The Sugar Mother (14 page)

“It might just help to bring her out of that shyness,” Leila's mother said.

“Yes, I think it might.” Edwin smiled at Leila.

“And you need not be afraid being with Dr. Page,” Leila's mother said to Leila. “It will be valuable experience.”

“In familiar surroundings.” Edwin smiled at them both. It was very useful to a young woman, Leila's mother declared, and it was a privilege, she was sure Leila would realize this, for Leila to be with a gentleman like Dr. Page for the evening.

Edwin felt as if he would choke. Moving nearer to the window, he found he could no longer see Leila. He could only see the reflection of all the color and the excited movements of preparation in the kitchen. The most awful part of the whole thing was that Leila had been looking forward tremendously—she had told him so—to the evening. She and her mother had been out to buy the apron and the dustpan and brush, there not being either anywhere in the house, specially for the evening. When the guests, with their fancy dress and exotic food, came clamoring through the house, Leila, with hardly a glance at Edwin, had slipped out through the back door and stayed outside.

The moment for introducing or even mentioning her had gone, he realized in the next few minutes, as he was bundled by Paulette and Erica into the cabbage-rose room, the lounge, they called it, where Buffy Honeywell and Tuppy Wellaton (all the men in their set had pet names which enabled them to get through certain aspects of married life) lifted the responsibility of host completely off his shoulders by pouring and offering him, in his own house, a double Scotch. They followed this with another as soon as he had drained the glass.

The Honeywells and the Wellatons and the Fairfaxes, Dippy and Ida, unfortunately unable to come, Paulette insisted on reminding them, knew just how much Edwin relied on dear little Cecilia. They had all promised her, practically weeping, that they would see to it that he did not get lonely and depressed.

“The Old Country!” Buffy said. They were still standing but would have risen if they had been sitting down.

“To Home. Here's to Home. Down the hatch! The Old Country!”

“The Queen!” Buffy was inspired. “God bless the Queen.”

“I'll drink to that,” Tuppy said. “God bless the Queen.” Edwin, in silence, drank his share. With toasts it was impossible not to. In a minute, he thought, he would slip out and fetch Leila from the very awkward position she was in. A stranger in the yard, yet familiar. He looked at his guests. They were very good-looking and very good-hearted people. They would never knowingly hurt anyone, but Leila would be frightened of them. They were toasting their old regiments now. It seemed inconceivable that he belonged with these people. He never spoke or thought of England as the Old Country. He never thought about it as Home as they apparently, after many years, did. He believed this was described as a migration syndrome; he had heard the phrase. What was home anyway other than a place you lived in and came back to every night? These people could be said to be invading his home. Cecilia when she talked of home did not particularly mean England. She meant her mother's house, a place of Viyella nightgowns, of delphiniums and rosemary, of little vegetable plots with radishes and pale lettuces splashed with mud, and a neatly trimmed lawn in the front garden hidden from the road by evergreen bushes, rhododendrons. Home for Cecilia contained a mythology of coziness, of sharing chocolates or making buttered toast by a sitting room fire on a winter's afternoon. Years ago, because he was older, while she perched on his lap he had to explain more than once that home was where they were together. He had to persuade her to close her bedroom door at night instead of keeping it slightly open with a slipper, as all the doors in her mother's house were kept at night. He said, teaching her, that she must trust that the rest of the house would be safe while she slept. In any case the telephone disturbed him during the night when she was called out. If her door was closed he did not hear the phone so often. She developed the habit of putting a cushion on it and sometimes declared that it would be better for the emerging child to begin the battle unaided.

Edwin, burning his lips and tongue with the hot Spanish soup, thought he would rescue Leila between courses and
smuggle her into the spare room with promises and explanations and something to eat, and after the guests were gone…He groaned at the hours and the food ahead. The evening, in their pattern of doing things, was endless, hours of jokes and anecdotes, mostly with double meanings. They would eat and drink and talk too much in loud voices and play foolish games, probably sardines and photographers and—he glanced at their clothes—bullfights. Buffy was dressed as an eighteenth-century Spanish bandit and Tuppy resembled the doorman of the Edelweiss, an unexpected and expensive German restaurant in Madrid.

The evening would end with the ritual of keys in the ring since that was the way of broad-minded couples and they were all broad-minded and open, by declaration, in their marriages. The game, of course, because of their changing needs and interests and because of Buffy's prostate, was now something different. Always an act, it had become more so but with compensations, one of these being the chance to talk intimately,
even if under the influence
(Dippy's phrase), at times with someone else, the other half of a couple,
all aboveboard
(Dippy again), as it were.

“I give you Dippy Fairfax and Ida.” Buffy tipped the great jug of sangria towards each glass.

“Dippy and Ida!”

“Down the hatch!”

“Absent friends. Love you, Dippy. Love love you, Ida.”

“I give you Cecilia.” Another pouring from the jug. Edwin felt himself swaying.

“Cecilia!”

“Darling Cecilia!”

“Here's to our one and only.”

“I do believe Teddy's crying. Dry up and down the hatch!”

“Bottoms up! Don't howl, Teddy darling. If you do we'll all howl. I'm howling.”

Suddenly he was remembering the golden sheen of a fine down in the small of her back. Cecilia's. Perhaps it was the vermouth. It was not his drink. Never had been. He'd had too
much. Perhaps he was crying somewhere inside but it was not all for Cecilia. Why remember, of all things, the small of her back now? Damn Cecilia and the same to these people. Get out! he wanted to shout. Get out! He wanted to herd them all to the front door and out down the brick path. It seemed as if they would be in his house forever, and with that wretched game ahead, one of them would be. It was Leila he wanted. He wanted to be with her alone, to have her to himself. He did not want these people to know about her. He did not want Cecilia to know, not yet. They always did know about each other but this was something he wanted to keep for himself. He wanted to contemplate, alone, the small hollow of Leila's back.

“Pechuga valenciana, Teddy? Have some more?” He scarcely tasted anything with his soup-burnt tongue. He tried to eat and smile and nod his head. He drank too much as Buffy offered more of the adulterated vermouth, alternating it with whisky.

“Garlic bread, Teddy? Eat up!”

“Sangria? Drink up, Teddy!”

He wished Daphne would come. She was always invited and she sometimes came. When Paulette and Erica talked of her they called her “poor Daphne,” referring to her being unmarried rather than her thin purse. Edwin knew that Miss Heller thrived in an expensive apartment, positively bulging with bank accounts, as Daphne herself would have described it if she ever permitted herself to descend into bitterness and the discussing of Miss Heller's money.

At last Edwin had a chance to slip out. The Honeywells and the Wellatons, suitably split up, were dancing, moving about the room very close to each other. It was what passed for dancing. Edwin said that while he made the coffee he would look for a special record Tuppy remembered. A tango he thought it was, very earthy music and erotic, powerfully erotic, just the thing. Tuppy was sure, he said, that Edwin had it. As he made for the back door Edwin was glad that Cecilia was far away. For once he was not wishing for her to come to
the rescue with her laughter and her quick ways of dealing with whatever had to be done. He heard, in his head, the high-pitched laughing voice:

Well, folks! Let me present Leila, little Miss Bott, little Leila Bott, our little debutante, our little fresh flower of the evening, our little fresh apple, a new face of Eve herself, Leila!
Cecilia, with graceful flourishes, would draw the reluctant Leila, freshly dressed in new clothes—absolutely the right clothes, in Cecilia's eyes, and absolutely the right hairdo—into the middle of the room. No elaborate hairstyle would suit Leila, not one; he frowned the images, with their green and coppery tints, out of his thoughts. He had seen Cecilia's efforts with some of the more clumsy daughters of their friends, everyone applauding the results. If Cecilia had only had a daughter of her own perhaps everything would have been different. Certainly there would not have been parties like this one. One of the latest ideas had been mock remarriages in fancy dress, in all sorts of odd places with useless extravagant and unusual presents. He rushed into the dark garden, calling Leila by name in a low urgent voice. He wrenched open the shed and he ran back to the garage. No voice answered his. Quickly in the overpowering smell of spiced food in the kitchen he hunted for a filter paper and put on the coffee. Taking some bread and butter, he went to the spare room. He switched on the light. Leila was not in the room. It was a curiously folded-up room, this Leila family nest. The guest room bedside books, Agatha Christie, Rupert Brooke and Kahlil Gibran, chosen by Cecilia, had been placed neatly along the top of the wardrobe. He was sure they had been put there with reverence. The counterpane, carefully folded, was up there too. The empty room, completely empty of Leila, gave the impression of everything being packed, the cases open but full of careful foldings, as if the owners were living in readiness to leave at a moment's notice. The room was airless, he thought, as if closed up. The window should be open. He was about to open it when he heard them calling.

“Teddy! Teddy!” they were calling. “Phone, Teddy.”

“It's Cecilia! Quickly!” Paulette was in the long passage. He hurried back to them.

“I said a tango, old chap,” Tuppy growled, “not a plate of bread and butter!” Erica, screaming with excitement, held the receiver towards him. Everyone crowded into the study. He heard Cecilia.

They Strudell Vorwickl and herself she told him were in Toronto still in the more French part. That's nice he said. Delicious cakes she said
charcuterie boucherie
and other tourist nonsense.
Blanquette de veau
he offered. Yes she said.
Pouilly fuissé
and perhaps an onion.
Flute baguette
he said. Yes she said. Tucked under one arm, Camembert and other cheesy delights
mon vieux
. They were exactly twelve hours behind still. Was he enjoying his party she wanted to know. He told her yes very much. Spanish he said. Olé Olé she said. He said yes. Was he being a good boy she wanted to know. Yes he told her he was and was she being a good girl. She told him yes. Yes he told the Honeywells and the Wellatons. She said she could hear them cheering. It was like being back home she said hearing them having a party. They had to swim in a heated pool she told him. Ridiculous he said they should break the ice. Remember Vorwickl she said. He said of course he could. Yes she told him he had said once that Vorwickl was the kind of woman…I remember he said. Listen she said. He heard her laughing. Vorwickl she said can sing solo eight bars behind the choir on Ascension Day. Who said he asked her. You said she said. She told him they were leaving for New York Strudell Vorwickl and herself and on to Montreal. Fertility failures she said and to find out…He heard her laughing.

“They're going to Montreal,” he told the Wellatons and the Honeywells, “to find out where baby Eskimos come from.”

She was on reverse charge she told him. That's right he said. She was homesick she said. He told her nonsense. She was loving it he said. He was the sad one he said he was missing her nibble nibble he said kiss kiss he told her. Here's Paulette he said.

“Darling Cecilia. Take care!”

“Hmp Cecilia. Buffycat here. Chin chin.”

“Cecilia darling. Lovely lovely to hear you. Teddy's just fine, just fine. Love love darling. Erica.”

“Goo'night m'dear.” Tuppy beamed as if actually seeing her. “Not right time” he tried again, making an effort: “Not right time eh? Goo'day then. Eh? What? Chow. You're a saint. Always remember that m'dear….”

Edwin, listening on the edge of the little circle round the telephone, remembered reading somewhere about Saint Cecilia, that someone wanting to get rid of her tried to steam her to death in a bathroom. She did not die but endured and that was how she became a saint. Cecilia had the power of endurance. He knew that without putting her to any kind of test. In the haze of muddled excited voices talking to Cecilia in turn he returned to his earlier thought, one which he knew would persist especially after occasions like the present one. If he and Cecilia had had children, if they had a daughter, would their lives, life itself, be different? Would there be more meaning in the antics which were part of the daily performance of living? Or would it simply be a different set of antics, as meaningless as these present ones? He stumbled slightly as he took the receiver from Tuppy, and trying to steady himself, he accidentally dropped it. When he picked it up they, he and Cecilia, were cut off. Thousands of miles of land, mountains, plains and valleys, villages, towns and cities, oceans and rivers, all with their own sunrise and sunset, lay between them.

“Bad luck, old chap!” Tuppy consoled. “Bad luck!”

They forgot about the tango. It was time for the keys game. With a simulation of enthusiasm they gathered round in a crooked little group.