Something in Disguise (33 page)

A sound outside – a car in the drive? – and some of her fears returned; it was horrible to feel nervous in one’s own house. She decided to pull herself yet further together; to
go and make her bed-time Horlicks and take it straight up with her. Claude could easily be got to come too as he adored Horlicks and benefited from her hot-water bottle.

Upstairs – Herbert insisted on the windows always being open – the bedroom was as dankly cold as a railway station in an east wind, and loneliness overcame her. Elizabeth, in
Jamaica, was unspeakably far away. She decided to ring Alice, who after all would be far the most likely to explain that her father often rushed out in the evenings (whenever Herbert had seemed to
do anything eccentric, Alice had been in the habit of saying that he was often, or even always, like that). But Leslie answered the telephone: sounding, May thought, as though he was a little
drunk. Alice was in the nursing home, he said; she’d got pneumonia and lost the baby, but she was perfectly all right. May sent shocked and affectionate messages, but she wasn’t sure if
Leslie took them in: he kept saying, ‘Well, I’ll tell her you phoned,’ in a sort of heavy, final way and then not putting down the receiver so she said good-bye firmly, to stop
the conversation. Poor Alice! She was the only person May had ever met about whom she felt continuously protective. She would write to her tomorrow morning. Claude had drunk the first half inch of
Horlicks, but hating cold rooms even more than he liked hot milky drinks he had got right into bed in order to be next to the hot-water bottle. She got into bed with him and composed herself for
sleep by remembering Herbert as he was when she first met him. His frank kindness: his simplicty: many people with these old-fashioned virtues were sometimes the weeniest bit boring . . .

‘. . . look at me like that, I feel as though you’ve known me for years.’

‘I wish I had.’

‘That’s a nice thing to say.’

‘Not nice, m’dear: true.’

‘Some trifle? Or would you prefer the cheese board?’

‘Which are you going to have?’

‘Well – I shouldn’t really, but tonight I’m going to spoil myself. A little trifle. I ought to watch my figure really.’

‘Nonsense! A little of what you fancy, eh?’

‘That’s what my husband always said!
I’ll
watch your figure, Myrtle, he said,
you
enjoy yourself. What about you? Two trifles, please, Ramon.’

They were the last in the dining-room, and their table, if not the best, was the most secluded. The tables round them had already been laid for breakfast; the Muzak, like the Tyrolean sconces,
had been turned low: they sat before the unearthly cheeriness of a Magicoal which cast endless speedy reflections upon the horse-brasses each side of the huge brick fireplace. Myrtle Hanger-Davies
owned the hotel: at least, she had inherited it from her husband, Dennis, who had clearly died from obvious forms of over-indulgence at the early age of fifty-six. Myrtle had been much younger than
he when she married him and although they had been married for some time before he died (last September) there was no reason to suppose that she had caught him up. She had spent dinner telling the
colonel these and other salient facts, and, frankly, she had not enjoyed herself so much for years. The great question was whether she should continue to run the hotel, or whether she should sell
up and go abroad – possibly to run something or possibly just to retire. What she had felt was that on the one hand, she did not want to feel lonely, as she might in somewhere like Majorca
with nothing to do, but on the other hand, she’d seen a lot of human nature. She sighed. The colonel expected that she had and agreed that it was something of the devil and the deep blue sea.
The trifles arrived, and Ramon, who was certainly trained in some things, had brought a jug of Bird’s custard
and
a jug of cream. Myrtle had quite a lot of both, and so did the
colonel.

‘When in doubt always do nothing, Dennis used to say. What do you think of that? As a maxim?’

‘Lot of old-fashioned truth there –’

‘Excuse me one moment – what will you have? With your coffee, I mean.’

He decided on Drambuie and she a Tia Maria. The conversation came to a halt while Ramon was getting these things. The colonel gazed at her. She was blonde and very well covered, both of which he
liked: tonight she wore a tight electric-blue woollen dress with a high neck, so she was well covered in that way too. At her shoulder she wore a poodle brooch that was made of real diamonds with
ruby eyes. Her hair had been done that day and so had her nails – it was a damn good thing he hadn’t gone on thinking it was Tuesday . . .

‘. . . look at me like that, what are you thinking?’

He laughed challengingly and said, ‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Would I really?’ she asked, hoping not.

‘I was wondering if you’d ever been to Portugal.’

‘Never!’ she said. He certainly wasn’t predictable – you never knew what he would say next.

He gazed at her a moment in silence, ‘Ah well,’ he said in the end. A little blazing shiver began at the bottom of her spine and travelled right up to the back of her neck. At this
moment, Ramon returned with the liqueurs and coffee. When he had gone, she raised her Tia Maria and said, ‘What shall we drink to – a Merry Christmas, or a Happy New Year?’

He picked up his glass,

‘Let’s start with a Merry Christmas.’

John had been watching Elizabeth watching a humming bird. The bird was feeding from a bottle of honey and water. It was so small, and so amazing in colour, that even when it
poised itself to siphon up the nectar she could hardly believe that it was really
there
. The expression on her face was serious: she was almost frowning with attention and pleasure. It was
Christmas Eve; the sun was beginning to drop like a huge, round, red-hot stone into the sea, palm trees were turning darker than shadows and the mosquitoes had not yet started their night assault.
The humming bird left; Elizabeth, who had been sitting on her heels, linked her hands behind her neck and stretched – in the middle of which she became aware of John.

‘Did you see?’

‘Yes.’

‘Only feathers are that colour – or those colours, I suppose you’d have to say. Flowers aren’t; jewels aren’t.’

‘Silk?’ he suggested.

‘It tries to be. Doesn’t work, though, because there’s always too much of it.’

‘Butterflies,’ he said, sitting beside her.

‘Of course.’

‘And tropical fish.’

‘That’s one of the things I like best about you.’

He waited.

‘How you go into things. There are far too many things that a good many men don’t think it worth talking about.’

‘Is that so?’ One of the things he noted with amusement was the way in which her generalizations about men proliferated as her confidence grew about their marriage.

‘Yes. A lot of men would think it was silly to discuss humming birds at all. A lot of men –’ she stopped as she saw his face.

‘I married you for your experience, Mrs Cole. It was a woman of the world I was after –’

Here the telephone rang, which it all too often did. The only way in which John could leave England for so long was by letting people telephone him whenever they felt like it. He had explained
this at the beginning, and she was very good and always read a book while he was talking which meant that she neither fidgeted nor listened. When he was finished he saw that she was starting
Bleak House
which he knew she had read.

‘It’s the fog,’ she said looking up as he bent to kiss her. ‘The contrast to here is so terrific.’

‘It must be. Now. What would you like to do this evening? A terrifically vulgar man has asked us to a party –’

‘What kind of party?’

‘The kind that starts off very pompous with too much of everything and ends with people getting thrown into the swimming pool.’

‘What else might we do?’

‘We might go to Negril and have a hot-fish beach picnic.’

‘Can’t we do both things?’

‘We’ll do anything you like, my darling.’

‘Don’t you care at
all
what you do?’

‘Not if I’m with you.’

The sun was almost touching the sea: the palm trees, relaxing against the sky, were black and silhouettes.

‘I can’t ever have been in love before,’ he said, ‘because I know I’ve never felt like this. And I’m pretty sure it’s what people always do when
they’re in love. I wouldn’t have known before; but I do now.’

She waited, wanting to see if it was the same.

‘
You
know. My God, I hope you know. It’s finding that you’re very simple: that you don’t need anything at all except the presence of the person. That scrambled
eggs, or going to bed early, or it raining the whole day, are all enhancements: anything at all can make you think you are happier than you were before. It’s feeling that everybody else must
be better than you thought, and that whatever they are you mustn’t be against them because perhaps somehow, they’ve missed it –’

‘It
is
the same for everybody,’ she said. ‘I mean – you couldn’t stop thinking of enhancements, but basically it’s the same.’

The sun was sliding down out of sight. ‘It looks as though there was a sort of slot for it – just beyond the sea and before the sky begins.’

In the end, they didn’t go anywhere, but stayed by their own pool, and drank Daiquiris and swam and had supper and talked, as John later remarked, as though they had known each other all
their lives but hadn’t met for a year.

‘We might as well be in a basement in Fulham Road.’

‘Oh no we mightn’t. There’d be no oxygen and you’d have too many clothes on.’

She was wearing one of his shirts over her bathing dress.

‘God, money, sex, how to bring up children, birth control, democracy, education, socialism, looking after animals and things, boarding schools, homosexuality, good names for boys, how much
we
agree
about things – oh dear, I’ve just thought –’

‘What?’

‘We’ve never had a serious quarrel! Do you realize that?’

‘Nor we have. Do you want one, particularly?’

‘Oh
no
! Of course I don’t! I was just thinking how awful it would be when we do.’

He was bending down to lift her off the sofa.

‘Perhaps we shall just not find the time,’ he said.

Ten days after his pleasant little meal with Mrs Hanger-Davies it was Christmas Eve, and from first thing in the morning, nothing seemed to go right. To begin with he woke up
with indigestion – or something that felt damn like it. He’d taken a couple of Alka Seltzers with his morning tea but before they’d had a chance to work, May had started nagging
him about the house – they’d-have-to-get-rid-of-it-it-was-far-too-large-for-them stuff. It was some time before he realized that she was serious: even shouting at her didn’t seem
to shut her up. Then, when he’d slipped out for a quick drink at the pub, he’d suddenly had a feeling that he ought to ring Myrtle: funny – he really had a sixth sense or
something. She said she was so glad he’d phoned, because all his talk about Portugal (he’d only mentioned it for God’s sake, he hadn’t talked about it at all) anyway, she
had said that all his talk about Portugal had given her ideas. She was going on a cruise to the Canary Islands. When? Next week. A
cruise
of all things. Everybody knew what occurred to
middle aged widows on
them
. He liked a lot of time to arrange things in – he hated being rushed – but that was what was happening to him, and just when he wasn’t feeling up
to scratch. Having told Myrtle three or four times what a splendid idea he thought the cruise was, he asked whether he might pop in for a spot of tea. Had he really got time for that on Christmas
Eve
? Myrtle had always understood that that was when most gentlemen did their shopping. Had she now? (Damn good thing she’d reminded him.) Well, from this point of view, at least,
he’d like her to know that he was no gentleman. He’d laughed a good deal when he said this to be on the safe side. He’d rung off and rang May to say that he wouldn’t be back
for lunch because he’d suddenly remembered his Christmas shopping. That put the lid on it. He’d go to London and kill two birds with one stone: pop in to the lawyer (he’d written
to Mr Pinkney asking him to prepare an appropriate version of his will – recently signed with a flourish in the presence of Mr Pinkney – for his wife to sign): then he’d have a
spot of lunch at the club, then he’d nip along to Selfridge’s where they often had bundles of slightly imperfect handkerchiefs at decent down-to-earth prices – back to Waterloo
– train to West Byfleet (Myrtle’s nearest station); Myrtle – and then May. Bit of a marathon, especially when he wasn’t feeling quite the thing in the first place. Still
– he was never a man to shirk his duty, which was what he called anything that he wanted to do enough to decide to do it. He headed the Wolseley towards West Byfleet; it would be madness to
take the car to London on Christmas Eve.

It was madness to try and get about London at
all
: there were far too many people milling about all over the station, far too many children and parcels – you couldn’t move
without falling over them – and there was such a mob on the stairs to the Underground that he decided to walk to the Strand and Mr Pinkney’s office. It was bitterly cold and the sky
looked as though there might very well be snow later. He paused on Waterloo Bridge because walking seemed to have a bad effect upon his indigestion – he’d been walking fast to try and
keep the cold out. The river looked damn bleak: they said nowadays that there was no need for a man to go down three times before he drowned, he’d be dead anyway by then from the effluent. He
couldn’t for the life of him understand somebody throwing themselves off a bridge in any case, but then suicide had never been in his line.

At the lawyer’s it was very tiresome. Mr Pinkney was engaged they said: he had someone with him. When he objected to this, they asked whether he had an appointment. Of course not;
he’d come all this way simply to pick up some papers that Mr Pinkney should have ready for him. They went away again and after what seemed a positive aeon came back and said would he like to
wait just a few more minutes, Mr Pinkney
would
like to see him. Eventually Mr Pinkney did. He was full of breezy bonhomie, which meant, the colonel knew, that he was not going to do what he
had been asked. So as soon as they finished agreeing about the possibility of there being snow, he fixed Mr Pinkney with his frankest look and said he’d simply no idea that one was supposed
to make an appointment when one was just going to pick up some papers: then before Mr Pinkney could reply, he added that of course when he came to think of it, he could see that chaps like Mr
Pinkney had to organize their lives pretty carefully – it was damn foolish of him not to have realized that before. Mr Pinkney said well, there it was.