The Sleeping Beauty (15 page)

‘Mother,’ Laurence had said. ‘That friend I went to stay with at Portsmouth, Len, I wondered if it would be any use asking him down here the next weekend we can get off.’

‘Any use, darling? How do you mean? I like to meet your friends,’ Isabella said encouragingly.

‘I just wondered
would
you, though? He’s a bit of a rough diamond. I mean, the men you meet in the Army aren’t always too fancy, though very nice.’

‘I think it is wonderful of you to be so adaptable.’

He blushed.

‘But I cannot understand why they don’t give you a commission like everyone else.’

‘So this Len, you see, now the summer’s here said he felt like a breath of sea air.’ Then, remembering that Len’s home was also on the coast, he quickly added: ‘He likes a change.’

The truth was, Len was curious about Betty, of whom Laurence talked so much, and wished to give her, and Laurence’s home, as well, what he called the once-over. Laurence, though nervous of the impact of Len on his mother, was tempted by the picture of himself with Betty clinging to his
arm: they would indulge in teasings and little familiarities in front of Len, as Len had before Laurence with
his
young lady. Laurence would assume a proprietary attitude for which Len would respect him enough to make coarse allusions before the other men on their return.

On the other hand, he could not help being a little uneasy, and when Isabella said: ‘It will be lovely, darling,’ he was not really convinced that it would.

‘You will remember what I said – not to make him feel awkward?’

‘I think I know how to behave,’ Isabella said crossly.

‘Yes, I know, but you might think
he
doesn’t.’

‘Shall you just leave it to me?’ she suggested, icily smooth. ‘Remembering that as your father’s wife I think I showed myself equal to most occasions.’

‘Well, if she is going to be like that for a start!’ Laurence thought, his apprehension growing.

When the weekend arrived, she was not at all ‘like that’. She rather enlisted Len’s services in correcting Laurence; for Len was, unmistakably, the fatherly type. One glance at his red, good-tempered face reassured her. He would lead her son into no harm. All the same, she could not resist a little lecture when Len asked if anyone could tell him what had won the three-fifteen at Chester.

‘I’m afraid no one here would have any idea,’ she said. ‘I do hope you, Laurence, don’t back horses. Except for the big races.’

‘What are the big races?’

‘Well, darling, the ones everyone takes an interest in. The Derby, and the National. And,’ she added doubtfully, ‘perhaps the Lincoln.’

‘Nothing at Ascot?’

She looked suspiciously at him, feeling he was making fun of
her. ‘I am really serious,’ she said to Len. ‘My father lost so much money on horses. He was a born gambler, and sometimes it runs in families, so that one must be on one’s guard. It ruined my mother’s health and happiness.’ That was a grand way of saying that her mother had nagged.

‘What, Granny?’ said Laurence, seeing her in a new light.

‘On our pay, we can’t afford to have a bet,’ Len assured Isabella.

‘We can’t afford not to,’ Laurence thought.

‘It’s the bookmakers who ride in the Rolls-Royces, in my experience,’ Len said, speaking from it.

‘How right you are, my dear boy!’ Isabella said. Len she recognised as being a man-of-the-world, beside whom Laurence seemed a schoolboy still, with his sulks and impatiences.

‘Good
Lord
!’ he was always saying, and flinging himself into an armchair. But every time Isabella came into the room, Len jumped up and fussed with the chairs and had his cigarette-lighter ready, if not his cigarettes. ‘Showing-off!’ Laurence thought, wishing that he had never invited him. His mother was showing-off, too, with her ‘dear boy’ and her sycophantic advice-asking. She was also smoking too much … He looked forward to tomorrow, to Betty’s half-day, when he could do a little showing-off himself.

‘Not a very nice evening for you,’ Isabella said, joining Len at the window. People were coming up from the rain-pitted sands wearing mackintoshes: some of them held wet newspapers over their heads. All the deck-chairs were abandoned. The boat-littered water by the pier faintly steamed. A young boy came pelting along the slippery esplanade and stopped to push the evening paper through the letter-box.

‘The paper!’ Isabella said.

No one stirred.

‘Laurence, dear, would you fetch the paper?’ (No ‘dear boy’, though; just the ‘dear’.)

‘I will,’ said Len, and was out of the room first.

‘
Such
disappointing weather,’ Isabella continued. ‘Ah, thank you, Len.’ She glanced carelessly at the headlines. ‘Oh, dear, another bus strike! What is the world coming to? I’m sure they don’t know when they’re well off. Everything done for them and they’re never satisfied.’

Len, whose father was a bus-driver, seemed not to be listening. Turning from Isabella, he grimaced at Laurence, his thumbs going down dolefully. Laurence looked steadily back. Isabella continued to chatter her way through the news. She looked at each page in order and only glanced at the stop-press.

‘Do you want the paper, Laurence? Or Len?’

‘No, thanks,’ Laurence said.

Len took it, as if for politeness’ sake, and read out the weather-report.

‘Now, let’s have some sherry!’ Isabella said, suddenly gay.

Evalie Hobson seemed gay, too, when she arrived for dinner – to help Isabella out, as they had arranged.

After dinner, the boys went for a walk.

‘It was all right, then?’ Evalie said. ‘You
did
do King Humphrey?’

‘Not only. I had a double with Dumb Blonde.’

‘Oh, you didn’t
tell
me!’

‘And how could I, with Laurence and his friend in the house? Every time I went to the telephone, one or other of them came into the hall.’

‘I was only
teasing
,’ Evalie said frostily.

‘Whose tip was that?’ Len asked, as they pushed open the swing-door of the Saloon Bar. ‘Anthology, or however you say it?’ He stressed the third syllable.

‘Anthology,’ Laurence said. ‘Ginger had it from one of the apprentices at Newmarket. Next time out, he said.’

‘Two small milds,’ Len said.

When it was Laurence’s turn, he ordered their usual mild-and-bitter.

‘I was economising,’ Len said. ‘In the circs.’

‘Well, I had a saver on King Humphrey.’

‘You might have passed it on.’

‘I thought I did mention it,’

‘You bloody know you didn’t.’

‘Well, I’m sorry.’

They drank in silence.

‘Don’t look round,’ Laurence said later. ‘Boyfriend of my mother’s just come in.’

Vinny, seeing Laurence pretending not to see him, crossed to the other side of the bar, drank a whisky and went out.

‘What, serious?’ Len asked.

‘I daresay.’

‘Quite a decent-looking old codger. He put that down fast. Does he drink?’

‘Everybody drinks,’ Laurence said crossly.

‘Do you mean he wants to marry her?’

‘I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Very queer,’ Len mused. ‘Thinking of such things at that age.’

‘Gives me the cold horrors,’ Laurence said.

‘Must be fifty if he’s a day. What does your mother think of him?’

‘Oh, Lord, don’t ask
me
.’

‘Well, I don’t blame them,’ Len said tolerantly. ‘They’d be company for one another.’ He was interested in Isabella and her affairs. ‘In their old age,’ he added.

‘Shall we move on?’ Laurence asked.

*

Vinny had needed his whisky. He had walked along the sands with Emily and Philly after tea. Philly had kept stubbornly apart, edging too near the sea and getting her sandals wet, to draw attention to herself.

‘Can we never be alone?’ he had asked.

‘Rose is busy with someone new arriving. I had to keep Philly out of the way. It is almost all I do. Come back, darling,’ she called.

‘I hate to hear you sigh, as if you were tired through and through.’

‘I cannot be that, for Rose lets me do less and less.’

‘To have come all this way and never to see you alone! Nothing ever again like that one beautiful Sunday we had.’

‘Which still has its repercussions.’

‘But if she won’t let you do any work, how can she miss you when she says she is busy?’

‘I have told you, I keep Philly out of her way. Someone must be with her, or she mopes, and hangs about the kitchen. I can understand how Rose feels. She is frightened of the child, of what she will do, and how to deal with her – for she is really incalculable.’

She picked up a shell and called to Philly, holding it out in her hand; but the girl turned her head exaggeratedly and walked on.

‘When you’ve seen her to bed?’ Vinny suggested.

‘She goes much later now that the evenings are light.’

‘I can wait till night.’

‘Yes, well, then …’

‘I will meet you at the bottom of the steps.’

‘The tide will be coming in later.’

‘Then I shall be cut off, if you don’t come in time. I shall have to go up the steps into the garden.’

‘Please, don’t.’

Then Philly had slipped on a rock she was climbing and had cut and grazed her legs. They helped her up the steps. She made no sound, looking with vague interest at the blood starting through Vinny’s handkerchief, and trickling down towards her ankle.

‘Oh, can’t you take more care of her?’ Rose said sharply, meeting them as they came to the house. Philly leant back against Emily, pinching up a fold of her sleeve, as if to hold on to safety.

When Emily had gone for a bowl of water and bandages, Rose had said to Vinny: ‘Can’t you please leave us alone? I am forced for all our sakes to speak to you in this way, because you interfere here and make us wretched, and I have to think of Emily’s happiness. She has had so little.’

‘You know I want to marry her.’

‘You are only sorry for her. You cannot resist your feelings of compassion.’

‘No, I am, after all, only sorry for you.’

‘You shan’t pity me!’ Rose said, in a furious, small voice. She stroked Philly’s untidy hair and her hand was trembling. Philly’s unmoving eyes were filled with terror; but she sat very still, as if to move would be fatal. ‘How dare you!’ Rose whispered.

‘After all, what pity I feel, and for whom, is beyond my control. And beyond yours, too. Neither of us can stop it.’

When Emily returned, he said goodbye and went fast down to the town where he turned into the first pub he came to and bought a large whisky.

‘Belmont,’ Evalie suggested, going through the
Morning Advertiser
.

‘Belmont?’ said Isabella. ‘But we don’t know what weight it’s carrying.’

‘It did well at Thirsk. Oh, do you remember when we did our
first crossed doubles – how nervous we were? There ought to be evening-classes for those things. Would that be someone at the door?’

‘Perhaps the boy’s back home again.’ Evalie folded the paper and stuffed it in her handbag.

But it was Vinny.

‘How nice!’ Isabella said. ‘We will all have a little drink. I feel rather gay tonight. I can’t think why, but I expect because the boys are here. This doesn’t look very nice whisky … so much tartan all over the label. Oh, I always wanted two sons, and a daughter, too: but after Laurie, there was all that bother with my Fallopian tubes, whatever they may be. I am so sorry there’s no soda-water.’

‘I feel gay, too; but not so gay as Isabella,’ Evalie said meaningly.

‘And I should feel gayest of all,’ Vinny said, which was far from true, ‘because I had a little flutter today.’

‘A little flutter?’ Evalie said.

‘A bet. On a horse.’

‘Oh, I see. And did it win?’

‘It did.’

‘What was its name?’

‘Its name,’ said Vinny, raising his glass, ‘was Dumb Blonde. So ridiculous.’

Isabella looked down, and Evalie from her to Vinny.

‘You must tell us what will win at Ascot,’ she said, ‘then we can have a little flutter too.’

Len said: ‘I like your pubs, old boy.’

Laurence felt personally congratulated and looked with modesty about the saloon-bar. They were in The Anchor now.

‘I like the beer,’ Len added. He was more of a connoisseur than Laurence, who found all beer much the same and now felt
very sick. The barmaid receded, then swam up towards him, enormous and not quite, he thought, straight on her feet. Small things caught and held his attention. He concentrated his mind and his eyes on the wet rings his glass made on the counter. When the barmaid swept a damp cloth over them, he still stared stupidly, feeling unsafe, as if some prop had been removed.

‘Haven’t,’ Len said, ‘ever enjoyed myself so much with my clothes on.’ This was one of his favourite sayings and Laurence hoped he would not be using it indiscriminately.

‘A pity the blonde couldn’t be with us this evening.’

Laurence could not imagine Betty on such a round. When he was with her, they went to the milk-bar and, under the fluorescent lighting which turned the food an uninviting colour, they ate and drank the childish fare which Len despised – sundaes, shakes, parfaits, whips, melbas.

The proprietary word ‘blonde’ had made Laurence feel nervous that Len might try to take over his girl as he seemed to have taken over Isabella, perhaps aligning himself with her with little jokes at Laurence’s expense.

‘People are different in different places,’ he thought hazily. ‘And if they’re all right in one place, it’s best to leave them there.’ Len at Aldershot was one thing; but in Laurence’s home he was too clearly making his mark – helping to wash-up; complimenting Isabella on almost everything she did, or had; condescending to Laurence.

‘Nice when she calls “Time” and we don’t have to go on enjoying ourselves,’ Len said. But that was one of his sayings, too, and meant as a joke. ‘You look a bit under the weather, old boy,’ he told Laurence.

‘I bloody well feel it.’

He did not see any reason why he should be competitive about drinking, when he had always disdained to be so about
everything else – games at parties as a child; school athletics; getting his commission. He had never won, or tried to win, any of those little silver cups which his mother seemed to think part of the décor of a schoolboy’s bedroom. He said: ‘I’ve been quite drunk for at least half-an-hour.’