MARCH HOUSE Page 17

  Hilda had decided that we should go out to lunch and we went to an Italian restaurant in Soho. Hilda explained that she was not doing her full duties at present and so could afford to take a long lunch hour. ‘In fact, I’m going in for an op. next week. Nothing serious, a bit of trouble with the waterworks.’ It sounded rather elderly and Hilda indeed looked more than her age, her skin was a bad colour and there were pouches beneath her eyes; but it was apparent that she did not want to talk about it and for a few minutes we chatted in a desultory way about life in London. Then I said, idly flying my kite, ‘I would like to open a teashop. Then if it was successful, I’d buy another and then another. All reasonably priced. I’d change the eating habits of London.’

  ‘You’d never make a success of it.’ Hilda took me up vehemently as though the project was already on the drawing-board. ‘You don’t care enough about money. It’s only the people who are primarily concerned with money who can bring about change on that scale.’

  ‘Just a daydream.’

  ‘London isn’t a place for daydreaming. It’s a depressed society.’

  Hilda’s face was hot and her eyes were angry; for some reason she was very much on the defensive. While she set about demolishing my pretensions I looked over her shoulder into the street. The sun was still shining brightly; people were walking by, dark people, yellow people, pink people, people from trim houses in the suburbs and rootless people, old, young, hairy and kempt. At a stall across the road a woman was pulling the leaves of pineapples before making her choice.

  ‘She is the one I would ask the way,’ I said, expecting Hilda to follow my train of thought.

  She did not even follow my gaze, she said, ‘But you don’t need to ask the way when you’re with me.’

  ‘I meant that she has the look of belonging, not being a tourist . . .’

  ‘How can you possibly tell.’

  The waiter came and took our order.

  ‘She’s here to buy vegetables and fruit,’ I said when he had gone. ‘She’s not sight-seeing . . .’

  Hilda went on talking about the depressed society and its effect on the individual. The woman had left the stall and was walking past a restaurant on the far side of the road. I judged her to be young, but not a girl; there was something elusive about her and it was difficult to guess at her age at this distance, she might even be in her mid-thirties.

  Hilda said, ‘In a depressed society the most the individual can manage is a small personal adjustment. It would be a great mistake to imagine . . .’

  ‘It’s not the end of the world to make a mistake or take a wrong turning . . .’

  I found myself looking to the woman for confirmation, but a couple of men coming out of the restaurant masked her from my view; then I fancied I had a glimpse of her further down the street. I could not keep her in focus long enough to have a clear picture of her. The waiter came with whitebait. When he had gone I looked out of the window again, eager to see what the woman was doing now, but she had been swallowed up in the crowd and I had to supply the answer myself.

  ‘. . . very risky,’ Hilda was on to the violent society now, ‘what with muggings in the subways and fights on late-night buses.’

  I saw her continuing her walk: a woman in a big city where the beautiful and the squalid interact and safety can never be taken for granted. I saw her shopping in winter evening streets, lamps lighting pavements gleaming in a drizzle of rain, the frantic homeward bound travellers jostling those who would be staying behind when night fell and the streets gradually emptied. I saw her shopping, knowing what she wanted and at what price, looking into the faces of shopkeepers and passers-by without a need to placate or to challenge, meeting them on a level, one person to another, unafraid of where each new encounter would lead her: an incautious, venturesome person, not seeking alliances to safeguard herself against bad times.

  Now, for a moment, I did not see her so much as sense her. She breathed and I felt the breath stir my body. My body felt different, the pulse of blood was unfamiliar; or was it that I had never listened to my blood before?

  ‘. . . in Bayswater and the only person to come to her help was a Negro. It upset her dreadfully because she’s very colour conscious.’ Hilda pushed her plate to one side. ‘You haven’t been listening to anything I have said. You’ve been dreaming again.’

  I knew that I had not been dreaming, but I did not want the woman to be investigated by Hilda, so I said, ‘Some parts of London are lovely, you must admit. The parks . . .’

  ‘There’s a mosque in Regent’s Park now, did you know?’

  ‘My father was talking about it last week.’ I thought about home and my father in dismay. ‘Perhaps I could give him a ring tonight?’

  ‘Yes, of course; whenever you like.’

  I looked out of the window again, feeling unsettled. I wondered what Dr. Laver was doing; for all I knew he might have died in the gents at Liverpool Street station.

  Hilda said, ‘You have a bad effect on me, Ruth.’ I looked at her guiltily, but she was gazing down at the veal escallop which the waiter had just placed in front of her.

  I telephoned my father that evening and he said that he was all right but that Punter was missing me. I told him to tell Punter that I would arrive at Weston Market on the four-ten train the next day.

  Hilda prepared a light supper and after we had eaten we went for a walk in St. James’s Park. It was cool for the first time during the day. There were people sitting in deck chairs and lying on the grass; it was quiet, the peace undisturbed by the noisy thoroughfares which surrounded the park. We crossed the bridge over the lake, pausing to look towards Buckingham Palace and in the other direction at the turrets of the Admiralty mirrored in the still water.

  ‘London can be beautiful,’ I said.

  ‘But it’s only skin deep.’ Hilda looked nor’ west of Buckingham Palace. ‘There are some squalid areas around Victoria.’

  We crossed The Mall and walked slowly through Green Park past Clarence House and the Ritz. She said, ‘It’s the same wherever you go, there’s a lot of nastiness back of all the posh terraces and squares.’ In the twilight we walked down Piccadilly and men eyed us speculatively. There were gangs of youths in the area between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, rootless and unstable as autumn leaves which may swirl up at the first breath of wind; their activities were watched by quieter people lingering in doorways or lounging against walls. I thought of that woman I had half-recognised and I knew that she had thrown away the chance of a quiet life; she had decided to pay the penalty which might be violence in a dark street or the less spectacular fate of those who are left alone because they do not fit easily into the conventional pattern.

  That night, when Hilda brought Ovaltine to me in bed, I said, wanting reassurance, ‘But you do like living in London, don’t you, Hilda, in spite of everything?’

  She sat on the end of my bed, wrapped in her old woolly dressing-gown, looking cold in spite of the warm air. ‘I hate it. I’m at the Middlesex all day and then I come back here; and I try not to notice what goes on in between.’

  ‘Why don’t you take people in, Hilda? You’ve got the upper floor empty and spare bedrooms on this floor. I remember you had another bathroom put in and a shower because you planned to let off rooms. You could take four or five people. It would be splendid, even better than running a teashop’. There must be such a need for rooms.’

  She turned her head away. ‘I ought to, of course; it troubles my conscience having a house this size to myself. But it would be a big risk to let rooms. You never know who might turn up; there are some very nasty stories.’

  I realised she was lonely and afraid and I put my hand in hers.

  ‘Hilda, don’t let things get you down. Just think how lucky you are to be doing the one job you always wanted to do.’ She looked at our clasped hands, her face unhappy. ‘You are a very rare person,’ I told her. She looked at me then, surprised. ‘You are the person you would like to be. I thi
nk most of us are two people, the person we are, and the person we would like to be, and we have to make sure they don’t get too far apart.’

  ‘And if they do?’ She did not quarrel with this, which surprised me as she was not usually responsive to my flights of fancy.

  ‘We have to let go of the person we are and make a leap towards the other person before they get right away.’

  She bent forward and kissed me. ‘Try and get some sleep before they start banging about next door. I’ll give you some cotton wool to put in your ears.’

  The next morning Hilda went to her chapel and I went to St. Martin-in-the-Fields. After lunch Hilda insisted on coming to Liverpool Street station to see me off. We arrived early. The Cambridge train had just come in and we had to wait at the barrier while the passengers alighted. I looked round for Dr. Laver but I did not see him. One of the last of the arriving passengers was the man who had bumped into us on this very platform on Friday evening. I probably would not have noticed him had he not nodded to Hilda as he passed by. ‘Who is that man?’ I asked.

  ‘Dr. Cumner Asche. He’s one of our consultants.’ She walked past the barrier carrying my zip-bag and saw me safely into a carriage. ‘I hope things will be all right, Ruth—for both of us.’

  The whistle went and the train began to move. I waved until I could not see Hilda any more. The train rattled briskly past the tall, grimy buildings of Inner London. We were at Harlow in no time at all. I watched the houses and parades of shops falling away and the fields running towards me, welcoming me back to that country world which I had always regarded as fresh and wholesome and safe until Dr. Laver showed me otherwise.

  Chapter Eleven

  There was a man with a dog waiting under the clock at Weston Market station. That was how I saw them, standing there in the evening sunlight; figures in a composition. Beyond were a row of white-washed houses and shops, some ancient, the upper storeys overhanging the street; an old man rode down the street on a bicycle, the evening breeze in his wispy hair. I observed the scene in the detached way that one studies photographs not of one’s own period.

  Punter saw me and leapt about, tugging on his lead. The man and I took steps towards each other. He looked at me as though I had become distanced from him; although there was no reproach in his gaze there was sadness. He let Punter leap up between us but he did not tell me how much Punter had missed me.

  ‘How was Hilda?’ he asked as he took my zip bag from me.

  ‘A bit under the weather; she has to have a minor op. this week. She sent her best wishes to you.’

  We got into the car. Punter, in the back seat, refused to settle down and kept thrusting his nose between us.

  ‘Was the weather good here?’ I asked. ‘It was lovely in London; none of that awful haze.’

  ‘We’ve had quite a wind. The woman in the post office assures me it is all to do with the hydrogen bomb.’

  When we reached the house I asked, ‘Did you have a proper lunch?’

  ‘Yes, Punter and I finished the joint between us. I shan’t want much supper.’

  The house was in order, the kitchen tidy, the sink clean. If he had had difficulty in managing, he had not left evidence of it for me to find. After supper we settled down to listen to the radio adaptation of Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time.

  ‘I don’t think the chap who’s playing Peter Templar has struck the right note yet, do you?’ he asked me.

  ‘It’s not how I imagined him,’ I agreed. ‘I think Stringham may be good, don’t you?’

  I went to bed when the programme ended. My bedroom seemed quieter than usual. I went to the window and looked out. The wind had dropped and it was a bright, still night. Tomorrow I would cycle to the office and the man who was my father, Stewart Saunders, would take the train to London. What a long daily journey it was for him; what did he do in the train, did he have travelling companions or did he sit alone, wrapped in his own thoughts? What were his thoughts? I did not know what had gone on in his mind over the last few weeks, what battles he had been fighting, what effect my sudden departure this week-end might have had on the outcome. For some reason, at what cost I could not guess, he had adjusted his view of me. Whether this was a sacrifice to give me freedom, or a change he found necessary for his own sake, again, I did not know. Perhaps I exaggerated my importance? Perhaps my actions had not been so significant as I imagined. In his desolation after my mother’s death, he might have tried to construct a new life in which an imaginary daughter played a part; in time, the imaginary world had palled and he had found he could not sustain it. Perhaps that was how it was. But whatever the answer, he had decided to let go his hold on me as I must let go my hold on him. It was as it should be, but I had not yet reached a stage where I could be sanguine about it. I felt lonely and hollow inside.

  The next morning I woke early. The temperature had dropped during the night and it was pleasantly cool. I decided to walk to the office and set out early. Although the day was as yet cloudless I could smell damp borne on the wind from the Fens. The visibility was good and many miles beyond the Mill House the tower of Ely Cathedral was just visible. The fields seemed at this moment to stretch uninterrupted between me and the cathedral, and in the clear morning light I could make out quite easily the dark line of shadow, with lighter lines on either side of it, which marked the course of an old river which had been silted up in times before the Romans came. These and other features of the landscape had been pointed out to me many times when I was at school, but it was only now that it struck me as a thing to marvel at that every day I was treading history. I recalled that votive deposits from the Bronze Age had been found in Grunty Fen, not so many miles from here.

  I arrived at the office only to find the front door locked. I had not brought my key with me, so I sat on the grass verge to wait the arrival of Mrs. Libnitz. I had not thought until now what I would do if Dr. Laver showed up at the office. Surprisingly, I had not thought about Dr. Laver since I made my escape from him in London. It was inconceivable, of course, that he should return. But just supposing the inconceivable happened, my course of action was quite straightforward: I should walk out immediately. I was very angry. I sat and contemplated my anger. It did not quite satisfy me and I was trying to devise ways of stimulating it when the postman arrived and handed me our letters. There were only three; two were for Douglas and one was for Iris. The letter addressed to Iris had the crest of the Foundation on the back of the envelope; the envelope itself was crumpled and bore signs of having got very wet at some time.

  ‘It looks as if that letter’s been in the pond,’ the postman said.

  ‘Does that really happen to our letters?’

  ‘We had one fellow who used to throw the mail bags away when he got tired. Town chap, he was. Said the farm dogs went for him.’

  When he had gone I opened the envelope. The letter, dated three months previously, stated that Dr. Laver would not now be coming to our clinic as he was ill; it was hoped that the clinic would continue to function until such time as another psychiatrist had been appointed. I looked at the date on the letter again; the third of March, three days before Dr. Laver had, in fact, arrived at the clinic.

  A few minutes later Mrs. Libnitz arrived. She was annoyed to find me waiting and explained irritably that the bus had been late. ‘Why didn’t you knock at Douglas’s flat?’

  ‘I had forgotten he lived here. And anyway, I wasn’t in a hurry.’ I hesitated on the porch, not wanting to go into the house. ‘It’s going to rain. I can smell it coming up from the Fens.’

  ‘I don’t smell anything. I smoke too much.’ She banged open the hatch in the reception room and flipped a key on the switchboard.

  I went reluctantly to my room, holding the letters in my hand, not prepared to think about Dr. Laver. Iris had left a pile of paper tied up in a file on the side of my desk. She normally kept her papers in good order but this file was filled with scraps of paper on which only a few words were scribbled,
as though she was organising an intellectual paper chase. I studied one scrap which read ‘. . . revealed that I was, in fact, intensely envious of my adored Podge.’ While I was looking at it the door opened and Iris came in.

  ‘I meant to get here before you,’ she said, taking the file from me. ‘I was going to put my notes in order. You may have a little difficulty deciphering them as it is.’

  ‘But what are they?’

  ‘Notes for a series of TV programmes.’ She was intensely excited and zoomed erratically about the room.

  ‘A series?’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it splendid? I shall be doing the introductory programmes with a psychiatrist, possibly Dr. Laver, although there is a very interesting young man whom I met at a party in Cambridge . . .’ She had been shuffling the papers while she spoke and now she looked down at them frowning. ‘Oh dear, now where did this come in?’ She closed her eyes. ‘Mmmh . . . ah, yes! The prize-giving where I came second to Cecily Brandt and tore up my certificate and put it down the lavatory.’ She did some more shuffling and dropped several pages on the floor. ‘It is absolutely fascinating.’ She squatted, laying the scraps of paper out on the rug like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. As I looked down at her form, which seemed to be gathered into a tight knot from which hands darted back and forth like feelers, I was amazed at the ferocity of her activity; almost, I expected to hear an angry buzzing. ‘Fascinating! The unrealised part of oneself that escapes analysis is here revealed unequivocally . . . Oh, bugger!’ She looked first at one scrap, then at another, while another was held in a poised hand, the head moving busily from side to side all the while. This feverish squandering of energy distressed me, but I could not think how to quiet her. All our exchanges at the clinic were in close-up, we interacted eyeball to eyeball, the exterior world was of no more relevance than a blurred map without date or compass point. What would she say were I to speculate about Celtic chalk figures on the Gogmagog Hills to the south of us or the importance of the preservation of Wicken Fen to the east? ‘Yes, I recall now,’ she said. ‘That goes in here, when I got lost at the Ideal Home Exhibition and I told everyone that I was Iris Fowler and it didn’t help at all. My first crisis of identity! Oh dear, there must be one piece missing; it doesn’t make sense without it.’