GOOD DAUGHTERS Page 15

  She opened her eyes and immediately became aware that the cinema seemed to be full of dirty cotton wool; several people were coughing badly. The censor’s certificate had come up, but the words The Bowery could barely be seen. A small figure appeared by a corner of the screen. It was the manager. He said that because the fog was so bad it would be impossible to show the film.

  Alice was overcome with rage and disappointment. It was not until they had, at Katia’s insistence, been reimbursed, and had moved out of the foyer, that it dawned on her that London was at this moment providing drama on a scale to rival the goings-on in the Bowery. The buildings on the other side of the street, the street itself, even the pavement on which they stood, had been obliterated, but nearby a great wall loomed out of the fog, and very faintly they could see two fuzzy lights. People screamed and pushed back into the cinema foyer as a two-decker London bus edged along the pavement and came to a halt only a foot from the cinema’s sweets and cigarettes kiosk. ‘You’re on the pavement,’ the trapped assistant shrieked at the driver. In a moment, he could be heard shouting, ‘I’m not going any further!’ and soon ghostly shapes detached themselves from the bus.

  ‘How are we going to get home, my man?’ A woman’s voice. ‘I have to get to Hampstead.’

  ‘Not on this bus, lady.’

  ‘Let’s go upstairs and sit in the lounge,’ Katia said.

  ‘But they’ll expect us to buy something to eat, and anyway, we’ve got to get home. Mummy and Daddy will be terribly worried.’

  A car crawled along a few feet from them; a man in evening dress crouched on the running-board directing the driver.

  Alice said to the man in evening dress, ‘You’re on the wrong side of the road.’

  ‘Are we? Thanks most awfully.’ He shouted to the driver, ‘Whoah!’

  Light flickered, and the figure of a man carrying a hurricane lamp slowly emerged from the fog, a bus crawling behind him.

  ‘I’m afraid we seem to be in your way,’ the man in evening dress told him pleasantly. Perhaps the conductor of the bus had been carrying the hurricane lamp for some distance, or perhaps he simply did not like people in evening dress; whatever the reason, his reply fell somewhat short of the courtesy which one benighted traveller might be expected to extend to another. Alice and Katia edged away. They stood in the doorway and discussed their situation.

  After a few moments the man in the bookshop opened the door and said, ‘Why don’t you come in?’ The notice outside the shop said CLOSED.

  ‘We’re all right, thank you,’ Alice said warily.

  ‘Fuck off, then!’

  They moved away hurriedly. ‘We’re in Charing Cross Road,’ Alice said. ‘If we keep walking, we’ll come to Tottenham Court Road tube station. The tube trains are bound to be running.’

  ‘I don’t want to go underground,’ Katia said sharply.

  Alice took her hand. ‘Come on. Let’s make an adventure of it.’ She stepped boldly forward and tripped over a pile of papers which had been abandoned by a newsvendor.

  Katia crouched beside her. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘I’ve got a hole in my stocking, and I think I’ve cut my knee.’ People stumbled into them while Alice was binding a handkerchief round her knee.

  ‘I don’t like this, Alice!’ Katia’s voice was rising.

  A man asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ He sounded young and unperturbed.

  ‘Tottenham Court Road tube station.’

  ‘I’m going there. Hang on to my arm.’

  Katia readily grabbed his arm, her good spirits restored. They moved forward slowly, unable to see one another; they could hear the sound of traffic quite close. The young man said, ‘The first road we come to will be Shaftesbury Avenue at Cambridge Circus.’ They shuffled along for what seemed to be an interminable time, their eyes smarting, their throats raw. Katia giggled and made constant ejaculations. As they came near to Cambridge Circus, light again penetrated the fog. A policeman on point duty was trying to direct the traffic with the aid of an acetylene flare. There were several abandoned cars in Shaftesbury Avenue, and they edged gingerly between them. This manoeuvring made them lose their way, and they found themselves on an island with no idea in which direction they should move. Katia, alternately excited by the presence of the young man and terrified by the feeling that a choking blanket had been thrown over her head, began to whimper. The young man said, ‘If the bobby is in the middle of the road – and we’ll hope he is – we want to go towards him and then veer to the left.’

  ‘We’ll be run over,’ Katia protested.

  ‘We may be run over if we stay here,’ the young man said cheerfully. ‘Onward and upward!’

  They started forward again, Katia clinging to the young man’s arm while he flourished an umbrella and Alice pawing the air with her free hand. They made contact with three cars, two pedestrians, a lamppost and a pillarbox, but as the traffic was now jammed because of the abandoned vehicles, they came to no harm. In this way, and with one or two changes of course, they came eventually to Tottenham Court Road tube station. Katia had stopped giggling; whenever she tried to take a deep breath, there was an odd whistling noise in her chest. Alice, who had wound her scarf round her mouth and nose, was not so badly afflicted, but her knee was throbbing.

  ‘Which way do you go?’ the young man asked.

  ‘Shepherd’s Bush.’

  ‘I’m for Holborn. Will you be all right from here?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Alice said politely.

  They listened to his departing footsteps. ‘It would have been nice to have seen him,’ Katia said dejectedly.

  ‘Take your chance.’ The clerk in the booking office said sourly, ‘Keep well away from the track.’

  Katia hung back at the top of the escalator. ‘Don’t let’s go down there, Alice.’

  ‘Come on! We’re nearly home!’

  The platform was crowded. After five minutes a train came inching out of the tunnel; a guard shouted, ‘Keep back! Keep back!’ When the doors opened, Katia and Alice were swept up in an onward rush. Alice, clinging to Katia, felt herself lifted off her feet and buried forward. She had not experienced such force since the time an Atlantic roller had plucked her up and flung her on the beach at Newquay. People had said how lucky she was to be tossed on the shore when the sea might just as well have sucked her into its great maw. She had not felt lucky, but terrified by the power that had had her in its grasp. She did not feel lucky now, the breath knocked out of her body, although there were people on the platform who had not managed to get onto the train.

  When she had recovered herself, she said to Katia, ‘We’ll go down the centre of the carriage. There won’t be so many people there.’

  ‘We’ll never get out!’

  But Alice was more afraid of being spewed out at the next station, and she began easing her way towards the centre. ‘Remember Miss Pym,’ Miss Pym, their lacrosse mistress, always maintained that a good lacrosse player could get through any crowd. It was congested even in the centre. The train started, and proceeded in a series of jolts. The air was foul and the press of people alarming.

  Katia said, ‘I don’t like this, Alice.’

  Alice said, ‘Look up, it’s much better if you look up.’

  Admittedly, visibility was a bit better, but the sight of the rounded roof above their heads reminded them that they were in a tunnel.

  As the train rattled and shook, and people pushed and strained, Alice became aware of a sound which seemed to go on beneath all this activity – a deep roar, as of something monstrous awakened in the underground. She shook her head and rubbed her fingers in her ears. Katia was gripping her tightly. Alice looked at her, and saw that a change had come over her friend’s face. It had become like a face in a dream, known and yet not known, the face of someone who was not quite a person. The eyes, of whose compelling power Katia so proudly boasted, seemed to get larger as Alice looked, but they were empty of intention, as though they had swallow
ed up all the people on whom Katia had ever played her game, and now the eyes had nothing to hope for. Alice said sharply, ‘What’s the matter, Katia?’

  ‘I don’t like this, Alice.’

  ‘It’s all right. We’ll be at Oxford Circus soon.’

  Alice recited the familiar names to herself: Oxford Circus, Bond Street, Marble Arch, Lancaster Gate . . . The train stopped at Oxford Circus. People fought to get to the door while others fought to get into the train. Alice could feel Katia trembling; there was a lot of Katia to tremble, and the vibration was unpleasant. Someone was screaming and a guard was shouting. Alice had never realized people could behave in this way, clawing one another like animals. She began to believe Katia was right, they would never get out, they would have to go to the end of the line; but that would only be Ealing Broadway, there was nothing dreadful about Ealing Broadway. She repeated ‘Ealing Broadway’ aloud. The familiar words brought no reassurance. There was a blackness which seemed to surround the two of them, and she could not believe she would ever see Shepherd’s Bush or Ealing Broadway. Panic threatened her. She tried to think of pleasant things. How lovely it had been walking by the sea’s edge at Falmouth! But the goodness which had welled up between her toes now seemed a small thing against this blackness. She thought of her home, of the table laid with tea and toast and cup cakes, but instead of bringing comfort, the image of her family sitting down to tea filled her with desolation. If she were to cry out for help, no one would come, they would be too busy helping themselves to jam. The possibility of abandonment had never before entered her head; when she had a nightmare, she had only to cry out and there would be Claire, or her mother, at her side when she awoke. She prayed, ‘Please, God, let me get home to Mummy and Daddy.’ Bodies pressed in on her, tight-packed as a lost-property cupboard full of pieces of people, knuckles, shoulder-blades, elbows, chins.

  The doors closed, jammed, opened, closed again. The train moved slowly. ‘People will start getting out at Lancaster Gate,’ she rallied Katia. ‘And by the time we get to Holland Park it will be quite comfortable.’

  It was less crowded, but it was not comfortable. They managed to ease their way towards the doors so that they would be in position when the train arrived at Shepherd’s Bush. Here, there was a big crowd waiting, and as soon as the doors opened people surged forward. Katia and Alice were sucked into the foul mouth of the carriage. Alice, forgetting Miss Pym, used not only her shoulders, but elbows, knees and feet, to say nothing of every ounce of weight, to fight her way out. She reached the platform, triumphant and surprised by her own ferocity. The doors were closing. To her dismay, she saw that Katia had not managed to free herself. Katia’s face stared at her, passive and ludicrously despairing. Yet what was there to despair about? There would be no crowds at Wood Lane. But such mischances always engender fear of a separation which will be longer than the journey back from the next station. Alice was intensely afraid. ‘My friend!’ she howled. ‘My friend’s in there!’ She put a foot in the door; when the driver opened the doors, she caught hold of Katia’s coat and tugged with all her might so that Katia fell out of the train and sprawled on the platform.

  ‘Why didn’t you push?’ Alice shouted, panic making her angry.

  ‘You’ve ripped my coat!’ Katia snivelled. ‘You’ve ripped out the sleeve.’

  Alice squatted beside her. Now that it was over, her legs were shaking. Katia said, ‘I’ll be better in a minute. I don’t mind about the coat. I don’t mind about anything now I’m out of that train.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why you didn’t push. You’re pushy enough most of the time.’

  Outside, the above-ground world had not yet reassembled itself, even the station-name was blotted out. Alice, never good at orientating herself, was unsure which way to turn. While they hesitated, a policeman loomed up and pointed them in the direction of The Askew Arms.

  They got home safely after a long walk, and there was tea with toast and cup-cakes. Alice was allowed to sit by the fire and as she ate, warm in the glow of the flames, she felt ashamed of the horrible things which had come into her mind in the train. ‘Whatever came over me?’ she wondered, reaching for a cup-cake. Tomorrow, she would have forgotten about it.

  Chapter Ten

  In February, Grandmother Fairley had a stroke and went to stay with Aunt May in Notting Hill. Aunt May was quiet and gentle and loving, but all that Grandmother Fairley thought about was that Judith had not had her to stay. ‘Oh, my son, my son, what have I done that he should treat me so?’ she would ask, although he came to see her regularly.

  Louise became angry about this. ‘What’s so special about a son? Why doesn’t she care about her daughters?’

  ‘Her mind is wandering,’ Judith said.

  ‘Her mind’s as sharp as a tack. The moment you go out of the room she stops all that moaning and sighing; I’ve watched her in the mirror in the hall. She’s a wicked old woman! You’d better not let me go to see her, because I shall tell her so.’

  Louise was at odds with life. Many of her contemporaries were enjoying being in the sixth form, because they were treated by the staff as though they were adults. But Louise, not regarding the staff as adults, did not find that the more informal atmosphere compensated for having to work harder than she had ever worked before.

  ‘You should be grateful for your opportunities,’ her mother told her.

  ‘I bet that’s the kind of thing they used to say in the eighteenth century when they arranged a good marriage for their daughter! And things are no better now. In those days a woman had to get married; now she has to be educated. Either way, someone else decides what’s good for her.’

  ‘Is it Guy that is making you feel like this?’

  ‘There you go again! There are just two possibilities: go to university and make a career for yourself; or get married.’

  ‘If you don’t want a career and you don’t want to get married, what do you want?’

  ‘I’m only seventeen. I don’t have to have the whole of my life mapped out as though it had already happened, do I?’

  ‘That’s how life is, Louise. If we don’t grasp our opportunities, they don’t come again.’

  ‘Is that why you married Daddy?’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent.’ Judith was almost as edgy as her daughter.

  ‘You asked me about Guy.’

  Judith found the question difficult to answer. She had known that Stanley was the one who would change her life. Now, when she returned to Falmouth, she saw that the lively boys she had grown up with had allowed their small businesses to drain their resources; they were spent forces, and their wives had the look of women whose husbands were no longer interested in them. She was proud of Stanley’s intellectual alertness, and prouder still of his undiminished sexual energy. ‘I thought we would suit each other very well,’ she said in answer to Louise.

  ‘But were you in love with him?’

  ‘Oh, how you do go on about being “in love”! That sort of feeling doesn’t last.’

  ‘Doesn’t last, you say! At the rate I’m going, I’ll never have had it. Do you realize I’ve never been allowed to go to a dance?’

  ‘Is that what this is leading up to? A dance?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ There was a pause while Louise marshalled her forces. ‘St Bartholomew’s Dramatic Society is doing Dear Brutus in the autumn, and they want me to play Margaret, the dream child. Why shouldn’t I? Daddy can’t find much wrong with Dear Brutus, can he?’

  ‘You’ll have to slim down before the autumn if you’re to play a dream child.’

  ‘Does that mean you’ll ask him?’

  ‘We’ll see. There’s sometime between now and the autumn. In the meantime, perhaps we can persuade Daddy to take us to the theatre.’

  After this conversation, Judith found herself re-examining her own adolescence, arousing old yearnings which gave rise to new discontents. It was in this uneasy mood that she tackled Stanley later that week when they were
sitting together after the children had gone to bed. She was aware of a certain pleasure in the prospect of combating his objections; a desire, in fact, to pick a quarrel.

  She watched him reading the Methodist Recorder, innocently savouring the attack which he would make on one of the articles. She sat quietly for a few minutes, allowing her resentment to simmer. He moved and re-settled himself in his chair, like a log shifting comfortably in the fire. She said, ‘Do you think the children would enjoy this Richard of Bordeaux the critics are so enthusiastic about?’

  ‘Richard of Bordeaux?’ Stanley lowered his paper and stared at her. His time alone with Judith was precious. So was his peace. He imagined it was understood between them that they sat in silence while he read the paper and she pursued her womanly chores: the silence of a companionship too deep for words was how he liked to think of it.

  ‘It’s on in the West End,’ she continued to promote this extraordinarily irrelevant conversation. ‘John Gielgud is in it and . . .’

  ‘Yes, I have read about it,’ he said testily. ‘A highly romantic piece of special pleading for a thoroughly bad king.’ His disapproval of the man was growing by the minute.

  ‘You did agree to Louise seeing Richard II.’

  ‘That was Shakespeare, and it was in her school syllabus.’

  ‘When she goes to university, she will see things which aren’t in her syllabus.’

  He could scarcely believe that she intended to squander these precious moments talking about the school syllabus. He said, ‘There will be a certain freedom, undoubtedly, and one that I would want her to experience. What she makes of it will be up to her. She will not have had bad examples set in her own home.’ In case his briskness had not sufficiently emphasized that the conversation was concluded, he returned to his study of the Methodist Recorder.

  Judith said sharply, ‘Example is one thing, a refusal to allow her to begin to find her own way is another.’

  ‘Her own way?’ He was outraged both by the sentiment and the continued interruption of his reading. ‘What is all this talk about finding her own way?’