The Sugar Mother (9 page)

Once, going to the staff room at afternoon teatime, his heart and mind pleasantly occupied with Leila images, he bent down to the table, and turning the tap of the urn marked Coffee, he filled a cup which had been standing ready with a tea bag. Straightening up quickly from the urn, he was sure he had seen Ms. Tranby nudge the Head and Miss Bushby (or whatever her name was) simultaneously in their respective well-covered ribs. Tranby's elbows, he thought, seemed to jerk upwards in both directions with surprising speed and sharpness, and as he made for the door with his cup, it seemed as if a watchful silence was directed towards his mistake. He did not have to imagine much to know the half-pitying laughter
which would accompany the retellings. Someone—Miss Bushby or was the woman called Burton? he could never remember—catching him by the sleeve, offered him homemade nut cookies. “Delicious, even if I, as I shouldn't, say so myself!” Trying not to be impolite, he half-turned as the plate was tilting towards him, his incapable hand missing the biscuits as they slid over the edge.

“Bad luck, Page!” He felt he must get away quickly from the inevitable words which would follow. The head of the department, a tall blond Scandinavian, as if catching Edwin's glance of annoyance, detached himself from Ms. Tranby's all too familiar way of hanging on to his arm. He moved towards Edwin, unwanted conversation beginning to drop, with chopped nuts, from his lips.

Polka dots on a yellow tie: the Tranby woman would make the most of them. A wrinkly who ought to be watching his ticker, his old ticker, trying to get up steps two at a time, showing his yellow socks. She never missed anything. His socks and his tie: he wanted to get them off at once. He wanted to get up to his room—damn the stairs, he was out of breath—up to his room and out of sight as quickly as possible. It was ridiculous having a staff common room in the basement.

Tranby and Bushby—or was it Burton?—would be sure to know he had people staying in his house while Cecilia was away. Of course it did not matter that he had guests. He would tell Cecilia and she would say it was hilarious. Reasonably it did not matter, his having guests. He knew this and knew too his unreasonable reason for not wanting anyone to know.

 

It seemed to Edwin that Leila's mother was being careful, all the time, not to intrude. She spent her time mostly in the kitchen, either squeezing yellow and blue sponges and washing the edges of the table and the cupboards or filling the kettle. Sometimes when he entered the kitchen she was putting something in the oven. More often, she seemed to be taking something, golden brown scones or sausage rolls, out.
He noticed the little flourishes with which she placed her baking trays on the table. When she was cooking she seemed kind and wholesome and there was nothing sinister about her at all. At other times, when he was thinking about her and not seeing her, he was overcome with a kind of helpless amazement that she was in his house at all. Her way of getting into the house, by invitation from him, was frightening. At these times, unable to bear these thoughts, he turned to thinking about Leila and some of her delightful quiet little ways. One of the things she did was to look up at him with the sweetest smile. He liked to think that no other person had ever seen this smile.

 

“These cups,” Leila's mother would say in the mornings. “The excitement's almost too much. It's like going to the theatre.” She tipped the cups as she read the leaves. There was quite a tension during these readings, particularly on one day when Leila's mother, peering into Edwin's cup and then into Leila's, looked up first at Edwin and then, searchingly, at Leila. Shaking her head, she looked up at the ceiling and then again at Leila and at Edwin, saying at intervals, “Well, I never!” and “Who'd have thought it!” She told them they could knock her down with a feather. She would have to watch the leaves carefully, she said, for an accident. At present she did not know what sort of an accident. You never could tell, she said; there might just be a sign, a warning, a promise. She set her lips in a thin line and rinsed the cups quickly under the cold tap.

Leila's mother did not often have ice cream, she said. She was a weight watcher and nothing in her opinion put it on as quick as ice cream. But the rat the other night had given her a shock, she said, and she was still all jittery and shaky. Sometimes she had noticed if she had the jitters something sweet put her to rights. She was ever so grateful, so was Leila, she said, that Edwin had invited them back into his house till the agent got rid of the rats in theirs. She was enjoying her ice
cream even though she was overweight. Being overweight, she said, the flesh did protect the organs. She had a hazelnut whirl covered with a hot caramel sauce. The hot sauce, she said, leaning forward on the little wrought-iron chair, stops it going for your teeth. Leila had a strawberry ice with real cream and little bits of strawberries and Edwin's was green. He thought it was either almond or pistachio.

“If you don't come at adoption,” Leila's mother said, “there's always whatsaname, whatyoucallit, the surrated mother, sugared whatsit, thingumajig sugar mother.”

“Surrogate,” Edwin said with the polite little laugh of correction. He had corrected her on this one before, he reminded her.

“Better than adopting,” Leila's mother said, “like a cake you've made yourself, a home-made cake. You know what's in it. I always say home-cooked is best. You can't go wrong.”

 

In the evenings Leila's mother was quite willing to sit through Brahms. When Edwin suggested the TV in the other room, she said no, she had always enjoyed classical music. She seemed to efface herself at times, Edwin thought, as if trying not to be a nuisance. She occupied herself with her knitting, which was white, he noticed, with very small sleeves or perhaps, he thought, they were fingers for gloves. But who would want only two fingers? Leila simply smiled her small pink-lipped smile and did not offer explanations. He wanted to talk to Leila about the music.

“Have you read Ecclesiastes?” he wanted to ask. He wanted to explain to her that after a broad survey of the world, Ecclesiastes concludes: “therefore I praise the dead more than the living but above all I praise those who never were born.” He glanced at Leila's mother, who was intent on her stitches. “In this music,” he wanted to tell Leila, “in this third song of Brahms, the third of the Four Serious Songs, Brahms makes use of this text. And concert audiences,” he wanted to add, “actually listen to it without wincing!” He had never said any
thing of this to Cecilia, and though this left him free to speak about it to Leila, he felt he should not because of Cecilia not knowing what it was her right, in a sense, to know first.

 

“
W
hat on earth are these?” Edwin unwrapped a small package. The striped paper—he recognized the local draper's wrapping—was not gift paper.

“I think they're called Playboy Jocks,” Daphne said. “I bought them for you. They're more dashing than plain boxers or B.V.D.s—they have a sort of pattern, d'you see, bows and arrows—aren't they?”

“You're very knowledgeable.” Edwin smiled.

“Oh, Mr. Barclay was most helpful. He is really one of those people who love their work. Imagine selling men's underwear all day and every day and being fond of it.”

“Thank you for the present,” Edwin said. He glanced at her luggage. “Whatever is that?”

“My portable gramophone,” Daphne said. “It weighs a ton. It's ages old. I've brought it for ‘Hiawatha' in the bathroom—that's an old seventy-eight. Hope it works; haven't used it for years. You have to wind it up. Cecilia and I had it in a cupboard at school. Father brought it one weekend. We used to play Wagner secretly, the ‘Siegfried Idyll' and ‘Wotan's Farewell.' We used to stuff a towel in it to muffle the noise. Can you imagine!”

“Oh, I see,” Edwin said. “But look here, Daphne, we don't want to overdo things. They, Leila and her mother, might hear us.”

“That's just the idea. The only trouble is they're not in. Whatever possessed them to go to
Murder on the Nile
? It's just about the longest film ever made and it isn't even new. It's incredibly long and rather dull.”

“I told them I'd be out to dinner,” Edwin said. “It seemed thoughtless, indelicate somehow, to sit romantically with you at Lorenzo's in candlelight while they prepared a dinner expecting me to come home.”

“I do understand,” Daphne said.

“So Leila's mother said if I was sure I'd be all right they would go out. They hadn't ‘been to a cinema in a while'—those were her words.”

“We'll have to either put off or prolong our lovemaking till they come back.” Daphne prodded Cecilia's mattress. Edwin could see them, Cecilia and Daphne, years ago at their boarding school, bouncing on beds to test them, reserving beds and cupboards next to each other, grabbing towels, beating the others to the best showers, sharing coat hangers and eating chocolate biscuits under white counterpanes.

Daphne sat on the edge of the bed. “The Playboy Jocks,” she said. “How on earth will you get into them?” She gazed in a perplexed way at the appropriate region of Edwin's body. “Will they stretch or something? They're so small.” She held them up. “I can't imagine them stretching.”

“Size eight,” Edwin said. “Just my size once….”

“Oh Lord!”

“Look,” he said, “it doesn't matter; you didn't need to give me a present.”

“I was afraid you might have an intimate gift for me.” Daphne blushed. He knew it was an unusual thing for her to blush. He thought it quite suited her rather large handsome face. The awkwardness made him fond. He wondered how quickly he could dash down the passage to grab the orchids and carnations he had brought in the day before for Leila's mother. The stalks, he thought, might drip water everywhere and Daphne might already have noticed them in the hall. The
stalks would no longer look fresh; they would even be a bit slimy by now.

“We might as well be comfortable.” Edwin smiled and opened the door which led from Cecilia's bedroom through a small dressing room, which Cecilia's mother had once, on a visit, described as a walk-through 'robe, directly into Edwin's study. His glowing walls of books, his leather chairs and his own neat bed, made as he liked it, reassured him. “Let's have some champagne,” he said. “I put it in here.”

“Oh, rather!” Daphne followed him too quickly. “Sorry, Teddy. Sorry!” She stepped back off his heel.

“Relax,” he said in his kindest voice. “Relax, Daph.”

“Oh, you are a dear!” She seemed too grateful. “I'm afraid,” she said, “Prince is kicking up a frightful din; he's tied up outside your kitchen door.” She sipped her champagne hurriedly. They listened to the mournful barking and howling. Edwin was sure that if Leila's mother heard the noise she would predict, without the leaves and with satisfaction, a death. He knew that nature had endowed dogs with a strange strength which enabled them to bark and howl for a whole night and to have, the next day, the same endless destructive vitality as if they had had a good night's sleep. If he wanted to be rid of his guests he must take certain steps, he understood this, but he would have to listen to Prince all night too. There were other things; his heart sank: he would not sleep. He did not sleep when other people were in the house. It was Cecilia's idea to have his study as his bedroom because of her repeated nocturnal and unholy early morning visits to the Mary and Joseph. Though his health was surely being wrecked with the uneasiness of having guests, there were compensations. Leila's mother, for example, one night had made a dish of wonderfully tender beef with a sauce of wine-soaked mushrooms. Not liking to say that he did not trust mushrooms, Edwin ate them for the first time in his life. He liked them and was not even ill. He remembered now that he had forgotten to make an entry in the notebook for the internal. The awful thing was, he thought, as he poured more champagne, that he was not sure that he wanted his guests to go. He wanted his
house to himself but there was something else. He tried to sort out in his mind what this other thing was.

Cecilia's smiling face on Edwin's desk seemed to approve their champagne drinking. Daphne raised her glass to the photograph. “This binge is for you, Cecilia darling,” she said. There was another photograph, Cecilia's graduation year. Daphne peered at it. “Gosh!” she said. “There's old Duckbill, great friend of Father's. I'd forgotten him. Cecilia's old Head. He thought the world of her and she worshipped him. They all called him Duckbill because of the speculum: he perfected the art, it was said, of its use,” she explained.

“I thought the Head was Stirrups,” he said.

“I believe Duckbill and Stirrups alternated. Took turns. Gynecologists,” she said, “have excellent manners. They're born with them. Father was the same. It was his good manners which prevented him from telling me…”

“I know.” Edwin was gentle. He patted her knee.

Daphne smiled. “You can just see,” she said—draining her glass, Edwin thought, rather too quickly—“those two doctors taking turns, especially as they got older and more pompous, standing aside to let the other examine or operate first.” She held out her glass. Edwin poured more for them both. He wondered if having a gynecologist for a father would make a girl more knowledgeable and more well cared for “down there.” He glanced at Daphne's honest face; he thought not in her case perhaps. Most certainly well cared for but not knowledgeable in the way he was thinking. Cecilia's father's attitude towards his daughter had not been one of concern for personal hygiene but was clearly that she should have the advantages of all the education that money could buy and then “get on in the world.” His words. Almost his first question to Edwin had been: “And how do you earn your crust?”