The Wedding Group (20 page)

‘You used to want to go everywhere and see everything – and I’ve taken you nowhere and shown you nothing.’

Much of his great enjoyment in her company had been her unspoiled pleasures and enthusiasms.

‘When the baby’s born you’ll never get away,’ he said. He followed her into the kitchen, where slowly she began to cut a slice of bread. She switched on the grill.

‘I couldn’t go,’ she said.

‘You won’t make the effort.’

She stood guard over the piece of toast, turned it over, said nothing.

‘I’m not too keen on leaving you here on your own,’ he said.

In spite of her standing guard over it, somehow, while she looked away for a moment, the toast was burned. She took it to the sink and began to scrape it.

‘I’m sure your mother would let me stay with her,’ she said.

‘Of course you can stay,’ Midge said to her the next day. ‘Whenever you like, and for as long as you like. I’ll see that you’re taken care of.’

They were having coffee at the kitchen table, for Midge had been arranging flowers at the sink when Cressy called. She went on stripping leaves off stems into an old newspaper.

‘Do have another biscuit,’ she urged Cressy.

‘I really shouldn’t. Dr Baseden’s quite cross with me. He says I’m putting on too much weight.’

‘Dr Baseden’s an old fool,’ Midge said. ‘Try one of those ginger ones.’

Pet’s baby son was just what Harry wanted at the time. The child came most usefully for him, and Pet spent many dumb and tedious hours in the studio with the child in her lap, or at her breast. She was meek in her manner, feeling that she had better be, in her state of complete dependence. She even consented to be sketched sitting sideways on a donkey with the child in her arms, looking as apathetic as any refugee. The baby was placid, and made no fuss, as if he, too, knew his situation.

Everything seemed to work out to the Master’s advantage – except the new houses encroaching upon Quayne. They were almost completed. Soon voices would rise from them, television aerials go up on the rooftops, and commuting cars disturb the quiet of Quayne Hill. The lane would be straightened, widened; more trees would be felled and more houses built, his peace destroyed, their community jarred by the outside world. He often thought now of moving away, of finding some real country while there was any left, of beginning again, building a new chapel. He told no one of his plans, not even his wife. They would all receive instructions when the time was ripe. He
thought of Suffolk, and decided to make for there on his next walking-tour with Leofric.

Midge took Cressy to see Pet’s baby; but stayed by her car in the lane. She spent the time digging up leaf-mould from the woods to enrich her garden. Rose, hearing of it, thought her behaviour very rude.

The baby had lain peacefully in its wooden rocking-cradle.

‘We used to sell those in the shop. People keep logs in them,’ Cressy said.

‘And I suppose put their babies to sleep in the coal scuttle,’ Pet said scornfully.

‘Did it hurt?’ Cressy asked, looking down at the baby.

‘Not in the least,’ said Pet, stretching out a toe to rock the cradle.

‘That’s all right then,’ Cressy said, feeling she really had not the energy to suffer pain. She wished the time would come, be over. The weather was so warm, and her feet were swollen. She could hardly walk back across the courtyard and down the lane to Midge’s car.

The last few days – and the nights – seemed never-ending. She was discontented. Now she wished that she had a cradle like Pet’s. It would make a baby seem more of a toy. ‘I never thought you would be envious of
her
,’ David said reprovingly.

Midge had packed the suitcase for the nursing-home, and it stood ready by the front door, as if to be snatched up in great haste.

‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ Cressy said to her. ‘If David were at work, and you weren’t there, what should I do?’

‘Don’t worry about what can’t happen,’ Midge replied.

In the end, it was she who took Cressy to the nursing-home, as she had always, for no reason, supposed it would be. She drove her there one hot afternoon – Cressy, with vague, upsetting
pains, sighing and shuffling about beside her, nervously wiping her moist palms on her skirt.

‘I think it will rain,’ Midge said, looking at the cloudy sky. ‘Then we shall all be more comfortable.’

Cressy could not be interested in anyone’s comfort but her own.

At the nursing-home everyone seemed casual and unconcerned about her. They implied that, later on, when they found they had nothing better to do, they might attend to her. Midge drove back to the cottage to wait for David.

The baby was born early the next morning – a son.

David, hearing the news, was suddenly overwhelmed with excitement. He had not imagined feeling like this. His dreary worries, his shrinking from responsibility left him. Now he wanted to make known his importance to everyone in the world. He spent hours on the telephone: he could not stop talking.

‘My
real
grandchild,’ Midge said to Mrs Brindle. ‘The others are just little people in photographs.’

‘You’ve never seemed like a grandmother to me,’ Mrs Brindle said. ‘I doubt if I’ll ever see you in that light.’

When, later that day, David went to the nursing-home, he found Cressy looking very neat, with her long hair tied in two bunches by pieces of tape. He put his roses down on the locker beside the bed. (Flowers from Midge had arrived already, and were in hideous vases round the room.) Bending down to kiss Cressy, he thought she smelled very unfamiliar and antiseptic.

‘It
did
hurt,’ she said accusingly. ‘It hurt like hell.’

‘It’s all over now. But I was so worried I couldn’t sleep.’

‘I couldn’t sleep either. What did you have for supper?’

‘Oh… I can’t remember. Mother got something.’

‘I had nothing.’

The baby was asleep in a cot across the room, and he went
over rather self-consciously to look at him. He was veined and downy, like a small animal, David decided, staring down at him but, it was the fact of his
being
that excited him; not what he was at this moment. He stayed politely by the cot for a moment or two, hoping that his worries were not returning to him. Cressy watched him complacently.

‘Don’t you think “Timothy” is nice?’ she asked. ‘Midge liked it.’

‘Yes. I don’t mind.’

‘Is she pleased – Midge?’

‘You bet she’s pleased. And so is your mother.’

‘Oh, Mother thinks he has been born in sin. I suppose she pities him.’

‘She does nothing of the kind. And your father’s delighted, too. This evening, I’m going to celebrate with him at the Three Horseshoes.’

‘I wish I could come.’

‘We’ll have a special little party when you’re at home again.’

‘Will Midge come to see me?’

‘Nothing will keep her away,’ David said.

When Midge came, she spent most of the time rearranging the flowers. It was peaceful, Cressy thought sleepily, having her there, just softly moving about the room.

When the baby cried, she stooped over the cot and turned him gently on to his other side.

‘I don’t think you’re allowed to touch him,’ Cressy said. But the baby was quiet at once.

At first, the child looked sun-tanned, as if he had just come from the South of France, not Cressy’s womb. Then his face took on a yellow tinge, and his eyes were bloodshot. He smelled waxy, when he did not smell of sick. He had screamed all night
in the nursery, Cressy was always told when he was brought in at six o’clock. He had disturbed the other babies.

David was worried, and Cressy was usually in tears when he called on his way home from work. The mood of celebration had worn off. Rose came to see the baby, and was unable to hide her anxiety. Only Midge was any comfort to Cressy. She had consoling recollections – of her own first-born with jaundice, of how common it was in infants, and how soon it disappeared.

‘And I had everything primrose,’ she said. ‘His cot draped with it, the pillows, the blankets, and there he lay like a little shrivelled blood orange amongst it all. You really mustn’t worry.’

‘But if he goes on screaming when I get him home?’

‘I’m sure he won’t. But if he does, I’ll be there to help you.’

Cressy sighed and shut her eyes. She was so tired, she explained. Six o’clock in the morning was terrible, and sometimes a nurse brought the child at half past five. She was made to get out of bed for most of the day, and join the other mothers while they bathed their babies, and to hear again that it was her son who had upset them all at night.

‘If only I could stay in bed and have a rest,’ she said to Midge.

‘I was kept in bed for a fortnight when I had mine,’ Midge said. ‘And I think that’s right. After all, we’re not peasants.’

It had been some months since David had called to see his father. The summer had gone by, and autumn was in the air. Even from the outside, the house now had a look of neglect. The windows were dusty, and the brass door-knocker was dull. After a long time, in which David could hear a slow shuffling downstairs and along the passage, Archie opened the door. He was wearing a dressing-gown.

Oh, God, now
he’s
ill, David thought angrily.

His father’s face seemed to have become very soft and small and blurred and, following him down the passage, David saw the frailty of his corded neck, the deep hollow at the base of his skull. Like a baby’s the head seemed to bob about involuntarily.

‘I hope you will excuse my dishabille,’ Archie said, opening the drawing-room door. ‘I was about to have an early night.’

It was not yet seven o’clock.

David made a vague apology; but for what he was not quite sure.

‘No, no, my boy!’ Archie protested. ‘I’m delighted to see you. One does not have many callers.’

He lowered himself into a chair and looked about the room,
as if he had not entered it for a long time. ‘And how’ve you bin keeping?’ he asked politely.

‘Are you ill, Father?’ David asked, fearful of the answer.

‘Nothing at all to worry about. A touch of the colley-wobbles, as I believe you young people call it.’

David had never heard the word, and dreaded details.

The room was cold and stuffy. It smelled of dusty carpets, dandruff, sour breath, decay. He longed to fling up the sashed windows.

‘Mrs Thing comes less and less,’ Archie said, looking calmly at a tarnished silver vase holding fog-coloured pampas grass. ‘One’s standards are inevitably relaxed a little.’

To David it was always an astonishing thing to find that people are capable of changing, can be a totally different person between one year’s beginning and end. For this reason he rejected his father’s image of Midge – she was not like that, so could not have been – and was so bewildered by Cressy’s transformation. He would not have believed father and mother had reversed roles, Archie going sluttishly about the house in his dressing-gown, as he had always described Midge.

‘How is my grandson?’ Archie asked, with a pleased, coy look up at David.

‘He hasn’t made a very good beginning, poor Timmy.’

‘Ah, yes, Timothy. A good enough name for a small boy; but hardly suitable for an old man. Perhaps you didn’t think that far ahead. What’s the matter with him?’

‘He cries a lot. We have awful nights.’ (
I
have awful nights was more to the point, David thought; for Cressy slept heavily.) ‘He hasn’t put on as much weight as he should. He gets indigestion.’

‘Ah, the colley-wobbles. You should call in the medico. Mine gave me some tablets. They quieten it down a little.’

Not much, David thought; for the old stomach was chirping
and bubbling gassily, and Archie kept banging a fist at his lower ribs, and smothering belches.

‘And your lady-wife?’ he asked in a fastidious, mocking tone.
Her
name had escaped him, too.

‘Well, thank you.’

David got up and walked about the dusty room. ‘Mother was burgled some time back,’ he said.

‘I hope they didn’t get off with too much,’ Archie said quickly, wondering if David had come from an ulterior motive. ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing doing in this direction.’

‘I don’t know what you mean. They made a Godawful mess and stole her diamond ear-rings.’

‘My
mater’s
diamond ear-rings,’ Archie said, remembering. ‘Fully insured,’ he added. ‘Or
were
.’

‘They went through all her drawers – just tipped them out on the floor. Something may have disturbed them before they found her other jewellery. She had only been out of the house half an hour. She had just come down to bring Cressy some apple jelly she’d made.’

‘I’ve no doubt it was the servant who made the apple jelly,’ Archie said sarcastically. ‘I was forever having to tell her about locking doors. Would she listen? She would not. It was just too much trouble to turn the key in the lock, or run the bolt along. I am only astonished it hasn’t happened before. You called the police in, I take it?’