MARCH HOUSE Read online

  ‘I’m going out for a drink with Bill Harrison.’

  ‘I thought that was all finished.’

  ‘We’re not engaged, but we still see each other from time to time.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather unusual?’

  ‘Not really. We like each other.’

  ‘Do you . . .’He hesitated. ‘I mean, are you . . . have you . . .?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked puzzled. Like so many of his generation it had taken him a long time to accept the ideas of the young on premarital sex, but having once come to terms with the situation it seemed impossible for him to conceive of the young having friendship without sex. I could tell that he did not believe me.

  ‘Why don’t you want to marry him?’ he asked.

  ‘Just because.’

  We walked in silence for a few hundred yards, then he said, ‘How old are you now?’

  ‘Thirty plus.’

  ‘Are you?’ He gave me an unbelieving look; although he did not want to lose me, he did not like to think that I was unconcerned about my unmarried state. After another hundred yards, he said, ‘Don’t you want to get married?’

  ‘Not just like that.’

  ‘It isn’t possible to have a sensible conversation with you if you keep saying things like “just because” and “not just like that”,’ he said irritably.

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Of course I mind. I like to know what is going on in your life. You’re my daughter.’

  ‘It hasn’t worried you until now,’ I pointed out.

  ‘There was always Mother before. I assumed she knew these things.’

  I had not confided in my mother. There has to be something one keeps to oneself. Now I wondered if my mother would have minded about Reuben. Stewart would have been horrified, but I could not be sure what her reaction would have been. I was beginning to realise how much there was that I had not known about her. Bill Harrison had wanted to marry me and settle down and rear children who would go into his law firm and join the tennis club. Reuben was a gypsy. I suppose his life followed a pattern, too, but to me it did not seem to. He was attractive and did not have any plans for me beyond the immediate sexual act. Bill had found out about Reuben and he had been scandalised. He had said there was talk about me in the village because I went after the gypsies.

  ‘They don’t talk about me because I go out with you.’

  ‘That’s a foul thing to say.’

  ‘Foul!’ I still could not see what was foul about it. Bill seemed to think I was rebelling against my parents but that I was pushing it too far. But I was not rebelling against anything. I accepted people as they came; I liked Reuben and I had not thought when I slept with him that I had stepped outside of anything. Perhaps I belonged outside, whatever ‘outside’ meant.

  Stewart was still pursuing his investigation. He asked, ‘Didn’t your mother talk to you about marriage?’

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t get married!’ had been my mother’s advice. I had never been sure how seriously she meant it. I said, ‘I expect she knew that I’d do my own thing.’

  ‘There you go again! Why can’t young people talk intelligibly?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I put my arm through his. ‘I know I’m grumpy. I don’t seem able to help myself.’

  He squeezed my arm and said, ‘I know, darling; I know.’

  We walked in silence for a few minutes and then I said, ‘I’ve been thinking about Scotland. It would be rather fun, wouldn’t it? I telephoned Dorothy the other night and I could go to her for a week-end in the autumn.’

  ‘Scotland?’

  ‘Ross and Cromarty.’

  ‘What about Ross and Cromarty?’

  ‘I thought perhaps you were upset because I hadn’t seemed keen to go.’

  ‘I’d forgotten all about it. Do you want to go?’

  ‘Not if you don’t.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to go all that way just now.’

  We could see Miss Maud’s house at the edge of the field. I hoped she would be in and that we should not have to make this journey again.

  ‘Why do you want to see Miss Maud?’ I asked.

  ‘I want to thank her for sending the wreath.’

  But it was more than that. He had talked about her a lot lately. To him, she seemed to represent an authority and a stability which he had lost and wanted to retrieve. In the past, he had referred to her as a ‘dotty old thing’, but now he spoke of her as having belonged to a way of life that was good and had passed away. I had the fantastic idea that if she had received him in the style in which he imagined she lived, he would have been prepared to shut himself up here with her and ignore a world he liked less and less.

  But however much one may shut away the world, there are some things with which one has to come to terms; and it was evident as we approached the house that Miss Maud had come to terms with the necessity of feeding herself. Old Mr. Leveridge had employed a gardener and an under-gardener, but both had gone now. Gone, too, were the rose garden, the flower beds and the herb garden. The rose garden had been put down to vegetables and ramshackle chicken coops had been erected where the herb garden had once flourished; the flower beds and the croquet lawn had been left to Nature, which had done its usual untidy job. Miss Maud was at this moment feeding the hens. A battered straw hat decorated with roses shaded her eyes and the rose motif was dimly repeated in the ankle-length gingham dress; a pair of Wellington boots completed the outfit.

  Stewart, who was wearing a neat grey suit and an immaculate blue and white striped shirt, was taken aback; but Miss Maud greeted him with such aristocratic assurance that he was reconciled to her appearance. ‘How delightful!’ She tucked the grain bowl under one arm and shook hands with both of us. ‘Now you must come and take tea with me.’

  We walked past a flower bed where a rambler rose fought a grim battle with foxgloves and ground elder. ‘I’ve had to let Chapman go,’ she said. ‘The garden was getting too much for him.’

  ‘Chapman?’ Stewart repeated.

  ‘The head gardener.’

  Stewart said, ‘Ah yes.’ Only yesterday he had commented on Chapman’s tombstone as we walked round the graveyard. ‘Died nineteen hundred and fifty nine, aged ninety-one years,’ he had read out.

  Miss Maud led us to the front door which stood open. She paused in the porch to take off her Wellington boots, revealing small feet and slim ankles encased in grey silk stockings. The porch was cluttered with croquet mallets, deck chairs, folding green-baize tables, and geraniums in pots. The great wall mirror which I remembered from my childhood visit was hanging in the hall; it was dusty and tarnished but still looked imposing by virtue of its size. Beneath it was a carved wooden chest piled with letters, seed catalogues, calendars and newspapers yellow with age. There were also a lot of bills and several rate demands. Miss Maud put her hand to the wall and a bell jangled in the rear of the house. ‘We’ll take tea in here,’ she said. We went into the drawing-room. Even in this warm weather the room struck chill and there was a smell which, after a glance at the discoloured patches on the outside wall, I decided must be damp. In spite of the damp, the wallpaper with its faded pattern of fleur-de-lys was still elegant. The room had been hoping for us. The grand piano to one side of the window, the china cabinet on the long wall, demanded admiration; the chairs, couch and side tables, carefully positioned on the Chinese carpet, were waiting to receive guests.

  Miss Maud said, ‘Please sit down. Bridget will bring tea.’ She went out of the room.

  Stewart said, ‘Well!’ He sat on the couch and a puff of dust rose in the air. I went to the piano and touched a key; no sound came but the imprint of my finger was left on the ivory. I rubbed at it guiltily. ‘Was Bridget one of the maids?’ I asked.

  Stewart nodded.

  ‘How long ago did she die?’

  ‘Sometime in the nineteen-sixties, I believe.’ He looked shocked. ‘What a terrible thing! I had no idea.’

  ‘I think sh
e’s quite happy.’

  ‘But she’s only in her early seventies. That’s no age nowadays.’

  ‘I wonder what Bridget is getting us for tea,’ I said.

  He looked dismayed and then smiled; I realised that it was a long time since he had smiled. He said, ‘I don’t suppose it will be dainty cucumber sandwiches.’

  There was a family portrait on the wall; the mother sitting stiff- backed on the couch, the father standing erect behind her, three little girls strung out beside the mother and a boy looking cramped on a footstool. None of them looked very happy although one of the little girls had a gleam in her eyes which I thought I recognised.

  ‘What happened to the brother and the sisters?’ I asked.

  ‘One of the girls died quite young; the other was still alive when we first came to live here. I believe the brother went abroad.’

  A distant rumbling and a clatter of crockery told us that tea was on the way. Stewart got up and held open the door. There was a dusty patch on the seat of his trousers. Miss Maud came in wheeling a trolley. ‘I think Bridget can go now,’ she said briskly. She spoke as though we were all aware that Bridget was a convention which must be observed. Perhaps this was the only way in which Miss Maud could undertake the task of looking after the house and still remain its mistress.

  She poured strong tea into fluted china cups. There was a chocolate loaf on a tarnished silver dish; with relief I identified it as the produce of the woman who kept the village post office. The scones probably came from the same excellent source. Stewart handed me cup and saucer and brought milk and sugar.

  ‘I was talking to the vicar yesterday about March House,’ he said to Miss Maud. ‘He thinks that at one time it belonged to the Verney family, but I rather doubt that. I was sure that you would know.’

  ‘What nonsense that man does talk! Of course it never belonged to the Verneys.’ Miss Maud was delighted to talk about March House, mentioning many people of whom I had never heard as though they were still important features of the neighbourhood.

  As I listened, I realised something I had never understood before. Miss Maud was as isolated as my mother had been. Unlike Mother, however, she belonged here: her trouble was that no one else did. The important families had melted away, their houses had been sold, and the village was full of people who had moved in over the years since the war. The structure of the society Miss Maud’s parents had known had broken down and Miss Maud was now the only person who belonged. The problem set by finding oneself living in a world where no one else belonged must have been daunting. Custom and acceptance are vital; what happens when maintenance of the kind they provide is no longer available? By now, Miss Maud probably had only a vague memory of how things ought to be.

  Stewart, who had responded with courtesy to Miss Maud’s account of the history of March House, decided it was time to do some reminiscing of his own.

  ‘I remember that just after we moved here the Percivals were at March House.’ I was surprised to realise that he had known March House long before I went to work there. I had always thought of it as being a place where I had a life unknown to my parents, where they could not even visualise my existence. Stewart was saying, ‘The Percivals had a garden party. That must have been . . . when . . . nineteen forty seven?’ He turned to me. ‘Before you were born, my dear.’

  ‘Well, yes, it must have been.’ I did so hope that he was not going to become sentimental: that he should know March House was bad enough, but that he should establish special claims to it was unbearable.

  ‘My dear wife was a young woman then.’ He looked out of the window, summoning up his ghosts. ‘I can see her now . . .’

  Miss Maud glanced at him sharply. ‘I am going to cut this cake. I hope you will have some. It is delicious.’

  Stewart, who had not interrupted her when she was telling him how her parents had attended balls at March House, continued firmly, ‘You are one of the few people who can remember Lillian as she was then, so I know you will excuse me talking to you about her. She was very beautiful. When we went to that garden party people turned to stare at her.’

  Miss Maud said quietly, ‘Yes, I do remember how striking your wife was.’ She raised the teapot and held out a hand for my cup.

  ‘I couldn’t believe that this beautiful girl had married me. If you say that kind of thing to young people nowadays they sneer.’ His voice had become bitter and I felt that he was getting at me. ‘There is no romance any more; the very idea embarrasses them. They don’t mind taking drugs and sleeping around; it’s only the idea of being in love that embarrasses this unshockable generation!’

  When Miss Maud had filled my cup, she caught hold of my free hand and gave it a shake.

  Stewart said deliberately, ‘But I was in love, and I remained in love all my life, right to the very end.’ His face was like marble.

  I said, ‘We came to thank you for sending the wreath, Miss Maud. It was very kind of you. We sent the flowers to the church and to the hospital afterwards; it seems such a waste to . . .’

  Stewart said loudly, ‘I can’t believe that she’s gone. Every time I go into the house . . .’ He choked over the words.

  Miss Maud picked up the teapot and crossed the room to where he was sitting. ‘You know, you will have to stop this,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice as she poured tea. ‘I know it’s very upsetting for you and I’m glad you came to talk to me. But you mustn’t get into a habit of letting yourself go. It’s bad for your daughter. And you mustn’t lean on her, either, just because she’s still at home with you, which is very unusual these days.’

  I could not bear to see how he took this, I was so distressed for him. I turned in my chair and examined the china in the cabinet. I could hear the clink of his spoon as he stirred his tea. To my amazement, he said meekly, ‘Yes, you are right, of course.’ He sounded like a naughty child who has been waiting to be told how far it can go.

  ‘Of course I’m right! Most young women have left home by the time they are twenty. The days have gone when daughters can be expected to sacrifice themselves for their fathers.’

  ‘Yes,’ he sighed sadly. ‘We must let the young people lead their own lives.’

  ‘You did, didn’t you?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ He examined the idea as though it had not occurred to him before. I turned to look at him. ‘When I was a boy I wanted to be a farmer, but no one took me seriously.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have let that stop you.’

  ‘It’s hard to take yourself seriously if no one else does.’

  ‘So you did something they were prepared to take seriously?’

  ‘I went to Oxford.’

  When he was with strangers he usually mentioned that he had been to Oxford, offering the information as he might have shown a passport. But today it was a gesture of defeat.

  I had never heard him talk like this before, usually he spoke deferentially about his parents and his overbearing sisters. I was aware of pain. The awareness was new, but the pain was not. It had always been there and probably explained the withdrawals which had baffled me as a child. Now I had a glimpse of him as a young man, painfully sensitive and unsure, accepting his family’s assessment of himself and dutifully starting on a career which would cripple his spirit. Later, he had paid them back by marrying my mother.

  ‘My father was a Victorian, too,’ Miss Maud was saying as though this explained everything. ‘When my mother died it was assumed that I would look after him and my sister. I was very attractive and a lot of men wanted to marry me, but I turned them away. My sister was an invalid and I knew that I couldn’t leave her alone with him. There were times when I thought of killing him; but one doesn’t do that sort of thing.’

  Neither Stewart nor I knew quite how to take the remark. She sensed our uneasiness and said, ‘Well, why not? It would have been very sensible. He didn’t enjoy his life, but I should have enjoyed mine much more. I should have had this house and his money would have come to me at
a time when I could have profited by it; I could have married, or if that didn’t appeal to me, I could have had as many men as I wanted.’

  ‘People in the village used to say how well you looked after your father, Miss Maud,’ Stewart said, trying gently to restore normality to the conversation.

  ‘The doctor told him he mustn’t eat so much because it was bad for his heart. But he liked good food and I saw no reason why he shouldn’t have it. I suppose you might say I fed him to death.’ Stewart smiled, but I thought she meant exactly what she said. She picked up the silver dish. ‘Another piece of this delicious cake?’ It was a theatrical cliché and indicated how much she was enjoying herself. Stewart, resolutely determined to treat the matter as a joke, accepted a second piece of cake.

  It was far from a joke. Miss Maud had grown up in this house with a brother and two sisters. I had longed for brothers and sisters and had been disappointed when my parents only provided dolls. But listening to Miss Maud, and looking at this room, I found no hint of remembered happiness. The secrets of this house were dark ones. Stewart was maintaining a conversation of precarious normality about flower borders, but I was afraid that this could not last. Miss Maud would not stay long with hollyhocks and lupins.

  Somewhere at the rear of the house a door opened. Miss Maud half-turned her head to listen. Footsteps sounded in the corridor. I was unreasonably apprehensive. I have no idea whom I expected to see when the door opened, but it was not Dr. Laver. He came into the room cradling a large tabby cat in his arms. When he saw us he said, ‘I came to buy eggs.’

  Miss Maud introduced him to Stewart and they attempted to shake hands; the cat scratched Stewart. It was a deep scratch and bled profusely. Miss Maud hurried out of the room. Dr. Laver, still cradling the cat, said, ‘No need to be disturbed; by the look of that blood you are not in the least anaemic.’ He did not acknowledge my presence and I was glad of that, although afterwards I thought it strange. He tickled the cat behind the ear and said what splendidly independent creatures cats were, not like dogs who were forever trying to ingratiate themselves with humans. The cat purred like a dynamo all the while gazing hostilely at Stewart. Miss Maud returned with a grey-looking roll of bandage. Stewart, who had been prepared to risk the chocolate cake, was having none of the bandage. Dr. Laver unhooked the cat from his jacket and, saying something about cold water, led Stewart away.