Wish Her Safe at Home (12 page)

The Allsops came back—though not nearly so quickly as I had expected. This didn’t matter. I’d had other things to occupy my mind and the thought that temporarily they might have forgotten me had caused me little heartache. Yet when I again saw them standing on my doorstep I felt pleased.

“What can you think of us?” asked Celia. “Saying you must come round and then not getting in touch for almost three weeks.”

For almost five.

“What nonsense!” I exclaimed. “You’re young. You’ve got your own lives to lead. I don’t expect—”

“Oh, it isn’t that,” said Roger. “But we’ve all been down with summer colds and there seems to have been one damned thing after another and what with all my studies and that wretched job of mine...
”

He looked more golden and Viking-like than ever.

“Well, I’m sure you know how it is,” he ended, with a grimace of utterly irresistible charm.

“Oh, I do, I do. There’s nothing to explain.”

“Just so long as you don’t believe we’re insincere,” added Celia. “We really couldn’t bear that—could we, darling?”

She looked at him devotedly, that same old look of doting admiration, but now I didn’t find it so disturbing. Not quite. When I realized this I felt yet happier. I no longer had any reason to envy a soul.

“No, I would willingly plunge a dagger into my heart,” he confided, “rather than think you believed that.”

“Oh, a little drastic—surely?”

“In fact, madam, it’s all your fault,” he declared cheerfully, the penitent stepping with ease into the shoes of the accuser. “If like sensible people you only had a phone—”

“Oh, that’s unfair,” I broke in, with matching gaiety. “The Post Office keeps promising they’re going to connect me. I
want
to be connected. Should I go down on my knees and
pray
to be connected?”

For an instant he himself went down on his knees, his hands imploringly uplifted, like Jolson about to give us
Mammy
. “Connect me with the human race! Oh, please connect me with the human race! Somebody—somewhere—must surely want to hear from me!”

“Yes. Sylvia,” I smiled. Yet my heart sank. She would be here with me on Friday.

“Who is Sylvia?”

He quickly added, “What is she, that all our swains commend her?”

“The friend I was sharing a flat with before I came to Bristol.”

But somehow it seemed disloyal to mention my having doubts about all our swains, or even any of our swains, commending her. I still remembered certain lines of the passage, however—it was another which we’d learnt at school—and I wanted both Roger and Horatio (we were naturally, by this time, up in the sitting room) to know I could quote bits of Shakespeare that weren’t boringly familiar to thousands. Therefore I threw open my arms and cried, “Is she kind as she is fair? Oh, bother—something, something, something! Then to Sylvia let us sing.”

“That would be charming,” he said as he got up, “but I’m afraid that singing to
anyone
mightn’t accomplish very much; mightn’t actually get you connected. Unless of course you went straight to the fountainhead—no intermediaries—addressed your plaintive song to Buzby. But failing that it would be quicker to become a doctor. Or even, if you must, a solicitor. Or an architect. Or a clergyman.”

“Don’t listen to him, Miss Waring. Darling, I think it’s possible you’re being offensive.”

“Oh, not at all.” I denied it with a laugh. “Only absurd. And anyway...
”

I was about to point out that although I mightn’t have a telephone I certainly did have a letterbox—but just stopped myself in time.
I
didn’t want to make anything out of their not having been in touch; it was
they
who were shaping it into a drama.

“And anyway—enough of all this nonsense. Let’s talk about important things. How’s my little Thomas? May I hold him, Celia?” (So far, upon greeting them, I had only kissed his cheek.) “And then I’ll pop down and put the kettle on.”

“How is your little Thomas?” repeated Roger. “He’s just about as good and sweet and angelic as...
well, I don’t know...
as his father always is.”

“No longer, then, the noisiest little thing in the whole of the southwest?”

“He never really was.”

“He’s certainly growing heavier.”

“Oh, he’s going to be so big and strong and bonny. Aren’t you, Tom? Just like your old dad. Disgustingly healthy. Never a single day’s illness from one year to the next.”

“No summer colds?” I queried.

For a moment he actually looked as if I’d caught him out. “Oh, summer colds don’t really count!” Then he laughed and gently prodded his son’s tummy. “Do you mind if I take my jacket off, Miss Waring? This is the warmest day in weeks!”

“Oh,
please
...”

I added, perhaps a little outrageously, “After all, don’t forget I’ve seen you not only without a jacket but even without a shirt!”

He grinned. “I had forgotten.”

Though I didn’t altogether believe him I let it go. “I hope it wasn’t simply for my sake—again!—that you came here in a suit and tie?”

He seemed about to deny it but then spread his hands. “I think one should always pay one’s friends the courtesy of trying to look one’s best.”

“And I feel honoured by that courtesy, I really do. Especially as I’m surprised to find anyone of your generation still viewing the world like that. Yet all the same, Roger, next time...
”

“No,” said Celia, “next time
you’re
coming to us, no question!”

“Besides,” enquired Roger, “why do you say someone of
my
generation? That makes it sound...
I don’t know...
as though we come from different planets, as though you’re either Abraham or Methuselah. I honestly don’t see it that way. Nor does Celia.”

“Not at all.”

“That’s very sweet of you both, but...
” But what? “How long
is
a generation?”

“Oh...
” He shrugged. “Isn’t it about twenty-five years?”

I spoke quickly. “Well, in that case we don’t even belong to different generations let alone planets. Nothing like.”

“Who said we did?”

“But the fact remains that I call you Roger and Celia; you call me Miss Waring.”

“What was that, Rachel?” He bent towards me, frowning. We all laughed.

“I didn’t even realize that you knew my first name.”

“Ah. And I bet there are other things you never realized about us.”

“I’m sure there are.”

He shook his head. “No, that’s utterly the wrong cue. You’re meant to say, ‘Like what?’”

“Oh, your daddy!” I said to the baby in my arms, giving him a merry shake, which made him chuckle. “Oh, your funny old daddy!” But of course I did exactly as Roger asked.

“Like, for instance, the fact that we very much want you—if you would—we’d really be so very happy if...
No,
you
tell her, Celia.”

“No,
you,
darling.”

“Well, if you’d consent to be that little tyke’s godmother...
”

Here it was, then: the true start of that other road which—like a spool of yellow ribbon—would soon unwind across the whole of this beautiful poppy-filled landscape. When (at long last) I went to put the kettle on I half danced down the stairs—in the hall holding Roger’s jacket out in front of me, a sort of scarecrow partner from the land of Oz, en route to a coat hanger and a coat peg. Celia called down the stairs: “May I come and give you a hand?” “No, you stay there with Tom.” Her presence would have spoilt it all.

I hung up—I smoothed out—his jacket. I filled the kettle.

“Dancing in the dark,

With a new love;

I’m dancing in the dark,

Here with you, love...
”

“Caught you!” said Roger. “Caught you red-handed. Or red-footed. And what a pretty voice you have.”

“Oh, you villain.”

“I wish you wouldn’t stop.”

“Well, surely you wouldn’t expect me to carry on in front of an audience?”

“I’ll tell you one thing. You’re certainly not Abraham. Nor Methuselah.”

“Twenty-one,” I said. “Twenty-one, key of the door, never been twenty-one before.”

“Really? As much as that? You surprise me.”

“Sycophant.”

“And that makes us exactly the same age.” He became practical. “Now tell me what I can do.”

It was fun. He got out the milk jug and the sugar bowl and the silver tongs, though I could have done it all a bit quicker myself, and he shook some more sugar lumps out of the packet and he filled the jug and he sliced a lemon and he went off jauntily across the road..
to buy a selection of jauntily coloured cakes. “But I insist, Roger, you take this!” “And I insist, Rachel, I do nothing of the kind!” While he was gone I went to see if he’d taken his jacket and finding that he hadn’t I slipped two pounds into the breast pocket. I buried my nose for a moment in the brown tweed.

Upstairs they spoke about arrangements for the christening and about some of the people who were likely to be there. “It will all be very
dull
, Rachel, but afterwards you and we and a few of our more special friends will have a bit of a knees-up to atone.” I could hardly be insensible of the magnitude of the compliment. My hand shook slightly as I poured the tea.

“Are you expecting someone else, Miss Waring?”

“Rachel,” corrected Roger.

“Because you may think Thomas
very
advanced but he doesn’t yet handle a cup and saucer with total confidence.”

I stared at the fourth teacup and teaplate and folded napkin. “Oh, that’s your husband’s fault. He was so busy playing the fool down there that he got me all mixed up.”

“No, I don’t think so. I noticed it the last time too.”

Then—maybe afraid that it might distress me having to own up to absentmindedness—she hurriedly put another question. It must have been the first thing that came into her head and, ironically, showed that even if my own mind hadn’t wandered hers at some point assuredly had.

“Please remind me...
who is Sylvia? You seemed to suggest she might be missing you.”

Roger laughed. “Holy, fair, and wise is she.” His laugh had relieved any small suggestion of awkwardness.

“I had forgotten that bit,” I confessed.

“Ah, but you remembered ‘Is she kind as she is fair?’ That’s pretty good, you know.”

“What a patronizing young man!”

I enjoyed being able to insult him, since that naturally gave him carte blanche to insult me right back.

But he didn’t avail himself of it. “For beauty lives with kindness,” he declaimed.

I was beginning to giggle. “No, don’t. Please don’t!”

“Why not?”

“Because you haven’t met Sylvia and you’re going to make it so that I can never look her in the eye again.”

He giggled with me. They both did. “Then she obviously isn’t
that
close a friend?”

I coloured a little and wondered how best to put things. “Well, let’s simply say I don’t think she’s quite as you’ve described her.”

“But Rachel. You can’t quarrel with Shakespeare. Nobody can.”

“I do beg his pardon.”

(How he seemed to have the gift of drawing from me repartee.)

“It appears, then, there are just two possibilities. Either when in London you saw only through a glass, darkly”—I hoped I didn’t start—“or else...
” He hesitated.

“Yes? Or else?”

“Or else he got the names muddled. He was describing the wrong flatmate.”

Well, if I coloured now, it certainly wasn’t on account of any feelings of slight guilt.

“All these compliments!” I managed to get out, eventually. “I’m really not quite used to them. But, ‘Thank ’ee kindly, sir,’ she said.” Had I been standing I might have dropped a curtsy. “Which play does it come from?”

“I think...
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
. It’s not a speech by the way; it’s a song.”

I nodded. Just so long as I knew where to look for it.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all
?

“You’ll have to learn to sing it,” he said.

Celia may have thought her husband was getting a little too carried away because she again changed the subject, changed it somewhat abruptly, and reverted more or less to where we’d begun. “These are such pretty cups,” she said. “I meant to mention it the last time we were here.”

“I believe you did.”

“Did I? Oh, it must get rather boring. Everything you have is just so pretty. So...
”

“Attractive,” said Roger. “Pretty is such a milk-and-water word.”

“I was going to say perfect. You must excuse us, Rachel.” This time she got it right. “It must be very bad form to enthuse all the while; at the very least a bit lacking in sophistication. But the real problem is...
I seem to have fallen in love a little with your house.”

“Well, you
know
you don’t have to apologize for that!” I said. “Who wants sophistication?”

“That picture’s new, isn’t it?” asked Roger.

I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“We’ve been admiring it.”

For ten or twelve seconds the three of us gazed at Horatio in silence.

“One of these days I’ll tell you all about him,” I said.

“Ah, is there a story, then?”

“There most definitely is—and in more ways than one! But not for now. For now, I’m only going to say that if it wasn’t for him I myself shouldn’t be here.”

“You’re joking!”

“No. I should have sold the house and gone straight back to London.”

Then how they tried to draw it out of me! But they had met their match: I resisted every subterfuge. I had decided not to supply so much as a single hint.

It was far better, I often thought—despite my natural inclinations—
not
to give everything away too quickly.