The voice on the phone was unexpected.
‘Mrs Ferguson? This is William. William Anstey, you know. May I come to see you? I have to talk to you.’
Now she must discuss her shameless child with William. The prospect was not agreeable.
‘Of course you may. When would you like to come?’
‘This afternoon. I’m taking my manuscript to the publisher this morning and we’ll probably have lunch together, then I can come straight up, if that’s all right.’
‘Yes. That’s good news about the novel. You must be glad that it’s finished.’
‘It’s a weight off the back. You don’t know what a help Sophie’s been. But I suppose you do know. And you too, taking me in.’
That’s right. Say a kind word. You can’t make me feel any better.
‘It was no trouble.’
But it brought plenty in its wake.
‘I’ll see you later, then.’
While she waited for him, she managed to create a quite convincing aerial view of a duck on the segment of pond in the lower righthand corner of the frame. She was admiring it when William appeared, rigid with embarrassment, at the dining room door.
‘I should have rung the bell, sorry. I just took it for granted, I came in the back way. Sorry. I thought you’d be in the kitchen.’
‘It doesn’t matter in the least. Do sit down.’
Dear me, what a hobbledehoy he was, what a large, awkward clod. The dismay she had felt at the first sight of him, since forgotten, now returned.
He stared at Ella’s rug, seeming to draw reassurance from it.
‘That’s marvellous. Love your cauliflowers and the duck. Are you copying a set design?’
‘No, I just block out the sections and make up the details as I go along.’
‘Terrific. Don’t stop. I like watching. No doubt you know what I’ve come to talk about.’
‘I’m afraid Sophie has behaved very badly and put you in a most embarrassing position.’
‘My position.’ He stared at her and shook his head. ‘I’m not complaining about my position, except that I think it can’t be real. It’s like the old fairytales where the idiot somehow gets it right, says the right word by accident and the door opens or the golden apple falls into his hand.’
He might be reduced to stammering misery by coming in through the wrong door, but he was bold enough when it came to unpacking his heart.
‘Suddenly the tree flowers in winter in the snow.’
Ella began to be seriously angry with Sophie.
‘She’s put her sleeping-bag on the kitchen floor. It’s the only clean spot in the house. When I go in to make a cup of tea in the morning, she’s still asleep, with her hair loose, and so beautiful.’
He began to cry, quietly and neatly.
Ella hooked a line of green round the duckpond with speed and concentration.
‘I’m thirty-seven.’
He had regained sobriety.
‘She doesn’t seem to be interested in boys of her own age. She says they are boring.’
‘I don’t have affairs. Don’t get involved. It’s too much mess and waste, waste of everything. Waste of time, too. You never get any work done.’
He added in a rush of words, ‘I would be aiming at marriage.’
Ella’s rug hook stopped in mid-loop.
‘Have you talked about this to Sophie?’
‘We haven’t talked about anything since that first day, when I told her she had to take her time and think it over. I told her she could just go away without saying anything if she wanted to, but every morning when I go into the kitchen she’s still there. Perhaps she’s only staying till the manuscript’s finished. You might see her back home today.’
I’ll have a word to say to her if I do, thought Ella. Playing with a man’s feelings like this.
‘Even if she said yes, could it last?’
‘Who can answer that?’ Ella asked, with a bitterness he did not try to understand.
‘No, of course not.’
Ella thought of Rob, saying, ‘Night must fall.’
‘Eighteen years is a big gap,’ he said.
Some people didn’t think twenty-eight years too great a gap. What did he expect her to do about it? Make him younger?
‘Even for nineteen, sometimes she seems very innocent.’
Ella observed, ‘Innocence may not be all it’s cracked up to be.’
William was alert.
‘Oh? Why do you say that?’
‘It can be a sort of blindness, I suppose. Too close to ignorance.’
No doubt he sensed a warning in her words.
‘You don’t know,’ he said with sudden urgency, ‘just how much one wants … I don’t know, a bit of the joy of living. Happiness. All the big words,’ he added and uttered a falsetto guffaw which startled and silenced him.
‘Then you had better take your chance and ask her.’
‘You wouldn’t be against it? I wouldn’t want to cut her off from her family.’
‘Oh, William. I don’t think it’s the most suitable marriage in the world, for you as well as her. You certainly have the right to ask her. She made the situation. I don’t know about her father, what he might think.’
‘She doesn’t care about her father. You’re the one she cares about.’
But not always, not enough.
‘I’m aware that the drawbacks are obvious,’ he said.
So I don’t need to point them out.
‘It’s up to her.’
Ella got up, stretching and sighing with fatigue.
‘What about a cup of coffee?’
‘Yes, please. Why do you sit all day at your loom like Penelope?’
‘It’s for my granddaughter. I’m trying to get it finished before I move out.’
She had said that quite calmly, so the remark passed without comment.
‘It’s terrific. Like a primitive.’
William as a son-in-law. How odd.
He was talking like a son-in-law already. Over coffee, he said, ‘The financial situation isn’t so bad now, though of course there’s no real security. I can sell short stories just about anywhere, I think. My second book didn’t bring in much but if this one goes well it might pick up again.’
‘Martha thinks you should publish a book of your short stories.’
‘Martha?’
He looked attentive and almost handsome.
She said to herself, He’ll live.
‘My daughter-in-law, David’s wife. You met her here with David. She admires your work very much.’
‘Tell her I am getting one together.’
‘She’ll be pleased.’
Dear me, but this was heavy going.
What went on in Sophie’s head? She tried to picture the beauty in the sleeping-bag who had made William cry, but all she could see was Sophie in her Girl Guide uniform, chubby and cheerful, her only care to make the A grade hockey team, her greatest charm her amiable disposition.
I cannot answer for them, she thought. I cannot take responsibility.
A combination of innocence and power might be deadly, but William must take his chance. She thought she had issued a warning, which was the best she could do.
When William on leaving said, ‘Do I have your blessing then?’ she answered, ‘Yes,’ but added silently, For what it is worth.