The Sugar Mother (12 page)

“Is it first or second or third movement?” she had asked, with the directness of a doctor requesting information about bowel habits. “Can you sing it?” was her next question. She paused as if waiting for him to sing the phrase. She knew a great deal about music. He knew that if he tried to sing, it would be quite unlike the real sound; it would make identification impossible.

“Is it something you've heard me play?” she asked. “I sometimes have a go at the piano parts of things. Have I played it?”

It could be but he couldn't remember, he'd said, trying to think about Daphne's piano playing. He seemed able to remember only her enthusiasm for the lute. Cecilia had once declared Daphne's true beauty was displayed when she played the lute.

Now, when he listened to the Mozart, to the piano and the orchestra, he thought of the composer holding the notes and the phrases in his head till they could be tried and written down. The piano notes in particular being held while the composer heard in his own head, at the same time, the other instruments in the orchestra—both groups of notes sometimes going in opposite directions but complementing and supporting and emphasizing each other.

Edwin from his side of the room looked across at Leila, who continued to write, in a round hand, not looking up once in his direction.

Affairs, Edwin thought during the stampede of piano and orchestra towards an abrupt finale, were not all simply a whipping off of dresses and a stepping out of underwear; they were hours of indecision, loneliness, partings and looking forward to future meetings. A whole life could be devoted to this way of living. It would be a great deal of trouble to arrange. Perhaps, at his age, he could not feel disposed towards taking trouble of this sort. All the same there was this eagerness, this wanting to meet, wanting to be with a person, excluding all others, wanting the excitement and pleasure of exchanging ideas,
searching each other for wishes and thoughts, liking each other, loving, and not being able to stand being apart. The inevitable pain of parting would cloud every meeting and a time would come when it would be declared that it was not possible to continue….

Accompanying the wish to be with one person was the terrifying wish and need to avoid, to not be with, the other person. Edwin, with a quick cringing movement, chose another piano concerto. There was no need for him to dwell on these things, because he was not having an affair. He thought he would make a note later of the profound realizations in his book of the intangible. It was not impossible—he glanced at Leila—that he might need to be reminded of these at some time in his life.

Leila's mother said that Leila had time to go out and post her letter. The potatoes, she said, needed a few minutes and she was not ready with the parsley sauce for the cauli yet. She had been held up, she said, by the agent.

“I'll come to the post with you, if I may.” Edwin sprang up, eager to perhaps have the chance to speak to Leila by herself.

The agent, Leila's mother told him as they went through the kitchen, had just been and reported that the house next door was now free from all pests, but that the tenants were advised to occupy alternative accommodation till the effects of fumigation subsided. Since the agency felt responsible, they offered Leila and her mother a motel on the other side of town.

“Oh, please do consider staying on a day or two.” Edwin's good manners and charm prevailed upon Leila's mother, who immediately said it was very good of him. Motel life, she said, did not appeal to Leila or to herself unless it was for the purpose of traveling and seeing the wonders of the world. The motel suggested happened to be in the less desirable part of town, not really very suitable for two ladies on their own. She was ever so grateful, she said, to Edwin, as both she and Leila felt really nicely at home in his house. A real homely place. They would be really sorry to leave when the house next door was pronounced ready for them. About dinner for tomorrow,
Leila's mother continued, did Dr. Page eat veal? She knew some as couldn't touch it, but if he liked it the butcher had told her he had some prime.

Edwin, who had misgivings about veal, declared it would be a nice change to have veal if Mrs. Bott would be kind enough to buy it and cook it. He put a handful of bank notes on the kitchen table, and with one of his little flourishes, he held open the back door for Leila to go through while Leila's mother gathered up the money quickly.

“Shall we walk through the pines?” Edwin asked as they stood side by side waiting to cross the road. He spoke in his most subdued and chastened voice in preparation for his sincere apology. Leila, clutching her letter, nodded. She seemed both younger and older away from her mother. He could not make her out. If Cecilia had been at home, the two of them, Cecilia and Edwin between them, would have made a little game, an act of bringing Leila out. They would have asked Leila's mother, Mrs. Bott, most solemnly, could they take Leila out? Yes, to dinner with friends. Really nice people. Yes, she would be home early; Edwin would bring her home—faithfully. Oh well, if you won't hear of Edwin leaving early we'll pop her in a taxi, all safe and sound home, like Cinderella, before midnight. Cecilia would take Leila under her wing and teach her to know what to wear and how to do her hair and what to put on her face and when. With Cecilia, Leila would blossom—for a time. But Cecilia was not at home and Edwin, at present, was not part of a broad-minded, fun-loving, pleasure-loving couple. He was by himself. He was going with Leila to post a letter. “Who have you been writing to, darling?” Cecilia would have asked, laughing and teasing. Kind teasing but teasing all the same, and she would have insisted that Leila tell her. Edwin did not ask. Good manners prevented him from more than scarcely glancing at the letter. It was addressed to a box number and he did not try to see the name above it.

Leila seemed different away from her mother's side, rather as she was not the same when, shyly, she slipped by him,
unbuttoned, on her way from the bathroom to the spare room that first night. Edwin recalled something, as they crossed into the dark pines, about mother and daughter, the symbiotic relationship. For one of Cecilia's papers he had found a quotation about willow trees and how they needed to be planted in threes. A mother and two daughters. On reflection his quotation had not been applicable to the description of symbiosis. Perhaps Cecilia's audience had not noticed….

He did not know how to explain things to this shy girl. He could not say that he did not want her and her mother to be in the house. How else could he explain what her mother had called a little fling? He still felt he did not want visitors in the house but, at the same time, it did not seem quite so awkward after all. When the house next door was ready he might even miss them. At least he would miss—he smiled to himself—Leila's mother's cooking. That he had hurt this shy girl was unforgivable. He knew from her look this morning that she had been hurt and that she did not understand why. Perhaps he should start by saying that he simply could not understand his own shameful behavior. Daphne was a thoroughly good sort; he would make a point of that. She had only meant to help. But help with what? To get Leila and her mother out of the house? He was back at the beginning of the impossible explanation. Gently he took her plump arm and guided her with his easy smooth way between the pines to the now hidden path. She seemed to soften beneath his touch. Physically he knew all the right ways to handle a woman. But how to explain to Leila? He had no idea what she was really like. She might behind her plump plain look be quite different.

“Aw! Get off the grass, willya. Just you watch it! Tough cookie, you'll end up with egg on your face!” What if she said this sort of thing in response to his quiet dignified protection of Daphne? She might be a tough cookie herself and scorn his ashamed apology. His charm, successful most of the time, might be wasted.

“Just you watch it!” He had heard the words often but never addressed to him, even in his imagination.

Because of the heavy cloud, the evening was dark early. Edwin, without meaning to, said he thought it was going to rain. They hastened their silent steps over the springing pine-needle path. They walked side by side, Edwin trying, in his nervousness, not to walk ahead of Leila.

“Mother will keep the dinner hot,” Leila said. Edwin was wondering whether to say, “I must tell you I am deeply ashamed,” or, “About last night, I must explain.” Instead he said, “We turn out of the trees here; there's the post box. We might as well go back through the pines.” He hoped that on the way back he would find the right thing to say.

“Hello! How absolutely jolly!” Daphne met them as they turned to walk back from the letter box. Prince came leaping and bounding towards them.

“He loves being one of the party,” Daphne said, grabbing at handfuls of Prince's glossy coat. “I'm running rather late,” she said. She had been to the vet, she told them, and Prince had been cooped up in the most, for him, evil of waiting rooms—mainly in the company of cats—so he had to have a walk before bed. He hated going to the vet.

“Not the lavender,” Edwin said, trying to sound jovial.

“Sort of,” Daphne said. She turned to Leila, explaining. “He ate a whole bush of French lavender this morning and then he was sick. The whole bush, Teddy”—she turned to Edwin—“he brought up the lot. It's practically complete; it might even grow….”

“Oh, Daphne, don't, please.” Edwin's pretended groans were wonderfully realistic. Leila gave a polite little smile.

“He's perfectly all right, the vet says.” Daphne hurled a stick into the gathering darkness. “The vet says he's going to have puppies.” They all watched as the dog approached from the gloom carrying the stick. “The condition,” Daphne said, “seems to have given him a craving.” They watched as Prince began to eat the stick.

“You'll have to call him Princess,” Edwin said, and laughed too much at his own remark.

They were now at the edge of the pines, waiting to cross the road.

“I'll walk on a bit, I think,” Daphne said. “Prince thinks his walk has been too short. Oh, by the way,” she said, “I almost forgot—Cecilia phoned. She's been trying to get you, thinks your phone must be…She's perfectly all right; said would I tell you she's all right and would I report your phone. Nearly forgot!”

As he walked with Leila along the last part of the pavement Edwin remembered the pulled-out connection. Poor little Cecilia, trying and trying to phone. She always needed to tell him things. She might have needed to tell him something troublesome.

As they walked together Edwin's hand brushed against Leila's, or, he wondered, did her hand brush his? They were on the brick path leading up to the front door. Edwin, feeling that he had failed, suddenly felt Leila's hand take hold of his hand. He felt the smallness of her hand and a kind of soft dryness in the palm. He thought her hand was like a child's hand, but roughened with kitchen work, perhaps scrubbing floors and vegetables. Very lightly she squeezed his fingers, a tiny gentle squeeze, and then she stepped ahead of him through the half-open front door and vanished down the hall in the direction of the kitchen.

A feeling of relief and joy spread through his whole body. It was like the time of relief when a severe pain is no longer there after a time of its being unbearable. He went singing to wash before dinner. It was not like Daphne, he thought, to make a mistake like that about a dog. He was amazed at the mistake. Daphne and Cecilia, friends all their lives since their boarding school days, had followed different interests—Daphne medieval music and drama, and Cecilia the fleshiness of the human female and her functions—but Daphne was the one who knew about dogs and horses. As for himself, with his limitations, the Elizabethan and the Renaissance (and some desultory strayings), even with his narrowness he could tell at
a glance a male dog from a female. He had never looked closely at Prince. He wondered how many puppies and whether Leila would like one for herself. Smiling, he went into the dining room and took his place at the head of his table. Surveying the steaming dishes and the devout heads of Leila's mother and Leila, he thought it would be nice for Leila to have a puppy.

 

R
eaching out in darkness, Edwin answered the telephone. Cecilia's voice was remarkably close and clear. They, Vorwickl and Cecilia, were about to leave for London where she told him they were hoping to share an apartment within walking distance of the Diseases of Women. But she said we shan't be in London just yet. They had she said to do more of Canada first. Montreal next. She said she thought they had a bad line. He thought he said they were about to board the plane. He thought he heard the sounds of the airport. No she told him it was the canteen. She had escaped with Vorwickl from a lecture, a demonstration lecture on bonding. Blow-up dolls. He heard her laughing. They had to blow up the mother and child she told him, inflate them and then bond. He heard her laughing across continents. Exploding. He tried to wake up. She was dragging him from sleep he told her. You listening she asked. What time is it over there she wanted to know. Wait he told her while he looked at his watch. She said she knew it was luminous hadn't she given it to him at Christmas? Last Christmas or the one before. She chose it for him she said. I know he replied. It's 3
A.M.
he told her. He
was trying not to grudge her his sleep he said and the weight of an unbearable ensuing wakefulness. She was sorry to forget she said the twelve hours. We're having coffee she explained and Danish pastries. He told her he had a surprise for her. It's black he said with four legs and a tail. A parrot she said I'm only guessing. Right first time he said. She must be headfirst he said in an empty canister holding her legs nimbly together at the knees kicking frantic but only from the knees. Correct she said. He heard her laughing. Red shoes he said. He told her she had on her Italian red shoes. Boots she managed in the middle of her laugh. Vacuum-packed he said. Tinned she agreed. A parrot she said. She told him she had always wanted a parrot. She said she heard him groan and yawn. He said that was what she heard. He had his eyes shut he explained he hoped to be able to stay asleep. His neck ached he said with speaking into the phone lying down. Sit up she said. No he replied. Vorwickl she said wanted to speak to him. Go ahead Vorwickl he said. He told them he could hear them squeezed together in a telephone box.
Grüss Gott
he said he heard Vorwickl.
Guten Tag Gnädige Frau Doktor
he explained he was raising himself with an attempt at chivalry. Bravo! she said she could see his gold tooth the one at the back when he smiled. Good he said. Homage paid. Melancholy he said often follows courtesies. They were eating gooseberries Cecilia said it was her turn to speak again. Vorwickl bought a bag of gooseberries. Listen she said sharp teeth crunching fruit long distance.