Casting Off (11 page)

‘I know,’ she answered. It had been mentioned in passing that morning after Make-up and while she was being strapped into her padded top.

‘Whatever will they do next?’ Marlene had said after the lunch-break, but nobody had come up with an answer.

‘If anyone mentions the word bomb to me again I shall throw a fit,’ someone called Goldie said.

Nobody did.

‘. . . darling, don’t you realize? It could mean the end of the war.’

‘Goodness!’ she had answered. She didn’t believe him for a moment. He simply liked talking about the war.

At the end of the second day at the studios they had the Cargills to dinner and she told them about how she had come upon Tommy Trinder in a corner of the set. He had been wearing a very short, pleated white kilt and he was all by himself doing a little dance, flicking up the kilt with both hands and intoning, ‘Now you see it! Now you don’t!’

It wasn’t a success. Patricia Cargill said, ‘Good gracious!’, and her husband, to be Number One in Michael’s destroyer, gave an uneasy smile and said, ‘How awfully funny,’ before he turned back to Michael who said, ‘Take Patricia upstairs, darling, and leave the gentlemen to their port.’ There wasn’t any port actually, it was just a way of getting rid of her – of them.

She took Patricia Cargill upstairs to the pretty L-shaped drawing room. She had painted the walls white and hung curtains made of mattress ticking – grey and white stripes with yellow corded ties. She was pleased with this room, although there wasn’t much furniture – a sofa and two chairs and a beautiful mirror that she and Hugo had found together. ‘Thirty bob if you can take it home,’ the man had said, and Hugo had said, ‘Done!’ He’d even persuaded a taxi driver to put it on his roof. Now it reflected the two main windows that looked on to the square. She knew, whenever she looked at it, that it still had an aura of happiness, and she could not look at it if she was alone. After the first misery of knowing that Hugo was dead, that she would never see him again and that his only letter to her had been destroyed, she had to shut out all thoughts of him. In her frozen state the memory scorched her: it seemed easier to feel nothing at all.

She set about being a hostess. ‘Do you want to powder your nose or anything?’

‘No thanks.’

‘I’m afraid the coffee will have gone into the dining room but I could get you some, if you like?’

‘No thanks. I don’t sleep a wink if I have coffee in the evenings.’ Patricia gave an apologetic little laugh and fingered the graded pearl necklace that lay unevenly over the salt cellars at the bottom of her neck. ‘Your little boy is two, isn’t he? You must have been married awfully young.’

‘I was nineteen.’

‘We had to wait until Johnny got his second stripe. He wouldn’t marry me on a sub-lieutenant’s pay. We were lucky. He got promotion sooner because of the war. We married in ’thirty-eight – Johnny was in the Med and I spent a glorious month in Gib. We had such fun! Dances, and parties on board ship, and treasure hunts and picnics. Then Johnny got moved and I had to come home. I was pregnant by then, with the twins.’ She gave her apologetic laugh again. ‘I mustn’t bore you with all that. You must have been awfully disappointed when your husband didn’t get into Parliament.’

‘Oh, well, I wouldn’t have been much good at political life. And I don’t think he minded. He’d much rather have his destroyer.’

‘But that’s rather what I meant. I mean, he’ll be away for such a long time. Just when you must have thought you’d got him home for good.’

‘It’s the same for you, isn’t it?’

‘Not really. Johnny’s regular so, of course, I’m used to it. It’s you Wavy Navy wives I feel sorry for.’ Her rather protuberant faded blue eyes rested on Louise’s face with a look of kindly speculation. She leaned forward. ‘If you don’t think me impertinent, I
could
give you a little tip.’

Louise waited wondering what on earth it could be.

‘If I were you, I’d do my
damnedest
to start another baby. You’ll be amazed how the time will fly if you do. And you can get through all the unattractive part while your husband is away.’

‘Is that what you’re going to do?’

‘Oh, my dear, would that we were! But we’ve got four, and I don’t honestly think we could
afford
another. I should simply love to because, after all, I think that that is what marriage is for. Some of it’, her pale face became mildly suffused, ‘is rather over-rated, if you know what I mean.’

There was a short silence during which Louise wondered why she seemed to be the only person in the world who didn’t want her to have another child. Nannie kept mentioning it: ‘Sebastian keeps wondering when he is going to have a little sister, Mummy,’ was one of the ghastly ways she would put it. To change the subject, she said, ‘You don’t think this bomb will stop the war?’

‘Oh, my dear, I wish I did. But you know the Japanese!’

‘I suppose not, then.’ She had never met a single Japanese person and knew nothing about them. One of the things she had discovered about her marriage was that she didn’t know anything about a whole lot of things that she didn’t want to know anything about.

But two days later another bomb was dropped, and within a week of that the Japanese surrendered. Michael, after all, did not get his destroyer, and was to come out of the Navy and go back to portrait painting.

When she knew this, the decision about what on earth she was to do about her life loomed again and she was overcome with the apathy of terror. The film work was over – there had only been a week of it – and she was back to not being a good wife or mother. She had to talk to someone, and the only possible person was Stella, and she realized then, with guilty dismay, that she did not even know where Stella was or what she was doing. Michael had never taken to Stella, and although Stella had always maintained an enigmatic neutrality about Michael, Louise had felt uncomfortably that she did not like him much either. She rang Stella’s parents and Mrs Rose answered.

‘Ah! Louise! It is long since we met! Your son is well? And your husband? That is good. Stella? She is away. She is working on some little newspaper out of town – writing nonsense about what the bride is wearing at local weddings. Her father is not pleased with her – considers it a great waste of her education. Of course I have her number. Wait one minute – I’ll find it. Please, if you see her, try to advise her to find a more sensible thing to do.’

They met for lunch in a pub in Bromley the following day.

‘It won’t be a good lunch,’ Stella had said on the telephone, ‘but it will be quiet if you want to talk.’

The place was empty. ‘How did you know I wanted to talk?’

‘Well, I didn’t think you’d bother to come all this way simply to look at me.’

‘It is good to see you, though. I’m sorry I seem to have lost touch.’

‘We’ve not seen each other, but I don’t think we’ve lost touch.’ She picked up the menu. ‘Let’s get the food ordering over first. Now. You can have soup – tomato – or grapefruit. Both will be out of a tin. Different tins, you will be glad to hear. Then you have the choice between cottage pie or fillets of plaice. I advise the plaice. It will come with chips, which they have to make with real potatoes, whereas the pie will have that dreadful Pomme on top of it.’

‘You choose, I don’t honestly mind.’

For some reason that she could not understand, her eyes filled with tears. She blinked and saw her friend smiling with that familiar blend of cynicism and affection that Louise recognized as a family trait: her father’s smile.

Stella ordered their meal and then pushed a packet of cigarettes across the table.

‘I didn’t know you’d taken to smoking.’

‘I haven’t. They’re for you. Have one. The food will be ages. Tell me what you came to tell me.’

‘I don’t know where to begin.’

‘Is it Michael?’

She nodded. ‘It’s no good. I’m no good at it. I should never have married him.’

‘Are you in love with someone else, then?’

‘No. At least, I was.’

‘What happened?’

‘He died. Got killed.’

‘So now you’re sort of stuck with him.’

‘Michael?’

‘The lover. It is very difficult to fall out of love with someone when they die. I’m really sorry,’ she added. ‘I knew you didn’t love Michael, though.’

‘I thought I loved him.’

‘I know you did. How much longer will he be in the Navy?’

Louise explained about all that.

The soup arrived while she was doing it and a plate with two pieces of rather grey bread.

‘So you see, I thought I had two years to think about everything – to decide, I mean.’

‘You could still have that, couldn’t you?’

The idea startled her, and she rejected it.

‘It wouldn’t be at all the same. I mean he’s
there
nearly all the time. And we have to have dinner with his family at least once a week now that they’re back in London. His mother hates me. He told her about the other person and so, of course, she hates me more than ever.’

‘And what about the little boy?’

‘He’s fine. We’ve got a very good nannie. Zee adores
him
. He looks exactly like Michael did at that age – she says.’ She felt Stella watching her – tried, and failed, to meet her eye.

The waitress brought their fish.

‘Everything all right?’ she said, as she cleared the plates full of soup.

‘Yes, thanks. We were talking and it got cold.’

When she had gone, Stella said, ‘If you did leave, what do you want to do?’

‘I don’t know. Try to get a job, I suppose. I haven’t got any money, so I’d have to. And somewhere to live,’ she added, after a pause.

‘You don’t sound exactly thrilled at the prospect.’

‘I’m not. Why do you expect me to be thrilled at anything? My whole life’s a mess.’

‘Eat some lunch, Louise. One has to eat.’

She separated a piece of the fish from its black skin and put it in her mouth. ‘They taste awful, don’t they? Like thick, congealed water.’

‘Plaice?’

‘Nannie makes Sebastian have them for lunch. He hates it.’ She picked up a chip and ate it in her fingers. ‘Anyway. If you thought I shouldn’t have married Michael, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Oh,
Louise
! What good do you think that would have done? People don’t take that sort of advice from anyone.’

‘But here I am – asking you what you think I should do!’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes! Yes, I am.’

‘Well. Since you
did
marry Michael, and you have a child, I think you should do everything you can before you are sure that you can’t make a go of it. You couldn’t do that if he was off in the Pacific, but you can if he’s around.’

‘He’s sleeping with someone else. Or possibly several someones.’

Stella seemed unmoved. ‘Have you been faithful to him?’

Louise felt her face getting hot. ‘No. Well, I did have an affair – after Hugo died. But it didn’t mean anything.’

‘That’s not really the point, is it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that what you feel about something you’ve done doesn’t alter the fact that you’ve done it.’

‘No. I shouldn’t have, of course.’

‘I’m not blaming you—’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘No. Just wanting to get the facts clear. I think you need to talk to someone.’

‘I’m talking to you.’

‘No, I mean a professional. I think there must be many things you haven’t told me. And some things you haven’t even told yourself.’

‘You think I’m
dotty
or something? You mean I should talk to a
psychiatrist
?’ She had never even
heard
of anyone who had had to do that. ‘Do you honestly think I’m mad?’

‘Don’t be silly. Of course I don’t think you’re mad, but it’s very plain that you are unhappy, and it seems to me that you keep doing things that make you more so. Perhaps you should find out why.’

‘You mean that if I was told that it was all because I’m in love with my father – all that Freudian stuff – everything would be all right? All those people think that anything wrong with people is to do with sex or their parents, don’t they?’ She wanted a cigarette, but her hands were shaking and she didn’t want Stella – she seemed to have turned into some sort of enemy – to see.

Stella reached across the table, took a cigarette out of the packet, stuck it in Louise’s mouth and lit it for her. ‘Whatever we are has something to do with our parents,’ she said, ‘and probably something to do with sex as well. I wouldn’t know about that. But I
do
know something about unhappiness because of my aunt, Pappy’s sister, the one who lives with us.’

‘Why is
she
unhappy?’

‘Uncle Louis was sent to Auschwitz. It took weeks to find out. All we really know is that he was sent there in June 1944. Uncle Louis, and his very old parents and his sister. A friend saw them being taken away.’

Louise stared at her aghast, but Stella’s grey-green eyes were quite tearless and steady as she said, ‘I shouldn’t think his parents survived the journey. Two days in a cattle truck without food or water or even enough air. I hope they didn’t. Anyway, Aunt Anna
knows
about all that now. She has found out everything about it that she could, in spite of Pappy trying to shield her.’

There was a silence while Stella drank some water and she tried to imagine how one lot of people could do such awful things to other people and failed. ‘She had a daughter, didn’t she? You said that she had a grandchild that she’d never seen.’

‘They were sent to another camp. Apparently that happened earlier. They did not live in the same place.’

‘Oh – poor Aunt Anna! It’s too much for one person!’

‘Yes. She can think of nothing but herself and her losses.’

‘How can you blame her for that?’

‘I don’t. I am trying to explain something to you about unhappiness. I’m not saying what people should or shouldn’t do about it – just trying to tell you what happens.’

‘I don’t see how my sort of unhappiness can remotely compare with your aunt’s.’

‘That’s not the point, Louise. The point is that when – I
think
this is true – when anyone becomes more than a certain amount unhappy they get cut off. They don’t feel any comfort or concern or affection that comes from other people – all of that simply disappears inside some bottomless pit and when people realize that, they stop trying to be affectionate or comforting. Would you like some grey coffee, or some pink-brown tea?’