Dolly (27 page)

‘Yes I am,’ she said, raising her head and glaring at me. ‘And it’s none of your business why.’

This brief burst of temper surprised me, but I said nothing. I carried the tray to the drawing-room; again she followed me, content for me to take matters in hand.

She ate thoughtfully but greedily, as if there were an intimate connection between her lack of sugar and her downcast demeanour. Strawberry tart followed éclair which in
turn followed meringue. And yet she had lost weight, I reflected.

‘Do you feed yourself properly, now that Annie’s not here?’

At this she looked annoyed. ‘Of course I do! I go round the corner, to the Italian, for lunch. Do I feed myself! Impertinence!’

‘And for dinner?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I don’t bother with dinner,’ she replied, her eyes once more sliding away from mine. ‘I open a tin of soup. We always had soup, Mother and I. Then I go to bed. You needn’t worry about me.’ When she looked at me again I saw that her eyes were full of tears.

‘Dolly,’ I asked gently. ‘What is wrong? Is it your mother?’

‘Mother? No, it’s not Mother. She was happy enough, in the sun. She had friends. In a way she was lucky, luckier than I shall be. We understood each other, Mother and I; everything was done for the best. I try to think of her there in the sun, and then I think of the old days, when we were together. My life hasn’t been easy, Jane.’

‘And Harry?’ I ventured, with some trepidation, for the answer to this question was all too clear.

‘Harry’s gone,’ she said. ‘Harry left me.’ Two tears slipped down her face, which she wiped negligently with her hand. ‘He meant a great deal to me, Jane. I know you never liked him, but you never got to know him like I did. We were two of a kind; we understood each other. Nobody else did, and that’s the truth. That’s why I miss him so much. Two years we had, two wonderful years.’

I noticed that she remarked on the understanding between
Harry and herself, much as she had assured me—and it was undoubtedly true—that she and her mother had understood each other. It was as if everyone else she had known had failed her, and now she saw by how much.

‘I know he was company for you.’

‘Company? Oh, yes, he was company. But he was more than that. I’m talking about something you wouldn’t understand, Jane: love, attraction, sex, if that’s what you want to call it.’ She blushed slightly as she uttered the word, but once it was out in the open went on to make herself clear. ‘Sometimes he stayed on after the others had left. Oh, I made him comfortable, all right. He liked a game of cards; my little parties amused him. And when I saw him looking at me and knew what he was thinking … My heart, Jane!’ Here she put her hand to her heart. ‘He made me feel what I’d never felt before, not even when I was married. I knew he didn’t love me. I knew I was making a fool of myself. But it’s not easy for a woman of my age, for a woman of any age. And living the way I did, with all those other women … He understood me,’ she repeated. ‘Oh, you’ve all been kind enough, I dare say, but I felt more at home with Harry. More than I ever did with Hugo. Harry was my type; do you understand? I don’t suppose you do, really.’

‘You loved him,’ I said, making the statement she was still too awkward to make herself.

‘I really loved him,’ she said, bending her head and fishing a handkerchief out of the sleeve which slipped loosely down her arm.

‘And you gave him money,’ I said, in order to get the worst out of the way.

‘I put money into the business, yes. Why not? There was nothing wrong with it; it was a going concern. And then one day, out of the blue, he said he was going abroad. I knew that was an excuse. I saw him in the Edgware Road the following day and taxed him with it.’ (After having waited for him, I thought, but said nothing.) ‘ “When shall I be seeing you?” I asked him. “Oh, I’ll see you around. I’ll see you at the girls’, perhaps.” Because he knew I still went to Phyllis and Rose. “I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment,” he said. “Business is picking up. I’m putting in extra time. Buck up, darling. No need to look like that, is there?” He called me darling,’ she said, with some return of pride. ‘It makes a woman feel special, somehow.’

I could see him, the monster, bluffing it out, jovial to the end. And he would no doubt wave a modest hand, when teased by Phyllis or Rose, thereby adding further to his lustre as a man loved by women. I could see him now, in their ever more welcoming drawing-rooms, his foot wagging in time to his own invisible orchestra.

‘So I stopped going to the girls,’ Dolly went on. ‘Then, a few months back I went to Rose’s, just for a chance of seeing him. Just casually, you know.’

But he would have made quite sure that she did not see him, I thought.

‘I still go occasionally. I’m sure we’ll get together again one of these days. But it won’t be the same. Something died in me, Jane. Not that you would understand—you were always so cold. Funny little thing,’ she said, putting away her handkerchief. The reproach was familiar, but her heart was not in it. That was the only time during the whole of the afternoon
that I was mentioned. Of my own concerns not a word was broached, for which I was grateful.

‘There’s a quiche in the fridge, if you fancy a little supper,’ I said.

‘Oh, I couldn’t eat anything after all those cakes. Are you going? I’ll change my shoes and walk down to the corner with you. Come into the bedroom with me.’

She seemed unwilling for me to leave her alone. The bedroom was if anything dustier, the coverlet on the narrow bed faded. Where had Harry slept, I wondered? Or had he just left and gone home to his own comfortable house? Adjusting his clothing, was the thought that entered my mind, and once there would not be dislodged. The wardrobe opened with a creak onto a smell of faded scent. Dolly bent down and eased her feet out of her tight shoes, replacing them with a black flat-heeled pair that suddenly made her seem much shorter. She tidied her navy blue hair in the tarnished mirror of her dressing-table. By her bed, just as I had pictured it, was a small pile of novels by Delly and Gyp, their covers faded, one or two loose pages testifying to long use.

In the street she took my arm, as if she had not been out for a long while. She may even have been exaggerating her weakness, but I think not. I intended to walk to the main road to get the tube, but she led me down a quiet side street, and then stopped outside a small block of flats, where lights blazed cheerfully in most of the windows.

‘Doesn’t it look nice there?’ she said. ‘I wish I lived there.’

Her voice was so wistful that I asked her if she knew anyone who did live there.

‘One or two ladies,’ she answered. ‘Just to say good-morning
to. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. Harry lives in Belsize Park, or did when I knew him. I don’t know where he is now. I hate my flat, Jane. I hate going back to it, when it’s empty. And it’s always empty now. If I could live there,’ she added, with none of her original slyness, ‘I think I could be more settled, more comfortable.’ She gazed up at the cheerful windows, as if willing herself inside those lighted rooms. Then of course I knew what I had to do.

I left her on the corner, looking oddly diminished in her flat shoes. I waited until I saw her turn and wander back. The sight was painful to me. When I got home I rang John Pickering and invited him for a drink.

‘I’m thinking of buying a flat,’ I said. ‘As an investment.’

His expression changed from alarm to cautious approval.

‘Always a good way to place extra funds. If you like I will look around for you.’

‘Oh, I’ve found something,’ I told him. ‘Here’s the address. If you could just make enquiries?’ For I had seen a set of unlighted windows on the first floor and had an idea that that flat would be empty.

My manner must have been rather dismissive, for he left shortly afterwards. He was always remarkably intuitive to atmosphere.

My charity felt cold to me, as it was perhaps supposed to feel, as it had felt to my mother, to my grandmother. The saving grace was that the beneficiary would have no such misgivings. And yet even though I thought I knew all about Dolly’s conscience, given that it existed, it was impossible for me not to feel her pathos, which I perceived for the first time. Her words had been banal, certainly not chosen to excite
my sympathy. She had spoken of her lover in terms so devoid of interest that I might have been forgiven for thinking that she was a woman of no distinction, who could not put her passion into words, and who was perhaps as little skilled emotionally as she was in any other way. She had referred to her nights of love, such as they were, as if I would grasp all her meaning, yet a few moments later had denied me even that faculty, saying that I was cold, though she had no way of verifying this. No doubt what she felt was a generalised contempt for my kind, in which she included my parents, my grandmother, certainly her husband, with our correct manners and impassive faces. Again she lacked the skill to discern the temperament underneath, lacked the curiosity to enquire into our lives, lacked the fellow feeling to appreciate that we ourselves might have difficulties, might be frustrated, might feel loss or doubt, or even need.

The appeal of Harry had been his obviousness: his signals could not be mistaken. He was lazy, greedy, a sexual speculator, and a self-made man, comfortably off but a vulgarian, not burdened with too many refinements, a lover of rich food, fast cars, dance music, and the sort of luxury which could be paid for in ready cash. The appeal of such blatant accessibility had been profound. No need, here, to give one’s usual performance, or if one did one could at least relax and enjoy it. Thus the bridge parties had taken on a new meaning, since the presence of her women friends, so tolerated, so detested, would be offset by the presence of Harry, and the meaningful glance with which he occasionally favoured her would repay her for numerous social humiliations suffered over the years.

His lovemaking would no doubt be expert, but he would enjoy the spectacle of a woman losing her dignity in bed. His instincts were perhaps very slightly criminal, for he would have seen that he was dealing with a woman who was, despite appearances to the contrary, unsophisticated. And the part of Harry that was itself unsophisticated would appreciate the comforting inconsequential feminine atmosphere of those gambling afternoons, would enjoy being spoilt, being cajoled, being tempted with plates of delicious food. It was when Dolly was at her worldliest that he would be tempted to stay behind, to linger in her company; it was then that it would amuse him to cut her down to size. And the more he did so, the more successfully he made her plead and beg, the less he thought of her.

If she had remained true to type, and exploited him as she exploited everyone else, he might have shaken his head in admiration; he might even have married her, thinking it better by far to have her as an ally than as an enemy. Instead she had grown tearful, lamenting his more and more frequent absences, and had finally been forced to track him down in the Edgware Road, perhaps peering through the glass window of his office, and waiting until he had finally consented to emerge, although with an excuse that he was short of time, that he was ‘going for a quick coffee’ (in which he did not invite her to join him), and had seen him, dapper as ever, cross the road on his glossy feet, and had known that she would only see him again if she engaged in the same humiliating stratagems, perhaps to the delight of former friends to whom she had considered herself superior, thinking them too stupid to notice her contempt.

Thus had Dolly’s final education been inaugurated. Always needy, always greedy, she had at last to conclude that her methods had failed, that this time gratification was to be withheld, and withheld for ever. And this realisation had effected a profound change in her, one which manifested itself in a complete alteration of her physical appearance. I could not rid myself of the sight of her in her flat shoes, which made her walk seem awkward, quite different from her normal dancer’s step. When she had accompanied me to the tube—holding my arm, as if made cautious by the bustle of evening—she had worn an ordinary cloth coat in a rather sour ginger colour, in any event unbecoming, and a world removed from the fur coat scented with Joy which dated from my childhood and which had been remodelled at great expense several times since then. The wardrobe door had creaked open on to the ghost of that scent, and on to the familiar collection of impractical silk dresses (
‘C’est fait à la main, tout ça’
) now crammed indifferently together. She had worn one of those dresses, and it no longer fitted her. She had lost weight; her figure had fallen and flattened, so that the dress, designed for a plumper woman, looked merely clumsy. And the high-heeled patent shoes were far from new, as could be judged by the height and slenderness of those heels, which had once flattered her strikingly arched foot but now merely caused discomfort.

In her face, that face newly devoid of colour, could be read the first intimation that Dolly had been overtaken by that long resignation which marks the true onset of old age. That she was not technically old—a bare sixty-eight—made her new patience seem all the more shocking. I could see
that she had been beautiful, could see traces of beauty still in the wide dreaming eyes which strayed continually to the window, in the finely arched brows, now sparse, in the tilt of the head, but that was only because I had known her before. Anyone meeting her now for the first time would simply register her as an elderly person, for this was her new card of identity, the one she proffered when she went to afternoon performances at the cinema or ate her lonely lunch at the Italian restaurant round the corner. The completeness of the change in her could be read in the wistful way she had referred to the ‘ladies’ from the small block of flats in which she longed to live, and to whom she occasionally said good-morning. What she wanted now, and wanted with all the ardour of her lost youth, was to be one of those ladies, in whose company she might revive, and whom she might eventually entertain, modestly and discreetly, with none of her former flourish, in her flat, which she would strive to make as close in style as possible to theirs.