A Rather English Marriage (39 page)

‘Liz … How are you? How have you been?'

‘I'm all right,' she said. ‘What about you?'

‘I'm getting better. They are good here. They are teaching me to walk and talk again, just as though I'd pranged myself. It's hard work. I try and go twice round the ward every morning and afternoon, and I make myself walk right down the corridor every day. But I am getting better. They say I can probably go home in about a week.'

‘Good,' she said. ‘Well done. Is it very tiring?'

‘Yes,' he admitted. ‘I am exhausted after going down the corridor and back. I have to lie down and rest. But I
can
walk, though I still need a stick. When they first brought me in, I was almost paralysed all down here.' He indicated his right side.

‘How awful,' she said. There was a silence. With an effort, he broke it.

‘You said you were selling up,' he began. ‘Is it because of me?'

She could not bear the unexpressed hope in his voice. ‘In a way. Not really.'

‘Are you going to come and live with me when I come out? We can marry straightaway, if you want. Or we could wait and see how I get on. You don't have to. I don't want to tie you down. You're still young. My darling.'

This was it. A great heaviness settled over her. She would have liked to live in deafness and dumbness rather than utter the next words. There was a rushing in her ears. She took his hand between hers and swivelled her knees towards him.

‘Reginald,' she said. ‘I have done wrong. I can't marry you. I should never have agreed. I am going away – almost at once. Abroad.'

‘Where are you going?' he asked, pointlessly. The lips continue to move, we say the right thing, the thing that is expected of us, even at moments when the fulcrum of our lives wobbles.

Liz inhaled deeply and flicked the ash.

‘I am going to the south of France, to look for my ex-husband. He's there somewhere, and I think I ought to tell him that we will soon be grandparents.'

‘No!' he said in amazement. ‘You? I thought
we
might have a baby. A son. You can't be a grandmother?'

‘Oh Reggie,' she said. ‘Oh darling. I am fifty-two. I'm past having children. I couldn't possibly have given you a son.'

‘No? It seemed such a lovely idea. What would we have called him, I wonder?'

‘Not Vivian,'
she said.

‘I quite agree.
Not
Vivian.' They smiled at each other. ‘I never thought you were fifty-two.'

‘You're so sweet,' she said. ‘Oh Reggie, darling, you
are
so sweet; but I am going to leave you. There's no point in saying sorry or anything. I won't even say I'd never have made you happy. But I'm not a very nice person.'

‘And I am old and fat and ill, not rich or sexually attractive,' he said. ‘But it was wonderful, that night. Will I see you again?'

The cigarette was burning his fingertips. She took it from him and crushed it in the silver-foil ashtray.

‘No, I don't think so,' she said. ‘Though you never know.'

‘I thought I was good at goodbyes. God knows, I've had plenty of practice. All my life people went away; usually because they died. You don't know how many people have died. At least you're not dying. You do look lovely. Is it some man you're going after?'

‘It
is
my ex-husband,' she said. ‘Honestly. I haven't seen him for several years. I don't know exactly where he is. I've only got a postmark to go by. I just somehow felt he ought to know that his daughter, our daughter, is expecting a baby.'

‘Quite right. Well, now what's left for me to do? I'd better go after
my
wife. Mary.'

‘Don't be bitter. Please don't say anything else, I couldn't bear it. Please don't see me out. Please don't think ill of me. Oh Reggie, please don't…'

The tears were misting her sight as she leaned forward and kissed him on both cheeks; they gathered in the corners of her eyes as she stood up, and ran down the side of her nose and into the lines that bracketed her mouth as she left the ward, so she could not turn round for a last wave. Not waiting for the lift, she went down the stairs into a balmy September afternoon, to find a gardener cutting the grass and buses plying the route up and down Mount Ephraim Road.

Vivian Blythgowrie had spent five demanding days on business in Hong Kong and was feeling jet-lagged and irritable. His uncle's problems could hardly have come at a more inconvenient time. Susan had promised to look into local nursing homes. Once she had found somewhere suitable, it was just a matter of making sure that Liz had been seen off. He hoped he would not have to pay her to go away but had mentally set a figure of £15,000 as his highest offer. The Blythgowrie Trust had a discreet contingencies fund. It had dealt with Celia's lamentable drugs episode under the heading of ‘health problems'. It could pay off Liz.

Reginald was sitting fully dressed on the side of his bed. The expression on his face was utterly woebegone. He was not reading, not listening to the radio, not watching the nurses or the ward television. He looked like a man who has spent weeks in solitary confinement. As Vivian approached, he detected the whiff of stale cigarette smoke. He handed over
The Times, Country Life
and
Punch
, and a lavish bunch of flowers.

‘These are from Susan,' he said. ‘She sends her love.'

Reggie barely gave him time for the pleasantries before he said, his diction a good deal clearer than last time, ‘Wha' did you tell her? What did you say to
Liz?'

‘Why?'

‘Answer me!'

‘Isn't there somewhere else we can talk?' asked Vivian, scenting trouble and unwilling to continue the conversation in a public ward. Reginald heaved himself upright and shambled down the corridor, stopping beside a large window with a railing in front of it. He leaned against the railing, rummaged in his pocket for a cigarette and lit it.

‘I say, old man,' Vivian objected priggishly, ‘I'm quite sure you aren't allowed to –'

‘I want to know what you
said to her?'
Reginald interrupted.

‘I told her about your, well, you know, your set-up.'

‘What do you mean, my set-up?'

‘How you were placed. That is, financially. More or less…'

‘How dare you?' raged Reginald. His eyes blazed with fury. ‘How
dare
you take it upon yourself to interfere! What gave you that right?'

‘Calm down, Uncle. No need to get in such a state. You'll do yourself damage.'

‘Don't patronize me, Vivian. What exactly did you say?'

‘I said very little, as far as I remember. I said, I think, that you were tolerably well off but could not afford to live in great style. To ensure that she had no false expectations.'

‘Thanks to you,' said Reggie, his voice flat and final, ‘she's gone away. Abroad. Left me. My one hope of happiness.'

‘Better off without her,' said Vivian. ‘It just proves that she was only after you because she thought you were rich.'

‘Of course
she thought I was rich. I meant her to think I was rich. For God's sake, you fool, why
else
should a good-looking girl of her age marry me?'

‘I would be grateful if you could avoid abusive language. That woman was no “girl”. She was well into her fifties, by my reckoning,' said Vivian self-righteously.

‘Liz Franks was fifty-two. She was beautiful, vivacious, and very attractive to me – yes, I mean
sexually
attractive. What is a marvellous girl like that
supposed
to love me for, you pompous, interfering prat, except money?'

It was many years since anyone had used such ephithets to Vivian Blythgowrie. He contrived, as always, to conceal his emotions behind a mask of self-control, but inwardly he was seething. First there had been that calculating tart with her outrageous allegations; and now Reginald, a clapped-out old fogey, was making remarks that were simply inexcusable. An idle parasite who had depended throughout his life on his, Vivian's generosity: how dared he call him names? Come along, he told himself, calm down. Remember that the man is your uncle; he is elderly and he has been very ill. It must have affected his mind.

‘Let us say no more about it. I assumed you wouldn't wish to marry a gold-digger,' Vivian said icily, ‘and on that basis –'

‘I wanted to marry
Liz,'
Reggie retorted. ‘I'm not such an idiot as to imagine that she loved me for my character or my good looks. But she wanted a comfortable life and I wanted
her
. You would rather I had found some dry, upper-crust widow – that
would
have met with your approval. Come off your high horse, Vivian. You don't think Susan, ten years younger than you, and, if I remember rightly, a top model girl at the time, married you for your
character?
She married you because she liked the idea of having a title, and you married her because you wanted an heir. It's what the upper classes have always married for. So out went poor Geraldine, you hung on to the girls (never understood how you got away with that), and in came a younger, better-looking wife. As it happens,
she
hasn't given you an heir, either. Time for a change of model soon, eh, Vivian?'

‘There is no need to be offensive,' Vivian said, still containing his anger, although Reginald's analysis was spot on. Much as he resented having his marriage exposed, he had never seen his normally affable, easy-going uncle so enraged. One more outburst might bring on another stroke.

Reginald stamped out his cigarette on the grey-and-white vinyl floor and turned to his nephew. ‘You haven't yet answered my question. What made you think you were entitled to poke your nose in my business?'

‘Because I am the head of the family and, as such, the guardian of its interests.'

‘Did it never cross your mind,' said Reginald, ‘as you sprang to the defence of the family money – of which, incidentally, there is more,
much
more than enough – that I might
love
Liz Franks? That I wanted to marry her whatever her reasons? And that I have no chance, now, of finding anyone else? That thanks to you, damn you, I have had my
last fuck?'

Vivian saw his opportunity and seized the initiative. ‘Spare me,' he said with distaste, ‘the details of your erotic activities. I intervened in this preposterous so-called engagement in your own best interests. Events have proved me absolutely right. If that woman had felt any real affection for you, she would not have decamped as soon as she found out how you stood financially. I was perfectly justified in doing what I did, and I take great exception to your remarks. I am now returning to London. If you want to see any other member of the family, you have only to ask. Susan is making inquiries as to a suitable local nursing home, since you are clearly unfit to live alone. The Trust will cover its costs, until your house is sold. That's it. Nothing else. Goodbye, Uncle Reginald.'

The sound of their argument had penetrated to Sister's office. As Vivian's footsteps strode purposefully away down the corridor, she emerged.

‘What the dickens is going on?' she asked ‘Mr Conynghame-Jervis! You know very well that smoking is not permitted, above all not to you; and the doctor has warned you about getting over-excited. You really
must
…' Her voice trailed off as she took his wrist between a cool, professional finger and thumb and glanced down at her watch. ‘Go and lie on your bed,' she ordered. ‘I will ask a nurse to come and give you something to calm you down. That pulse-rate is far too high. If this is the effect of visitors, we shall have to ban them.'
Then she smiled. ‘With the possible exception of that good-looking fiancée of yours! When is
she
coming again?'

‘Never,' said Reginald, with finality. ‘Never.'

He shuffled laboriously back to the ward muttering under his breath, ‘Never again, never again. I am old and I shall never fuck again.'

Once or twice a week Roy went up to The Cedars to collect the Squadron Leader's post (if any) and make sure all was well. He would run a duster over the dining table and sideboard, slip a freshly heated hot-water bottle between the clean sheets with which he had made up the beds, and throw open the windows so that fresh autumnal air billowed the curtains and stirred up the motionless rooms. It was something he could do to help the poor chap and it gave him a much-needed break from the clatter and rumpus of his own house.

June made efforts to please him, although within a day or two she usually reverted to her own slapdash ways. She had no routine, but wandered through each day doing the chores at different times, and sometimes not doing them at all. Why doesn't she make the beds as soon as the boys have gone off to school? Roy thought in exasperation. Then tidy up the kitchen, put their dirty clothes in the machine, go to the shops while that's doing … Behind his impatience lay the real question: why isn't she more like Grace?

He couldn't see why June took so much trouble over her looks, putting her hair in curlers each night and making up her face for half an hour each morning, although she hadn't a man to primp for. He wondered, he admitted guiltily to himself, how she felt without a man in her bed. But she left her arms alone; the cuts had healed to faint brown lines, and though she was often short with the boys, she had managed to govern her tongue with him since their last upset.

Billy and Joe were clever boys who thrived in the new school and, although at first they grumbled about their homework, they were soon getting good marks.

‘Look what my teacher put, Grandad,' little Joe said, showing him an arithmetic book with '7/10 – well done, Joe! A
very good start!' written at the end of some exercise. Roy peered at the complicated rows of figures.