On the other side of the party wall to the Fairleys lived an elderly gentleman known to the Fairley girls as ‘the relic’. Mr Ainsworth, who was in his nineties, regarded the Fairleys as people with whom he could have little social contact. He acknowledged their existence by raising his hat to Mrs Fairley and the girls whenever he met them in the street, and by occasionally commenting to Stanley Fairley on events in the world of politics. Mr Ainsworth could recall seeing Mr Disraeli drive up to Gunnersbury Park to be greeted by Baron de Rothschild, and therefore regarded himself as an incontrovertible authority on all matters political. As Mr Fairley entertained the same conceit, without benefit of ever having seen Mr Disraeli, communication between the two men was necessarily brief – though invariably courteous. Mr Ainsworth, a widower, was looked after by a housekeeper. Mrs Peachey, a woman of great refinement, was even more aware of the decline of the neighbourhood than her employer, and it was many months before she could bring herself to walk on the same side of the street as the Fairleys. Mr Fairley said that Mr Ainsworth was a relic of the past, and as such instructive and to be studied with respect – a dictum he did not extend to include Mrs Peachey.
Mr Ainsworth was, however, part of a tradition out of which the Fairleys had grown. But the family who lived on the detached side of the Fairley property were of quite another kind. The Vaseyelins (or the Vaseline family as they were known locally) had come to Shepherd’s Bush in 1926. Whether at that time there was a Mr Vaseyelin, the Fairleys did not know. Some people in the road said there had been a man in the house for a few years, but it was thought he was a lodger and he had now left. What was certain was that there were four children – one girl and three boys – now ranging from nine to eighteen. Jacov, the eldest, played the man’s role in the household, and the role normally played by the woman in English households fell to Anita, who was possibly an old nurse, a governess, a dependent relative – or an amalgam of all three. Mrs Vaseyelin was a mysterious figure, seldom seen except in the evening, when she would appear wearing a long coat hemmed with fur and a hat with a veil which covered her face, and was knotted at the back of her head. No doubt in the past she had been accustomed to step from the house into her carriage; but if there was one thing which was known about the Vaseyelins, it was that they had no money. Several of the tradespeople were prepared to vouch for that. So, Mrs Vaseyelin, instead of stepping into her carriage, walked to The Askew Arms and took a Number 12 bus. What happened thereafter none of her neighbours knew.
When Mrs Vaseyelin and her family first arrived in Pratts Farm Road she had left her card at Numbers 25 and 29, but as the recipients had no idea how they were supposed to respond, this had not advanced intercourse between the households. By the time the Fairleys arrived in the autumn of 1929, the Vaseyelins were conditioned to isolation. The advent of three children next door, however, was of considerable interest to the Vaseyelin children. The first day that Stanley Fairley worked in the garden, Jacov Vaseyelin – having concluded from conversations with schoolfellows that cards were no longer exchanged, introduced himself in what he took to be a suitably informal manner.
‘I am Jacov Alexei Anton Vaseyelin, sir, your neighbour. If I can be of service to you at any time, please to say.’
Stanley Fairley looked up in astonishment at the head with its mop of curly black hair affixed, in the manner of a surrealist sculpture, to the brick wall. Mr Fairley was deeply suspicious of surrealism, which he considered decadent. The face did nothing to allay his fears. It was apparently guileless, but it had that anarchic quality which can sometimes go with a certain kind of gentleness: the face of one of those unholy innocents who – seeming not to see the world as others see it – make havoc of the carefully constructed patterns of society. Mr Fairley, while being prepared to fight for intellectual freedom, was not prepared to brook any interference with the rules governing the day-to-day exchanges of his life. He was not a sociable man, and the last thing he wanted when he was working in his garden was to be made aware of neighbours, well-meaning or otherwise. He thanked Jacov Alexei Anton Vaseyelin brusquely, and went about the business of digging up a recalcitrant holly bush. When he swung round to throw down pieces of the uprooted holly, he saw that the head had been removed. Had he been dealing with a man, he would not have reproached himself; as far as he was concerned, the sooner you let the other fellow know the way you like to live your life, the better. But this was a boy, and he had been churlish to him. He stuck the spade in the flowerbed, and approached the wall to make amends. The rest of the unholy innocent was now in view: a thin youth, hunched crescent-shaped on a dilapidated garden seat, disconsolately poking at a hole in the sole of one shoe.
‘You wouldn’t have a pair of shears?’ Mr Fairley asked grudgingly. ‘I’ve sent mine to be sharpened.’
‘Surely we must have!’ The youth unwound himself with alacrity. He moved lightly and easily, but took a somewhat wayward course towards what was his obvious destination – the garden shed; it was as though it was not natural to him to approach anything directly. Eventually however, by way of a conservatory (where he pressed his face against the window and grimaced at someone within) and what was probably an outside lavatory, he came to the garden shed and, after some desultory rummaging, found a pair of shears on a shelf.
‘Hmmm.’ Mr Fairley examined the shears. ‘These don’t get used very often, do they?’
‘I am sorry. No use?’
‘I expect they might be with a bit of oiling.’
Later, he told his wife, ‘I’ve spent the afternoon getting their shears into good repair. We really can’t have too much of this kind of thing. We shall have to be careful to keep our distance.’ He looked at her reproachfully, as though it were she who had borrowed the shears.
‘I doubt if they will trouble you now that they’ve introduced themselves.’ Judith guessed that it was her daughters in whom the young Vaseyelins were interested, and in this she proved correct. The back garden of Number 27 began to receive much-needed attention; the front garden, which offered no prospect of communication with the Fairley children, continued to be neglected, the hedge grown so high that it obscured the downstairs windows. In the spring there were frequent exchanges over the garden wall, and by the summer it was impossible not to include the Vaseyelins in Alice’s birthday party. ‘We can’t have a party in the garden and leave them out,’ Judith Fairley said reluctantly. The Vaseyelins were alien, and she did not want the bother of trying to understand them. She was busy enough without that.
The Vaseyelins arrived at the party stiff and too formally dressed. Nicholas and Boris, who were twins, took up their usual position on the fringe of events, heads dose together, sharing secret observations. Katia, on the other hand, was soon shouting and screaming with the other children. Jacov seemed uncertain whether he belonged with the adults or with the children, and he made a nuisance of himself in the kitchen, offering to carry things and generally getting in Judith’s way. In spite of his willingness, he was unable to complete the simplest task assigned to him effectively, because he allowed himself to become sidetracked into some other well-meaning activity.
‘You can’t do two things at once, Jacov,’ Judith told him.
‘But you do several things at the same time,’ he pointed out.
‘I know which things can be combined.’ She was irritated at the way in which he spoke to her: not insolently, but as though he noted things about her. Her daughters’ friends were not yet old enough to do this, and she was not accustomed to it.
After the party, the Vaseyelins kept their place on the far side of the garden wall. Judith was pleased about this. She had been afraid that they might have expected to come and go more freely.
Then at Christmas the party invitation was returned. This was obviously an event of some importance, and Jacov felt it necessary to approach Mr Fairley.
Mr Fairley found himself in a dilemma. He was careful about the houses which his daughters visited. He had refused to allow them to go to one house, because the parents played tennis on a Sunday: ‘If they do that on the Lord’s Day, goodness alone knows what goes on on other days of the week!’ The membership of a social club, whether visited on a Sunday or a weekday, was an automatic disqualification for entertaining the Fairley children. The Vaseyelin household, however, kept its secrets, and all that Mr Fairley could with certainty pin on them was that they were foreigners and Russian Orthodox. Russian Orthodox was not as bad as Roman Catholic, but it was bad enough. ‘Foreigner’ was a different matter. Mr Fairley was a passionate believer in liberal values and, as a Methodist lay preacher, laid frequent stress on the rights of minorities and the needs of the underprivileged. He was aware that many people who would not have minded subjecting their daughters to the perils of an agnostic – or even atheistic – household, would not have wanted them to mix with the Vaseyelins because they ‘did not belong’. But on a matter of such importance, would he be right to redress the balance in favour of the Vaseyelins? Should he not be concerned primarily with his children’s well-being?
Jacov said, ‘I hope you will do us the honour to say yes.’
At this point something happened for which Mr Fairley was unprepared. Mr Fairley could have taught in a grammar school; he had a good London degree; but the Lord had called him to teach the underprivileged and the less able. He did not do this in a spirit of patronage. Mr Fairley cared about his boys. Now, he was surprised to see in Jacov’s eyes the same look he had sometimes caught in the eyes of a boy who is desperately afraid that – owing to lack of means – he will be left out of some longed-for treat, a sea cadet camp, or a day’s excursion to the coast. On such occasions, Mr Fairley would dig into his own pocket to help. It was not money that was needed now. This party represented something to Jacov – perhaps it was honour that was at stake, or the need for once to be a giver. Mr Fairley had no understanding of the workings of Jacov’s mind, but he did understand that the issue was an important one.
Jacov said, ‘I will myself be responsible for your daughters.’
Mr Fairley, squaring up to him solemnly, replied, ‘On that understanding alone, then . . .’
Mrs Fairley had sighed when her husband told her of his decision. ‘I think the boy is to be trusted,’ he said.
Judith Fairley did not believe that any human being, let alone a young male, was ever entirely to be trusted, but she saw no point in saying this.
So it was that at four o’clock in the afternoon of 21 December 1930 Alice stood at the dining-room window. It was cold, and the window was frosted so that she could not see clearly into the street; and in any case, the Vaseyelins’ hedge was so high that it was not always possible to see people coming to the house. So far she had counted three people and the postman. She breathed on the window pane, moaning with impatience. Louise took a long time dressing and Claire started late, so Alice always had to wait for them. Her mother told her she was in too much of a hurry for her pleasures, but Alice was convinced that some moment of enchantment would be lost if she was late.
Louise came in and said, ‘Anyone would think you had never been to a party before.’
Alice noticed that, in spite of being so casual, Louise was wearing the apple-green crepe dress which Grandma had made for her, and which she kept for special occasions. It was a lovely dress, and Alice looked forward to the time when Louise would have outgrown it. Outside in the hall Claire, who had been hurried, was saying, ‘I don’t want to go any more.’
Mummy said reprovingly, ‘Think how disappointed you would be if people stayed away from your party.’
‘I shan’t know anyone.’
‘You’ll be with Alice and Louise.’
‘They won’t stay with me.’
‘Yes, I will!’ Alice rushed into the hall and put an arm round Claire. ‘I’ll stay with you all the time.’
Their father came with them to the door of Number 17. He knocked. There was no response. Claire tugged herself free of Alice’s restraining arm and was about to protest, when they heard foot-steps crossing the hall. The front door opened. In the dim light of the gas lamp they saw Jacov, shabby in a frayed brown suit with a bow tie. Behind him, a flight of uncarpeted stairs disappeared into the gloom of the first-floor landing. There was a smell of gas and damp.
Mr Fairley said he would come at six o’clock to collect the children. Jacov bowed and waited at the door while Mr Fairley walked down the path. The children peered about them uneasily, and Louise was moved to place a protective arm around the shoulders of each of her charges. On the left side of the hall there were heavy brown curtains in a material which resembled sacking; the sound of voices and laughter could be heard beyond the curtains. Had it not been for this, the house might have been unoccupied, so little evidence was there of its being lived in. Jacov closed the front door and took Alice’s wrap from her. ‘How nice. Is it sable or ermine, the collar?’ He said this with no hint of mockery, as though sable and ermine were commonplace in Shepherd’s Bush.
‘I don’t know what it is,’ Alice answered. ‘It came off a hat of Aunt May’s and it moults.’
Claire and Louise gave Jacov their shawls, and he put them on top of a pile of clothes hung over the banister post. Then he parted the curtains grandly, as though they were velvet. Alice saw that only a few people had arrived. They were playing a guessing game. Claire, who always got on well at parties once she had broken the ice, immediately joined in. Louise was greeted by the twins, who stood one on each side of her, Nicholas saying she looked pretty while Boris giggled and stroked her hair. Alice started to talk to Katia, but she said ‘Hush’, because she was doing well at the game; so Alice sat on a stool by the fire and looked round the room, which was large with a high ceiling. It looked as though at one time there had been double doors leading to the hall, but these had gone, and in their place were the brown curtains. The absence of the doors made the room cold and draughty. The furniture had been pushed against the walls, revealing the holes which the castors of the couch had made in the brown linoleum. Patches of damp discoloured the yellow wallpaper. In a corner by the window there was a shrivelled tree left over from a previous Christmas, with a candle burning on the top. There were no other decorations; nor were there any photographs – not even one of Jacov’s older sister, Sonya, who had died before the family left Russia. ‘My mother does not speak of her,’ Jacov had once said. Alice thought it was sad that there was no photograph of Sonya.
The wood fire was bright and made a pleasant smell, but it did not give out much heat. Alice was dismayed. In her own house she was surrounded by objects which had a history: the heavy Serpentine ornaments from Cornwall, one in the shape of a lighthouse, the other a buoy, which Daddy said must have belonged to Mummy’s wrecker ancestors; the armchair which could be extended into a day-bed and had been left to them by Great Aunt Mathilda, who had spent a great deal of her life lying on it; the wheezy grandfather clock which was always wrong, in spite of Daddy constantly ‘adjusting’ the swing of the pendulum by attaching weights to it; these things were as much a part of the household as the people themselves. This room looked just like the sitting- room of Number 29 had looked on the day of their arrival, before any of their treasures had been unpacked. There were no tatting chairbacks, no embroidered cloths for vases to stand on so that they did not mark the table; there was not even a rug by the hearth. Alice glanced guiltily at the green enamel clock on the mantelshelf. Ten minutes past four. In two hours she could go home. She straightened out the skirt of her voile party frock, and wondered what she would do if she wanted to go to the lavatory.
There was a knock at the front door. Jacov introduced new arrivals. Several were foreigners who did not seem interested in the Fairley children, but there were three English boys who were plainly glad to encounter compatriots in this strange house. The most noticeable of the English was a boy of about Jacov’s age. He had brown hair, thick and strong, falling in a tuft over his left eye and curling crisply at the back of his head and behind his ears.
His ears were big and laid against his head as though they had been pinned there, just as they should. Everything about him was as it should be. He had blue eyes, a wide, smiling mouth, a straight nose with just enough freckles to be attractive, and no spots. He was the most handsome boy Alice had ever seen. His name was Guy Immingham.
The room was crowded now. The children jostled, screamed, laughed and improvised treasure hunts, which they enjoyed passionately and then dropped in favour of another activity, such as imitating film stars. It was not like an ordinary party where everything is carefully organized so that all are included, and a watch is kept to ensure that no one is getting over-excited. It seemed very odd at first. Claire scampered about, pushing, tickling, doing somersaults. A big, clownish boy told Louise what a rotter Guy Immingham was and she pretended to be shocked, head hung down so that the long brown hair curtained her face, while Guy squatted on the ground to see if she was laughing. Someone fell over him and upset orangeade. Everyone laughed, and Jacov poured some more orangeade, and no one fussed with a mop. The younger children screamed louder and louder, and Claire did cartwheels.
Alice sat on the stool, blowing up a balloon. The fire was warm now. She tossed the balloon up in front of her and, as she looked after it, she saw a tall woman standing between the curtains. It was Mrs Vaseyelin. Her dress was black and her hair was black and there was no colour in her face; yet she looked rich, and behind her the curtains really seemed velvet now. Dark hair parted in the centre and drawn back from the perfect oval face was, Alice knew, a recipe for beauty, and she had seen it demonstrated in photographs of Sylvia Sidney. But Sylvia Sidney was young. It was a surprise to see that a face could still be beautiful when it had tiny dry lines scoring the forehead, and shadows which looked as though they had been burnt beneath the eyes.
Alice felt as she did in the assembly hall, waiting for the school play to begin, when curtains were drawn across the platform to give the illusion of theatre. But whereas what happened on the stage was never as strange as she had anticipated, here was strangeness where she had not looked for it!
The room was quiet now. Everyone was staring at Mrs Vaseyelin. She walked across the room, not looking directly at anyone, but seeming to gaze at something beyond them. She sat in a chair by the window, a little in shadow. The voices leapt up again. Alice patted the balloon. It soared up and then came gently down towards her, orange and mauve in the firelight.
A man came through the curtains and joined Mrs Vaseyelin. He was tall, stooping and shabby. Alice thought there was something familiar about him, but as he was standing in the shadows she did not have a clear picture of his face.
The children shouted, tumbled, laughed and screamed. Claire was having a coughing fit. Louise imitated Al Jolson singing ‘Sonny Boy’. Guy Immingham said, ‘Gosh, you ought to be an actress!’ and she said she was going to be, as though there was no question about it. The man and the woman watched without concern or interest. Every now and again fat, good-natured Anita lumbered in from the kitchen and shouted, ‘The sweets, Jacov; don’t forget to hand round the sweets!’ or ‘You must offer more ginger beer, Jacov.’ No one was concerned when a chair fell over and a side- table was overturned. You would have thought they were used to their possessions tumbling around them.
Then, at a signal from Anita, the twins began to carry in trays of food. A table was moved into the centre of the room. The food did not look very exciting. Jacov brought candles and placed them on the table, then he turned down the gas lamps. He struck a match and bent forward. As Alice watched him leaning towards the candle, she felt that, in the shadows beyond the flame, the room had become much larger.
She looked around her. First, she saw that Mrs Vaseyelin had a shawl across the back of her chair; it was worn thin and the colours were faded, but the material was soft and it glimmered in the candlelight. Then, she saw the wooden figures on the mantelpiece which she had failed to notice before. They stood on a round base, a ballerina in a pretty flowing dress and a baggy-trousered clown; he was kneeling before her, she turning away, hand outstretched for something just beyond her reach. They looked so strange there, standing next to the green enamel clock.
Jacov handed Alice a blackcurrant drink. As she looked down into the glass, it glowed deep crimson. The cakes were from a shop in Shepherd’s Bush High Street – not a very nice shop; they had a strange, spicy flavour. Alice said this to Claire, but Claire said she could not taste anything special, and anyway they were dry. Claire said she wished there had been some sherbet.
The candles flickered and shadows leapt on the wall, absurdly short, like a hunchback, and very long, like a beanstalk. Alice looked at Mrs Vaseyelin, who smiled pleasantly, but not as though she really saw her, and asked whether she would like another cake. Alice felt, as she watched the woman’s eyes, that someone had come into the room and was standing beside her in the shadows.
While everyone ate and chattered, Alice went up to the mantelpiece. She stood on a chair and took down the carving. She knew this was a bad thing to do, much worse than spilling orangeade or knocking over a chair, but she could not help herself. Even if she was never asked again, she must touch these figures. She sat on the stool and stroked the folds of the gown, and the sad clown’s face. The figures were mounted on a round base which had a key underneath; guiltily, Alice turned the key several times. Nothing happened. A voice said, ‘She used to dance once. But no more.’ Alice saw that Mrs Vaseyelin was looking down at her.
Alice said, ‘I would love to have seen her dance.’ She closed her eyes, and suddenly she was in a much bigger room; and in the centre of the room a girl was dancing and laughing as she danced. The curtains over the window were parted, and Alice was sure there was a glimpse of snow-laden trees. Then, as her fingers stroked the figure of the dancer, she heard the music of the dance – a long way off, but clear, like a music-box playing in another room. When she opened her eyes, Mrs Vaseyelin was still there, and Alice knew by something that flashed in her eyes that she, too, had heard the music.
Jacov came across the room. ‘You are quiet,’ he said to Alice.
He took away the wooden figures and gave her a jam puff. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m having a lovely time, thank you.’
When Mr Fairley came to fetch his children, Alice did not want to leave. Mrs Vaseyelin and the strange man came out to the hall to see their guests off. Alice heard her say to the man, ‘. . . like our dear Sonya sitting there by the fire.’ She stood on the top step and watched them go. It was cold, but there was no snow. In the yellow gaslight Alice saw that she was much older than she had imagined, and not in any way beautiful.
In the years since that party the Fairley children often saw the young Vaseyelins, but they seldom saw Mrs Vaseyelin, and they did not see the man again; although Alice thought she glimpsed him once walking down Acton High Street in the dusk, carrying a long case. Soon after the party, she had asked Katia, ‘Was that man your uncle?’ and Katia had shaken her head and changed the subject.
When the children described the party to their parents, they made much of Guy Immingham. It was then that they discovered that their father was acquainted with Guy Immingham’s father, and that the Imminghams attended the Methodist Chapel in Holland Park.
‘Why don’t we go to chapel in Holland Park?’ Louise asked her mother. ‘It’s no further than the Acton chapel.’
‘We go to the Acton chapel because your father teaches in Acton, and he does a lot with the Acton sea cadets. There is no good reason why we should go traipsing off to Holland Park.’
Louise did not argue, and in this she was wise, because Guy Immingham began to visit the Vaseyelins quite often and it was no longer necessary to think of changing chapels in order to see him. Mr and Mrs Fairley thought him a likable enough boy, and a year later when the children had their own party no objection was raised to his inclusion.
It was as a result of her friendship with Guy Immingham that Louise was introduced to the St Bartholomew’s Dramatic Society. Jacov produced plays for the society, and it was he who recruited Guy. Guy was by then studying for his accountancy examinations, and it was hoped that he would go into his father’s firm; but like Louise he had leanings towards the stage, having played several leading parts in school plays with moderate success.
A few weeks after the audition, by which time Louise had been offered a part, Guy accompanied the Fairley family to chapel on a cold February evening. Mr Fairley was preaching and Guy had said that he would like to hear him. In spite of his quest for intellectual truth, which sometimes made him cavalier in his treatment of the pretensions of others, Mr Fairley liked praise. His wife – busy, practical and at times imperceptive – seldom met his needs in this respect, and was inclined to spoil his pleasure when others were more obliging.
‘I don’t think it is your words of wisdom that he’s interested in,’ she had said on this occasion, irritated that he should court Guy’s good opinion.
‘I see no reason to doubt his sincerity.’
Judith, walking with Claire while Louise and Guy followed some distance behind, reflected on man’s infinite capacity for self¬deception.
‘Your father couldn’t possibly mind your taking part,’ Guy was saying. ‘My father doesn’t object, and he’s a Methodist. There’ll be a fuss when I tell him I’m going on the stage, of course; but that’s different.’
‘My father wouldn’t think it was different,’ Louise replied. ‘I know exactly what he would say to that: “Play-acting is either right or it is wrong; whether it is professional or not is immaterial.” ’ She gave a passable imitation of her father.
They were walking past a terrace of small, two-storeyed houses, the occupants of which – judging by the smell – had all had boiled cabbage for their Sunday dinner. Although these people were at some pains to keep the houses decent, Guy was shocked to see how badly the paintwork had been allowed to deteriorate. He also noticed that in most cases the curtains were little better than threadbare scraps. In the rooms where the curtains had not yet been drawn there was no cheerful glow of firelight. Most of the houses fronted onto the pavement, but further on they came to two old cottages of an earlier period which had a few square feet of turned earth staked out by dilapidated railings. There were two women talking in the doorway of one of the cottages, and somewhere out of sight a child was howling dismally. Here, bad drains added to the all-pervasive smell of cabbage. The area reminded Guy of old photographs yellowing in albums. There was nothing dramatic about it, no sense of danger or depravity lurking in the shadows; it was simply that it failed to convince as a place in which real people lived and loved and had their being.
Beyond the cottages a group of boys were sitting in the gutter shouting encouragement to another boy who was climbing a lamppost. Judith Fairley stopped to admonish the climber; his companions eyed Alice and Claire stonily. Guy and Louise walked on.
‘But your father doesn’t object to school plays . . .’
‘Oh, but he does! He went to see Miss Blaize about them.’
‘What happened?’
‘She convinced him that our “moral welfare” could be left in her hands and that, “although she is an Anglican, she has no leanings towards Rome.” She also satisfied him on the subject of makeup. “We could hardly forbid the use of any kind of make-up in school and then permit theatrical make-up.” ’ Louise pronounced the word ‘theatrical’ in a deep voice. ‘I’d love to have heard them talking.’
Guy was taken aback. If his father had made an exhibition of himself at his school, he would have been mortified beyond bearing. Louise, however, seemed not only to accept it but to feel a real affection for her father because of it. Guy, unable to respect any man whose opinions he did not share, was puzzled. He looked down at Louise. He really knew very little about her, but this did not seem important because she was a girl. His own mother was a mystery to him. She was pretty in the manner of the ladies who advertised the MacDonald’s permanent wave, and she talked about the superiority of MacDonald’s over Eugene in a tone which made Guy imagine that it would be barely possible to mix with people who favoured Eugene. Her clothes were well-made and tasteful, but she wore them without pleasure, as though she was under an obligation to uphold the standards of her neighbourhood. Apart from her hairstyle and her clothes, he would have found it quite difficult to recognize his mother. He would have had no such problem with Louise. Although he might have found it hard to isolate any one feature which compelled his attention – the eyes, amused as though the whole of life was a huge joke; the tilted nose (which his mother thought a little vulgar); the mouth which could be twisted to express the impudence of Harlow or the hauteur of Garbo – she would be immediately recognizable by her liveliness. Now, walking along this dreary street, by her very presence beside him she made every step of the way exciting. He had always lived in anticipation until now – ‘When you get into the main school, when you have matriculated, when you are articled . . .’ Never before had he known what it was to enjoy the given moment.
‘Doesn’t it make you angry when your father behaves like that?’ he asked.
‘Daddy cares so much; I wouldn’t have him any different.’
‘If he cares about the wrong things, though . . .’
‘I don’t know about that.’ She was indifferent to ‘wrong things’.
‘What will you do, then? About our play, I mean.’
‘I’ll wait to see how things go.’
The moment would come, she would feel it within her, just as she felt the sap rising in spring, and then she would tell her father. It did not occur to her to wonder whether the moment would be equally acceptable to him. She did not, in fact, distinguish very clearly between her own feelings and those of others.
They had come to the end of the road and Louise turned right under a railway bridge into another street, where the houses were interspersed with small shops and laundries. ‘You’re in soapsuds island now,’ she said. ‘George Bernard Shaw has his laundry done here, did you know? Mrs Haines, who collects, says he is a real gent and won’t allow her to carry the basket down the steps.’
On the far side of the street Guy saw the Methodist chapel, a grim-looking building in dingy red brick, fronted by spiked iron railings. He experienced, George Bernard Shaw notwithstanding, a moment of dismay akin to fear. An atmosphere of mute hopelessness seemed to cling about him as though all the unemployed had breathed their sourness into this dismal area. He pulled himself together and said to Louise, ‘Would it be helpful if Jacov and I talked to your father?’
‘Perhaps. But he’ll say no at first. If he does come round, it will take a day or so.’
‘What will you do if he says no finally?’
‘I haven’t thought about that yet.’
A time would come when she would go her own way, but she sensed that it was not yet. Judith Fairley, Claire and Alice joined them, and they crossed the road to the chapel.
At the door, a rosy-cheeked man with a walrus moustache was talking to a chirpy little woman who waved to the Fairleys in a manner too skittish for a person of her age. ‘That is Dot,’ Louise told Guy. ‘She’s a bit simple.’ A spotty-faced young man handed out hymn books, saying unctuously to Guy, ‘Glad to have you worship with us, friend.’
The chapel was not like the Holland Park Chapel, which had stained-glass windows and an organ, and the appearance of being distantly related to the Church of England. It was small and bare of adornment. The platform was a space on which three objects had been deposited; an upright piano to the left, a pulpit to the right with a large Bible on a ledge and, back centre, a table covered with a green baize cloth on which stood a vase of yellow chrysanthemums. The room was lit by gas lamps which hissed and popped. After they had bowed their heads in prayer, Guy whispered to Louise, ‘We have electric light in our chapel.’
The rosy-cheeked man at the far door broke away from Dot and moved along the row in front of the Fairleys to talk to a middle-aged woman, who looked plump not so much as a result of cheerful good living, but of wearing layers of clothes in order to keep out the cold.
‘Did you hear the Minister forgot to ask Mrs Ravilious to open the bazaar?’ the man asked, chuckling.
The woman replied loudly, ‘I don’t think it’s funny, Mr Crockett. In this world, money matters, say what you will, and the way he goes on there soon won’t be a Lord’s House for us to worship in.’
Her companion, a bird-like woman with hairs bristling from a pointed chin, hissed, ‘Forgetful he may be, but he’s one of the saints of God, Miss Thomas.’
‘Then the Lord has more patience than I have, Miss Dyer.’
This conversation was interrupted by a woman trailing a scowling small boy who squeezed past Miss Thomas and Miss Dyer, a process involving much fumbling with handbags, groping for gloves and the dropping of hymn books. As soon as they were seated, the small boy whispered to his mother, who said sharply, ‘Not now.’ A gloomy, cadaverous man came through the door at the back of the platform carrying a board with hymn numbers on it, which he hung on a nail at the side of the pulpit. The conversation in the hall died down, and there was silence save for the turning of the leaves of hymn books and the hissing of the gas. Claire and Alice looked at the woman with the small boy. They had heard older people say that Dolly Bligh was still attractive ‘in spite of everything’, but they could not understand this, because she was over thirty and sallow. Last week in chapel, while they had been waiting for their father they had heard Miss Thomas talking to the Minister. Mr Bligh, they knew, was in prison; what they had hitherto not known was that when he came out Mrs Bligh would have to choose between him and their daughters, because he was known to interfere with them. From the way in which Miss Thomas had spoken, they had been aware that the word ‘interfere’ was being used in a sense to which they were unaccustomed, and although no particulars had been given they had sensed, if not the exact nature, then the general area of the trouble. Alice wondered what the girls would do if Mrs Bligh chose her husband; Claire assumed she would stay with her children.
Mrs Bligh said to her son, ‘You should have gone before you left home.’ While he was debating this, the door at the back of the platform opened and the Minister came out. He was a tall, ungainly man who gave the impression of someone moving about on stilts. As he reached the pulpit, several sheets of paper fell onto the floor; he swooped to retrieve them and banged his head on the book ledge as he straightened. Miss Thomas sighed. The Minister glanced at the notes now topmost in the bundle and announced in a gentle voice, ‘Let us begin our worship of God by standing and singing together hymn number one hundred and twenty-two, “Brightest and best of the sons of the morning”.’
The pianist found herself confronted with a decision she was ill-equipped to make. While she hesitated, Miss Thomas began to sing in a resolute soprano, ‘ “The day is past and over, all thanks, O Lord, to Thee”.’ The congregation supported her gratefully.
There followed prayers during which the small boy made repeated attempts to attract his mother’s attention, an old man in the front pew murmured ‘Amen!’ fervently at frequent intervals and Dot shouted ‘Hallelujah!’ Miss Thomas then rose to read the notices. ‘On Monday at three p.m. there will be the usual meeting of the Women’s Bright Hour . . .’ The small boy triumphantly announced that he had wet himself and, as the congregation rose to sing the next hynm, his mother led him out. Miss Dyer whispered to Miss Thomas, ‘She shouldn’t bring him out in the evening. He ought to be in bed.’
‘She says its warmer here than at home.’
‘Where’s the girls, then?’
‘They’ve been taken away, didn’t you know?’
Alice looked at Claire; she was standing with her head bent over her hymn book, and it was questionable whether she had heard. They sang ‘Fight the good fight’, and then settled themselves for the sermon. While Mr Fairley rose from the front row and ascended the platform, the two sidesmen turned down the gas lamps in the body of the hall.
The room was slowly darkened and, by contrast, the little glow of light around the pulpit seemed to have an added intensity. The silence in the hall was broken only by the popping of one of the gas lamps and the distant sound of a train rumbling over the railway bridge. Mr Fairley frowned down upon the congregation. ‘Our brethren in the Church of England will by this evening have repeated the Apostles’ Creed and probably the Nicene Creed as well. We do not do this, and it is well that we do not do it. Tonight, however, I should like to examine the Apostles’ Creed.
‘ “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, His only Son . . .” We would all say “amen” to that.’ Miss Thomas exchanged a look with Miss Dyer, which made it clear that not everyone was prepared to make this concession to the Church of England. ‘But should we say it so easily? “I believe”: a tremendous statement to trip so readily off the tongue. Consider the world today. What evidence do we see of the hand of God in our affairs? Within the last weeks we have heard of the fall of the Daladier government in France and of the Hindenburg government in Germany; Adolf Hitler has become Chancellor of Germany; in Italy there is a dictatorship; in Russia a communist regime enslaves the people; Japan is at war with China; while in our own country we have two million, nine hundred thousand unemployed.’ He enunciated each word with sombre clarity, so that the dead weight of numbers seemed to bear down on the unemployed among his audience, and they felt more diminished and hopeless than ever, it is not an encouraging picture, is it?’ he demanded. ‘God, we are told, created us out of chaos: it sometimes seems He is intent on returning us to chaos.’
At this point boys ran in from the street, banged on the doors and shouted messages which were only partly comprehensible, but unmistakably rude. The sidesmen, with expressions of grave reverence on their faces, got up and moved with unhurried dignity towards the doors; from outside there was the sound of an irreverent but not ill-humoured exchange, then they returned looking as grave as ever.
‘Let us go on with this stupendous statement of belief: “conceived by the Holy Ghost” – well, I have reservations about that, but let it pass – “born of the Virgin Mary . . .” What sort of a world was He born into? A world not noticeably more full of hope than our own. Years before his birth, Sophocles wrote:
“Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say,
Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day;
The second best’s a gay goodnight, and quickly turn away.” ’
Miss Dyer nodded her head vigorously, which was her way of paying homage to poetry, whether by Ella Wheeler Wilcox or John Milton.
‘By the time Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the brutal Roman civilization had succeeded the Greek and straddled the world, exhausting itself in the process. It was already divided, and dying – in my view – of lack of hope for the future and belief in itself.
‘So, into this despairing world He was born, and the next thing that we are asked to note about Him is that He “suffered under Pontius Pilate . . .” ’ Mr Fairley gazed at them, eyes popping from beneath bushy eyebrows: his capacity for astonishment was infinite. ‘Nothing between that birth and that suffering, no mention that He grew up working at His father’s carpentry bench, made friends and walked with them through cornfields in Galilee, turned water into wine at a marriage at Cana; only birth, suffering and death. Yet for nearly two thousand years men have followed Him and tried to make His way their way. Why? We should ask ourselves these questions from time to time.’ He allowed a pause for them to put the question to themselves. Mr Fairley’s family obligingly registered concern; the old man who had said ‘amen’ during the prayers slept peacefully, each outward breath producing a noise like the blowing of a contented horse; the Minister had the look of a man troubled in spirit; the rest of the congregation waited in varying attitudes of stoicism. ‘Why?’ Mr Fairley repeated. ‘What did He offer them? “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me . . .” “I came not to send peace, but a sword . . .” “Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places . . .” Hard words, if you think about them, which we seldom do.’ The dark, cadaverous man nodded in dismal approbation and cracked his knuckles.
‘But He did make certain promises: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live . . .” “I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you . . .” Not, I surest, as the Man of Sorrows will He come, but as the man who drew all manner of folk to Him who were enriched and invigorated and made eternally joyful by His company.’
While Mr Fairley was saying this, the boys ran in from the street and banged the doors. The sidesmen withdrew, this time accompanied by Dot, who could be heard shouting that the devil was in one Harry Rowbotham. The old man woke up and stared unblinkingly at Mr Fairley to show how alert he was.
‘Why do we listen to these promises? Others have said splendid things; but their voices die. This voice speaks to us directly, as though no centuries separated us; it is a voice which challenges us at the deepest level of our being, and we need no one to interpret for us in order that we can understand what it is that is required of us.’ He felt the challenge himself, every moment of every day. Early in his life he had acquired a taste for his own way, and this made for confrontation rather than contemplation. His protruding eyes brimmed over with emotion as he said, ‘If we decide to answer His call, we may stray from the path, but we do so knowingly; for there is that within us, and within all men, that knows it is answerable to Him. He is our master and we prove it every day, in every decision that we make, in every encounter with another human being.’ Miss Thomas scratched at a mark on her coat, and then carried out a morbid inspection of her fingernail.
‘And the Creed says, “And after three days He rose again from the dead and ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God, from whence He shall come to judge both the quick and the dead . . .” And I say NO!’ Mr Fairley banged the pulpit and Mr Crockett, who had been counting the congregation, lost his place and began a recount. ‘I cannot accept this as the bare bones of my belief. For I believe He broke through not only the bonds of death, but of time. The agonies that came upon Him in the Garden of Gethsemane were indeed the sins of the world, of my sins and your sins, then, at that moment, bearing down upon Him.’
Alice thought of Jesus hanging on the cross, knowing that police in Shepherd’s Bush were investigating a burglary that had never taken place. The hissing gas lamps had a hypnotic effect. She bent her little finger back, which was something she had been told was a cure if you felt faint; it was certainly painful enough to occupy her mind until the urge to stand up and confess her sin had passed.
Mr Fairley was glaring angrily, a flush of colour on his cheeks; his voice became louder, vibrating with the force of his emotion. Judith thought: he’ll have a stroke when he’s older; it’s in the family. ‘And He is crucified now and the Resurrection and the promise are now. My Christ is not sitting at the right hand of God watching the miseries of the world and waiting to come in judgement. He is here among us. But do we look for him, my friends? Do we go where He will be?’ Mr Fairley paused. It was plain he would not be pleased to be answered in the affirmative.
‘How many people in London turned out to support the hunger marchers? Or offered them accommodation for the night? Most people were too busy for that. But on the days when these men were marching, cinema attendances were good. People weren’t too busy for that! And of one thing we can be certain: we shall not find Him in the cinema.’
Alice felt the hand of God laid on her as her father continued: ‘It is all glitter and glamour and tinsel morality; a world in which, above all else, it is essential to be attractive; where the problems of personality can be solved by a change of lipstick or a new hairstyle. We say it is only entertainment; but there are young people who go to the cinema two, three times a week and, without their knowing it, the values of the silver screen become an integral part of their way of looking at life.’
A further thumping on the chapel doors jerked Mr Fairley back to his pursuit of God. ‘Our situation today demonstrates that without Him “things fall apart, the centre cannot hold”.’ Miss Dyer nodded, quick to recognize the poetic tone. ‘There is an essential person somewhere within each of us who eludes us. We long for all the fragments of personality to be gathered together so that we are whole. We can’t do this for ourselves. Isn’t this because we are created by God and only He sustains us? Without Him, we cannot sustain our lives; we, too, fall apart and gradually cease to be. The proof of this is all around us.’
Alice clenched her hands and prayed that he would stop and he did. He had not got very far with the Creed, and would have to deal with such matters as the communion of saints and the forgiveness of sins, to say nothing of the Holy Ghost, on another occasion. He concluded, ‘My friends, we must take Christ out of history, or our religion becomes a long, backward glance. He is here and now always. We have our being in His presence. It is that or nothing. As we walk home tonight, along Acton High Street, past the Globe Cinema and The King’s Head and the Napier Arms Factory, the road leads – as it always has led and will always lead – to Emmaus.’ Dot, the tears streaming down her face, should ‘Hallelujah!’ Mr Fairley concluded sombrely, ‘And now, in the name of the Father and of the Son . . .’
They bowed their heads and groped for hymn books. The Minister announced the hymn, and they rose to sing:
‘Oh Beulah land, sweet Beulah land
As on thy highest mount I stand
I look away across the sea
Where mountains are prepared for me
And view the shining glory shore
My Heaven, my home for evermore.’
They sang loudly and the bare, uncomfortable room was suddenly full of people who had come alive and were briefly happy; the old man’s paper-thin face glowed as though the rosy light of the promised land already fell upon him. This, their voices said to Mr Fairley, is the kind of thing which is needed in these dark days!
When the service was over, the old man came along the row to Miss Thomas and said, ‘We should have opened the church hall to the hunger marchers; I shall raise it at the next vestry meeting.’
‘They were communists, Mr Plumley. It said so in the Morning Post.’
Miss Dyer said, ‘I was surprised to hear mention of the Virgin Mary. We’ll be having candles on the communion table next.’
It took several minutes to get out of the chapel, because the Minister and the sidesmen were shaking hands with people at the door. By the time his family had reached the door, Mr Fairley had joined them. The Minister gripped his hand and said, ‘Splendid! We must have a talk some rime about your interpretation of the Ascension . . .’
‘I didn’t think that last hymn was very appropriate,’ Mr Fairley said bluntly.
‘No, perhaps not, but Mr Plumley particularly asked for it.’
‘The reward of the good; I don’t begrudge that, dear old chap,’ Mr Fairley said philosophically as they left the chapel and turned towards the railway arch. ‘I just wish he could have had his reward at morning service.’
A few flakes of snow were beginning to fall. There was a tram coming when they reached the High Street, and in the hurry to catch it all else was forgotten. They did not speak about the service until they sat down to supper. After he had said grace, Mr Fairley turned to his wife. ‘Startled them, talking about the Creed, I’m afraid. Does them good to be startled every now and again.’
‘It’s not the Creed that startled them; it’s the films you see!’
‘I haven’t seen them,’ he said irritably.
‘That’s what you tell us!’ She smiled at Guy. ‘Do you go to the pictures much?’ She was aware of her husband’s displeasure, but Louise was coming to an age when she would bring young men home, and they must learn to talk about these things. She was relieved, however, when Guy said with obvious sincerity, ‘I agree with Mr Fairley; the cinema’s full of rubbish.’
Mr Fairley looked approvingly at Guy from under bushy eyebrows; he was about to lead the conversation round to his sermon, when Guy went on, ‘It’s the theatre which interests me.’ Mr Fairley said, ‘Really?’
‘In fact, I belong to a rather good dramatic society.’
‘You mean you actually . . . perform?’
Alice was sitting opposite Guy, and the consternation reflected in her face warned him. He said, ‘I have done a bit, yes; at school . . . Shakespeare and that kind of thing . . .’
Which of Shakespeare’s plays?’ Mr Fairley was not the man to be silenced by the magic of a great name.
‘The historical plays – Henry the Fifth and . . . er . . . Julius Caesar.’
Mr Fairley nodded. The danger had passed. Claire, who did not like to be left out of a conversation, said, ‘And The House with the Twisty Windows.’
‘The WHAT?’
‘The House with the . . .’ Claire, aware of the angry looks of her sisters, went scarlet; her eyes filled with tears.
‘What is all this about?’ Mr Fairley looked at his wife as though she were involved in a conspiracy against him.
‘I’ve no idea. What are you being so silly about, Claire? Is this house-with-whatever-it-was something you’ve heard on the wireless?’
Claire began to cry.
Louise said, ‘It’s a one-act play. The St Bartholomew’s Dramatic Society are putting it on with two other one-acts.’
Mr Fairley said, ‘St Bartholomew’s?’
‘It’s not a church dramatic society. Daddy; it broke away from the Church of England five years ago because the vicar kept interfering with the plays they put on.’
‘Why didn’t the vicar like the plays they put on?’ Judith Fairley asked, watching her daughter closely.
‘It was all right as long as they did things like Quality Street and Cranford, but if they did anything in modern dress he found it wicked.’
‘I am not at all clear,’ Mr Fairley said, ‘why we are talking about this.’
Judith caught her daughter’s eye and shook her head, but Louise had recognized her moment. ‘They want me to play a part in The House with the Twisty Windows.’
‘You!’
‘There’s nothing surprising about it. Daddy.’ Louise remained calm in the face of something rather stronger than surprise. ‘Several people we know belong. Jacov produces for them.’
Judith said sharply, ‘Louise, be quiet. What Jacov does or does not do is of no interest to your father.’ She turned to Claire. ‘If you’re not going to eat any more, you had better go upstairs. It’s past your bedtime, anyway.’
Claire got up; on her way to the door she paused behind Louise’s chair. ‘Lou . . .’
‘Oh, go and eat sour apples!’
Claire went out of the room crying.
Mr Fairley said to Louise, ‘We will say no more about this, you understand? We will say no more about it.’
Alice clenched her hands on the sides of her chair and prayed. ‘Oh God, please don’t let Louise argue with him, please don’t let her argue.’
Louise looked at her father. This was an occasion which demanded lowered eyes and trembling lips, and to Alice it seemed there was something alarming about the very steadiness of Louise’s gaze.
‘I see now that no one was listening to me this evening,’ Mr Fairley said. This hurt him and deflected his anger. ‘While I was castigating the congregation about superficiality, and making that good old man, Plumley, feel guilty about the hunger marchers, my own family was racked with concern about a one-act play called The House with the Twisty Windows!’
‘I thought your sermon was splendid, sir,’ Guy said.
For a young man who hoped to make a career on the stage he had a poor sense of timing.
When Guy left, Alice feared hostilities would break out, but neither protagonist appeared to relish a confrontation. Mr Fairley retired to his study and Louise followed Alice and her mother into the kitchen.
‘Mummy, why shouldn’t I?’
‘I’ve no sympathy with you. I warned you and you took no notice. You always think you know best, my lady, and it will lead you into trouble.’
‘But Daddy doesn’t even know the play. If that isn’t an example of knowing best, I don’t know what is.’
‘Don’t be pert, Louise. He knows you deceived us.’
‘It wasn’t deception, it was you who assumed it was the school play I was talking about.’
‘And you encouraged Claire and Alice to deceive us.’
‘As soon as Claire got involved, I told Daddy about it.’
‘Only because Claire had given the game away. You see everything from your own point of view, Louise; if you want a thing, it is right, and people who don’t agree with you are wrong.’ She went into the dining room to clear the table.
‘I know someone else who suffers from that complaint.’ Louise waited until her mother had passed out of earshot before she said this.
‘Who do you mean, Lou?’ Alice asked, feeling, as she so often did when an oblique remark was made, that she must be the person at fault.
‘Why, Daddy, of course.’
Louise was showing more of herself than she usually revealed to Alice. This made Alice feel elevated. ‘What do you mean about Daddy, Lou?’ She managed to say this in a sensible, interested tone, just as she would have talked in class about the character of Darcy or Mr Collins.
‘If he wants a thing, he talks about it as though it had happened – like me going to university; so it becomes an accepted fact. We can argue about which university and what course, but the fact of my going is incontrovertible.’
‘I thought you were going.’
‘You see how well it works!’
Aren’t you?’
‘No; I’m going to be an actress.’
‘Lou!’
Alice looked at her sister in awe. This was not the Louise of childhood, but a new person. And such a marvellous person, so brave and resolute, yet so cheerful with it. Alice had the same feeling of fear and exultation she experienced when her father and his friends talked about going over the top; but Louise’s non-combatant bravery seemed more splendid than the vision of men charging with bayonets. It was also more real, something she might come to herself one day.
‘But that’s some way off.’ Louise became active at the sink, souring hot water into the bowl and grabbing a handful of soda. She lad shaken herself and felt some compunction about the effect she must have had on Alice. ‘I’m just as fond of Daddy as you are. Don’t take what I say to heart.’ She looked at her sister quizzically, then she put a finger on the tip of Alice’s nose and pressed. Mrs Fairley came in with a loaded tray and the two girls laughed conspiratorially.
Claire was in an agitated state when her father came in to say goodnight to her.
‘You mustn’t blame yourself for what happened,’ he told her.
It seemed, however, that it was something she had overheard in chapel which was now upsetting her. ‘Mummy wouldn’t ever send us away, would she?’
He tracked this down to Miss Thomas’s comments about the Bligh family, and comforted Claire by pointing out the unfortunate fact that not every family was as loving and united as her own. He then read her a ‘William’ story (a great concession, as this was Sunday), after which he returned to his study and his own distress.
When Alice came into the bedroom there was a ridge of snow several inches deep on the windowsill. She put the stone hot water jar in her bed, and began to undress. Claire said, ‘Is Louise still cross with me?’
‘I expect so.’
‘I didn’t mean it; it just came out.’
Alice went to the washstand.
The windows were blotchy with snow. ‘The pipes will freeze,’ Claire said mournfully. She hunched down in the bed, contemplating the misery which would befall them when the boiler had to be put out, and the cold established its iron grip on the whole house. The paraffin lamp would be placed on the landing but would be found to smoke, or there would be a strong draught from the landing window which would make it dangerous to keep it alight. Louise would make an awful fuss about the state of the lavatory. Daddy would go up in the attic with a blow-lamp and Mummy would say, ‘Now we shall have a burst.’
There was a place just above the lavatory window where a waterpipe curved outwards, inviting the attention of the east wind. It was only a small length of pipe, but the plumber informed the Fairleys on each of his more than occasional winter visits that they could save themselves the bother of lagging the pipes because the water would always freeze at this point. Although it was such a small length of pipe, there were reasons – which he could not bring himself to divulge – why to bring it into the house would involve a major alteration of the whole water system.
The burst, when it came, was always a source of excitement to the children. First, it must be located, and the house would echo to cries of ‘Not in here!’ until eventually damp patches were discovered (not infrequently in the linen cupboard); then there would be much rushing about with buckets and cries of ‘Ahoy down below!’ from Mr Fairley in the attic. But enjoyable though all this undoubtedly was, it did not compensate for the misery which had gone before; and the long, cold spells gave rise to constant grumbling on the part of the children, by no means muted by their parents’ recollection of greater hardships endured in their youth.
Claire’s discomfort differed from that of her sisters. It was not just that she could not stand the cold and inconvenience; there was something sinister in the failed apparatus itself. She went in dread of the first sight of a damp patch, and at night the thought of the burst pipe dripping somewhere unknown in the house filled her with terror. While diphtheria had not permanently undermined Claire’s health, banishment to the isolation hospital had left her subject to unspecified fears which she could not fight, because they never confronted her in the open, but engaged in a kind of shadow- boxing just beyond the range of sight and sound.
Claire sniffled, thinking that this time she would have to bear Louise’s anger as well as the malignity of leaking pipes and smoking oil stoves. ‘Badger’s the only one who understands,’ she mourned.
Alice, who had finished washing, went to the window to draw the curtains. ‘It’s all white, Claire. I expect Kashmir looks lovely.’
Mr Fairley sat alone in the sitting-room, his book unopened. Judith was putting washing in to soak in case the water had frozen by the morning. Mr Fairley poked the fire and sighed. The very idea that his daughter had deceived him was scarcely credible, conflicting as it did with his cherished impression of his family as a united one in which each person could speak freely to the other. Mr Fairley made a number of assumptions about his life which usually worked out very well. On the occasions when an assumption was proved false, he had a long journey to make back to the reality of his situation. He took such setbacks badly; they disrupted him, and he often had a bad turn. He was feeling sick now.
He gazed into the fire. If the freezing of water was one of the miseries of the winter, firelight was surely its greatest joy, offering such homely pleasures as roasting chestnuts and toasting crumpets. Best of all was watching the faces in the fire. At first barely discernible, so that there was much discussion as to how it would emerge (Mr Fairley tended to see men like Jack Hulbert with long chins, while Alice favoured a sailor, like Nelson, in a cockaded hat), the face, as the flames worked on it, became clearer so that all could see that it was, in fact, the hawk-nosed gypsy which Louise had predicted. How often they had stared at the face in the fire until either some movement of the coals broke it apart or the flames, burning steadily, ate it away! But by then another face would be forming, only to be consumed in its turn, and so it would go on until, as evening turned to night, the flames hollowed the last face to glowing embers. Tonight, the wind howling in the chimney had accelerated the process. Soon the embers would dwindle to ash. Mr Fairley, who had no taste for the end of things, went out of the room and began his nightly round of winding the clocks.