The Happy Prisoner (41 page)

I didn't tell him that. I said he couldn't possibly leave his own party, and he saw that—he's always such a good host—and he saw, too, that I couldn't possibly stay. Luckily, there's a garage attached to the Spotted Dog, and I managed to get a car, and when the man asked me where I wanted to go I said Kidderminster. You may well ask why, but I'd happened to see it on one of those maps with puns and funny drawings while I was waiting in the hall, and it was the sort of place where I wouldn't be likely to meet anyone I knew.

When we got there I asked him if he knew where I could stay, and he took me to this hotel. He knew the proprietor, luckily, because I'd never have got in anywhere else at that time of night. It didn't matter it being such a squalid place, a sort of commercial travellers' one-night stand. It was better, because I was sure not to meet anyone. I just wanted to be quite alone. I wanted to hide from you all and Stanford and everybody. Queer place to go into a kind of retreat, wasn't it, the King's Head, Sharpe Street, Kidderminster? The tablecloths had Worcester sauce stains on them and there was one very old, brokendown chambermaid called Ruby. The bell in my room didn't work anyway, even if I had wanted her. Supper was at half-past six—high tea rather, with tea that left brown stains in the cups, and slabs of factory cake, and then you either went into the saloon bar or did what I did, which was go to bed. How I slept, Ollie. The first real sleep I've had for weeks and years. Perhaps that's why I feel so well. I felt rather bad thinking of Elizabeth getting out of bed to shut the children up when they wake early, but I have had them all this time, and I know she gets up with the lark, anyway, to do the boiler. There's a lot of good in that girl, Ollie; I don't know whether you've realised it.

There you are, darling, there's my pathetic little story, my dim little tribute to the Catholic Faith. I see now that it all goes back to meeting Blanche Arnold in that nursing-home. Although I couldn't make anything of it till now, that was all part of the shape of it, because when I did, when it really mattered that I should, it made it so unmistakable and important.

Don't be afraid that I'm going to be a changed woman, or get religious melancholia or anything. It's just that I know now what I'm going to do. Instead of always trying to alter John, I'll have to alter myself, just enough so that we can fit in together and get the best out of each other instead of scratching around trying to find the worst. Does that sound
awfully righteous? It isn't meant to be; it's meant to be common sense.”

.…

“I think I'll go to bed now.” She yawned and leaned her head against the window. He could tell by her silhouette that she was completely relaxed. It was the first time he had seen her so relaxed since the old days when she used to fling herself down to sleep in odd corners.

“Of course,” she said slowly, “I'm dreading facing the others. I think John will understand, though. D'you think he'll take me back? I should look pretty silly if he wouldn't. Has Ma been very upset? I do hope she'll believe I haven't been with Stanford, because she's so moral she'd never get over it, even though I have come back. She'd think of it every time she looked at me. I think perhaps we'll go out to Australia after all and do what they call making a fresh start. After all, if John could be happy in Melbourne with the consumptive Stella, he can be happy with me—happier perhaps; he always did like plump women better than thin ones.

“If Stanford rings up, I'm out, or dead. Good night, darling. I think I'll sleep in Vi's room. You might tell Elizabeth when she wakes you and she can break the glad news, or you can, and then I shan't feel quite such a fool coming down. I shall feel a pretty good fool, though. Still, I suppose one's got to pay some price for three days' debauchery in Kidderminster. Did you know the air there has got one of the highest soot contents in Worcester? One of the commercial travellers told me.”

Oliver slept well and lay so still that in the morning there was still a dent on the end of the bed to tell him that he had not dreamed it, and when he pulled the eiderdown up against the chill of the early morning air a little pile of feathers drifted down onto the floor.

The house had never known such a quiet summer. John had started work again in London, and Heather and the children had gone to live with him in his mother's new flat in Maida Vale. Lady Sandys, who had done well in Birmingham, had been moved to a rest home in the outer suburbs, where they could visit her
more easily. She was so much better that she was demanding to know why she could not go home. They told her that she had had a nervous breakdown, due to delayed war strain, which she was quite ready to believe. Being one of those people who say “I have a horror of war”, as if everybody else loved it, she was not surprised that it had affected her more deeply than those people who scampered about in navy blue overalls and berets, really
enjoying
the air raids.

Although she objected to the neighbourhood and to the matron of the home, who called her My Lady Lou” and almost gave her woolly bears to play with, Muffet was quite happy playing bridge and writing the memoirs of her life in green ink. She only had occasional lapses now into oddity, and there was talk of her going with John and Heather to Australia if they definitely decided to migrate.

Fred was so short of labour that Violet and Evelyn and even Elizabeth were sometimes out all day helping on the farm, and Oliver was outside now most of the time, wheeling himself round the flatter parts of the garden, or sitting on the lawn, or in the recess of the yew hedge where people used to watch the tennis. Mrs. North said she was haunted by the echo of her own footsteps as she dusted and tidied the rooms which there was no one to make dusty or untidy.

She did not like the heat, and she kept the house curtained and cool. When Oliver wheeled himself through the french windows into the rose-scented dusk of the drawing-room, he collided with the furniture, because it seemed pitch dark after the garden. When she sat in the garden, his mother kept to the shade of the Cedar tree, while Oliver basked, against orders, in the full sun, with his father's old Panama hat tipped over his eyes and a sawn-off pair of flannel trousers pinned across his stump. Dr. Trevor would not let him have his artificial leg yet, as he did not trust him not to do more with it than his heart could stand.

Now that he needed so little nursing, Elizabeth had been given the chance to leave, but after all these months of seeming never to have taken root, she preferred now to stay and help with the house and farm. Her rounded arms were taking on the colour of a brown speckled hen's egg and her corn-coloured hair, bleaching in the sun, looked fairer still in contrast to the tanning skin, which made her eyes look bluer and her teeth whiter. She did not seem to want to go. Oliver gathered that she was thinking seriously about Arnold Clitheroe, and did not consider it worth while starting another job if she was going to be married. It would mean living in Golders Green, with a week-end cottage
at Virginia Water, so he supposed she planned to make the most of the real country while she could.

He saw her and Evelyn coming down to tea one day from the hay field on the other side of the hill opposite the house. They came over the top of the hill, and he watched them all the way down, Elizabeth in a blue dress and Evelyn in boy's shorts and a bright yellow shirt. Halfway down, they broke into a run, and soon their legs were going faster than their bodies, like bicycles without free-wheels. He heard them laughing as they disappeared under the lip of the Ha-Ha wall that divided the garden from the hill field.

Mrs. North puttered out of the house with the tea trolley like a shunting goods engine. She wore a striped tussore dress, white buckskin shoes with buckles and a straw hat with a flopping brim, which she pushed up to look down the garden through her dark spectacles. She looked different without her pince-nez; softer and cosier, more English, more like anybody's mother.

“What are those two playing at?” she asked. “I can see them fooling around trying to climb the Ha-Ha at the highest place. Why don't they come up the steps like sensible people? I do wish they'd hurry; I just can't wait to tell Evie about her father's letter. Oh, Evie!” she called. “Oh, Elizabeth!” No wonder she found the heat trying. It made even Oliver, who could soak up sun like a lizard, feel hot to see her fussing round the tea table, rearranging plates, going in and out of the house, and calling out at intervals to two people who would come, anyway, sooner or later.

“Oh my,” she said. “Violet said she might be stopping by for tea. That'll mean another cup. All this going backwards and forwards makes my legs feel like melting candles.”

“Why not let her get it when she comes?” Oliver asked with the indolence of someone who knew he could not go himself.

“She'd only break it. Do you know, she's broken nearly the whole of that tea set I gave her. I found Fred eating his tea off a tin flan dish when I went over the other day. And it wasn't even tea-time. They have the craziest regime: tea at half-past six, and they were aiming to have supper after that at half-past seven—macaroni pudding, in this weather! Violet was eating a hunk of cold suet roll for her tea. Imagine, they have hot steamed pudding for lunch every Saturday, whatever the season. Still, I reckon Fred's lucky to get any food at all, though Violet's really becoming quite a good little cook since she's consented to let me give her a few hints. She will use the same pan for everything, though, without scouring it properly
in between. That's not very hygienic, you know.” She pronounced it hygi-ennic, and stood for a moment gazing wistfully at a vision of her land where washing-up machines and rubbish pulverisers and cornerless floors could make the most casual woman sanitary.

“Here they are at last. Well, come along, you two! My goodness, anyone would think you didn't want your tea. I've got a surprise for you, Evie.”

“Strawberries?” Her freckled face fell again as Mrs. North shook her head. “Much more exciting. Your Pa's coming over next month to stay awhile and then take you back to the States.”

Evelyn's skinny bare legs waved in the air as she solemnly turned head over heels and then rolled down the bank onto the lower lawn. During the anticlimax of climbing back up the bank, she remembered that it would be polite to say: “Of course, I don't want to leave here—but oh, Aunt Hattie! Did he say anything about the ranch? Has he got my horse yet?”

When she had gone in to wash, Mrs. North said to Oliver: “I shan't tell her the other news yet. Bob said he was going to write and break it himself. Once she gets used to it, she'll probably like the idea of having someone to take her mother's place. She can't resent it. After all, she never knew Vivien; she was only a baby when she died.”

“She could be jealous of someone taking Bob away from her though. She seems to adore him.”

“Bob wouldn't let that happen; he's too nice a person. He adores Evie too. It's just that he's never had the time for her and she'd always been parked with nursemaids and convenient sisters. But now that she's older he'll probably take more interest in her, and this Irene, of course, will be able to make a home for the poor kid. I only hope she's the right type. I never have trusted Bob's taste since he got himself so involved with that terrible girl who played the cello, remember?”

“Irene,” said Oliver. “I'm sure it's Irene, not Ireen.” They had this argument about twice a week until Bob's arrival.

But when Bob Linnegar and his new wife arrived, it turned out that she was never called either Irene or
I
reen, but Honey. Everyone, even Evelyn, must call her that.

“She can't call her Mother,” said Bob piously, mentally removing his hat to the memory of his first wife. Evelyn had no intention of doing anything of the kind. She did not like Honey, who was tall and svelte, with a thirty years' trail of interesting experiences behind her, which now, at forty-seven, showed in her
face if not in her figure. Honey did not like Evelyn very much either. She did not like any children, especially unsophisticated ones. She arrived, however, laden with presents to make a good impression: a fabulous doll, dressed by Molyneux, which could take in drinks and get rid of them, a cabinet of paints good enough for an artist, boxes of chocolate and candy, and some precocious little dresses.

Evelyn had taken the doll shyly and politely, holding it as awkwardly as Violet held a baby, and left it upside down in a chair for days until Mrs. North took it away. She had taken the paints to school to show her friends and she had passed round the chocolates once and then disappeared with them for the rest of the afternoon.

The dresses terrified her. Mrs. North, afraid of offending her new sister-in-law, had at last argued Evelyn into trying them on, but she would not come downstairs and show herself, nor could she ever be found afterwards when Mrs. North wanted to fit them for altering.

“Beastly, horrible things,” Evelyn told Oliver through the window. “Weeny short sticky-out skirts like lampshades and blouses with words written all over them and great big soppy bows instead of buttons. I
couldn't
wear them.”

“I suppose they're what children wear in America, so she thought you'd like them too. It was jolly kind of her to bring you all those things, wasn't it?” he said in a propaganda voice.

“I don't like her,” said Evelyn sombrely. “She looks like a devil.” This was rather true. Honey's face was long and narrow, with high cheekbones and thin, sarcastic lips, painted to look fuller. She had long greenish eyes and her eyebrows were plucked to go down in the middle and up at the sides. Her nose was not beaky enough to spoil her appearance, but it was bony and sharp, with cutaway nostrils. She wore her hair parted in the middle, with the front locks rolled into a black horn over each temple. She was extremely elegant, with perfect legs and feet and liked all her clothes, even her suit, to cling everywhere. Her nails were talons dipped in venous blood and she liked musky perfume and barbaric, clanking jewellery and huge shiny handbags.