‘Your eyes!’ exclaimed Christabel, and Gaskell laughed.
‘My best feature,’ she said, with an air of proud satisfaction. Her eyes were a rich and bright emerald green, and fixed on Christabel with a beautiful, sincere and humorous intensity. ‘Let’s go out and have a cup of tea and a piece of cake,’ she said.
They sat and chatted, and then went for a walk, getting on so well that they decided to go to the West End and see a play. In the interval Christabel found a telephone box and phoned home. It was answered by Rosie. ‘Where are you? We’ve been worried sick!’
‘Actually, I’m in the West End, and I’m going to stay in Kensington tonight.’
‘Kensington?’
‘I’ve made a new friend. She’s marvellous. You’ll really adore her. Anyway, I’m going to stay with her tonight. She says that her flat is frightfully bohemian, and –’ She was interrupted by the bleeping of expiring time, and the last Rosie heard was ‘Gaskell, have you got another penny?’ before the telephone was cut off.
Gaskell’s rooms were really a fully functioning studio, with canvases propped up against chairs and walls, pots of paint lined up, and brushes decongealing in jars of turpentine. The smell was intoxicating. Gaskell had been using the walls to try out colours, and you would have had to look up to see that they had once been white. There was a marvellously vigorous multicoloured patch where she had been cleaning the excess oil from her brushes, with strong diagonal strokes that had built up into thick contours. There was a large new canvas, still at the charcoal stage, which was going to be of a dead horse.
The two women drank sherry out of teacups, ate anchovy-paste sandwiches straight off the table, and talked about photography. ‘I always take lots of photographs before I do a painting,’ said Gaskell. ‘Otherwise it’s terribly difficult to sketch things quickly enough, or get anyone to pose for long enough.’
‘The dead horse would have been easy,’ pointed out Christabel.
‘Very true, but that particular one has been dead for two years, and by now it would be quite a different thing to paint. I took lots of pictures of it. Of course, I had to make notes about the colours.’
‘Will you teach me how to take photographs artistically?’ asked Christabel. ‘I think it might be my vocation, but I have such a long way to go technically.’
‘Why don’t we do joint exhibitions?’ suggested Gaskell. ‘Photographs and paintings together would double the potential, I would think.’
‘I think you’d better wait and see if I’m any good,’ said Christabel.
They killed the bottle of sherry between them, and Gaskell fetched Christabel a glass of water, saying, ‘Better drink this, or you’ll have a head in the morning.’
That night Christabel lay wide awake in Gaskell’s bed, her head swimming with alcohol, and Gaskell tried to accommodate her long frame on a sofa, covered only by a rug. It seemed that they could not stop talking, no matter how they tried to get to sleep. They had forgotten to stack up the grate, and it grew very cold. At two o’clock in the morning, Christabel said, ‘Aren’t you absolutely freezing?’
‘I wouldn’t say I’m toasting,’ replied Gaskell.
‘Come and get in with me and we’ll keep each other warm,’ said Christabel.
‘I’m not sure…well…I mean…’
‘Oh, come on, it’ll be like being at school again. And I often cuddle up to my sisters when it’s cold.
‘Isn’t this nice?’ said Christabel happily, as they matched contours, and began to warm up deliciously.
‘You smell just like a puppy,’ said Gaskell, putting her arm over Christabel, and tucking up.
59
The AC Six
After a few weeks had passed, the AC Six was still in the driveway, and Mr and Mrs McCosh were beginning to find it a nuisance.
‘Why doesn’t that fellow come and get the damned thing?’ Mr McCosh demanded frequently.
‘In case Daniel’s here and gives him another thrashing,’ said Ottilie. ‘I wouldn’t come back if I were him.’
‘He’s probably too ashamed,’ said Rosie. ‘I would be.’
‘He might be in prison,’ said Christabel. ‘He’s a murderer, if you think about it.’
‘A manslaughterer, at the very least,’ said Mr McCosh. ‘I hope he’s sewing up mailbags for many years to come. But what are we going to do about the damned AC? The hackney carriages can’t get round the crescent and have to drop us off outside in the road.’
‘It is too humiliating to be dropped outside in the road,’ said Mrs McCosh. ‘Just imagine if Their Majesties were to come by, and had to be dropped in the road. It would be too mortifying.’
‘Or the Shah of Persia,’ said Ottilie.
‘Indeed,’ concurred Mrs McCosh.
‘Or the Maharaja of Morvi,’ said Christabel.
‘Or the Grand Panjandrum of Mysorebaksyde,’ said Mr McCosh.
‘Thank you, that’s quite enough,’ said Mrs McCosh. ‘What does one have to do to be taken seriously? What are we going to do about the horseless carriage?’
‘One of us should go to the police station and try to find out what’s going on,’ suggested Rosie. ‘We can ask the police to sort it out.’
‘Your idea,’ said Ottilie. ‘You do it.’
‘I’ll do it if you come with me,’ said Rosie.
The two sisters walked to the police station and found a sergeant at the desk, who was not at all interested. ‘Once it’s been there for ten years, I think I’m right in saying that it’s yours,’ he said, ‘but I might have made it up. Better ask a lawyer.’
‘Can’t you give us the man’s name and address?’ asked Rosie. ‘Or ask someone from the station nearest to his house to go and see him and ask him to dispose of it?’
‘I’ll see what I can do, miss’ said the policeman wearily. As the British police, then as now, measure out their lives by the intervals between cups of tea, he resolved to deal with the matter at a quarter past eleven.
Thus it was that one week later Constable Dusty Miller arrived at the house and presented Rosie with a handwritten message stating that the gentleman concerned had jumped bail and apparently absconded abroad in a Vickers Vimy. Furthermore, he had been fined £600 during the war for hoarding. ‘He was an all-round nasty piece of work,’ concluded the constable.
‘Gracious me, what shall we do with the car, then?’ asked Rosie.
‘If I were you, I’d just use it, miss. I don’t think ’e’s coming back.’ E’s probably sipping gin in Rangoon. I’d get it insured, though.’
‘Hmm,’ said Rosie doubtfully. ‘Oh well, thank you so much, Constable, and do call in at the kitchen. I’m sure Cookie will give you a cup of tea.’
‘Thank you very much, miss, that’s very kind, miss.’ This was something he had been intending to do anyway, but it was certainly congenial to have permission. ‘How are you getting on with the cat, miss?’
‘He’s always climbing the curtains. It drives my mother mad. Then he reverses down with great difficulty. He’s growing terribly quickly.’
‘Ah, a curtain climber. Fluff mostly stops us writing our reports. She likes to sit on the paper and play with the pens. She knocked over a pot of ink last week. And she turned over the milk jug.’
‘We were going to find a home for Caractacus,’ said Rosie, ‘but I don’t think we will.’
‘Well, that’s the trouble with cats, miss,’ said the constable wisely.
60
Rosie and Fairhead
Out by the side of the house, on a freezing day, the Reverend Captain Fairhead, dressed in his officer’s warm, was watching with interest as two dozen bags of coal were borne from Freemantle’s large cart by four men who were themselves as black as the coal that they carried, as were the enormous dray horses which stamped and snorted in the shafts, their breath hanging like plumes of smoke in the frozen air. The coal dust had been worn and compressed into the coalmen’s leather aprons and jerkins, their caps, the felt
of their donkey jackets, and into the skin of their hands and faces. Shining and gleaming, the coalmen were like creatures from another universe. Not for the first time, Fairhead felt a kind of gratitude that he had been born to a lighter fate.
He bowed his head for a second, though, when he remembered how backbreaking it had been to be at one end of a stretcher, struggling through mire, or attempting to carry a wounded man over one’s shoulders. ‘I have something in common with them after all,’ he thought. Fairhead remembered how intense physical labour can keep you more than warm on an icy day. He saw how much they enjoyed tipping the coal down the chute into the cellar. They always stood for a second and watched it go. It went down with a wonderful rumble on the wooden boards, and arrived at the bottom with a satisfying soft crash. He wondered what kind of life the coalmen could have at home. Perhaps they left their clothes at the door, stepped naked into their houses, and stood in a tub while their wives went back and forth with jugs of hot water. Perhaps they spent their evenings and Sundays as white as the lamb.
Fairhead became aware of someone standing beside him, and he turned his head. ‘I love it when the coal comes,’ said Rosie. ‘When you’re inside the house you don’t expect it, and when it starts, my first thought is “Oh no, it’s an earthquake!” ’
‘I was thinking about the lives of these people, these coalmen,’ said Fairhead. ‘I was trying to imagine it.’
‘I often look at people with what seem to be intolerable lives, and then I can’t help but notice that they’re really quite happy. Just as happy as us, anyway.’
‘Are you happy, Rosie? I can’t help noticing that you and Daniel have become constant companions. Moving pictures, skating, art exhibitions, smoking concerts, dancing…Do we have grounds for hope?’
‘Hope?’
‘Come, Rosie, I’m sure you catch my drift.’
‘Well, I wanted to ask you about it. I want your opinion. As a man of God. Shall we go inside? It’s perishing.’
They gave up their coats to Millicent, and sat either side of the drawing-room fire, shivering now that they were warming up a little.
Rosie said, ‘I won’t beat about the bush. The thing is…Daniel has asked me to marry him. Several times. He is very insistent.’
‘I take it from what you say that you haven’t accepted him?’
‘No. Not…I’m very doubtful. I’m in two minds. It’s not like you and Sophie…’
‘But you do get on terribly well. Let’s come straight to the point, shall we? Do you love him enough to marry him?’
Rosie hung her head. ‘This is what I don’t know.’
Fairhead leaned forward, pressing his fingertips together. ‘Look, Rosie, I don’t have any experience to speak of. But one thing I do suspect is that you should not marry someone if you are not dedicated to their happiness rather than your own. Are you willing to dedicate yourself to his happiness? And are you sure that he will be more interested in your happiness than in his own?’
‘I’m certain he would be a good husband,’ said Rosie sincerely, ‘and that’s what makes it so tempting. But I do know myself. I might very well say that I will always put his happiness before mine, but will I, when it comes down to it? I don’t trust myself, the way I would have done with Ash.’
Fairhead nodded, and said, ‘Go on.’
‘The thing is, I had thought of him as my husband since I was about, what? About twelve years old? We got engaged with a curtain ring. I promised I’d love him forever, even beyond death, and there’d never be anyone else, and, you know, how can I put it? It feels as though my heart is closed, and will always be closed. And there’s another thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘You know how important my faith is to me?’
‘How could I not? It puts mine to shame, in every way.’
‘Well, Daniel has no faith.’
‘He doesn’t not have faith. I mean, he’s an agnostic, not an atheist. He has perfectly defensible philosophical doubts. It would be strange not to, after such a terrible war. I’ve had some very interesting conversations with him.’
‘I don’t think I could live with someone who doesn’t share my faith.’
‘Did Ashbridge have faith like yours?’
Rosie blushed and looked a little horrified. At length she admitted, ‘I honestly don’t know. We never really talked about it much. He called it my “weakness”, and teased me about it. And back then, before the war, it wasn’t so important. We lived in a nice golden cocoon, didn’t we?’
‘Mmm, yes, it was lovely being Edwardian,’ said Fairhead. ‘That was our little golden age.’ He stood and looked down at her sympathetically. He picked the poker out of its stand and rattled at the coals in the grate. ‘Listen, my dear, you should not count very much on my advice. My certainties are really very small, when it comes down to it. But first of all come and look at the Bible with me, will you?’
They went into the morning room, and Fairhead turned to the Book of Romans. He loved the smell of the expensive slightly damp paper, and the elaborate red-and-gold illuminated lettering at the beginnings of the chapters.
‘Here it is,’ he said, pointing with his forefinger. ‘Read that.’
Rosie read: ‘ “For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.” ’
She took this in, and then turned to look at him. ‘But I promised.’
‘Knowing him as I did, I’m prepared to bet that he told you to find happiness with another if he was killed.’
‘Yes, I think he did,’ confessed Rosie, ‘but I didn’t want to hear it, and now I think that maybe I didn’t. What I remember is the promise to love beyond death, forever.’
‘But of course you can love him forever. I’m certain you will. But you can’t love him as a husband when he’s dead. You know, life isn’t a romantic poem, Rosie. You’re alive here. We believe he is alive somewhere else. But this is where you must live.
‘And I must tell you what St John the Divine said. He said that God is love. He said that therefore anyone who loves is of God.
‘Now, Daniel loves his mother. He loves animals and children. When we go down to the Tarn he throws sticks for dogs he’s never met before, and he goes down on his knees to play clapping games with little ones, and lets them ride on his back while he pretends to be a horse. He loves your sisters, and Gaskell too, that’s plain. He loves your father. He loves his friends and his dead comrades, and he still loves his brothers and his father who died so long ago. He adores you, Rosie, it’s absolutely obvious, and it isn’t very much distempered by commonplace desire, as far as I can see. He doesn’t importune you, does he? Rosie, a man who loves so much and so liberally may not know God. But Daniel is of God. And if I were you I’d talk it over with Ottilie. She is much the wisest of us all, don’t you think?’
61
Rosie and Daniel at the Tarn
On a cold and windy day in late winter, not long after Rosie’s conversation with Fairhead, she and Daniel, muffled up in heavy coats and scarves, sat on a bench and looked out over the water. ‘Why do coots have white foreheads?’ asked Rosie.
‘Because they hope to join the Band of the Royal Marines,’ said Daniel. ‘And I have a question: why are moorhens called “moorhens” when they don’t live in moorland, and they aren’t hens?’
‘They got thrown off the moorlands at the time of the enclosures,’ said Rosie. ‘By wicked landlords.’
‘That must be it. What shall we do on Saturday evening?’
‘Let’s go and see the new Charlie Chaplin. Mama went to see it and hated it. She didn’t think it was funny at all, so I expect it’s hilarious. And on Sunday there’s a church parade of Boy Scouts going down Court Road, so I’m going to turn out and be appreciative. I expect you’ll be going to your mother’s on Sunday, won’t you?’
‘Yes, that’s the plan, but do let’s see the Chaplin on Satu
rday. You know, I never did join the Boy Scouts. I wanted to at first, because I always longed for a sheath knife. Then I got one anyway, so there was no longer any point. I could make dens and camps and cook up tins of beans any time I wanted, with Archie. Once we made a walkway that connected about six trees, fifteen feet up. I did have a copy of the Scouts’ Manual. It fell to bits from so much reading.’
‘It’s a pity the Pals got broken up, isn’t it?’ said Rosie. ‘Such a shame that your father died, and you had to move. It went very quiet after you and Archie left. No one flying over the wall any more like Sunny Jim, and staging fights with sticks, and making bows and arrows. It was such a lovely childhood, all of us in our little false paradise.’
‘It wasn’t false! That was real, and it all did happen. And you still had the Pendennis boys after we left.’
‘I know. But Ottilie did so love Archie, didn’t she? And I was terribly fond of you.’
‘Ash was the one, though.’
‘Yes, Ash was the one.’
‘Such a shame.’
There was the sound of people crying out, not fifty yards away, and the two of them were jerked out of their reminiscences. It appeared that a woman was getting very agitated on the bankside, and calling out to someone in the water. It was not a person, however.
‘There seems to be a dog stuck out in the water,’ said Daniel.
‘Oh dear, perhaps we’d better see if we can help.’
Daniel rose and ran the fifty yards. He saw that there was indeed a large black retriever in the water, apparently unable to keep itself up, and beginning to drown. A woman of about thirty, accompanied by a small boy, was calling, ‘Sheba! Sheba! Come on, girl! Come on! Oh, come on. Please come on! Swim! Swim!’
The little boy was in tears, and the woman was clearly desperate. Daniel bent down and untied the laces of his shoes, kicking them off. Then he removed his coat, jacket, shirt and socks but left his vest. The others watched him in amazement and hope. He sat on the bank and lowered himself into the water, exclaimed at the coldness of it, and struck out. The dog was fifteen yards out, and by now struggling so feebly that Daniel was only just in time to stop it going under altogether. ‘Come on, girl,’ he said, grabbing its collar and trying to work out how he was going to get it back to the bankside. There was no bottom beneath his feet, and that it made it all immeasurably difficult. The dog struggled hopelessly, and Daniel managed to get it almost onto his chest so that he could swim backwards with it. He felt so weighed down by the water in his trousers that he wondered whether he would make it back himself. At last his feet found the bottom, and he felt its horrible slimy mud squelching up between his toes. He picked the dog up and waded to the edge, depositing it on the bank, and scrambling out himself by holding onto a wooden post that had been driven in near the edge. As he came out he was overwhelmed by cold, made much worse by the sharp wind, and could not control either his shivering or the chattering of his teeth.