There was no post at all the next day, nor the day after that. Thursday simply brought more bills… But it was humiliating to watch and wait for the postman. She went into Town, and called on Christina. And when Christina asked archly, ‘So? How’s Love, upper case?’ she blew a raspberry at her.
‘Love’s packed its upper case and gone to Hastings with its husband. Love’s eating ices on the front, having a donkey-ride – I don’t know. I don’t care.’
Christina didn’t ask for any of the details. She made tea, produced cigarettes, then rooted about for something to eat; she turned up a bag of monkey-nuts, and the two of them sat breaking open the shells. But when the last of the nuts was finished she moved forward in her chair and said, ‘Here’s an idea. How long do you have? Let’s go to the music hall! We can make the second half of the matinée at the Holborn if we leg it. My treat. What do you say?’
It was the sort of thing they might have done together years before. Frances brushed the crumbs from her lap; they left the tea-table just as it was, and, still buttoning their jackets, hurried down the stone staircase to the street. They picked up a bus at once, and were at the Holborn Empire five minutes later; five minutes later again they were sitting in the hot bright darkness of the balcony, watching a couple of comedians pedalling around the stage on a tandem. The elderly, peppermint-sucking audience made Frances remember how young she was. Gazing sideways at Chrissy, catching her eye and smiling, seeing her face and fair hair lighted up by the glow of the stage, she felt a swell of affection for her – something stronger than affection, perhaps; a shiver of the heart, as if the ghost of their lost passion were gliding through it.
But later, when she got home, she looked again for a letter from Lilian, and, as before, found nothing; and it suddenly dawned on her that Lilian’s silence must be a message of its own. She thought back to how they had parted, with none of their difficulties resolved. She remembered their conversation in the park, the weariness on Lilian’s face. I couldn’t. I never could. Don’t keep asking me, Frances.
And she had to push down a sudden wave of fear, like fighting off nausea.
The next day, she and her mother had a visitor. She heard the knock at the front door, and something about the rather tentative nature of the sound made her think that the caller might be Margaret Lamb, from down the hill. On pulling the door open, however, she saw, not Margaret’s rather dumpy figure, but a good-looking, well-dressed woman holding a bouquet of bronze chrysanthemums. She blinked – then recognised Edith, John Arthur’s fiancée.
‘Edith! How lovely to see you! And what glorious flowers! Not for us? Oh, you shouldn’t have. I shudder to think what they must have cost you.’
‘I’m not disturbing you?’
‘Not in the least. You’re just in time for tea. Mother will be delighted. – Mother, look who’s here! Come in, come in. We didn’t look for you for another month.’
Edith generally called in October, for the anniversary of John Arthur’s death, so this visit was out of season. As she stepped into the hall, Frances’s mother emerged from the drawing-room and came to greet her, beaming.
‘Well, what a treat. And such handsome flowers! But you didn’t travel all the way from Wimbledon on our account, Edith?’
Edith coloured slightly. ‘I ought to have given you warning, I know.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘But I had a day to myself, and thought how I should like to see you.’
‘Well, I call it very kind that you did. I shall get out the albums. And how well you’re looking. You’re looking wonderfully well!’
Edith was looking well. Her auburn hair was shining. She was wearing a cream-coloured frock and coat, and pale suede shoes; her gloves were spotless, as if fresh from the box; her hat had an exotic Bond Street feather in it, the sort of feather that Frances, in her youth, had signed letters of petition against. Had Edith always been so fashionable, so glossy? Surely not. Her background was unremarkable; her father was a banker, in a modest sort of way. But perhaps, Frances thought, her family had simply kept to its level, while she and her mother had started slipping down the scale. The idea was disconcerting. She felt ashamed of her tired indoor clothes, of her mother’s drab old frock. And she was embarrassed by the house, unchanged since Edith’s last visit and all the visits before that, except that it was all slightly shabbier, every surface a little more dull. As the three of them entered the drawing-room she saw Edith looking from one thing to another with a touch of wonder, and, ‘Yes, everything’s just exactly the same, you see!’ she found herself saying, with a laugh.
At once, she wished she’d said nothing, or had kept the wryness out of her tone, because Edith blushed again, as if caught out.
Perhaps it made a bad start to the visit. She took the chrysanthemums to the scullery and put them into a vase, and when she carried them back to the drawing-room along with the tea-tray she found her mother settled in an armchair but Edith sitting at the front of the sofa, chatting brightly enough, but still wearing her gloves and her feathered hat. She kept the hat and the gloves on while Frances poured the tea. She shared her pieces of news, showed a photograph of her sister’s children; she took her cup, and a plate with a slice of sticky cake on it; and still, bafflingly, she sat there in her outdoor things. Finally Frances said, ‘Don’t you mean to stay long, Edith? Aren’t you hot, in all that get-up? You mustn’t stand on ceremony here.’
Edith looked less comfortable than ever. ‘Yes, I am a little warm.’ She rose, to unpin the hat at the mantel-glass and to tidy her hair, then returned to the sofa and drew off her gloves. Frances noticed nothing. But almost at once her mother said, ‘Edith,’ in a new sort of way.
Edith’s hands moved oddly, and she dipped her head. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, we must congratulate you.’
‘Thank you.’
Then Frances saw, and understood. In all these years since John Arthur’s death Edith had continued to wear her engagement ring, not on the ring finger of her left hand but on the corresponding finger of her right. Now, on the ‘real’ finger, another ring had appeared, a sizeable diamond in a square claw setting, rather putting John Arthur’s filigree band to shame. Frances looked from the wink of the diamond to Edith’s face and said, surprised and pleased, ‘You’re to be married.’
Edith nodded. ‘At the end of the month. And then a honeymoon. Six weeks. America!’
‘But, how marvellous for you. I’m so glad. And such a handsome ring! Look, Mother. Isn’t it terrific?’
‘Yes, I see it.’
‘Will you tell us about him, Edith?’
This, of course, was why she had come. Her colour now was the flush of relief. She said, ‘His name is Mr Pacey. He owns a business. Glassware – jars and bottles. Not very exciting! But he has built the business up over many years and made a great success of it. He’s rather older than I am. His first wife died, just a year ago. He has children, three boys and a girl, quite grown up already.’
‘So you shall be a mother right away.’
‘Yes.’ She put her hand to her heart. ‘That part makes me nervous, I must admit. But the children are very kind. The youngest boy is at school still. The girl, Cora, is nineteen. I hope to do my best by them. It isn’t at all what I expected. Two months ago I had no more idea of marrying than of flying to the moon! I met him only then, you see. Can you imagine?’
Frances answered with real feeling. ‘You’ll make him happy, Edith, I know it.’
‘I do hope so.’
‘Of course you will. Won’t she, Mother?’
‘Yes, indeed. And the children too! What an adventure. Your mother’s pleased, Edith, I dare say. How she’ll miss you though.’
‘Yes, it’s a great change for Mother. She means to write to you about it. I wanted to speak to you myself, before she did.’
‘I’m glad that you did. Thank you.’
‘Mother was so fond of Jack.’
‘Yes, I know.’
> ‘Jack’ was what Edith had always called John Arthur. The name had never sounded right to Frances; it was such a roguish sort of name, and John Arthur hadn’t been at all roguish, and neither was Edith herself. Had there been other marriage proposals, in the years since his death? If there had, Frances and her mother had not got wind of them. They had grown used to thinking of Edith as John Arthur’s widow; and Frances knew that widowhood meant something to the women of her mother’s generation that it did not mean to women now. ‘I’m delighted for you, Edith,’ she heard her mother say, but she could see, from the subtle working of her face, that she was not, at heart, delighted – or rather, that her delight was choked about by too many other feelings, too many griefs and disappointments on her own and John Arthur’s behalf. She asked to hear more about Mr Pacey, and Edith, still blushing, told them about his factory, his motor-cars, the suppers and tennis-parties he liked to host, his large house, with the garage attached, on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells. He sounded as unlike mild John Arthur as it was possible to imagine. He seemed almost, Frances thought, to sit in the room along with them, overbearing, slightly bored, now and then checking his watch. She saw her mother’s smile become increasingly artificial, heard her responses to Edith’s remarks grow briefer and more forced. From the cupboard at her side she had brought the family photograph albums, along with the muddy pencilled letters that John Arthur had sent from the Front: it was their habit to go through them, on Edith’s visits. Edith noticed them now, and remembered; they rearranged the chairs so as to be closer to each other. But the turning of the pages and the reading aloud of the letters felt dry, this time – like picking through dead leaves. And once the final letter had been returned to its envelope their voices died away, and they sat in a painful silence.
Frances suggested that they look at the garden. They went out and on to the lawn, made a tour of the asters and the dahlias, and that perked the party up a little. Edith described the grounds of Mr Pacey’s house, the Italianate terrace, the ponds, the fountain. The Wrays, she said, must be sure to visit her in her new home, and they promised that they would, adding that she must bring her husband to meet them, here at Champion Hill; perhaps the daughter too. She nodded at that, but her smile was rather fixed, and Frances guessed that neither visit would ever come off. It had been one thing for Edith to call as John Arthur’s fiancée; it would be quite another for her to arrive as the wife of Mr Pacey. And within a few months, of course – probably before she returned from her honeymoon – she would in all likelihood be expecting a child of her own.
Out in the hall, before she left, Frances saw her looking around in the same noticing way as before. This time the wistfulness in her expression was plain: she was gazing from thing to thing as if to imprint it on her memory. The thought made Frances feel sorry. It seemed to her that, all these years, she had been short-changing Edith slightly. On impulse, she said, ‘You’re going down to the station, I suppose? Let me walk with you.’
‘Oh, Frances, you needn’t.’
But, ‘Yes, do walk Edith to the station,’ said Frances’s mother; and from the manner in which she said it Frances guessed that she would be grateful for some time to herself. So she ran upstairs to change her shoes and to pull on a hat, and she and Edith started down the hill together.
As they passed the gate to the Lambs’, Edith smiled in a troubled way. ‘I remember making this walk with Jack,’ she said, ‘so many times. It doesn’t seem six years, does it, Frances? But then in other ways – I don’t know. They’ve been long years, too. It’s always funny to see these houses, all so unchanged. You’re still friends with the Playfairs, I hope?’
‘Yes, we see Mrs Playfair often. Mr Playfair died, of course. The year before last.’
‘Of course he did. How stupid of me! You told me, and I’d forgotten. A kind man.’
‘Yes, we all liked Mr Playfair.’
‘And how’s your friend? I’ve never asked you.’
‘My friend?’
‘You remember? Carrie, was it?’
Frances, surprised, said, ‘Chrissy, you mean?’
‘The clever girl with all the masses of fair hair. I remember meeting her with you – oh, three or four times. Once just here, on the hill. You don’t remember?’
‘No, I don’t remember that.’
‘But you still see her? You were such great friends. You used to frighten me, the two of you. You had an opinion on everything! I’ve always been so muddle-headed. Mr Pacey calls me his goose. What’s become of her? Did she marry?’
‘She’s living in Town, in a flat, with another girl. Working. She wears her hair very short now.’
‘Oh, what a pity! I used to envy her her hair. Yes, I must have seen her with you three or four times, at least.’
There was nothing behind the comment, Frances decided. The scandal over Christina had happened long after John Arthur’s death, and would never have been allowed to reach Edith. She was simply pulling out these memories in the same wistful way in which, a few minutes before, she had been gazing around the Wrays’ hall at the black oak furniture. She must be thinking still how strange it was that here was a life, a world, of which she might have been a part, a life she had had some claim on all this time, but from the clinging fibres of which she was finally being eased away.
As they drew near to the station entrance they heard the approach of a west-bound train. But there was no question of Edith’s running for it: she let the train go by, and they stood in the shade at the top of the platform steps, waiting for the next one.
Frances said, ‘It was good of you to come to us today, Edith. It was good of you to tell us about Mr Pacey – rather than writing it, I mean. I’m really happy for you.’
‘Are you? I wish I thought your mother was.’
‘Mother is happy for you, too. She will be, anyhow, once she’s had time to take it in.’
‘She was always so kind to me. She thinks I’ve let Jack down. You don’t think that, do you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘You know what he was to me. I shan’t ever forget him. I shall always wear his ring. Mr Pacey is very understanding about that.’ She brought her gloved hands together, as if to reassure herself of the solidity of the metal under the kid – though it was the new ring that her fingers strayed to, Frances noticed, rather than the old.
And she was blushing again – blushing with excitement, with delight, for her unlikely-sounding sweetheart. For, now that they were away from the repressions of the drawing-room, Frances saw the delight for the physical thing it was; she saw it, she recognised it, because it was like her own delight for Lilian. She felt fonder of Edith suddenly than she ever had before – an artificial fondness probably, produced by the currents of the moment, but she thought that Edith also felt the leap of intimacy between them, because she gazed into Frances’s face in a franker way and said, ‘It’s good to see you, Frances! I wish now that I’d kept up with you more. You, and your mother. Are you both all right? Your mother’s quite well? She’s aged, I think, since last year. And you —’
‘What?’ asked Frances, smiling. ‘I don’t look older too, I hope?’
‘Not older, exactly. But – perhaps as though you’re settling into your role?’
Frances was startled. ‘My role?’
‘I don’t mean it badly! But in the past – well, you’ve sometimes seemed not quite happy. Your mother, too. But you must be such a comfort to each other. I’m so glad. – Oh, but I must go!’ Another train was coming. ‘I’ve arranged to meet Herbert – Mr Pacey, I mean – and he fusses if I’m late. Thank you for being so nice to me!’
They shook hands, hurriedly, though she made a point of pressing Frances’s fingers. Then she turned and made her quick, smart way down the steps.
She boarded the train without looking back. Probably it didn’t occur to her that Frances would stand and watch. But Frances remained there while the train moved off, and stayed even for a minute or two afterwards, th
inking, Settling into my role! The words had filled her with horror. She had taken on the role herself; she had given up Christina to do it. But that was an age, a lifetime, ago, and since then – She stared at the shining railway line and thought of the night of Netta’s party, when she and Lilian had sat squashed together in the train. She remembered their silent climb up these steps, and all that had come after. There had been no roles to follow, then. The two of them had been reborn in each other’s kisses – hadn’t they?
She didn’t know. She’d lost her confidence in it. It all felt oddly insubstantial, as though Edith’s visit had chased it away, like a cockerel crowing away a ghost. She left the station and headed home, but the thought of the house, the tired house, the empty rooms, her grieving mother, made her falter. Instead of pressing on up the hill she crossed the road and went into the park.
She was suddenly desperate to conjure up Lilian’s presence, the substance and reality of her. But the fine weather had brought people out: the band-stand had a courting couple on it, the boy tickling the girl’s nose with a blade of grass; Frances didn’t even think of climbing the steps. She went on instead to the tennis courts, where she and Lilian had once stood to watch the young women play. A few games were in progress, but the nets were sagging, the courts worn to dust by the demands of the long summer. She approached the pond, and found the water dark, with scummy banks; she left it quickly. But everywhere was the same. It was all small, suburban, unspecial. The exposed western slope was like a desert plain. What struck her most were those remnants of the grand houses and gardens from which the park had been patched together years before: the stranded portico; a sundial, still telling the time for a lost age; a mournful avenue of trees, leading nowhere.
Frustrated, she kept moving. She thought she had come in here to find Lilian, but she realised as she made the turn from one path to another that she was not so much in search of something as in flight: she was trying to outrun the implications of Edith’s visit. She kept seeing Edith’s ring. She kept recalling the wink of the diamond. ‘Here I am, Miss Wray,’ that diamond seemed to say to her. ‘The real thing. You can’t compete with the likes of me, so don’t try. Be content with your “role”, that you are settling so nicely into, like an oyster digging its dumb way into the sea-bed.’ She had resisted thinking like this for the whole of her adult life. She would as soon have worn a ring like Edith’s as worn a saddle on her back! But she felt drained of strength and spirit; she felt bruised, she felt alone. Was this what the affair with Lilian had done to her? Made her a stranger to herself? With dragging feet, she left the last stretch of arid grass and started for home.