27

Lawrence’s prophecy came true, but not in quite the way he had envisaged. Frances and Nicky did indeed become a couple, and when Rad came down for the Christmas holidays we would go out, or stay in, depending on whether we had any money, in a foursome. This was not, however, the fulfilment of all my hopes, as Rad appeared to be quite unmoved by the spectacle of grand romance enacted daily by Frances and Nicky, and showed no sign of following suit. He simply tagged along as Nicky’s friend and Frances’ brother and was not about to be pressurised by the demands of mere symmetry. This arrangement at least legitimised my presence. Without Rad we had made an uncomfortable threesome: I didn’t have the dignity to retire, and Nicky and Frances hadn’t the heart to tell me to clear off. We settled into a new routine. I would spend Friday night at the Radleys’ and leave on Saturday morning in time for orchestra. Frances would see Nicky on Saturdays and both of us were invited for Sunday lunch. This meant that all my Saturday evenings were now spent at home: I had no other friends. I had never needed to make the effort – there had always been Frances. My mother was soon as dismayed to have me slouching around the house as she had ever been at my readiness to be gone. She took my predicament as a personal slight, and began to entertain uncharitable thoughts about Frances.

‘It’s not natural for a girl of your age to be in every Saturday night. Don’t you have some other friends you could ring up? You could invite someone to stay here – that would show Frances. What about the people at orchestra? Surely after all this time you must have got to know someone?’ It was pointless trying to explain that my aloofness was made of sterner stuff. I didn’t mind staying in for the evening. It was only a matter of getting through it, and then it would be Sunday and off I’d go again.

I watched a lot of television at that time. I was abetted in this by father, who had recently acquired a remote control set and took such joy in his new gadget that it was possible to acquire a working knowledge of the material on all three sides at once. His continual grazing between channels exasperated my mother, who could often be caught out and find herself transported in and out of several programmes before realising what was happening. Any display of interest in what was on the screen would instantly provoke a burst of channel-switching from father. The only way to ensure your programme stayed put was to affect complete indifference – pick up a magazine for example. But mother would never learn. She would sit forward, or say, ‘Ooh good,’ as Gardeners’ World appeared, and click, we’d be in the middle of Coronation Street or Dad’s Army. He seemed to regard it all as a great game. ‘I’ve got the conch,’ he used to say, settling down in an armchair with one finger poised on the button like a contestant in a quiz show.

Even this sacrifice on my part was not enough for Nicky. Having come to ardour rather late in his acquaintance with Frances he was now making up for lost time, and begrudged her every minute she spent away from him. Sometimes he would come down from college in the middle of the week and stay overnight. Rad’s room became his official second residence. They obviously sat up late on these occasions as the next day Frances would come to school wilting with tiredness. Her academic standing had never been lower. Her work was regularly returned with comments like 3/20 – Frankly, pathetic, or U – Is this a joke? The only subject at which she exerted herself was English, where she would produce pages of breathless scribble about Jane Eyre or The Eve of Saint Agnes with the maximum recourse to personal opinion and experience, and the minimum of textual analysis. These offerings were welcomed by the teacher as a sign of interest and her enthusiasm, however incoherent, was given every encouragement.

‘I wish Nicky was a bit more romantic,’ was Frances’ only criticism.

‘Romantic like what?’ I asked. ‘Do you want him to serenade you under your window by the light of the 194 bus?’

‘Yes,’ she said, jumping at the idea. ‘Yes. Oh, you know, I thought he might write me poems and stuff.’

‘That’s a bit much to expect, isn’t it? He’s a trainee dentist not a poet. I bet you couldn’t even write a poem yourself.’ I knew she would take up the challenge, but by the end of double biology she had only produced one feeble couplet: ‘Nicky Rupp you make me frantic / Is your soul so unromantic?’ The following day, however, she slid a piece of folded paper into my lap during assembly. We were sitting in the front row of seats – those more junior had to sit cross-legged in the dust at our feet – and I was feeling rather exposed. I eased the note open under cover of my hymnbook as the headmistress and deputies processed down the aisle, and read:

Nicky Rupp you make me frantic;

Is your soul so unromantic

That you couldn’t write a line

Of verse to let me know you’re mine?

Could you not describe a rose

In something more intense than prose?

Consider as you pull a tooth

That Truth is Beauty; Beauty Truth;

Ever let the fancy roam

Far from halitosis’ home.

Your gentle hand would suit a quill

Much better than a dentist’s drill,

For there must beat a heart beneath

That thrills to something more than teeth.

I glanced sideways at Frances and she bared her teeth at me. I looked away hurriedly and dug my fingernails into my palm as my eyes started to water. I could sense twitching next to me but didn’t dare look up again. Laughing in prayers was regarded as an insult to God.

‘Frances Radley and the girl next to you, get out,’ hissed the headmistress as soon as she gained the platform. ‘We take our worship seriously here!’ she added in a menacing tone.

‘You never wrote that,’ I said when we had slunk out of the hall.

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I got stuck after two lines so Dad finished it off. I’m going to send it to Nicky anonymously.’

Nicky was given the opportunity to prove himself a man of grand gestures before long. Rad was down for the weekend and the four of us were planning to spend the day in London. Nicky, who was coming straight from his hall of residence, was to meet us at the bus stop at Waterloo station and we would walk over to King’s to have lunch in the canteen before going to see a film at the Empire. I had only realised that morning that it was Valentine’s Day because an unsigned card had arrived for me – as it had every year since I had been a visitor at the Radleys’. I knew it was from Mr Radley as Frances also received one addressed in the same handwriting, which he had made no attempt to disguise. These cards were intended to console us in the face of being otherwise unloved: at sixteen I took this as an impertinence.

We were a little late arriving as I had been obliged to set off from home with my cello as if on the way to orchestra, and then double back to Frances’ place. I didn’t want my parents to know I was playing truant: they had just spent £500 on a new bow for me after the old one started to moult, and it might have looked ungrateful. Rad, typically, was critical of these measures.

‘Are your parents very fierce? Do they beat you?’ he asked, watching me stow the cello in the cupboard under the stairs next to Lexi’s golf clubs. ‘Or do you just like complications?’

Nicky was nowhere in sight when we got off the bus so we started walking and met up with him about half-way across the bridge. He was wearing an expensive-looking jacket of distressed leather and carrying a large irregular-shaped parcel, about the size of a fat pillow, wrapped in red foil.

‘Hello pooch,’ he said, closing on Frances. Rad and I gazed out over the Thames as they kissed passionately. The water was dark grey and rippled like beaten metal. A pleasure cruiser, half-empty, passed underneath us on its way to Greenwich. It wasn’t a good day for sightseeing: there was a stinging wind and a few raindrops were starting to fall. My hair was whipping itself into a tangle, so I twisted it into a coil and stuffed it down the back of my coat. The kiss continued. Rad tutted to himself. Passers-by were beginning to stare. The rain started to come down harder and all around us umbrellas burst into bloom. Frances and Nicky broke apart. ‘Is that new?’ she asked, emerging from within his jacket. Nicky’s expenditure on clothes was the subject of much leg-pulling in the Radley household. Only Lexi bought as many new clothes as him – and she invariably took them back after one wearing.

Nicky fingered the lapel. ‘Yes. Do you like it?’

‘Is it meant to look like that?’

‘It’s the fashion, Frances. I know that’s an unfamiliar word to you people.’

‘You mean scruffy is In? Hey, Rad, you’d better watch out or someone might mistake you for a follower of fashion.’

‘I knew my time would come,’ he said.

‘What’s that, anyway?’ Frances pointed to the parcel, her curiosity getting the better of her.

‘Oh, sorry,’ said Nicky, collecting himself. He thrust it at her. ‘Happy Valentine’s Day.’

Frances tore off the paper, which the wind promptly snapped out of her hand. We watched it cartwheel into the middle of the road where it was run over by a succession of cars. The contents of the parcel were revealed as a large fluffy white teddy bear holding a red satin heart. Her face fell.

‘Thank you,’ she said, a second too late.

‘Don’t you like it?’ Nicky asked.

‘Ye-e-es,’ said Frances, without much conviction.

Nicky looked crushed. ‘I thought girls were supposed to like that sort of thing. Cute cuddly toys. The shops are absolutely full of them.’

‘That’s the whole point,’ said Frances. ‘Anyway, I haven’t said I don’t like it. I’d like anything that was from you.’ And then the death-blow: ‘Did you keep the receipt?’

‘What’s wrong with it?’ He appealed to me and Rad.

We all stood around the bear, surveying it critically.

‘Well …’ Rad began, struggling to unite honesty with tact. ‘It’s a bit lacking in the good taste department.’

‘Oh God, I’ve really screwed up, haven’t I?’ said Nicky. ‘I knew I should have got flowers.’

‘Oh, it’s not that bad,’ said Frances, giving the bear a forgiving squeeze which must have activated a switch somewhere deep in the fur, as it gave an electronic squeak indicative of a creature in great pain.

‘No, you’re right, it’s total crap,’ said Nicky decisively, and before any of us could respond he snatched the bear and tossed it over the parapet.

‘Oh Nicky!’ Frances let out a shriek worthy of a mother whose baby has just fallen into the Thames, as we watched it spin through the air. ‘What did you do that for? I didn’t hate it that much. Poor little thing.’ And she burst into tears. Indeed it did look rather forlorn, bowling along on its back in the oily river.

‘I’ll get it back for you if you want it,’ Nicky said heroically, struggling out of his jacket. ‘Look after that,’ he added, spoiling the effect somewhat.

‘Don’t be …’

‘You’re not …’ Rad and I said simultaneously.

‘I’ll be all right.’ And he swung his legs over the parapet.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Rad.

‘Frances, stop him,’ I said. But she hesitated, and in that second’s pause Nicky jumped.

The three of us watched in horror as he plummeted towards the water, his legs kicking slightly, as if he was already regretting it. He disappeared beneath the surface as if sucked under, and everything seemed to stop – the traffic on the bridge, the boats on the river, the people on the embankment below, as if time itself was holding its breath, and then, perhaps four seconds later, Nicky popped up like a cork some twenty yards from his point of entry, struggling vainly against the incoming tide that was pulling him upstream and out into the middle of the river. The teddy bear was well on its way to Westminster Bridge by now, and quite unreachable.

‘Oh God, he’s going to drown. Rad, you’ll have to go in after him,’ said Frances hysterically. Rad didn’t move.

‘No don’t,’ I said. ‘Look.’ Below us a police launch was chugging into view. It swung round towards Nicky, its wake tracing a milky circle around his thrashing figure. The current was so strong that each time the boat attempted to come alongside him Nicky would be swept further out of reach. By this time we had been joined on the bridge by a small group of spectators, hopeful of witnessing a successful suicide attempt. A murmur of anxiety, or was it excitement?, ran through the crowd each time the launch failed to pick him up. It took several circuits before one of the boatmen could get close enough to fling out a lifebelt on a line, and Nicky was hauled in. He stood, round shouldered and dripping, in the bow of the boat as it disappeared under Westminster Bridge.

‘If he’d drowned that would have been your fault, Frances,’ Rad said severely.

‘What do you mean?’ she said, red-faced with guilt and anger.

‘You could have stopped him but you didn’t.’

‘You could have jumped in after him but you didn’t.’ They faced each other, glaring. It was the first time I’d ever seen them in a confrontation. The few bystanders, cheated of tragedy by the efficiency of the river police, turned towards Frances in anticipation of fresh drama.

‘All right, calm down,’ Rad muttered. ‘There’s no point in standing here in the rain arguing.’

‘Where do you think they’ll take Nicky?’ I asked. ‘To Saint Thomas’s? He’ll probably need his stomach pumped if he’s swallowed any of that water.’

‘They’re more likely to have taken him down to the cells for making a nuisance of himself.’

‘They wouldn’t be able to charge him with anything, would they?’ asked Frances.

‘Dunno,’ said Rad. ‘Breach of the peace?’

‘Dropping litter?’ I suggested. Frances started to giggle, her familiar madwoman’s cackle, which set us off, and I don’t know whether it was just a release of tension, but the three of us were soon crying with laughter. We were still gasping when we reached the underpass, where we stopped on the kerb to cross just as a black taxi hit the only pot-hole on the bridge, sending up a filthy sheet of water which left an arc of oily spray on Nicky’s new jacket.

It emerged later that Nicky had been taken to the police station – ‘for a change of clothes and a bollocking’ as he reported it. His rescuers had gone on to pick up the bear as well, not as a favour to Nicky, but in a spirit of tidiness, and he was able to present it to Frances when he finally caught up with us back at his halls.

‘Sponge clean only,’ said Frances, reading the label, as she squeezed the waterlogged teddy over the sink. ‘Do not soak.’ Now violently attached to it, she took it home in a plastic bag and sat it on her radiator, where it took two days to dry out, lost its shine and its squeak, and gave off a powerful smell of drains.