Falling (19 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard
The following morning as I walked from the boat to the cottage where I now spent most of my time I noticed a small clump of snowdrops growing near the hedge. I picked the most perfect I could
find and pressed it between blotting paper weighted by a doorstop she had in the shape of a lion. Then I embarked upon the interesting task of unpacking the tea chests. There were only three of
them, and they had been piled in one corner of the sitting room. The first was full of filing cases and folders, the second contained a miscellany of stationery, a portable typewriter and, wrapped
in newspaper, some framed photographs, and the third consisted of typescripts of films and television plays. After a quick look at all this, I set about the first case.
I looked at the pictures first. There were only half a dozen of them. The largest was a picture of an elderly woman with shingled hair sitting in a basket chair in a garden. Her mother, I
supposed, although she did not seem to resemble Daisy. On the back was written: ‘Jess. Brighton, 1938’. Who was Jess? Then there was a much smaller one of a man in plus-fours with his
arm round a young woman wearing a cloche hat and a low-waisted dress that utterly concealed her figure. The picture had faded to a brownish yellow. On the back Daisy had put ‘Your
grandparents: 1928’. The next was a portrait of a very young man in RAF uniform sitting at a table with his forearms resting upon it. The back said: ‘Your father: 1942’. When I
unwrapped the fourth picture, which was of a very pretty little girl sitting on a pebbly beach and the caption on the back read, ‘You, aged four at Brighton’, I began to get the point.
The pictures were meant for her daughter, Katya Moreland. The remaining two pictures were of Katya grown-up in jeans and a fringed jacket captioned, ‘You at my wedding’. Another one of
the same girl arm in arm with a man in a roll-necked jersey with a pipe said, ‘You and Edwin 1980’. There was no picture of Daisy at all. This was disappointing. I went back to the
grown-up ones of her daughter, to try to detect a likeness, but I could not see it. The one taken at Daisy’s wedding (presumably to Jason Redfearn) showed her looking very sulky. She had long
dark hair flowing round her shoulders. It looked straight and heavy – utterly unlike her mother’s; she had a large mouth, which was compressed, and her expression was almost
dramatically hostile. The one with the young man, however, was entirely different. In that, she looked alive: she glowed, and her mouth when she smiled was beguiling; she looked joyful and carefree
and extremely attractive. But I was not interested in Katya. I wrapped up the pictures again and placed them on a shelf.
For days I searched through the contents of the chests. The files proved to be almost entirely professional papers, filed under the television companies that she had worked for, but they also
contained one or two quite interesting press cuttings that referred to her second marriage. There was one with a picture of both of them standing at the top of a flight of steps, and there was
Katya again in the background in her jeans and fringed jacket looking bored. ‘Register Office Wedding for Playwright Daisy Langrish and Actor Jason Redfearn’. It was not a good picture,
but clear enough to see that she looked serious and he was extraordinarily good-looking. I put this cutting to one side, to study it later when I had fetched my magnifying glass from the boat, and
ranged the files upright along the bottom bookshelf.
I left the stationery and typewriter and tackled the chest full of typescripts. There were a lot of them; in the case of television plays sometimes several versions of the same piece. There were
also some plays, bound typescripts with their titles and Daisy’s name typed on a label in front. I put them aside to read. Would they tell me more about her? They must, I thought, if I had
the wit to divine it. It didn’t seem possible that people could write fiction without betraying themselves – for better or worse. From the novel reading that I had done this had several
times become clear – in spite of my having no particular interest in the authors. With Daisy, it would be different: I would be aware of what she cared about, feared, wanted. I would in some
sense
know
her, and this would make letters to her easier to write since I was aiming at intimacy with someone who must regard me – at the moment, certainly – as virtually a
stranger.
It was well into February now, and I was finding it more and more difficult to leave the cottage to spend the night in the bleak, neglected boat. I could not keep the fire in all day, and
therefore went back to a cramped space that was increasingly dank and cheerless. One night I collected some blankets and a pillow from the spare room and slept in front of the fire, and after that
I visited the boat once a day to see that she was not actually sinking, collected my sleeping-bag and kept it in the sitting room. If Miss Blackstone appeared, which seemed unlikely, I could easily
say that my sleeping bag had got soaked from a leak in the cabin, and I was drying it out in front of the fire. To this end, I left it handy to put there if needed.
About a week after I sent the letter asking what seeds she would like me to plant, she wrote back.
I should like some blue flowers: delphiniums, corn-flowers, only not the pink ones, and some phlox. I love their peppery smell. Poppies, too, I love, the little delicate
ones in pale yellows and whites and pink. And nemophila. You may think it strange that I know all these names, but my aunt had a lovely garden when I was a child and I should particularly
like to grow the things she loved. Lavender – the dark purple kind and if possible some pinks, those white ones that smell so good, I don’t know what they’re called. And
rock roses. Perhaps not all of these can be grown from seed, but I’m sure you will know, and with those that can’t perhaps you would buy me plants? I’m sorry I was so feeble
about money: I forgot that I had some English money in my wallet. Here is some for seeds and/or plants. If it is not enough, perhaps you would let me know. Gardens here – when they have
them – are full of the sort of plants that people put in their Gothic conservatories. I am so glad that the cottage has not got one of
them.
It seems odd, when I have hardly
spent any time in it at
all,
but I really miss the cottage, and especially not seeing it come alive in spring – the garden, I mean.
I wonder if you have started upon Chekhov. I am reading his letters, which are very good and tell me much more about him. I cannot do much
but
read. My film is to go ahead without
me, which is frustrating, although watching things go wrong or be rewritten by director or actors can be worse. So I am stuck here. In the evenings I watch old movies of which there is a
plentiful supply.
I have been looking at the first letter you wrote, and cannot help wondering
why
you are so much alone since you do not like it. Do you have friends who are simply too far away for
visiting? Or family? [This last was crossed out but I managed to decipher it.] Your boat must be rather cold in winter: I hope you warm yourself when you light fires in the cottage. Here, it
seems almost a luxury to be cold – to need warm clothes and hot drinks and fires. Really, I should not complain. This hospital is more like a luxury hotel. I have a beautiful room with
every imaginable gadget, menus like a restaurant, fresh flowers and bowls of fruit and even a little fridge to keep my fruit juice and water cold. Once a day I hobble up and down the passages
with two sticks – I have graduated from crutches but walking is still fairly painful.
Oh, dear, I can’t think why I have written so much of what cannot be of the slightest interest to you. There is too much time on my hands or wherever one keeps it.
I forgot foxgloves – white ones. And I think I had already said I like hollyhocks even if they remind other people of tea cosies.
Yours sincerely,
Daisy Langrish
A twenty-pound note was attached to the letter.
Here, unexpectedly soon, were the openings I had been hoping and planning for. The letter told me much: she was lonely, even homesick. She had begun to display interest in me. Her rereading of
my first letter and her question about why I was lonely showed that. It would enable me to tell her something of myself, which in turn might lead to her doing the same. I stopped my perusal of the
chests and settled down to a letter. It took me all of the rest of that day to write a draft and the next day to edit and copy it out. When it was finished, I read it aloud to myself to see if it
sounded as I wished.
Dear Miss Langrish,
First: here is a snowdrop for you. I picked it from a clump under the hedge near the gate. It is one of the perfect surprises one may find when one takes on a new garden.
Thank you for the money for seeds and plants. I don’t think it is possible to get seeds of phlox, but I will buy two or three of them and they will increase with time and sometimes
seed themselves. The pinks you like are Mrs Sinkins – called, I believe, after the wife of the gardener who bred them. They do have the best scent of all pinks. I will get a few and
then we can get more from them with cuttings. Lavender is expensive and if you want a little hedge either side of your front door, we would need a dozen plants. However, I will leave them and
buy the seeds first and stretch the money as far as I can.
Your life sounds rather cut off from the world. Perhaps that suits you and you are writing and need the solitary peace. Or are you too ill to write? You make light of your accident, but it
must have been serious for you to be incarcerated so long. I wish that there was something I could do for you. I have always been good at looking after people, and alas! at the moment have no
candidate. Please bear in mind that when you are able to leave hospital and come home, I would be able to shop and drive for you and indeed do anything necessary for your convalescence.
Perhaps that is impertinent. I am sure you have dozens of friends who would love to look after you. I want only to say that nobody would take more
care
than I in that context.
You ask me why I am so much alone. It is a long story as indeed it must be with anyone who has lived as long as I have. I suppose a great deal of my life has been a battle against being
rejected. My mother died when I was five and a half, and I don’t think I have ever got over her death. It was fairly sudden: she had been nursing me with the measles and caught it
herself. She then got some chest infection (the cottage we lived in was very damp) and died, I imagine, of pneumonia. My father at once married again – a horrible woman who resented me.
I suffered frequent beatings from both of them, father and stepmother, and felt always in the way. I had a little room of my own, and took to reading as my only recourse . . .
Here, I paused for some time. I must not tell her too much at once, and had also to choose most carefully
what
I should tell her. After some thought, I continued:
My father was head gardener of the great house of the neighbourhood, and as I grew up I naturally got to know the child of that house, an only daughter. This story must seem obvious
– banal, even – but as we grew up together, the friendship changed and I fell violently in love with Daphne and she with me. For some time this situation was kept entirely secret,
but Daphne, who was young and innocent, was determined that her parents should be told in order that they might consent to our marriage. When her father died and she became more insistent, in
vain did I try to persuade her that this would be a fatal mistake, and that I must prove myself worthy of her beyond simply working for my father on the estate, which he forced me to do. I
must add here that earlier, when the time came for me to leave the village school, the teachers wanted me to try for a scholarship for the local grammar, but my father refused to allow this.
So I was, in a sense, imprisoned by my lack of education in a job that I was sure Daphne’s parents would not consider fit for the husband of their only daughter.
Of course she told her mother. I discovered this when Lady (I will call her simply ‘C’ for reasons that you will discover as I write) sent for me, and of course I knew, or
thought I knew, why.
I shall never forget that scene. She was lying on a sofa in the library – a room of great magnificence which naturally I had never penetrated – dressed entirely in black with a
long string of pearls that she kept touching with her white scarlet-tipped fingers.
It is hard to write this. I realize, Miss Langrish, that what happened in that room is more like a scene from a nineteenth-century melodrama than anything else.
‘Daphne has told me that you want to marry her,’ she said, after she had not invited me to sit down.
I said that although I loved Daphne, I knew that we must wait.
‘It is not, and can never be, a question of waiting.’
‘Daphne is prepared to wait. She has told me. Ask her.’
‘I have sent Daphne away. It is better that you do not see each other again.’
‘Where has she gone?’
‘I shall never tell you that. And nobody here knows where she is.’
‘You cannot prevent her from writing to me.’
‘I am sending you away also. Your father has agreed to it. You will be leaving this week.’
‘And supposing I refuse to go?’
‘I think that would be most unwise. Your employment here ceases from today and you would need references. I have provided your new employer with those, but would not repeat them to
anyone else. You do not seem to understand that your behaviour has been thoroughly underhand. You are in no way a suitable person for my daughter, and you are fortunate that I have taken the
trouble to place you elsewhere.’
I could think of nothing to say. My mind – my heart – was reeling from the idea that I would never see Daphne again. I was so shocked, however, by her arrogant assumption that
I would do whatever she commanded that I began to feel very angry.
‘How dare you treat me in this way? Just because I’m working class, you, who have never done a hand’s turn in your life, think you can speak to me and treat me as some
sort of inferior animal. I love Daphne – I—’ and then to my shame I burst out crying – in front of this woman I loathed. It was too much, and I could not stop. I
remembered that I brushed my eyes with my arm and almost blinded by tears, started to leave that enormous room.
And then an extraordinary thing happened.
‘Come here,’ she said, in a voice so different that I turned to see if there was someone else in the room.
‘Come here,’ she said again, with such gentleness that I was trapped.
She touched a stool by her sofa and I sat down before her. There was a moment’s silence while she regarded me thoughtfully as though she was weighing me up and I sensed that she was
going to say something that she found difficult.
‘You look so like your father when you are angry.’
I was silent. I had no wish to resemble my father in any way. I also knew that this could not be the reason for her calling me back.
‘I understand some of what you must be feeling. You are shocked, you are angry with me, you are hurt and you think I am a snob.’
It was all true and there did not seem to be anything to say. But I refused to be placated by soft talk from her. Nor did I wish to display any more emotion in front of her. I regarded her
coldly – I think I shrugged.
‘Poor boy.’
‘You need not think that telling me you are sorry for me will alter anything. I shall search for Daphne until I find her.’
‘I am going to beg you not to do that.
Beg
you.’
‘Why?
Surely you would think even less of me if I did not?’
She smiled then and suddenly took my hand. Her hand was slender and cool. I could have crushed it in mine.
‘I see that I am going to have to tell you. But there is one condition. I ask you on no account to repeat any of it to your father.’
That was easy. ‘Oh, I don’t talk to
him.’
And then she told me. That Daphne and I were half-siblings – that we shared a father, and that nobody knew this excepting herself, ‘and now you,’ she finished.
I was staring at her, and saw that she could not meet my eye. ‘It sounds like Lady Chatterley.’ I said this with an attempt at brutality. She met it coolly.
‘Not quite. My husband wanted an heir. Your father married later that year. And I had a daughter.’ After a pause, she added, ‘There was nothing prolonged about our
association.’ I thought I detected some faint bitterness.
‘Now I think you had better go. There is an envelope on that desk that gives you information about your new position. They expect you two days from now. You will be better placed
there than here, since their head gardener is shortly to retire. If you give satisfaction, you might well take his place!’
I took the envelope without further word, and left.