A Rather English Marriage (18 page)

Suddenly she turned to him. ‘Does
she
visit him? That other one?'

‘I've no idea,' said Roy.

It wasn't true. He did know. Yes, Sheila visited Alan, and Alan had written to him warning that once he was out of prison, he would divorce June so as to be free to marry Sheila legally. Roy couldn't bring himself to tell June that, not just before Christmas. To his relief she fell asleep as well.

The plush grey car rolled smoothly along the middle lane, content to be overtaken by frantic smaller cars whose drivers sneered as they shot past. I did her an injustice, Roy thought. She does care for Alan, she really cares. I never knew that before. She's not a bad girl, and
he
thought she was the bees' knees, once. Why did it all go wrong?

It was nearly seven o'clock when Reggie came home in high good humour.

‘Jolly good show!' he said. ‘Jolly good show! Join me in a snifter? Good day out?'

‘Car went like a bird,' said Roy. ‘Thanks for letting me have it.'

‘Any time, old chap. Just let me know. Any time.'

Christmas was over, and both men had been given boxes of crisp cotton handkerchiefs shaped into triangles with vicious hidden pins, soft pairs of chevron-patterned socks, and ties, sludge-coloured for Roy, and fat silk for Reggie. Christmas was over, and the tree had started to drop greyish needles in a circle around itself. Christmas was over, and the dry, curling remnants of turkey were finally discarded. Without waiting for Twelfth Night, the decorations had been taken down and put away in carrier bags under the stairs. And with Christmas over, life returned to normal. Only New Year's Eve was still to come.

Reggie still thought of New Year's Eve as Hogmanay, harking back to the boisterous times of his childhood, family and servants whirling together, drunk together, on just this one night of the year. He had cajoled Liz into agreeing to have dinner with him that evening, though he was forced to accept her proviso - rum idea, he thought - that they would separate before midnight. He was cheesed off at the prospect, but it was that or nothing and with a bit of luck and a following wind he could manoeuvre her back to his place, or himself into hers. He had not yet seen her house, except from the outside on the one occasion he had dropped her off.

After some research he'd decided to take her to eat at a restaurant called Thackeray's House. Not too big to provide a nice cosy atmosphere for the turn of the year, but without vulgar hilarity. He wanted no sashaying round the tables in a conga to destroy the romantic mood he hoped to create. The place offered good English food, nothing on the menu he wouldn't be able to translate, and the owner, Bruce, was a nodding acquaintance from occasional visits to the Conservative Club next door. Most important of all, it was his end of town not hers, and he'd rather operate in his own airspace.

*

Liz had spent the day in the shop behind drawn blinds, marking down prices for the sale. A lot of stock was hanging about on the rails - city suits with long shorts had been a non-starter: she didn't see how she was ever going to shift those, or the gauzy Renaissance-style evening dresses that were too advanced for the tastes of Tunbridge Wells, however rapturously they were acclaimed in Milan. Sometimes you had to stay ahead of the trend, and sometimes you had to dawdle behind it; the problem was knowing which. The recession everyone talked about seemed to have arrived, and, as she slashed prices, she knew she was shaving her own profit margins uncomfortably fine. But with Christmas over, none of this stuff was going to sell at full price; she depended on people picking up a bargain with their gift cheques from indulgent husbands or daddies. After that it was cruisewear until the spring. Cruisewear! I should be so lucky, she thought, and was reminded of the advantages to be gained by succumbing to Reggie's increasingly ardent hints. He'd given her a piece of expensive costume jewellery for Christmas, with the clear implication that next year it could be for real.

Liz selected a dark blue Jean Muir evening dress, cut on the bias from silk crepe that slithered round her breasts and over her hips to toss and flicker just above her ankles. She needed a piece of good gold to complete the look. On an impulse she had slipped down the road to her friend Colin Thurlwell, who designed and made real jewellery in clever modern shapes. His face lit up with conspiratorial glee when she explained why she needed to borrow a piece just for the evening. Together they sorted through the necklaces that lay coiled in their separate chamois-leather pouches, deciding on a rose-gold chain of interlinking Paisley shapes that lifted and slid and caught the light as her head turned and her collarbone moved.

‘Colin, you're an angel! Bless you,' she said.

‘Just make sure you bring it back, OK? No, I won't charge you anything; but it's £1,500 if you lose it, so don't leave it on the bedside table, or in his pocket. And get him in here when
the time comes for the ring, darling, or I'll have your guts for garters.'

She had refused a drink at Reginald's house; refused even to let him pick her up; she wanted to make an entrance on her own terms. She let him wait ten minutes at the restaurant while she sat with crossed ankles on her own sofa at home, weighing the odds as she downed half a pint of milk to keep her head clear. She had not yet been to bed with him, though she knew she would have to before it came to a proposal. Did she want the proposal? That was the point.

Liz stood up and examined herself in the long mirror in her hall. She looked good; indeed, she might never look this good again. The dark blue dress was as chaste as a nun's habit until she moved, when the long shallow undulation from throat to waist and waist to knee was outlined as though by a Greek breeze upon Greek drapery. The necklace was the only piece of jewellery she wore; she had decided against his brooch and even taken off her watch. Her hair was rolled into an old-fashioned French pleat. Her make-up had taken three-quarters of an hour, yet its final effect was smooth, almost invisible.

She walked into the restaurant unsmiling and saw the bluff, anxious expression drain from his face and his jaw drop.

‘I am dining with Mr Conynghame-Jervis,' she said to the head waiter.

Roy and Molly Tucker sat facing one another in her front parlour. She had cooked a joint: rolled breast of lamb with onion-and-sage stuffing, accompanied by parsnips and potatoes from the allotment and followed by a fluffy treacle pudding. Roy had brought a six-pack of Guinness (‘And you'll be taking five back with you!' Molly said), and now, replete, they sat in front of the popping, honeycombed gas fire that gave out a faint odour of singed dust. She had been good company, sentimental but not maudlin, jolly without being raucous and Roy had made an effort to be cheerful rather than (as he would have preferred and thought proper on New Year's Eve) reminiscent.

She listened sympathetically when he told her about the prison visit, and Christmas with June and the boys. With a heavy heart he had concealed from them Alan's plan to move in with Sheila.

‘Hope you've given him a piece of your mind!' she said indignantly.

‘Don't like to go poking my nose into what's not my business. He's a grown man now.'

‘Course
it's your business!' Molly said, eyes flashing, fists clenching unconsciously. ‘Your
grandsons
are your business. Now they're got no Nana to stick up for them, you have to do it! Give him a good old dressing-down, your next visit. Time to think - that's what he's got plenty of. You give him something to think about!'

‘If he wants to go off with this other one, I can't stop him. Not if he doesn't want to be married to June.'

‘
She
hasn't got no children, has she? The new one – what's her name? Sheila? Well then. That's what makes the difference. He'll be brooding about his boys, wondering what's going to happen to them, whether they'll end up in the nick like him. You got to harp on that. A man wants his family, deep down. June's given him family and this other missus hasn't. Grace would have told him, fair and square.'

‘Grace never knew, and thank God she didn't.'

‘Well, let's hope she didn't.'

‘Molly! What're you saying?'

‘She was no fool. For all I know, she may have thought she was protecting you, just like you think you protected her. No, we didn't never discuss it. But
I
knew, and there's plenty of wagging tongues … Well, too late now. You worry about those lads. Now then, Roy Southgate, I hope you don't think
I'm
sitting up to see the New Year in. Time I showed you the door, or the neighbours'll talk.' She cackled with laughter, teasing and suggestive despite her seventy-odd years. Roy looked at her, thinking, She'd still be game for a bit on the side; and censored the thought that followed.

*

The long-case clock in the marble hall was chiming eleven as Roy entered. He had been tempted to go back to his own home, but in the end the melancholy thought of spending his first New Year's Eve without Grace alone in the house they had shared drove him reluctantly to Reggie's. Here at least the lights burned in the hall, a fire in the grate, and his bedroom was warm. He went down to the kitchen to put the remaining cans of beer in the fridge, and made himself a cup of tea. He'd see the new year in on the television, since Reginald didn't seem to be back.

The drawing-room glittered softly, pristine and plump. Roy stirred the fire, which hissed and flared as he settled a couple more logs. He switched on the television, sat down in front of it and almost immediately fell asleep.

Slack-shouldered with weariness and disappointment, Reginald climbed the steps to the front door, turned the key in the square brass lock and shut the door behind him. Damnation take the woman! He folded his fist around the small box in his coat pocket for a moment. He could hear the television next door, blaring bloody jollity. He took off his navy blue coat and slung it over a chair. The little man must be sitting up, waiting for him, blast it.

As he looked into the drawing-room, Roy started awake. ‘Must've closed my eyes for a minute,' he mumbled. ‘Whatsa time?'

Reginald shot his cuff. ‘Quarter to,' he said. ‘Midnight.'

He crossed the room towards the squawking kaleidoscope on the screen and turned it off. The silence was abrupt and shocking.

‘Music,' he said. ‘Anything but that rubbish. “Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon. All I want is loving you and –”'

‘“Music, music, music.'”

‘I need a stiff drink,' said Reginald. ‘How about you? Break a rule?'

‘I don't mind if I do,' Roy said. ‘Seeing as it's -'

‘Scotch? Cognac?'

‘I'll have a brandy. Shall I pour it myself? I like soda in it.'

‘Soda? You're not wrecking my Remy Martin with soda.
Here you are. One for you and one for me. Down the hatch!'

Roy cradled the big brandy balloon, inhaling its potent, fiery fumes, while Reginald bent unsteadily over the record cabinet discarding various classical symphonies and opera selections. That was Mary's stuff. Never been his taste. But they must have had music for parties, long ago and far away. They'd given parties in their time, when they were young. Must have done. Of course - there was that fancy-dress party they'd had once. He'd dressed as a goat, with horns on an elastic band round his temples; little goatee beard stuck on; and - the crowning touch - a small bunch of grapes tied to a string, dragging behind him. ‘What's that for?' Mary had puzzled. ‘Goat's, turds,' he had said and she shrieked with delighted laughter. ‘Oh Reggie, you are a hoot!' she'd said. ‘You really are a scream!'
Had
he really been a scream?

Where the blazes … ah!
The Music of Jerome Kern
. He picked out the dog-eared record sleeve, the sleek Forties face of a bandleader smiling invitingly beside a list of favourite tunes, and slipped the record on to the turntable. Sweet, nostalgic rhythms filled the room.

‘That's better,' Reggie said. He snapped his fingers in time to the beat, tapped his foot and began swaying to the familiar sound of ‘A Fine Romance'. Roy's feet, too, were tapping, his shoulders lifting alternately. The tune changed to ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes'. Reginald began to move forward, his arms extended, hands cupping the air in front of him. ‘“They said, someday you'll find,”' he crooned '“all true love is blind …”'

Roy stood up. “‘I at first replied, when a loving flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes.”' His gruff voice was uncertain but he knew the words and joined in with the yearning tremolo on the record. He shut his eyes.

Reginald stepped forward and gripped Roy's hand, putting the other around his waist. ‘No, you fool, here: on my shoulder,' he muttered, and Roy reached up hesitantly. ‘Right.'

The chap was about the same height as Mary, but Reginald was not thinking of his wife as he glided forward with closed
eyes, much less of Liz (sitting on her own sofa with her shoes off, downing a double whisky and grinning more at herself than at the inanities on the screen in front of her); he was thinking of dancing classes in the gymnasium at school, steering pliant younger boys around its springy floor; or in the village hall, where local girls had giggled at his clumsiness over the Scottish reels he would be required to perform at their Christmas parties. He thought of all those supple young bodies, innocent and available, of opportunities grasped and many more opportunities missed. If he'd had a son, he'd have told him, Fuck while you can; there'll be plenty of times when you can't. Never mind the scruples, get your fucking done, son!

Roy thought of the Orchid Ballroom in Purley, where he used to take Grace dancing occasionally to the big-band sound of Harry Roy and other orchestras who came from the London clubs and hotels for the evening, the polished floor crowded with young men in uniform, girls in their best frocks, dancing to these same tunes. He couldn't remember ever having danced with anyone but Grace, though he must have done. It was Grace who had manoeuvred his clumsy feet into some sort of rhythm and taught him to indicate by the pressure of his hands and the angle of his body which way they were going to move; just as they had learned together the silky friction of each others' nakedness. Roy felt an erection imminent and moved slightly back from Reginald's forward step, man and girl at once, urgent and yearning.