Going Away and Other Stories Page 9

  ‘Roland, at last!’ my sister greeted me, opening the front door and letting out a blast of hot air into the cold night. She was much altered. She had let her greying hair grow and was wearing an odd-looking smock over a pair of black trousers which had sequins sewn down the side of each leg.

  ‘It’s all right, we haven’t started eating. We want to spin it out until the New Year. But we’ve had plenty to drink. Come and have some mulled wine.’

  I should explain that my sister and I are totally different. Everybody tells me that I’m reserved and fastidious, whereas she is like an enthusiastic Labrador! They were all seated around an enormous fire in the living room. My brother-in-law, Edwin, was clad in a shaggy sweater with corduroy trousers and sandals – a change from the banker’s suit or sports coat and flannels at the weekend! The three late-teenage children were looking like, well, all teenage children, in jeans and strange tops. They grinned at me in unison. And then there was a girl with bright red hair and a pink face. The pinkness of the face I deduced was from her sitting too near the roaring fire. I assumed she must be my nephew’s girlfriend. But then my sister was waving in her direction and saying, ‘This is our neighbour, Rosamund. She’s an artist.’

  Rosamund smiled at me shyly and lowered her eyes. I glanced at her briefly while she did so. Not bad looking! Rather short and perhaps dumpy, but it was difficult to tell as she was wearing a tent-like green velvet dress.

  ‘Give him a glass, Edwin. No, perhaps you’d like to go upstairs and wash? It’s very cold upstairs I’m afraid. We haven’t much heating yet – hence the big fire. Your room is on the right.’

  As I went upstairs with my case and the cold hit me I thought that although Margot’s clothing might be different, she hadn’t changed in character – still bossy and trying to get me to do two things at once! How was she managing in this house with no heat? The semi-detached in Ealing had always been far too warm for my taste and almost claustrophobically tidy. Mid-life crisis for both of them, maybe?

  Having deposited my case in my room and had a quick wash, as instructed by Margot, I carried downstairs the various Christmas presents I had brought with me in my suitcase – of necessity small and light. But they seemed to be appreciated. Margot appeared to have gone arty with her food too, because the meal consisted of a huge rabbit stew with vegetables, followed by ‘some of our local cheeses’. I recalled how on similar occasions in Ealing it would have been smoked salmon followed by roast pheasant. My nephew and two nieces, all of whom were studying at various universities or colleges, kept winking at one another during the meal. When I enquired if they liked the new place, the eldest, Robert, replied that it was great but they wouldn’t be here much.

  Rosamund said practically nothing.

  After supper, Margot organised us in a very silly game called ‘Consequences’ and then at midnight we all had to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ by the Christmas tree. Then, ‘Come on you lot, clearing up and washing up. I don’t want to see all these dirty dishes when I come down in the morning! Roland, would you please see Rosamund home. She’s afraid of the dark. It’s only two hundred yards away up the lane. I’ll give you a torch.’

  So, clad in our overcoats, Rosamund and I stepped out into the cold blackness of a moonless country night. I shone the torch.

  ‘Which way?’ I asked her.

  ‘Down the path and then turn right.’

  She clutched my arm. I don’t like physical contact and the two hundred yards uphill seemed like a mile. An owl hooted, causing her to gasp and to cling to me even more tightly. And then my torch picked out the eyes of a rabbit in the lane, at which she screamed. It did occur to me that if she was really so afraid of the dark it was a pity she didn’t live in a place with street lighting!

  Eventually we reached her front door.

  ‘Please come in while I turn on some lights.’

  It was a pretty little cottage, very untidy, with an easel, paints and canvases at one end of the large downstairs room. There were other canvases around the walls.

  ‘Would you like to have a look at some of my work?’

  As it was nearly one o’clock and well past my usual bedtime I replied, ‘That would be lovely, but perhaps tomorrow morning – the light would be better!’

  She seemed very disappointed and pouted.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll call round for you.’

  And there she was at breakfast the next morning in a smock just like Margot’s. I’d spent a wretched night in a freezing cold bedroom trying to get warm and go to sleep and I was not in the best of tempers.

  ‘Have a cup of coffee, Rosie,’ said Margot. ‘Roland will come round with you as soon as he’s finished his breakfast, won’t you Roland?’

  It made me cross that I was being pushed around again. After breakfast I wanted to clean my teeth and say my prayers, as was my custom. But I’d always found it easier in the long run to give way to my sister. So, after consuming a bowl of porridge and a cup of coffee, I found myself reluctantly walking, more sedately this time and several feet apart, beside Rosamund up the lane. I could hear the sea in the distance and there’d been an early morning frost which was only just disappearing. Everything looked rather nice, I thought.

  ‘A new year and a new start. That’s what I always say,’ said Rosamund. ‘I’ve tidied up a bit since I knew you were coming.’

  And indeed the clutter of last night had all been cleared away.

  ‘Goodness,’ I thought, ‘she must have been up early!’

  ‘You know I’m not an expert,’ I said.

  ‘But your sister said you were very keen and that you went to a lot of exhibitions.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  I gazed around the room. The walls were now covered with canvases and there were more propped up by the skirting board. They seemed largely abstract, with a recurrent theme of a house surrounded by green sea. I was not very taken with them, but one has to be polite and make intelligent comments.

  ‘Very nice,’ I said, ‘but personally . . . for me . . . too abstract. Have you not thought of being a little bit more representational? I don’t know what it’s called – “abstract expressionism” maybe?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ She pouted again. She was really rather pretty when she pouted. ‘You may be right,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve only been out of art school for a year, you see, and I’m still feeling my way.’

  ‘Do you exhibit frequently?’ I asked.

  ‘Only at the local gallery. Nothing in London or anything like that.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ I said half an hour later, after I had examined every picture.

  I’d found the atmosphere in Rosie’s cottage rather intense and I was glad to get back to my sister and her family. My nephew, Robert, was splitting logs and the two girls, Betty and Jo, were stacking them, all of them, of course, under my sister’s watchful supervision.

  ‘Have to keep them at it before the holidays are over. We’d freeze without a big fire alight all the time. Edwin’s got plans to put an Aga in the kitchen and run central heating from it, but I don’t suppose he’ll get round to it, he’s so busy with his pottery.’

  And Edwin did indeed seem obsessed with his new venture. He hardly ever left his pottery, which was in the garden, except to eat and sleep. I was entertained largely by Margot, who took me for long walks around the harbour and along the beach and cliffs. It was a nice old town, built more or less on the side of a cliff, and the walking was very steep. My knees ached terribly at the end of our walks.

  ‘I’m glad you like our new home and way of life, Roland!’ she said as I left (though I hadn’t in fact commented on either). ‘Come down to see us again at Easter, won’t you? The courts don’t sit then, do they? And I hope by then Edwin will be ready to show you his work. I’m sorry he’s been so secretive about it at the moment.’

  And so I went back to my way of life as a barrister, with my flat in the Temple and my chambers across the other side of Fleet Stre
et in Lincoln’s Inn.

  Easter was late that year and it was thankfully quite pleasantly warm when I re-entered my sister’s house. She seemed very pleased to see me. She explained that she’d not made any close friends, apart from Rosie. The children were apparently not coming home for the Easter holidays. They were off on some expedition or other. But Edwin, I gathered, was very happy. His pottery was going very well.

  ‘He’s nearly got a contract with a shop in London,’ Margot whispered. ‘He’ll be very happy to show you his stuff now. He was a bit doubtful about it before, you see. And of course Rosie’s longing to see you again. She says your suggestions about her paintings have changed her life . . . in fact, I think she’s taken a great fancy to you!’

  Oh dear! I thought.

  And indeed, within an hour of my arrival, Rosamund had called. She seemed to have had a character change. She bounced through the front door shouting, ‘Cuckoo!’ Her long red hair had been pinned up in two coils, one over each ear, and she was wearing a smart pair of jeans and a jumper.

  ‘Roland, you must please, please come and see what I’ve been doing. You’ve changed my life . . . It’s wonderful! . . . Come on!!’

  As we went out of the front door Margot gave me an exaggerated wink.

  I don’t know what I was expecting, but the change was remarkable. This, I thought, was really very good stuff. One can’t explain really good art or properly describe it, but, as I had suggested, she had moved to a much less abstract style and the effects she had created were, I thought, excellent. I was rather at a loss for words. There were only about a dozen new works and these were on the wall. The old stuff had presumably been cleared away to some upstairs room.

  ‘Well, come on, Roland, what do you think?’

  ‘It’s wonderful!’ I said. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘There, I knew you would like it! You might even buy one, I suspect, for your little flat where you live all alone, Margot tells me.’

  ‘Yes, I might I think, provided they’re not too dear!’

  ‘But first,’ she said, ‘I want you to look round the gardens of a house near here. They’re open today and they’re lovely. I’ve borrowed a friend’s car for the afternoon as I knew you came by train.’

  ‘Yes, I don’t drive,’ I said.

  She looked at me oddly. ‘Not at all?’

  ‘No. I never learnt.’

  The gardens were exceptionally beautiful and it was a good time to look round them because the owners had somehow managed to have the daffodils, the pansies, the aubrietia, the wallflowers and the beds of tulips all in flower at the same time. The house was set up high on a hill a little inland from the sea and there were some wonderful views. Rosamund (she had indicated very firmly to me that she did not like being called ‘Rosie’) became very excited. There was a shrubbery, and she led me down strange evergreen paths waving her arms in the air and saying, ‘This is lovely! This is lovely!’ She was leading me through a particularly dense mass of foliage when suddenly she stopped. ‘The smell!’ she said. ‘What is it? It’s delicious. Where is it coming from? It must be from one of these shrubs.’ She dashed around sniffing. ‘Just here. Stand here, Roland. Do you get it?’

  Suddenly I smelt it. It was remarkably fragrant and sweet, but try as we might we could not find where it was coming from.

  ‘I could die for that perfume, Roland.’ She clutched my arm and buried her head against my chest, to my great embarrassment, and started breathing deeply. I could feel her breasts moving up and down against my body, which I really did not like. Then, slowly at first, she started to shake all over. Then her knees gave way and she slid down against my body and lay writhing on the ground in what appeared to be some sort of fit. I was horrified. I am hopeless when people are ill. I just feel sick and want to run away. But I remember being told once that you should put a pencil between an epileptic’s teeth to stop them swallowing their tongue. I hadn’t a pencil, but I reached for my fountain pen which was in my jacket pocket and slid it into her mouth. Her face, which had been ecstatic a few moments before, looked hideous. It was white and puffy and her eyeballs had rolled upwards. I realised I had to get help, so I ran to the house.

  After what seemed like an hour, but was probably only seven or eight minutes, an ambulance came and I directed the men to where Rosamund lay. She seemed a little better. She opened her eyes and smiled but she was still shaking slightly. The men put her on a stretcher and I followed them back to the ambulance, asking them where they were taking her.

  ‘A & E, mate,’ was all I could get from them.

  The ambulance drove off and then I realised that I was stranded! I don’t carry a mobile phone and I hadn’t even got a note of Margot’s phone number with me. So I had to go to the tea room in the house and ask to use the phone and ring up directory enquiries to get her number and then phone her. She was appalled to hear what had happened and furious with me for not going with Rosamund in the ambulance.

  ‘But I wasn’t invited!’ was all I could say.

  When she’d calmed down, she said she’d come and pick me up and we’d both go to the local A & E Department, which was only five minutes away. I then raised the question of what was to happen to the car that Rosamund had borrowed and brought us in.

  ‘For God’s sake!!’ was the only reply I got.

  By the time we arrived at the hospital we were told that Ms Ehel (for that was Rosamund’s name) was much better. They proposed to keep her in overnight for observation, but they would discharge her in the morning. Margot, who had been a nurse before she married, said she would pick her up and look after her.

  I was sure that Rosamund had had an epileptic fit, but the following morning the hospital discharged her without comment and Margot insisted to me that it was ‘just the time of the month’ and that she’d probably been painting for too many hours at a stretch.

  Margot loved being completely in charge of someone. She installed Rosamund in the bedroom next to mine and fed her hot Bovril and lightly boiled eggs. I was told to keep out of the way until the second morning, when I was told that Rosamund wanted to speak to me.

  Margot stood to one side as I asked from the doorway, ‘Are you feeling better?’

  Rosamund held out her hand towards me and I gathered I was expected to go and hold it.

  ‘The last thing I remember – and I shall always remember it – was you and me standing in the middle of that wonderful smell!’

  ‘What was this?’ said Margot sharply.

  Rosamund continued, ignoring her, ‘You’re going to take me there again before it disappears. I want to stand there with you and enjoy it. Margot, would you take us this afternoon to the gardens?’

  Margot of course would not hear of it.

  ‘Ridiculous,’ she said.

  Rosamund pouted and then cried.

  ‘Where is this place and what is this smell? Is it far from here?’ snapped Margot.

  ‘It’s in the gardens,’ I said. ‘But Rosamund, do you really think you’re better enough to be able to go?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. Look, it was so strange and fugitive. If we wait even a day it may have gone for ever.’

  ‘Now, Rosie,’ said Margot in her best nurse’s voice, ‘just you listen to me. Roland, you’d better go to your room while I talk to her!’

  I sighed inwardly and retired. I knew that when Margot was in this sort of mood there was no point in arguing. I didn’t want to go back to the gardens myself. Something awful might happen again. I could hear the muffled sound of raised voices and crying from the next room. Eventually, after about five minutes, it died down and a few moments later there was a knock on my door. Margot appeared and said, ‘I’ve agreed to take you both this afternoon provided you only stay for ten minutes.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not surprised you don’t sound very enthusiastic. It’s crazy if you ask me. But Rosie’s become my best friend and she’s in a terrible state and I suppose I must try and appease
her.’

  And so we all drove in Margot and Edwin’s Jaguar (a relic from their Ealing days) up to the house and gardens immediately after lunch.

  ‘You wait here please, Margot. I must go to this place alone with Roland.’

  Margot raised her eyebrows and breathed heavily. ‘Now you promise only to be away ten minutes. I’ll be timing you. And Roland, you just look after her!’

  So Rosamund and I set out for the shrubbery again. I glanced at her face and thought she looked very pale. She hadn’t bothered to coil her hair and it was lying loosely on her shoulders. As we entered the shrubbery she said in a whisper, ‘I’ll go ahead. I’m glad there’s no one else about. I wouldn’t want to share it with anyone else. I think it was about here.’

  She started sniffing the air.

  I looked at her as she tiptoed in front of me. A strange little creature with wide shoulders and broad hips and chubby arms which were covered, like her face, in freckles.

  ‘Just here, I think.’

  She turned and took my hand and shut her eyes and breathed deeply.

  ‘It’s coming!’ she whispered. ‘There it is. Just a bit to the left.’

  And there indeed was the same smell.

  ‘Roland, please hold both my hands and face me.’

  I complied awkwardly, feeling very foolish, and deeply regretted that I’d agreed to come.

  ‘Roland, you’ve changed my life. I love you and we must get married.’

  And then she literally hurled herself at me and flung her arms around me. Fortunately she was so short she couldn’t reach my face otherwise I’m sure she would have kissed me. Even as it was I found it extremely unpleasant. Images of pushing my mother away when I was small when she tried to cuddle me and that awful girl at the college dance and, even worse, of Adam, my friend at university, pushing himself against me as I was bending over to tie my shoelace! I tried gently at first to push her away. It was no use. She clung to me desperately. She looked upwards from my shirt front and moaned, ‘Kiss me, kiss me please, Roland. I can’t bear this much longer!’