He said, ‘You owe me nothing. You know that.’
‘I'm not thinking of you. I'm thinking of me.’
‘You're sure that's what you want?’
‘I'm not in the right mood for being alone.’
‘Mr and Mrs Smith, then.’
‘Mr and Mrs Smith.’
And so they slept together, their weariness and his desire assuaged in the anonymous and undisturbed comfort of an enormous double bed. And the last, unasked question was answered, because he discovered that night that Athena, for all her affairs, her strings of admirers, her little weekends in Paris, was still a virgin. Finding this out was somehow the most touching and marvellous thing that had ever happened to him; as though, gratuitously, she had given him a priceless present which he knew he was going to hold close, and treasure, for the rest of his life.
Hence, the dilemma. It had, as it were, crept up on him from behind, and his subconscious had known it was there, approaching, ready to pounce at any moment, while all the time he had been robustly telling himself that Athena was simply another relationship, another girl. Lies. What was the point in lying to himself, when the truth was that the prospect of any sort of an existence without her would be insupportable? She had, in fact, become his future.
There. It was done. Accepted. He took a deep breath, and let it all out on a long sigh of relief.
‘You sound very gloomy.’
He turned his head, and Athena was there, standing in the open French windows, and smiling down at him. She wore a sleeveless cream linen dress, and had knotted, like a cricket silk, a blue-and-cream-spotted scarf around her slender waist.
‘You look like a matinée star,’ he told her, ‘making an entrance. Anyone for tennis?’
‘And you look like doom personified. But rather comfortable. Don't get up.’ She stepped out onto the grass, and dragged a second chair closer to where he lay. On this she perched, sitting sideways, so that she faced him. ‘What was the sigh for?’
He reached out and took her hand. ‘Perhaps it was a yawn. How did you sleep?’
‘Like a log.’
‘We didn't expect you until lunch-time.’
‘The sun woke me up.’
‘Have you had breakfast?’
‘Cup of coffee.’
‘Actually, I wasn't yawning. I was thinking.’
‘So that's what you were doing? It sounded dreadfully exhausting.’
‘I was thinking that perhaps we ought to get married.’
Athena looked a bit stunned. After a bit, she said, ‘Oh, dear.’
‘Is it such an awesome suggestion?’
‘No, it's just come at rather a funny time.’
‘What's funny about it?’
‘I don't know. Everything, really. Aunt Lavinia dying and then not dying, and us racing home from Scotland…I just feel I don't quite know what's going to happen next. Except that we seem to be teetering on the verge of a horrible war.’
It was the first time Rupert had ever heard her make a serious and considered statement about the situation in Europe. And in all the time they had spent together, she had presented a face so trivial and light-hearted and sweet that he had never brought the subject up, simply because he didn't want to spoil anything; he wanted her to stay that way.
Now he said, ‘Does it frighten you?’
‘Of course it does. The very idea turns me to jelly. And I hate waiting. And listening to the news. It's like watching sand go through an egg-timer, and each day everything gets more and more ghastly and hopeless.’
‘If it's any comfort, we're all in it together.’
‘It's people like darling Pops that I agonise for. He's been through it all before, and Mummy says he's despairing, though he does his best to hide it. Not for himself, but for all of us. Specially Edward.’
‘Is it because of a war that you don't want to get married?’
‘I didn't say that.’
‘Can you imagine being the wife of a regular Army officer?’
‘Not really, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't quite like it.’
‘Following the drum?’
‘If the balloon goes up, I don't suppose there'll be much of a drum to follow.’
‘That's true enough. So, for the time being, I haven't very much to offer you, except probably years of separation. If you don't think you can deal with that, I shall perfectly understand.’
She said, with total confidence, ‘Oh, I could easily deal with that.’
‘So what couldn't you deal with?’
‘Oh, silly things that you probably don't think are important.’
‘Try me.’
‘Well…I'm not being rude or critical or anything, but I don't think I'd fit frightfully well into your family. Admit it, Rupert, I didn't make much of an impression.’
He was sympathetic. ‘My mother is a bit of a battleaxe, I know, but she's not a fool. She's capable of making the best of any situation. And my inheriting Taddington, and taking over responsibility, is, with a bit of luck, decades away. As well, I respect my parents, but I have never been intimidated by them.’
‘Goodness, you're brave. Do you mean you'd fly against their wishes?’
‘I mean that I intend marrying someone I love, not the Lady Master of Foxhounds, nor the prospective Conservative candidate.’
Which for some reason made her laugh, and all at once she was his own dear Athena again. He put his hand around her neck, drew her close and kissed her. When he had finished kissing her, she said, ‘I certainly don't fall into either of those categories.’
He lay back in his chair. ‘Which deals with one silly thing. What's the next objection?’
‘You won't laugh?’
‘I promise.’
‘Well, the thing is, I've never really wanted to get married.’
‘To get married, or to be married?’
‘To get married. I mean, weddings and such. I hate weddings. I don't even like going to them. They always strike me as being the most ghastly ordeal for everybody. Particularly the poor bride.’
‘I thought her wedding day was meant to be every girl's dream.’
‘Not mine. I've attended too many, sometimes as a bridesmaid and sometimes as a guest, and they're all the same, except that each seems just a bit more extravagant and pretentious than the last. As though the whole idea was to outdo the last performance, and put on an even more costly and theatrical show. And weddings take months to organise, and there are fittings and invitation lists and old aunts being coy about the honeymoon, and having to have somebody's perfectly hideous cousin for a bridesmaid. And then hundreds of appalling wedding presents. Toast-racks and Japanese vases and pictures that never, in a million years, would you want to hang on the wall. And you spend all your time writing insincere thank-you letters with your fingers crossed, and everybody gets tense and miserable and there's lots of bursting into tears. The miracle is that anybody ever gets married at all, but I bet most girls have nervous breakdowns on their honeymoons…’
He listened patiently to all this until Athena finally ran out of breath. Her outburst was followed by a long silence. Then she said, sounding sulky, ‘I told you it was a silly reason.’
‘No,’ Rupert told her, ‘not silly at all. But I think you concentrate on inessentials. I am talking about a lifetime, and you are jibbing at a single day. A tradition. I think, the way the world is going, we are perfectly entitled to throw tradition out of the window.’
‘I hate to say it, Rupert, but my mother would be devastated.’
‘Of course she wouldn't. She loves you, and she'll understand. Now, we've talked it all through, pros and cons. And as for a wedding, when it comes to the push, nobody really needs to be there except you and me.’
‘Do you really mean that?’
‘Of course.’
She lifted his hand and pressed a kiss on it, and when she looked up at him again, he saw that her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
‘So silly
to want to cry. It's just that I never thought this could happen. That you could have a best friend and a lover all rolled in one. You are my Scotch Corner lover, Rupert. It sounds like something to eat, doesn't it? But the best-friend bit is the most important, because that's what lasts for always.’
‘That's right,’ Rupert told her, and he had to make something of an effort to keep his voice steady, so touched was he by her tears, and so filled with protective love. ‘That's what's really important.’
‘Have you got a handkerchief?’
He gave her his clean one, and she blew her nose.
‘What time is it, Rupert?’
‘Just about noon.’
‘I wish it was lunch-time. I'm starving.’
It was not until the Saturday, the final day of her stay in Porthkerris, that Judith set off for Pendeen to see Phyllis. The reasons for the delay were various. It wasn't that she didn't want to see Phyllis, nor felt that in any way she was performing a duty, it was just that there was always so much going on, and the days raced by with alarming speed. As well, there was the complication of communication, and the amount of time it took to get in touch by letter. Judith had sent Phyllis a picture postcard, suggesting one or two dates, and finally had received Phyllis's reply, written on lined paper torn from a notebook.
Saturday would be best come around three and well have tea. Im about a mile beyond Pendeen. Row of cottages on the left. Number two. Cyrils on weekend shift at Geevor but Anna and me will be waiting. Love Phyllis.
Saturday. ‘It's my last day!’ she protested to Heather. ‘Oh, bother, I wish we could have fixed it before.’
‘Doesn't matter. Mum wants to go to Penzance and buy a hat for Daisy Parson's wedding, and if I don't go with her she'll come home with something that looks like a po. You and I can do something in the evening. Get Joe to take us to the Palais de Danse.’
And so, Saturday afternoon and she was on her way, driving up the hill and out of the town. Past shops, her old school; between terraced rows of stone houses, each one step higher than its neighbour. The bay, the harbour sank down behind her, and she reached the cross-roads and took the turning for Land's End.
The weather was still fine, hot and sunny, but a brisk wind blew in from the sea, and the Atlantic was freckled with white-caps. Clouds sailed across the sky, and as the car ground its way, in third gear, up onto the moor, she saw their shadows bowling across the russet hills. At the summit, the view was spectacular — the shelf of green farmland, distant cliffs, yellow gorse, jutting headlands, the clear horizon and the indigo sea. For a moment she was tempted to draw in to the side of the road, roll down the window and just sit and look at it all for a bit, but Phyllis was waiting and there was no time to be wasted.
Im about a mile beyond Pendeen. Row of cottages on the left. Phyllis's directions were not hard to follow, because once through Pendeen, and past Geevor Mine, where poor Cyril was, at this moment, labouring deep underground, the countryside abruptly changed, becoming bleak. Primeval; almost forbidding. No more pretty little farms set in green pasture fields, patchworked by stone walls dating back to the Bronze Age; and not a single tree to be seen, however stunted by the wind.
The terrace of mining cottages, when she came upon it, stood isolated, reasonless, in the middle of nowhere. It resembled nothing so much as a row of upended bricks, cemented together and then dropped, haphazard, and abandoned where they had fallen. Each brick had a window upstairs and a window downstairs and a doorway, and all were roofed in grey slate. They were separated from the roadside by a stone wall, and then small, downtrodden front gardens. The garden of number two boasted a patch of rough grass and a few pansies and a lot of weeds.
Judith got out of the car, collected up the sheaf of flowers and small packages she had brought for Phyllis, opened a rickety gate and started up the path. But she was only half-way before the door opened and Phyllis, bearing the baby Anna in her arms, came running to greet her.
‘Judith! Been looking out the window, waiting for you to come. Thought you might have got lost.’ She stared out at the road, her face incredulous. ‘That your car, is it? I couldn't believe it when you said you'd come in your own car. It's lovely. Never seen anything so new…’
She had changed. Not aged, exactly, but lost weight, and with it some of her bloom. Her skirt and knitted jumper hung about her, as though once they had belonged to a much larger person, and her straight hair looked dry as straw. But her eyes shone with excitement, and nothing could stop her smile.
‘Oh, Phyllis.’ They hugged. All those years ago it had been Jess in Phyllis's arms who had impeded their embrace. And now it was Anna who got in the way, but not enough to matter except that her expression was deeply disapproving.
Judith laughed. ‘She looks as though we're doing something dreadfully wrong. Hello, Anna.’ Anna stared balefully. ‘How old is she?’
‘Eight months.’
‘She's wonderfully chubby.’
‘Got a mind of her own. Come on inside, the wind's teasy, and we don't want to stand here with the neighbours watching…’
She turned and went back in through her front door, and Judith followed, walking straight into a small room which was clearly the only living space. Little light penetrated the window, so it was a bit dark, but a Cornish range kept it warm, and one end of the table had been carefully set for tea.
‘I've brought you some bits and pieces…’ She unloaded the packages onto the free end of the table.
‘Judith. You didn't need to do that…’ But Phyllis's eyes gleamed with happy expectancy at the thought of surprises in the offing. ‘Just hang on a mo, till I get the kettle on, and then we can have a cup of tea.’ Hoisting the baby to her shoulder, she went to do this, and then drew out a chair and sat down, with Anna on her lap. Anna reached for a teaspoon, and stuffed it, dribbling, into her mouth. ‘She's teething, the little love.’
‘Perhaps we should put the flowers in water.’
‘Flowers! Roses! You know, I haven't seen roses in years, not like these. And the smell. What can I put them in? I haven't got any vases.’
‘A jug would do. Or a jam jar. Tell me where to find one.’
Phyllis began, gently, to unwrap the tissue paper from the long-stemmed buds. ‘There's an old pickle jar in that cupboard. And the tap's out the door at the back, in the wash-house. Oh, just look at those! I'd forgotten how beautiful they are.’
Judith went to open the cupboard door, unearthed the pickle jar, and carried it through the door at the back of the room, down two steps and out into a cavernous wash-house, a double-height lean-to, tacked on to the back of the two-room cottage. This had a flagged floor and flaking whitewashed walls, and smelt of household soap and the soggy wood of the draining-board. Gold and damp struck chill. In one corner, like a great monster, brooded a clothes-boiler, and there was a clay sink with a tin-bath tucked beneath it. The sink had one tap, and a flight of open wooden stairs led to the upstairs room. The baby clearly slept with her mother and father.
At the back of the wash-house was a half-glassed door, ill-fitting and the source of a sneaky draught. Through this could be seen a cement yard, a washing-line strung with blowing nappies and work-shirts, a rickety perambulator, and a sagging privy. This dismal spot was probably where Phyllis spent much of her time, lighting the fire under the boiler to deal with her family wash, or carrying a kettle of hot water through from the range in order to wash a sinkful of dishes. Imagining the hard labour involved simply to deal with the ordinary chores of everyday life caused Judith some distress. No wonder Phyllis looked so thin. What was almost impossible to understand was how any person could have put up such a house in the first place, without thought for the woman who was going to have to work in it. Only a man, she decided bitterly.
‘What are you doing?’ Phyllis called through the open door. ‘I'm going mad, waiting.’
‘Just coming.’ She turned on the lone tap, filled the pickle jar and carried it back to the front room, clo
sing the door firmly behind her.
‘Gloomy old place, that wash-house, isn't it? And it's icy in winter unless you've got the boiler going.’ But Phyllis said this quite cheerfully, and clearly did not think that there was anything untoward in such primitive conditions. She placed the roses, one by one, into the pickle jar, and then sat back to admire them.
‘They change everything, don't they, flowers? Make a place look quite different.’
‘Open the other things, Phyllis.’
It took some time, with Phyllis unknotting string and folding paper, to be put aside for use at some later date. ‘Soap! Yardley's Lavender. Just like your mum used to use. I'll save it for best. Put it in a drawer with my knickers. And what's this then?’
‘That's for Anna.’
‘Oh, look. A little coat.’ Phyllis held it up. ‘She's hardly ever had a new thing for herself, been living in hand-me-downs since the day she was born. Look at it, Anna. Isn't that lovely? You can wear it next Sunday when you go to see Gran. And so soft, that wool. Like a little princess, you'll be.’
‘And this is for Cyril. But you eat them if he doesn't like them. I thought about cigarettes, but I didn't know if he smoked.’
‘No, he doesn't smoke. Has a glass of beer, but he doesn't smoke. Gets to his chest. Coughs something awful. I think it must have something to do with working down the mine.’
‘But he's all right?’
‘Oh, he's all right. Sorry about him not being here today. You never met him, did you, not even after all that time I was with your mother?’
‘I'll meet him another day.’
‘In a way,’ said Phyllis, ‘it's easier without him. We can have a proper chat.’ She took the wrapping-paper from the final parcel. ‘Oh, my life. Chocolates. Cyril's mad on chocolate. Look, Anna, at the ribbon and the pretty box. See the little kitten and the puppy in their basket? It's lovely, Judith. It's all lovely. Some kind, you are…’
She smiled, dizzy with delight, but there was the shine of tears in her eyes, and Judith was filled with guilt. Such small things she had brought with her, and here was Phyllis almost weeping with gratitude.