The Carousel (2 page)

But she was beyond amusement. "It's so rude, cryingoff at the last moment. You'll never be invited again. And what will Nigel's mother think?" 

"I'll write to her. I'm sure she'll understand."

"And with Phoebe . .. you'll meet nobody with Phoebe except a lot of unwashed students and extraordinary women in hand-woven ponchos."

"Perhaps Mrs. Tolliver will come up with some suitable man for me."

"It's nothing to joke about."

I said, gently, "It is my life." 

"You've always said that. You said it when you took yourself off to live in that gruesome basement in Islington. Islington, of all places."

"It's very trendy."

"And when you enrolled at that horrible art school . . ."

"At least I've got a perfectly respectable job. You must admit that."

"You ought to be married. And then you wouldn't have to have a job."

"Even if I were married, I wouldn't want to give it up."

"But, Prue, it's not a future. I want you to have a proper life."

"I think it is a proper life."

We eyed each other for a long moment. Then my mother sighed deeply, resigned and apparently mortally wounded. And I knew that for the time being, the argument was over.

She said, sounding pathetic, "I'll never understand you."

I went to give her a hug. "Don't try," I told her. "Just cheer up and go on liking me. I'll send you a postcard from Cornwall."

I had decided not to drive a car to Penmarron but to travel by train. The next morning I took a taxi to Paddington, found the right platform and the right coach. I had reserved a seat, but the train was not full; by the middle of September the flood of holidaymakers had ceased. I had just stowed my luggage and settled myself in a seat when there was a tap on the window, and I looked up and saw a man standing outside, carrying a briefcase in one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other.

It was, astonishingly, Nigel.

I got up and went back to the door and stepped down onto the platform. He was walking towards me, smiling sheepishly.

"Prue. I thought I wouldn't find you."

"What on earth are you doing here?"

"I came to see you off. Wish you bon voyage." He held out the bunch of flowers, which were small and shaggy yellow chrysanthemums. "And to bring you these."

I was, despite myself, very touched. I recognised that his coming here to the station was a generous gesture of forgiveness, and to make it clear that he had understood why I was letting him down. This had the effect of making me feel more of a heel than ever. I took the flowers in their collar of crisp white paper and buried my nose in them. They smelt delicious. I looked up at him and smiled.

"It's ten o'clock. Oughtn't you to be at your desk by now?"

He shook his head. "No hurry." "I didn't realise you were so high up in the banking world."

Nigel grinned. "I'm not, but I don't exactly have to clock in. Anyway, made a phone call. Said I'd been held up." He had a solid, mature sort of face, with fair hair beginning to thin on top, but when he grinned like that, he looked quite boyish. I began to wonder if I was mad, abandoning this personable man in order to go and nurse my unpredictable aunt Phoebe. Perhaps my mother had been right, after all.

I said, "I'm sorry about letting you down. I wrote to your mother last night."

"Perhaps, another time . . ." said Nigel generously. "Anyway, keep in touch. Let me know when you get back to London."

I knew that he would be waiting for me, if I asked him. Ready to meet my train, to drive me back to Islington, to pick up the threads of our relationship as though I had never been away.

"I'll do that."

"I hope your aunt recovers quickly."

"It's only a broken arm. She's not ill."

There came a short, uncomfortable pause. Then Nigel said, "Well. . . ." He moved forward to kiss my cheek. It was more of a peck than a kiss. "Good-bye, and have a good journey."

"Thank you for coming. Thank you for the flowers."

He stepped back, made an indeterminate gesture of farewell, turned and walked away. I watched him go, making his way through the shifting confusion of porters, barrows, families with suitcases. At the barrier he turned back for a final time. We waved. Then he was gone. I got back into the train, stowed the flowers in the luggage rack and sat down once more. I wished that he had not come.

I was very much a Shackleton, but every now and then stray emotions would float to the surface of my mind, which I recognised as stemming straight from my mother. This was just such a time. I must be mad not to want to be with Nigel, to become involved with him, even to spend the rest of my life with him. Normally, I bucked like a horse at the very idea of settling down, but at this moment, sitting in the train, gazing out the window at Paddington Station, it suddenly seemed enormously attractive. Security; that's what this dependable man would give me. I imagined living in his solid London house, going to Scotland for my holidays; only working if I wanted to, and not because I needed the money. I thought about having children . . .

A voice said, "I'm sorry, is this seat taken?"

"What . . . ?" I looked up and saw the man standing there in the aisle between the seats. He carried a small suitcase, and there was a child beside him, a small thin girl about ten years old, dark haired and wearing round, owllike spectacles.

"No, it's not taken."

He said, "Good," and lifted the suitcase up into the rack. He did not look in the mood for any sort of pleasantry, and a certain impatience of manner made me not ask him to watch out for my bunch of chrysanthemums. He was dressed, as Nigel had been, for some City office, in a navy chalk-striped suit. But the suit sat ill upon him, as though he had lately put on a good deal of weight (I imagined enormous expense-account luncheons), and as he reached up with the suitcase, I had a direct view of his expensive, bulging shirt and straining buttons. He was dark, and once, perhaps, had been good-looking, but now his jowls were heavy, his complexion florid, and his greying hair worn long on the back of his collar, possibly to atone for the lack of it on top.

"There you are," he said to the little girl. "Go on, sit down."

She did so, cautiously, perched on the very edge of the seat. She carried a single comic paper and wore a red leather purse slung by a strap across one shoulder. She was a pale child, with hair cut very short, exposing a long and slender neck. This, and her spectacles, and her expression of stoic misery gave her the appearance of a small boy, and I was reminded of other small boys I had observed on station platforms, dwarfed by stiff new uniforms, fighting tears, and being told by beefy fathers how much they were going to enjoy being at boarding school.

"Got your ticket all right?"

She nodded.

"Granny'll meet you at the junction." She nodded again.

"Well . . ." He ran a hand back over his head. He was obviously longing to be off. "That's it, then. You'll be all right."

Once more she nodded. They looked, unsmiling, at each other. He began to move away and then remembered something else.

"Here . . ." He felt in his breast pocket, produced a crocodile wallet, a ten-pound note. "You'll need something to eat. When it's time, take yourself along to the restaurant car and get some lunch."

She took the ten-pound note and sat looking at it.

"Good-bye, then."

"Good-bye."

He went. At the window he paused to wave and give a cursory smile. Then he disappeared, hurrying in the direction of some sleek, showy car that would restore him to the safe, masculine world of his business.

As I had already told myself that Nigel was nice, I now told myself that this man was horrible and wondered why such an unengaging person had been given the job of seeing the little girl off. She sat beside me, still as a mouse. After a little she reached for her handbag, undid the zipper, put the ten-pound note inside, and shut the zipper again. I thought about saying something friendly to her, but, there was a shine of tears in her eyes behind the spectacles, so I decided, for the moment, to leave well alone. A moment later the train started to move, and we were off.

I opened my Times, read the headlines and all the gloomy news, and then turned with a pleasant sensation of relief to the Arts page. I found what I was looking for, which was the review of an exhibition that had opened a couple of days before in the Peter Chastal Gallery, which was only a couple of doors away from where I worked for Marcus Bernstein. 

The artist was a young man called Daniel Cassens, and I had always been interested in his career because, when he was about twenty, he had spent a year in Cornwall living with Phoebe and studying sculpture with Chips. I had never met him, but Phoebe and Chips had become very fond of him, and when he left them to continue his career in America, Phoebe had followed his progress avidly and enthusiastically as if he had been her own son.

He had travelled and spent some years in America and then had taken himself on to Japan, where he had engrossed himself in the intricate simplicities of Oriental art.

This latest exhibition was a direct outcome of his years in Japan, and the critic was enthusiastic, revelling in the tranquillity and formality of Daniel Cassens's work, praising the controlled brushwork of the watercolours, the subtlety of detail.

". . . This is a unique collection," he finished his piece. "The paintings are complementary, each one a single facet of a total and rare experience. Take an hour or so off from your daily round and visit the Chastal Gallery. You will certainly not be disappointed."

Phoebe would be delighted, and I was glad for her. I closed the paper and looked out the window and saw that we had left the suburbs behind and were now out into the country. It was a damp day, with large grey clouds rolling across the sky, revealing every now and then a patch of limpid blue. Trees were beginning to turn, the first leaves to fall. There were tractors ploughing out in the fields, and cottage gardens, as we rocketed past, were purple with Michaelmas daisies.

I remembered my small companion and turned to see how she was getting on. She had not yet opened her comic or unbuttoned her coat, but the tears had receded and she seemed a little more composed.

"Where are you going to?" I asked her.

She said, "Cornwall."

"I'm going to Cornwall, too. Whereabouts are you going?"

"I'm going to stay with my grandmother."

"That'll be nice." I thought about this. "But isn't it term time? Shouldn't you be at school?"

"Yes, I should. I'm at a boarding school. We all went back, and then the boiler blew up, so they closed the school for a week till it's mended and sent us all home again."

"How terrible. I hope nobody was hurt." "No. But Miss Brownrigg, our headmistress, had to go to bed for a day. Matron said it was shock." "I'm not surprised."

"So I went home, but there's nobody there but my father. My mother's on holiday in Majorca. She went at the end of the holidays. So I've got to go to Granny."

She didn't make it sound a very attractive prospect. I was trying to think of something comforting to say to jolly her along when she picked up her comic and settled down, rather pointedly, to read it. I was amused but took the hint, found my book, and began to read. The journey progressed in silence until the waiter from the restaurant car made his way down the train to tell us that luncheon was being served.

I laid down my book. "Are you going to go and have some lunch?" I asked her, knowing about the ten-pound note in her bag.

She looked agonised. "I ... I don't know which way to go."

"I'm going. Would you like to come with me? We could have lunch together."

Her expression changed to one of grateful relief. "Oh, could I? I've got the money, but I've never been on a train by myself before, and I don't know what I'm meant to do."

"I know, it's muddling, isn't it? Come along, let's go before all the tables get booked up."

Together we made our way down the lurching corridors, found the restaurant car, and were shown to a table for two. There was a fresh white cloth, and flowers in a glass carafe.

She said, "I'm a bit hot. Do you think I could take off my coat?"

"I think that would be a good idea."

She did this, and the waiter came to help her, and fold the coat, and lay it over the back of her seat. We opened the menus.

"Are you feeling hungry?" I asked her.

"Yes I am. We had breakfast ages ago." 

"Where do you live?"

"In Sunningdale. I came up to London with my father in his car. He drives up every morning."

"Your . . . ? Was that your father who saw you off?"

"Yes." He hadn't even kissed her good-bye. "He works in an office in the City." Our eyes met, and then she looked hastily away. "He doesn't like being late."

I said, soothingly, "Few men do. Is it his mother you're going to stay with?"

"No. Granny's my mother's mother."

I said, sounding chatty, "I'm going to stay with an aunt. She's broken her arm, and she can't drive her car, so I'm going to look after her. She lives at the very end of Cornwall in a village called Penmarron."

"Penmarron? But I'm going to Penmarron too."

This was a coincidence. "How extraordinary."

"I'm Charlotte Collis. I'm Mrs. Tolliver's granddaughter. She's my granny. Do you know Mrs. Tolliver?"

"Yes, I do. Not very well, but I do know her. My mother used to play bridge with her. And my aunt is called Phoebe Shackleton."

And now her face lit up. For the first time since I had set eyes on her, she looked a natural and excited child. Her eyes were wide behind the spectacles, and her mouth opened in a delighted gasp of surprise, revealing teeth too big for her narrow face.

"Phoebe! Phoebe's my best friend. I go and have tea with her and things, every time I go and stay with Granny. I didn't know she'd broken her arm." She gazed into my face. "You . . . you're not Prue, are you?" 

I smiled. "Yes, I am. How did you know?"

"I thought I knew your face. I've seen your photograph in Phoebe's sitting room. I always thought you looked lovely. "