‘He came to say goodbye, Simmie, that’s all. He will be sailing for Colombia on Tuesday he said, on some crack-brained mining scheme or other, and won’t be back for ages.’
‘Yes I know what his plans are, dear, Meriel told me all about them on the train home this evening.’
Simmie had staggered in just after seven; lame, dishevelled, almost too tired to think.
‘But why did he call this afternoon?’ she said as much to the parlour furniture as to Ned. ‘Surely Meriel told him we’d be out all day? And why ‘goodbye’ when he hasn’t troubled to say so much as how d’ye do in all the time he’s been here?’
Ned wavered for a moment between truth and inclination. ‘He came to leave a note for you to suggest some kind of a meeting,’ he said heavily, ‘an assignation I daresay. But you see when he saw that I was living with you here, he tore it up.’
‘But that’s absurd, Ned!’ In the act of removing her hat, Simmie turned to him from the mirror with her hair floating like a halo round her face. Her eyes strayed to the waste basket. ‘He tore it up, you say?’
‘It’s no good looking for it, Simmie. It was there. But after he’d gone, I fished it out and burnt it in the grate.’
Simmie sighed and turned back to the mirror. ‘You mustn’t imagine that a few hours in bed with a woman entitles you to run her life for ever afterwards, my dear,’ she said, busy with her hair. ‘Because it doesn’t, Ned. It doesn’t actually entitle you to anything at all.’
And somehow she managed to remain like that with her back turned until he left the room. One minute more and she would have relented, held out her hands to him and undone all the good of the past weeks. But that was Robert. He had only to set one foot in her house to turn all her resolutions upside-down!
‘And one way or another you’ve had just about as much as you can take for one day, haven’t you, you poor thing?’ she said to her bedraggled reflection.
The face in the mirror gave a wan little smile.
‘Then there’s only one answer, isn’t there?’ The reflection nodded wisely; and together, in perfect accord, they climbed the stairs to Simmie’s bathroom.
‘A long hot bath.’ Even the words were comforting! The bath itself was a magnificent commodious affair with a goffered flounce, four cast iron ball-and-claw feet and a great rearing shower-screen at the tap end, which could spray you from above and three sides all at once. As she watched the scalding water gushing down to meet the cold enamel in a fog of steam, Simmie experienced a ridiculous sense of pride that such power could be hers at the mere twist of a dial. Mrs Llewellen had installed the new bath and the coke boiler which heated it, soon after they’d moved up to London from Ham Common. But in all the years since then, Simmie had never been able to forget the chilly hip-baths of her youth – never ceased to marvel at the wonders of modern plumbing.
‘Enjoy, ma chère! Life is not easy. Therefore we must all take from it what we can, n’est ce pas?’ Cecile Llewellen’s philosophy had been formulated through her years as a French maid in the austere Welsh household of Robert’s grandparents. She’d been passionate about comfort, that dear old lady, and adored her baignoire; wallowing for hours in perfumed water to totter off to her feather bed as pink and as fragrant as a little rose.
‘Enjoy, enjoy, ma chère!’
Later, lying submerged with her feet on the warm brass column of the plug, Simmie pushed aside the wooden soap-bridge to consider her tired body beneath its canopy of heat and steam. It was strange, so strange that Robert had never seen the vertical white scar on her stomach, although it concerned him closely – his child, his poor little dead baby; his mother’s charity in paying for the surgery which had saved her life. Yet he had never seen the mark it left; and now of course he never would.
‘Such a wasted body, mine,’ thought Simmie – good broad hips, nice thighs, so pale beneath the water; ‘Enjoy, enjoy ma chère…’
Robert’s – Robert’s thighs, fine-drawn, long muscled and so strong. So heavy on her own… ‘And that’s quite enough of that, thank you!’ Simmie told herself; standing up abruptly to free herself from the bath’s seductive embrace, and seize a bar of soap to lather herself with it briskly.
Meriel called in on Simmie early the next morning while she was still at breakfast. Clutched in her hand was a small brown envelope, with inside it a pressed four-leaved clover.
‘Found it last week on my uncle’s lawn,’ Meriel explained. ‘I have been saving it to bring Ashby luck in his Second Year exams – meant to get it to him yesterday. So you’ll be sure to give it to him, won’t you Simmie, first thing when he gets back from the labs?’
‘Yes of course dear, if that’s what you want. A cup of coffee?’
‘Thanks.’ Meriel accepted the cup automatically. ‘Now then, tell me what he thought of our trip down to Sellington. I’m dying to hear. Wasn’t he astonished?’
‘Well, to tell you the truth he was a little preoccupied with something else last night. I don’t think we even talked about it.’
‘What? You are a cuckoo Simmie, you really are! I thought you would be bound to tell him all about it.’ Meriel tipped back the coffee that she’d just slopped into her saucer. ‘Especially when I went down so well with the old Grannie. I mean we got on like a house on fire, didn’t we?’
Simmie had an unpleasant vision of Margaret Ashby smiling gruesomely at her across an elegant silver teapot, while Meriel eulogised her grandson with a non-stop flow of superlatives. But luckily, before she was required to answer, Meriel had thought of something else. I almost forgot the other thing I came to ask you,’ she said. ‘We’re all going down to Southampton by train on Tuesday to see Da off, and I wondered if you’d like to come along for the ride?’
‘Southampton,’ Simmie murmured, playing desperately for time. ‘How nice. But does your… do your parents know that you’re inviting me?’
‘No. But who cares? They’ll be tickled pink, I know they will. Da’s always saying how nice you are – how kind you were to Grandmère when she was ill.’
‘Oh, but in that case I couldn’t possibly, dear. It’ll be a family occasion; and besides, I happen to know I’m going to be extremely busy next week, what with the boys to see through their exams and everything.’
‘Well suit yourself of course.’ Meriel sounded disappointed. ‘I’ll have to run now anyway. But if you change your mind, Simmie – don’t forget, we’ll be catching the two thirty-five from Waterloo.’
There were four days until Tuesday; something like a hundred hours of not seeing Robert to be got through. Simmie lectured herself bracingly on the subject every morning when she woke; and every night when she lay down to sleep she congratulated herself on another day safely past. So when Tuesday finally came round, she felt as if she’d personally propelled it into place. It was a dullish morning threatening rain. After the false bravado of her lodgers bravely setting out to battle with examination papers, the house had seemed very quiet – and Simmie drifted restlessly from one room to another in search of things to occupy her.
Three miles away at the Llewellens’ establishment in Pimlico, neither quiet nor useful occupation were in evidence. By the time the gig came round to carry Uncle Vincent to the office, the family had all been up for hours, bumping into one another and falling over the luggage in the hall.
‘Gareth, go upstairs this minute and clean your teeth, then bring me down your toothbrush and powder and your hairbrushes to pack – and listen… Are you listening? I’m putting in three bottles of Chlorodyne for you, and Dovers Powders and castor oil, and quinine for fever and ammonia-water for insect bites. Oh, and liquorice for constipation, Gareth. Listen… Are you listening? One teaspoonful of liquorice powder every morning to keep you regular. Have you got that, darling? Have you?’ Harriet Llewellen was quite beside herself with anxiety for her ewe lamb.
Poor Garry. Heartlessly co-opted after only three terms at Redruth to go with his father to Colombia. ‘He’s too young, Robert, I tell you he’s too young and sensitive for such a hazardous adventure!’ But his mother’s protestations were unavailing. No one listened.
Gladys was out shopping, and Simmie had run down to make a pot of tea for herself in the kitchen. She couldn’t work. She couldn’t relax; couldn’t even talk to Gussie in his basket without thinking of that confounded train! Even her hand, as she poured out the tea, was trembling with tension.
Robert used the new telephone in the kitchen passage to summon a brace of hackneys to take them to the station; and after a cold luncheon, the family foregathered in the hall to wait for their arrival. ‘Garry and I will go with Da in the first cab,’ Meriel announced, ‘and bags I face the horses.’
Simmie had to get out of the house. She needed the distraction of moving things around her; had to walk. On any other day she would have taken Gussie to Coram Fields or Russell Square. But today instead of heading north she’d turned down Theobald’s Road in the direction of Southampton Row. Not that she had been thinking of omnibuses and their routes. They hadn’t crossed her mind. So when a bus with a ‘WATERLOO STATION’ placard on the front came trotting into view, the idea of boarding it had come as a surprise. No really, she assured herself, an absolute surprise.
There was no sense in it or logic. She simply had to see him, that was all. She hadn’t anything to say, she wouldn’t even speak. She’d stand behind a hoarding or a pillar, just to watch him pass. It surely couldn’t matter, wouldn’t do the slightest harm to anyone but her?
Simmie had always liked travelling by omnibus. As a child she had sat up in the front above the horses whenever she possibly could, and had always much preferred the open view on top deck to the crowded deck below. She loved to hear the chuckings and whoas of the bowler-hatted driver and watch him flourishing his whip. She even liked the way the bus lurched on the cambered road when it pulled in at stops. It felt how she imagined riding on an elephant must feel in India – ‘though thankfully without the tigers. Once up its winding stair, Simmie found an aisle seat two rows from the front of the omnibus, and sat down suddenly as it moved off.
‘I tell you, Meriellie, there’s a fortune to be gained from mercury for anyone who can extract it.’ Sitting knee to knee with her – with Garry squashed in beside him and the prospect of adventures looming, her father looked like nothing so much as a great big excited schoolboy, Meriel thought, off for his summer holiday. If she hadn’t other fish to fry she would be envious of Garry, travelling with Da to see the Caribbean and scale the mighty Andes. She really would!
‘Your mother seems determined to come out to join us in Colombia as soon as we are settled in the hacienda,’ Da was saying, ‘and of course you girls must come as well, if only to prevent her squandering our savings on drink and gigolos on the voyage out.’ He raised his black brows at her, smiling his most charming smile.
‘Provided that the mine turns out to be a going concern, Da,’ she reminded him, ‘and you can get the Indians to work.’
‘Work? I’ve worked the Irish in Australia, haven’t I, and the Malays in Borneo? By the time you reach Anaime…’
‘Well, I hope you can. But even if the Mater does decide to come, I’d rather not leave London now if you don’t mind, Da.’
‘Good God, can I believe my ears?’ She saw she had surprised him. ‘Now who would have thought that you of all people would prefer London society to a hike up the Andes! What’s up Meriellie? You’re not in love?’
‘Well what if I am?’ she snapped. It was important to clear all this with Da before he left, because she needed his approval; his more than everyone’s. But somehow the conversation wasn’t going as she’d planned. ‘I am nineteen you know. You can’t expect me to stay on the shelf forever.’
‘Nineteen, as old as that?’ He was still smiling, but all the warmth had left his eyes. ‘And might one be so bold as to ask who the lucky man is?’
‘Garry knows. He’s one of the young men boarding with Miss Sims in Harpur Street, Edwin Ashby – and you might as well know here and now, Da, that I intend to marry him.’
‘The dickens you will, Meriel! It’s clear to me that you know next to nothing about this young man, or any young man for that matter, and I forbid you to see him informally until we’ve all discussed this further. Is that understood? I daresay you’re still too young and innocent to know it, Miss. But no man’s to be trusted, and I do mean no man; not in affairs of this nature.’
‘Affairs of this nature?’ She mimicked the pompous, preachy tone that sat so ill on him. ‘It isn’t any kind of an affair – and I know all I need to know about him, thank you very much. I’ve seen his home, I’ve met his grandmother; and if you need a certificate of his good character, I’m sure that Simmie will be happy to provide it!’
As the omnibus negotiated the High Holborn crossing to the downhill gradient of the new Kingsway thoroughfare, Simmie wallowed in her degradation. What would he look like now? Would he have aged – and would she feel the same about him as she had the last time she saw him in the solicitor’s office in Boswell Street?
He’d written to her when he’d found out about the baby and the operation; hasty, scribbled letters, full of apology and abbreviated emotions. And of course he’d sent her money. But there was precious little love or understanding of her feelings in his letters, a thing that she’d sworn never to forgive. But being unforgiving wasn’t something she was good at. So when Cecile Llewellen left her the house in Harpur Street, and when she’d met Robert that last time to receive the deeds and sign the Assent document, she had relented. His was a nature that she couldn’t change – and if she was really honest, wouldn’t want to. Because she knew his arrogance and ruthlessness were part of what made Robert so attractive. Shamingly! The reason why she still clung to the memory of how he’d been in Richmond – how he’d hurt and used her in the room of that hotel.
Simmie swiftly cast her eyes down to the raked floor of the omnibus, in case one of the other passengers should see her face and read her mind. But as she did so, something wet splashed on her neck, and she realised it was raining. From a dignified and almost silent little congregation, the top deck of the bus had been transformed in seconds to a noisy rookery of flapping oilskins and black umbrellas. Passengers who’d never met before, perforce must share the omnibus company’s waterproof covers and co–operate in hooking them onto the pegs in front; and with hardly room for four umbrellas in a row, some sort of an arrangement had to be agreed for distributing the gamps.
‘Do share mine,’ said Simmie to the woman in the mustard–coloured coat beside her. ‘It was my father’s and is easily big enough for two!’ And she put up the clumsy thing at arm’s length to avoid poking someone in the eye.
Below them in the Kingsway, umbrellas were sprouting like black mushrooms by the dozen and the score. The wet roofs of the cabs, the awnings and the flanks of the horses looked suddenly as if they’d all been polished as the bus moved on into the Strand.
‘Typical!’ Meriel gave up scowling at her father, to scowl instead through the cab window at the rain. They’d spanked up the Strand in fine style for a four-wheeler. But now as they approached the Aldwych, everything was slowing to a snail’s pace, as it always did in London when it rained. Five roads met at the Aldwych in a chaotic new traffic scheme which so far seemed to be creating more problems than it solved.
‘Should’ve gorn by the Embankment,’ the cabbie called down to them as he pitched his horse into the melée – and Da was pointing out the new developments at Aldwych, when Meriel leapt wildly to her feet.
‘Oh the poor horse! What does the driver think he’s playing at, the fool,’ she shouted, scrabbling for the handle of the door. ‘The bus has run right onto it, poor thing! We’ll have to stop – stop here and put me out!’
Simmie hadn’t consciously thought about the hill, or the speed of the bus on the slippery road. But very sensibly she’d put a hand out just in case – which was what saved her from hitting the seat in front as the sudden impact threw her forward. She hadn’t been aware of her oilskin cover jerking from its pegs or the umbrella as it left her hand. The extreme simplicity of her own rise and descent had been too painfully absorbing, accompanied as it was by a deluge of other people’s hats and brollies and the alarming sight of the small boy in front of her diving head-first over the rail into the driver’s lap.
For a long moment the world stopped spinning altogether – then lurched off again at double speed, with women shrieking, men swearing dreadfully and the shrill sound of the screaming horse adding to the general sense of panic and confusion. The little woman in the mustard coat was moaning and clasping a crimson handkerchief to her nose, having rapped it smartly on the Nestlé’s Milk advertisement on the seat in front. So Simmie had been fully occupied with helping her down to the street, when the Llewellens’ four-wheeler – with Meriel inside it, still protesting loudly – turned off in the direction of Waterloo Bridge.
While a small army of passengers and passers-by attempted to push the bus back from the fallen horse, the conductor hailed a passing cab to take the injured woman to the nearest hospital at Charing Cross. Simmie was convinced the poor thing had a broken her nose, and felt obliged to go with her, to pay her fare and see her safely in.
‘Lie back across my knee, dear, it will help to stop the bleeding,’ she advised her, patting the poor woman’s hand and trying nobly not to think of Waterloo.
As Robert’s elegant suede-topped boot made contact with the station kerb, he raked the concourse for the sight of a straw hat and hair like sugar floss – and failing to find them, dropped his cigarette-butt in the gutter and turned away to see to the disposal of his luggage.
Simmie trudged disconsolately back up the Strand from the hospital; soaking, bruised and streaked with blood. It was still raining lightly and she’d left her damaged brolly on the bus. But she didn’t want a cab. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, just lose herself in the wet crowds. As soon as she reached home she planned to run up to her room and shut the door, and bawl her eyes out like a child! And then perhaps ring down to Gladys for some tea, and no doubt feel the better for it. Life after all went on.
But when she finally got home, climbed wearily up to her bedroom, closed the door and stood behind it waiting, the tears refused to come.