A Rather English Marriage (12 page)

Darling Reginald
, she wrote:

I am afraid this will may come as a bit of a shock to you. Of course you had no idea what I did with my money. Most of the time I didn't do very much. But gradually I got interested in the City, learned to read the financial pages and began to get the hang of how the stock exchange works. About 15 years ago, roundabout the early 70s, I had a bit of luck. I sold those old brewery shares and invested in different ones, and after that things sort of began to go quite well for me. I don't know when I'll die or how much money I shall leave, but Pm pretty sure it'll be more than you expect, which is why I'm writing this. I've worked out how much you've been borrowing in recent years, and tried to make sure you'll get roughly double that. I hope this means you won't be any worse off than before, in fact probably a bit better. By making over £5,000 a year to you, you shouldn't need to draw in your horns in case I die before you - though with luck I hope that won't happen!

Here followed a tidy list of her annual loans to him, beginning in 1975. From £678 in the first year it rose steadily, and the last figure, for 1988, was nearly £3,000. Can't be right, thought Reggie, she's wildly over the top; but he knew that from time to time, perhaps almost from week to week, he'd asked for ‘the odd' hundred pounds. He wondered now why he'd never been surprised that she was always willing to write him a cheque from her own account. He turned back to the letter.

Now about the girls. You remember that about the time of the divorce, they gave Vivian and Susan a bit of trouble? It can't have been easy for them to lose their mother. Well, anyway, that's when I started seeing a good deal of them. I used to slip up to London during their school holidays to give them lunch and take them to a matinée, and sometimes we'd go clothes-shopping together which was tremendously good fun for
me. In time they started to confide in me. Susan's a darling of course but it must have been jolly intimidating for teenagers, having such a glamorous step-Mama! Anyhow I began to get very close to them
.

You mustn't feel indignant about all this, Reggie dear. I would have told you, if you'd seemed interested, but although in the beginning I used to mention that I was seeing the girls you only said, Jolly good, give them my love - which I always did, by the way - and never asked questions. I suppose I felt you didn't really care about them. To tell you the truth, I sometimes wondered if you heard what I said
.

I know I haven't been a very exciting wife to you. But I have loved you and writing this now brings the tears to my eyes. I wish I had been able to say it more often. A couple of weeks ago I took you out to dinner for your 70th birthday at Luigi's - I expect you remember? I asked you then whether you were happy and you looked at me in sort of surprise and said, perfectly. I thought to myself, well that's something, if he can say he's perfectly happy. I can't have made too much of a hash of things
.

Perhaps if we'd had a child, or more than one, it might have brought us closer. Oh Reggie. I
did
so long for children! But we were never very good at talking about all that. I know you'll understand why I made over my half of the house to BAAF
.

BAAF? thought Reginald. What the hell's … oh yes, that adoption thing.

If I do go first, I want you to know that I hope you'll marry again. I don't think you're very suited to living by yourself. Marriage is a funny thing, it isn't easy, it hasn't been what we expected, has it? We've had a rather
English
sort of marriage
.

Well Reggie dear, I'm getting sentimental, so I'd better stop. It's hard to imagine you reading this, and I hope you'll never have to. But I'm nearly
70
too, and I get the odd ache and pain and had to pop along to Dr Duncan last week, so I suppose it could be me that goes first
.

Well, if you ever have to read this, my famous last words!! are, look after yourself, try not to drink too much and also you ought to lose a bit of weight, dear, or your health will suffer. Be kind to the girls and don't think they sucked up to me because I promise you it isn't true.
They
had no idea I was becoming fairly well off, either. They just treated me like a sort of second mother which was wonderful for me, just what I've always wanted. They're a grand pair
.

Oh heck, I don't think I could bring myself to end this if I ever actually thought you were going to read it, but I don't so F
11
just say, lots of love from your wife

Mary

P.S. And ‘the bunnies'!!

It was the ‘Oh heck' that finished him. It had been one of her favourite expressions, long after everyone else had stopped saying it, and Reggie could hear the mock-cockney tone in which she would say it: ‘Oh ‘eck!' Her strongest terms of criticism would be ‘I'm a bit browned off about …' or, ‘Oh really, that's
too
bad!' She hated to make a fuss. Pleased by something, she would exclaim like a schoolgirl, ‘Good-
oh
!' Gentle Mary, meek and mild. She was so innocent that it amounted to foolishness sometimes, but always on the lookout for the best in everyone and always stoical. He saw now the gallantry in her patient stoicism. She hadn't nagged him or found fault, but gone on putting up with things, even at the very worst of times.

Reggie put his head down on to the steering wheel of his car and wept. One hand clutched the letter tightly in his lap and the other was laid across the top of his head.
I
sometimes wondered if you heard what I said
. He hadn't heard; he had never listened, never heard, and now it was too late.

After a while, two passers-by noticed the stout, elderly man heaving convulsively, and, wondering if he was having a heart attack, went in search of authority. First a meter maid rapped on the windscreen.

‘Everything all right, sir?' she mouthed through the shatterproof glass.

Reggie looked up, shook his head, waved her away and went on sobbing. In due course she returned, bringing with
her a policeman, who signalled to him to wind down the window.

‘You feeling all right, sir?' he asked. ‘Need any help?'

‘Thank you, officer. No. I'm fine now. Be on my way in a tick. Cleared for take-off?'

The policeman looked at him in puzzlement, but Reggie's accent and his opulent car and evident sobriety reassured him. ‘Very good, sir,' he said. ‘Mind how you go.'

Reginald folded the letter in two, replaced it in his pocket and drove to Simpson's in the Strand for lunch. He'd definitely give Sabrina a miss. That was the least he could do. But he badly needed a double Scotch.

‘I do appreciate your coming, what with you being so busy, but I don't think you should keep on,' said Roy to Mandy Hope. ‘We've sorted out the forms and the money. I just have to get on with whatever life's left.'

It was a dank and gloomy afternoon in early October. By half past five it was already almost dark. Rain dripped with tiny audible blips from the roof overhanging the kitchen, and Mandy's umbrella stood in a pool of water by the front door. Despite the warmth of the coal stove and the steaming cups of tea in front of them, Roy Southgate wore a knitted Fair Isle waistcoat to keep the cold off his chest, and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. Nowadays he never left the house without a woollen muffler up to his ears, a flat cap and warm gloves. The earth felt cold and heavy when he visited the cemetery or dug in the allotment; its clamminess weighed down the spade and clung to the soles of his shoes.

Mandy was concerned about him. Grace's death and the drama of his son's acute depression had left their mark. Roy was no longer a gallant, chirpy figure. He looked old, frailer and greyer than when she had seen him for the first time, his slight frame more stooped. She smiled vigorously to reassure him.

‘But I love coming - and, anyway, it's important if you
do
decide to give it a try up at The Cedars, that you and the Squadron Leader should get off on the right footing. For a start I don't see why you shouldn't call him Reginald.'

Roy Southgate looked appalled. ‘I don't think that would be right. He'd not like it, not one bit. And I don't think I could get my tongue round it.'

‘You may be staying in his house, but you'll be there on equal terms. There's no question of him paying you. He won't be your employer. He calls you Roy, doesn't he?'

Reggie in fact called him ‘Southgate', but Roy thought it would only make matters worse if he admitted this, so he ignored the question.

‘We've met twice now for what he calls a chin-wag. I still don't think he's really keen on the vicar's idea.'

‘That's just his manner. I notice it's got worse since his cleaner left. The hospital came up with a nice woman who works as a ward orderly there on a part-time basis, but Elsie was a link with his wife and that was important. Someone who remembered her and could talk about her.'

‘Why did she leave?'

Mandy remembered Elsie O'Murphy's outraged Catholic propriety and searched for an excuse that was reasonably true but would not scandalize Roy Southgate. T think,' she said eventually, ‘she felt it wasn't proper for her, a married woman, to be alone in the house with him quite so much.'

Roy sighed. It was true that he craved company, the presence of another human being to eke out the long lonely evenings now that winter was coming. He had felt that he and the Squadron Leader must have so much in common, that the coincidence of their wives' deaths in the same ward, on the same night, made a palpable link between them. The other man showed little sign of recognizing this or of wanting to discuss his wife. That much Roy could understand: some things were too deep to be talked about with a stranger. But he had hoped for some gesture of comradeship. However, though the War might have ended forty-five years ago, the difference in rank between them yawned almost as wide and deep as ever. Mandy and the vicar, he thought, were being over-optimistic. Still, it was hard to reject the idea entirely.

‘It's a big house,' he said cautiously.

‘Yes, I know. You wouldn't get on top of one another.'

‘I'd have my own quarters.'

‘You'd have your own bedroom and bathroom, and you could have a sitting room downstairs if you wanted one. It's the old servants' sitting room, to be honest, but don't read anything into that. You would be there as an equal. You
would
not
be his servant - I've made that quite clear to him - and nobody expects you to wait on him.'

‘I know it would take my mind off things. I sometimes, tell you the truth, often, howl my eyes out here on my own. It's just that if I leave here, it feels like, well, abandoning Grace.'

‘Roy, the decision's entirely up to you. But as I say,
he's
keen to give it a try. And it
would
be on a trial basis at first.'

‘Tell him … tell him, I'll move in the beginning of November, up until after Christmas. Then we'll both see how we like it. That gives me a few weeks to sort myself out.'

‘I'll talk to him. I'll make sure he understands that at this stage it's not a permanent arrangement.'

She smiled at Roy's worried face. He did so want to do the right thing. She also knew that it was realistic for him to be worried. The Squadron Leader could be maddening, yet he was surprisingly open to suggestion, and keener than Roy to give this idea a try.

‘I'm seeing him for the last time next week. I'll warn him he's got to be on good behaviour!'

She would, Mandy told Roy, always be on the end of a telephone. Any problems, any difficulty settling in, and he had only to ring; but he should not expect her to visit them regularly.

After she had gone, Roy looked out some things for mending. There was a smashed cup and saucer that needed Aralditing - just the sort of meticulous job he liked - and his pyjama trousers wanted threading with new elastic: tasks on which his fingers had to concentrate, leaving his mind free. He assembled everything he needed and picked up the cup.

What was the alternative to the vicar's idea? He was lonely here by himself, true enough, and while the Squadron Leader wouldn't have been his first choice of companion, who else was there? He didn't know any other widowers - most of them went into those old people's dumps after their wives had died, and anything was better than
that
. He'd visited once or twice, with Grace. The smell hit you first - mouldy vegetables, mouldy bodies, and stained linen: suit yourself as to which
you noticed most. Then the listlessness. They sat about in collapsing armchairs, usually in a circle round the television, any old rubbish blaring from the screen
and
far too loud, on account of the ones who were deaf. He didn't think he'd deteriorate in the same way, but once you were institutionalized you weren't in control any more. Look at Alan … He banished the thought. Blokes from the dairy who had been cracking a joke in the Kelsey Arms not a year before went into a home and were suddenly fit for nothing but the compost heap. By comparison with that, the Squadron Leader and his posh house sounded like paradise.

No one was suggesting
he
should go into a home, but somehow women seemed to manage better on their own. Grace had several friends whose husbands had gone first. ‘Free she is now, after a lifetime of drudgery, bad language and worse than that when he'd got drink in him!' Grace had said more than once. These old women became brisk and bright-eyed, skipped off on their Old Person's Railcard to visit grandchildren all over the country, even went off abroad on coach-trips sometimes, if the money allowed. Old Jack Simmonds, the milkman who'd turned to lashing his wife when they got rid of horses and brought in milk floats - now there was a vicious man! He'd had a heart attack soon after he retired from the Unigate, and Edith Simmonds had been a happier woman without him, no doubt about it. But he could hardly turn up on
her
doorstep and say, Hello, are you lonely too?