A Change of Pace (13 page)

‘All?’

‘All.’

And of course she did. Pete was like that. She ended up crying on his shoulder. ‘Ducky, please don’t cry. I thought you said it was all so wonderful —’

‘It is, of course it is. I’m a new woman and all that rubbish, but — ’

‘You’re wondering what’s going to happen next. Women always do; they never seem able just to enjoy the moment for its own sake, always have to be thinking ahead. The question is, do you love the guy?’

‘Do you love Janice?’ Janice was the girl who did the photocopying in Pete’s office. Pete, or so he had told Bet, had been crazy about her for months. ‘It’s not the same thing at all. Anyway, didn’t I tell you she’s getting married. Some damned Aussi in the next bedsitter; she’s going back to Adelaide with him. As a matter of fact the wedding’s next week — she’s asked me to give her away.’

‘And you’ll give her a bloody great wedding present too, I don’t doubt. Poor old Pete, are you dreadfully upset, you’ve been so good to her.’

‘To tell you the truth, there’s this new girl in the typing pool, started a few weeks ago. She did a job for me the other day and we got talking — you know how it is.’ Bet nodded, she knew how it was with Pete anyway, and God knew, she wished that was how it was with her. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Karen. Mother’s Danish. She’s tall and blonde and her legs ... ’ He became aware that they’d somehow drifted away from the subject in hand. ‘That’s enough of that, you’re the one on the agenda, not your poor old Uncle Pete. Now look, ducky, I know you get cross if anyone mentions the chap’s track record, but honestly, for your own sake, you must bear it in mind. No one wants you to be hurt, you’ve had enough pain, God knows.’ He took her chin in his hand and pulled her face towards his. ‘You don’t want to marry him, do you?’

‘Marry him? Of course not. I simply want ... ’ And she was just trying to work out what it was that she did want when Pol, who appeared to have been eavesdropping outside in the yard, stuck her head through the window. ‘So there you are, Pete, I might have known! I asked you to keep an eye on the soufflé while I was in the bath — it’s completely ruined. Do I always have to do everything myself?’

This was altogether too much. Bet, taken off balance, lost her temper. Experiencing an overwhelming urge to knock her sister off her self-constructed pedestal, and throwing caution to the winds, she let rip. Pol listened — she couldn’t do anything else — her mouth opening and shutting like a fish, two red spots of anger blossoming on her cheeks. Was she going to burst into tears? Feeling savage and guilty at the same time, Bet hoped so. But Pol didn’t cry, she was made of sterner stuff. Arms akimbo, eyes flashing, blonde hair blowing in the evening breeze, she stuck it out; then, when at last Bet’s powers of invective finally ran out, she too let rip.

‘ I can only assume,’ she shouted back in a clear, carrying voice as crammed with disdain as she could make it, ‘that you’ve been drinking again, Bet. One would have thought you were old enough by now to accept too much alcohol doesn’t agree with you, as I’m sure Pete’ — Pete, unheeded, moaned a disclaimer — ‘and Miles if he were here, would agree. But then of course you never learn, do you. The fact that I have a husband and you don’t is hardly my fault, and certainly no reason for you to hurl childish abuse at me, as I’m sure you will be the first to admit when you’ve managed to sober up a bit —’

‘Watch it!’ Too late, an anguished shout of warning from Pete. Bet had already seized a potato — the large one full of eyes — and hurled it through the window at her sister. It hit Pol slap in the middle of her chest, bounced off and dropped on the flowerbed, leaving a muddy trail of water all down Pol’s brand new Harvey & Nichols pink cotton shirt-waister.

Suddenly the years fled away, Pete was forgotten, and the sisters were back in the nursery fighting over the rocking-horse —
He’s mine! He isn’t, Mum said we’d got to share him! No she didn’t, she said I was in charge and you had to ask me first if you wanted to ride him! She didn’t, you know she didn’t, you rotten little bully!
Quick as a flash, Pol bent down and retrieved the potato, took aim — she hadn’t been fast bowler in the school first eleven for nothing — and bowled it back through the window. Bet, always quicker on the uptake than her sister, leaped nimbly out of its path, and the potato, knocking Pete’s glass out of his hand on the way, landed with a crash against the kitchen dresses, breaking two dinner plates, a glass water jug and a hideous china windmill Diz had once brought back from a school trip to Holland. Pausing only for a second to survey with considerable satisfaction the damage she’d done, Pol legged it through the gate into the kitchen garden, back to the comparative safety of her end of the house.

‘Just make sure your wife never crosses this threshold again, Pete, will you,’ panted Bet, bosom heaving, a knife from the draining-board in her hand, ‘because if she does, I won’t be answerable for the consequences.’ Then she too fled, leaving Pete alone and near to tears, to clear up the mess.

When Simon heard the story on Monday afternoon he laughed till he cried. Bet crossly threw the soap at him. They’d taken to having baths together now, an idea quite novel to Bet. She and Miles had never shared a bath, he’d been too big for the two of them to fit comfortably into one, besides, he preferred a shower. ‘It’s not that funny. You’ve absolutely no idea what my sister can be like. I often wonder how Pete’s managed to put up with her all these years, he must be some kind of a saint.’

‘Long-suffering, yes, but not, one would have thought, quite the stuff of saints; more some kind of idiot. Turn on the hot tap, darling, there’s a good girl, it’s getting cold my end. So what happens now?’

‘Oh, I expect it’ll blow over. But she’ll damn well stump up for those plates.’

‘Scrooge! What about that caviar and all those drinks?’

‘Shut up, shut up, or I’ll drown you, you randy little wop!’ Bet leapt on him, pressing his head down into the water. A large pool began to form on the bathroom floor, and after a time the water started gently to drip through the ceiling of Nell and Bernie’s sitting-room.

*

‘Mum is
up
to something — I told you.’ Nell and Bernie stood looking up at the damp patch on their ceiling. ‘Nonsense, she just let the bath run over, that’s all. Perhaps she fell asleep, you said she’s been looking tired lately.’

‘But Mum never has a bath in the daytime.’

‘So people change their habits.’

‘Something’s going on, I know it is. Why, for instance, does she never mention Simon Morris? They were as thick as thieves at the party, and he told me he would be staying at the Manor while Miss Westover’s away. What’s more, I bumped into Mrs Bone in town yesterday, and she said Simon was here one afternoon last week; she happened to be passing in the bus and saw his car parked in our yard. How come Mum never mentioned it?’

‘And you think your Mum and Simon Morris are having baths together in the afternoons?’ Bernie said, meaning it as a joke, then suddenly thinking it might not be.

‘It’s possible, I suppose ... but Mum ... Surely she wouldn’t, not Mum ... ?’

They looked at each other.

*

‘You know Bet’s having baths with that man now?’

Pete choked over his drink. ‘Baths, ducky?’ Good Lord, was she now. ‘Yes, baths. They let the water run over and ruined poor Nelly’s sitting-room ceiling; Bernie’s only just finished decorating, too.’

‘Bad show. I mean, about the ceiling. But I don’t see how the blame can be laid at poor old Morris’s door. How do Nell and Bernie know?’

‘Someone saw his car parked in the yard, and apparently it’s there every afternoon, so of course the whole village knows by now what’s going on.’

‘But what about the bath? I still don’t see —’

‘It would be perfectly obvious to anyone but you. Nell says the bathroom was completely flooded and a whole bottle of that Arden stuff I gave her for Christmas had been used up, and Bernie said the place stank like a brothel. Apparently all Bet could come up with was that she must have gone out and left the bathroom tap on.’

‘Just out of interest, how does Bernie know what a brothel smells like?’

‘Don’t try and change the subject. In my opinion you know far more about the whole business than you pretend. Bet’s told you, hasn’t she, she’s told you she’s having an affair with Simon Morris?’

So the old girl hadn’t overheard his and Bet’s conversation in the kitchen after all, one must be thankful for small mercies. ‘Oh all right then, she has. And good luck to her, I say. I’m only sorry she’s fallen for a chap like that, because quite frankly I can’t see any good coming out of it.’

‘Are you saying you condone Bet’s behaviour? A woman of her age, carrying on like a love-sick teenager, flaunting her lover — a man like that, with a notorious reputation — in front of the entire village? Flooding her own daughter’s sitting-room, drinking, fornicating ... ’

Pete waited quietly for her to run out of steam. When she had, he said gently, as one speaking to a child: ‘You do know you’re talking the most utter balls, ducky, don’t you?’

Pol sniffed. A small tear began to roll down her cheek. Pete knelt beside her, a whale amongst the fashionable Victoriana in their tiny Chelsea drawing-room. She sniffed again and buried her face in his shoulder. ‘It’s that stupid row you and Bet had, isn’t it?’ Pol nodded her head two or three times.

Pete stroked her hair. ‘Bet’s a damned attractive woman still, ducky. She had a hell of a shock when old Miles died. This was bound to happen sooner or later — something had to give.’ Pol looked at him, her face vulnerable for once; that look Pete knew well, it was the look that had caused him to fall in love with her in the first place.

‘But Pete, to go overboard with Simon Morris of all people. He’ll ditch her just as soon as he finds someone more interesting, you know he will. And I know you think I’m stupid and old-fashioned, but it’s not a good thing for the rest of us if Bet gets a name in the village for behaving oddly. Imagine what poor Bernie must feel, with his mother-in-law carrying on like that.’

‘Bernie’!! get by, it’s Bet I’m worried about. The snag is, she really does seem to have gone a bit over the top for the damned chap.’

Pol sat up and tidied her face in the mirror opposite; Second Empire cherubs danced lewdly round its rim but she ignored them. ‘We’ll have to find her someone else, that’s all.’

Pete looked at her in admiration. ‘But shall we be able to?’ ‘We can but try.’

Later that evening, after a cosy dinner
en
famille
, Pete, waking from his post-dinner nap, got up from his chair and switched off the television. ‘Ducky?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know Bet and that Morris chap.’

‘Yes?’

‘They’ve given me an idea. Why don’t we do what they did?’

Pol’s neatly plucked brows shot up in shocked surprise. ‘Do what they did?’

‘I mean, why don’t we have a bath together; it might be fun. We could put some of that bubble stuff in it, and there’s plenty of room for the two of us in that new Italian job you insisted on buying. And Pol?’

‘??’

‘Bags I the tap end.’

Chapter Eleven

‘The train now approaching platform two is the thirteen twenty-seven for Liverpool Street only.’ Bet, jittery as a maybug, clutching an overnight bag and far too hot in a denim trouser suit, stood alone on a packed platform at Stourwick station, about to embark on a weekend with Simon Morris. The weekend was bound to be a disaster, it couldn’t be anything else, but like the stock figure in a Greek tragedy, Bet felt compelled to go on and meet her doom. Why she seemed unable to look forward to the weekend like a normal person, she simply didn’t know. What was wrong with a couple of nights in London with an attractive man when you were both unattached, for God’s sake?

The train roared in, stinking of diesel, and there was no time to think any more; Bet was on it, and the die was cast. She found a seat, sat down and tried to relax. She must stop wondering what was going on at home, forget the sweat trickling down her back, and above all try not to speculate on why Simon had asked her to London in the first place.

It was early June now, and she hadn’t seen him since their three weeks’ idyll had officially come to an end just over a fortnight ago. It had been absolutely splendid, Simon said, not looking at her; he’d not enjoyed anything so much for years, and it only went to show what fun things can be if both of you are uncommitted. ‘Yes, doesn’t it?’ Bet said, engulfed in misery and cursing the still, small voice inside her that kept repeating ‘I told you so’. But at least he had invited her to dine at the Manor for a farewell celebration. ‘The food won’t be up to much, Alfonso and I aren’t on speaking terms, but I can vouch for the wine.’

Initially, the dinner was a success, in spite of the food. Alfonso having made a last-minute decision to take the evening off, the fare consisted of a slice or two of what used to be known as Spam, a limp lettuce, and one of Mr Kipling’s fruit pies; the wine, however, was all it had been cracked up to be. They’d dined in a shabby, doggy room known as the morning-room, opening on to a conservatory. ‘Sorry about the smell of dog,’ Simon said, ‘but one gets used to it. It still upsets Alfonso, but then I don’t think Spaniards like dogs much.’

The conservatory was lovely, and in contrast to the morning-room, smelt of lemon verbena and honey. It was littered with basket chairs, battered sofas, old geraniums and back numbers of
Horse
and
Hound
. At the far end, bunches of tiny, hard, green grapes hung down like Chinese lanterns from the tentacles of a surprisingly luxuriant vine. Outside, in the middle of a small, weedy lawn badly in need of cutting, danced a broken statue of Eros. He’d always loved this part of the house, Simon said, ever since he was a child. They’d had wonderful games here, he and Cyn, and in those days there’d been a grass tennis court beyond the box hedge that bordered the lawn.

It was while they were drinking their after-dinner coffee —Nescafe in Spode cups — that Bet asked Simon about his father. She’d never dared before, but somehow now it no longer seemed to matter. ‘My dad?’ Simon took a gulp of coffee, grimaced, and gave the patiently waiting marmalade dog a lump of sugar. ‘Hasn’t Christine Barnet told you all? I believe the legend goes he was an Italian piano tuner; I’ve even heard it mooted that he was an organ grinder, though how that particular story got off the ground I’ll never know.

‘He was, however, Italian. He came over here in the summer of thirty-nine to value and restore some of the furniture. My grandmother suddenly decided something should be done about it and my great-uncle Arthur, who happened to be in antiques, produced my dad. That’s what my dad did, you see. He spent his summers staying in the houses of the rich, advising them on their possessions and occasionally doing a little modest restoration work, and his winters rather more uncomfortably in a bedsitter in Milan, writing not very good articles for various periodicals, and chatting up rich women. Anyway, my mum, a galumphing eighteen-year-old at the time, who’d never been known before to show the slightest enthusiasm for anything other than a horse, fell madly in love with him, and somehow persuaded the poor chap to run off with her.

‘Of course there was an appalling family row, which reached epic proportions when it was revealed after they’d gone that not only had dad seduced mother — actually I’ve always had my doubts about this and wouldn’t mind betting it was mother who did the seducing; we Westovers are a determined lot and mother’s a pretty big woman to boot —but half the girls in the village as well. However, when it was discovered that the worst had happened and mother was in pup, my grandparents relented, and on a downpayment of five hundred pounds the truants were married at a register office in London, three weeks before the outbreak of World War Two.

‘Not long after that my dad returned to Italy, where he joined the army and subsequently — no doubt to the relief of all concerned — got himself killed early in forty-three. I don’t think mother ever heard from him after he went back to Italy; she was simply notified of his death by the War Office. I appeared just as the phony war was coming to an end, and as the last thing Mother wanted was a baby around, spoiling her fun, I was shipped down here and virtually adopted by my grandparents, leaving Mother to enjoy her war in peace.

‘Running away with my dad was the only original thing Mother ever did. After the war she married my stepfather, a monumental bore by the name of Reggie Morris, and bought a riding school near Camberley. They live there to this day. I pay them an annual visit — God knows why, some sort of misplaced sense of filial duty, I suppose — when Mother keeps me up to date with the latest news on her horses, wonders why I never married, and complains incessantly about the ills inherent in the permissive society. Old Cyn has her faults, she’s rude and philistine and drinks too much, but she does live and let live, and I’ve always loved this place.’

‘Do you know what your father looked like?’ Bet, fascinated, saw it all. The galumphing, privileged girl in her jodhpurs and Aertex shirt that last, baking summer before the war. Hitler’s armies on the march, marionette figures with arms raised in the Nazi salute, strutting through country after beaten country, pursued by rumbling tanks. Evacuees, gas masks, Peace in our Time, strawberries for tea, village cricket, gymkhanas. The young, dark-haired, doomed Italian, exotic as a peacock in a farmyard; like Simon, only not like Simon ... ‘ Kiss me, Angelo ... I love you, love you, love you ... Better than the horses, better than Daddy and Mummy, better than anything ... ’

‘Are you listening, Titania, you’ve a faraway look in your eye. Yes, I do know what he looked like, I’ve a photo of him somewhere, one of those sepia affairs taken in the twenties. He looks like a poor man’s Rudolf Valentino — hair smarmed down and parted in the middle, a stiff collar, and believe it not, carrying a prayer book.’

‘Oh.’ Bet, for once, could think of nothing to say. Simon got up and poured himself another brandy. ‘Come on, there’s no need to look so serious. I’ve been damned lucky, you know, and the last thing I had was a deprived childhood; any buggering up of my life has been done strictly by myself alone.’ He bent down and kissed the back of her neck. ‘Enough of this soul-searching, haven’t we some unfinished business to attend to?’ They made love then, on one of the broken-down sofas, in the depths of which Simon found an old marrow bone.

Bet closed her eyes as the train rushed through Chelmsford and saw again the brown moths flying about the guttering candles on the dinner table, smelt the scent of lemon verbena, tasted the salt of her own tears. It had not been the same as before, their love-making, she’d felt too sad, her thoughts continually drifting forward to the time when Simon would be gone from her. Indeed, after a bit he’d sat up, shaking the fluff and dust from the sofa out of his hair and saying crossly: ‘We don’t seem to be getting anywhere much with this, do we? Perhaps it’s time I took you home.’ Of course she apologised, tried to explain, but it wasn’t any good, he either couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.

Then, to crown it all, they had a row. The first they’d ever had. ‘Look, Titania, I don’t want to hurry you, but can you start collecting your things, I have to be back here by ten forty-five, Cyn’s ringing from the States.’ And that had really riled her. ‘For Christ’s sake! If it’s that much bother I’ll ring Bernie and get him to collect me.’

‘Oh, don’t be childish, if it’s anything I hate it’s childish women. Of course I’ll drive you home, but I have to be back by ten forty-five, that’s all — I promised Cyn. It’s to do with a deal she’s involved in over there, and it’s important.’

After that they hadn’t spoken until he dropped her at the Rectory gate.

‘Goodnight, Simon, thank you for the dinner.’

‘Come on, Titania, no need to sulk, you’re a big girl now, you know.’ Then he’d kissed her on the top of her head, squeezed her hand, and driven off into the night.

A few days after that — days plodded through somehow, cooking, gardening, walking Tib, listening to Christine’s gossip, arguing with Diz — Nell, jubilant, had announced that she was pregnant, the baby due in December. They celebrated her news with dinner at The George, and for a few short hours, in the excitement of hearing she was to become a grandmother, Bet forgot Simon. But the euphoria was short-lived. Nell began to suffer from morning sickness; not only morning sickness, either; almost every type of food appeared to disagree with her. Bet who had never suffered a moment’s discomfort with either of her pregnancies, found her sympathy wearing a little thin, and burst into tears of frustration and longing when forced one evening to rush into the garden with a pan of gently frying onions, pursued by despairing wails of, ‘Oh please, Mum,
not
onions!’

Then, when she had finally convinced herself that their abortive evening at the Manor had been her last with Simon, he rang. What was more — so typical of a man! — he chose the one moment when she would have been quite happy if he hadn’t. It was the night of the Redford dinner party, she and Pol by this time having made it up; an uncharacteristic aspect of their reconciliation this time was that Pol had been the first to offer the olive branch; usually it was the other way round, with Pol frightened of a rebuff, hanging about looking miserable, and waiting for Bet to make the first move. The dinner party consisted of the Redfords, the Cornwalls, and a friend of theirs as a token man for Bet. The token man, as it happened, turned out to be surprisingly nice. Small (but most men seemed on the small side after Miles), glasses (so what?), with a marked resemblance to a very intelligent-looking fox terrier (she loved dogs, didn’t she?) But definitely nice, and what was more, funny with it. Pol introduced him with all the smugness of a conjuror producing a rabbit from his hat: ‘Bet, dear, this is Donald Stewart. Donald’s an archaeologist, he’s written a lot of books and he knew Miles at Cambridge.’

And there he was, a jolly, sandy-haired man looking rather sheepish. ‘Look, you probably hate archaeology and loathe meeting old university chums of your husband’s. If so, do please say so and I promise to leave you in peace. Alternatively, I have one or two other topics of conversation up my sleeve. While you’re making up your mind, why not have a peanut?’

Suddenly, absurdly, she’d felt like an orphan brought in from the storm. She’d accepted the peanut, said that on the contrary, she was interested in archaeology and she did like meeting old friends of Miles, and where was his wife? He said his wife had run off with a skiing instructor years ago, and would Bet like to come to tea at his place in the not too distant future? He possessed, he went on to say, quite a reasonable collection of Bronze Age pots, but if these failed to please there were always the roses, and his daily was an absolute dab hand at making scones. Bet said yes, she’d love to, and it went on from there.’

It were therefore rather irritating that on her return to her part of the house, feeling happier than she had for months, she was greeted by Nell with the news that Simon had rung. ‘He said he’d ring back later, but I wouldn’t bank on it.’

She didn’t, and stoically made ready for bed. However, as usual taking her by surprise, he did ring back — just as she was drifting into an uneasy doze. ‘I rang earlier and you were out.’ He sounded aggrieved.

‘Pol had a dinner party.’

‘Oh. Anyone interesting?’

‘An archaeologist who likes dogs. His wife ran off with a skiing instructor.’

‘I see. In that case you probably won’t be interested in my proposition.’

‘Proposition?’ God, what now?

‘Do you want to come to London next weekend?’

‘London?’

‘Yes, London. And must you keep repeating everything I say?’

‘It would be nice, but ... ‘

‘You’ll have to make your mind up fairly quickly, Johnny Backhouse needs to know by Monday.’

‘Who is Johnny Backhouse, and what’s he got to do with it?

‘He’s offered me his flat in Chelsea, it’s a bit on the noisy side, but I haven’t a pad of my own at the moment; I’m away so much it’s not worth the expense, so I mostly doss down with friends.’

‘I see,’ she said, playing for time. There was silence while she rubbed one foot against the other. Her feet were freezing; in the excitement of answering the phone she’d forgotten her slippers.

‘Have you fallen asleep?’ He sounded reproachful now. ‘Or perhaps just not keen? The last time we met, I had the distinct impression you would welcome the idea of a weekend together. If I’m wrong, please, do say so.’

‘You’re not wrong. It’s just, well, next weekend is rather soon, and what will I say to everyone’