The Sugar Mother (13 page)

 

“How splendid to see pearl barley again.” Daphne gazed into the large saucepan as Leila's mother stirred the contents.

“This soup,” Leila's mother said, “takes three days.”

“Good heavens!” Daphne fixed her thoughtful eyes on the wooden spoon as it rose and fell in the glistening liquid.

Both women sat down again to their teacups.

“Sometimes,” Daphne said, “I look through my old school poetry book where I once wrote, just lightly in pencil, the
names of the girls who read the poems aloud. And when I look at the names now I actually seem to hear their voices.”

“That's nice,” Leila's mother said. “That's very nice.” She topped up her own cup, Daphne having indicated that she had had enough.

“I'm glad I kept my old schoolbooks and carried them across the world,” Daphne continued. “One of the poems in particular that I like to look at is called ‘Dedication.'
My new-cut ashlar takes the light…
Kipling.”

“Isn't that nice now!” Leila's mother said, sipping her tea.

“Cecilia read that one,” Daphne said. “Of course I keep forgetting that you don't know Cecilia. I do rather miss her,” she sighed.

Leila's mother clicked her tongue. “The time soon goes,” she said. “Before you know it, she'll be back.”

“Yes,” Daphne said. “Cecilia read in a very clear voice. I remember especially the lines:

“I do worry about Edwin,” Daphne said. “Cecilia thinks he can't look after himself.”

“Most men can't,” Leila's mother said comfortably.

“I suppose that's true,” Daphne said. “Anyway Cecilia had a soprano voice, I'm contralto, we sang duets, you know, from
Orfeo
and
Fidelio
.”

“That's nice,” Leila's mother said. “Very nice.”

“In the book were poems by Rossetti and Emily Brontë:
No coward soul is mine
. It was very fitting,” Daphne said, “absolutely right that Cecilia should have been asked to read ‘Dedication.' All her life, you know, she has been dedicated to her work and absolutely to Edwin.”

“Isn't that just lovely!” Leila's mother said. “So you were at school in England?” she asked, changing the subject slightly.
“Mr. Bott was adamant about schooling. Leila went to an English school. We lived in London,” she added.

“Yes,” Daphne replied. “Father was in New Guinea for a good deal of the time and because of the climate he sent me to boarding school in England, and of course that's where I met Cecilia. Cecilia's mother's a dear,” she added. “She's a widow now. She is a very clever woman. She contributed a great deal in her own field. She had two wasps named after her.”

“Fancy that,” Leila's mother said.

“Species, you understand,” Daphne said. “We, Cecilia and I, have been friends for years. I do miss her!”

“Aw!” Leila's mother said. “It would be a shame if you didn't.”

“That's true.” Daphne seemed surprised. “Later I went to England several times to stay with Cecilia. After she married Edwin I only visited them once and then to my utter surprise they both, at the same time, got awfully good appointments over here—so here we all are.”

“Well, if that isn't nice, very nice,” Leila's mother said. “It's a small world when all's said and done.”

“Father was a doctor too,” Daphne said.

“Women's troubles?” Leila's mother was comfortable.

“Yes.” Daphne began to collect up her bag and a few books.

“Well, we can't say they're not needed,” Leila's mother sighed. It seemed to Daphne that a great weight of thighs, buttocks, abdomens and perhaps a few breasts were included in the sigh. She had never contemplated her father's work while he lived as she did now in the images conjured in this sigh from Leila's mother. Perhaps Miss Heller had managed to contemplate and to understand.

“Don't go,” Leila's mother said, filling the kettle. “There's no need for you to hurry, is there? I expected them earlier; they should be back directly. Dr. Page took Leila to see his university. They'll be in for their afternoon teas.”

“Oh, what fun!” Daphne said. “But I must go; I've been at school all day and Prince hasn't had his walk. I thought”—she
paused—“that Edwin might have been in on his own. I thought that you would…”

“Dr. Page,” Leila's mother said, “has asked us to stay on.”

“Oh, I see,” Daphne said.

 

E
dwin knew that Leila, in an apron decorated with seafood, mainly a design of lobsters, was waiting with a new dustpan and brush to sweep the kitchen linoleum. He saw the shy shape of her waiting outside the back door. She was going to cook a dinner for him too. It was all arranged. Leila's mother had gone to visit her sister and would be very late, the journey being a tiresome one. He knew that Leila was looking forward to peeling the vegetables and to making everything nice for him. She had said so. She told him that she had enjoyed walking to the university and she liked his room there. It was a bit like his room at home, she said, but without the bed, of course. Both the rooms, she said, were like him.

“How d'you mean?” he asked, really wanting to know her opinion.

“I can't explain,” she said, adding that both rooms smelled nice. The gardens at the university, she said, in her ordinary way, were very pretty. He said he had never thought of them as pretty; rather dull, in fact.

“I like neat clipped lawns,” she said, “and flower beds with red roses.”

When they were walking home she told him that she
wanted to be like Cecilia. “I admire Cecilia very much,” she said.

Edwin, smiling down at her, said, “But you don't know Cecilia.” Suddenly he wanted to show affection, to do something affectionate towards her, but could not in the street alongside the university, where an unseen colleague might pass in a car or, unnoticed by them, on a bicycle. Since the little walk to the letter box a few days earlier he had not been absolutely sure whether she had caressed his hand or not. He kept telling himself that he might have imagined the touch of forgiveness because he wanted it so much. He had been able to push aside the doubt as he listened to her voice. “I've seen her a few times,” she said, “when she's been leaving the house and you wave to her.”

“Ah yes, of course,” Edwin said.

“And I've seen her nightdresses too,” Leila said. “I've worn one, remember, the biggest one, the stretchy one. When I had it on, though I know I'm too fat, I pretended I was her.”

“Oh?” He was amused. “And why did you do that?”

“Because—Oh! I can't tell you.” Her face was turned away. He saw her ear, very pink, the tip of it showing below her short straight hair.

“Come on! Of course you can tell me.” He enjoyed persuading her. “You surely aren't shy with me,” he said.

“It's because of…in the nightgown…because she will have worn it next to you, so…”

“Yes? Go on.” He liked teasing her. “Yes, and so?”

“So if I'm wearing it…” She looked up quickly, straight into his smile. For a moment he felt no one existed except himself and her. The sun caught the edge of her spectacles so that they shone.

Held by her smile, he said in his softest voice, “You are very sweet.”

“Am I?” he thought he heard her reply.

“Yes, yes, you are. You must always be as you are,” he said. “Never try to be like anyone else.”

Now, in the kitchen, which was suddenly crowded with the Wellatons and the Honeywells—the Fairfaxes, Dippy and Ida, were unable to come, apparently, at the last minute—Edwin stood surprised as hot dishes were carried in from the cars and pushed into the oven. The visitors seemed bigger and noisier than usual and there was a clattering of heels across the veranda as more dishes were fetched. He stood wondering what to do about Leila.

“Darling! Teddy!” Paulette Honeywell screamed. “We've gone all Spanish.” Edwin saw the flamboyant dresses, flamenco style. Paulette, in particular, was striking in a scarlet dress and a black mantilla. She had a red rose tucked behind one ear. “Soup matador!” she said, putting a large saucepan on the stove. “I'll be back in a minute,” she cried, “with the pechuga valenciana.”

“Paella—eggs and fish.” Erica Wellaton pushed her dish forward. “Don't look so worried.” She gave Edwin a kiss. “The pechuga is a sort of baked chicken, quite harmless. And”—she gave him another kiss—“how have you been getting on? All lonesome?” Edwin tried not to draw back from her third kiss.

“Sangria! Sangria! Open the fridge, old man!” Buffy Honeywell filled the door space. “It's naughty but nice and full of ice,” he said. Edwin had to move some of Leila's mother's stored cooking to make room for the enormous pitcher, which he guessed was mainly vermouth, a drink he did not care for.

“Sangria!” Paulette screeched. “Don't look like that, Teddy—you'll simply love it! Buffy's been busy all day getting it dollied up. I always think,” she added, “that vermouth's a medicinal drink. Cecilia's always said you like medicinal things. You do, don't you, darling?”

Edwin, dismayed, now remembered the dinner parties Cecilia had arranged for him during her absence. He had forgotten them completely when he suggested to Leila's mother that they might like to stay longer, perhaps even for a time to discontinue their rent next door. “Think about it,” he'd said, surprised at his own words. The coming home to comfortable dinners and relaxed evenings outweighed the ini
tial uneasiness of having other people in the house. Surprisingly the bathroom presented no problems. It seemed clean and empty at all times. He supposed that Leila's mother and Leila showered during the times when he was out. Leila's mother did seem to be very considerate.

There were to be twelve of these parties, a “happening” every month while Cecilia was away. This was the first. How could he have forgotten so easily? It was only a short time since her departure and here were the Wellatons and the Honeywells, friends, their set at the tennis club, come to look after him, to feed him and to cheer him up—Cecilia's words when she had suggested the idea a few weeks earlier. She had telephoned everyone. All the dates were arranged and written in Cecilia's firm up-and-down handwriting in a little red diary she had given him. The diary was on his desk, he remembered now; he had not looked in it. Somehow it had not been difficult to forget the diary.

There were several stories about Edwin's forgetfulness and his absentminded intellectual ways. Paulette and Erica had always been very understanding and forgiving.

He saw Leila's round brown head, like a seal, he thought, by the edge of the uncurtained window (Cecilia hated curtains in a kitchen). It was now quite dark. Only someone who knew Leila was out there would be able to see her. With another quick glance he saw her bending down, perhaps to fasten a shoe. She would not be in fact hiding, he knew, any more than she, feeling excluded, was hiding by being in the yard instead of the kitchen. Without knowing her very well, he was able to imagine that she would wait out there till these intruders had gone. He hoped she would not see things he preferred her not to know about.

The Honeywells and the Wellatons were, in their own words, awfully good sorts. He knew he should bring Leila in to them and explain that she was a visitor. The women, once they understood that Edwin unexpectedly had houseguests, would include her in their preparations. They would even put a red rose behind her ear in their generous endeavors. He, in
his mind, saw the stalk of the rose refuse to stay in Leila's short straight hair. It was soft and fluffy today; she must have washed it. And the rose, a thoroughly awkward blossom, would lean and slip and need constant attention, little pattings and attempts to keep it in place, till it, in the end, would fall.

Paulette's rose was placed bewitchingly and would never slip. It gave an impression of being fastened by a long pin or a nail driven firmly into her fashionable skull. The rose seemed to make Paulette's eyes sparkle with mischief. Perhaps that was the intention. A rose might fill Leila's eyes with anxiety. Edwin, unable to move away, watched Paulette's thin capable fingers unwrap some special bread and various mysterious little jars containing sauces and, finally, some little biscuits which, she declared, were heavenly. He was unsure about Leila herself; he could not see how she would manage in the overbearing presences of Erica and Paulette. If Leila's mother had been there, he thought, she would in her large and heavy way have been thoroughly in command. Leila's mother, he had noticed in the short time of being acquainted with her, was a discerning woman. She perceived and acted immediately on her perception. He was not sure that he really liked this. There was something frightening, almost sinister, about the ease with which she adapted herself, fitted herself in. If Leila's mother had been there, Erica and Paulette would have been simply flattened into the position of being guests. But Leila's mother was a journey, two buses and a train, away. Her sister, Leila's mother said after dinner the previous day, had not been well and she was wondering, she said, if Dr. Page would mind if Leila stayed quietly at home. Her sister, she said, would be sure to want to talk about her illness, which was terminal—Leila's mother shook her head—and about her big operation. No, of course he did not mind. It would be a pleasure to have Leila stay behind, his charming smile reassured Leila's mother. He had then suggested that Leila should cook the meal for them both.