The Sleeping Beauty (17 page)

The next weekend, Vinny drove to Seething in his car. This was a maroon Daimler, twenty years old. When he had fetched it in the middle of the week, Mrs Tumulty had been both scornful and suspicious. It was hearse-like, she complained, and smelt of fungus. She had pictured herself, tied up with veils and wearing goggles, driving in a fast, open car; had hoped for something like the Tillotsons’ Bentley. Vinny drove her out to Richmond Park and she found a great deal of fault. ‘It isn’t manoeuvrable in traffic,’ she observed. ‘I shall have parking difficulties.’

‘Mother, I don’t want you to drive this car.’

‘You think I am too old, I daresay; but if I lived to be twice my age, I should never choose such an elderly-looking motor as this. I feel like the Queen Mother perched up here. But it would be extremely useful to me to have a car during the day. I could get over to Whiteleys more easily and to Kew and Buckingham Palace.’

‘You tire yourself out with this Buckingham Palace nonsense.’

‘On the contrary, I find it very restful.’

‘Standing about for hours merely to see a car slide in through the gates.’

‘I had a very clear view of the Queen yesterday. I saw her chin and her pearls. And beautiful dove-grey gloves. I like nice well-fitting gloves.’ Her own were mauve cotton and needed a wash. ‘Besides, I don’t stand, Vincent, I sit down on the steps of the Victoria monument.’

‘Oh, mother, no!’

‘I buy an evening-paper and sit on that. Vincent, you must stop the car at once. Surely you see that dog over there worrying the sheep?’

‘It’s only running up and down, and it isn’t our affair. There are some people with it.’

‘It isn’t under proper control. I shall have a word with them.’

‘Mother, please!’

‘I have asked you, Vincent, to stop the car.’

He had to watch her trailing across the long grasses, her skirts powdered with pollen. At last the dog was brought to heel. The sheep moved away, a querulous, undulating mass. Mrs Tumulty returned to the car, quickened with both annoyance and satisfaction. ‘So rude!’ she said. ‘Without conscience or civic responsibility. I cannot understand such people.’

When they were home again and she was in her room, divesting herself of all her strange outer garments, Vinny had an impulse to telephone Emily. He had thought of her that morning, making her second attempt to enter the café, and he wondered how she had fared. He gave the number and waited impatiently, hoping that his mother would not join him too soon. He felt nervous – and angry with himself for being nervous; feeling sure that Rose would be the one to answer. This happened. The voice was faint and tinny along the singing lines.

He asked: ‘Are you better?’

‘A little, thank you.’

‘May I speak to Emily?’

‘I am afraid not. She isn’t at home.’

‘Then I shall telephone later.’

‘She has gone out with friends.’

‘And you don’t know when she will return?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t.’

He sat by the telephone, trembling with anger, believing that Rose had not spoken the truth; for Emily had no friends and there was nowhere for her to go. When he heard his mother coming, he moved towards the open window, looked down at the dusty plane-trees in the gardens of the square. The flat, with all its oriental furniture, travel-trophies and knickknacks seemed no longer a place that he could bear to inhabit.

‘I think I shall write to one of the newspapers,’ Mrs Tumulty said.

‘What about?’

‘About people not keeping their dogs under proper control. You seem depressed this evening, Vincent. Is it because you have made such a bad bargain over the car?’

‘I am perfectly satisfied about the car.’

‘Well, I am glad that you are. I am very glad you are.’

‘You have some weeds stuck to your skirt,’ he said in exasperation.

‘Mouse-ear chickweed,’ Mrs Tumulty said, stooping to pick it off. ‘Not uncommon.’

Emily, when he arrived after dinner on Friday, was delighted with the car. She saw him draw up before the house and hastened out to meet him.

‘Such a sedate and lovely car!’ she said, walking round it.

‘I am afraid my mother makes a mockery of it.’

‘Will you take me for a drive?’

‘I bought it for no other purpose.’

‘All the mahogany and ash-trays and flower-holders. One might almost expect to find a commode. What is this cut-glass decanter?’

‘I think it is for smelling-salts in case of an accident.’

‘Oh, yes, of course.’ She smiled brightly. He stood looking down at the gravel.

‘Please don’t worry!’ she said. ‘I know what you are thinking. Surely there are not people anywhere so sensitive that those allusions could distress them? How can words hurt that have no cruel intention? Especially when there are so many of the other kind.’

‘They sometimes might be cruel simply by being a reminder.’

She touched his cheek with her hand. ‘Don’t be sensitive
for
me! There is Rose to be that. Two is too great a burden. Shall we go now? I will run quickly and say goodbye.’

Rose, sitting at the sewing-machine, treadling frantically, looked frightening and obsessed. She had a fringe of pins between her lips and was bowed, frowning, as if over some infernal machine. Close to her ear, Emily said – and hoped to run away at once – ‘I am going for a little drive with Vinny in his car.’

The whirring slowed down. Rose put her hand at the small of her back and straightened herself. Quickly, Emily said: ‘You know that Ralph told you to rest. I could have done these sheets this afternoon, if you had asked me.’

‘Oh, I know your machining. And what doctor ever explains how one can get all one’s jobs done without doing any work? Words come too easily to them.’

Rose knew that Emily was being solicitous and quoting the doctor from a sense of her own guilt; passing the buck; in fact laying blame to ward off reproaches.

‘I shall not be long.’

‘In a car, did you say?’

‘He has just bought one.’

‘I hope he can drive it properly.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Sometimes,’ Rose began and put her hand hesitantly on the sewing-machine, ‘sometimes I wonder if … I think you must be in love with him.’

‘Don’t sound so accusing.’

Her protesting laugh was full of affectation, Rose thought. She was sheltering behind insincerity.

‘Where is Philly?’ she asked.

‘She is drying her hair. I had just finished washing it when Vinny arrived.’

‘Then I shall have to see her to bed,’ Rose said.

Emily looked away. ‘You
are
her mother!’ was a ghost-phrase, unspoken; but perhaps reflected in her eyes.

‘Will you help me to fold this sheet before you go?’ Rose said.

‘She was like that in her married life,’ Emily thought, as she went out through the hall. ‘Always speeding him on with her martyrdom, sighs, reproaches, the little last jobs before he went out, though implying that they could hardly help. A great one with a welcome when he came home at night; a past-master at not having sat down all day, or touched a morsel of food. Most days started with bleak descriptions of not having slept a wink all night; remembering every quarter having struck, lest proof were needed.’ Even as a girl she had had her splitting heads, allergies, indispositions and the perennial travel-sickness. To retaliate, Emily herself had assumed an exaggerated robustness. Because Rose finicked with her food, Emily ate everything – once, standing at a stall in the street, ate jellied eels, the skin as well – and had for a while kept as a pet a grass-snake, overcoming her revulsion as Rose could not.

‘Why are you smiling?’ Vinny asked, opening the car-door for her.

‘I am rather surprised if I was. I was remembering something disgusting.’

‘It is wonderful,’ he thought, ‘to see her sit down in the car beside me, as if we have driven out together for years, seeing her smooth her skirt over her knees and settle down.’ He said: ‘Tell me about this disgusting thing.’

‘When I was a child, I had a pet snake. One day I saw that he had a large bulge in his middle, so I tapped it with a ruler – I was showing-off to Rose – a dreadful ripple ran all along the poor old snake – whose name was Fabian, by-the-by – and a little frog popped out of his mouth.’

‘I hope you won’t keep snakes when we are married,’ Vinny said in consternation, feeling that one naturalist in his life might be enough.

‘I detest them.’

‘Then why have them about you?’

‘Because Rose detested them, too,’ she said simply.

He drove out on to the Cliff Road, and every car which raced past them he felt with her nerves, though she sat beside him seeming relaxed and indifferent.

Inland, the fields of wheat were a dark blue as clouds raced over them. Vinny drove slowly along the narrow lanes, between hedgerows hoary with chalk dust. Emily was looking about her quickly, from left to right, as if noting changes in and remembering this countryside which, Vinny supposed, had been for years beyond her limits. At the top of a hill, he drew the car into a field gateway. The view was of a valley, all parkland, dark elms with slanting oval shadows, and a grey house smothered in trees.

‘How many years since you drove in a car?’ Vinny asked, lifting her hands from her lap and kissing them. ‘You seem to me to be a very nonchalant and low-strung girl.’

‘Not years. Last Wednesday.’ She laughed, but seemed uneasy and then added: ‘That was my surprise for you.’

He leaned away from her and fetched out his cigarettes. When she refused one, he stared into the case, as if he could not decide which one to choose.

‘I went into the café at eleven,’ she went on. ‘You were thinking of me?’

‘Of course.’

‘I knew. I was sure. It was truly a second chance; for, as I went in, the same man was paying his bill at the cash-desk. Instead of hurrying by, because I felt you with me and very brave, I said good-morning to him. This time he smiled and said good-morning, too. We had a little conversation and he apologised for not recognising me that other time. I could tell that since then he had made enquiries about me. He was very charming and made his excuses in a charming way. He even came back into the café with me and sat down at my table. I thought “How pleased with this Vinny will be!”’ She glanced at him uncertainly. He thought that she was smiling too often.

‘What is his name?’ he asked.

‘Hughie Cooper.’

Vinny looked as if he could not trust a man with such a name.

‘And you’ve known him for years?’

‘We used to go to dances together.’

‘It was nice for you to talk about old times,’ Vinny said, trying to keep unhappiness from his voice. ‘How old is he?’

‘My sort of age, I suppose.’

‘And not married?’

‘Oh yes, married. His wife had gone to America. I forget why.’

‘I am very glad you were rewarded for your courage,’ Vinny
said tonelessly. ‘Well done! You see, it wasn’t so bad, was it?’ He patted her hand.

‘No, it was not bad at all.’

‘And so he drove you home and you were brave about the car, too?’

‘No, he didn’t take me in the car then. I had the shopping to do. But in the evening he called for me and drove me out to the Golf Club. I met a lot of people. He must have warned them first. They …’ her voice trembled and she put her fingers to her eyelashes … ‘they were very kind to me. So I am a different person from last week. I have got friends again. I have gone out into the world, as they used to say at school in prayers for the old girls.’

‘But without me,’ Vinny thought. ‘She has managed it all without me.’

‘I could not have managed it without you,’ Emily said.

‘Of course you could, and did.’

‘If it had not been for you, I should have stayed shut up at home for the rest of my life. You know that.’

‘I wanted her to escape, be really free,’ he thought, ‘and that must mean to other people, not just to me – to everyone; the Golf Club; this wretched Hughie Cooper.’ He asked: ‘What did Rose say?’

‘Rose, to my astonishment, was not displeased, especially when I got back and she could tell me you had telephoned. She said: “It will do you good to see other people occasionally.” She had to add “occasionally”. She seems to feel threatened only by you, nowadays; though once she guarded me from everyone, and I was glad enough for her to do so.’

‘It is splendid that she realises that I am a serious menace.’

‘Dearest, am I … oh, tell me … turning into something different from your first ideas of me? I am afraid that it is only myself I am turning into – though I cannot be sure, or help myself. You may be disappointed.’

He leaned over and kissed her mouth and at once she put her arms round him, turning with relief from words. Often, in these last few years, pacing about Rose’s sitting-room, or playing Patience, she had suddenly covered her face with her hands as if she were giddy. She did so now, when he had kissed her.

But Vinny was speaking of marriage – a remote arrangement, she felt; and not to do with this minute. ‘Yes, when you say,’ she cried. ‘At any date you like – next month, next week, tomorrow. I am desperate to go away from Philly and Rose and my bounden duty, and all other sad things.’ She was desperate, too, for his embrace, and impatient with his scruples, and wondered in moments of panic if her scarred body were an alarming test of his love for her, so nice were his principles, so unshakeable was his respect for her.

‘And you will always love me?’ he insisted.

She nodded.

‘And not Hughie Cooper?’

‘Certainly not Hughie Cooper.’

When he kissed her again, she said: ‘We will marry tomorrow. The day after at latest.’ He could see that their betrothal must come to an end, and her own frank impatience could not add to his own, which was complete.

‘I cannot think why you love me,’ he said, as all lovers say; but with more anxiety in his voice than is usual.

‘Oh, I am nothing without you,’ she said. ‘I should not know what to be. I feel as if you had invented me. I watch you inventing me, week after week.’

‘I have just had the most curious letter from Laurence,’ Isabella told Evalie Hobson. ‘He hates to write letters, and at school he never did unless he wanted something. I know that he has to want a thing very badly for him to put pen to paper.’

She shook out from her library-book a narrow piece of lined paper with backwards-sloping writing. ‘You don’t get much for your money at those schools,’ she explained. ‘There are several spelling-mistakes – see how he spells “epistle” – and it is very facetious in tone. “Excuse haste!” Why should I excuse haste?’

She handed the letter to Evalie, who took out some blonde tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses from her sewing-bag and began to read.

Isabella picked up her tapestry-work again. This was their latest enthusiasm, and she often nowadays sat down to it in her dressing-gown as soon as she had finished her breakfast.

‘Who is this girl?’ Evalie asked.

‘I never heard of her. Betty Bags. It doesn’t sound much of a name.’

‘Betty Page, I make it.’

‘Oh, good! But who she is, is more puzzling. “A girl I met one weekend.” How could he meet a girl? There are none here.’

‘What will you say?’

‘I shall invite her to tea on Sunday, as he asks me. To refuse to is to drive him into her arms.’ Isabella’s sagacity was learnt from the problem-pages of the women’s magazines, which she and Evalie found so amusing. They had often wondered if the readers ever took the advice they were given – to see no more of the married man; to take mother into their confidence; to seek other interests – and now she was taking it herself; but without knowing. ‘No harm can be done,’ she said, ‘by my meeting the girl.’

‘Except to the girl,’ Evalie thought. She was surprised at Laurence’s sudden lack of secrecy. To bring girls to his home was the last thing she would have expected of him. She did not know that Len’s success with Isabella had made him over-confident. As a woman, and a mother herself, she could have warned him that the situation was not the same; that some of the ingredients for success were absent.

‘Well, we shall see,’ Isabella said, and she pressed her hand on a tapestry rose whose stitches stood up unevenly.

Evalie stretched her neck and kneaded her dowager’s-hump. ‘I get so stiff. Are we, perhaps, with all this sewing, giving ourselves such double chins as we shall never get rid of?’ She suddenly slapped under her chin with the back of her hand until she made herself retch. Isabella took no notice of this surprising behaviour. It was part of their friendship that they could behave oddly without rousing comment or offering apology.

‘You know that Vinny is engaged?’ Isabella said carelessly, and she frowned and pressed very hard upon her tapestry. ‘I have done it too loosely, and I don’t think I have the character to unpick it and do it again.’

‘Have you enough wool?’

‘Plenty of wool.’

‘Let me see!’ Evalie put on her spectacles again, which seemed to be worn more for passing judgment than for work. Isabella watched her anxiously. ‘Yes,’ Evalie said consideringly and handed the work back. Isabella took up her scissors – they were shaped like storks: she had had them at school – and began quickly, before she changed her mind, to poke and snip at her sewing. She felt tired and angry. Everything went well for Evalie: her needlework was smooth, and neat at the back; her son did not write illiterate and disturbing notes to her; her husband did not get drowned; her best friend did not become engaged to another woman and not even invite her to the wedding.

‘You mean with a ring and an announcement and everything?’ Evalie now asked.

‘No announcement. One would think he is ashamed, or she is ashamed. They could not be more secret about it all. But a ring certainly – sapphires of such a size one doubts them. Although, knowing Vinny …’ And then she broke off; for she did not know Vinny. She had never known him. That had not been his wish.

‘You sound quite upset,’ Evalie said.

‘Upset? Why should I be upset?’ She had now cut through a thread of the canvas and could have cried. Then she was alarmed that Evalie would answer her questions; and to stop her she began to say what she had meant for ever to keep to herself. With an instinct for self-preservation she threw away Vinny’s secret so that she could keep her own. ‘I am only worried,’ she was saying. ‘I do not know what to think or where my duty lies.’

Evalie murmured encouragingly.

‘But I must tell someone.’ Isabella discarded her sewing and sat looking anxiously in front of her. ‘You won’t breathe a word?’

‘Of course not,’ Evalie said, as if this were a mere formality, easily agreed to.

‘You do promise?’

‘Surely you can trust me, Isabella?’

‘Yes, I know; but this is something serious. I lie awake at night and worry about it.’

‘What is it?’ Evalie asked, not unreasonably.

‘Do you remember that I went up to Buckinghamshire to that christening – when I was godmother to the Mitchell baby?’

Evalie nodded.

‘I stayed there on the Sunday night … and the next morning, instead of catching the train from there, I drove with Mr Mitchell into Market Swanford, where he has a factory … they make things out of plastic … soap-dishes, fruit-bowls, beakers, everything you can imagine. … I thought I would catch the train from there – it is one station down the line, you see. I had some time to spare, because he gets away early in the morning … It seemed worth making the effort in spite of so much champagne at the christening … the taxi is eight shillings, to say nothing of the tip … and so I went into a tea-shop and had some coffee which I didn’t want, and then I suddenly remembered that when I was there the last time I had seen an amusing picture, on glass – like that one above the bureau – in some scruffy little shop in a side street. When I saw it before, I couldn’t buy it or ask the price, because the shop was shut …’

‘Yes?’ said Evalie.

‘Would you like a drink?’

‘Not at the moment.’

‘When I saw the picture, it was on the day of the auction-sale and Vinny had gone in to Market Swanford on business, he
said
, and he promised to come back for me at the sale. But I could not bear to stay there any longer … you can’t imagine
how distressing it was …
never
go … and I decided to go to Market Swanford myself and meet Vinny by the bus-stop.’

‘Yes?’ Evalie said.

‘You mustn’t breathe a word of this.’

‘Of course not.’

‘It is always a mistake to change plans. It was only because of changed plans that Harry went out in the boat that day. I knew it was a mistake, as soon as I arrived in Market Swanford. I felt more wretched than ever. Early-closing day. I wandered about, knowing where I could find Vinny when the bus was due, but wondering where he might be meanwhile. I looked at the picture in the shop-window and rattled the door-handle, and then … I don’t know what made me … I glanced up at a building across the road and there he was – Vinny – looking at me out of a window, but not as if he were trying to attract my attention.’

‘Yes?’

‘I didn’t know what to do, for I knew that he had seen me. I just waved, in a silly sort of way.’ She did so now, to show Evalie. ‘He lifted up his hand in answer, but he looked put out. Then a woman came to the window, too, and stared at me. It was all in a flash, but before I looked away I saw that she was crying. She had frondy sort of hair, very elaborate. I would have known her anywhere after that one glance. And I did know her. The next time. The morning after the Mitchell christening.’

Evalie put down her sewing and rested her hands in her lap.

‘I was just going into the shop to ask about the picture when I saw her across the road. She came out of the side-door of a shop and went off down the road, leaving the door wide open. She held her hand over the curls on her forehead to stop them blowing about.’ Isabella could rarely describe a gesture without
making it herself, and these gestures Evalie found more illuminating than the verbal descriptions. She now felt that she saw the woman perfectly.

‘I forgot about the picture,’ Isabella said. ‘And as soon as she was out of sight, I crossed the road and looked into the doorway. I could see a notice at the top of the stairs and I thought that it must be the way up to some offices. My curiosity overcame me and I began to climb the stairs. The notice was the name of a dancing-school – Rita-Something School of Dancing. I turned to go down the stairs again … my heart was banging … I had a bit wondered if it was a notice about a brothel … and suddenly I heard someone running up the stairs and when I turned round this woman was there, rather out of breath, as I was.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I asked her if it was right for the Estate Agent’s,’ Isabella said with a look of pride; but this expression faded at once. ‘She stared at me, my face, then my hat, then my pearls, very slowly, and rudely. Then she said: ‘There is no Estate Agent.’ I apologised and said I was wrongly directed. I wanted to pass her and go down the stairs; but although she didn’t in the least bar my way, I could not take one step forward. She leant against the wall and kept swinging her door-key to and fro on one finger and watching it, then staring again at my clothes. She said “What do you really want? It is something to do with my husband, isn’t it?” I told her I did not know her husband and she said: “Oh, yes, you do, and I think he has sent you here because he does no good by coming himself.”’

‘Her husband?’ said Evalie.

‘Oh, you won’t tell a soul? You do most faithfully promise?’

Evalie’s lips moved impatiently.

‘It would be so dreadful. What would Vinny think of my spying in that way? Or does he already know what I have done?
But if he knows, he could not have told me that he is marrying Emily so soon.’

‘This woman was his wife, then?’

Isabella nodded in a terrified way. Although they were alone in the house, their voices had sunk to whispers.

‘But perhaps they are now divorced?’

‘No. That is one of the things she said to me. “I will never divorce him. You can go on your bended knees, and so can he.”’

‘You?’

‘She seemed to think that I was in love with him and hoped to marry him.’

Evalie’s eyes rested on her.

‘She had put two and two together and that hardly ever comes to the right answer. Because she had seen me that morning from the window, because I had gone exploring up those stairs … she made no allowances for curiosity.’

‘Then what are you going to do?’

‘Yes, what?’

‘You must tell him that you know.’

‘I never could.’

‘For Emily’s sake.’

‘Her sake is no affair of mine.’

‘But it is a crime which you are condoning,’ Evalie said pompously.

‘I know nothing for sure.’

‘You will let her marry him?’

‘I must. And then for ever hold my peace. Once they are married, I am bound to do that. It is in the marriage-service. And I am not invited to the wedding – no one is – so the other thing does not arise.’

‘I am not surprised that no one is invited.’

‘He said: “At my age, I want it to be a simple affair.”’

‘What about at her age? She is not so very old. And every woman naturally wants to be a proper bride and wear white.’

‘She is very retiring since her accident,’ Isabella said, in defence of Vinny. ‘Although lately I have seen her about the town more. That is how I glimpsed the ring. He suggested bringing her to tea on Sunday.’

‘And you will have Laurence and this girl as well. Everything of interest coming at once. Does his mother know his past history?’

‘I should think no one does. And we should always remember that that woman may not have told the truth.’

Countering one conjecture with another, they passed the evening pleasantly. Often, Evalie was reminded of Isabella’s trust in her, then sworn again and again to secrecy, as if the trust lasted no more than a moment or two. When she had put away her sewing, Evalie glanced round the walls. ‘Did you ever buy that picture?’

‘Oh, no!’ said Isabella.