Ashenden (40 page)

Alison may not have wanted to turn into her mother, but she missed her all the same. The incapacities of her old age, the worsening arthritis and the series of strokes, had been a trial to them both, duty chafing at her love, the indignity of physical decline chafing at her mother, each of them locked into it together. If her father’s sudden death of a heart attack thirteen years ago had been a brutal severance, her mother’s had been what people call “a release,” which didn’t make it any easier to bear. When the envelope arrived in two weeks’ time and Izzie got the grades she was expected to get (fingers crossed), she knew she would not be able to resist the impulse to reach for the phone, the same phone that would have delivered the news to her parents, and then turn away from it saddened that there was no one on the other end of the line.

Walter, having examined the plane from more angles than you would have thought possible, pulled out a chair, sat down at the kitchen table, and sighed.

“The Lyells have decided to move out of the house and into the south pavilion.”

Alison put down her stickers and looked at him. “Have they?” And then, “I suppose it’s sensible at their age.”

“There will be an announcement at the fête, I think. Better not say anything about it for now.”

“Of course. Are you sad?”

“No, not sad. A little—what is the word?—wistful. Yes, I am wistful.”

She reached across the table to squeeze his hand. “Look at it this way. You made sure the house survived. They couldn’t have rescued it without you.”

He nodded.

Change, she thought, none of us like it. “I’ll make some tea.”

“Don’t,” he said, catching her around the waist as she got up. “Better we should have a toast, I think.”

“Good idea.” She kissed the top of his head, then pulled herself free and went over to open a cupboard. “Schnapps or Dubonnet? We don’t seem to have anything else.”

“Schnapps.”

They held up their tiny shot glasses and clinked them.

“To retirement,” said Alison.

“To retirement,” said Walter, keeping quiet about the fact that the Lyells had asked him to finish the conversion of the south pavilion for them and he had agreed.

*  *  *

All day Izzie had been humming with the righteousness of the useful. After she had delivered the cake, she’d found her father in the paddock and helped him with the marquee, hammering in the pegs and standing on the aluminium stepladder to throw the linings across the jointed metal framework. Because of the heat, they decided to leave the side walls rolled up. The canvas smelled musty, as if its folds had trapped the air of an old camping holiday. Lunch was sandwiches sent down from the Park.

“Aren’t you meant to be helping your mother with the stall?” said her father.

Izzie picked cress out of her egg sandwich. “That’s later. What else can I do?”

Her father thought a moment. “You could take the van and fetch the tea urn from the house.”

“Really?”

“Why not?”

“I haven’t passed my test yet.”

“You’ve had lots of lessons. And it’s a private road.” He handed her the keys. “Don’t hit a tree. Or anything else.”

The van was boiling inside. Izzie rolled down the windows, reversed over the grass into the drive, her driving instructor’s mantra—“mirror, signal, maneuver”—going through her head. Lots of lessons, in her case, had not meant much improvement behind the wheel, although that was not the story she told. “You chuffing idiot!” was what Mr. Stubbs said at some point most weeks. It took a couple of minutes at most to reach the house, but she was hugely pleased with the accomplishment. She parked near the courtyard and went through the archway, just as Lady Lyell came out of the house with Mrs. Marsham, who was leaning heavily on her stick, her ankles swollen over the tops of her black lace-up shoes.

“Hello there, Izzie.” Lady Lyell was wearing a pale-pink linen dress and was as cool and composed as if she were air-conditioned.

Later Izzie would learn that socialism was not incompatible with snobbery, inverted or otherwise. For the moment, she would have sooner seen her mother as a class enemy than Lady Lyell, whom she had known and admired all her life, her connection with the Park via her father’s firm being something that she had always hugged to herself as something special.

“Oh, hi,” she said. “I’ve come for the tea urn.”

“Do you need someone to help you with it?” said Lady Lyell. “Mind the step, Mrs. M.”

“No, I’m fine. Dad lent me the van.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

The urn, scrubbed and shiny, was where her father had said it would be, and she made a great show of lifting it up as if it weighed nothing at all, which it didn’t.

Mrs. Marsham, feeling ahead with her stick, was fussing about the time.

“Ages to go,” said Lady Lyell.

“Not a good idea to rush things.” Although Mrs. Marsham had been retired for a number of years, she always came back on the day of the fête to reign over the tea tent. “In
my
experience.”

“Izzie, since you’ve got the van,” said Lady Lyell, “would you mind giving Mrs. M a lift?”

“OK,” said Izzie, from behind the tea urn. She didn’t want to admit that she hadn’t passed her test yet or turn down another opportunity to demonstrate how useful she was.

It was funny how much difference a passenger could make. The only person Izzie had ever driven before was Mr. Stubbs, who didn’t count. For a time she couldn’t find first gear, and the three-point turn that should have sent her in the other direction down the drive became a seven-point turn with a hill start in the middle of it. Sweat poured into the khaki bandanna. Then they were off, the tea urn rattling away in the back. Down, down, her mind returning to the virginity, the Doing It question, and just when she was thinking about changing up to second—“Fuck!” said Izzie, stamping too late on the brakes. Metal scratched metal, an awful scritching sound, like fingernails scraping across a blackboard. They were thrown forward, then back. The tea urn crashed onto its side with a loud clang.

“Umph,” said Mrs. Marsham.

“Oh, God, are you hurt?”

Mrs. Marsham patted her chest, getting her breath back. “No, dear. A little shaken, that’s all.”

Izzie rested her head on the steering wheel, panting, dry-mouthed, a sick feeling in her stomach. She heard the clunk of a car door and the other driver bent his head through the open window.

“You all right?”

She raised her head and glared at him. “What do you think?”

“Mrs. M?” he said. “Didn’t see you there at first. You OK?”

“You want to be more careful, Charlie. You’ll kill yourself in that thing one of these days. I’ve told you so a hundred times.” Mrs. Marsham shifted her legs. “Good job I was wearing my seat belt. They should make it a law with people like you about.”

Izzie got out of the van. A long ragged scratch ran down the side to the rear-passenger door. It was worse than she thought. “Shit.”

The other driver was in his early twenties, with longish dark hair and bright blue eyes. “Look, I’m awfully sorry, but you were right in the middle of the road.”

“So were you! Going like a hundred miles an hour!”

“Yes, but in my case I was actually looking where I was going.”

“What do you mean? Are you saying I wasn’t paying attention?”

He checked the damage to his own car, a yellow Triumph Spitfire: the front bumper was a bit dented. “Let’s just let the insurance sort it out, shall we?” He reached into his jeans pocket. “Have you got a pen and paper?”

“No,” said Izzie.

“I do,” said Mrs. Marsham, opening her handbag and producing a biro and a small notepad with a William Morris pattern on the cover.

The driver, Charlie, wrote quickly, tore out a page, and handed it to Izzie. “Your turn.”

She took the notebook and didn’t know what to put.

“You are insured, aren’t you?”

Izzie straightened her khaki bandanna.

“Aren’t you?”

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is my dad’s van.”

“Are you insured to drive it?”

“He said it would be OK.”

“How old are you?”

“None of your business!”

“Christ,” he said. “Have you passed your test?”

Izzie cursed the blush that spread up her neck to her cheeks.

“Look,” he said, “give me your number and I’ll speak to your dad.” His eyes really were a startling blue. Dark hair, blue eyes—she and Ruth, her best friend, had decided that was their ideal combination in a man. “I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.”

This concession, and the wealth and privilege that she wrongly assumed lay behind it, made her furious. Here, at last, was the class enemy. “I should bloody well think so!”

“Your dad’s details?”

Mrs. Marsham leaned across and spoke out of the window. “She’s Walter Beckmann’s daughter,” she said. “Look him up in the telephone directory, Charlie. I do need to get on. Time’s ticking past.”

“Well, take your life in your own hands, Mrs. M,” said Charlie, tapping the van’s bonnet. “Good luck.”

“Who was that?” said Izzie, trying to stop her hands shaking long enough to turn the key in the ignition.

“Charlie Minton. One of Sir Hugo’s nephews,” said Mrs. Marsham. “The clever one. Though you wouldn’t think it sometimes.”

Izzie parked in the shade. The sensible thing would have been to tell her father what had happened straightaway. Instead, she took the urn out of the back and went along to the marquee with Mrs. Marsham, where she helped her set up. By the time the fête opened, she was still there, wondering what on earth she was going to say about the van.

*  *  *

Stuart had begged Mick to come along. The plan was that they would show up at the fête, he would tell Izzie he was chucking her, and then they would go back to Reading and sit in the pub until closing time. Only the pub part of the plan appealed to Mick.

“Can’t you do it over the phone? Or just split, man, and let her work it out for herself.”

Stuart shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

“You’ve done it before.”

“Yeah, but this is different.”

Since Easter Stuart Moss had been seeing someone called Jan Vickers, who lived in a squat in Shepherd’s Bush. Jan was really creative and made these really clever little leather chokers and anklets and things. While Izzie had been revising, he had been up in London most weekends; after she finished school, he went to stay with Jan for odd days and nights in the week. The sex was fantastic.
Proper sex, on a bed. A mattress on the floor really, but same thing. Even if Jan didn’t have such a great body as Izzie, the big plus was she let him do things to it. In return she did things to his that were surprisingly inventive. The maroon Ford Anglia had a lot more mileage on it these days. Now Jan was hassling him to move in, and he was all packed, ready to leave. “A rolling stone gathers no Moss,” was how he had been putting it.

“Anyway, I’m busy,” said Mick. “I promised Tiny Tits I’d take her to see
The Omen
.”

“Please,” said Stuart. “It’s going to be really heavy. She’s going to freak out.”

“You don’t have to tell her about Jan.”

“Do me a favor,” said Stuart. “Do you think I’m crazy? I’m going to say I need a bit of space.”

“You never did get your leg over, did you?” Mick stubbed out his fag. “Don’t understand why you didn’t chuck her weeks ago.”

“She was doing her exams.”

“Stuart, mate, the exams have been over for ages.”

“Please.”

“OK. But you owe me.”

Mick decided that if he was going to provide moral support, he needed some chemical support. Stuart picked him up from his house around three and they drove out of Reading along the country lanes.

“Wow, so many trees.”

A vague greenness swam past the car windows.

“You sod.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” said Mick, tripping on the greenness.

“You bloody sod. You’re stoned.”

The vague greenness became a vague brownness as they came past parched fields.

“True,” said Mick. “Very, very high.”

They paid their ten-pence entrance fee and wandered around the trestle tables congested with old people picking things up and putting them down.

“This is cool, this is all very cool,” said Mick. “Can you, like, eat this jam?”

“You have to buy it first.” Stuart took the jar out of his hands. “See Izzie anywhere? She said she’d be on one of the stalls.”

Thwock, thwock, thwock came from the coconut shy, and the shrill cries of children tore the air. A queue was forming by the tea tent, and the St. John Ambulance people were on the alert for heat exhaustion. They wandered about a little more.

“Stuart.”

“Oh, hi, Mrs. Beckmann.” Izzie’s mother was standing behind a table covered with crap, frowning at him.

“I don’t suppose you know where Izzie is, do you?”

“No, we just got here.”

“Well, if you see her, tell her I need her to come and look after the stall. I’ve got to fetch Mrs. Drummond for the prize giving.”

“OK,” said Stuart, as if he was supposed to know who Mrs. Drummond was and why she was giving out prizes.

“Unless,” said Izzie’s mother, still frowning, “you wouldn’t mind tending the stall for me. Everything’s priced. All you have to do is take the money and give change.”

“Um,” said Stuart.

“I won’t be long.”

“OK.”

She gathered up her handbag. “Is your friend all right?”

Mick was sitting cross-legged on the brown ground, staring at it.

“He’s not dead keen on the heat.”

“For a minute there I thought he was counting what’s left of the grass.”

“I am,” said Mick, looking up and giving her a stoned smile.

“He’s interested in nature,” said Stuart.

“I see,” said Izzie’s mother.

The sun beat down. Christ, he had never seen so many old people in his life. Or so many children. There didn’t seem to be anyone in between, except him and Mick.

“How much is this?” said an old person with a horrible sagging
neck, holding up some sort of metal tray with “God Bless Our Daily Bread” on it.