said Pamela warningly. ‘Mother?’
Mrs Hennessy put up her hand.
‘I’m only saying – that’s all. In my opinion your generation gives up too easily. You could have a very comfortable life now. I’m sure of it. And you’re fond of him, aren’t you?’
‘Peter was very odd, mother,’ said Pam firmly. ‘And hardly domesticated.’
‘Everybody’s odd, dear. Your father wasn’t exactly what you could call easy. And he never changed a nappy in his life.’
‘That’s different. You were made for each other. You could see that.’
Mrs Hennessy snorted. ‘We most certainly were not,’ she said. ‘And you girls only saw what you wanted to see. We had our silly moments like everyone else.’
She stared out at the lawns for a minute, as if composing herself. At her time of life, she decided, there was no point in platitudes. ‘The truth is,’ she said eventually, ‘that we met on a trip to Brighton just after the war. I went with your Auntie Ida, Harry and a boy called Reginald. We all went up in a plane together. Paris or Bust. It was only once round the airfield. A bit of a nonsense really. Reginald was the good-looking one and I wanted him to take notice of me very badly. But it was your father who gave me his hand as I got out. That’s all. It could just as easily have been the other way round. You father could have been called Reginald.’ Mrs Hennessy gave her daughter a little look.
Pamela nibbled at a biscuit to stop herself saying anything else.
‘I can assure you it was not a marriage made in heaven,’ said Mrs Hennessy positively. ‘It was a marriage made in Brighton. . .’
‘It’s a nice story,’ said Pam.
‘Oh, it’s always a nice story when it happens to somebody else. But we had to get on with it. And we did.’
‘You were happy,’ said Pam.
Give me strength, thought her mother. ‘Off and on,’ she said. ‘Just like everybody else.’ And she thought, Happiness can go under a lorry just like that.
‘What happened to the other one?’
‘Broke Ida’s heart and vanished.’
‘You had a lucky escape.’
‘Not at all. I was never romantic like Ida.’
The trouble, thought Mrs Hennessy, with bright young women like Pam, all talent and education and independence, was that they just weren’t prepared to put up with things any more. Peter was only being what men were brought up to be: ambitious, successful, number one. Even Kay, married to her quiet countryman, was happy in his shadow. At the end of the day there were no winners, of course, but you couldn’t have it both ways. Here was Pamela all on her own, and there was Kay contented for life. . .
Pamela looked around. At the paleness, the sanctity, the perfection of the restraint. ‘He’d love this place – Peter,’ she said.
‘He would,’ said her mother. ‘Perhaps I should invite him down here for tea again.’
‘Mother!’ said Pamela again. ‘Stop it. Don’t you dare.’
Too late. Mrs Hennessy looked down at her cup. She had made up her mind.
Pamela was looking at her questioningly.
But Mrs Hennessy was already rising from her chair. ‘I think I’d like to go for a little walk in the grounds, dear,’ she said.
It was the right thing to do and calmed things between them. Mrs Hennessy waved at Eileen, who was sitting in the small conservatory reading the News of the World. But she did not look up. Later she would read bits of the more scandalous stories out to Mrs Hennessy over cocoa. It was one of the delights of the week, of which there were many.
‘Do you remember your father’s bits of poetry?’ she said as they walked arm in arm past serried ranks of chrysanthemums. ‘He was a one for self-improvement. Very proud of you.’
‘Well, I remember the bit he used at my wedding.’
‘Say it for me,’ said her mother.
Pamela knew what her mother was up to, but she obliged:
‘Let him first work out the number
Of the dust of Africa
And the twinkling stars above
Whoever wants to number your
Many thousand love games
Play as you please, and very soon
Produce children. . .’
Mrs Hennessy nodded. ‘Didn’t half make your Auntie Ida blush.’
‘It didn’t do too bad a job on Peter,’ said Pam. ‘I think I only saved him from fainting with embarrassment by pointing out it was Catullus.’
Mrs Hennessy stopped walking and touched some of the drooping flower heads with her fingertips.‘It isn’t everything, you know. There’s a lot to be said for company. And you’ve managed without it very well. Haven’t you?’
‘It?’ said Pam, mischievously. ‘What’s It?’
But Mrs Hennessy walked on.
Her mother knew about Douglas, of course. There was no hiding the pain of that. But Pamela never told her about Dean. She wondered whether she should do so now, just to let her know that she had not been an entirely erotic-free zone. But much as Mrs Hennessy liked to present an easygoing face to the world, she would find the age gap difficult to accept.
They walked on. The turf felt like velvet and not a daisy nor a clover leaf spoiled the pile. Even the trees looked neat and tidy and moved very little in the breeze. How dull, Pam thought, how flat and dull and boring all this is. She suddenly came out in goosebumps. Was this to be the measure of her days also?
‘I like Peter,’ said Mrs Hennessy abruptly.
‘Oddly enough,’ said Pam, ‘he and I have been getting on quite well recently.’
‘Nothing odd about it. You go back a long way. And he can be very charming and considerate. And interesting. All those different jobs of his. You could do a lot worse than have him come courting you. A lot worse.’
Pamela thought it was remarkable how her mother kept abreast of such things, considering that she had not seen him for years, apart from at Daniel’s graduation. It was Daniel who must have told her about Kirsty.
‘There really is more to life than passion. Don’t you think?’ The word came very oddly from her mother’s lips.
‘Not on your nelly,’ said Pam. And she steered her mother past the weeping willow which could not have been more tastefully or picturesquely placed if it had been set-designed.
‘Do you really like it here?’ she said.
Mrs Hennessy nodded.
They were now walking along by the fading rose beds, all of whose bushes bloomed at the same height, around the ornamental pond and back towards the house. They passed an ancient gardener. Mrs Hennessy gave him a regal wave with her handkerchief as if she were the Queen Mother. When, wondered Pam, did one stop feeling embarrassed by one’s parents?
She commented that all the staff here seemed to be either very young, bored and boring, or very old and half-decayed. ‘That’s right, dear,’ nodded her mother. ‘It’s very peaceful.’
‘It wouldn’t do for me,’ said Pam firmly.
Her mother stopped. She gave her a penetrating look, her eyes just as alert as they ever were. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Exactly. So don’t you let it. Think about Peter. You could do a lot worse.’
On the way home Pamela very nearly lost concentration and crashed the car. What might it be like to take up the baton with Peter again? One thing it might be was comfortable. No shortage of money now. And it was true they had their profession in common. And the invisible, permanent bond of a son. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have sex with Peter again, which was the point at which she nearly crashed the car.