The Solitary Child Page 3

  He said, surprised into coldness, “It is quite impossible for us to live there.”

  It was like a slap in the face. I felt like a child who has been encouraged by the casual indulgence of a grown-up into unintentional presumption and been rebuked for it.

  I said childishly, “Then why did you tell me all this? I think it’s beastly of you.” His astonished stare provoked me. “Is it nothing to do with me? You are abominably unfair.”

  Seeing the hurt look in his eyes, I was doubtful of the rightness of my anger. I groped for his hand.

  “I’m sorry. But if the future includes me, you could have asked me how I felt about it.”

  He watched me with dismayed eyes. “Sweetheart—I never imagined … do I have to tell you why we can’t live there together?”

  “You lived there alone. You went back there after the trial.”

  He said slowly, “That was easy. I was angry and sore and scared to death. I felt as if I’d been flayed in public. I was free but that didn’t mean anything. I was free because I was lucky, because I had a clever counsel. I was expected to slink away and hide like a criminal. Well, I wasn’t going to. I was going back to show them all that I had a right to live where I wanted to live. To make a long nose at all the nice people who couldn’t think of me as a human being any more.” His hand was shaking. “I hadn’t anything to lose, then. Now I have. I want us to be happy together, not bedevilled by my charming neighbours. You are precious to me. I don’t want to risk you.”

  It was sensible evidence of his love for me. But just then it sounded like the timorous reasoning of middle age. And I had a feeling that I would have preferred him angry and beaten and proud.

  I said, “Are you really afraid that people will talk about us? What do you think they will say? Do you expect them to point at me and wonder how long it will be before they come to my funeral too?”

  My voice was high and clear.

  James said, “Harriet, control yourself.” His face was bloodless.

  At the opposite table there was a pig-faced man with a pretty, anæmic young girl. He was staring at us with eyes like hard, shiny buttons and the girl giggled suddenly behind her lifted hand. I blew my nose violently and James made hasty signs at the waiter.

  I said, “I’ll see you outside,” and ran for the Ladies.

  When I came out of the lavatory, the girl who had giggled was combing her hair in front of the looking-glass. I stood beside her and put fresh lipstick on my mouth; my face, in the mirror, was white and startled. She looked at me, frankly curious, with bright, sly eyes.

  James was waiting for me in the street. It seemed that I was always apologising. “I’m sorry. I made a scene, didn’t I?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” His face looked tired and yellow. He coughed and turned up his coat collar.

  “It wasn’t very tactful of me to talk about the place like that. Like showing a child a new toy and snatching it away. But good heavens, Harriet, I never thought you would expect to live there.”

  I said miserably, “Well, I did.”

  He took my hand and we walked slowly down Maiden Lane. Covent Garden, in the fog, was like a forsaken city. Our footsteps rang hollow on the road.

  I forget exactly what I said. I know I made a great many sweeping statements that would not bear analysis now. Happiness, it seemed, was not worth much if it had to be so carefully guarded. To run away would mean that he doubted our love for each other. Did he rate our chances so low? I was excited by the wine and the emotional atmosphere. The sentiment was unexamined, the bravery compassionate and foolish and young.

  In the end, he said, “Perhaps you’re right. I never thought that being in love could make such a coward of me.”

  We were standing outside my boarding-house because I was not allowed to have men in my room in the evening.

  I said, “Was it like this before?”

  He said guardedly, “It was a very long time ago. You were just learning your alphabet.”

  I answered accusingly, “You could have waited for me. Most of the time I was at school, I was in love with Gary Cooper. You would have made a nice change.”

  “I wouldn’t have stood a chance. Were you a pretty little girl or a scrubby one?”

  “Scrubby. I used to have warts all over my hands. Little clusters of them. They came up overnight like mushrooms.”

  He laughed and kissed me. “Go along indoors with you, or you’ll have a streaming cold on your wedding day.”

  He gave me a little shake and pushed me in through the door. I closed it behind me and leaned against the wall. I heard my landlady’s footsteps on the linoleum-covered stairs that led to the basement, and fled up the first floor to safety. She was kindly, she was coming for a gossip and a cup of tea, and I was tired and unwilling. I waited on the landing until I heard her slow, disappointed steps retreating down again.

  When I reached my room, my mother was waiting for me there.

  Chapter Two

  As the years pass, remembering becomes an academic exercise, a kind of cosy reckoning—a private game kept for the solitary train journeys, the white nights. You finish the crossword puzzle, read the new novel, but memory is inexhaustible, waiting to be taken out and examined without pain, touched inquiringly, like an old scar. There is no longer any emotion involved; what remains is pictorial and vivid. The little things stand out, the fly on the wall, the coffee stain on the carpet.

  I remember that she was wearing a new brown hat with a blue feather. The fire had gone out and the room was bitterly cold. She huddled in her old-fashioned fur coat, a self-conscious martyr. Her eyes, as she looked at me, were bright with anger.

  I repeated, “I’m sorry. I tried to tell you about James before …”

  Her voice was unnatural and precise.

  “I had a little bridge party this afternoon. The Major and his wife and Mrs. Drew. I told them about your marriage. I also told Mrs. Foster when she came in afterwards to wash up. Naturally, she was delighted to tell me all she knew about my future son-in-law.”

  The humiliation lay openly in the clamped mouth and the hurt eyes. My mouth was dry and the cigarette stuck to my lip.

  I had forgotten Mrs. Foster. I should have remembered her. I should have known my mother would tell her. I knew how they would look, standing in the steamy kitchen, the dirty tea cups piled on the trolley, the uneaten cress sandwiches curling at the edges, the crumpled paper doyleys.

  My mother, brightly condescending to a servant. “My daughter is going to be married. I am so pleased about it. Such a nice man. …”

  And the understanding, at first incredulous and then eager in the pale eyes of the woman who read all the Sunday papers, the woman who never forgot a name and to whom James’s trial would have been a well-remembered peak in the weekly prurient excitement. At first she would have been delicate and only hinted. But when she was sure she would have been lavish with her explanations, relishing her special aptitude for shabby detail.

  “Mummy, I’m so dreadfully sorry. I did try to tell you on the telephone, but it wasn’t easy.…”

  The fat, gloved hands tightened on the handbag in her lap. “It’s true, then?”

  Of course, she had told Mrs. Foster that she was making a mistake. It was not, after all, an unusual name. She had made it clear that she thought Mrs. Foster a vulgar gossip; now, because she was honest, she would have to tell the woman she had been right and face the slyness and the triumph.

  “I didn’t mean to expose you to this. It was unforgivable of me.”

  She looked at me with a dying flash of anger.

  “Please, Harriet, try not to be sentimental over the damage to my pride.”

  She huddled in her chair, shabby and suddenly defeated, the last hope gone.

  “It isn’t so terrible, surely? The terrible part of it is over and done with. And it was James who had to bear it, not you or me.”

  My voice was light and brittle. I could feel the fixed, silly smile on my mout
h.

  She started to cry. Her mouth became loose and shapeless, her eyes, colourless with tears. She searched blindly in her crocodile skin handbag. I gave her my handkerchief and she held it to her eyes. She was sobbing loudly now, on the edge of hysteria. I waited for the familiar spate of accusations.

  The words were disjointed and breathless. “How could you let me down like this? Everything has been centred on you, everything. I have always been so proud of you, how can I be proud any longer? You never think of anyone but yourself. Do you know what this will mean to me? Everyone will know, everyone. All the neighbours, all my friends. The people at the Bridge Club.… My only comfort is that your father is dead. It would have been too much for him to bear.…”

  She went on, rocking backwards and forwards in her chair. There had been scenes like this before and for less reason. I had never grown used to them, convinced that they were my fault, that in one way or another I was not what she expected me to be. Now, watching her, I was neither bewildered nor distressed. I saw her with a new, detached surprise as an uncontrolled middle-aged woman, desperate with self-pity.

  I said loudly, “This is foolish nonsense. You’re talking as if James was a common criminal. He was acquitted. The jury found him innocent.”

  She stopped crying and stared at me. She said, astonished, “Why do you shout at me?” She blew her nose and her voice was suddenly quite normal and controlled as if we had been having an ordinary conversation. “You’ve known this man for such a short time. He’s older than you and you’re in love with him. You know nothing about him, nothing at all. You’re very immature. You are quite capable of being carried away by the glamour of an acquitted murderer.”

  The word was monstrous, obscene. I hated her. I clenched my hands together in my lap.

  She leaned forward in her chair, her skirt stretched taut across her plump knees. Her eyes were tearless now, dry and excited.

  “I know you’ll say that if they let him off, he wasn’t a murderer. You call him innocent. But the rest of the world won’t think so. You’ll find that out. You think I’m a silly woman, but I’m older than you and I know what I’m talking about.”

  Her tongue flickered along her lips like a pale, pink snake. “I’m sure you think you’re in love with him. You’re a virgin—at least, I hope you are—and you’re excited at the idea of going to bed with a man. Perhaps it’s even more exciting to think of going to bed with a man who has been accused of murdering his wife. But once that is over—and, believe me, it’s over very quickly—you’ll find you’ve made a hell for yourself to live in. There will always be the things that people say—to your face as well as behind your back—and, in the end, there will be the questions you will have to ask yourself. And you will ask them, Harriet. You will never be sure. Never.” Her eyes slid away from mine and she looked almost ashamed.

  My face was burning hot.

  I said, “This is intolerably wicked,” and then I stopped. I was too tired to be angry and there was no point in it, anyway. She and Lally would not be the only people to proffer their advice; it would be wise to husband my temper.

  I said, “I’m going to marry James in ten days’time.”

  She looked grey and exhausted. She plucked at a bit of fluff on her skirt. In the end she said:

  “It was the wrong way to talk to you, wasn’t it? All the way up in the train I was thinking what was the best thing to say. I meant to be understanding and kind. Not to behave like this. But it isn’t always easy to be careful and clever when you mind so much.”

  She sounded humble, quite unlike herself.

  I forced a smile. “It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  She made a helpless gesture with her hand. “You’ve always done what you wanted.”

  She got up clumsily and stood, undecided, in front of the dead fire, a small, sturdy woman, running to fat. She had no particular distinction or authority. I was surprised at the depth of my pity for her.

  “What about your Diploma?” she asked. “Are you giving it all up?”

  “I didn’t really want to teach, Mummy. I’m one of those women who only want a job to fill in the time until they get married.”

  “You’re always so sure, aren’t you? Last year, when you came down from Exeter, you were going to have a career. It was more important than anything else.”

  “Of course it was, then. But I’ve been doing some teaching this term and I hated it.”

  “You didn’t say so.” She sighed.

  I said awkwardly, trying to bridge the gulf between us, “You’ll feel differently when you see James. You’ll like him. You won’t be able to help liking him.”

  She glanced at me with faint alarm. “Oh! Oh dear! I couldn’t see him. Really, dear, you mustn’t expect it of me.…”

  She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Is that the time? I shall have to hurry. The last Tube goes at twelve twenty-five.”

  She spoke as if she had been spending a social evening and had stayed too long.

  “But it’s so late. You can have my bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

  She smiled her vague and rather pretty smile.

  “We’d both be better on our own. I’m too old for all this emotion.”

  “We won’t talk any more, I promise you. And the fog is so thick.” I felt I could not bear the burden of her long, cold journey home.

  “I don’t mind the fog. The trains are still running and I can sleep late in the morning. You wouldn’t sleep on that hard, old sofa, and you need a good night’s rest.”

  She smiled with automatic sweetness. She was being polite as if I were her friend and not her daughter, as if she had abdicated her maternity. She stood on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek; her lips felt cool and dry and old.

  She walked down the stairs in front of me, feeling slowly for each step. We said good-bye on the doorstep. There was too much constraint between us for affection. As she stood there, catching her breath in the fog, I think she hoped I would kiss her good-bye but I didn’t realise it until she had gone. Then I ran after her, coughing and calling her name, but she did not answer me.

  I was no longer sleepy. I made myself a cup of tea on the gas-ring and undressed slowly. I tried on the nightdress I had bought for my honeymoon. It was made of black nylon with a stiff frill round the skirt. I tipped the reading-lamp so that I could see myself in the glass and struck an attitude. It was very transparent and made me look faintly indecent. I wondered if James would like it. I pulled my hair back from my face and tried to see how I would look if I cut my hair short and ragged like Lally. Then I took off the nightdress and folded it away in tissue paper.

  James went to the farm and came back again. I handed in my notice at the College and told them, cravenly, that I would probably finish the course and take my Diploma in Education after I was married. When I told them where I was going to live there were a few, sceptical smiles but no comment. I had not been a particularly attentive student; it was possible that they were glad to get rid of me. I told my landlady that I was going to get married and gave her a month’s rent for the room. It was a scruffy little room and there was mildew in the cupboards but it had been the setting for my brief independence between my years of childhood and my marriage. She wept on my shoulder, made me a cup of tea and presented me with a cut glass vase wrapped in Christmas paper.

  I went to see my mother on the day before my marriage. She had not written to me, or telephoned.

  Hughie Walters was on the train. He walked on to the platform in front of me, and I remembered that his family lived in the same street as mine. I had an idea that he still lived at home. I didn’t want to talk to him. I skulked in the waiting-room until the train came in and scrambled hastily into the last coach. During the last week I had found that I was avoiding my friends.

  It was nearly dark when we reached the suburban station. I hung around the platform for a while to give Hughie Walters a chance to leave before me.

  When the plat
form was empty, I climbed the stairs and handed in my ticket.

  A line of modern shops made a bright oasis round the entrance to the Tube; beyond them, the residential roads were desolate and wet and empty.

  The laurels dripped in the front garden of our solemn, Edwardian house. The window of the drawing-room was uncurtained and I saw my mother, sitting by the parchment standard lamp, her head bent over the sewing in her lap.

  I rang the bell and waited. She opened the door and peered out into the grey evening.

  “Oh, it’s you, Harriet.” She sounded nervous.

  I went into the hall. She pecked me on the cheek and took my raincoat. “I didn’t expect you.” Her face was pale and she dabbed fussily at her hair.

  “I know. I’m getting married to-morrow.”

  She glanced jerkily over her shoulder. “Oh! Oh, I see.”

  I don’t know what I had expected. I think either tears and reconciliation, or further anger. Not this awkwardness between us as we sat on the edges of tightly-stuffed armchairs like acquaintances making a polite social call. I should have guessed what was wrong by the hurried way she drew the curtains and by the way she seemed to be waiting and listening for a sound outside the room. She asked me where we were going to be married and I told her. She said, with a doubtful air, that she hoped I would be happy.

  I tried to think of something to interest her.

  “We’re going to Switzerland for our honeymoon. It’s too early for snow but there might be sun in the south.”

  “That will be nice. I’ve always wanted to see the Continent.”

  Her hands were neatly folded in her lap, her voice was automatic.

  “We’re going to fly. It takes about two hours to Geneva. James says, if the sun is shining, we shall see the tops of the mountains above the clouds.”

  My voice faded wretchedly into silence. She was not listening. She was leaning forward with her mouth slightly open and her eyes on the door.

  The back door banged. There was a distant clatter from the kitchen. She sighed deeply, her eyes met mine with fear and shame.