Just Like a Lady Read online

  In these circumstances, the desire to be noticed by the superior being next door consumed all Lucy’s attention. She spied on her—not on the young man—from the bathroom window and, armed with a library book on the History of Art, strolled hopefully in the garden or sat in a deck-chair with a wistful, other-worldly expression.

  One spring evening the sculptress, discomfited by Lucy’s brooding stare, invited her to coffee. Lucy was disappointed by the experience. The ‘studio’ was simply a garden shed that housed a mess of modelling clay and a few shapeless blocks of stone. They drank coffee in the artist’s bedroom which was the same size and shape as Lucy’s own and much dirtier. Though she was entranced by Eirene’s suggestion that she should call her by her Christian name, Lucy did not greatly care for her queer voice—she tried so hard to be refined that the aspirate in ‘who’came out in an affected gasp—nor for her grubby feet in Grecian thong sandals.

  Nevertheless, when she returned home to face the inevitable row, she championed her new friend enthusiastically. There was nothing wrong in what Eirene was doing, she told her aunt: the human body was beautiful, considered as an arrangement of light and shade, and Eirene herself was always decently clad, during the sittings, in a strange, flowing garment a little like a Roman toga. Ida tightened her lips and asked whether had seen the young boy’s statue. Lucy nodded. It was a very interesting work of art, she said, with a demure smile. She paused effectively. ‘But you couldn’t tell it was a man,’ she admitted finally, looking her aunt straight in the eye until she blushed and turned away.

  The only wickedness, Lucy lectured, taking advantage of Ida’s temporary embarrassment, lay in the sordid minds of the local gossips. People in Earls Gate just could not bear anyone not to be exactly like themselves. It was as if they shunned the idea of inviduality and longed only to approximate as closely as possible to some dull, statistical norm. When the boy next door, sent out of his mind by spiteful anonymous letters, put his head in the gas oven and Eirene was carried off, raving, to nearest asylum, Lucy, though she wept for her friend, felt that her point had been proved. ‘Your son,’ she said in the little letter of condolence she sent without her aunt’s knowledge to the dead boy’s mother, ‘has been broken on the wheel of conformity,’ a phrase she had admired at the time for its literary flow, though soon afterwards she flinched whenever she thought of it. She could not bear to meet the widow even now and the embarrassment seemed to be mutual: when they met in the street or their eyes encountered over the garden fence, the woman glanced nervously away as if she thought Lucy deranged.

  Still, the incident had a moral, Lucy thought, shuddering at the memory of her adolescent folly. No one could live fully or, anyway, differently from other people in Earls Gate and survive. If she lost this chance of getting out, she decided wretchedly, she would not kill herself or go mad; she would just become submerged, a drab conformist like everyone else who lived there.

  In Earls Gate, Lucy used to say to her friends when they totted up the horrors of the place in the schoolroom, everyone hung their curtains with the patterned side facing outwards, so that the neighbours could see it.

  And yet the essence of the place was not neighbourliness, but withdrawal. Brushing her hair, Lucy wondered penitently whether she was not being a thought heartless, glooming over her own troubles when there was sickness in the house. After all, Ida had no one but her to turn to. She had lived next door to the widow for twenty years and never spoken to her. The widow was shy and Ida was not a person to push herself where she wasn’t wanted. If Uncle Bob were to die, Lucy thought, dropping her brush and staring fearfully at her reflection in the glass, Ida would be quite alone. Uncle Bob had friends, fellow philatelists, but he only met them in the little room at the back of the church hall that the society took for their weekly meetings.

  Lucy heaved a sigh. You could not change people, she decided. Her aunt was what she was. It was idle to wish her any different, as Lucy was sometimes tempted to do when she saw that her friends’mothers fussed over their daughters, ironing their dresses when they were asked to parties and showing an interest in their friends. In a way, of course, Ida’s disregard was an advantage. She did not much care what Lucy did as long as she came home at a ‘respectable’hour and did not have her friends in, giggling and making the house untidy.

  Lucy smiled ruefully, thinking with horror of the only time her best friend’s brother, Willy Aube, had come to call. Ida had refused to leave them alone together in the lounge in case they should ‘get up to something’. Like most prudish people she believed that the rest of mankind spent their time in riotous sexual behaviour. She had sat in silence on the sofa for the whole of his visit, her disapproving gaze fixed on his shoes nervously scuffling the clean carpet. Lucy had longed for the earth to open and swallow her.

  A heavier sigh escaped her. Then the muscles in her stomach contracted. She had promised to meet Willy at the park gates after school; her uncle’s illness had driven it out of her head. He was bound, she realized with a sinking heart, to come to see what had happened to her and she was not even dressed. She whirled round, throwing off her school uniform and dragging a cotton skirt over her head. As she opened the wardrobe door to look for a clean blouse, a loud knock sounded. A pulse leapt in her throat. It couldn’t be Willy, she thought, flying to the window.

  But it was. His car with the home-built, red-painted body, was standing in the road. Her aunt was bound to see it, Lucy thought, feverishly buttoning her blouse. A cautious woman, Ida always looked out of the window before she answered the door. A fleeting hope that Ida might be asleep was dashed by a thumping sound from the adjacent bedroom. As Lucy scurried on to the landing, her aunt flung open her door. She was wearing a pink wool vest and directoire knickers. ‘Who is it?’ she hissed, tossing back the thick mane of hair which she had loosened before she lay down for her rest.

  Lucy felt her colour rise. Ida’s suspicious attitude made her nervous of her own motives. However innocent her behaviour, in her aunt’s presence Lucy always had the sensation that she must be about to do something wrong. ‘It’s Willy,’ she murmured. ‘Did he wake you up?’ ‘He woke up your uncle,’ Ida retorted. ‘I’m surprised at you, letting your friends come thundering at the door at a time like this.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ Lucy faltered and indeed, she felt hideously negligent. She backed towards the stairs. ‘You’re not going out?’ Ida widened her eyes in mock astonishment.

  Lucy hesitated. She knew from experience that whatever she did would be wrong. If she went, her aunt would think her unfeeling and if she stayed, Ida would object because Lucy was ‘mooning about the place’. It was impossible to behave reasonably.

  Ida shrugged. ‘Go out if you want to. I’m sure I don’t mind. It’s your uncle that’ll feel it.’

  As she strode heavily into the bedroom, Lucy’s conscience spoke up. Her aunt could not help herself, she suddenly saw. Her mysterious resentments and angers must be as hard for her to bear as for everyone else. She started after her aunt, full of forgiving sentiments, but Willy knocked again, louder this time. Lucy gasped, and raced down the stairs.

  ‘I wondered what had happened to you,’ Willy said.

  He was a tall, thin young man with a pleasant, bony face, untidy hair, and thick spectacles, a scientist with a research fellowship at a London college. Normally he wore a cheerful, expectant air as if every moment was an adventure to him but just now he looked hangdog and shy, shuffling his feet on the doorstep.

  ‘My uncle’s ill,’ Lucy said. She closed the door and looked at him severely. Willy was keen on her, everyone said, and she accepted it, although she could not see why he should be. She went out with him because there was no one else in Earls Gate to ask her, but she treated him brusquely, even rudely on occasion, because he was so unlike the smooth, sleek men of her imagination who drove fast cars, spoke with impeccable accents, and went to residential universities. His eyes rested on her with awe, as if the moon had stepped through the door. ‘I’m ter
ribly sorry,’ he said. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ Lucy shook her head. ‘He’s all right now. He’s resting.’ ‘Well, if there is …’ He took off his spectacles and blinked rapidly, looking much more handsome without them. He had alert, dark blue eyes fringed with long, girlish lashes, and a full, sweet mouth. ‘You didn’t mind my coming here?’ he asked delicately.

  Lucy wondered if her aunt was listening in the hall. ‘Of course not,’ she said brightly, moving away from the door. She did not want Willy to think she was ashamed of her home or her foster parents. The Aubes lived in a big, detached house in a garden full of rhododendron bushes. Lucy’s uncle and aunt looked down on the tenants of the council houses by the station; the Aubes could have looked down on the whole of Earls Gate if they had been the sort of people to look down on anybody, which they weren’t. They were great believers in social equality. Mrs. Aube could not even bring herself, so Willy said, to say the word ‘charwoman’: she thought it degrading. Her mother had been a suffragette and her father a sound man of business who had left his daughter a tidy little fortune invested in slum property in the north. Mr. Aube was the headmaster of the boys’grammar school and wrote pamphlets for the Fabian Society. The Aubes had sent their children to the free local schools and proudly encouraged them when they said, or did, little things that made their less sophisticated friends go numb with astonishment. Lucy thought it was a pity that Willy had not been to a public school and wondered privately, if his parents were as well off as they were reputed to be. ‘Why should I mind?’ she said. She glanced at the prim, curtained window of the front room and then at Willy. Their eyes slowly canvassed each other. ‘We could go for a drive if you like,’ Lucy said in an off-hand tone, ignoring his quizzical look.

  His face lit up. ‘Would you like to come to dinner?’ he asked, bounding clumsily in front of her to open the gate. ‘There’ll be some other people there, of course. Ann and Derek—and we’ve got an uncle staying in the house. But you won’t mind that, will you?’

  Lucy affected to look doubtful. She did not want Willy to guess she had never been out to dinner before. It was the first time Willy had asked her and her uncle and aunt neither visited nor entertained. ‘If you once let people in, they’ll take advantage of you,’ Ida explained; she was fearful for her social chastity. Lucy frowned like a woman of forty with a crowded engagement book. ‘I suppose it will be all right. If my uncle gets worse, my aunt could always telephone.’ Willy nodded solemnly and then gave her a refulgent smile. ‘Dinner’s at seven thirty. Shall I call for you?’

  Lucy shook her head quickly. ‘No, don’t bother,’ she said.

  ‘It’s no bother.’ Willy held open the car door and looked at her with a puzzled expression. ‘Why don’t you like me coming to the house? Doesn’t your aunt like me?’ Lucy shook her head again and gazed at the pavement. ‘Are you ashamed of me, then?’ he went on inexorably.

  Lucy sighed. Willy was a terribly serious young man. He had frequently told her that it was particularly important to be truthful about one’s meaner emotions because they were the most difficult things to be truthful about. It was probably no more than plain, ordinary inquisitiveness on his part, Lucy thought crossly. All the same, she couldn’t help feeling that she should try to live up to his high moral standards. Naturally, she explained in a low voice as she climbed into the passenger seat, she was not ashamed of Willy. But she was just a little ashamed of her aunt and uncle and their way of life. They were not educated people and the house had no books or pictures. On the other hand—she looked Willy straight in the eye—she was ashamed of being ashamed. A flush rose prettily in her cheeks. She rather admired herself for her honesty, she discovered: it took courage to admit to such pettiness.

  Willy listened intently. ‘It’s a very common problem, surely,’ he said in a thoughtful voice. ‘Millions of people are getting better educated than their parents and moving out of their parents’world. They have to adjust themselves to living on two different levels, that’s all.’

  He made it sound so easy, Lucy thought. ‘They aren’t my parents,’ she said vaguely, staring down at her hands and wondering what she should wear.

  This was a question she had been turning over in her mind ever since Willy had produced his invitation. Her only good clothes were her school uniform and a white, lacy blouse her uncle had bought her as an Easter present. It was a pretty blouse, but not stylish enough for an occasion. She guessed that the Aubes might be the sort of people who dressed for dinner. Bracing her feet as the car started with a jerk, Lucy had a brain wave. Last month, at one of Miss Jones’s musical evenings, Maudie Cayliss had worn a green dress that was too tight in the bust and almost outgrown. Maudie was taller and broader than she was but her hips were quite narrow: Lucy had noticed this when they changed for gym in the cloakroom. And she could shorten the skirt by tucking it into a belt and make the neckline respectable with a brooch if it was too low in the bosom. Something quieter would have been better—Maudie was inclined to dress flashily—but there was no point in repining. Maudie was the only one of her friends who was generous with her clothes.

  She became aware that Willy was talking. ‘It makes it easier in a way,’ he was saying. ‘Because with your own father and mother, the situation would be complicated by the blood tie. I mean you would have to feel fond of them,’ he ended lamely, with an apologetic grin for his prosiness.

  ‘I have to feel grateful, which is worse,’ argued Lucy, clinging to the side window as the car lurched round a corner and deciding that she would have to leave home early and change at Maudie’s. Her parents would not mind; they were rather common, casual people. Of course, Ida would object if she knew. In her view, Lucy would be insulting her publicly by borrowing another girl’s clothes. It would be an awkward moment if she were still up when Lucy came home wearing the green dress.

  ‘Why shouldn’t you be grateful?’ Willy asked mildly, stopping the car in front of the coffee bar in the high street. He did not mean this question seriously, Lucy knew. Gratitude, they had decided, sitting in the park one afternoon and watching the cricket, was not really a virtuous emotion: it was too humiliating to both parties. Nevertheless, though she understood perfectly that he merely wanted to make her laugh and change the subject, Lucy felt a ridiculous stab of anger. She felt he had been belittling the difficulties of her position. ‘You can’t imagine how much gratitude my aunt expects,’ she cried angrily. ‘She makes me feel it’s mean and shabby to want anything over and above being fed and clothed and allowed to live in that horrible little pokey house with her. Nice girls, she’s always telling me, are content with their lot! Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m the only person in the world who’s wicked enough to be ambitious—as if I were a weird kind of freak like that mad woman who rides round the town on a man’s bicycle in a pair of scarlet knickers!’

  ‘She’s letting you go to Oxford,’ Willy pointed out. He hated to criticize Lucy, but he had a passionate sense of justice. He would not allow a word against anyone if he suspected that it might, just possibly, be unfair.

  Lucy gulped and stared out of the window. She shrank from explaining to Willy that she could not go to Oxford now. Real poverty was romantic, but reality was drab. Her foster parents were not starving: they would simply be more comfortable with the few pounds a week Lucy could give them if she went out to work.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Willy said remorsefully. But he stuck to his guns. ‘You mustn’t look down on your family. You mustn’t let yourself think you’re better than they are, just because you’ve been educated.’

  ‘But I want to be better than they are.’ Lucy rounded on him. ‘Is that so awful?’

  Willy’s eyes fell. ‘I suppose not,’ he agreed, and sighed. ‘You must think me an awful prig.’

  The unhappiness Lucy had felt during the afternoon combined with shame at her outburst against her aunt. She wanted to hurt somebody. ‘Yes, you are,’ she accused him in loud, resentful tones. His eyes opened wide. It hurt
him, she saw, that she should behave so badly. But she felt no remorse. ‘I want to go home,’ she said.

  He nodded and switched on the engine. She felt a faint disgust at his ineptitude. Suddenly she wished he would behave more manfully and slap or kiss her. He was such a gentleman. He had never attempted anything further than a sticky hand-clasp in the cinema, a respectful good-night kiss planted lightly on her brow, and the recital of an occasional risqué but impersonal story, delivered with a foolish grin and a sly glance to see how she was taking it. Indeed, measuring her experiences against the far wilder, reported exploits of other girls, Lucy had often felt mortified by the tameness of their embraces. She had never envisaged herself yielding to Willy’s charms, but the fact that he never tried anything on sometimes made her nervous. Was he ‘respecting’ her, or did he find her physically unattractive? This thought sobered her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said meekly, her eyes on his melancholy profile, ‘you’re not a prig. It’s me that’s wrong. I’m selfish and horrible.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ he asserted swiftly. It upset him more than anything, when she depreciated herself. Knowing this, she became more emphatic. ‘Yes I am,’ she insisted, quite sincerely now. ‘I only think of myself. Do you know, when my uncle was brought home in the taxi, my first thought was that if he was going to have to give up his job, I might not be able to go to Oxford after all?’ ‘I don’t believe that,’ said Willy stoutly. ‘But it’s true.’ Lucy’s soft brown eyes filled with tears. She felt herself to be set apart from other people.