No More Meadows (6 page)

‘No wonder, with the noise you and that dog are making. Go up and put on your dressing-gown before the doctor comes.'

‘I will not go up. I'm perfectly decent.'

They were still arguing when the doctor arrived; not their own family doctor, but a cavernous, monosyllabic man, who had just been climbing wearily into bed after a confinement when the summons from ‘Roselawn' caught him.

Geoffrey was fully conscious by now, not fussing, but appearing to accept the situation without surprise. The doctor took some things out of his bag, went away to wash his hands and came back to take scissors and needles and silk out of the sterile cases that Christine opened for him. She tried to do things for him without being asked, efficiently, to show she had been a nurse, but it was not like it had been in hospital. It was quicker and more casual. In hospital there would have been a tremendous boiling-up of sterilizers, and people rushing about with trolleys and sterile towels and kidney dishes. The doctor simply threaded a needle, squared his elbows and bent over Geoffrey. He had not even taken off his overcoat.

‘You're not going to stitch him up without an anaesthetic?' asked Aunt Josephine.

‘He won't feel it. He's drunk as a goat.' Geoffrey grinned foolishly, as if at a compliment. Aunt Josephine looked startled, and then stared at Christine and gave her one of her awkward winks that did not fit in with her long solemn face.

Mr Cope said: ‘Oh', and walked away. He was more shocked at Geoffrey being drunk than at him being stitched up without an anaesthetic. He did not watch the stitching. The other two did, and while they were getting Geoffrey to bed in the spare room that looked over the garden at the back, Mr Cope went to his own room and locked the door loudly, as a sign that he cared for no more disturbance
that
night.

‘You've had quite a lot to drink too, haven't you?' Aunt Josephine asked Christine, looking across the bed as they tucked the blankets round Geoffrey's cold feet.

‘A bit.'

‘Did you have a nice time?'

Christine looked at Geoffrey. He was asleep. ‘Not very,' she said.

‘Well, I never thought you would. That's the finish of that dress, anyway,' said Aunt Josephine, looking at the blood on Christine's skirt. ‘I'll take my roses now, if you'll just unpin them.'

Christine looked down guiltily. ‘Oh, thank goodness,' she said. ‘They're not spoiled.' She gave them to her aunt.

‘Yes, thank goodness,' said Aunt Josephine, carrying them carefully out of the room like a bridal posy. ‘They escaped disaster. They looked lovely on you. You shall wear them again some time if you like.'

Christine kissed her aunt on the landing. She felt she should say something. ‘Sorry,' she said brusquely, jerking her hand towards the spare-room door. ‘Sorry about all this.'

‘Gracious me,' said Aunt Josephine easily. ‘It adds a spice to life.' She went into her room and Christine heard her talking to the puppy which was sleeping on her bed.

In her bedroom, Christine did not feel tired or sleepy. She stepped out of the ruined dress, threw away her laddered stockings and dawdled over creaming her face and doing her hair. What a night, she thought. What a night. She sat up in bed and went over the events of the evening, and she remembered the kiss in the doorway more clearly than the details of what had happened with Geoffrey.

She had forgotten to look at the picture of herself and Jerry at the Commemoration ball at Oxford. She got out of bed again and took out the picture from where it was rolled up with her old school photographs in the bottom drawer of her desk. Kneeling, she spread it on the floor and put a hand on each end to keep it flat. There he was, Jerry, rumpled and unshaven.

When you kissed me, in those days, it wasn't anything like tonight in the doorway. You were so innocent, only I didn't know it, because I was too. None of those other Canadians in
the ice-hockey team can have been like you were. When you got a bit carried away, like that time in the hay barn at Jennifer's, you used to say afterwards: ‘Forgive me, darling' and be afraid that I minded.

Christine smiled, rolled up the photograph again and put it away with the pictures of herself in the cricket team and the swimming eight, and the panoramic photograph of the whole school and all the mistresses making funny mouths, taken with a slowly turning camera on the tennis courts in Jubilee year. She got into bed and turned out the light. The room was not dark now and she shut her eyes and began to worry about having to get up in a few hours' time, and what she would feel like at work.

She was late getting up in the morning. A weight pressed on her eyes and her mouth was dry as sandpaper. When she went downstairs she could hear Aunt Josephine in the hall, telephoning to Geoffrey's mother. Christine went into the kitchen, where her aunt had put coffee and toast and half a grapefruit on the table for her. The butter was under a plate, because of the cats.

When Christine had a hangover it always made her hungry. It seemed a long time ago that she had eaten dinner with Geoffrey, and much had happened since then. She finished the grapefruit and the toast and was cutting a slice of bread when Aunt Josephine came in. She wore a net over her yellow-grey hair and a stiff new flowered overall that looked like the loose cover for a sofa. She sat down at the kitchen table and poured herself a cup of coffee. A cat mewed against her leg.

‘How did Aunt Lottie take it?' asked Christine.

‘Badly. Being woken so early gave her a sense of calamity. If she would get up at a reasonable hour like we do she wouldn't take things so ill.'

‘My hour isn't so reasonable,' Christine said. ‘I'm dreadfully late, even worse than usual. Mr Parker doesn't mind, but sooner or later someone's going to find out I'm never in on time, and then I shan't be the estimable Miss Cope any more.' The manager had once called her that at a staff conference, and the family had never let her forget it.

‘You won't have time to get my wool then,' said Aunt Josephine sadly.

‘Oh Lord, I'm sorry, no. I'll have to go straight to my own department. I'll go early on Monday and get it. I promise.'

‘I could have done two or three of those pilches over the weekend.'

‘Well, the Balkan Orphans can wait a few days. They're in bad enough shape as it is.'

‘That's just the trouble.' Aunt Josephine leaned on the table despondently. She bore the world's troubles on her back. She saw all the babies from all the ruined homes behind the Iron Curtain running about freezing to death because Christine had not got up early enough to buy her some wool to knit drawers for them.

‘I tell you what,' she said, brightening. ‘Why don't you take Geoffrey's car to work?'

‘He'd never let me. It's his treasure.'

‘Don't ask him.' Aunt Josephine levered one side of her face into her brand of wink. ‘I don't want him wakened, anyway. You'll be back with it when he goes this afternoon. His mother's coming to take him away after lunch - “in the Rolls,” she informed me, as if I didn't know she had one.'

The idea of driving comfortably to work in Geoffrey's car instead of waiting on the windy road at the corner of the common for the bus and then joining the battle for the train at Hammersmith Broadway was so tempting that Christine did not let herself think twice about it. She took the car and got to Goldwyn's early enough to buy Aunt Josephine's wool from the flushed woman in Art Needlework, and get to her own department in time to hustle the juniors over their dusting.

‘I say, Miss Cope, you do look rough this morning,' Alice said gaily. ‘Aren't you quite the thing?'

‘I'm fine, thank you.'

‘Had a night out, I expect,' Alice said. ‘I must say that's the only thing I'm glad I'm so young for. It doesn't show on me.'

Christine went away to tell Margaret of the night's adventures. Since Mr Parker would not be in this morning, they went into his little jumbled office and lit cigarettes, with one eye for shadows coming up to the stippled glass partition.

Saturdays were usually fairly quiet. Most people were busy buying food, and the chief customers were college students looking for technical books and children clutching five shillings in an agony of choice. Christine and Margaret usually had a cigarette or two on a Saturday morning. Even if you did not especially want one, it was enjoyable because it was illicit, like smoking in the ward bathroom on night duty, when Night Sister might come round on rubber soles at any time and catch you.

Margaret enjoyed the story about Geoffrey, whom she had disliked ever since Christine had brought him to a party at her house and he had criticized the colour of the curtains. The story of the man in the Old Harrovian tie fell rather flat. She was not shocked. She listened without comment, but in the telling it became, not a romantic adventure, but something quite sordid.

Margaret suddenly got up and went to the door. ‘I'm going to have a baby.' She threw it out casually, not looking at Christine, as if she were almost embarrassed about announcing a baby after twelve years.

‘Darling Maggie, how wonderful!' Christine looked at her, intrigued by the secret changes unguessed within the familiar neat exterior. Margaret seemed suddenly remote. Pregnant women lead an introverted life that no one else can share.

‘I think it's terribly exciting!' Christine was over-enthusiastic, as always at news like this, to smother the little jealous stab that wished it could be her. ‘Isn't Laurie pleased?'

‘Well, I suppose so. He's surprised. He treats me as if I were a phenomenon, producing at my age. It makes me feel terribly old.' Margaret went briskly off among the books. Miss Burman came up to Christine with a muddled query about encyclopaedias, and the morning went on.

Since they were not busy, Christine had time to feel tired and a little sick from last night. She was buoyed up by the thought of driving home in Geoffrey's car. If she could come to work in a car every day, life would be a fine thing. Her father never let her take his stolid black car, which had been laid up with bricks under the axles during the war and had never run properly since.

Christine overtipped the car-park man, because Geoffrey's
grey coupé made her feel grand, and drove rather showily among the westbound traffic, looking without pity on the lines of people at the bus stops, who might have been herself.

Miss Burman, who was getting a lift to West Kensington, squeaked and exclaimed and leaned forward, holding on to the door. She was gratifyingly though sickeningly impressed. If only she would not keep saying: ‘My stars! I don't get a ride in a car from one year's end to the next', one might be more sorry for her.

‘Here's where you get out,' said Christine. ‘I'll stop for you while the lights are red.'

Miss Burman had dropped her handbag on the floor and could not find it. She had difficulty getting out of the car, and by the time she had staggered to the pavement with her hat askew, leaned in to tell Christine once again how surprised Mother would be to see her home so early and shut the door without latching it properly, the lights had been green and were now red again.

Christine turned on the radio and opened the window so that the man in the old car next to her could hear that she had a radio. The car made her feel superior. Ordinarily, she did not have much to be superior about. After Hammersmith Bridge she let Geoffrey's car out far over the speed limit and arrived home feeling happy.

Aunt Josephine met her at the door with a face that wiped some of the smile off Christine's. ‘The doctor's been,' she said hollowly.

‘How's Geoff?'

‘It's bad news, I'm afraid.' Aunt Josephine bent to straighten the rugs that the alsatian had scattered when he heard the car stop.

‘What do you mean? Is it a fractured skull? Is he dying or something?'

‘Heavens, why should he be? He'll be all right, but the doctor says he can't be moved for at least a week.'

‘Oh gosh,' said Christine. She looked at her aunt. Her aunt looked at her. With Geoffrey ill upstairs, it would be unkind to say what they thought.

Aunt Josephine made a face. ‘I shall look after him like my
own child,' she said theatrically and went away to dish up lunch.

After lunch Christine followed her aunt into the kitchen and said: ‘I'll do the washing-up, if you want to get off to the Incurables.'

‘I'm not going,' Aunt Josephine said in a martyred voice, rolling up her sleeves and turning on taps.

‘Of course you are.' Aunt Josephine went every week to read to the inmates of the Putney Home for Incurables. They loved her. Other visitors read what they thought was good for the Incurables. Aunt Josephine read them what they liked, which was love stories and thrillers.

‘They'll die if you don't go,' Christine said.

‘They're dying, anyway,' said her aunt gloomily. ‘I can't go, with that body upstairs to look after.'

‘I'll look after Geoffrey. Don't be difficult. Here, get away from that sink and let me get on with the dishes.'

Aunt Josephine put on a heavy coat like a travelling rug and a red felt toque which she clung to in the teeth of all opposition, and went off to Putney. When Christine had put away the plates and silver she made coffee and took a cup into her father's study. He was working, crouched like an ape over the big varnished desk under the window which looked over the neglected lawn.

Since he retired from his job in the Ministry of Pensions he had occupied himself by translating French novels into rather stilted English. It was not very lucrative work, and he was slow at it, because, although he had been brought up in France, his French had rusted over the years and he spent more time consulting dictionaries than actually writing anything, but it kept him busy and he enjoyed it. It made him feel that he was part of the literary world. When he had to enter his occupation on any form, he did not put ‘Retired Civil Servant'; he put ‘Author', and he behaved as temperamentally about his work as any creative writer.