The Wedding Group (4 page)

‘What did you have for lunch?’ she asked. It was one question she could not resist and – if she had only known – one that irked him. To him, food was like sex, to be enjoyed, forgotten.

‘Oh, just a beer and a bit of pie.’

She shook her head, as she always did.

‘What about the week-end after next?’ he asked, thinking back to Nell Stapleforth.

He was stripping the last bits of meat off a cutlet bone with his strong white teeth. He was the most handsome of her boys, she considered, and she loved to be told that he took after her, which he did not.

‘Yes, of course. Any week-end would be perfect.’

‘I must warn you that she hardly ever stops talking.’ He dabbed his chin with his napkin and sighed contentedly. ‘But she’s what one might call a good sort.’

Midge was willing to give a welcome to all the good sorts in the world if it would make him happy. She smiled, and thought of menus and shopping-lists. Lately, she smiled to herself a great deal, for so many of his friends now were good sorts, plain girls with hearts of gold, on the shelf for all time, evidently.

Crême brulée
followed the cutlets. She thought it was one of
his favourites but, though he had two helpings, he had tired of it years ago.

After dinner, they sat for a little while in the drawing-room and then, as she had known he would, he looked at his watch.

‘I might go down for a pint,’ he said. ‘Are you coming? I don’t suppose you’ve been out all day.’

She had no friends. It had been a long time before he realised this about her, and he could not understand it.

‘I went to the butcher’s and to the post and had coffee at the Walnut Tree,’ she said, trying to make much of her day. But she declined his invitation. She rationed her outings with him, wanting him to feel unfettered, dreading the words ‘apron-strings’ in his mind, or anybody else’s. Two evenings ago she had accompanied him. Tomorrow, she might again.

As soon as he had left, the house seemed dull. She wished that she had gone with him, but knew that by bedtime she would be glad that she had not. But bedtime had to be come by, as all day long his coming home had to be waited for. Without him, she had no life – or only time to be spent perfecting what he would return to. Motherhood was now an art it had never been in the days when it was called for.

She washed up, emptied ash-trays, turned down his bed and drew the curtains. Then she walked about the drawing-room, a glass in hand again, and wondered about Nell Stapleforth, without anxiety.

Because it was August, which seemed to David the most banal month of them all, the trees were smothered in bitter, dark green foliage, the hedges bound over and choked by convolvulus and old man’s beard and bryony. Down the lane from the house, nettles of the same darkness crowded up to the lower branches, and gnats danced above them.

But he was not as conscious of his surroundings as his mother
was, and walked along quite happily to the pub. He was always pleased when he had her company, and pleased, too, when she stayed at home. She had the wit and the imagination to know this.

At the Three Horseshoes the evening had a familiar pattern – a few strangers listening apathetically to the regulars. The ‘passing trade’ sat on chairs round the walls, and the habitués stood about the bar, except for old Pitcher, a retired gamekeeper, who had his special place in the corner, and Joe MacPhail and Father Daughtry in theirs.

There were some middle-aged people giving Mother an evening out. Mother was dear, and the family took turns to lean across and shout at her. She looked a grumpy old party, David thought – aggressive hat, spectacles, fancy gloves – probably not much older than Midge, but those two were inhabitants of different worlds, members, almost, he felt, of a different sex.

Between old Pitcher and one of his cronies a long and exasperating argument was going on – about portsmouth reversibles and artillery bits, and other pieces of antique harness hanging about the bar. They were egged on by an American, who obviously thought he was discovering rural England at its most typical.

David leaned against the bar, talking to the landlord between customers, half-listening at other times to the tangle of conversation.

The American addressed old Pitcher as ‘sir’, with respect to his age, and Pitcher returned the compliment, with respect to the pint of beer he had been bought.

‘All right, Mother?’ shouted one of the family party, leaning forward.

Mother nodded glumly. In a slightly less shrill voice the daughter turned and said to one of the others, ‘Mother’s
enjoying herself. She doesn’t get out much these days. She’s standing up to it nicely.’

Mother heard this and looked huffy.

‘I was saying, you don’t get out much, Mother.’

‘I’m not deaf.’

The daughter sighed, and said in a low voice, ‘You can never be sure with her.’

Joe MacPhail and the Father were on a reminiscent tour of the Dublin bars. As on other evenings, they were day-dreaming themselves from Davey Byrne’s to the Bailey, stopping for a jar at the Russell. Would, no doubt, go on to Jury’s and end up at the Hibernian.

They had looked up and nodded when David came in. That was all, for they kept to their own company.

Joe had looks that had been handsome, but had become pouchy and untidy. His mouth was puffy, sensitive. He rolled his own cigarettes with long, brown-stained fingers, and looked down at his glass of Guinness most of the time.

The Father was fat and moon-faced, with fuzzy patchy hair and odd bits of baldness. His fly-buttons were opened, and Mother was glaring at them contemptuously. Her daughter was trying to distract her attention.

‘It makes a nice change, doesn’t it, Mother, coming out?’

‘No, thanks, you know I never have more than one. You must please yourself. Like you always do.’

‘There’s none so deaf as those as won’t hear,’ her daughter murmured sideways to her husband. ‘It was a good idea of yours, Ken – dumping the old fridge in the woods. Got rid of that and made a nice outing of it.’

‘I mind in the old days,’ Pitcher was saying to the American. I mind this. I mind that. He was giving full value, now describing his late Lordship’s pheasant shoots, year by year, gun by gun, brace by brace. He swirled round the last of his draught bitter
and drank it swiftly, and the American, understanding the hint, took the empty glass back to the bar, paying well for his taste of village England.

‘I was never for the Gresham,’ said the Father. ‘So brassy, so modern, and black with me own kind, don’t you know.’

David kept looking towards the door, or out of the window at the car-park, hoping that one of his friends might come in.

‘Blighty,’ he thought. The darkness, the dull evening. Might up and hop it. There’s all the rest of the world. He imagined Midge up and hopping it with him. She was quite game enough. Sometimes, England felt too small for him. For instance, he was physically cramped in this bar, and had to duck his head under the beams from which pewter pots hung, increasing the hazard. It wasn’t only in this bar either. He remembered other places – Nell’s mews flat, for instance, and, leaving Quayne that day, feeling smothered, wanting open spaces, and having, instead, to speed back to Fleet Street and shoulder his way amongst crowds, caught in a cleft between high buildings.

That visit to Quayne was in his mind again. What he had written about it was now all that he remembered; but since reading Cressy’s letter, he had been trying to recall what else had happened. The day had been coloured by his dislike of Harry Bretton, and the success of the article had been mainly due to the asperity with which he had dealt with him. Readers who had always discounted his painting, had been delighted to discount the Master himself, and even those who admired his work had found a wicked glee in discovering the cracks in the idol so deftly revealed. David had heard later that the idol, in his vanity, had been delighted, too. He would have liked Joe MacPhail’s opinion, but knew that he would not get it. He should have had the sense to talk more to the daughter, he thought. But the truth about her had come too late to be of use to him. It was all done
with now. Quayne was behind him. There were other idols to topple; other Quaynes to be looked into.

‘Ken thinks we ought to be making a move, Mother.’

David winked at the landlord and looked out of the window again. No one came, and there was a great to-do going on in the bar, the hoisting of Mother to her feet, offering her an arm which she pushed away. With another disgusted glance at Father Daughtry’s gleaming fly-buttons she shuffled to the door, followed by her brood.

‘Stable-door, old boy,’ the landlord said, out of the side of his mouth, as he stooped over the Father to wipe an ash-tray. He stood close by while Father Daughtry fumbled hurriedly with his buttons.

David said good night and went out. It had been a tedious end to the evening. His mother had escaped it. But she was alone all day, and he ought to take her out, somewhere more exciting. He would do a bit of shouting at her when he got back. ‘You don’t get out much, Mother, do you?’ Smiling to himself, he went home up the lane. It was dark now.

When he reached home, he went to Midge’s room, as he always did, to say good night.

She was sitting up in bed, in a lace wrap, reading, and looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

‘Who was in the boozer, darling?’

He made it sound as dull as it had been, would have made it worse if he could. He was innocent of the workings of his own mind, and did not go into his motive for always belittling what he did without her, exaggerating the rain on holidays, the weariness of journeys, the tastelessness of food – everything that might make her glad to have stayed at home.

He told her about the deaf old party, and shouting back through the door ‘Good night, mother,’ went off to bed.

She was smiling, looking down at her book without reading. After a while, she closed it. She got up and took off her makeup and creamed her face carefully. Then she pinned up her hair and, when all this was done, she went to bed. She slept soon and peacefully, from a deep sense of security.

On the evening before Nell went down with him to the country, David visited his father. He felt guilty for not going to see him more often than he did, and tried to convince himself that the blame was on the other side, for it was his father who had defaulted and left them all in the lurch – not financially in the lurch, it was true; but his going had changed their lives, none the less. They – he and his brothers – had been in their teens, and had suddenly found themselves with their mother on their hands, instead of the other way round.

Archie Little had not left Midge for another woman. He had just left her. ‘So
rude
!’ she always said, seeing the funny side. ‘I can’t help seeing the funny side of it.’ But the colour in her cheeks was from anger, not amusement. She had been badly shaken up at the time, incredulous, furious. Although spared jealousy, she was not spared something which seemed worse – the bare truth that he simply could not abide her any more, and had found a way of letting the world know it. He had expected his love to last, and it had lasted hardly any time at all, and he was not able to live with his disappointment. Discovering that he could not bear to live with her any longer, he had gone back
where he had come from – to his Aunt Sylvie’s home. He was twelve years older than Midge, and his marriage had made him seem more.

Her contempt had been corroding – especially as it came at a time when in the course of nature things were going wrong with him. He was losing his hair, and his joints were stiffening. The final crisis was having to have his teeth out: he was distressed by the idea of it, and felt that he was ageing fast. He wished that his wife need not know. During that time, she had been tirelessly cruel – had been sarcastic, had served food difficult for him to eat, had asked him never to leave the false teeth anywhere where she might catch a glimpse of them, as they gave her the horrors, she explained. She implied that he gave her the horrors, too.

He had seen her trying to make a fool of him before his sons, with his fuddy-duddy ways, his not being able to keep up to the minute or know the latest thing. He became very tired, trying to hide little aches and pains which beset him.

One day, he did not come home from his office. He telephoned from his club to give the reason. He was never coming home again, he said. Midge would not believe it. She became ill with anger, with waiting to tell him what she thought of him. She was obsessed by the thought of the scene she had been denied, and for weeks would pace about the house, or stand rigid, with closed eyes and moving lips. Several letters came, with business-like instructions about money. But he himself never came again. It was all over.

Since then, having taken up the old ways with Aunt Sylvie, he had not been happy. He had really been nothing and was glad of it – becoming a little more eccentric every year, a little more at peace, growing old fast. He had retired from business life but had by no means retired from work. Aunt Sylvie was difficult. She treated servants as she had treated them when she
was young, so was usually without any; and both she and Archie had high standards to live by.

The house was on the outskirts of a town which had become a suburb of London, and traffic droned past it on the main road, and planes shrieked overhead. It stood in a ferny, dusty garden, full of old iris roots and broken terracotta path edgings.
Fernlea
it was called. The name was in curly gilt letters on the fanlight. Inside was a great darkness of mahogany. The sound of clocks ticking was softened by thick carpets and velvet hangings.