Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) (13 page)

“You don’t have to,” Amy murmured over her shoulder, getting up to make coffee.

But Isobel heard.

She gave Martha a minute or two, and then said clearly, “Eat that pastry.”

“I don’t care to, though thank you all the same.”

“Eat that pastry, I said.”

“I didn’t see you eating your pie.”

“That wasn’t a present.”

“Anyone can say things are presents. I could give you a bottle of poison and say it was for your birthday, and be cross if you were ungrateful.”

Amy thought, it’s like having two children instead of one, but two is better. They take it out on one another.

Then the telephone rang. It was James to say that Maggie was well and would be coming home tomorrow.

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes, apparently she’s been a bit sick.”

“Sick?” Amy could for the moment only repeat things.

“Yes, but nothing to worry about.”

“What on earth’s she been sick for?”

“I really don’t know. They never tell one anything. Are you coping?”

“Yes, of course, James.” Though there was no ‘of course’ about it.

“I’ll bring Dora from Pascale’s when I come home.”

Dora was to have tea with her worst friend, the one who said bedtime prayers. Her best friend never invited her. The misery of it, Amy had thought sadly listening to the factual statement.

“Goodbye, James,” she said, wondering, as she rang off, about supper. Maggie had pinned up a list of likely dishes to be taken from the freezer, along with their defrosting times. She studied this, and took out some beef curry. At least we can’t drink his wine with that, she mistakenly thought.

For some reason, Martha and Isobel were laughing now, although the pastry gift still lay menacingly between them on the table. Martha, probably from all her fidgeting, had perfected a balancing trick with cutlery. Briefly Amy glimpsed Isobel in relation to another child, and not her granddaughter, open, amused, and neither scheming nor temporarily devastated.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” Martha suggested. “It’s stopped raining.” And sure enough some dusty sunlight was slanting down into the kitchen. Here, below pavement level, Amy never noticed weather.

“I’ll take my doll’s pram,” Isobel said.

“No,” Amy said firmly. “You get tired of pushing it, and then I have to, and it nearly breaks my back.”

She waited for screams, but Isobel only said in a
reasonable voice, “Well I must take something. I think I’ll wear my muff and put Teddy in it.”

“Yes, you do that.”

They set off along the quiet streets, Martha delighted with the terraced houses that were set among daunting blocks of flats. So civilised, she said; so tame. She told them about her parents’ small clapboard, shingle-roofed house on Long Island, with the wind-bitten shrubs no protection from the winds in winter, the wild shore with its crashing breakers, and all the sea and inland-water birds. All of her girlhood, she had looked out on that sea, walked along the sands with her head bowed, her body shrugged against the wind, meeting an occasional neighbour exercising a dog – their greetings would be snatched from their throats. And her head had been full of poetry, of people in books, and she had dreamed about London, imagining it from all that she had read. And it was, she now said, exactly as she
had
imagined it; always greenness breaking through, trees everywhere, parks, little gardens and squares, the heaths, the commons, the cemeteries.

“For a birthday treat, could we take a cab and drive round Hyde Park?” Martha suggested.

“Yes, yes,” cried Isobel.

My God, thought Amy, knowing that she would have to pay and wondering how much money she had on her.

But Martha, clasping Isobel’s hand, was almost running down the hill towards Holland Park Road. Teddy, inside the muff, bumped up and down against Isobel’s stomach. Her cheeks glowed as she staggeringly
tried to keep up. Amy followed, without changing her pace, consoling herself that it was a poor part of London for finding taxis – a consolation almost at once taken from her by the sight of Martha waving one down.

When she gave her directions to the driver, he did not conceal his astonishment He was a middle-aged man, and he could remember a time when young men hired cabs to take girls for a drive round the Park; but after dark, and long ago.

They turned into Hyde Park, and Martha leaned forward, gazing out of the window, while Amy gazed at the meter. Isobel fidgeted excitedly on her tip-up seat.

“I want to write about it,” Martha said. “Two people planning to meet here on a winter’s afternoon. Though he doesn’t turn up.”

No surprise to me, Amy thought, having read that one depressing novelette.

The sky had lost its colour, and the Serpentine was like pewter. Birds and old leaves floated in the air. Few people were about, although a man walked under the trees stabbing at bits of paper with a pointed stick, and another swept leaves from a path. Isobel got up and rubbed the filmed window with Teddy. Martha seemed to be searching for an assignation place for her two characters.

“Aren’t there parks in America?” Isobel asked.

“Not country-looking parks.” Martha appeared not to have noticed the back-drop of tall buildings studded with rows of lights, and Amy was remembering an afternoon many years ago when she and Nick had
eaten strawberries and cream at a table in front of the Tea House, before all the skyscrapers were there. Not much gets better, she was thinking, and she opened her bag and secretly counted money, her eyes still on the meter. It was all such a waste, because it was growing dark now, and damp in the air made the lights look shaggy.

“I have never
known
such a winter,” Isobel said in her mother’s voice.

In Knightsbridge, it was beginning to be Christmas. There were decorated trees above shops, others glittering within. Isobel was entranced.

Were they to go back through the park? Amy wondered; but Martha suddenly leaned forward and tapped on the window behind the driver, who slowed down at the open gates. Amy paid the fare.

They walked along busy pavements. “We can get quite a cheap cup of tea in here,” Martha said, as if the saving of money was her one idea. She led the way into a coffee shop, loud with the dealing out of thick plates on tiled-topped tables and gasps from the Espresso machine.

Isobel sat down and looked about her, and Amy guessed that poor Dora was to be spared not a detail of this treat. When the tea and toasted tea-cakes were ordered, Martha said, and said it as if there had already been a long discussion on the subject, “Well, you’ll have to meet him sometime, and his office is only just round the corner, so I’ll give him a ring, shall I?”

No Cockney could have been more expert at finding the way about, knowing where telephones were, or
tube stations, or bus-stops, or, for that matter, cheap tea-places.

The tea-things were clattered down on the table. Amy ordered extra, and waited for Martha’s return. She was sure that Simon would come, for it all seemed to have been arranged. She gave Isobel some milk and a tea-cake, and sat back, feeling tired. When Martha returned she said that Simon was on his way.

“Did you see the reindeers?” Isobel asked, busily licking her fingers.

“No, I didn’t notice them, darling.”

“I saw them.”

Reindeer lined up against Dora, too.

Despite Martha’s earlier description, Amy was unprepared for the quietness of. Simon. All she really knew about him was that he and Martha went to bed together after lectures.

“Hello, there,” he said diffidently … or was it neutrally? – when he was introduced to Amy. “And Isobel,” said Martha, but he did not bother to look at Isobel.

“Would you like one of these?” Amy asked him, offering the silver-coloured dish of tea-cakes. Butter had by now formed a cold scum on them, but he took one and ate it as if he were hungry, although first cutting it into little squares. He quite ignored Isobel, who had now begun to fidget. He was handed a cup of tea, thanked Amy, and then, turning to Martha, said in a low voice, “I’m posted back home.”

“Whenever?” She looked alarmed.

“Feb. three.”

“My God!”

“Yes, I know.”

“Can’t you….?”

“No, I don’t see myself…”

“Would you like an ice-cream, Isobel?” Amy asked, against the rudeness of the other two. And for how much longer, she wondered, must she sit here listening to them discussing their private affairs?

Isobel most certainly would like an ice-cream, and for some reason Simon seemed rather put out by this. He was unable to carry on the conversation with Martha and watch the arrival of the ice-cream at the same time.

“Some more tea?” Amy asked him, laying her hand against the faintly warm side of the pot.

“If there is some please.”

“Or shall I order some fresh?”

“No, no,” he said hurriedly. “Just if there is some. And no milk this time, thank you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

I’m allergic to milk.”

“How long for?” Martha asked him; but not referring to the allergy.

“Three years, I guess. That’s the normal run.”

“Simon’s being sent back home” Martha said, turning to Amy.

Having put her officially in the know, she resumed her discussion with Simon, whom Amy studied listlessly. His pale face was surrounded by pale, fluffy hair; his dark suit was neat, but shiny; he wore a dull tie with a tie-pin, and he smelled faintly of embrocation. He did not lean against the back of his chair on which he had hung his neatly-folded raincoat. She
could also imagine him, neatly folding his other clothes, rolling up his tie, putting the tie-pin in a safe place, before he got into Martha’s bed in Hampstead.

Isobel ran her spoon round the metal dish, round and round, almost reproachfully; licking at nothing. “It’s strawberry I really like,” she said.

“Well, you managed all right with what you got,” Amy said, and she thought, if she screams in here, I simply don’t care. I don’t care about anybody in here. And she glanced round at the worn-out shoppers with parcels, people waiting for people at tables, and other people now waiting for tables.

But Isobel didn’t scream. She pushed aside the empty ice-cream dish, leaned her plump elbows on the table, and asked Simon Lomax, “Why are you an American?” To be ignored while she was eating was one thing, but with the ice-cream finished it was another.

Amy and Isobel left the other two outside the coffee shop. The pavement, from the beginning of a drizzle, was stained with coloured reflections. Isobel gave a last glance upwards at Father Christmas, reindeer and sleigh illuminated above shops, and then they once again got into a taxi.

“I love strawberry ice-cream,” she said quietly, settling herself on the tip-up seat opposite Amy. “I simply
love
it.”

“Poor Dora didn’t have
any
ice-cream,” Amy unwisely said, remembering too late how often poor Dora would be reminded of it.

Martha’s and Simon’s evening was to take its usual pattern, she supposed, of lecture first and fornication later. He had paid the bill for their tea, and she could understand now why he had appeared anxious about Isobel’s ice-cream, and the suggestion of another pot of tea. Amy had sympathy for hard-up young people. Long ago, she had been one herself, and it was because of this that journeys in taxis just for the sake of the drive and not necessity seemed outrageous to her.

When at last they got back to Campden Hill, James and Dora were already home. Dora was sitting at the kitchen table, drawing, and she went on drawing against the spate of Isobel’s descriptions of taxis, ice-creams, Americans and Christmas decorations. Trying not to listen, she frowned and pursed her lips. At last, she said calmly, scribbling pubic hair onto her drawing of a nude woman, “I’ve decided when I’m grownup, I’m going to be a great artist like Grandpa.”

“I’m going to be a great artist, too,” Isobel said. “I shall make someone do the drawings, and I shall colour them in.”

“You will come to us for Christmas?” James asked, as he drove Amy back from her ordeal.

“But you always come to us.”

His hands tightened on the steering-wheel as he tried to think of something to say.

“And Ernie and I have already made the pudding. He would be quite put out if we were not to have our proper Christmas.” Like many unreligious people, she laid great store by her Christmas. “And Gareth’s coming.”

The pudding might be taken from one place to another, but James could see that Gareth and Ernie could not. Now that his father was dead, he and Maggie had rather hoped for Christmas in their own home. No obstacles to that from Maggie’s side, whose parents were in Malta for their retirement and tax-evasion. It was just one party after another for them there, so they were no trouble to anyone’s conscience. And now poor James would have to go home to break the news of another Christmas at Laurel House, and she would resent it.

Amy’s ‘proper’ Christmas, having nothing to do with religion, had very much to do with prettiness – a beautiful garland on the front door, a tinselled tree, tangerines arranged on frosted magnolia leaves,
petits fours
in ribboned goblets. It was the meal of the year
at which Ernie was always present as part of the family, wearing the black corduroy jazz-club jacket and a pink bow tie. Having brought in the turkey and set it before James, he whipped off a fancy apron and stood by to pass plates and vegetables. The sausages were in one long string and draped about the bird like a coronet. James, whose father had always done the carving, was annoyed by all this cluttering up of his job. He tried to lift the sausages away, but with a knife blade-side up, so that they lay scattered all over the carpet. Dora laughed quietly, with her eyes shut, her lips pressed together. Isobel was furious.