A Rather English Marriage (13 page)

Then there was Molly Tucker, who'd kept her improbable mop of blonde curls all her life. ‘It wasn't me own when I was twenty and it ain't me own at sixty,' she would say. ‘So where's the difference, may I ask?' Molly and Ted had been happily married, too, till Ted got cancer in his chest and it carried him off in three months. That was when Grace had persuaded Roy to give up smoking. It hadn't been easy - he'd smoked all his life - but she said, ‘You always promised me we'd grow old together, Royston Southgate, and after what I seen of Ted's last weeks I don't want to have to nurse you down the same road.' He sighed, and the delicate fingertips
pressing two fragments of china together shook so that he had to start that section again.

Sometimes the one left would move in with married children. That was the best solution, if it worked. But Roy didn't want to up sticks and go out to Australia, though it wasn't for want of asking on Vera's part. He didn't feel old, not often; but he felt too old for
that
. Fly thousands of miles to arrive at a strange place on the other side of the world, different weather, different ways of doing things? Too much of a risk. Besides, he'd never got on with Vera's husband, Stan. Roy suspected that Stan was a bully, dreaded lest he was violent to her and their sons, although Vera was loyal and never so much as hinted at any such thing. None the less, he wouldn't care to put himself under Stan's roof or at Stan's mercy.

And then there was Alan's wife, June.

‘The less said about
her
the better!' he'd commented to Grace, after Alan brought her home for the first time; but Grace had said, ‘Now Royston: give her a chance. Nobody gets condemned out of hand in
this
household. All right, she's got a child with no father to give it his name, but what would you rather? Should she have done away with it, poor innocent mite? That would have been tidier, I grant you, but would it have been right?'

He had done his best to be open-minded about June, but Alan hadn't given them the opportunity to get to know her. They'd married in a register office, had a party above a pub afterwards, and from then on he and Grace were lucky to see their son and his wife once a year.

It was five years before the first of the little lads came along, William Alan, and two years after him came Joe – Joseph Roy. Grace would sometimes take the train to south London to see June, whose own mother lived in Dublin and could seldom visit her; she would spend all day minding the boys, washing and baking. June was defensive at first. ‘
My
standards aren't good enough for you, I suppose?' But Grace would answer, ‘Now don't be silly, lovey: it's to give you a break from babies and toddlers. Go and get your hair done, see a
film, better still, go off with Alan somewhere, just the two of you.'

Grace would return from these outings pale and overtired, but she always said it was worth the trouble. ‘How else do you get to know a kiddie except by changing its nappy or wiping its little nose? If you wait till they can talk to you, it's too late! You've lost 'em by then.'

But he, Roy, had never changed the nappies, hardly even wiped the noses, of his own children - that had been Grace's side of things. He wouldn't know how to begin with his grandsons. Then came the shock of Alan's news, right after Gracie's diagnosis had been confirmed. Grace had had to endure an interminable series of visits to the hospital for tests and more tests, and then the operation. But the cancer had spread too far. The surgeon could not remove it all. Thank God Roy had been able to keep from her the news of Alan's trial and Alan's prison sentence. Eighteen months he'd got: longer than normal because he refused to express regret. I am not brave enough to think about that yet, Roy said to himself deliberately. I will put it out of my mind. He tidied away the work basket and left the cup and saucer beside the stove to harden.

Time for supper. He fancied rissoles and baked beans, but there didn't seem much point in going to all the trouble of making a rissole for one, so he'd bought a frozen hamburger at Tesco's. Give that a try, with some of Gracie's potted plums to follow with custard. Vera kept telling him in her letters how important it was to eat properly.

An hour later, the taste of artificial fat still circling glutinously around his false teeth in spite of a cup of strong tea, Roy sat at the kitchen table and prepared to write to his daughter. She'd have to have his new address, he supposed, or at any rate the telephone number in case of emergencies, and perhaps if he explained to her on paper why he was moving it would all come clear in his own mind, the pros and cons, and he would feel less bad about leaving Grace behind.
Grace
, he asked again,
oh Grace – why did you have to leave me?

*

Roy was awake before the alarm went off at its usual six o'clock. His working day had begun at five for so long that six seemed a late indulgence. The November dawn was still distant and the first bird had not yet begun its tentative song as he got out of bed and, with Grace's soft nightie brushing against his legs, started his bath running before going downstairs to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. He'd finished packing last night and his suitcase stood by the hall table. While the kettle boiled, he went in to Grace's shrine. A vase of late chrysanthemums blazed in the centre of the table, surrounded by her photographs and a birthday card he'd bought her last week. She would have been seventy.

‘Oh my dear wife,' he thought, ‘it feels like another parting. I don't like having to leave you alone here. But I'll look in often. He's lonely, that poor old chap, and he doesn't look after himself. He needs company. And I do, too. I'll soon be back. I'll always be with you.'

He picked up a photograph of Grace, put it down again and went through to the kitchen to make his cup of tea.

After he had finished bathing and shaving, Roy dressed and put fresh sheets on the bed. He pulled them tightly over the mattress, Army-fashion (‘If I can't bounce a sixpence off your beds when they're done,' the sergeant used to say, ‘I'll make you lazy blighters do 'em again until that bloody sixpence bounces like a barmaid's tits!'), and smoothed the candlewick bedspread over its hospital corners. He decided not to risk packing the nightie, but took it downstairs and washed it through by hand in Lux Flakes while the last sheets and pillowcase spun in the machine.

He checked the kitchen cupboards once again, opening and shutting each to look at the saucepans and mixing bowls in their serried ranks. The cups hung in a still row from their hooks above the sink, the mended one back in its proper place. On the shelves above, plates and saucers were stacked in sixes, with the good bone china placed carefully at the back. If Grace were to walk in now, it would look exactly as she'd left it five months ago. He'd emptied the fridge, apart
from a last half-pint of milk. Two hours to go before the vicar collected him in his car for the short drive across Tunbridge Wells to Nevill Park. Roy sat down at the kitchen table and leafed through the
Mirror
.

Had he …? Yes, of course he'd stopped the papers.

‘Going away, are you, dear? That's nice. Do with a bit of a break, help you get over …' And the voice of the Indian lady in the newsagent's had dropped to a reedy, tactful diminuendo so that the name of death should remain unspoken. The
Mirror
was making a great hoo-ha about the poll tax but it left him unmoved. People should set aside money to cover the necessities before they started buying luxuries. He had no sympathy with anyone who complained yet had a houseful of TV gadgetry. He turned to the Letters page, which could sometimes make him smile, and stared at the blur of print before him. He could see himself at this same table, reading it aloud while Grace in her apron dished up supper for them all.

‘Eat up your nice shepherd's pie, Vera,' she would encourage. ‘It's bananas and custard for afters!' Vera in her teens had become a fussy eater, endlessly picking at her food. ‘Don't you want yours?' Alan would say. ‘Give it here, I'm starving.' He grew before their eyes, until he towered above his mother and, by the time he was fourteen, his father as well. Grace was proud of her strong, vigorous son, his body seeming to burst through his school jumpers, his legs ever longer below the grey uniform trousers. He was a tribute to her good cooking and the fresh vegetables that Roy brought down from the allotment. He would eat until there was nothing left on the table, and then call out for plates of bread and butter to sustain him while, reluctantly, he did his homework. When Alan was around, the cake tin was always empty, the rice-pudding bowl always scraped clean. ‘Let him have mine,' Vera would say. ‘He's hungry, and I haven't got much of an appetite tonight.'

So Alan grew into a muscular lad with big feet and a deepening voice, and Vera's slenderness was a source of pride to her mother. Dress-making patterns had to be adapted specially
for her narrow ribcage and eighteen-inch waist (‘Same as Scarlett O'Hara and no need for laced corsets, either!'), and she swayed like a reed above the bouncy petticoats and short skirts that suited her so well. Only her teeth had been a problem, and though none of them ever used the shameful words - bad breath. Well, it certainly wasn't down to poor diet.

Roy unloaded the washing machine and spread the heavy wet sheets across the lines in the airing cupboard. Time to get into his suit. He took it from the wardrobe and hung it up to give it a good brush. Best shirt … good suit … black shoes … If it weren't for the regimental tie, he might be going to a funeral. He went downstairs to sit in the dining room for the remaining half hour while he waited for the vicar.

Up at The Cedars, Reggie's new cleaning lady was reproaching him. She was a stout, ebullient black woman. There had been no answers to his advertisement (‘Widower wants dependable char for large house three times a week, £2.50 an hour'), so his doctor, to whom he had complained about the impossibility of finding servants these days, had suggested Mrs Ode-jayi. She worked as a ward orderly for the Kent & Sussex Hospital five half days a week, and was more than able, reflected Dr Duncan, to hold her own with difficult old men.

‘You should shame yourself, Mr Squadron Leader!' she scolded. ‘A guest arriving today, and I find you still in your bed at half past nine. Come on, up with you and into that bathroom while I fix your bed. Pooh, this room needs a good airing. Out you get, or we'll never be done in time. You been down to the laundry to pick up those sheets?'

‘Yes, I have,' said Reggie crossly. ‘They're put away in the usual place.'

‘“Usual place,” he says. I ain't been with him above two weeks and he expects me to know usual place. You get yourself out of that bed and bring 'em up here to me while I air this room. You could do with a good bath, I'm telling you.'

Yes, Nanny. No, Nanny. Sorry, Nanny. I'll be a good boy
today. His Nanny had been just as stout and bossy, and if this one hadn't been black he would have found her bustling commands reassuring, a sign that his life was taken care of and everything was going to be ordered and all he had to do was obey.

‘If you wouldn't mind, Mrs Owsyerfather, I'll get up by myself,' he said, adding firmly, ‘When you leave the room.'

She laughed. ‘Leave the room, he says! Leave the room! If you'd seen as many gentlemen in their pyjamas as I've seen, not to mention out of them, you wouldn't have no worries about me leaving the room. But if that'll get you up, out I goes.'

Her magnificent black bum swayed from side to side as she bustled out and Reggie took his erection into the bathroom to let it subside before having a long pee.

He'd never had a coloured girl in the house before – nigger, not to mince words, though you weren't allowed to say ‘nigger' these days, not even ‘girl' if you listened to some of those crazy harpies.

As he lay in the bath pleasurably soaping his cock and balls, he tried to imagine fucking her huge black body. Back in Cairo, when he got a weekend's leave from the hell of the Desert Airforce, he'd visited an officer's brothel in the side streets behind the Sharia Kasr-el-Nil, although the risk of VD always made him uneasy. The Arab tarts, with their smoothly oiled, coppery bodies and flying fingers, had been skilful and exciting, but the ululating songs that they played on a wind-up gramophone stimulated them to lashing, writhing movements that made him come too fast. By the time a 78 record was over and done with, he was too. Hardly worth it, not unless you were desperate and supercharged. Then he'd been injured, and the pale-skinned, faintly perspiring English nurses in the Cairo hospital had restored his desires to their proper place. He'd always had a thing about nurses. Those crisp uniforms … Reggie rubbed harder.

‘Mr Jervis!' shouted Agnes Odejayi, banging on the bathroom door. ‘You hurry up in there now! Nearly ten and you not even dressed, what sort of a welcome is that?'

‘Coming!' yelled Reggie, thinking, Silly old Nanny, silly old Mrs Black Mambo. But the sight of his clean shirts arranged in tidy rectangles on the shelf in his wardrobe restored his good humour. He slicked some brilliantine on to his hair and combed it back such as it was in neat wavy lines across his scalp.

Before going downstairs he looked in to the second spare bedroom. The single bed was made up and she'd put flowers on top of the chest of drawers. The room, long unused, looked tranquil and welcoming, ready for its new occupant. Reggie himself didn't feel particularly tranquil or welcoming. He felt that he'd been talked into this daft idea by the vicar against his better judgement. With Mrs Owsyerfather getting the hang of things the house was back to normal and he didn't need a soldier-servant - if that's what the little bloke had in mind. Now a stranger would be sleeping here, barging down the corridor in the middle of the night for a slash - damn fool idea, damn fool whole ruddy business. He scowled into the spotted silvering of the toilet mirror on top of the chest of drawers, and saw over his shoulder the laughing face of Mary, young Mary, his new bride.