Alfred Baxter, settled physically in his small bright flat overlooking the promenade of a seaside town along the coast from the old shop, was, as he put it to himself, out of sorts.
To begin with, all had been well. There had been so much to organize: moving, unpacking, painting the two small rooms, putting up Eileen’s curtains and finding a place for all the clutter he could not bear to throw away, that his mind and time had been kept fully occupied. But at the end of six weeks there was nothing further to do. The place was in as much order as it ever would be: the pictures up, the old wedding photographs in their oval frames arranged along the fireplace, the bars of soap and tins of dried milk to last his lifetime (left over from the shop) stored away, suits all cleaned and checked for loose buttons before being squashed into the small bedroom cupboard. Now, time hung heavy about him.
The hours were hard to fill, the days surprisingly sluggish. In the past, a busy morning behind the counter would pass with amazing speed, and no sooner had he finished his lunch than Eileen’s delicious high tea was upon him, the hours between having flown by while he checked stock, sharpened his cutting scissors and polished the mahogany drawers between serving customers. But in the last few idle days in his seaside flat, Alfred had learned the sharp lesson of the hours that all those who live alone must become acquainted with. For the first time in his life he was aware of the precise difference between ten o’clock — a chilly time when the whole morning lies bleakly ahead — and eleven o’clock, which brings with it a little more warmth if only because preparation of lunch, a sparse midday meal, is not far away. He learned about the pangs of mid-afternoon, the zero hour of three o’clock when all those fortunate enough to be employed are about their business, and all those with no well-defined occupation are drained of ideas as to how to pass the afternoon before the merciful relief of early evening television. He learned how approaching night can loom like a great black mountain, to be climbed alone. When Eileen was alive, bedtime was always a happy ritual: the damping down of the small wood fire, the checking of the back door while Eileen made two mugs of cocoa, the climb of the steep stairs to their small bedroom under the eaves, skilfully balancing the mugs on a tin tray. And finally, the quiet pleasure of a hot drink, propped comfortably against their pillows, before Eileen read a few verses from the Bible and put out the light. Tired out by their busy day, they both slept instantly. They took sleep for granted.
It was only now that Alfred Baxter realized how fortunate he had been all those years. A considerable worry on his mind was the fact that Eileen’s Bible had disappeared in the move. For it was the nightly verses, he began to believe, that had induced their good sleep. He searched for the Bible everywhere, and eventually, despairing, gave up. Buying a new one was an idea soon discarded; it would not be the same. He was forced to face the truth to himself: should he not find the Bible, easy sleep would never come again.
In the days of his marriage to Eileen, on the rare occasions there was time to imagine their retirement (which naturally Alfred had never envisaged would be spent on his own), they had painted for themselves some pretty pictures. They would spend much time cultivating a small garden, both vegetables and flowers, and while Eileen made herself useful in whatever way she could in the village, Alfred would at last take up his old ambition of becoming a bowls player. For years he had dreamed of treading the emerald turf of the green, smooth and shining ball in hand, white flannels scarcely creasing as he bent to cast his accurate eye on the target … Then the splatter of applause, that muted English sound of spectators on a summer’s day — he had heard it so many times in his mind’s ear. Retired, he would also listen to the music of brass bands on a fine new record player, and buy himself a bumper book of crossword puzzles, and perhaps invest in a couple of Khaki Campbell ducks. In spring and summer he and Eileen would travel to some of the places they had always meant to see: not to anywhere fancy, abroad, but short trips in their immaculate Austin 30 to the cathedral cities of England and unexplored beaches on their own east coast. Thus they would fill their years before death most agreeably. And each was convinced that as soon as one died the other would follow very quickly.
In reality, such pictures were smashed beyond all repair. For a start, despite the adequate radiators and a cheerful sun that shone through the south-facing windows, Alfred felt permanently chilly. He never remembered feeling cold when Eileen was alive and this particular, unreasonable chill — which often caused him to tremble quite violently, and would not disappear even after a hot bath — depressed him. It seemed to drain him of energy. Purpose, he realized, is warming, and he had no real purpose now. But he did try. He established some kind of routine to divide up the days — walk to the newsagent after breakfast, walk to the pub for a single pint at one o’clock, walk along the Front after tea. He even went to the Bowls Club, but then lacked the impetus to apply for membership. Without Eileen there to watch, there would be little point in his becoming a champion. He managed a crossword puzzle a day, and he acquired a taste for Afternoon Theatre on the radio, but still there were many hours in between. He received several letters from friends left behind in the village, urging him to come and visit them. But the car had been sold — Alfred had no desire for cathedrals without Eileen — and a dull apathy, caused by the permanent gooseflesh on his skin, meant the journey on rural buses was quite beyond his declining ability.
On a fine morning in late May he sat in his armchair at the window reading the local paper, which he had fetched at seven, having been awake since five. There was a warm smell of burnt toast and fried egg in the room. He had not had the heart to wash the breakfast things: procrastination, he noticed, was beginning to afflict him. Something he would have to fight.
Now, after a bad night, Alfred was feeling pleasantly sleepy. (Heavens above, what a time to feel sleepy, he thought. Mornings are for hard work. Have been all my life.) His eyes were closing over reports of local fetes and council meetings. Then a headline caught his attention. Models Washed up on Shore, it said. At once Alfred was quite awake. His heart began to thump violently. The chill on his skin fled, to be replaced by an uncomfortable sense of burning on cheeks and chest.
‘Oh no,’ he moaned out loud. ‘God, let my girls rest in peace.’
He read the paragraph several times. It seemed that earlier this week five ‘corpses’ had been sighted washed up on a nearby beach. The man who had seen them through his field glasses, fearing a major disaster, had alerted coast guard, police and ambulance before approaching them. Accompanied by two policemen and six ambulancemen bearing stretchers, the man had walked over the sands to the pathetic huddle of beached ladies. It was not until they were a few yards away from them they discovered the corpses were ‘models’, as the reporter called them. ‘One of them was wearing a straw hat trimmed with cherries,’ he wrote. (Trust the vain little minx Deborah to keep her hat on in a crisis, thought Alfred.) ‘Police and ambulancemen put on a show of very good humour in face of loss of precious time.’
There the story ended. No mention of what happened to the girls. Had they been callously flung back into the sea? Buried deep beneath the sand? Or flung on to a municipal tip?
The thought of an ignominious end, after all his efforts to speed them on their way with dignity, brought tears to Alfred’s eyes. In all his plans for their final picnic it had not occurred to him what might happen when the tide came in. He had not liked to picture a scene of floating bodies, pretty dresses adrift in the sea. Now he came to think of it he had had some unclear notion that a boat of merry sailors would pass by, join the girls in their revelries, and carry them off to a South Seas island to live happily ever after. But on reflection Alfred knew this piece of fanciful thinking was only to disguise the thought of the reality: and it had always been hard to put his finger on reality in the case of the girls.
He sat with the paper folded on his knee, mild sun fiery on flushed cheeks fretted with hot tears, feeling the weight of anguish roll from the edges of his body to some painful depth in its centre. He had let the girls down, after all. He had drowned them. Would to God in heaven that he had kept them with him, here, to share his retirement. Life might have been much better, then.
The day was a terrible struggle for Alfred. Every hour was haunted by visions of how the girls might have met their final end. Perhaps they had been chopped up, or melted down, their wigs donated as spare parts, their beautiful clothes washed and ironed for a jumble sale. As the ghastly imaginings crowded his mind, Alfred felt the burning of his skin die away and the old chill return. He sat by his window all day. He could not eat. In the evening he forced himself out for his stroll along the Front, but there the sight of the sea that had been so cruel to the girls filled him with further despair. Once he stopped at a telephone booth, determined to ring the newspaper and inquire what had happened to the ‘models’. (He could scarcely bring himself to mouth the word in his mind.) But it occurred to him his inquiries might lead to further publicity. They might even send a reporter round to write a mocking little story: that, he could not have tolerated.
Some time after midnight he went to bed, dreading the sleepless hours ahead, hungry, but still with no desire to eat. He could not face the darkness, so decided to read every single small advertisement in the paper. Perhaps that would do the trick, dull the turmoil of his wretched mind.
An hour later — Alfred was not a fast reader — he discovered he had read one particular advertisement several times over. ‘Take a grip on yourself, Mr Baxter,’ he said out loud, in imitation of Eileen on the rare occasions she was slightly cross with him, ‘and read it again.’
Wanted, it said, friendly competent caretaker I odd job man to live in wing of old rectory. Suitable someone who would find overgrown garden a challenge and who would like to help look after a much loved house that was once full of people.
A different ring, that advertisement has, thought Alfred to himself. A decidedly different ring. He lay back, closing his eyes, saying the words over to himself, letting their message seep into the chill of his body. If anyone in the world was suitable for such a job, surely it was he. To be able, so soon, to abandon this nasty little flat, to live in a village again, and above all to have something to do, to care for once more, would be a chance he would never have dared to imagine.
He did not like to think of the possibility too hard. But, cast in hope, the mind runs happy riot, and as dawn pressed through his window in his imagination Alfred found himself firmly established as caretaker of the rectory. Full of such bright new thoughts, his worries about the girls rested for the time being.
Three days later Alfred boarded a bus bound for the village of the old rectory. He wore his navy serge suit and his grey tie. He had had a haircut and polished his shoes. There was a clean white handkerchief in his breast pocket and a dab of Old Spice behind his left ear. Eileen would have been proud of him.
Since making the date for this interview — which Alfred had arranged early in the morning after his sleepless night — he had been blessed with a revival of energy, so that he found himself doing quite unnecessary things like ironing his underpants and sewing up the small tear in the lining of his jacket. He felt both anticipation and apprehension. Never before had he experienced an interview, having been a self-employed man all his life. But he knew quite well what a prospective employer found impressive in a prospective employee, and he spent many hours in his chair by the window working out what to say that would best convince Miss Windrush of his suitability for the job. He also wondered whether Miss Windrush might be any relation to a good customer of the same name who came to the shop years ago, sometimes with two small children.
Walking up the drive to the rectory — a fine old house, he immediately thought, but needs a bit of work on it — Alfred could hear the beating of his own heart. His nervousness amused him. At my age, he reflected. Ridiculous. But fear was reasonable enough. If he failed to get the job, then he would be forced back to the new life he hated. He did not like to dwell on such a prospect. God be with me, he said to himself, and rang the bell.
The door was answered by a young lady with a pale face and untidy hair. She wore a fisherman’s jersey that was far too large for her and cradled her arms under her breasts as if, for all the fineness of the morning, she was cold.
‘Miss Windrush?’
‘Mr Baxter! Come in.’
They shook hands. She smiled. The smile seemed vaguely familiar. He followed her along a darkish passage to the kitchen. It was a high-ceilinged old room that rambled at large towards its thick walls. Plainly it had received little attention for many years, and yet it had the air of being loved. There were faded patchwork cushions on the chairs, rows of pickled fruits and vegetables on the dresser, a crowd of potted sweet geraniums on the window ledge. The table, it seemed to Alfred, had been built for a giant. It could surely seat twenty, made from enormous slabs of solid pine. The high-backed chairs all round it spread their arms widely. The whole scene reminded Alfred of Jack and the Beanstalk, his first pantomime, in Lowestoft, when he was a child. The giant’s kitchen had impressed him with its enormous proportions — ten cups the size of teapots, a table a small man could walk under without bending his head. And here it was again, in real life. The image was further heightened when Miss Windrush sat in the huge chair at one end of the table. Curled up, legs beneath her, within it she looked tiny. Alfred chose the chair next to her. Viola dragged towards her a giant tea pot made of brown tin, and two enormous pottery cups. She poured. It was then Alfred remembered.
‘You’re not by any chance — excuse my asking … But could you be the daughter of a Mrs William Windrush? I had a very good customer in Mrs Windrush, years ago. We were Baxter’s, you see. Baxter’s, the drapers, though of course we ended up with many other lines.’
The light of recognition filled Viola’s face. She smiled again, delighted.
‘Mr Baxter of Baxter’s? Of course I remember you! I used to come in with my mother quite often. She used to buy all my dress materials from you, and all her sewing things. You were the only shop for a hundred miles, she said, that kept a supply of bone thimbles.’
‘We did, too.’
‘How extraordinary.’
Alfred smiled, touched his head.
‘My memory … but of course, I remember you as a child. I remember Eileen saying Miss Windrush had very definite opinions for one so young, when it came to ribbons and that.’
He smiled. Viola remembered him as a lean and upright man, always in a starched brown overall.
‘Eileen. She passed on some time ago. So I was forced to sell up and go into retirement. But I don’t like being retired. I’ve got a good few years of usefulness in me yet. Silly to waste them.’
Viola passed him his tea. They both drank, thinking of their meetings in the past, and of the changes in their appearances.
‘Both my parents are dead, too,’ said Viola at last. ‘And my brother Gideon — he used to come into the shop sometimes, remember? — he lives in America now. So it’s a struggle to keep the house on. But I don’t want to sell it if I can help it.’
‘A very natural feeling, Miss Windrush. No one in their right mind would want to sell a place like this.’
Viola’s hot strong tea had warmed Alfred right through, he was warm as he had not been for weeks. And extraordinarily at home. It was as though he had sat in this room for years. Already the ticking clock, the faded curtains, the framed engravings of snipe and teal on the copper-coloured walls were wonderfully familiar. He had not had such a happy morning since Eileen died.
‘Your mother, Mrs Windrush, was an exceptional lady,’ he said. ‘Such style, Eileen used to say. You could tell she was a great English lady before she ever opened her mouth. She was one of our most treasured customers.’
Alfred hoped this would not sound like flattery. For it was the truth. Mrs Windrush had had a presence, as Eileen called it, that was unforgettable. A calm and dignified presence although she always maintained her distance. Alfred respected that. He could not abide a gushing woman, but admired friendly reticence. A great English quality, he often thought.
Viola and Alfred reminisced for a while, listening to each other as one memory sparked off another. They mused over the coincidence of this meeting. They drank several pots of tea.
An hour went by and still Viola made no mention of the job. It occurred to Alfred, at last, that perhaps she would find broaching the subject difficult. So he decided to take matters into his own hands. Give her an idea of the sort of thing he would be willing and able to do for her.
Viola sat back gratefully listening while he outlined his plans. Alfred volunteered to be in charge of the garden, the fires, the rough work and polishing in the house (‘Nothing I like better than to kindle a polish on an old piece of furniture’). He would care for the place when she was away: see that the larder was well stocked when she came back. He would patch the roof, clean the gutters, stoke the boiler, do any decorating that needed to be done. Would that be the sort of thing she had in mind? And, in return, all he would require was the pleasure of occupying his wing, and a little pocket money, whatever she felt she could afford. He was not interested in money: he had enough put by for his needs, and his needs were minimal. If Miss Windrush would allow him to take the liberty, he would like to try raising a few bantams, and some Khaki Campbell ducks: something he had always wanted to do, and of course she would be welcome to unlimited eggs.
As he spoke, a look of relief began visibly to gleam in Viola’s face. A shaft of sunlight backlit her hair. There was a quality of goldness about her. Alfred Baxter found himself touched by her appearance of vulnerability. She seemed a somewhat helpless young thing — Alfred tried but failed to guess her age — although there was strength beneath her fragile appearance. With great passion, Alfred found himself wishing to help her: end his days in this house. Even as he spoke of the birds and the eggs he prayed to God that Viola would offer him the job. He did not often call upon his maker’s aid, though he had always intended to spend much of his retirement thanking Him for the blessings of his life, kneeling beside Eileen beneath the soaring roof of an English cathedral. But Eileen’s death and the sale of the car had forced him to abandon that form of thanks, and now Alfred felt acutely neglectful, and speedily prayed for forgiveness as well as for help.
He was rewarded. As Viola sat, hand on her chin, thoughtful, Alfred could see she had made up her mind.
‘Well,’ she said at last. ‘There doesn’t seem to be much doubt about it, does there? You are obviously the right man.’
Alfred made no effort to control his delight. He stood up, shook her hand, assured her of his undying service.
‘Unexpected blessings, Miss Windrush,’ he said, ‘are what can save a man.’
Viola saw his eyes were sparkling with tears. She hastily began to discuss practical matters concerning his instalment the following week. Then she showed him the wing, joined to the main house by a door from the kitchen. It consisted of two good rooms, a bathroom and small kitchen. They smelled of damp, and had not been painted for many years. But Alfred immediately saw their potential, and delighted in the thought of refurnishing them. Eileen’s cornflower curtains, he fancied, would fit the kitchen windows to perfection.
It was not until well past midday Alfred eventually braced himself to leave. At the front door he shook Viola warmly by the hand again, not trusting himself to speak of the pleasure of his anticipation. Viola, whose feelings were very similar, gave him a smile that was so like that of her poor dear mother that Alfred, ungrounded by looking both at the past and the future simultaneously, found himself weaving down the drive with the unsteady gait of a man incredulous of his good fortune.
It was almost fifteen years ago that Gideon had brought home Richard Almond from Oxford for the weekend. Viola, aged sixteen, was eating scones at the kitchen table and studying King Lear. Her concentration having been interrupted by the arrival of her brother and his friend, she pushed away both book and food and turned her attention upon them. In Gideon’s friends, though she barely admitted it to herself, she was constantly on the look-out for potential lovers, or at least loves, and in Richard Almond she at once recognized a possible candidate.
He was a tall, thin Irishman with fierce green eyes and wild black hair: a restless traveller, a compulsive reader, a man beset by small misadventures which he turned into hilarious anecdotes. He was reading Classics at Oxford, intending to go on to read medicine and ultimately become a neurosurgeon. Viola, noticing his immensely long and tapering fingers, judged they would be calm and skilful with a scalpel, in contrast to the sometimes irritable movements of the rest of his body.
In his first weekend at the house Richard Almond charmed the Windrush family, not least Viola. Unlike many other of Gideon’s friends, who regarded her merely as a younger sister, he helped her with The Wife of Bath, he took her sailing on Sunday morning while Gideon remained in bed with a hangover. By the time he left on Sunday evening, Viola was in love. I aspire to him, she wrote in her diary that night. If this is my first real love, and comes to nothing, then I shall wait until this quality of feeling strikes again before I commit myself to any other man.
Viola lived in exhilaration with her secret. She worked with new energy for her exams: there was now someone she felt a vital need to impress with her results. In between his frequent visits — Gideon seemed particularly attached to Richard and brought him often — she lived in a kaleidoscope of memories of his last visit: small, rewarding moments such as his smile to her at breakfast, his listening seriously to her views, his remembering to bring her a copy of Isis in which he had written an article. And when he was gone, beyond the brightness within of all such memories, the solid things of every day took on an ethereal quality that made them unrecognizable. The scintillant that is the magic product of first love scattered Viola’s small quiet world, and she feared that the glitter of her exhilaration would be visible for all to see.
But she made a great effort to contain herself, and if Richard or the others guessed at her feelings they kept their thoughts to themselves. Richard, for all his friendliness, never made the slightest gesture that Viola could interpret as requited love. But she was happy enough, for the time being, that he should be her friend, and flattered that he should treat her as a contemporary rather than Gideon’s schoolgirl sister.
One summer weekend in June, by which time Richard had been a frequent visitor for six months, there was to be a dance to celebrate the twenty-first birthday of Maisie Fanshawe, who lived nearby, and who had loved Gideon fiercely since childhood. Viola had not been invited, Maisie considering her too young. But at lunch on the Saturday of the party Richard suddenly declared that it was unfair that Viola should be left behind, and he would refuse to go unless she came with them.
Viola’s parents quietly argued the matter. Mrs Windrush thought the idea delightful, especially as her daughter would be so responsibly chaperoned. But Colonel Windrush foresaw many a danger to his young daughter once exposed to ‘wild young blood’ in a Norfolk marquee. He abandoned his favourite rice pudding to make his points against young girls being thrust into the lascivious world too soon, but was mellowed by several glasses of port pressed upon him by Richard and Gideon. They made promises to protect her from all conceivable dangers, and Mrs Windrush wondered, with a sweet smile, at her husband’s lack of trust in Viola. The argument was won. The Colonel conceded with dignity and went to find solace in an afternoon on the golf course.
There then arose the problem of what Viola should wear. Her own wardrobe contained nothing suitable for a dance. The only possibility was to sift through the mothball cupboards of Mrs Windrush’s old clothes. This prospect all but crushed Viola’s excitement: it was with many misgivings she followed her mother — all enthusiasm and optimism — into her bedroom whose window overlooked the sea.
They spent the afternoon untying plastic bags, so old that they had turned a dull opalescence, through which flaming silks and satins shone grey as shadows. As they untied bows of tape the bags crackled quietly, brittle in their age — the only sound in the quiet room. Mrs Windrush pulled out dozens of dresses — she never threw old clothes away — and for all Viola’s worry as to whether they would find anything suitable for her, she enjoyed seeing them for the first time, each one a piercing memory of her mother’s past.
Beautiful they were indeed: the sheerest, flimsiest fabrics, hand-embroidered and hand-made: sprigged cottons Mrs Windrush had bought in her youth in India, striped taffetas, sequined chiffons and bruised glowing velvets, soft as feathers. But none seemed right on Viola. They fitted her, for she had inherited her mother’s slimness, but she looked as if she was dressed up — as indeed she was — from a store of clothes kept nowadays for charades. In dress after dress she surveyed herself in the long looking-glass: the sky had become overcast and a light rain speckled the windows, throwing a grey despairing light into the room. Mrs Windrush sat on the end of the bed in gumboots and fisherman’s jersey, her arms filled with a bright writhing snake of multi-coloured dresses, her voice sing-songing with pleasure as each one of them brought back to her another event of her youth.
‘And this one, the peacock blue, was for a ball at the Savoy. But perhaps this watered silk would suit you better — livelier, don’t you think, darling? That was for a dance at Skindles, the banks of the Thames lit by candles for miles and miles …’
‘It won’t do, Mama. I’m sorry. I won’t be able to go after all.’
Finally, there was only one dress left. Mrs Windrush pulled it reluctantly from the bag. It was very simple. White satin, sleeveless. Thin silver shoulder straps to hold up the camisole bodice. The hem was embroidered with lilies, delicate trumpet heads, picked out in silver thread.
Mrs Windrush stood up. She held the dress in front of herself, dark jerseyed arms sticking incongruously out at its sides, gumboots peeping beneath the twinkling hem. Viola made room for her at the mirror. Mrs Windrush smiled at her reflection.
‘I was wearing this when I first met your father,’ she said. She turned to her daughter. The silvery light of the bodice reflected kindly up into her face, bleaching out the lines, burnishing the fine bones and magnificent eyes. Viola could see exactly how beautiful she must have looked.
‘Then I can’t possibly wear it,’ she said.
‘No, I suppose not.’ Mrs Windrush, rocking the skirt of the dress from side to side, was dreamily transported to a private world of long ago. Then she said:
‘Though I don’t see why not, really. In fact, I think you probably should. After all, it’s the best one there is. It would suit you.’
She handed the dress to Viola, instantly transformed once more, in her old clothes, to her real age. The summer rain jittered more darkly against the window, and in the strange light of that late afternoon Viola agreed: they had found the perfect dress.
To the sophisticated eyes of Richard and Gideon the party was not a very imaginative affair: salmon pink gladioli propped stiffly as guns in their bowls, the sides of the marquee bunched fatly with yellow net, personifying the essence of debutantes themselves, the aged orchestra fatigued and slow. But to Viola, watching the dancing strangers, listening to the ho-ho-ho of the privileged laughter and feeling the ice of a champagne glass in her hand, it was a wondrous occasion. She feared only that Richard would leave her side and she would be humiliatingly alone. But he seemed to have no intention of doing that. Taking her elbow, he guided her through the silken crowds to the dance floor.
‘I’m terrified, Richard,’ she whispered, feeling the spring of the temporary parquet floor beneath her feet.
‘No need to be. You look, eh, how can I put this? All right.’
He gave her what she knew in her heart was an avuncular twinkle, but tried to believe was more than that. She was grateful to him and enjoyed their dance, his hand firm on her back, their legs entwined, spinning with no mistakes.
Later, moments or hours, Viola had no idea which, they walked in the garden, keeping their distance. The rain had stopped now. It had left the grass glittering like melted frost under a clouded moon. The briny air was warm but damp. There was a smell of roses and tobacco plants.
‘Only the nightingale missing,’ observed Richard, with a quality of laughter in his voice which did not reflect the seriousness of Viola’s thoughts. ‘In fifty years’ time, you know, there’s a good chance he’ll be quite extinct. Imagine that.’
Viola was more inclined to imagine Richard’s motives for coming into the garden at all. Had it been in his mind to declare the undying love for her that she felt for him? Followed up, of course, with sensible suggestions about patience in the face of youth, but promises of some kind of permanence in the future? In all her sixteen years Viola had never known such steeliness of conviction in her veins: she had been blessed very early with the kind of love that lasts a lifetime, and knew better than to endanger it with silly games of inaccessibility.
‘When I eventually retire from neurology,’ Richard was saying, ‘I shall have a garden like this.’
Too soon their path was returning them to the house. The sleepy music was loud again. Chance was fleeing. Despite herself, Viola stopped. Richard, a pace or two ahead of her, sensed her reluctance to return indoors. He turned, looked at her for a long time in silence, compassionate. She was silver, serious, sad in the moonlight.
‘Look what the wet grass has done to the hem of your dress! I’m so sorry. Those beautiful lilies. Come on, you’ll get cold.’ He gave her his arm. ‘I shall never forget that dress, you know. Never, never.’
They were walking with a swift sense of purpose up a gravel path, now chequered with lights from windows of the house. Viola felt herself being swept reluctantly along, not daring to hesitate again. Richard was being nannyish, she thought, and it was only a surge of all-forgiving love that squashed her disappointment. Then suddenly there was a girl before them, a huge great looming girl in swathes of ill-fitting green stuff whose folds did not disguise its essential limpness.
‘Oh, Richard,’ she said heartily, ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
She had long black hair, middle parted. She pushed it back from her face with both hands, lodging it behind sticking out ears, and grinned. There was a wide gap between her middle teeth. She did not look at Viola, but her ignoring intimidated.
‘We were on our way back,’ he said, more friendly than he need have been, thought Viola; but she loved him for his lack of explanation as to why they had been out at all. She hoped the giant would imagine they had been making love in the orchard.
‘This is Viola Windrush,’ he was saying. ‘Viola, Sonia Heel. We meet in Oxford.’
A vast hand was reaching out for Viola’s: clasped it without interest. Had Richard only said met, not meet, with all its horrible implications of regularity, Viola would have been happier. And now they were moving along together, all three of them in step, Richard in the middle, his arm withdrawn from Viola. She knew with each eternal second she was the one whose turn it was to be dropped. The keen bounce in Richard’s new stride — surely not her imagination — conveyed a desire which in truth had been lacking in his reaction towards herself. It was, of course, all a matter of age. The disadvantage at the moment was in being Gideon’s younger sister. Untouchable, inaccessible. But how unenlightened of him not to foresee the growing … The giant was laughing about something, tossing her awful hair. The marquee, now just a yard or so away, bulging with its light and music, looked down on Viola like a firing squad. Her time was up: she wondered how the slaughter would take place.
Richard, helped by the immediate sight of Gideon at the bar, managed everything with a skill that suggested in the matter of shuffling ladies he was not unpractised, and to cause them the least pain in the process of repositing was his utmost desire. Viola could never precisely remember the words with which Richard suggested Viola should have a drink with her brother while he took a whirl with the giant. Perhaps she chose not to hear. Certainly she did not respond to the gap-toothed smile of triumph as the massive green hulk strode away, hand possessively on Richard’s shoulder. Viola, deliberately turning her back to the dance floor, watched her brother’s eyes follow the couple. ‘Sonia Heel,’ he said, ‘is not just in love with Richard. She’s unhealthily obsessed by him.’
Viola managed a smile. ‘Will she get him?’
‘I doubt it. Being the object of somebody’s obsession is dreadfully tedious.’
Encouraged, Viola turned to look. But the sight of Richard and the giant dancing did not encourage her hopes: he seemed to be willingly imprisoned in a clumsy embrace, head buried (easily, for he was a couple of inches shorter) in the dark cavernous places beneath the swilling hair, while one rapturous hand idled about the vast green landscape of her back. Viola, craving to die, felt an unsteadiness in her legs that warned of impending death. Gideon noted her stricken face and thumped down his glass.
‘Well, this isn’t much of a party, is it?’ he said. ‘Three Rock Around the Clocks with Maisie and a scintillating waltz with her aunt. The band’s almost asleep, I’d say, and I wouldn’t mind going to bed. How about you?’ Viola nodded. ‘Sonia will no doubt drop Richard home in her nasty little car, and he’ll be very sorry in the morning he didn’t come with us.’
Viola approved the tone of her brother’s disapprobation. It was the only consolation. She followed him from the marquee, head held high and face set into a rigid smile lest Richard should glance up from his nesting place and see her. On the way home in the car Gideon patted her on the knee and said:
‘Don’t worry, Violetta. It’s only a passing lust.’
Later, very awake in bed, dawn bleaching the windows, she realized the wisdom of Gideon’s observation. It was sex, of course: all sex. How could it be anything else in the case of a plain giant such as Sonia Heel? Her advantage was that she was twenty or more, and was available. She would sleep with Richard. Well, Viola would patiently wait until Richard’s appetite, surfeited, would sicken and so die. Then he would return to her, for love. Sonia would be relegated to the category of a woman of no importance in his life. The surety of such notions consoled. Eventually Viola slept.
In more positive form comfort came next day, too. Richard described the party to Mrs Windrush as ‘a bit of a disaster, though Viola and I had a lovely dance’, then did not refer to it again. Nor did he mention Sonia Heel, and Viola asked no questions. She trusted her expression did not convey her feelings, and judging by Richard’s behaviour had reason to believe she had succeeded in her efforts. He was warm and friendly as ever to her, courteous and attentive. Before leaving, he invited her to his farewell party in Oxford and said he would be very disappointed if she did not come.
Viola spent eight weeks imagining all the possible horrors of another party haunted by the permissive giant. When the time came, she made a great effort to look her best and did not much enjoy herself. This was because, apart from her brother and Richard, she knew no one, and the hundred strange undergraduates showed little interest or even politeness to someone outside their world. But one cheering fact made up for the disappointment of the occasion: Sonia Heel was not present. Viola spent much of her time surreptitiously scanning the room, but her rival was quite definitely not there. Viola did not like to interpret this sign too hopefully, but found it hard not to imagine that perhaps Sonia, already, had outlived her welcome.
Three months later her speculations were to be ruthlessly dashed. Gideon gently broke the news that Richard and Sonia were to be married. Sonia was pregnant.
‘Then he’s an honourable man,’ Viola managed to say.
‘Honourable, my foot!’ shouted Gideon, extraordinarily upset. ‘He’s an honourable fool! He doesn’t love her, he never has. She was out to catch him and now she’ll ruin his life. I’ve done my best to dissuade him but he won’t change his mind. Perhaps you could —’ ‘Me? Don’t be ridiculous. He wouldn’t listen to me.’
‘He might,’ said Gideon, curiously.
But Viola, after much reflection, could not bring herself to write to Richard either in congratulation or condemnation. His marriage was none of her business. To try to persuade him against his course might mean losing his friendship and reveal the feelings which now more than ever she was anxious to conceal. With reluctant composure she went to the wedding, a small affair of little ceremony, and returned with double concentration to her studies. She had little faith in the idea of time as a healer, but was left with no choice other than to give it a chance.
Richard and his pregnant bride moved into a small cottage a few miles up the coast. They planned to leave for London, where Richard would begin his medical studies after the birth of the baby. Gideon visited them occasionally and once Richard came to the rectory, without his wife, wearing an expression which did not wholly convey newly-married bliss. It was impossible not to hear news of them, although Viola never allowed herself to ask questions.
The baby was born three months prematurely, and died almost immediately. Some weeks later the Windrushes heard Sonia had had a nervous breakdown and had been sent to a psychiatric home. Gideon reported that Richard was much distressed but when Sonia ‘recovered’, some months later, and came home, difficulties multiplied. Eventually she was readmitted, and had now spent some twelve years in various homes. She did not recover again nor, apparently, regress: but lived in a dark and stagnant world that veered regularly between apathy and violent paranoia. Richard visited her dutifully, though over the years he admitted his visits were less frequent. Once it was established his wife would not be coming home he returned to his old habit of seeing the Windrushes frequently. He never spoke of Sonia: merely explained, that in order to be near her, he had given up his plans to study to be a neurologist. His ambition in that direction seemed to have withered. Instead, his medical training over, he became a general practitioner, continuing to live in his cottage near the Windrushes.
Viola let the rest of the morning drift by, sitting in her kitchen chair, when Alfred Baxter had departed. She wondered if Richard, as he always seemed to, would hear of her return from America, and come and see her. She hoped he would. She was always pleased to see him. If too many months went by without a visit from him she felt a curious sense of loss, a wintry bleakness of the soul that did not decrease with the years.