After Julius (13 page)

‘He used to come and see us just before the war,’ said Esme.

‘I remember,’ said Cressy. ‘Goodness, Mother, what
have
you done to your hair?’

The childishness of this attack was so startling that Felix saw it was ineffective, like stabbing somebody with a bargepole.

‘Had it set in order to look my best for my old friend,’ she said with gallant accuracy. (
How
old was Cressy? Well over thirty, surely?) ‘Have a drink, darling,
I’m sure you need it. Oh – Emma’s brought a strange young man for the week-end.’

‘Do you mean we don’t know him, or he’s odd?’ Cressy was pouring whisky rather sloppily into a glass.

‘Both, I think, but Felix likes him, don’t you, Felix?’

Before Felix could reply, Cressy, who seemed now to be behaving as though he wasn’t there, said: ‘She told me this morning that she thought whoever she was supposed to have married
probably got killed in the war.’ She took the drink and prowled to the fire with it. ‘Well, if he’s young, at least you can’t say she’s looking for her father, which
we’re all supposed to do from morning till night.

‘Although, it’s a very silly thing to say when you come to think of it. It’s not so much that women are looking for their own father in other men, as that every now and then
they want a man to be fatherly to them: utterly different – unless they’ve got a mother complex and want to be in love with their son.’

‘The same thing probably applies there,’ said Felix.

She looked at him then with an insolence that was really too studied for someone of her age. ‘What do you mean, exactly?’

‘I mean, that from time to time, they might want a man towards whom they could feel maternal,’ said Felix patiently. She had the kind of eyes usually attributed to young Italian
beauties.

‘Oh,’ she turned away, and edged a log further into the fire with small, well-polished idlers. Her feet were bare in the shoes, he noticed.

It was a relief when Emma and Daniel rejoined them and they all trooped into the dining-room to eat Mrs Hanwell’s chickens, plain roast, with bread sauce, mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts
with chestnuts and thick chicken gravy, followed by a plum tart – bottled plums – and Mrs Hanwell’s husband’s cream. Emma got a wishbone, and Daniel dried it for her over
two candles. Cressy went to bed quite early, but the others stayed up till midnight or thereabouts. The week-end had begun.

PART TWO

SATURDAYS

CHAPTER 7

DANIEL

H
E
liked the room they had given him so much that he hadn’t in the least wanted to go to bed. She was a dear little
thing: she had brought him to the door of what they called the nursery, and asked him anxiously if he wanted anything. No, he had said: it wasn’t at all that he couldn’t think of things
that he wanted, it was just impossible to know what she was expecting him to want. So he had stuck to nothing. Well – good night, she had said, and walked away, and although he felt somehow
that he had deprived her of generosity, there wasn’t one thing he could do about it. The room was fascinating. It would take him all night to go through everything in it, but as he also had a
lot on his mind he cast himself on the bed for a start. He could see that if you had to stay in the same place it stood to reason that you would need more room, but the quantity of places that you
could be in this house were none the less startling. That dining-room now – did they really only eat in it? He’d eaten so much that he was beginning to feel hungry, so he laid off
thoughts of dinner; it had been so good that any thought of it brought those fruity juices to his mouth. What he couldn’t make out was how much of an
occasion
the whole evening had
been for them. Sometimes he had felt that it very much was one: when the mother had asked that doctor to open the wine, his eyes had travelled from one face to the other and he’d felt that
something serious and shifty was going on. He didn’t trust doctors anyway – he’d nearly made off when Emma had told him upstairs. You
couldn’t
trust them, as he well
knew: full of what looked like good will one minute and then jab! into your chest with a needle or sawing away at your rib bones with you enjoying the full privilege of a ‘local’.
They
told you you needed it: how were you to know? The last thing he’d do to anyone who felt as rotten as he had felt would be to saw off bits of his ribs. For a bit he pretended that
he felt too ill, or wasn’t allowed to get up off the bed: knowing he could was a private luxury, although that shouldn’t mean just being pleased about something awful that wasn’t
going to happen. It wasn’t a cheap bed at all. Nothing here was like that. From two chickens for supper onwards, the whole set-up was regardless. Why did she work in an office then? Something
he would never do in a million years minus a million meals he ought to be getting. For a moment the idea of being rich going with things being boring skimmed his mind; he simply couldn’t bear
it: if you could enjoy life without much, it must be ten times better with ten times more than not much. Otherwise, where was everybody going to? Naturally you chose what you wanted – you
didn’t just get things to keep like that silly sod Alfred. If Dot could see him now! All she’d worry about was his not having any pyjamas – ‘luggage’ as Emma had said.
She had seemed surprised. It wouldn’t strike her that he felt
exactly the same now
as he would have felt if he’d been lying there with a pair of pyjamas under his hand. He
couldn’t be cold, because anyway he wore an extra lot of clothes, and that was what blankets were for at night – to keep you even warmer. Where was he? Occasion. Well, that sister of
Emma’s would make an occasion out of a milk shake on a wet Sunday afternoon. She hadn’t seemed to like the doctor either; but then he’d never seen anyone treat their mother as she
had done – downright discourtesy if ever he’d seen it: crossed in love, he had no doubt, and nearly on the shelf on top of that. No wonder the poor thing was edgy. Of course, the father
had died, and a houseful of women without a man to crack the whip always made them soft and restless. Women couldn’t do without a living grievance, a chronic reason for being too tired,
overworked, having no time to themselves; children provided that for a bit, but they grew out of needing the attention – resented it as soon as they learned how. But a man could be a
satisfactory nuisance for as long as he lived: he remembered his father having to be undressed on Friday nights on the good weeks when they’d been on the beer run (better pay for the load,
and a spot of free liquor); or his angry, aimless gloom when they had to wait too long for a load, and on top of trying to stretch the money for food, his mother’d had his general sense of
injustice unleashed on her. And when
she’d
died, Dot had had to take over. But Emma’s mother – there she had sat all alone in the lap of luxury with just the two girls to
bring up – no wonder she wanted a bit of male company, even a doctor; no wonder that older sister was out of hand, and Emma still a child – in many ways more like Dot at fourteen for
all her office working. He’d enjoyed that meal with her, even if there hadn’t been much body to the food. The place was exotic – dark, with paper lanterns and candles on the table
under the bowls of food. Chopsticks were offered and the waiters had been foreign all right – tight yellow faces and fathomless eyes. He had had a moment’s panic when they sat down, and
he had thought that perhaps she ate Chinese food every day, but she said no, egg and tomato sandwiches, this was a treat for her, and she had looked as though it was. They’d had jasmine
Chinese tea – you could see the flat dead little flowers in bowl cups with green dragons on them, and she’d asked him about his writing which had made him foreign too, as though he was
someone else he happened to know better than anybody else he knew then. He hadn’t wanted it to stop because he wasn’t sure what to do between dinner and catching the train. But it had
been easy. They had wandered along the narrow street looking in shop windows choosing what they fancied until they’d come upon the shop filled with tricks and noses and beards and fireworks.
It was she who had suggested buying some, and she had wanted to pay, but it shocked him to see a woman spending money except on food. The Publishers had paid for their meal, and at the bank he had
got a great book of notes with a brand new elastic band thrown in round them – also two paper clips and some practically new blotting paper he’d picked up: those wide counters and iron
grilles cut both ways and they couldn’t see what went on. No, he had bought the fireworks, chosen them too. Then they had passed an animal shop, and he had asked whether her mother had a
canary: he suddenly felt he ought to take a present and a canary struck him as suitable. But Emma had said her mother didn’t go in much for birds and he wasn’t spending thirty-five
shillings on what they called a Belgian hare for someone he hadn’t even met, so that was that and they had walked on. They’d called it Belgian to put the price up, he shouldn’t
wonder. It was still raw and cold, and they had talked about what it would be like to live on an island with white coral sand and palm trees. She was very nice to walk about with; not a giggling
deadweight where you had to provide all the entertainment for two, and not bossy or patronizing because she lived in London and worked in an office. It was more like going with a friend than a
girl.

Every now and then he copied her voice and she said he was getting better at it, and he said copy me, and she laughed and wouldn’t. They passed a stationer and he looked there a long time,
and she said why didn’t he go and buy himself something nice there: he made some excuse; he liked to come by his stationery – paying for it out of a shop was not his line. She was no
fool, because when they went back to her office to fetch her ‘luggage’ she showed him a small cupboard in her room filled with the stuff and told him to help himself, but this
wasn’t how he liked to do things either, so he’d only taken one or two things he hadn’t wanted, to be polite.

He’d enjoyed the train. They’d had tea and biscuits on it and she’d told him about her father: it was the nearest he’d come to a hero and he felt a respect for her being
related. It was then that he’d decided to give all the fireworks to the mother, to cheer her up. And now, here he was, in the nursery; it struck him as queer to have a different room for
being a child in, but he supposed in a house of this size, you’d get worn out thinking of what to use up all the rooms for. Tomorrow they would actually see the sea: she’d promised to
take him; he’d told her that unreliability put him in a rage, and he thought she’d stick to her promise. He could do with a cup of tea now. He sat up and looked round for something to
take his mind off food. Another turn on the rocking horse? – but the trouble with that was that it was so nearly like he imagined the real thing, that you got bored going nowhere. He looked
like having to fall back on those old books, and when he opened them, the first thing he saw was a coloured picture of some teddy bears having a birthday party – jellies and buns and an
enormous cake with simple candles. The picture had been coloured in chalks so all the food was yellow and orange . . . food again. He knew he wouldn’t sleep without some sort of a snack, so
before he had time to think too much about it, he started off in search of the kitchen. The passage was dark, but he found a light and put it on long enough to see where the stairs began. A clock
somewhere ticked so loudly that the tick sounded irregular. The kitchen was a nice square room with a big table in the middle and a big stove against one wall. There were several doors along the
third wall and opening them he found successively a room (just for washing up in!), a place (just for keeping brooms in!), and a larder with stone floor and marble shelf, and rows of bowls and bits
of things on dishes in wire cages. This was very promising. He found a wedge of blackberry-and-apple-pie – just enough for one, and a piece of rather hard, greasy and slippery cheese. He was
examining a white can covered by a dear little piece of muslin with blue beads weighting its edges, when he heard a noise. I’m found out, he thought, feeling that he really was in strange
country because he had no idea how much they’d mind: people never liked finding you where they didn’t expect to – he knew that, even if you weren’t doing anything wrong
wherever it was. Honestly hanging on to the piece of pie he turned back to the kitchen.

It was Emma’s sister, with her black hair waving round her face, wearing a very grand white quilted dressing-gown and scarlet feathery slippers.

‘Oh,’ she said, and waited.

‘I had so much supper, you see, I’m hungry now.’

‘
You
can’t sleep either.’

He shook his head.

She looked at the pie in his hands.

‘Is that what you want?’

He nodded, and sat at the table. ‘There was a piece of cheese.’

‘Have it! Have anything! Shall I make some tea? Or coffee?’

‘I’d rather tea.’

He watched her lift the round lid off one of the hot plates on the Aga, and move the kettle on to it. The kettle responded at once.

‘Magic,’ he said. ‘I’ll get that cheese, if you don’t mind.’ They had been talking very quietly, which, in a funny way, had made them sound as though they
knew each other. When he came back to the table, she was warming the pot.

‘My sister’s got a fridge,’ he said to keep the conversation going. She wasn’t the company he would have chosen for this meal.

‘Most people have, haven’t they?’

‘I can’t answer you there.’ He started his pie. Immediately, she fetched him a plate and a blackberry slipped out and fell on it – just in time. He looked up to thank her
and saw a tear roll over the edge of her face into the air.

‘What’ll you eat then?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing – I don’t think.’ She was collecting cups and spoons and sugar.

‘I know where the milk is: you sit down.’ In the larder, he looked desperately for something she might like. There was some cold rice pudding, and on one shelf higher a jar marked
‘quince jam 1959’. When he came back, she was sitting with her elbows on the table, holding her hair back from her face with her hands.