Casting Off (54 page)

But Rachel had fixed everything. ‘I hope you don’t think I’ve been too bossy,’ she said on the telephone that same evening, ‘but Sister Moore said there was really no point in his remaining in hospital so I’ve arranged for him to go and stay with an old colleague of mine – a retired sister, who takes people in from time to time for light nursing or convalescence. She lives in Ealing, so you could visit him there. But I’ve told her what’s been going on, and she’s a very sensible person. I’m sure she will get him over the next stage. And, meanwhile, we can find him something more congenial to do than sit in a cubbyhole at Cazalets’ struggling with figures, which he says he’s not good at. I think what we should aim at is getting him a job in some community or institution, somewhere where there is built-in company for him. Sister Moore said that he was underweight, and his kidneys are not too good, so he needs a good rest first. I’ve talked to him a bit about this and told him that I’ll go and see him when he’s in Ealing.’

When she tried to thank Rachel, she was interrupted: ‘Oh, no. It’s the kind of thing I enjoy doing. I only hope you don’t think I’ve been too bossy. He’s such a sweet fellow and he deserves a better deal. There must be hundreds of people like him, mustn’t there? Who’ve really been wounded in the war, but in ways that don’t show so they simply don’t get the right attention.’ She paused for breath. ‘There was one rather sad thing. He gave me his address book because he wanted me to ring his dentist to cancel his appointment. The only addresses and numbers in it were the dentist and you.’

The morning had almost gone. As she got up, with the notion of having a bath, she thought about her visit to Johnnie the previous week. A fortnight with Sister Crouchback had worked wonders. He looked less shrunken and less generally pathetic; there was some colour in his face, and his clothes looked well cared-for – a properly ironed shirt, and his trousers pressed, his sparse hair neatly combed, his shoes polished. ‘He’s been learning to knit,’ Sister Crouchback declared. ‘Taken to it like a duck to water. And he’s cut my privet for me quite beautifully. I’m beginning to wonder what I’d do without him.’ And she saw him turn pink as she ended, ‘There’s nothing like having a man about the house, though I say it as shouldn’t.’

How lucky I am, she thought, compared to Johnnie! And she lay in the bath, counting up her blessings: a nice large house, not beautiful but convenient, a housekeeper who relieved her of all the shopping and cooking that had dominated her life for so long, four healthy children, and Edward, who had given up his marriage to marry her. What more could she want? But somehow she did not feel up to pursuing this question.

PART FOUR

One

Spring 1947

She sat at the built-in dressing table on which was a shallow cardboard box and a large bottle of nail-varnish remover. The box contained five very small turtles whose shells were thickly covered with bright green or bright yellow glossy paint. She had bought them that morning from a man who stood on a street corner of Madison Avenue and 48th Street with a tray of them. They cost five cents each and she was buying them to save their lives, since, covered with the paint, their shells were unable to breathe. She got a wad of cotton wool out of the dressing-table drawer and soaked it in the acetone. It took a long time to clean each turtle: the top layers of paint came off quite easily, but there was always a good deal left in the minute cracks and crevices. The turtle withdrew its head, which was a good thing, she thought, as the fumes of the acetone might also be bad for it. When she had got all the paint off, she took it to the bathroom and washed the shell with warm water and a bit of soap. Then she dried it on her face towel, and finally tipped some almond oil into a face cream lid, dipped her finger in it and gently massaged the oil into the shell. Then the turtle was ready to join the others – already cleaned – who sat in the bath. They had been in the hotel for nearly three weeks and now she had thirty-five of them cleaned.

Michael had been very nice about it. The turtles had to be moved every day for them to have baths and she used a dress box from one of her numerous shopping expeditions to house them. She fed them on chopped-up greens, which she ordered every day for breakfast: ‘A green salad with no dressing.’ Her plan was to take them back to England on the boat, and give them to the Zoo. Michael had pointed out that the more she bought, the more the street vendors would procure, and although she recognized the logic of this, she simply couldn’t bear to pass the trays of the miserable little creatures and do nothing. Anyway, cleaning them passed the time.

They had come to New York for Michael’s show at a gallery on East 57th Street. The show had been a success: portrait drawings of well-known people had been bought, and commissions placed for oil portraits. Michael was out all of every day fulfilling some of them (he was going to have to return to do them all). Today, he was painting Mrs Roosevelt on behalf of a charity that she sponsored. In the mornings, Louise stayed in bed until after breakfast, and then got up very slowly. She felt ill most of the time because the food was so rich. Even if she asked for a boiled egg for breakfast, two arrived, and it seemed a fearful waste not to eat them. Then, most evenings, they were invited out – to large dinner parties chiefly full of people at least twenty years older than she, where enormous meals were presented: great steaks dripping over the plate, fish in rich creamy sauces, elaborate and delicious ice creams. All this would be eaten after at least an hour and a half of Martini drinking, and, she had noted with surprise, many of the men would accompany their dinner with huge glasses of creamy milk. Unlimited butter had contributed to her ill-health. It seemed so wonderful and extraordinary to have as much as she liked – and what was called French bread to spread it on. There were amazing salads for one accustomed to a few limp lettuce leaves, a slice of cooked beetroot and half a tomato. These salads had little pieces of fried bread in them, and dressings made of blue cheese or mayonnaise. She ate an avocado pear for the first time in her life, stuffed with prawns and covered with a thick pink sauce. She ate aubergines, which she found delicious and tasting like nothing else. Best of all were the plates of oysters or cherry-stone clams with which many dinners began. For the first two or three days she had eaten everything put in front of her, but after that she was forced to be more prudent. But she still felt sick, and her back ached. Michael had been incredibly generous; he had given her
carte blanche
to go shopping, and she had made a list in England of people’s sizes, and was buying everyone presents. Nylon stockings, lovely idler shoes made of kangaroo hide, beautiful underclothes, trousers, innumerable pretty cotton shirts, clothes to last Sebastian at least two years. The stores, as they were called, were intoxicating; not being bounded by clothes coupons made choice far easier, and things seemed incredibly luxurious and cheap. She knew that there were five dollars to the pound, but the money seemed quite unreal – like playing Monopoly, it hardly counted. She bought herself a black velveteen raincoat, and a pale pink oilskin – and one for Polly, trimmed with dark blue corduroy. There were leather belts in every imaginable colour: she had bought them for all the people she could think of. She bought yards of soft thin raw silk for Aunt Zoë and Polly and Clary, and one length for herself. She bought cotton quilted housecoats for the girls and herself. Every morning she staggered back with boxes and bags of these things and entered the appropriate gifts against her list. She bought pyjamas and shirts for Michael. She walked and walked until she was exhausted. People were very nice to her. Her accent seemed to amaze people. ‘Can’t you speak English?’ a bus conductor had said, after trying to understand where she wanted to go, and when she said no, he seemed convulsed and said lady, she sure was something.

She had gone on like this for about ten days, although sometimes somebody she met at the gallery or at dinner took her out sight-seeing: to Radio City, in a ferry to Ellis Island, where the immigrants had once been landed and sorted out, to the Frick Museum, where the pictures were shown so that each one was like a jewel. The bookshops were full of books printed on white paper – as white as the bread. It was spring, the sky was blue and the air was sharp and exhilarating, and when she walked down the narrower streets, the towering buildings made it very cold. Often she stopped at a drug-store for lunch and drank large tumblers of pure orange juice, which seemed to her the height of luxury.

She did not remember about her cousin Angela until two days before they sailed home. She had never been particularly close to Angela but, still, she felt she should see her. She looked her up in the telephone book: there were pages of Blacks, but she found them. ‘Earl C. Black’ and the address was Park Avenue, which she had been in New York long enough to know was smart.

Angela answered the telephone and immediately invited her to lunch.

‘Today?’

‘If you’re free.’ The flat – she was learning to call it an apartment – was in an imposing building. ‘Take the elevator to the eleventh floor,’ Angela said, when she had pressed the buzzer marked Black. She was there at the open door. She wore a narrow black skirt and a scarlet smock. ‘What a lovely surprise! Yes, it’s due in a couple of weeks,’ she said, as Louise, embracing her, encountered her stomach.

She led the way into a large, long sitting room, with windows all the way down one side. A pale carpet covered the floor; one wall had an enormous glass-fronted cabinet filled with blue and white porcelain, and at the far end, over the mantelpiece, hung a portrait of Angela, in a man’s green shirt, sitting in a chair with her hair down, that was somehow familiar.

‘Rupert’s picture of me,’ Angela said, seeing her look at it. ‘He gave it to us for our wedding. I don’t care for it much, but Earl’s mad about it. So.’ She gave a happy shrug, implying that anything went that he was mad about. ‘You look lovely, Louise.’

‘So do you. I’ve never seen you look better.’ It was true. Her pale skin glowed faintly with health, her hair shone. She wore no make-up excepting a pale pink lipstick.

‘I’ve never felt better. I feel as big as a house, but it doesn’t seem to matter.’

She wanted news of the family, and Louise, in trying to give it, realized how much she had cut herself off from them. ‘You know that the Brig died,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes. Mummy wrote me about that. And Christopher’s given up his farm job and gone to live with Nora and Richard. How’s your baby? Only I suppose he isn’t a baby any more – he must be about three?’

‘Yes. He’s fine. Walking and talking and all that.’

‘Oh, I can’t
wait
! I must show you the nursery I’ve made. Earl let me do it just as I liked, and I’ve finished it just on time. We’re having a chicken salad for lunch. I hope that’s OK. Earl thought I might like to have you to myself,’ she explained, as they went to collect the lunch laid out on trays in the kitchen. ‘He sent you his love and hopes you’re enjoying New York.’

‘Is he out of the Army?’

‘Oh, yes – ages ago. He’s back in practice.’

‘Of course – he’s a doctor.’

‘He’s a psychiatrist. He has a small apartment on the ground floor of this block where he works. He has so many patients now that he has to keep referring people. He says we’ll be rich enough to buy a cottage out in the country so that the baby will get to have a nice open-air life. I feel so lucky, Louise.’

‘I think you were awfully brave to come out here by yourself and get married without your family about.’

‘I had a funny trip out, I can tell you. The worst crossing they’d ever had, according to the Captain, and everyone threw up practically, except me. I didn’t miss a single meal. There were four hundred of us.’

‘How do you mean “us”?’

‘GI brides. Except, of course, I wasn’t one. I was just a fiancée. It was an awful trip. But then Earl met me on the quay and brought me back here, and we got married the following day. It was wonderful. No, I wasn’t brave. I knew I wanted to marry Earl. I
knew
I was in love with him.’

Later, when she had shown the nursery: ‘I made it blue, because it would be silly in pink if it’s a boy,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think I
could
be happier until I got pregnant. Did you feel like that?’

‘Not exactly.’

Angela gave her a quick look and fell silent. She had asked about Michael earlier, and Louise had told her about the exhibition being a success. ‘Would you like to bring Michael to dinner?’ Angela asked – with some diffidence.

‘We’re leaving in two days, and he’s made plans for the last two evenings. I’d much
rather
come to you.’

Then, because she was in a strange country, and because she was leaving so shortly, and perhaps, most of all, because so much of her life seemed unreal, she said: ‘I don’t feel like you at all. I didn’t want my child when I had him. So now I’ll never know whether I would ever have wanted him. I don’t think I love Michael. I think I may have to leave him.’ And then, the enormity of what she had just said was too much for her, and she burst into tears.

Angela moved to her – they were back in the sitting room – took the coffee cup from her shaking hand and put her arms round her, holding her without saying anything until she had stopped crying. ‘I’m so
sorry
,’ she then said. ‘It must be so awful for you – so difficult and awful. I wish I could help.’

‘Would you like to talk to Earl?’ she said, when Louise had dried her eyes. ‘It can be a help to talk to someone who is outside the situation. And he’s really kind and good.’

‘No. I tried that. You won’t tell any of the family, will you? I mean – I haven’t made up my mind about what to do. I must do that on my own.’

‘Of course I won’t. Will you keep in touch, though?’

She said she would.

At the door, when she was leaving, Angela said, ‘I meant it about keeping in touch. You could come and stay with us.’