That Was Then Read online

  I was prevented from taking her up on this by the arrival of my glass of wine. When Ben had placed the glass in my hand he laid his hand on my shoulder and exerted a slight, meaningful pressure. He had always been an affectionate son, far more demonstrative than his older sister, but this second touch convinced me that there was another agenda here, a message struggling to find a medium.

  He sat down, in the other chair this time, and Sophie hitched herself backwards so that her back rested against his leg. He stroked her hair, and rubbed the side of her face with his finger in a way which warmed my heart. Let them have their fun, I thought, let them have it all and to the full, and not worry about the future. I felt calm and beneficent, set apart from the schemings of Sabine, and even the good-natured speculations of Ronnie. Beyond the prom the sea, at low tide, twinkled lazily in the early evening sun, and a couple walked along the shingle, the man with a toddler on his shoulders.

  ‘I called in on Ronnie Chatsworth on the way home,’ I said. ‘She’s fully recovered now.’

  ‘I didn’t know she’d been ill,’ said Ben. In the far off world of the olds someone had literally to die before he realised anything was amiss.

  ‘No reason why you should, really. Philip’s in Turkey, she said.’

  ‘Yeah? Nursing a broken heart, is he? Gone away to forget?’ They both cracked a smile.

  ‘I really couldn’t say, why?’

  ‘He fancied me.’ said Sophie. ‘But it was not to be.’

  ‘Of course …’ I remembered the party, Philip’s swift moving in, and Sophie’s subsequent change of direction. It was wholly improper of me, but I was delighted. Faint shouts from down below didn’t register with me until Ben said:

  ‘I take it you know those people.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘They seem to know you.’

  It was the couple with the toddler, now back up on the prom and recognisable as Desma and Rick.

  ‘Hi!’ I shouted expansively, ‘do you want to come up for a drink?’

  ‘Are you sure?’ called Desma. ‘We’re with child.’

  ‘I know – lovely – I’ve got some Ribena.’

  ‘OK, you twisted our arm.’

  They began to cross the road and Ben and Sophie got up.

  ‘There’s no need to go,’ I said. ‘They’re awfully nice.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Sophie. ‘But we are going out anyway and I have to go home and change.’

  I saw them out and watched them go down the staircase, encountering the Shaws coming the other way. There was a brief exchange – laughter, Sophie being charming, Bryony’s piping petitions – and then they were gone and Desma lifted her face and spotted me.

  ‘God, Eve, when are you going to get something with a lift?’

  I laughed, I was pleased to see them, but unfinished business hung tantalisingly in the air like the scent of a fascinating, unknown woman.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘I’m coming over for a meeting,’ said Mel. ‘End of next week. I’ll be down to see you on Sunday.’

  ‘Good – great!’ I said, with slightly more enthusiasm than I felt. My daughter was so crisp and commanding. In her family life as at work, she took no prisoners. There was no question of my being asked, I was placed firmly in an opt-out situation. If I absolutely could not manage to have her to stay, I would have to say so – otherwise I would have to make shift.

  ‘What are you doing on Saturday?’ I asked.

  ‘Going to the theatre with some pals in the evening. Having lunch with Dad and his new woman.’

  It was a shock, realising that she knew. ‘ Who told you?’

  ‘Dad wrote. He said he’d seen you, and how well you’d taken it considering. Did you take it well, or was that my father being diplomatic?’

  ‘I really don’t know. I took it, that’s all. I didn’t have much option.’

  ‘Have you met her?’

  ‘No!’ I said rather snappishly, and then modified my tone. ‘What on earth would be the point?’

  ‘None, granted. But since you and Dad have remained such chums I rule nothing out.’

  ‘Well, I have.’

  ‘I’ll give you a detailed report, Mother,’ said Mel. ‘Never fear.’

  I told myself that details were the last thing I needed, but of course I was eaten up with curiosity. From about eleven a.m. on Saturday I kept picturing Mel, and Ian, and Julia Kendal. Sometimes they were in a smart restaurant, sometimes in a pub, sometimes in a discreet hotel. Depending on the setting Julia was a vamp in a tight black suit and vermilion lipstick, attractively casual in faded denim, or all country elegance with pearls. Whatever her get-up the three of them were having a wonderful time, talking up a storm and breaking into great bursts of warm, spontaneous laughter. Mel was more relaxed than I’d ever seen her—

  ‘Fore!’ yelled Ronnie as her topspin serve kicked up off the line and hummed past my right ear.

  ‘Sorry!’

  ‘I take it you weren’t ready?’

  ‘Of course she wasn’t ready!’ shouted Desma, who had the misfortune to partner me on this, the morning when my concentration was at an all-time low.

  ‘I’ll take two.’ Ronnie sportingly heeled up another ball. Even out of practice she could afford to be generous. ‘OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. She served and the same thing happened, except that this time I took a wild swing, the ball just nicked the frame, and sailed high over the wire netting.

  ‘Ace!’ cried Sabine. ‘Great serve.’

  It had been, but I’d dealt more efficiently with greater. I mumbled an apology to Desma, who told me to think nothing of it. The score stood at forty-thirty. Desma returned the next serve towards the tramlines, generally a good move with Sabine, whose forehand volley was a weakness, but on this occasion she saw it like a football and smacked it back at my feet. The game, and the set, was lost, and it was undoubtedly I who had lost it.

  We shook hands at the net and I apologised again to Desma who patted me forgivingly on the shoulder.

  ‘No worries old thing, it happens to the best of us.’

  ‘We mustn’t patronise you,’ said Sabine, radiating the victor’s magnanimous glow. ‘ You were having a nightmare, Eve, you let us off very lightly this morning.’

  I bared my teeth in acknowledgement. Ronnie headed to the bench and began zipping up her racquet.

  ‘Sorry, I’ll have to pass on lunch today – packing to do.’

  ‘Have a terrific time,’ said Desma. ‘Will you be playing any tennis?’

  ‘Au contraire,’ replied Ronnie, ‘I shall be sitting about on my backside researching the local gastronomy and viticulture. Cheerio mes braves.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ I said as we walked along the prom to the Cutter Bar. ‘If she spent her holiday honing her game I’d be obliged to drop out.’

  ‘Though I have to say,’ put in Sabine, ‘that she may be expecting too much of the food and wine in that particular area.’

  ‘She was playing well,’ conceded Desma, ‘but we made it easy for them, is anything wrong?’

  I told her while Sabine vamped Clay at the bar.

  ‘Don’t torture yourself,’ was Desma’s advice. ‘Why should you care? Ian is your ex-husband—’

  ‘We’re not actually—’

  ‘Divorced? Then maybe it’s time you were. I mean to put it brutally you don’t want him back, so let him go.’

  ‘That’s pretty much what Ronnie said.’

  ‘Good for Ronnie.’

  Sabine joined us with the drinks. ‘ Salut. Are we still on tennis or something juicier?’

  ‘Ian’s got a new woman in his life,’ I said, ‘and Mel’s meeting her –’ I glanced at my watch – ‘as we speak. I can’t stop thinking about it.’

  ‘Perfectly natural my dear,’ remarked Sabine, who was full of surprises these days. ‘ Get mad, then get over it.’

  ‘I will, of course I will,’ I mumbled doubtfully. Sabine gave me her most worldly
look.

  ‘Get someone yourself.’

  ‘Easier said than done.’

  ‘Well of course you have to be ready to do it,’ said Desma. ‘The light bulb has to really want to change. But maybe this is the moment.’

  ‘Actually it makes me feel less ready than ever.’

  ‘You are very change-averse, Eve,’ declared Sabine, taking delivery of the menu. ‘It is a female failing, and one to which you are especially prone.’

  I really couldn’t take all this wise-woman stuff from Sabine. ‘Steady on,’ I said, ‘ I got out of my marriage, didn’t I?’

  ‘Exactement!’ Sabine gloried in having proved her point. ‘You got out of it – now walk away from it.’

  ‘But not on an empty stomach.’ Desma tweaked the menu away from Sabine and placed it in front of me. ‘Make-your-mind-up time.’

  They made it sound so easy. And they spoke only the truth. My torture was not only self-inflicted but irrational and immature. But knowing this made it no easier to bear. Julia of the Nursing Times haunted my attempts to clean the flat that afternoon, and even a background of Ute Lemper seeing to Kurt Weill could not drown out that imagined warm conversation, that infernally carefree laughter.…

  In the end I conceded defeat, and telephoned Whitegates. Mrs Rymer was in, they said, and not expecting visitors, so I told them to expect me. The key was still in my handbag.

  I realised I was quite unprepared for what I might find. Mrs Rymer might be in her dotage and completely gaga, or a tyrannical old boiler, which in either case would bode ill for my intrusion. But I badly needed a diversion and this afternoon she was it.

  The matron, immaculately coiffed à la Thatcher and dressed in a striped silk frock, greeted me effusively.

  ‘Mrs Piercy, how lovely to meet you. Mrs Rymer’s going to be so pleased, her family are all away at the moment.’

  ‘How is she?’ I asked. ‘ I mean, she doesn’t know me from Adam, and she might be a bit startled.’

  ‘Mrs Rymer? No.’ Matron gave me a roguish look. ‘It would take a lot more than a strange visitor to startle her.’

  She took me out into the garden, where residents were parked here and there under parasols or beneath a shady tree. There were three little groups, and one on her own – Mrs Rymer, who was reading The Times with the aid of a magnifying glass.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Matron. ‘We told her you were coming.’

  The moment I’d introduced myself I realised how ageist had been my assumptions about the woman I was visiting. For a start, she was handsome in that way which can only improve with the years – I suspected that the tall, awkward goose of seventy-odd years ago had become this wonderful eagle of a woman through a life lived to the full. The Roman nose, sweeping brows, broad mouth and strong jaw which must have been hell at seventeen were at their most striking now. Looking into her fiercely intelligent grey eyes, feeling the strength of her handshake, and hearing the steady resonance of her voice I knew that this was first and foremost and most emphatically an individual whom age stood no chance of wearying and the years had condemned to nothing more than an increase of natural authority.

  ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ I said, indicating the newspaper on her lap.

  ‘I live to be disturbed, Mrs Piercy,’ she replied. ‘What can I do for you?’

  That put me in my place. She was civil and attentive, but I was doing her no favours: I was the petitioner.

  ‘When we were checking the drawers in your bureau, we found a key,’ I explained. ‘It didn’t fit any of the pieces we have, so I thought you might like it back.’

  ‘Let me see.’ She held out a hand as big as a man’s. I laid the key in her palm and she picked up the magnifying glass and examined it. She wore glasses, and her hair – thick, wavy and dark, barely streaked with iron grey – was cut short and brushed back off her face.

  ‘No,’ she said shortly, handing me back the key. ‘No idea. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s yours, though, don’t you want to keep it – just in case?’

  This made her laugh. ‘ I don’t think so! I have very few things here, and none of them lock.’

  ‘Very well, if you’re sure …’ I put the key back in my handbag. ‘We’ll double check that it doesn’t fit anything at Bouvier’s.’

  ‘Then throw it in the sea. Make a wish. Do something symbolic,’ she suggested.

  Now it was my turn to laugh. She understood how I felt about the key.

  ‘I probably will,’ I said.

  ‘Sit down.’ She felt behind her for a cushion and tossed it down on the grass. I noticed that her long legs were bandaged from knee to ankle. ‘Sorry to disappoint.’

  ‘There’s something about keys, isn’t there.’

  ‘Deep dungeons, tall towers, sealed caskets – fairy tales, yes.’ She glanced at her watch – a large, practical timepiece with bold Roman numerals as a concession to her failing eyesight. ‘Would you like some tea?’

  I made a quick assessment of the distance from here to the house, the state of her legs, the time of day.

  ‘Oh, no thank you, I’m really not—’

  ‘I can whistle it up.’ She produced, like a conjurer, a mobile phone from the side of the chair. ‘I have the technology.’

  ‘OK then, if you’re sure. I’d love one.’

  With great deliberation, holding the phone close to her face, she pressed several digits. As she waited for an answer she bestowed on me a broad, straight-faced wink.

  ‘Ah – is that Arlette? Arlette it’s Mrs Rymer – fine thank you. Look I’m out to grass this afternoon and my visitor and I would simply love a pot of your best – are you sure? Thank you so much. Good-bye.’

  She switched off the phone with a flourish. ‘My legs are such a damn nuisance these days, I’ve realised if you don’t ask, you don’t get. And most of the girls here are perfectly fine if treated nicely. So – tea is on its way.’

  ‘You seem to have the system sussed – sorted out.’

  ‘I do have it sussed. You have to. I’m thinking of starting a gambling school.’ She was perfectly serious. ‘Do you play cards at all?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I have friends who are tigers at bridge, but I stopped at happy families.’

  The strangeness of what I’d just said struck me, and she must have noticed, because she said: ‘You’re lucky to have got that far, my dear! So you work at Bouvier’s – do you think my odds and sods will fetch much?’

  ‘They’re very desirable pieces, actually. We expect them to do well.’

  ‘You make them sound like bright young graduates going out into the world, instead of a few fusty bits of furniture.’

  ‘You don’t miss them?’

  ‘It’s only clutter,’ she said, ‘ only things. I miss having a home of my own, but the bungalow was no great shakes and I couldn’t manage on my own any more so I’m better off here. And look at all this –’ she waved a hand at the garden – ‘it really would be churlish to complain …’ She took in her surroundings appreciatively for a moment. ‘And when you’re not working at Bouvier’s, what do you do?’

  Confronted with such a question I suddenly felt extraordinarily dull, and defensive about my tidy flat, my single state, my ordered womanly life.

  ‘I play a lot of tennis,’ I told her. ‘I was playing this morning, but I seemed to be having an off day.’

  ‘Singles?’

  ‘Doubles.’

  ‘I used to play a lot,’ she said, ‘with my gentleman friend between the wars.’

  She put a subtle, ironic spin on the phrase ‘gentleman friend’ so that instead of sounding archaic it implied a host of decadent possibilities. I realised I’d been handed my opening on a plate. Perhaps the key had worked after all.

  ‘You partnered each other?’ I asked.

  ‘In very many senses we did. But on the court we played singles, to the death.’

  I was impressed. ‘Did you beat him?’

  ‘Someti
mes. But he was a very, very good player. Later on when I played club tennis with my husband we won no end of cups and it was really all down to Gerry.’ She caught my look. ‘ His name was Gerhardt. Not very helpful when hostilities broke out, as you may imagine. Now then tell me, what does your husband do?’

  ‘He’s in information technology. But we’re separated.’

  She made no comment other than to muse. ‘As a great many of us are, for one reason or another. Do you have a family?’

  ‘A son and a daughter – both grown up.’

  ‘You’ve met my son?’

  ‘No, only your daughter-in-law, she was at your house the first time I went.’

  ‘She’s a very nice woman,’ said Mrs Rymer, ‘extraordinarily energetic, and I’m lucky to have her. I always feel I want to say to her, Jane, calm down, don’t get into a flat spin, the sky won’t fall if you draw breath for ten seconds.’

  ‘There’s a lot of pressure these days to be busy.’

  Mrs Rymer ignored this. ‘ She must be about your age. Perhaps a bit older, or doesn’t look after herself so well. At any rate she’s running herself into the ground … Now she ought to separate.’

  My astonishment at this opinion in a mother-in-law was thankfully covered by the arrival of the tea. It was on one of those trays with legs, which Arlette set up on the grass.

  ‘Thank you Arlette,’ said Mrs Rymer, and then to me: ‘ You pour, or we’ll be all night.’

  ‘My son reckons his children are monsters,’ she continued, ‘which I think is an awful pity. They seem perfectly normal to me by the standards of the day, and since they’re both over twenty-one now he should stop feeling embarrassed by them. What are your two like?’

  I summed up Mel and Ben as succinctly as I could.

  ‘So your daughter is going to be a captain of industry and your son is in training to be a rich woman’s plaything,’ summarised my hostess breezily.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘And they have lovers?’

  I was beginning to adjust to Mrs Rymer’s conversational style, but even so this was a facer, coming from an elderly party whom I scarcely knew.

  ‘My son definitely does, my daughter keeps her own counsel.’