V
Humphrey and Leonora had been lunching together and now, as it was a fine afternoon, he proposed a drive into the country.
‘I shall enjoy it all the more because I shall feel slightly guilty leaving poor Miss Caton to cope with any possible customers,’ he declared, ‘but who could work on such an afternoon?’
‘What about James?’ Leonora asked. ‘Won’t he be working?’
‘Not exactly – I’ve sent him off to have a look round some country antique shops. It’ll be good practice for him to see other dealers’ stuff.’
‘I suppose he’ll be incognito,’ said Leonora fondly, ‘or even heavily disguised.’
‘Oh, there’ll be no need for that – nobody in the trade knows him yet,’ said Humphrey. He hoped they weren’t going to talk about James all the time. Indeed, he had chosen this afternoon because he wanted to get Leonora to himself – it was much more suitable that she should spend her time with him rather than with James. As they waited at the traffic lights he leaned over towards her and was about to lay a hand on her when they changed to green and he was forced to attend to his driving.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Leonora, moving just the merest fraction of an inch away from him. ‘Somewhere interesting and remote?’
‘Not remote,’ Humphrey admitted. ‘Interesting, yes, in a way – somewhere you said you’d never been.’
‘That might be almost anywhere,’ Leonora teased. ‘Surbiton or Slough or those places where commuters live.’
‘Well, I suppose people could commute from where we’re going and probably do. But I shan’t tell you till we get there.’
Leonora leaned back in pleasurable expectation. Humphrey’s car was very comfortable and the good lunch had made her a little drowsy, but of course it would never do to go to sleep. One simply mustn’t allow oneself to drop off…
Suddenly – had she perhaps nodded for just a second? – the car turned off and they were among trees.
Humphrey stole a glance at her to see her reaction. At intervals during lunch his lips had curved into a secret smile as he imagined Leonora’s pleasure at Virginia Water, her exclamations over trees, water and ruins.
‘How beautiful!’ She clasped her hands together in a gesture of delight. ‘And so quiet and peaceful.’
‘Yes, of course one couldn’t possibly come here at the weekend – it would be intolerably crowded and vulgar. But in the middle of the week on a working day . . his voice boomed out among the young beech trees.
‘A
working
day,’ Leonora mocked, thinking how pompous dear old Humphrey was and how much more agreeable it would have been if James had been her companion in this romantic setting. ‘A distant glimpse of a temple – perhaps a
ruined
temple – among trees, over still water,’ she mused. ‘I think that’s really one of my favourite sights.’
Dear Leonora, Humphrey thought, so sensitive and impractical. He wondered how many times she had seen such a sight to arrive at the conclusion that it was one of her favourites. Suddenly – he supposed it was the contrast that brought it to his mind – he remembered his dead wife as she had been in her ATS uniform during the war, walking with him among these same trees.
As they strolled along, Leonora keeping up a flow of admiring comments on the scene, they came upon a huge totem pole, shattering the peaceful beauty of the landscape.
What a hideous phallic symbol, Leonora thought, but of course one wouldn’t mention it, only hurry by with head averted. There were people clustering round it, too, shouting and exclaiming, a man and two small boys accompanied by Mum and perhaps Gran in white orlon cardigans, with the bright floral prints of their dresses showing through them. How did such people manage to get time off in the week? Leonora wondered.
‘I suppose they must be on holiday,’ she murmured, as they walked past. She felt a little tired now – perhaps it would be possible to sit down somewhere, but when she mentioned it Humphrey thought the grass would surely be damp – there had been a heavy shower yesterday evening – and suggested they should drive somewhere for tea.
It might not have been so damp in the depths of the wood, he thought regretfully, imagining himself reclining with Leonora on a bed of pine needles. But he soon dismissed the picture from his mind as impossible and ludicrous. A woodland seduction scene between two middle-aged protagonists could only end in disaster.
‘Tea
,’ he said firmly, seeing Leonora’s dark beauty against a background of chintz and home-made scones.
Later, when they were sitting in the cafe he had remembered, he told her that it was here he and Chloe used to meet sometimes.
‘Your wife,’ she said, her tone reverent to conceal her boredom. She considered it a slight error of taste that he should be able to think of another woman, even one long dead, when he was with her.
‘One got a jolly good tea here, even in those days,’ he said brightly. ‘You know how obsessed one was with food during the war.’
‘Ah, the
war.’
Leonora sighed, remembering her ‘secret work’ somewhere in the south of England before the invasion of Normandy. It had been spring – camellias, azaleas and rhododendrons, and brigadiers making passes at her, and even honourable proposals, among those luxuriant flowering shrubs. Oh, the marriages she could have made, brilliant marriages … Of course James would have been only four or five years old at that time, in America with his mother during those early formative years. ‘And James was just a baby then,’ she said aloud, ‘wasn’t he?’
‘Certainly James was a very young child,’ Humphrey confirmed, in an uninterested tone. ‘He was with his mother in the United States. His father was killed in the war, you know.’
Of course Leonora had known. ‘And then his mother died,’ she said softly.
‘Yes, but that was later. This date and walnut slice is very good,’ said Humphrey, hoping to distract Leonora’s attention, ‘won’t you try a piece?’
Leonora shook her head. The sadness of James’s life had taken away her appetite. Really, one couldn’t eat with such thoughts. That poor boy, and yet if his mother
hadn’t
died … ‘What a lovely afternoon I’m having,’ she said, remembering her duty to Humphrey. After all, James was dining with her this evening; she could afford to be generous.
James approached the village hall cautiously, having first observed from a distance how the land lay. It was of course ridiculous to imagine that one might come upon something of value at a village jumble sale, but one never knew and it was worth trying. It would certainly be more interesting than visiting the country antique shops, ‘seeing other dealers’ stuff’, as Humphrey had put it, for this was the village where Phoebe lived and he intended to call on her. Although they had parted abruptly she had been very careful to write down her address, almost like Eve presenting Adam with the apple.
The first mad rush of the sale was over by the time James entered the hall and paid his admission fee, and as a stranger he felt conspicuous. It was natural that people should stare at him but he wished he had thought of some kind of camouflage so that his head and face need not be quite so nakedly exposed to their curious gazes. Yet if he had worn, say, a panama hat and dark glasses, would he not have been even more conspicuous? Of course the fact of being male singled him out from the crowd of women, most of whom seemed to be shapeless, fat and middle-aged. This did not appear to be the kind of function that men attended, except perhaps the clergy, but no clergyman was visible, only the Scoutmaster with a little group of Scouts and Cubs.
Here, obviously, was where one picked up a Chelsea figure for sixpence, thought James, approaching a trestle table where some bits of china and bric-a-brac were lying. The first object that caught his attention was a salt and pepper set in the form of two cats, with the appropriate holes in their heads, on a little stand.
‘That’s nice,’ said the woman behind the stall, but without much conviction and not at all as if she really expected James to buy it.
‘Not quite what I’m looking for,’ he said, his eyes straying to other hideous trifles. Would there come a time when even these would be sought after by collectors? he wondered. It might almost be worth buying them up and starting an antique ‘supermarket’ on his own – rather amusing, but of course his uncle would frown on it.
Evidently there was nothing for him here, but out of politeness he bought a little china castle, though it was chipped, not realising that there was no need to be polite at a jumble sale. He wondered if he should ask the way to Vine Cottage – he was sure any of the helpers at the jumble sale would have been only too pleased to direct him – but decided against it. When after some time he did find it, he sat in his car in the lane before going up to the door.
The tall thin girl in jeans who came in answer to his knock seemed a stranger, only just recognisable as Phoebe, though he remembered the long mouse-coloured hair held back by a ribbon band. But was this the face – pale, peaky and altogether too natural-looking – that had seemed intriguing in the candle-lit restaurant?
She seemed disappointed too, as if he had not come up to her expectations, whatever they might have been.
‘So this is the cottage,’ he said, looking round the bare little room. It seemed very dark with its small windows.
‘The room needs more furniture,’ she said. ‘I’ve only brought a few things of my own.’
He wondered which they could possibly be.
‘This lamp,’ she said nervously.
He glanced at the converted wine bottle as if it were beneath comment. ‘You could easily get a few pieces – there are lots of sales round here,’ he suggested.
‘I might get landed with a case of stuffed birds.’
‘And very nice too,’ he retorted, slightly on the defensive. ‘Victoriana are still quite desirable.’
There was a silence after this rather prim statement. Perhaps feeling that he did not find her as desirable even as a case of stuffed birds, Phoebe began desperately to offer him coffee or a drink but he refused both. ‘Would you like to see the garden?’ she asked at last.
They strolled out into the overgrown garden. James remarked on the vine which sprawled over the back of the cottage.
‘Yes, that’s why it’s called Vine Cottage, I imagine. Is it all right, do you think, with those woolly grey buds?’
‘Of course – don’t you know the poem about the red turning gray?’
‘No,’ she said brusquely, obviously feeling that she ought to have known.
‘It’s Browning, but perhaps he isn’t thought much of now.’ James was about to quote the lines when he remembered that it was one of Leonora’s favourite poems – that was how he had come to know it – and some kind of natural delicacy held him back.
‘Are you any good at gardening?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said quickly, seeing himself having to mow the lawn, ‘but my mother was a great gardener.’
No doubt his mother was dead, Phoebe thought, giving him an unfair advantage over her, with a mother alive in Putney.
The walk round the garden did not take long and soon they were back in the cottage.
‘You haven’t seen my bedroom,’ said Phoebe, leading the way up the steep, narrow stairs.
Standing in the little room, which had a sloping ceiling and walls patterned with wistaria, James put his arm round her shoulders, thinking that she was just a little too tall for him. He kissed her and after a few murmured endearments things happened so quickly that he could not afterwards have said who had taken the initiative. James had certainly not meant to go so far but she had been so eager. She had really ‘thrown herself at him’, as somebody of an older generation – Leonora, of course – might have said. At the thought of Leonora a shadow crossed his face. He turned away from Phoebe and contemplated the pile of books on the floor by the bed. How untidy she was! He must get her a little bookcase or a table – he had one himself that would do very nicely.
Phoebe, feeling him turn away from her, raised herself up on one elbow to look through the window.
‘What’s the matter?’ James asked. ‘Somebody coming?’ He sat up, nervous. For one wild moment he pictured his uncle entering the room. ‘Ah, James, my dear boy …’
‘It’s all right, it was the vicar’s housekeeper. On her way to get the fish fingers for the evening meal, I shouldn’t wonder. Anyway, she’s gone past now. What are you looking at?’
‘This window’s nearly closed up with leaves – couldn’t you get somebody to cut them away? It can’t be healthy,’ he said primly. ‘Insects might come in when you’re asleep.’
‘Oh, I’m hopeless at getting things done,’ said Phoebe. ‘I suppose now you’ll say how untidy the room is.’
‘Well, you could do with somewhere to put those books. I could probably let you have something.’
‘You?’
‘Yes; the lease of my flat is up soon and I’ll be putting some of my things in store while I go on a trip abroad for my uncle.’
‘What sort of furniture could you lend me?’
‘Oh, a bedside table, and a little Victorian chair covered in olive green velvet – you’d like that, I think.’
‘Desirable Victoriana – not quite me, but still.’
‘Then there’s a mirror with cupids, fruitwood – that’s rather pretty.’ Leonora had always admired it excessively; perhaps it was unwise of him to have mentioned it. ‘I ought to be going,’ he said.
‘I suppose you’ve got a date this evening.’
‘Yes, I have, in a way.’ Dining with Leonora didn’t exactly count as a ‘date’.
‘I could make you a cup of tea.’
‘That would be nice, but hadn’t you better …?’ He looked at her bare shoulders doubtfully. ‘Somebody might call.’
‘They might, too. This village believes in dropping in. I suppose this sheet would do as a sarong but I don’t seem able to arrange it properly.’ Phoebe struggled back into her jeans and put on a crumpled white cotton shirt. ‘Is that better?’ He must still have looked doubtful for she said rather crossly, ‘Oh, well, it’ll do to make tea in,’ and crept barefoot down the stairs.
James waited uneasily in the sitting-room. He began to feel that he had behaved most unwisely. Why had he let himself get entangled with Phoebe like this? Yet what was ‘entangled’? Surely he need not feel any obligation towards a girl who had thrown herself at him?