Falling (14 page)

‘I saw a tin of Nescafé in the kitchen. I could do with a hot drink. Would you like the same?’

‘Thanks, I would.’

While she was making the coffee, I was thinking how I could gain her trust, even, possibly, some sort of confidence. She was not simply the only link I had – except for one brief letter
– with Daisy, but I sensed that she had influence with her. If I could get Miss Blackstone to like me it might lead to a stronger connection. I must somehow get her to see that I was not just
a jobbing gardener, that there were other, more interesting parts to me. This was, of course, entirely true; it was a question of which parts would most impress her.

When she returned with two mugs of coffee I had arranged the chairs each side of the fire with a low table between them. She sat in one and I in the other. She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of
her coat pocket and offered me one. When I had lit both our fags, she said, ‘Have you always been a gardener?’

‘Oh, no. I was trained in garden design and I did do it for a while. It was the design that interested me more than the actual maintenance. But since the war people haven’t had the
staff to keep up really interesting gardens.’ There was a pause, and then I added, ‘I designed and planted a maze once. I suppose I would have liked to be Repton or Capability Brown,
but on the whole they are not wanted any more. People want small, low-maintenance gardens, and there is a limit to what one could do with them. One does not any longer have the opportunities
presented to one that Maria Bertram’s fiancé had at his disposal.’

I saw from her face that she both caught the allusion and was surprised by it.

I have said nothing about her face, partly because it seemed to me entirely unremarkable, but now our eyes met and I saw that hers – a fine hazel – had a lively, penetrating
expression, lighting a countenance that could otherwise only be described as homely.

‘Do you know when Miss Langrish will be back?’

‘In about another couple of months, I think. Why do you ask?’

‘You’re her agent. I thought you’d know.’

‘I’m also her friend.’ There was something, not exactly hostile, but warning, about the way she said it.

‘Then you are even more likely to know her movements.’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I should have liked – with your agreement – to get the cottage clean and warm for her when she does come back. You can see from today that it’s neglected, it isn’t
a very welcoming place. I should like to do that for her.’

There was a silence, during which I saw her looking at me thoughtfully. I took the plunge. ‘It’s not just that. I’m book-struck. Have been all my life. She’s the first
live writer I’ve ever met. We spent an afternoon unpacking her books and arranging them. I don’t know much about plays, but she has hundreds here. I wouldn’t want any cash for
looking after things, just the agreement that I could read the plays. The books are getting damp, as I discovered when I came after the bird, and they’ll warp in the end. One doesn’t
get the chance to thank writers for what they do: this feels like mine. Do you see what I mean?’

‘I see what you mean. Do you mean what you say?’

‘I can’t think why I’d say it otherwise. But it’s clear you don’t trust me—’

‘I don’t know you, Mr Kent. I don’t know anyone who knows you. Usually when people do this kind of thing there are references.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t help you there. I’ve been more or less self-employed all my life, and there has never been the occasion for them. You will have to take me on trust,
or leave me. Though, come to think of it, what on earth damage you imagine I might do to Miss Langrish or her property is beyond me. However, if you have this Whipsnade view of me—’

‘Whipsnade?’

‘A wild animal – better out of doors at a distance. I take it you have no worries about my doing the garden?’

‘That was the arrangement Miss Langrish made with you.’

I was getting nowhere. Worse, I began to be afraid that Miss Blackstone would report back to her client, presenting me in an unfavourable light. I got to my feet and made one last effort. With
all the charm I could muster I said, ‘Miss Blackstone, I’m sorry. I seem to have made an awful mess of things that I thought were quite simple. I’m a country person, and we find
it natural to help one another – no strings attached. But I do see that to someone outside it would sound strange – even suspicious, I suppose. I’m rather given to shooting my
mouth off without realising the effect it might have on other people: it’s a recurrent fault of mine and I’ve suffered the consequences quite enough to know better at my age. Have you
noticed that curious thing about age? How one never seems to be consistently the same? At one point one is – in my case – sixty-five, and then without warning, a crass eighteen. There I
go, talking too much. It comes of living alone and then suddenly meeting two people, both you and Miss Langrish whose work is what interests me more than anything in the world.’

I got to my feet. I had been looking her straight in the face during that speech, pushing my lock of hair – iron-grey – away from my face. I wanted her to notice my hands, which have
inspired many people with confidence as they look both shapely and sensitive and
not
your average jobbing gardener’s hands. Now I smiled ruefully and said, ‘I’ll be off.
Please don’t hold my presumption against me. I’m sure, if you wanted to, you could find somebody in the village – or probably not there as it is a very small one, but in the
nearest market town about five miles away, who would be able to give you references and who would look after the place if you think it needs it. I should really like to go on doing the garden as I
have it all planned and have become rather attached to it. Is that OK?’

‘Of course. Oh, I nearly forgot. Here’s a cheque for the roses. I was going to post it if I couldn’t find your boat.’

As she handed me the envelope she smiled, which gave her face an amused look.

‘No, I won’t hold your being bookstruck, or any of what you call your presumptions, against you. I’m sure you understand that one has to be more vigilant with other
people’s property than one might be with one’s own.’

I agreed with this and we shook hands.

Phew! I thought, as I walked back to the boat. I was thankful she hadn’t bearded me
there.
It had relapsed again into the usual state of squalor. I spent the rest of the day
cleaning things up.

There was not much else to be glad about, I thought rather morosely, as I sat down to my baked beans on toast enlivened by my Saturday can of beer and miniature bottle of Smirnoff. Miss
Blackstone would be as formidable an opponent as she clearly was a friend. She was one of those women – a minority, I have discovered – who seem impervious to men, for whom sex has
played a minor and probably never heterosexual part of life, and who is consequently quite difficult to charm. Not impossible, of course, there is always a way in to anybody’s secret or inner
self, but there are people who do not provoke the urge to try. This has less to do with sexual attraction than one might think. It is not even a question of being either beautiful or plain. Indeed
there are often more barriers to successful sex with a beautiful woman than with a plain one. Which brings me back to Daphne and the dénouement of that chapter of my life.

I suppose I would have to say that in many ways the
affaire
with Daphne was the most unfortunate of my life and, looking back on it, it is clear to me now that it was doomed from the
start. I suppose also that anyone reading this (but I do not wish Daisy to read it – as it stands, at least) would wonder how on earth there was an affair at all. I have said how dull and
unattractive I had always found Daphne, but this would be reckoning without that occasional, sudden, complete metamorphosis that can occur in young girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty.
Daphne was – like Tennyson’s Maud – not seventeen when I next saw her and it is true that at first I literally did not recognize her.

It was a Saturday and one of my days off. I had gone into the local town to buy myself some decent clothes for the rare occasions when I was not working. I had also, since Lily, begun to feel
that I must get away from my father, the job he had pushed me into and the suffocating dependence and lack of privacy that were the chief miseries of living at home. I had fifteen pounds in my
pocket and spent twelve of them at the gentlemen’s outfitters in the high street, emerging in a very short time clad in a navy-blue suit with a pale blue poplin shirt, a dark blue tie with
white polka dots, and some black shoes and dark socks. In a brown paper bag I carried a second shirt (white) and two more pairs of socks. I had jettisoned my old clothes at the shop. I felt
wonderful – kept looking at myself in shop windows and wondering whether people realized that almost everything I was wearing was brand new. It seems odd now to think I could have bought so
much with twelve quid but this was 1936, and money was different. It had taken me a year to save it, after all, but I really enjoyed spending it and spending it so fast.

It was a beautiful early-autumn day and the town was busy with a market set out down the middle of the high street. I decided to walk to the end to see what was on at the cinema, go to a pub and
then explore the two second-hand book shops. Half-way down the street was the shop that sold new books and I could not resist going in. I was looking at the stand near the door, which had all the
newest publications built in a sort of tower – like giants playing at card houses – when there was a cry of dismay and a whole lot of books fell to the floor on the opposite side of the
stand to mine. I went round to help retrieve them and as I straightened up with an armful, a woman’s voice shouted, ‘Hal!’

There was a pause and then she said again, ‘Hal!’ and I found myself looking into the round blue eyes of a slender brunette. It was seconds before I recognized Daphne, so changed had
she become. The freckles were gone, leaving a milk and rose complexion that reminded me of a certain paeony. She was wearing a bright blue shirt open at the neck and a slim chocolate-brown skirt
with a leather belt. The clothes emphasized her neat waist, and her small round breasts. Her hair was cut to shoulder length and was dressed in a style known then as page-boy. She looked elegant,
groomed in a way that I came to know later was unusual in English girls. ‘I can’t say, “fancy seeing you here,”’ she said. ‘I know you always liked
books.’

‘That’s true enough.’ There was a pause. ‘You look very well.’ I meant it.

‘So do you. You look . . .’ She stopped and I saw the faintest blush.

‘Less like a gardener’s boy?’

The blush deepened. ‘Hal. You can’t imagine how bad I felt about that. It was disgusting of me, I’ve never stopped feeling ashamed.’ She was looking at me with a frank
and anxious expression that I remembered and that dissolved years of my pride and resentment.

‘Mummy was always on at me for spending so much time with you, and I suppose I was half showing off to her. It doesn’t make it any better,’ she added quickly, ‘I just
wanted to explain. We never had any lies between us, did we? You said what you thought, and I said what I thought, and sometimes we didn’t agree. That’s how people are, isn’t
it?’

‘I expect so.’ I hadn’t the slightest idea.

‘Listen! Couldn’t we have lunch together? The Swan does quite good lunches, or are you busy?’

‘No. It’s my day off. I was thinking of the flicks, if there’s anything on worth seeing.’

‘I expect there will be. I do love going to the cinema, don’t you? I don’t mind seeing films that I like again and again. If I give us lunch, will you take us to the
film?’

‘All right.’

She picked up her bag, well-polished brown leather, and slung it over one shoulder, and with her other hand, took my arm, and marched me out of the shop.

I had never been into the Swan Hotel. It was also a pub, in the sense that it had a saloon and ordinary bar, but somehow its beautiful sign – a golden swan preening – and the loud
county voices of those at its entrance had intimidated me. I realized that I had never, in fact, eaten anywhere except at home and at the boarding-house near Clacton that Mrs Greenwich had insisted
upon for an unspeakably dreary summer holiday. Judging by the house’s dining room, which I had several times seen when the table was laid – covered, you might say – with silver
and glass for dinner, this meal might present difficulties insoluble to a novice. As Daphne led the way down the carpeted passages with sconces in them that illuminated prints of gaudy and
improbable birds, I was thinking as fast and as hard as I could. There were three options. The first was simply to let things take their course: if I got it wrong, just laugh my way out of it. The
second was to pretend that I knew everything, and when I tripped up (if I did) to brazen it out as my way of doing things. The third was to confess to Daphne that I was a novice at eating in an
hotel restaurant and ask her to tell me what to do. By the time we reached the large, rather full dining room, and were being taken to a table by a knowing little snob dressed up to the nines, I
had decided upon the third course.

How right I was! Not only did it save me untold embarrassment – who would have thought that you’d have not only different knives and forks but sometimes even two
plates
on
which to put different kinds of food? – but it made Daphne even nicer than she had been already. She explained with tact and clarity, and soon I was reaching for my outside knife and fork as
one to the manner born. I tripped up over the first course, which was a platter containing six smaller dishes of different, mostly unidentifiable things. I took the dish of sardines, the only one
that I felt sure about, but then Daphne explained that one could not take all of everything, we were meant to share. But every time she said anything like that, she gazed into my eyes and said
something like, ‘Oh, Hal! You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you.’ Then the faint, enchanting blush would begin at the bottom of her pearly neck and surge upwards, sometimes
ebbing slowly away before it reached the crest of her cheekbone, sometimes persisting until it reached her forehead and the roots of her hair.