Marking Time (16 page)

Then Stella said, ‘You’ve never thought about these things, have you?’

‘No, not in the way you put it.’

‘Your family don’t talk about things like that?’

‘Well, not much.’ She thought of her father inveighing against people who were too lazy to work for their money. ‘My father told me once that he drove a bus in the General
Strike.’

But Stella simply laughed, and retorted, ‘There you are then. Conservative to the bone.’

‘And my mother has done a lot of work for the Red Cross. And charities and things.’

‘Charity is just another way of keeping people in their place.’

Louise was silenced. Everything that Stella said amazed her; she had no experience, no knowledge, no machinery of thought to contest, to deny or even to contribute to these ideas. Much later,
after they had cleaned their teeth and Miss Rennishaw had been to say good night and told them that a tree had fallen down across the drive, she said, ‘But who
will
do it if
you
don’t want to and you don’t think anyone else will?’

And Stella, who knew at once that she was talking about housework, said, ‘I don’t know. I should think most of it won’t get done. Most of it is unnecessary – look at all
the pointless polishing we do.’

This answer did not seem entirely satisfactory, but she was too unsure about everything to argue. Because it was disturbing (and exciting), and she knew nothing compared to Stella, she decided
to find out more, only she felt it was going to be quite difficult to choose anyone else to ask.

They were both going home for the same weekend, and then on the Friday before it, her mother rang Louise. ‘I’m afraid this weekend will have to be put off, Louise. Grania has
suddenly become not at all well, and I have to take her to a nursing home.’

‘What’s happened to her?’

‘As I said, she’s not at all well. She’s been very forgetful lately, and now she doesn’t seem to know what is going on at all, and the servants can’t manage her. So
I’m taking her to a very nice place near Tunbridge Wells where I’m told the nursing is good and she will be properly cared for. And of course Daddy’s away – he never seems
to get any leave – so could we make it next weekend instead?’

‘But I’d be perfectly all right at home by myself. And it won’t take you more than one day, will it?’

‘I’m afraid it will, because I’ve got to go to Frensham to collect her from Aunt Jessica and then take her to the home, and
then
go and shut up her house in London
– deal with poor Bryant who is practically having a nervous breakdown. Grania’s been ordering enormous meals for dinner parties and then not asking anyone because, of course, she
doesn’t really know anybody any more and then she gets very distressed and thinks it’s all poor Bryant’s fault.’

‘Goodness! She’s sort of gone off her head!’

But her mother repeated repressively: ‘She’s simply become very confused.’

When she told Stella, Stella said, ‘Well, I’ll have to ask, of course, but perhaps you could come and stay with me.’

Which, after what they both considered was a lot of fuss, is what happened. Stella’s mother said yes, and then Miss Rennishaw said that Louise’s mother must give her consent, and
then Louise’s mother wanted Mrs Rose’s telephone number . . . ‘What on earth
for
?’ Louise cried. ‘It’s really awful the way they treat us, as though we
were babies.’

‘I entirely agree with you. Particularly when, if we were boys, in a year’s time we’d be considered old enough to go to France and die for our country. Well, I would,
anyway.’ Stella at eighteen was a year older than Louise.

‘Do your family talk about politics a lot?’ she asked in the train.

They talk about everything a lot. They talk so much that they hardly have time to hear what each other says, and then they accuse each other of never listening to anyone else. Don’t look
so worried. We’ll do things on our own.’

The Roses lived in a large, dark mansion flat in St John’s Wood. It was on the third floor and was reached by a lift, like a cage, that made mysterious noises when in motion. The front
door had an iron grille in front of stained glass. It was opened by a small squat woman who looked, Louise thought, as though she was sick and tired of being so tired. She had black eyes with paler
dark circles under them and a mouth that seemed compressed with tragic resignation. When she saw Stella, she smiled and patted her effusively, before kissing her. ‘This is my aunt
Anna,’ Stella said. ‘This is my friend Louise Cazalet.’

‘The other way round, Stella. How many times have I told you that you tell the older person to whom they are being introduced?’ Stella’s mother emerged out of the gloomy
passage that seemed to stretch for ever in front of them.

‘But a child,’ Aunt Anna murmured and, nodding to Louise, she pushed past Stella’s mother and disappeared.

‘How do you do, Louise? I am so glad that you can keep my girl company this weekend. Take Louise to her room, Stella. Lunch will be in a quarter of an hour and Papa is coming back for
it.’

‘That means “don’t you dare be late”,’ Stella murmured. ‘Have you noticed how they hardly
ever
say simply what they mean?’

All the same she was ready in no time and hanging about in Louise’s doorway.

‘Is your mother French?’

‘Good Lord, no. Viennese.’

‘She’s fantastically beautiful.’

‘I know. Come on. Papa’s back – I heard the front door.’

She led the way to a large sitting room very full of fat, upholstered chairs and sofas, glass-fronted bookcases, and a grand piano. One whole side of the room was adorned with huge gilded
mirrors in front of which, on a pair of marble-topped tables, were plaster busts of Beethoven and somebody she didn’t recognise. The tall windows on the opposite wall were partly obscured by
dark velvet curtains that were looped back with thick silk tasselled rope to reveal inner curtains of elaborate white lace. A coal fire burned in the grate, glowing distantly in the crowded
twilight. The room was very hot. Stella took her by the elbow and guided her through the furniture to the far end where Mrs Rose stood beside her much shorter husband.

‘This is Louise, Papa.’

As he shook hands with her he remarked, ‘When you introduce people, Stella, you should use their full name. Your friend is not a housemaid.’

‘Sometimes she is. It’s one of the things we have to do at school.’

‘Ah ha!’ It came out like a snort. ‘Peter is late. Why?’

‘He has a rehearsal, Otto. He said not to wait.’

‘We must, of course,
obey
him. Come, Miss Louise, and have some lunch.’

He led the way through the room to another door beside the one they had come in from, which proved to lead to a smaller room where a table was elaborately laid: a white cloth, silver, rather
heavy, old-fashioned-looking china and tall, straight-backed chairs with velvet seats. This room was curtained in the same manner, but lit by a large chandelier with parchment half-shades on each
candle bulb. Stella’s parents sat at each end of the table and Louise and Stella were placed each side of her father. After a moment, Aunt Anna appeared, followed by a little maid who seemed
almost overpowered by the enormous soup tureen she carried on a tray which she set before Mrs Rose, who proceeded to ladle it into plates that were set in a pile before her. Louise was not used to
soup. It smelled strong but inviting, and contained dumplings bobbing about in the broth and she was not sure how to eat them.

Mr Rose observed this at once, and said, ‘You have not had
Leberklösse,
Louise? It is very good.’ He took a spoonful which included a dumpling and popped it into his
mouth. Louise copied him. The dumpling was scaldingly hot and, without thought, she spat it back into her spoon. Everybody noticed this, and she felt herself blushing.

‘It is Otto’s fault. He can eat food hotter than anyone in the world,’ Mrs Rose said kindly. Louise drank some water.

‘You are a sensible young woman not to burn your mouth. A burned mouth, and you can taste nothing.’ Just as she was thinking how kind he was, he put his spoon down with a bang, and
almost shouted, ‘This soup is without its celery. Anna! Anna! How is it possible that you have forgotten an ingredient so important?’

‘I did not forget, Otto, I could not find any. All the celery was just white stalks with the leaves already cut. What could I do?’

‘Make another soup, of course. I know that you have in your repertoire fourteen soups, many if not all of which do not require celery leaves. Don’t look like that, woman, it is not a
tragedy. I am just telling you that it is not as it should be.’ He picked up his spoon again and smiled at Louise. ‘You see? The smallest criticism and I am treated like a tyrant.
Me!’ He laughed fondly at the absurdity.

In spite of this, he – they all – had a second helping of soup, and while Stella was cross-examined about the school, Louise could look at her friend’s parents in peace. Mrs
Rose, although probably quite old – at least forty – was not somebody who had been a beauty once – she still was one. She was immensely tall with wavy iron-grey hair fastened with
a slide at one side. All her features were large, but so beautifully arranged that looking at her was like a close-up in the cinema. She had enormous dark brown eyes set very wide apart below a
broad forehead from which her hair sprang in a widow’s peak. She had cheekbones like Stella, but her nose although large was not bony like her daughter’s: it had exactly the right
quantity of flesh and she had sharply delineated and flaring nostrils. Her mouth was wide, and when she smiled these statuesque proportions were lit with a beautiful gaiety that Louise found
bewitching.

Peter Rose arrived just as the soup plates had been cleared from the table, and her father was telling Stella that it was absurd that she could not read Italian when he had so often offered to
teach her.

‘You trying to teach me things means you losing your temper and me bursting into tears,’ she said.

This, Louise could see, was about to provoke another outburst, quelled only by Peter’s arrival. He slipped into the room and his seat at table very much as though he wished he was
invisible. All eyes turned to him; he was bombarded with attention, disapproval and questions. He was late; why was he so late? How had his rehearsal gone? Would he like soup – Anna had kept
some hot specially for him – or would he like to go straight to the meat course? (A vast, savoury stew had been brought in by the maid.) He had not had his hair cut in spite of the
appointment being made for him; he would have to go after lunch . . . but this only branched out into a myriad other suggestions of how he should spend his afternoon. He should rest; he should take
a bracing walk; he should go to the cinema to take his mind off the concert. Throughout, he sat, his myopic eyes gleaming behind heavy spectacles, his capable very white hand brushing back the lock
of hair that fell constantly across his forehead, a nervous smile starting and being suppressed. He opted for soup and Aunt Anna rushed out of the room to procure it. At the same time his father
observed that he seemed so full of himself and this concert that he had not even had the common politeness to notice their guest. It seemed astonishing to him, he ruminated, at a volume suited to
someone soliloquising in the Albert Hall, how – considering the enormous trouble taken by their parents – two children should seem apparently devoid of any decent behaviour at all. A
daughter who answered back, answered her
father
back, and a son who utterly ignored the presence of a young lady who was a guest in their house. Could Sophie understand it? But his wife
merely smiled and continued to serve the stew. Could Anna? – ‘Otto, they are
children
.’ He turned to Louise but, filled with nervous embarrassment, she began to blush: he
observed it, and let her go.

Peter said: ‘Hallo! I know you’re Louise, Stella has told me.’

While the stew, accompanied by red cabbage (another thing that Louise had never had before in her life) and excellent mashed potato, was being eaten, Stella’s father cross-examined her
about what she was going to do with her friend during the weekend.

‘We’ll go to Peter’s concert, of course.’

‘You enjoy music?’

‘Oh, yes! Yes, I do.’

‘Louise’s grandfather was a composer,’ Stella said.

‘So? And who was he?’

‘He was called Hubert Rydal. I think he was only a minor composer.’

‘Indeed? I do not think,’ he said, chewing furiously as he spoke, ‘that I should much like your children, Stella, describing me as a minor surgeon. What could they know of
surgery to make such a pronouncement?’

‘I only meant that that’s what people call him.’ Louise felt herself blushing again and, worse, tears starting in her eyes as she remembered how much she had loved him –
how his habitually noble face, hawk nose, snow-white beard and large blue, sad, innocent eyes would crumple and dissolve into uncontrollable giggles when he thought something was funny, how he
would take her hand, ‘Come with me, little dear,’ and lead her to some treat kept tacitly secret from her grandmother who seldom found anything funny, how when he kissed her, his beard
had smelled of sweetbriar . . . ‘He was the first person I knew who died,’ she said unsteadily, and looked up to find Mr Rose regarding her with a sharp and comprehending kindness.

When their eyes met, he smiled – a curious smile that she would have described as cynical had there not been so much understanding and affection mysteriously there as well – and
said, ‘A worthy granddaughter. And tomorrow, Stella? What do you propose to do with your guest?’

Stella muttered that they were going shopping.

‘And in the evening?’

‘I don’t know, Pappy. We haven’t thought.’

‘Very well. I shall take you to a theatre. And then I shall take you out to supper. You will enjoy yourselves,’ he commanded, smiling ferociously round the room at all of them.

The plates were removed and a platter of cheeses brought. Louise, for whom cheese at home consisted invariably of Cheddar for the nursery and servants, and Stilton for the grown-ups and people
of her age at Christmas, was amazed to see such a collection. Mrs Rose, who saw this, said, ‘Stella’s father adores cheese, and many of his patients know it.’