MARCH HOUSE Read online

  I was not sure what it was that we had ‘made’. I still felt disorientated and prone to fly apart at any minute, but the desire to pull the communication cord had gone. I concentrated on the business of holding myself in one piece. As the train gobbled up the miles it seemed to be saying, ‘Here am I, here am I, here am I,’ and this produced an uneasy, but not entirely unpleasant, sensation in my stomach. This feeling had nothing to do with Dr. Laver who was sitting beside me; it was an apprehensive anticipation which I usually only experienced when I was travelling to meet someone whom I did not know well enough to take for granted.

  Fields were now giving way to the repetitive pattern of houses and small parades of shops which marks the sprawling suburbs of London. Dr. Laver said, ‘Thank God’, with such evident relief that one might have thought us to be riding in a stagecoach with a pack of Redskins on our trail instead of a British Rail diesel. He put his arm round my waist and explored my thigh. I said, ‘Not now,’ and he said, ‘I must, I must . . .’ and went on moving his hand in a twitchy way which I found irritating rather than erotic. For a moment, I felt about him as I had felt recently about my father; he was clinging to me because everything else was slipping away from him.

  ‘Where are we staying?’ I asked.

  ‘Pimlico, Soho, Holborn . . .’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘I don’t like making plans.’

  ‘But I have to know where I am spending the night.’

  He took my hand and said persuasively, ‘It will be all right when the time comes, I promise you. It’s barely seven. How can we possibly tell what we shall be doing at midnight?’ His hand in mine was sweating and I realised he was in a panic at the very idea of committing himself so far ahead.

  I said, without believing it would happen, ‘All right; I suppose if the worst comes to the worst we can sit on the Embankment or go to an all-night movie.’ He put his arm round my shoulders and hugged me. The students had stopped talking, they were looking at us and I saw that this behaviour in people who were no longer young had embarrassed them. The train slowed down. We had arrived at Liverpool Street Station. It was beyond belief.

  There were a lot of people on the platform waiting to board the train on its outward journey. As soon as we alighted we were pushed and jostled. One well-dressed man collided heavily with us, and then drew back with a startled exclamation. The swirl of passengers carried us away from him to the ticket barrier. As soon as we were past the barrier, Dr. Laver said, ‘You go and wait for me up there.’ He pointed to a restaurant which stood out like the prow of a ship high above the concourse where people waited for friends or studied the Departure board.

  ‘Is anything the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve got bellyache . . . be all right in a minute or two.’ He turned and made for the gents in a considerable hurry.

  I climbed slowly up the stairs which led to the restaurant. There were only a few people inside and when I had paid the price of a cup of coffee and a cake I understood why. But as this was the only high living I seemed likely to have this week-end I determined to enjoy myself and took a seat by the window. The restaurant had a sober chocolate decor, and was furnished with high-backed cane chairs and marble-topped tables. There were healthy-looking aspidistras in big brass tubs. It was restful and pleasing and offered a good view of the station with its great arched fans of glass supported on slender pillars. Beyond the platform I could see the blue sky paling into grey and the tower of a church rising elegantly between buildings like concrete packing cases. A man at the next table said to his companion, ‘I don’t even know whether I’m on the short list . . .’ I sipped the coffee which was good.

  There was an announcement for the ‘off-shore party booked at the rear of the Yarmouth train.’ A porter, hands behind his back, walked down number eleven platform which at present lacked a train; he moved leisurely as he might have done in a little country town. There was music over the tannoy now, unobtrusive, big-band style. A girl at another table said, ‘My grandparents used to have chairs like this,’ with respect for the very distant past. A train came in on number eleven platform, doors opened, people got out; not as many people as there had been on our train, but it was later now. In fact, it was ten to eight. I wondered idly what I would do if Dr. Laver had not come out of the gents by eight o’clock. I supposed I could call a policeman. I had another coffee and a rum baba.

  In the event, I did not call a policeman because I had never sufficiently believed in Dr. Laver to warrant making a fuss about his non-appearance.

  As I walked down the stairs from the restaurant the voice on the tannoy was announcing that the train for Cambridge would leave platform twelve in three minutes, calling at Harlow Town, Bishop’s Stortford, Newport, Audley End . . . If I hurried I could catch it; it was the sensible thing to do. There were only a few people about on the platform now and the taxi drivers were no longer doing brisk business. I took pity on one of them and told him to drive me to the Strand.

  My cousin Hilda was one of the diminishing number of natives who had a house in the West End. It had been bequeathed to her by an aunt. She was constantly propositioned by estate agents acting for wealthy Arabs, but so far she had held out; I had never been able to understand why, since with the amount of money they were prepared to pay she could have bought herself a sizable country mansion. Hilda, a rigid Calvinist, merely stated that she disliked profiteering: she could afford to dislike it, for the aunt had left her well-endowed and not only did she have the London house but a cottage in Norfolk. The London house was in a cul-de-sac in the area at the back of St. Martin’s Lane; there was a Chinese restaurant on one side of it and the offices of a film company on the other. Hilda was not in when I arrived. I had an idea that she now had a rather exalted position at the hospital and no longer did night duty; if I was right, she would probably return before ten o’clock because she kept sober hours.

  So, here am I, standing on the comer of St. Martin’s Lane on a still summer evening, light, mellowed by dust and petrol fumes, slanting across the traffic-littered street, shadows of plane trees dappling the grimy pavements of Charing Cross Road; people hurrying to and from Trafalgar Square, like so many quavers and crochets, their apparently haphazard activity contained by the rising tide now flowing leisurely in from the suburbs.

  I began to walk towards Trafalgar Square where I could see the fountains playing. People passed close by me, occasionally eyes rested on my face, but I was of no interest, an incidental woman. After a time, I began to savour this anonymity; and as I walked I looked more frequently for confirmation of it from those around me. My father had said that he would be late home this evening so probably he had not yet seen my note; Dr. Laver, if he thought about me at all, would imagine I was on the train back to Cambridge. I was particularly glad to have eluded Dr. Laver who always gave the impression of knowing things about me that I did not know myself. It was a great relief to think that at this moment no one in the whole world knew that Ruth Saunders was now walking past the National Gallery, heading towards Haymarket. I could not recall a time when I had so completely slipped free of the web of love and concern. I had not realised until now how used I had become to being noticed, how, lately, I had come to suspect that everyone had designs on my independence. Here, in this indifferent crowd, the idea seemed a monstrous conceit; not even monstrous, that was too pretentious, just a conceit. A bearded man waved to a shorn girl and they came together in front of me, joining hands and blocking my way as though I was invisible. I extricated myself and collided with a man who was in too much of a hurry to hail a taxi to heed my apology. As I walked I felt increasingly light and unburdened and, standing on the comer of Haymarket, I enjoyed a moment of indecision, surprised to find myself free of that inner prompting which usually told me so unfailingly which way I was to go at every turn. I drifted with a group of Italians to the traffic island and then crossed to the far side of Haymarket, but did not walk up it because my feet went on towards Lower
Regent Street.

  But it had been a mistake to take note of that moment of indecision. She was back with me again, that exacting prefect who monitored my behaviour. My mother, she reminded me, had liked Lower Regent Street. We had done this walk several times. I had hated it, feeling hot and sticky, longing for the time when the train would take us back to the country which was fresh and wholesome and better in every way, spiritually, morally, physically, than this ugly, sprawling city. What an ungracious, complaining companion I had been, refusing to be appeased by promises of ice-cream or a new pair of sandals. This priggish child threatened my new-found anonymity. I turned into Piccadilly and when I came to St. James’s Church I went inside hoping that in return for an act of atonement I might be able to leave her there, at least for the week-end. The office of Compline was about to be said. I was faintly irritated at having to share my devotions at this moment, but I accepted the copy of the service and allowed myself to be shown into a pew. The minister said, ‘May the Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.’ He spoke soberly and unemphatically and continued in the same manner to speak of the devil going about as a roaring lion. I did not open the copy of the service, but phrases came to my ears from time to time. ‘Thou hast set me at liberty when I was in trouble . . .’ ‘Bow down thine ear to me; make haste to deliver me . . .’ I felt I should make some offering of my troubles, enumerate a few of the afflictions from which I was in need of deliverance. But the service was so spare, so lucid, that it did not allow for the relating of the phantasmagorical experiences which had recently disturbed me; and the more I tried to reduce them to orderly proportions, stripped of emotion and imagination, the less there seemed to be to relate. ‘Thou shalt not be afraid for any terror by night: nor for the arrow that flieth by day; for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the sickness that destroyeth in the noon-day . . .’ These great phrases sat so lightly on the mind that they seemed more of a rebuke than a reassurance, a reminder that it is neither necessary nor profitable to enlarge on affliction, that in the matter of suffering, as in everything else, a degree of modesty is required. As the service went on, I had increasingly the feeling that here, too, I was, if not exactly anonymous, then of no peculiar interest. I tried to forget about myself, to think of my mother and make an act of atonement. But nothing came of it. I had nothing to offer, everything seemed to have dropped away from me, even the sense of loss which had been with me for so long seemed to have gone. Nothing was required of me, no busyness of mind or spirit. I did not feel exactly rejected, but there was a coolness in the air. The calm voice spoke not of dramatic confrontation, a lurid journey into the past, but simply of ‘time for the amendment of life’. I put down my copy of the service and was one of the first out of the church after the Blessing had been said.

  The sun had set but the light was still good and I sat on the seat in the courtyard, probing this absence of loss as one probes a tooth to see if it can be made to ache again. I watched the people walking along Piccadilly and thought of my mother; a passionate, insecure woman married to a shy, deeply wounded man. She had said to the farmer, ‘I couldn’t leave Ruth.’ Would she have made her life with him had it not been for me? Or had she been glad of the fetters that prevented her from taking so challenging a step? Nothing came of these thoughts, except the knowledge that the tragedy, if tragedy there was, was my mother’s and I had no business with it. I realised then, not with sadness, but a dryness that was beyond sadness, that almost without knowing it was happening, I had said my farewell to my mother and must now let her rest in peace.

  It was beginning to be chilly. I got up and walked into Piccadilly. It was too soon to return to Hilda’s house and I must find some way to pass the time. By now I was rather hungry, so instead of turning into Green Park I went in search of food, but all the restaurants were expensive. There seemed to be nowhere for the person on the way to an evening class to stop for a snack, for office friends to meet for a brief exchange of gossip on their way home, for the solitary one-roomers to have a meal if not in conversation with, at least within sight of, other human beings. Soon, if it had not already happened, London would be given over to the big spenders. Eventually I found a small Italian restaurant where I had a highly-priced pizza with a scrape of vegetables, cheese and anchovy on a cardboard base.

  It was ten o’clock when I turned into the cul-de-sac and there was a lighted window on the first floor of Hilda’s house. I knocked on the door, but there was no reply. The house held its breath. I knocked again, louder, and there was still no reply. It had not occurred to me that anyone as imposing and resolute as Hilda would not open her door in the evening, but this was obviously the case. I beat a tattoo on the door and then stepped back from the house, hoping that curiosity would impel Hilda to peer out of the window. It did. I waved and gesticulated. She moved away from the window and after what seemed a long time the curtains on the ground floor twitched slightly. I pushed back the flap of the letter-box and shouted, ‘Hilda, it’s me, Ruth! Your cousin, Ruth!’ Again, a long time seemed to elapse, then the door was opened fractionally and one eye peered out. There was the sound of a chain being unfastened. Hilda said, ‘Come inside’ and backed into the hall, one hand holding a dressing-gown between her heavy breasts.

  ‘This is awful of me,’ I said, stepping inside with some trepidation. But once the door was safely closed and the chain replaced Hilda let go her hold of the dressing-gown and embraced me boisterously. ‘What a gorgeous surprise!’ There was no doubting her delight, but it seemed to me that I was doubly welcome because my arrival had initially occasioned her alarm.

  ‘I get so fussed,’ she said as she carried my zip-bag into the sitting-room. ‘I can’t think what I’m going to be like when I’m menopausal.’ It was only when we were drinking Ovaltine that she recollected her usual role and said, ‘What is this all about? I hope you haven’t done anything silly?’ Her voice reminded me of a time when she was nine and I was five and had eaten too much ice-cream.

  ‘I felt I had to get away.’

  ‘It’s not another Reuben?’

  ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘Of course, you’ve had a lot of unhappiness with your dear mother’s death; and I expect you are finding it a strain looking after your poor papa.’

  ‘You know all about that,’ I answered. She had lovingly nursed her own parents through their respective terminal illnesses.

  ‘You mustn’t feel trapped because you have to look after your papa, Ruth. It will be much worse when he’s gone and you are on your own.’ She looked at me, hesitating, with troubles to tell; then seemed to take a grip on herself. ‘It’s late and we can talk tomorrow. I shall be on duty all day, but I could meet you for lunch.’

  She took me upstairs to one of the spare rooms and I helped her to make up the bed. It was a tall house, though narrow, and there must have been at least four spare rooms.

  ‘Do you let any of the rooms?’ I asked, remembering that she had planned to do this.

  She shook her head and thumped a pillow. ‘You will find it very noisy after your peaceful home,’ she warned.

  ‘I expect you get used to it.’

  ‘No. It was lucky for you that I was on duty this Saturday. When I have a free week-end I go down to the cottage, can’t get there fast enough.’

  She fussed over me, bringing a tray with an electric kettle so that I could make myself tea if I could not sleep. For some time I lay awake. The house seemed rather sad with all those unused rooms; I thought how I would have enjoyed hearing other residents coming in, filling kettles in the kitchen, exchanging the news of their day over a drink in one of the bedrooms above. Just as I was dozing a fight broke out in the road. Hilda called out, ‘Don’t get alarmed. It happens every night.’ Someone broke up the fight and it was comparatively quiet until two o’clock. From then until four o’clock they seemed to be smashing plates in the Chinese restaurant next door. After that I slept and did not wake until half-past nine. There
was a note from Hilda saying that she had not wanted to disturb me and had left breakfast things out in the kitchen; I was to meet her for lunch at the hospital and she gave instructions as to where I would find her.

  I had a pleasant morning window-shopping in Regent Street and wandering down side-streets into beautiful, expensive squares. There were a lot of tourists and young people who probably did not belong in any particular country but were constantly on the move and who sat on the steps of the terraced houses throwing banana skins and paper bags on to the pavements, the world their dustbin.

  In spite of Hilda’s instructions I got lost at the hospital and ended up in out-patients which had a parochial atmosphere I had not expected in a big London teaching hospital. It was apparent that to the people of Soho this was their local surgery; there were butchers with cut fingers, Italians talking like old friends to the woman with the tea trolley, a gloriously apparelled Nigerian in transit accompanied by his wife and what seemed to be his entire family trailing feudally behind him. One of the girls at the reception desk was vainly trying to convince a small Chinese man that there was no need for him to see the doctor again. ‘You’ve been discharged.’ The Chinese nodded his head and talked quietly and urgently. After a time the girl retired for consultation with the other receptionists; there were hisses of ‘You tell him . . .’ ‘I can’t, he never understands . . .’ ‘Send him to Casualty . . .’ ‘They sent him here.’ Eventually, a pony-tailed lass was thrust forward. She advanced to the counter, thrust out a dramatic hand, and intoned, ‘Go away! No come back many moons.’ The Chinese turned away, puzzled, and held a whispered conference with several compatriots who were sitting on the benches. I went to the reception desk and asked for Sister McIver.