A Change of Pace (14 page)

‘I’m sure you’ll think of something. Look, I’ll ring you on Sunday evening, OK?’

She told them she was spending the weekend in Beaconsfield with Maeve; Dicky was away, Maeve on her own, and it seemed a good opportunity to get together, they’d been meaning to for ages — which was true. Maeve Riley and Bet had been best friends since 0-Level days in the upper fifth, and until they married, had told each other everything. After that, things weren’t quite the same; they never were, were they, when people married, and Miles and Dicky hadn’t got on. But for all that, Maeve was the person Bet felt she could turn to in a crisis of this sort. Come to think of it, hadn’t Maeve herself once gone off the rails? Some mature student of Dicky’s who wanted her to run away with him to Bangladesh and work for Oxfam.

In fact, when Bet asked for her alibi — late at night on the phone in a whisper, though why she had to whisper she didn’t know, there was no one about to hear her — Maeve sounded quite excited. ‘How splendid, Bet, but why the secrecy? I mean, he isn’t married, is he?’

Why indeed? Bet’s mind slid away from the problem. ‘No, he’s not married.’

‘A flat in Chelsea, I’m green with envy. But what about Pol?’

‘Off to St Andrew’s for the weekend. And may I give you the number of the flat when I know it, just in case?’

‘OK, darling. I mean, what are friends for? But I’ll want a full report. By the way, can I tell Dicky?’

‘Would you mind awfully not, I feel such a fool ... ’ ‘Tickets please.’ Bet sat up; Bethnal Green already, they were almost there.

‘A bit on the sticky side, isn’t it — can I help you down with your case?’ The elderly man seated opposite looked her up and down, and smiled ingratiatingly.

‘Thank you, I’m sure I can manage.’

‘Nonsense, my dear, it’s much too heavy.’ The man smiled harder than ever, and added a wink for good measure. Oh God! It started to rain as she fled down the platform.

Her great adventure had begun.

‘This right then, love?’ the cab driver asked doubtfully as, twenty minutes later, they pulled up outside a trendy men’s boutique at the wrong end of the Kings Road. The rain sheeted down, and a particularly vivid flash of lightning illuminated the shop front just as Bet was getting out of the taxi.

‘It must be, it’s the right address.’ As a rendezvous for a romantic assignation it couldn’t look worse if it tried. Never mind, perhaps it was better inside. ‘The entrance must be round the corner, through that door.’

‘That’ll be it, love, but mind how you go.’ The cab drove away, leaving Bet alone in the rain. A tall, grim-faced girl with pink hair opened the pink front door. ‘Yeah?’

‘Simon Morris? He’s borrowed Mr Backhouse’s flat ... ‘

‘Sim’s in the bath — you can go up, he won’t be long.’

The stairs were steep, and Bet, scattering rain drops, was painfully aware of the sullen girl trudging up behind her. Who on earth was she? Safer not to wonder — never ask questions when you don’t want to know the answer, Miles always said. At the top was a small landing smelling of gas and garlic, from which several doors led off. One door, leading into about the most untidy room Bet had ever seen — even Diz in his worst phase had never reached these heights — stood open. ‘Make yourself at home,’ the girl waved a lethargic arm, ‘I’ll tell Sim you’re here. Coffee?’

‘Er ... thanks.’

The girl disappeared, leaving Bet standing in the middle of the room with her overnight bag at her feet. She was shamefully near to tears, and wondered what to do next. Should she walk out, scream, or just do as she was told — ie make herself at home. But how could anyone but a raving maniac make herself at home in all this racket? Simon’s description of the Backhouse flat as ‘a bit on the noisy side’ must be the understatement of the century. What with rain lashing the windows, the roar of traffic outside in the Kings Road and the gibbering of a television crouched malevolently in the far corner, you couldn’t hear yourself think, let alone make yourself at home.

‘Sorry, we’re out of milk — black do you?’ The girl was back again, this time with a brimming mug of treacly coffee. ‘Fine ... er ... I wonder, do you think we might turn the TV down a bit?’

‘Sim wants it for the racing,’ the girl said, and disappeared again. Bet, seething, threw herself down on the nearest arm-chair, then discovered she’d sat on a bag of doughnuts.

‘Hullo, darling, be with you in a minute.’ Simon stood there, fresh from his bath, hair wet, a towel draped round his middle. ‘Simon, I’ve sat on a bag of doughnuts, and unless you turn that bloody noise off, I’m going ... ’

The pink-haired girl, whose name turned out to be Bo, left at last, taking with her the bag of doughnuts and a sack of washing, and they made love on Johnny Backhouse’s bed to the accompaniment of the rush hour traffic and rock music from the flat upstairs.

‘Who actually is Bo?’ she asked.

‘No one, really. Just a friend.’

‘Does she always talk in monosyllables’

‘Most of the time, but she’s a good sort.’

‘Will she be coming back with the washing soon?’

‘Not while you’re here.’

But then nothing was as it should have been.

Before they went to bed properly, Bet tried to tidy up the flat a bit, but Simon said to leave it alone. Never to tidy the place was, he said, the only stipulation Johnny Backhouse made to his weekend tenants; he wouldn’t know where anything was if they did. Quite sensible when you came to think about it. Bet nodded wearily. She began to worry about Tib; had Diz remembered to take him for his walk?

The following afternoon Bet and Simon went on a boat down the river to Greenwich. Although it wasn’t sunny, the rain had stopped and it was quite warm. They sat in the stern, holding hands and giggling at the guide’s patter. A fat American lady took a picture of Simon, the outline of dockland behind him. ‘It always helps to have a figure in a landscape,’ she said, ‘and Hiram’s none too photogenic.’ Later, they sat in a dusty tea-shop in Greenwich eating sticky cakes and, briefly, life was fun, Bo and the ghastly flat forgotten.

*

‘I think I’ll go back today, after all.’ It was Sunday; the bells of St Luke’s church, Chelsea, were ringing for morning service, and Bet and Simon were the only customers in Colonel Foster’s Chicken Parlour. ‘But Simon,’ she’d said, ‘after last night I don’t think I could cope with chicken for breakfast.’ Don’t be an ass, we can have coffee and rolls, can’t we?’ But the coffee turned out to be half-cold, the rolls tasted of rubber, and the stale smell of last night’s chicken filled the air. The waitress looked at them sourly; the place was open, but she hadn’t bargained for customers yet. She put on a tape; that should get rid of them, they didn’t look the sort who’d like music first thing, it was a mystery to her what they were doing here anyway. But she hadn’t bargained for Simon who, with a hint of Westover authority in his voice, commanded her to ‘switch that damned thing off’ — which, taken by surprise and eyeing him with respect, she did. Quite dishy really, she decided, but a bit on the old side.

Simon lit a cigarette. ‘This weekend hasn’t been a frightful success, has it?’ Bet looked at her plate. ‘Not really.’

Not a lot we can do about it, is there?’ He took her hand and kissed it. All sorts of things they could do about it flashed through Bet’s mind, each one discarded as soon as it showed its face. She stirred her lacklustre coffee. ‘Are you saying this is it, then?’

‘I’m not saying anything of the kind! Why do women always have to be so literal?’ Did she detect a slightly querulous note in his voice? She pressed on. ‘I don’t happen to be ‘women’, I happen to be me. And I’m not being literal, whatever that means. It just seems to me that what you want is to have your cake and eat it.’ He looked up then and smiled. She wished that smile didn’t still make her heart turn over, but it did.

‘I’m not alone in that, for God’s sake! Most people would like to if they thought they could get away with it.’

‘Look, Simon, I’m being serious. It’s no use playing games with me, I don’t know the rules and it’s far too late in the day for me to learn. Let’s face it, this weekend’s been a disaster. I can’t and won’t put up with the likes of Bo and I’m not cut out for
la
vie
Boheme
, and there it is. If that’s what you want, then —’

‘I told you — Bo’s just a girl.’

‘Aren’t they all?’

‘Look, Titania, I’m sorry but I’m not up to serious conversations at this hour of the morning. In any case, soul-baring has never been much in my line. If two people are reduced to discussing their relationship, then in my opinion that relationship’s a dead duck and not worth the bother anyway. Just because you didn’t go a bundle on poor old Backhouses’s flat, and Bo happened to turn up to collect my washing, it isn’t the end of the world, or for that matter — ’

‘The end of the affair?’ Bet was near to tears; her eyes were smarting from lack of sleep, and she had a lump in her throat the size of a hen’s egg. There was a long silence while Simon frowned down at the bill, then feeling in his pockets for change, made the discovery that he hadn’t any. ‘Look, Bet, I know you’ll think I’m trying to get off the subject, but there seems to be a bit of a crisis on. Like the ass I am, I appear to have left all my money in the flat, you don’t think you could possibly oblige ... ?’

‘Oh God, Simon, you’re so ... so utterly hopeless!’ But she was giggling all the same as she opened her bag. ‘How much?’

‘More than it bloody should be. Just give me your purse.’ Hand outstretched, he grinned across the table at her, a small boy let off being sent to bed without his supper. ‘You’re a remarkable girl, Bet Brandon, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’ He took the proffered purse and jumped briskly to his feet. ‘Now, as we still have a couple of hours before you leave for your train, what d’you suggest we do? I know what I’d like to do, but it’s your treat, so ... ?’

Bet looked at him helplessly, she felt like someone drowning in glue. ‘If it’s what I think it is, I have to admit that it’s what I should like to do too, so we might as well do it, mightn’t we?’

They said goodbye in Johnny Backhouse’s awful flat. He wouldn’t come to the station with her, Simon said, he’d always hated saying goodbye at stations, it reminded him of going back to school. ‘But, joking apart, it has been fun, Titania, surely you will admit that? Not this weekend perhaps, I realise that’s been a bit of a flop, but all the other times?’ He sounded like a hospital visitor trying to cheer up a sick relative. Bet nodded sadly, knowing now that she wasn’t cut out to be a hedonist after all. And if feeling the way she did was the price one had to pay for fun — or Simon’s particular brand of fun, anyway — quite frankly, it wasn’t worth it.

‘It is over then, is it?’ she said, trying to think straight but not being able to. ‘If so, I —’ But it was no good, she couldn’t say any more because he was kissing her. And after that the taxi arrived, and after that there was nothing but goodbye left to say.

So ended Bet Brandon’s first, and probably last, ‘naughty’ weekend in London.

*

‘Lunch at the Pigeon Loft, ducky?’ Pete turned the car into the Kings Road. The Redfords had caught an early plane back from Scotland; like Bet’s, their weekend had not been a success. It had poured with rain from the moment they arrived at St Andrew’s to the moment they left it. ‘I suppose so,’ Pol said, ‘there’s nothing in the house, and if I don’t have something to eat soon I shall pass out from sheer exhaustion.’

There was a sudden screech of brakes and a volley of abuse from the man in the car behind. ‘Pete, what on earth ... ? Have you taken leave of your senses?’ But Pete was looking after a retreating taxi. ‘Do you know, I could have sworn it was Bet in that taxi.’

‘Bet? But she’s in Beaconsfield.’

Pete smiled. ‘I don’t think she is.’

‘Make up your bloody mind, mate.’ The man in the car behind pressed his horn hard down. ‘Some of us have work to do.’

*

‘Nelly dear, how are you? ... No, dear, we came back early, it poured with rain the whole time. Then Sally Monroe started flu and Jack said they’d better get back before it got any worse, so Pete and I thought there wasn’t much point in sitting there watching the rain ... I was just ringing to say we’ll be down next weekend, and then of course we’ll be down for ten days ... It’s chips now, is it, dear. Well, as I’m sure I’ve told you, such things do you no good. I never allow Pete any, although he loves them — he’s always had such plebian tastes ...

‘I must go now, dear, but before I do there is one tiny thing. Be a little careful what you say to your mother when she gets back from her weekend ... No, dear, I think you’ll find she gets back today, Pete and I have just seen her in a taxi in the Kings Road ...

‘Yes, odd, isn’t it. Quite a way from Beaconsfield ... !

‘I leave that to your imagination, dear, but I’m sure you’re just as capable of putting two and two together as I am. I can only suppose she feels a bit silly. I mean, lets face it, in another few months she’ll be a grandmother ... Look, I really must go, dear, Pete wants to watch Greer Garson on the box and I must admit I wouldn’t mind seeing her myself. There’s not enough good, clean romance any more. I know you all laugh at Barbara Cartland, but personally I think she has a lot going for her ... ’

Nell replaced the receiver. ‘You know what Mum’s been up to now?’