Complete Short Stories (VMC) (98 page)

At the end of the bus-ride there on a Saturday morning, I was almost too afraid to cross the orchard. I feared my own disappointment as if it were something I must protect myself – and incidentally Miss Martin – from. I seemed to become two people – the one who tapped jauntily on the door, and the other who stood ready to ward off the worst. Which did not happen. Miss Alliot herself opened the door.

She was wearing one of her bandeaux and several ropes of beads and had a rather gypsy air about her. ‘The child has arrived,’ she called back into the room. Miss Martin sat by the stove mending stockings – an occupation of those days. They were Miss Alliot’s stockings – rather thick and biscuit-coloured.

We went over to St Margaret’s for lunch and walked to the Echo afterwards, returning with branches of catkins and budding twigs. Miss Alliot had a long, loping stride. She hit about at nettles with her stick, the fringed tongues of her brogues flapped – she had long, narrow feet, and trouble with high insteps, she complained. The bandeau was replaced by a stitched felt hat in which was stuck the eye-part of a peacock’s feather. Bad luck, said Miss M. Bosh, said Miss A.

We had supper at Breezy Lodge, for Miss Alliot’s latest craze was for making goulash, and a great pot of it was to be consumed during the weekend. Afterwards, Miss Martin knitted – a jersey of complicated Fair Isle pattern for Miss Alliot. She sat in a little perplexed world of her own, entangled by coloured wools, her head bent over the instructions.

Miss Alliot turned her attention to me. What was my favourite line of poetry, what would I do if I were suddenly given a thousand pounds, would I rather visit Rome or Athens or New York, which should I hate most – being deaf or blind; hanged or drowned; are cats not better than dogs, and wild flowers more beautiful than garden ones, and Emily Brontë streets ahead of Charlotte? And so on. It was heady stuff to me. No one before had been interested in my opinions. Miss Martin knitted on. Occasionally, she was included in the questions, and always appeared to give the wrong answer.

I slept in their bedroom, on a camp-bed borrowed from St Margaret’s. (And how was I ever going to be satisfied with staying
there
again? I wondered.)

Miss Alliot bagged (as she put it) the bathroom first, and was already in bed by the time I returned from what was really only a ewer of water and an Elsan. She was wearing black silk pyjamas with DDA embroidered on a pocket. I bitterly regretted my pink nightgown, of which I had until then been proud. I had hastily brushed my teeth and passed a wet flannel over my face in eagerness to get back to her company and, I hoped, carry on with the entrancing subject of my likes and dislikes.

I began to undress. ‘People are kind to the blind, and impatient with the
deaf,’ I began, as if there had been no break in the conversation. ‘You are so right,’ Miss Alliot said. ‘And people matter most.’

‘But if you couldn’t see … well, this orchard in spring,’ Miss Martin put in. It was foolish of her to do so. ‘You’ve already seen it,’ Miss Alliot pointed out. ‘Why this desire to go on repeating your experiences?’

Miss Martin threw in the Parthenon, which she had
not
seen, and hoped to.

‘Still people matter most,’ Miss Alliot insisted. ‘To be cut off from them is worse than to be cut off from the Acropolis.’

She propped herself up in bed and with open curiosity watched me undress. For the first time in my life I realised what dreadful things I wore beneath my dress – lock-knit petticoat, baggy school bloomers, vest with Cash’s name tape, garters of stringy elastic tied in knots, not sewn. My mother had been right … I should have sewn them. Then, for some reason, I turned my back to Miss Alliot and put on my nightgown. I need not have bothered, for Miss Martin was there between us in a flash, standing before Miss Alliot with Ovaltine.

On the next day – Sunday – I renounced my religion. My doubts made it impossible for me to go to church, so Miss Martin went alone. She went rather miserably, I was forced to notice. I can scarcely believe that any deity could have been interested in my lack of devotion, but it was as if, somewhere, there was one who was. Freak weather had set in and, although spring had not yet begun, the sun was so warm that Miss Alliot took a deckchair and a blanket and sat on the veranda and went fast asleep until long after Miss Martin had returned. (She
needed
a great deal of sleep, she always said.) I pottered about and fretted at this waste of time. I almost desired my faith again. I waited for Miss Martin to come back, and, seeing her, ran out and held a finger to my lips, as if Miss Alliot were royalty, or a baby. Miss Martin nodded and came on stealthily.

It was before the end of the summer term that I had the dreadful letter from Miss Martin. Miss Alliot – hadn’t we both feared it? – was engaged to be married to Ralph Townsend. Of course, that put paid to my examinations. In the event of more serious matters, I scrawled off anything that came into my head. As for questions, I wanted to answer them only if they were asked by Miss Alliot, and they must be personal, not factual. As usual, if I didn’t know what I was asked in the examination paper, I did a piece about something else. I imagined some
rapport
being made, and that was what I wanted from life.

Miss Martin’s letter was taut and unrevealing. She stated the facts – the date, the place. An early autumn wedding it was to be, in Northumberland, as Miss Alliot had now no family of her own. I had never supposed that she
had. At the beginning of a voyage, a liner needs some small tugs to help it on its way, but they are soon dispensed with.

Before the wedding, there were the summer holidays, and the removal of their things from Breezy Lodge, for Miss Martin had no heart, she said, to keep it on alone.

During that last holiday, Miss Martin’s face was terrible. It seemed to be fading, like an old, old photograph. Miss Alliot, who was not inclined to jewellery (‘Would you prefer diamonds to Rembrandts?’ she had once asked me), had taken off her father’s signet ring and put in its place a half hoop of diamonds. Quite incongruous, I thought.

I was weeks older. Time was racing ahead for me. A boy called Jamie was staying at St Margaret’s with his parents. After supper, while Mrs Mayes’s recitals were going on, or the solo whist, he and I sat outside the drawing-room on the stairs, and he told me blood-chilling stories, which I have since read in Edgar Allan Poe.

Whenever Jamie saw Miss Alliot, he began to hum a song of those days – ‘Horsy, keep your tail up.’ My mother thought he was a bad influence, and so another frost set in.

Sometimes – not often, though – I went to Breezy Lodge. The Fair Isle sweater was put aside. Miss Martin’s having diminished, diminished everything, including Miss Alliot. Nothing was going on there, no goulash, no darning, no gathering of branches.

‘Yes, she’s got a face like a horse,’ Jamie said again and again.

And I said nothing.

‘But he’s
old
.’ Miss Martin moved her hands about in her lap, regretted her words, fell silent.

‘Old? How old?’ I asked.

‘He’s seventy.’

I had known that Miss Alliot was doing something dreadfully, dangerously wrong. She could not be in love with Ralph Townsend; but with the Townsends entire.

On the day they left, I went to Breezy Lodge to say good-bye. It looked squalid, with the packing done – something horribly shabby, ramshackle about it.

Later, I went with Jamie to the Echo and we shouted one another’s names across the valley. His name came back very clearly. When we returned, Miss Alliot and Miss Martin had gone for ever.

Miss Alliot was married in September. Miss Martin tried sharing her London flat with someone else, another schoolmistress. I wrote to her once, and she replied.

Towards Christmas my mother had a letter from Miss Louie to say that she had heard Miss Martin was dead – ‘by her own hand,’ she wrote, in her shaky handwriting.

‘I am
HORRIFIED
,’ I informed my diary that night – the five-year diary that was full of old sayings of Miss Alliot, and descriptions of her clothes.

I have quite forgotten what Jamie looked like – but I can still see Miss Alliot clearly, her head back, looking down her nose, her mouth contemptuous, and poor Miss Martin’s sad, scribbly face.

‘But not Mozart,’ he cried. ‘Mozart tinkles and irritates. Darling,’ he added.

‘Haydn, then.’

‘No, not Haydn. Look, pet, if you could clasp both your hands round the pipe like this, and I held mine over yours … That’s better. How long is Grace going to be? No, not Haydn. Bach is precise, don’t you feel? And geometrical.’

‘How could you!’ cried Grace, stepping towards them across floods of water. ‘Here is the house slowly filling, and you stand there talking about Bach. I can’t get a plumber. It’s too late. Oh, dear. You’re hopeless. Any other man would do something. You’re not a man. You’re …’ her voice rose and broke … ‘a sissy.’

‘But dear, if I let go of this pipe the water will be all over the ceiling. You have a go. But truly my hands are stronger than yours, sissy though I may be. The pressure’s terrific …’

‘It
is
all over the ceiling, anyhow,’ she wailed, and stooped and began to bail out with Baby’s pot. ‘Oh, my darling house. And you don’t even mind being called a sissy. Any other man would be furious. Oh, I know, I’ll try the waterworks. Why on earth didn’t I think of it before?’ She was gone again.

‘Poor Grace. Oh, your darling fingers are icy cold. I’m so sorry. Things like this are always happening in this house. How dark it’s getting.’

‘Look, Bernard. If you put the lid of the WC down, we could sit on that. We might as well be comfortable.’

He kicked it down with his foot and they edged on to it. Downstairs they could Grace’s irritated voice rising and rising.

‘Well, when you’ve turned the supply tap off what
else
can you do?’ they heard her shriek. ‘It’s coming through the kitchen now. No, I tried the main, but it’s just a dark hole about two yards deep and no sign of a tap. You’ll have to come. No, I’ve never seen or heard of any key … I don’t know in the least what you mean …’

Veronica giggled. ‘This is fun,’ she said. ‘But I’m glad it’s not my house. Oh, how frightful of me to say that.’

‘Your honesty, darling, is one of the things about you I most love.’

‘I’m sopping wet, aren’t you? Oh, look at your flannels.’ She bent down, so that he could see her breasts hanging like little pears inside her summer frock. ‘How funny sitting here like this … most improper really.’

‘I’ve no vice, Veronica, but your proximity is definitely disturbing. I’ve no right to say such a thing. I know that. I wouldn’t hurt Grace for worlds.’

‘Oh, but you embarrass me,’ she cried. ‘You mustn’t.’ She glanced down at her damp thighs. ‘It is getting dark. We’d better call to Grace to put on the lights.’

‘Oh no,’ he was going to say when Grace approached again. ‘Lights!’ she exclaimed. ‘Have you no sense? The ceilings are soaked. It creates an earth or something.’

‘Creates an earth,’ Veronica murmured incredulously. She and Bernard began to titter.

‘They’re coming immediately,’ Grace said. ‘I must pot Baby.’

‘If she’s wet the bed, it will be the last straw,’ Bernard called after her. He suddenly removed a hand to push back a lock of hair. The water shot all over the walls and Veronica. ‘Oh sod.’ He clasped the torn pipe again hastily.

‘It’s like that little boy in Holland,’ Veronica began, with her flair for the inevitable.

‘Indeed yes.’

They heard Grace going downstairs. She found the kitchen floor littered with pieces of floating apple-green plaster. Tears came hotly up into her eyes. ‘I’ve always borne all the responsibility,’ she thought, as she began to drop towels on to the flood and wring them out into a pail. ‘Heavy with their drink,’ she said aloud. ‘There ought to be some word like “despision”.’ It was getting very dark now, yet her eyes, accustomed to the gradual decline of light, could make out all the familiar objects looking unfamiliar in the wreckage. Laths became visible where once the ceiling had been.

‘As if there’s any need for them to both be sitting up there. Do they think I was born yesterday? But they can scarcely make love,’ she thought. ‘Not that he would. He wants nothing more than to hear the sound of his own voice.’

She left her mopping-up and went down the path to wait for the man from the waterworks. A greenish darkness hung over the landscape and there was the scent of fading elder-blossom, of clover and drying hay. She could hear the car coming up the hill and soon the pale light of its headlamps moved towards her along the road.

A young man jumped out. He collected bags of tools and wore, appropriately enough, long sea boots.

‘Here’s the main,’ she said, leading him inside a little tunnel behind the hedge. He said nothing, but kicked a toad aside contemptuously. Bernard would have been angry. They pulled up the cover and leant down.

‘Torch? Thanks. OK. No good. Got a key for it?’

‘No.’

‘Can’t do it without.’

He began to curse some other man’s work. They went into the house. She showed him the kitchen first, ashamed rather of her husband and Veronica discussing Mozart in the lavatory. The sounds of trickling water unnerved her. Fire would be better to deal with, she thought.

He tried all the taps. He opened the larder and peered inside. She resented this. She had a middle-class attitude to the privacy of meals and food, Bernard had often told her. He opened the broom cupboard.

‘Hey, what’s this?’ He seized upon a tap she had often dusted, scrubbed around, but never noticed. He wrenched at it.

Upstairs the flow faltered, dropped, dribbled, failed. Bernard and Veronica laughed at one another. ‘Darling,’ he whispered, as they unlocked their frozen hands. ‘Angel.’ Forgetting what they were sitting on, they relaxed damply against one another.

‘I feel ashamed,’ Grace was saying. ‘I didn’t remember that being there.’

‘Stupid plumbing,’ the young man said graciously. He had taken off his sea boots and paddled on the wet kitchen tiles. His feet in the near-darkness looked pallid and beautiful. I expect in the day-time they look horrid, Grace thought. Most men’s do. Covered with barnacles and things.