After Julius (15 page)

The plain fact was that she wanted him – now. Not just as much as she had ever wanted him – possibly even more. Twenty years of celibacy had not helped this at all. It seemed simply
to release a weight of feeling which should never have been allowed to accumulate. And if she was so much older, why should her body go on behaving in exactly the same way?
Why?
He had once
asked her whether, when she wanted him, the feeling started from the top and went down, or the other way round: then, almost immediately, he had touched her, and she had said the other way round
– like an arrow, really, a kind of burning thud; and he had hummed a bit of ‘Jerusalem’ and said he’d known the bit about arrows was pornographic, and she had said why was a
woman wanting a man always considered more pornographic brackets absurd, and faintly improper brackets than the other way round. He laughed and said that he supposed men had had more practice at
dressing up their lusts, or alternatively, no need to clothe them.

She was not naked and she seemed to be either feverishly hot or covered with a cold sweat and sometimes both at the same time. She sat up in the dark and immediately her arms and shoulders were
cold. One spent a great deal of one’s life learning to act truly on what one felt. What could she do now? She sat, for a moment or two, allowing herself to want him, as though he was in
London, or she had the curse badly, or Julius was there: any respectable, irresponsible reason – anything at all which let the thing stay just how she felt. Then she turned on the light. Then
she could not help seeing bits of herself. The absurdity, the shame, the imagination of people controlling hearty laughter with social compassion and the most secret indictment – what,
indeed, she might well have felt about someone else, a friend, in her lack of position – flooded over her. Here she was, a woman of nearly sixty, struggling with embarrassing lack of success
over a situation which any outsider would have dubbed sheer lust; than which, if it failed, there was nothing more funny and disgusting. It was hateful to be in a position that could neither be
ignored nor put a stop to. And he would be asleep: she was certain that he had no idea how she felt.

She got out of bed, but even then, she was so governed by her sense of appearances, that she stopped at her dressing-table. For some reason, she had not put on her hair-net, or any face cream.
She turned on the dressing-table lights and three impressions of her appeared. She was amazed at how harmless, blurred, insignificant she looked. ‘What you need is a night’s
rest,’ is what she would have said to these poor muddled impressions. Staring at herself she started to cry. Nobody could afford to hate themselves in this kind of way for long; self-pity was
the only possible descent from such a pitch. She had been alone for a very long time: most women did not have to live without a man from the age of thirty-eight. And if the man suddenly turned up
after all this time, it was perfectly natural that she should feel like this. It didn’t mean anything. It simply hurt. On top of feeling unhappy, she felt dreadfully humiliated: it was very
unfair to be made to feel so ashamed at her time of life: she would feel much better for a good cry that would get it out of her system. So, like a peevish child, she indulged herself in as much of
a show as she could put on, until, snuffling quietly, but with not a tear left, she crept shivering and exhausted into bed.

But this had not prevented her from waking very early – at least an hour before her usual time. Her head throbbed and her bones ached and the thought that this was only Saturday morning
hung over her. She switched on her electric kettle and got out of bed. Two cups of tea and a very hot bath helped. Then she settled down to make herself ‘presentable’, which meant, as
it always had, as attractive as possible. Her favourite tweed suit and some new, rather fashionable stockings further raised her morale, and by the time she drew her curtains to see what kind of
day it was going to be, the sun was up and out. There had been another heavy frost, but the mist this morning looked much less purposeful than yesterday; the sun was pale-yellow and the sky
ice-blue; the lawn glittered and smoke from village chimneys in the valley was the colour of dog violets. She loved these mornings: a cock pheasant swaggered about in the field of stubble at the
end of the garden; there were two perfectly new mole-hills in the front of the main border just where she had planted a new batch of grape hyacinths, and Mrs Hanwell’s cat – whom she
privately thought of as plain dotty – was edging his portly fur through the hedge back from one of his abortive excursions. Mrs Hanwell pretended that he was worth keeping because he was such
a good hunter, but he was far too cowardly to catch anything but butterflies in summer which he crunched up like fairy toast, and then jostled her all over the kitchen for square meals. This
morning she felt actually comforted by the sight of him and the mole-hills and the pheasant. It was eight o’clock, and she went down for the post.

Emma was the first down for breakfast, looking neat and pretty – and nervous at finding her mother alone. Esme asked her what she planned to do.

‘I thought I’d take Dan to see the farm: Hanwell’s, I mean.’ She had her back to her mother while she poured coffee at the sideboard. ‘He’s nice, isn’t
he?’ she added.

‘Very nice, dear,’ answered Esme, and this meaningless exchange seemed to ease them both; Esme returned to
The Times
, and Emma, after some counting, took two poached eggs.

Felix was next. He said a few things like wasn’t it a lovely morning and how nice and English they both looked and yes, he’d slept like a log. It was easier seeing him than she had
thought. She had expected actually to blush and not to be able to meet his eye; but it was all unemotional and quite cosy, really. Things always seemed worse at night. The whole atmosphere was
getting like the first act in those plays before the war that Julius had so much despised: ‘dull and worthless people eating endless breakfasts,’ he had said.

Mr Brick arrived, apologizing for being late. He brought three large and beautiful mushrooms wrapped in a handkerchief. ‘Where did you get them?’

He’d been out, he said. He presented the mushrooms to Emma who took them out to Mrs Hanwell. Mrs Hanwell adored her, and would love cooking them. While Emma was out of the room, and Mr
Brick was at the sideboard, Felix looked at Esme and winked. This brought utterly unexpected tears of gratitude to her eyes: she felt counted, in league with him; sure that he had come to see her
after all. She pushed her cup towards him. ‘Give me some more coffee, there’s a dear,’ she said.

Cressy arrived just at the same time as Emma’s mushrooms. Cressy was one of those few people who, even when no longer a young girl, could arrive at breakfast unmade-up, not seeming to have
combed her hair: in fact, she would have sat up in bed, dragged the four garments she wore on Saturday mornings towards her and somehow got out of bed twenty seconds later with them on. And she
looked unkempt, careless and magnificent. Esme felt both men’s attention on her as she said, ‘Morning all,’ and downed her lemon juice. She looked at Emma’s mushrooms and
made a mock Bisto face. ‘Where
did
you get those?’

‘Dan found them.’

‘I say you are a forager.’ She yawned. ‘Night and Day, You are the One.’

Emma said:

‘What on earth do you mean by that?’

‘Dan and I had a midnight feast: but don’t worry, not in the dorm.’

‘
I
wasn’t worrying.’ Emma had gone a uniform bright pink and glared at her mushrooms.

‘Oh dear,’ thought Esme: ‘she hasn’t woken up in a better frame of mind.’ Aloud, she said: ‘I’ve got to go into Battle this morning.’ She was
looking at Felix as she spoke. ‘Anybody like to come?’

He immediately said, yes, he’d love to see Battle Abbey again, but before she could clinch it, Cressy said:

‘You needn’t, Mother. I’ve got to take my car to Mr Monk. I’ll collect the meat, etc. And there’s plenty of room for a sightseeing doctor.’ She turned to
Felix. ‘From one road, you can see the carp pond or whatever it was that one of the owners of the Abbey drowned himself in. It’s cursed by fire and water, you know. I suppose modern
curses would be by Gas and Electricity: fire and water’s so general. I mean lightning counts, and one year a marquee caught fire at a flower show: they counted that in the curse, of
course.’

Emma said: ‘Perhaps Mummy
wants
to go to Battle.’

‘Well, do come if you want to. I only meant that I’ve got to go, because Mr Monk has my new battery and I need it badly.’

‘No.’ Dignity was not just important at her age, it was essential. ‘You take Felix: I’ve got plenty to do here.’

Cressy looked at Felix. ‘If he wants to come.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Felix. His face had a total lack of expression which, she remembered exactly as though it was yesterday, preceded anger.

So that was that. When everybody had finished breakfast – including Mr Brick, who had concentrated upon food with speechless, unwinking attention – they all dispersed. It was while
she was in the sitting-room finishing her list for Cressy that Felix came in.

‘Is she always like that?’

‘Who?’ But she knew perfectly well who he meant.

‘Your elder daughter.’

‘No – not always. I don’t know what’s the matter. I’m sorry she’s so rude to you.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of me. It’s you she’s intolerable to.’

She made a gesture – resigned, dismissive – really to conceal her pleasure in his interest.

‘Do you mind if I tell her where she gets off?’

She didn’t know what to say to that. ‘She’s not a child, you know.’

He gave one of his Scottish grunts. ‘She behaves like one.’

‘Well – see if you can find out what’s the matter.’

He said he’d see and took her list. Minutes later, she heard them leave, and Mrs Hanwell claimed her attention.

Mrs Hanwell was in an obscurely bad mood, and it took Esme some time to discover that this was because someone had eaten some pie reserved for Hanwell’s elevenses. Mrs Hanwell did not
say
it had been eaten: she simply reiterated that she could not think where it had gone: listing with mounting resentment a number of improbable things which could not possibly have happened
to it. In vain did Esme suggest that it had been eaten by Cressy: Miss Cressy would not
touch
blackberries; it was the same with Whiskey – he never fancied anything sweet –
unlike Hanwell, who had a sweet tooth, and liked his pies cold and in the morning. ‘Well, now, what could we give him instead,’ and Esme started to rummage through the larder followed
by Mrs Hanwell pointing out all the things he couldn’t have because they had not got them. In the end they were settling for half a green jelly rabbit and some custard on to which mixture Mrs
Hanwell said she would crush some homemade gingerbread to give it body, when the telephone rang and Esme thankfully escaped to answer it.

It was Jennifer Hammond. Her husband had been unable to go on his Continental business trip because of the fog, so might she bring him to dinner with her this evening? From her voice, Esme knew
that Jennifer was speaking with her husband in the room. He has to go to London early tomorrow afternoon for a conference, Jennifer said. Had she been alone, she would have asked Esme what she
thought this meant and then, without waiting for Esme’s reply, told her. So Esme simply said it would be wonderful to see them at a quarter to eight and rang off. Jennifer Hammond spent all
her spare time wondering whether her husband was unfaithful to her. Esme was her nearest confidante. Richard spent two nights in London every week, maintaining there a one-roomed service flat which
was almost insultingly uncomfortable for two on the rare occasions when he invited her to share it with him. He also went on foreign week-end business trips; the only time when he had really
pressed her to accompany him had been to Glasgow last February. She hadn’t gone because her older child, Timothy, was getting whooping cough and all the pipes had frozen up. ‘But
Glasgow
– in
February –
I
ask
you!’ she had said to Esme in her little nasal, clipped drawl. She had been married for about five years now, but the highlight
of her career had been before then when she was doing her season and working in a poodle salon in Knightsbridge: ‘Girl With Double Mission’ the
Express
had said of her on the
Hickey page, ‘Miss Jennifer Templeton-Urquhart-Chance does not let the grass grow under her feet either at the Savoy or in Sloane Street,’ etc. What Esme was unable to make out was how
much, if Jennifer was right in her speculation, she minded. ‘Looking a perfect fool’ came fairly high up on her list of anxieties, and it might only be that. Esme had advised her not to
find out for sure, and to take comfort in the fact that husbands who made regular, if clumsy, attempts to conceal their behaviour did not really want to break up their marriages. Jennifer had
stared at her with hurt, dry eyes, and said: ‘I think that’s terribly cynical – dn’t you?’ The vowel in ‘don’t’ got lost these days like some of the
final consonants of her youth. However, some of the advice seemed to have stuck, since Jennifer frequently told Esme that she had finally decided not to make a scene.

That would make eight for dinner. She must warn Mrs Hanwell to make even more of both stuffings for the goose. On her way to the kitchen she remembered wearily that Cressy had condemned both
Hammonds as dull. Oh dear.

She could not stay long in the kitchen because Hanwell had come in for his elevenses (he usually began them soon after ten) and he was so paralysed with shyness that it was cruelty to use the
kitchen when he was there. In spite of having known Esme for fifteen years, he would still start like someone being given an awful fright when she appeared, and then subside into a trance-like
stillness, unable even to masticate – food froze in his mouth and his eyes rolled in slow frenzy round the kitchen in desperate and local effort to escape her presence. Meanwhile his neck
changed colour from Georgian to Victorian brick. Eventually he would be reduced to staring at his hands laid on the kitchen table as though they had alarmingly changed size or were the wrong
number, while Mrs Hanwell, in a loud high voice, gave vent to his alleged opinions. He managed a very small farm about half a mile away and helped part time with the garden. He had once been to
London, to the Zoo, but hadn’t enjoyed it much, and Mrs Hanwell said he wasn’t going again – wouldn’t dream of it. She got out of the kitchen as soon as possible and said
she would make some beds.