Passing On (16 page)

‘How should I know?’ said Louise sourly. ‘I’m married, aren’t I?’

‘Well … your friends …’ Helen persisted. ‘For instance, if someone hadn’t heard from a man friend for — oh, for a couple of weeks or so — when he’d said vaguely he’d ring — I mean, she might wonder if there was something wrong, if he was ill, or if she’d offended in some way. Would she feel nowadays it was up to her to make contact?’

‘Look, what is all this?’ demanded Louise.

‘I’m just curious. Detached interest. One ought to know how things are. If they’ve changed or not.’

‘You are a funny old thing,’ said Louise. ‘You’re making that window worse, you know. Haven’t you got any Windowlene?

Actually so far as I can see it’s sod’s law for women, just as it always has been. You know my friend Judith? Well, she’s been having an affair with this bloke for the last year or so and then out of the blue he turned round and . . Here’s Edward. Open the window and he can come in this way.’

Edward was advancing across the lawn. ‘What did he turn round and do?’ said Helen.

‘Oh, some other time … Hi! Thanks for the birthday present.’

Edward came in at the french window and stared blankly at his younger sister. After a moment he said ‘Oh … Yes.’ And then, ‘Many happy returns of the day. How old are you?’

‘It’s next week, not today. And I’ll be forty-three for Christ’s sake. There’s this piece of contemporary mythology that the forties are the best time of your life. A load of cock, so far as I’m concerned. What about you?’

But Edward had lost interest, apparently. He turned to Helen.

‘Have we got any wire anywhere? I want to mend the fence.’

The question of age, in fact, filled his head these days, but it was not a matter he wanted to discuss with Louise. Or indeed with anyone. He did not want to be young again — that time had had particular and transcendent horrors — but the thought of being any older filled him with panic. He could not imagine finding tranquillity of soul in old age; if he could only be allowed to mark time for a while all might yet be well, one might suddenly achieve equilibrium, certainty, serenity. There would still be possibilities. Hopes.

When his mother died it was as though his youth began to slip out of sight. Her existence, he now realised, had implications far beyond her abrasive and insistent presence: it had tethered him to a distant shore. Now, the shore was fading and there was no going back.

And every now and then there came these appalling moments when feeling boiled, when, it seemed to him, he became slightly mad. Most of the time one was all right — or at least as all right as one had ever been — and then out of the blue it struck, a hideous uprush of fear, of longing, of shame. It could be prompted by anything, or nothing. It could come in the wastes of the night, or at the most humdrum moments of the day. It had surged forth in that dreadful shop in London, when he had stood transfixed — not, as Helen thought, by bunches of guineafowl but by the bare arms of the butcher’s lad adroitly trimming a carcass on a block beneath. The boy was done up in a long striped apron and straw boater in arch Victorian pastiche but his arms were all that Edward saw: young, dusted with golden hairs and somehow indisputably male. Beautiful arms; he looked at them and wanted to cry.

He could fend them off, the appalling moments. Fight them.

The thing was to keep occupied. He banged about in the scullery, hunting for wire. He would make the Britches impenetrable, tackle the dead trees and plant saplings.

As soon as Louise had left, Helen went to the telephone. She picked up the receiver, dialled Giles Carnaby’s number, and then replaced the receiver before the connection was made. She wasn’t quite ready yet, after all. In fifteen minutes’ time, she told herself sternly. Just a little longer to get oneself into the right frame of mind, run over the right casual, uncommitted phrases. ‘It just occurred to me you might like to …’; ‘If you’re free on Wednesday, I thought maybe. .

She too resolved on activity. She had been intending for days to make a start on clearing out the cloakroom; now was the moment — she would make a preliminary survey, set aside what should be kept, see if there was anything good enough for Oxfam. Then, suitably relaxed, she would telephone Giles.

Properly.

The cloakroom led off the hall. It was large exception ally

cold, and housed a primitive washbasin; the lavatory was separate, an internal room of its own. The walls were lined with layers of raincoats of a uniform dun, as though their colours had run together; they went back years — some had even belonged to her father and were so stiff and cracked that they could have stood unsupported. There was a pair of mackintosh waders; there were shooting-sticks and an Egyptian flywhisk and an alpenstock.

The pegs above the raincoats were occupied by assorted headgear — berets and peaked caps, a riding bowler, sou’westers, knitted hats, deerstalkers. Everything had associations — Dorothy’s, Edward’s, given by so-and-so, bought on a particular holiday, left behind by relative or friend; Helen saw an insistent kaleidoscope of references, shimmering tiresomely behind the garments and the implements, as ineradicable as the blackberry stains on a sleeve or the ingrained mud on everything.

And the whole lot smelt — a pervasive stench of damp and mildew. High time something was done about it. Starting in one corner, Helen began to lift garments from pegs and drop them on the floor in a pile — a mack of her father’s, something of Edward’s not worn within living memory, a very ancient corduroy jacket of Dorothy’s, also unused for many a year. It occurred to her that it might be wise to go through the pockets; her father’s garment yielded an old penny and a broken pipe. In Dorothy’s jacket was a letter.

Unopened and addressed to Helen.

She knew the handwriting at once, of course. Until ten years or so ago a bundle of similar envelopes had lain in a drawer of her desk; one day in a fit of vigour she had torn them up and thrown them away.

She sat down on the battered settle and opened the letter.

‘Dearest Helen,’ he began; that was interesting — the letters in the destroyed bundle usually began with ‘Dear’ or ‘My dear’. He went on to say that he felt they were both being rather silly and he wanted to make amends. He was missing her, he said. He had phoned a couple of times but she had been out. Anyway, maybe he could say what he felt more easily in a letter. She knew he wasn’t good at expressing himself. If she was still cross with him please would she stop. He was sorry about what was mainly a misunderstanding. He wanted very much to talk to her. There was something in particular he wanted to talk about. Please would she meet him for a long dinner on Friday — he would expect to hear from her tomorrow or the next day. He signed himself ‘With a great deal of love — Peter.’

The postmark on the envelope was March 10th 1965.

The hand of fate is brutal but impersonal. The hand of one’s mother is something different. Witting or unwitting? Carelessness — the thing picked up off the hall mat, thrust into her pocket and forgotten — or deliberate appropriation? If the latter — why had she not gone the whole hog and burned it? Well, one would never know and either way the effect was the same.

Helen began to shake. She saw her own hands with a certain detachment, holding the letter and trembling convulsively. She did not otherwise feel at all detached. Her mind raced. A number of things fell into place — click, click, click — with distant muffled echoes like stones dropped into a well. That time. The tiff. The coolness about … about what had it been? ‘A misunderstanding’.

Those weeks, not seeing him, wondering, too proud to make the first move. And weeks becoming a month, two months, three … a year. Anger giving way to misery and then to regret and eventually to … nothing. Until now, when one sat here in the cloakroom, surrounded by old raincoats, shaking as though struck down by fever.

One could, presumably, trace Peter Datchett. It would be relatively simple — she could think at once of how it could be done: the casual enquiry of a mutual friend with whom she still exchanged Christmas cards, the phone call to the college at which he had been a lecturer. And then the reply: ‘Dear Peter, I have at last received your letter of March 10th 1965. I hope it is not too late to say yes, I’d like very much to have dinner on Friday and I too feel we’ve been rather silly and it has all been a misunderstanding. .

And there is Peter, on the receiving end, opening it over breakfast with his wife and children … no, children if any are flown by now, Peter is fifty-six … with his wife (and the wife one is of course assuming, merely, but the assumption seems reasonable enough, things being what they are), who says ‘Who’s that from?’ And he shoves it in his pocket with some dismissive remark and wonders what the hell he is to do. How embarrassing, he thinks. God — poor old Helen.

No, one will not set about tracing Peter Datchett.

At this precise moment, thought Helen, I hate my mother. It was a refreshing feeling — invigorating, even. And worth indulging: it stifled various other feelings.

She knew that she would not have lived happily ever after with Peter Datchett. No one lives happily ever after. Very likely there would have been a further coolness or misunderstanding and they would have parted. The point was that one would never know, now. And so would wonder, and go on wondering. One would construct alternative scenarios, and brood about them.

One would furnish houses and arrange landscapes; one might go dangerously far and people them with … children. One would conjure up occasions; things would be said and done.

All this thanks to Dorothy. Still ordaining.

No, said Helen. She rose from the settle. She put the letter in her pocket. In due course she would dispose of it, but not just yet. Think of what was, she told herself, since only that is relevant. What might have been is neither here nor there. She tried to reconstruct the physical Peter Datchett: tall, thin, black hair that tended to flop forwards, a mole on one cheek. He taught at the College of Further Education a few miles from Spaxton; she had met him through a rambling club. His physical presence was all mixed up with muddy tracks, overgrown woodland paths, rain and barbed wire fences and glasses of beer in steamy pubs.

And then of course the relationship had become more personal and exclusive: lunches and dinners, films, visits to stately homes or places of scenic interest. Intimacy, of a kind; they were both reserved people, they didn’t rush things. She did not remember passion, but a certain eroticism — that, definitely. They were on the brink of sex; it was a matter of time, she had known — next week, the one after. She had explained to him about her mother; he had met her mother; he had seemed to size up the problem, had said the right things in his oblique way. Dorothy had referred to him as ‘that chap with the birthmark on his face.’

Love? It had been in the air, certainly — around the corner, along with sex. What she remembered was a sense of expectancy, of confident expectancy. They had been a unit, had shared jokes, exchanged small gifts, written to each other when unable to meet for a week or two; the assumption was always that this would continue, and expand.

Why didn’t he write again? Telephone? Arrive on the doorstep?

Because, thought Helen, he was as he was. Reserved; a touch diffident. And why did I do nothing? Ditto.

She went out into the hall. She picked up the receiver and dialled Giles Carnaby’s number. The ringing tone came: once, twice, six times … Out, she thought. Good. Reprieved. But honour is satisfied. You can put the thing down.

‘Hello?’ said Giles.

‘Oh.’ The prepared words evaporated. ‘Is that …? Could I speak to Giles Carnaby?’

‘You are.’

‘This is Helen Glover.’

‘But how very nice. I didn’t recognise your voice.’

‘I was wondering. .

‘And I’d been thinking of you only yesterday. How are you?’

‘Very well. I wondered if. .

‘Your mother’s affairs progress. Slowly, as I’m afraid is always the case. The Probate Office moves in its own mysterious way.’

‘Actually,’ said Helen, ‘that wasn’t what I was ringing about.

My brother and I are having a few people in for a drink before lunch on Sunday. I wondered if you might be able to come.’

There. No going back now.

‘But I’d be delighted. What fun. Last weekend I was away but this one I’m as free as air. I shall look forward to it. By the way I’ve finished the Earl Grey. Things are getting desperate. And you never did come and have a cup.’

‘Oh. No. You can buy it at the delicatessen in Long Barton, you know.’

‘I’m never in that direction. Do you think you could get me a packet next time you’re passing?’

‘I’ll try. I mean yes, I will.’

‘Bless you. And thank you so much for ringing. What time?’

‘Time?’

‘On Sunday.’

‘Oh — twelve, I think.’

‘Twelve. Splendid. Till then.’

‘We’re having some people in for a drink on Sunday. Before lunch.’

Edward, dealing out Puffed Wheat to the birds, swung round sharply. ‘Whatever for?’

‘I thought we should.’

‘But we’ve never done it before.’

‘It’s the sort of thing that’s done all the time, in other households.’

‘I can’t think why. Who, then?’

‘Doctor Taylor and his wife, I thought. A few others from the village. And our solicitor, Giles Carnaby.’

‘But you went to hear him sing,’ said Edward. ‘Surely that was quite enough.’

‘They will arrive at twelve and stay probably for an hour and a half or so. I’ll get the drink but you’ll have to help pour it out.

Is there anyone you’d like to ask?’

‘Certainly not. And I hope this isn’t going to be a precedent.’

She made telephone calls. She hoovered and dusted the sitting room. She found glasses that were unchipped and as nearly matching as possible. She bought sherry and white wine and whisky. She bought bags of little biscuity things. ‘You make me laugh,’ said her mother. ‘I never saw such a carry-on. Who do you think you’re fooling?’ Nobody,’ Helen replied. Least of all myself. ‘And that chap — Giles Thingy — do you imagine he’s going to be taken in? A man like that.’