The Sleeping Beauty (2 page)

‘There’s Vinny going in with the wreaths,’ Isabella had once said.

Now that her own time to be consoled had come, she was glad of him. The wreaths she had mentioned were a figure of speech – her way of associating Vinny with condolences and gloom; for disaster could always bring him to a scene. He went with sympathy professional in its skill; yet adept, exquisite. More personal than the professionals whom he excelled – doctors, priests, undertakers – he fired his reliability with talent and imagination. His letters to the bereaved never expressed inadequacy on his part: they seemed simply to be the reason for his existence. Flippant people – Isabella was one – felt that his presence was a foreboding, or a dismal signal, like drawn blinds: but behind the closed doors where sorrow was, he sustained and comforted.

Seeing him standing in the parlour, looking stouter, greyer than she had remembered, she felt remorse at never having treated him seriously, and she went quickly to him; first took his hands and then put her head against his shoulder to hide the distortion of her face.

One thing Vinny never said was ‘Don’t cry’. He waited patiently for her to finish, standing quite still, his glance directed about the room which he had not seen for ten years. Without moving, he could not take in more than an edge of the bay-window and none of the sea beyond; but seaside light is always noticeable and on this early Spring evening the room was washed with it.

‘Forgive me!’ Isabella wept. ‘I have not cried before – I was too sad.’

A large part of Vinny’s usefulness was the coaxing forth of such tears as are better shed. He stroked her untidy hair, until after a while she steadied, gathered herself together, dabbed her eyes, disengaged herself and gave the usual rueful smile.

‘You are so good to come.’

While she tried to patch up her poor face, he walked over to the window and then felt tactless at going too soon to look at the sea, which had so recently claimed Isabella’s husband and had nearly claimed her son at the same time.

The window gave immediately on to the sea-front. The terrace of little houses were close to the jetty and the road ran behind them. The lavender paving-stones were patchily wet. The low sun broke into the puddles in a great dazzle. All steamed and shimmered. A row of iron chairs stood by the sea-wall.

Out on the sands, two children ran at the water’s edge, trailing seaweed, bending for shells. Behind them came an elderly lady with a large umbrella, which was shut up but not furled. It stabbed the sands like an arrow, sometimes knocking aside pebbles or spearing pieces of seaweed for the children. They moved along like a frieze against the brown sea, with the grey beach to themselves.

‘The Tillotson children,’ Isabella said, coming to stand beside Vinny. ‘And Nannie,’ she added.

‘Who are the Tillotson children?’ Vinny asked, putting his arm through hers.

‘They had whooping-cough,’ Isabella said vaguely. ‘I was thinking, Vinny, that “inevitable” can mean nice things, too. It had never occurred to me before.’

‘What has been inevitable?’

‘Why, you! I waited for you to come. I thought “Vinny at least will come.” Although we never heard from you all these years, only the card at Christmas.’

‘I was busy. You didn’t need me. I thought of you often, and imagined you three here for your holidays, and Laurence growing up.’

‘I was simply convinced you would one day walk in. One is left so much on one’s own. People are shy of the bereaved. They don’t quite know what to
be
. And they feel that they must not flock down, like vultures …’ Vinny frowned … ‘They say: “Other people are nearer to her, it is not our place to presume or intrude.” And because they all say that, in the end no one comes – from nicety, of course; not cruelty. Or are they just too embarrassed and waiting for death to blow over? Time heals everything, especially embarrassment. But perhaps you think I am bitter?’ she asked, with a little pride in her voice.

‘You, Isabella! Oh, my darling, no one less, ever.’

‘You are so fatherly,’ she said coldly. Yet his laughter had made the room more normal. No one had dared to laugh before.

‘There they go, up the steps!’

The children had crossed the sands and begun to ascend some rustic-work, zigzagging steps up the cliff. Sometimes Nannie urged them on, shooing at them with her umbrella as if they were geese. They plodded upwards in their wellington boots. One threw down her seaweed in despair and seemed to be coughing.

‘Where do they go?’ Vinny asked.

‘Up to Rose Kelsey’s guest-house.’

At the top of the cliff, but mostly hidden in trees, he could see a gabled Victorian house of tremendous ugliness, ivy over its dark walls and one upstairs window glinting evilly in the sunset.

‘How is Laurence?’ Vinny asked, reminded by the sight of the children that the last time he had stayed with Isabella her son had been a boy, out on the sands all day. Vinny had built castles for him and dug channels to let in the tide, the soapy water like ginger-beer.

‘I can’t help worrying. There is the question of what one calls his
future
. In fact, how to scrape together two halfpennies for himself when he has finished his military service.’ She tried hard not to feel aggrieved with her husband for leaving her before they had settled anything.

‘It might be a chance for me to help. Where is he now?’

‘He is upstairs in his room, sulking. What am I saying?
Studying
, I mean. Studying.’

‘What is he studying?’

‘Well, reading then. I always say “reading” when people are lolling in a chair, or lying on the sofa, or in a train. But studying when they sit up to a table.’

‘What does he read?’

‘Books and papers and magazines.’ She turned her cuff back secretly to glance at her watch, thinking of the meal in the oven. ‘And library books,’ she added.

‘Pretty comprehensive.’

‘Yes. It was such an ordeal for him. He seemed quite stunned. Unimaginably horrifying: and so brave of him, trying to save Harry like that. It was hopeless. He barely saved himself.’

‘I know. I read of it,’ Vinny said, glancing at her.

‘He seemed ill for days, chilled and dazed and exhausted,
poor boy … and talking in his sleep, though nothing one could hear; and being so very difficult. Antagonistic.’

The children were at the top now: they disappeared behind some macrocarpa trees. The sunset had struck a different window of the house, and fell differently into the little parlour, which had a selfconscious, but charming, marine atmosphere – sea-green wallpaper, and furniture inlaid with mother-o’-pearl; on the chimney-piece, ships in bottles and spiked and curly pink shells. The pictures were of steamers, and paddle-boats painted on glass and having a darkly thunderous quality. By the window was the telescope on its stand. Isabella had often turned it on Harry’s yacht as he set off from the jetty, swinging round at first uncertainly, then settling to the water and at last disappearing round the cliff. She had probably watched it on the last day, Vinny thought, when Harry and Laurence were late returning. She had always been particularly anxious when Laurence had gone, too. He wondered how she could bear to keep the telescope there: then he realised that, sometimes, to take action over a thing can make it seem more real.

‘I may appear inevitable,’ he suddenly said, ‘but no more than that – not, for instance, punctual. I wanted to come earlier, but could only write.
Now
is really too late. All I can do are practical things … what to arrange for Laurence, for instance.’

‘You came just right,’ Isabella said. ‘When one is too shocked, one cannot …’ She put her rolled-up handkerchief to her mouth, and then went on: ‘After when one begins to feel the emptiness … and being so unpopular, because grieved … and then practical things I never could do … nor had to … not now, really … there wasn’t even a funeral, you see.’

‘No,’ said Vinny reverently. He tried not to imagine Harry’s body dragged to and fro on the sea’s floor, with no tide ever sweeping him to rest.

‘Oh, we ought to have some sherry,’ Isabella said, remembering. She had grown careless about such things, and often, when she was alone, did not bother.

When she opened the door, a dismal smell of cooking flew in. Vinny could envisage some dreary, woman’s meal – cauliflower-cheese, he thought – placed in the oven by the daily-help who had admitted him – a frantic-looking woman, who stood by the door, skewering in hatpins, to show she was just off.

There was dust on the stopper of the decanter Isabella brought in. She handed him his glass triumphantly, as if she had brought off a conjuring-trick.

‘I will call Laurie,’ she said. ‘You can have a drink together while I make up your bed.’

‘But I shall not stay here,’ Vinny protested. ‘I mean to take a stroll into the town and find a room at The Victoria.’

‘The Victoria! Out of season! It is half shut up, and no staff, and you would be much better off here, and are so
wanted
.’

For a minute or two, they played their game of doubt and reassurance. He threw to her protestations and got back overriding assertions, as he expected. In the end, she went away to prepare his room, and to fetch Laurence. At the door, she asked: ‘
How
long can you stay?’

‘Over the weekend, I
could
… but are you sure …’ but before he could begin again, she disappeared.

He turned once more, instinctively, to the window. The pinky sky had faded into a muffled blue, the beginning of darkness. A shred of moon had appeared, and the windows of the house on the cliff were blank and shadowed, as if lids had closed on them. On the wide curve of the sands, two figures walked; no longer the Tillotson children skipping along, but a woman walking gravely, abstractedly, at the sea’s edge, followed by a young girl who, like the children, bent sometimes to pick up a shell. When she stopped, the gap between the two figures
became greater, for the woman herself did not pause. She walked on at the same pace, her head erect, as if she noticed nothing at all, or else always the same thing ahead of her. Her arms were folded, her hands thrust up the wide sleeves of her dark coat. They made a most beautiful picture, Vinny thought; mysterious, romantic. He could not imagine any words passing between them: they were too together – seemed too much in accord – for any but the most broken phrases, the most disjointed sounds. Perhaps mother and daughter, he decided. The girl’s long pale hair blew away from her shoulders, but then (when she stooped for a shell) fell across her face and, with a gesture, immature, impatient, she brushed it back. It was too dark for him to see the woman’s face, but he was certain, from her walk, that it was beautiful. She went on slowly and dreamily along the shore. Beautiful women do not need to hurry. Then she turned and paused, looking back: the girl came nearer to her, and together they crossed the sands and began to climb the rustic steps, the private way up to the house above, where now a light or two was switched on in upstairs rooms. He watched them going up the steps in single file, the girl first now. At the top, the wind blowing stronger, the blonde hair flew about and the woman took it in both her hands and smoothed it away from the girl’s face. When she had done this, she bent her head down as if she was kissing the girl’s brow.

Vinny could see all this. He watched it intently, with fascination. When they had gone from view, he turned back to the room, and found it dark now, and very small.

Laurence, hearing his mother coming upstairs, opened the evening-paper at a different page and was discovered by her studying as usual, sitting up at the table; his elbows on either side of The Londoner’s Diary; his fists against his cheeks. When he did not look up, she sighed.

‘Don’t work too hard, darling, or try your eyes.’

He turned his chin to rest on his fist now and at last glanced at her. The red pressure-mark on his face made him look feverish, but soon faded.

When Isabella snapped on the light, the white boarded walls shone brilliantly. The room looked extremely neat, except for all the papers littering the table.

‘Vincent Tumulty is here,’ Isabella said. ‘I don’t suppose that you remember him. He spent a summer holiday with us here when you were a child.’

Not committing himself to any such memory, Laurence asked: ‘What is he here for?’

Isabella just parted her hands helplessly, appealingly, at this heartless remark. The sight of her glazed and puffy eyes angered him. He looked away again. ‘What a
name
, anyhow!’ he said.

‘We can put him up for a couple of nights.’ She spoke in this grudging way, implying inconvenience, to hide her real pleasure. At least Laurence was with her in desiring a third person. The two of them had become such a wounded pair – in everyone’s eyes, and their own. One more would help to break the agonising fusion. Lately, when she had handed him a cup of tea, or made any other simple, trivial gesture, it had seemed to have a horrifying significance. ‘You are all I have now,’ seemed to hang in the air. He hourly dreaded the words themselves, and if Vinny could stave off the phrase for a day or two he could not be more welcome.

‘If you would come down and have a drink while I make up the bed …’

He stood up, his hands still clumsily fidgeting with the papers on the table. He was tall, and because he wore his old school suit – the grey double-breasted flannel, which had shrunk at the cleaner’s – his wrists shot out too far from the sleeves and too much sock showed between turn-up and shoe.

He seemed reluctant to leave his papers until his mother was well away, and fidgeted about waiting for her to go. Her very appearance sometimes enraged him, although it was that of a rather nice woman. She was deeply interested in clothes, but in an academic, objective way. She was always reading fashion-papers and criticising her friends’ efforts, yet dressed mostly in pale twin-sets and seated skirts. Her silver-blonde hair was turning to real silver without any change to her pink-and-white attractions. Her fat arms and shoulders gave her a top-heavy appearance, especially as her feet were tiny – such little girl’s feet, in fact, that her high-heeled shoes made her look precocious. She was kind and simple and it would have been nice for her if Laurence had sometimes teased her, or said ‘Cheer up, mum,’ or something a little more homely than his present manner of fending off and backing away.