A Rather English Marriage (16 page)

Roy Southgate walked through his house opening the windows to let cold December air blow through the lifeless rooms. He looked into the wardrobe where Grace's clothes still hung and buried his face in the folds of dresses and blouses, inhaling deeply. Her presence was ever more elusive. On the dressing table stood a bottle of the perfume she had used once or twice a year. He unscrewed the stopper, but its contents smelled sharp and rancid. He sat on their bed, shoulders sagging, and stroked his own cheek, as she used to do when he was what she called ‘glum'. ‘Now, now, Royston Southgate,' she would say. ‘There's no room in
this
house for faint hearts! We've always got each other, and that's all that matters.' ‘Always' rang hollow now.

She had been so strong; much stronger than he, but then, women were. She had squared her shoulders and smiled radiantly when Alan announced that he was to marry the disastrous June. ‘So long as you love each other, that's all I care about!' she'd told the sullen young woman, and, crouching down to the child beside her, she'd said, ‘Well, Gloria, now you've got a new Daddy - and a new Nana as well! Aren't you a lucky girl? Will you give your new Nana a kiss?' The child had turned her head away and leaned into her mother's skirt. ‘Poor little lamb … she's shy. Never mind. We'll soon win her round,' Grace had said.

She had, too. Snotty-faced Gloria, in her absurd infant jeans, the over-long blonde hair trailing raggedly across her slight shoulders, had warmed to Grace's loving kindness. Soon she was trotting round the kitchen after her, proudly helping to lay the tea-table and reluctant to leave with her mother when the time came. ‘Wanna stay wiv noo nana!' she had whined. After that Grace would sing her little nursery rhymes,
the first time the child seemed to have heard any songs apart from advertising jingles, and tell her fairy stories. ‘Shut it, Mum,' Alan had said, ‘You'll only spoil her,' but Grace had understood that he was on the defensive against any suggestion that June might have neglected the forlorn little girl.

Alan and June had lived together openly for nearly two years before eventually getting married in a register office. Grace had found it easier than Roy to come to terms with their living in sin. ‘It's not like when we were young,' she'd said. ‘Look at Ted and Molly Tucker's girl – five months gone,
she
was - and Bill's daughter, been living with that young fellow from the pop group nearly five years now. It's no shame to share the same bed nowadays while you make up your mind. People don't see it like they used to. Main thing is, Allie's not leaving her and that poor little kiddie in the lurch.'

‘Don't know why,' Roy had muttered. ‘What with this blessed Pill, there's no need to have a baby out of wedlock.
We
managed it, even without the Pill.'

‘Wasn't easy, though, was it?' Grace had answered fondly.

Roy curled up on the bed and thought back to their wedding night. They had married in 1939 and, although it meant taking precious pennies out of their savings, they were both determined not to spend their first nights together in her parents' front room. So they had caught a train to Tunbridge Wells (thus deciding, although they did not realize it at the time, where they were to live and bring up their family in years to come) and walked from the station, Roy in his uniform, carrying their suitcases, to a friendly boarding house. The landlady had taken one look at Grace's smart suit and new hat and given them her best bedroom. ‘Bathroom's first on the right; toilet next door. I do breakfast downstairs at eight, though I don't suppose you'll be wanting any …' And she had left them alone.

Together they had stood looking at the double bed with its curved mahogany bedhead and two plumply rounded pillows. Grace had folded the counterpane tidily and checked the sheets for damp. Then - oh, and then she had taken out the hat-pin and removed her hat and come into his arms.

Later that night, despite their shyness and her modesty, despite her long embroidered nightdress, despite their consciousness of the landlady across the corridor, despite his awkward fumblings with the French letter and his gentleness and her brave, uncontainable tears, they had finally, in pride and triumph, consummated their marriage. It was May, in the springtime, the last glorious spring before the war. And now … how long is it now, thought Roy, since anyone touched me? He stumbled over to the chest of drawers and rummaged for Grace's winceyette nightie. Rolling it into a ball, he pressed it to his face, so that the soft material muffled his cries. What is life to me without you, what is life without my love?

He sat at the kitchen table over his elevenses and looked through a pile of early Christmas cards. One or two were inscribed ‘To Dear Grace and Roy', but most bore the message that people would be thinking of him specially this Christmastide. A card from June and Gloria, Billy and little Joe stung him to remorse by its invitation to spend Christmas with them in Balham. He picked up the telephone in the hall and dialled their number.

‘Hello - June? Roy here. How're you keeping? Oh, bearing up, bearing up. I've moved. No, just temporary. It's ever so nice of you to ask me for Christmas. Well, if I can make myself scarce. How's the boys?' It was all prevarication, to put off the moment when they would have to talk about Alan. June had lost her job; money was tight; the boys were playing up, what with Alan away and Gloria having left home; nobody knew how hard life was for her …

Eventually he said, ‘You been to see him lately? Since his … trouble? Thing is, see, I've got the use of a car now. I could come and pick you up, we'd go down there together. Bring him his Christmas presents. Cheer him up. He's not been in good spirits lately.'

If he wanted visiting, June spat furiously, that Sheila could go and see him. Roy sympathized and soothed and ended by persuading her to come with him the following Wednesday. By then he'd be able to let her know for definite about Christmas.

He was just about to hang up when June said, ‘You must be that lonely without Grace. I often think about it. You were like Darby and Joan, you two. I always envied you. Alan was ever so jealous.'

‘June, June … I don't know how I get through the days. I think about her all the time. But she slips away from me.'

He wept.

‘A trouble shared,' said June, her voice more tender than he had ever heard it. ‘I miss Alan, too, rotten sod. I never thought I would, but there it is, sometimes you surprise yourself. Never mind, Dad. We'll have time for a chat when I see you next Wednesday. Do us both good, remembering the good old days. Chin up.'

Roy put the phone down, thinking, First time in twenty years she'd talked like that. Funny what it takes before you see people as they really are. He set off for the allotment with his chin up to see if there were any late flowers for Grace.

Roy bent over the dahlias he had lifted and stored in his potting shed, checking them for signs of rotting around the tubers. On the plot of earth that had supplied them all with vegetables and flowers for over thirty years, he scratched away with a trowel round plants that would flower another year, clearing some of fallen leaves, discarding others and turning over the soil. There was still a good harvest of sprouts, broccoli and parsnips, and he wondered what to do with these. He could always take them back to Nevill Park, but the memory of being called Reginald's manservant rankled. It was not the actual
word
, but the fact - Roy now understood - that this was all his presence in Reginald's house amounted to: he was there to be a manservant. Not an equal, not a friend in need, just an unpaid, peacetime batman. Maybe he should have a word with the vicar, see if he could sort it out. But that would be cowardly - fight your own battles, his mother had always told him when he came back from the playground bruised and bloodied by older, bigger boys - and anyway, what was the use? The deed was done. Well, he'd undertaken to stay
until the end of December, and he would keep his word. After that he'd be off, back to his own house. He should never have left it. Meanwhile there was a lovely crop of parsnips that needed eating up.

He decided to go and visit Grace's friend Molly Tucker, who lived alone and might be glad of them. They could reminisce together over a cup of tea. He'd go up to the cemetery first, then walk into town from there. Picking the very last of the late chrysanthemums, a bit droopy and ragged now, he crammed the fresh, earthy vegetables into two plastic bags and set off.

Molly brewed a pot of tea and settled back, smoothing the apron across her lap with arthritic, purple-red hands. ‘You missing her then?' she said briskly. ‘Got to pull yourself together. You're all the same, you bloody men, hopeless without a woman to chivvy round after you. Took her for granted while she was there, let her worry about that great boy, never stood up to him yourself, did you? And as for poor skinny little Vera …'

This wasn't what Roy had come for at all, and he drained the cup of tea and prepared to take his leave.

‘Oh no, don't you be off yet,' she said. ‘You sit and hear me out now I'm started. You're not a bad bloke, Roy Southgate, don't get me wrong. I'm just telling you, now's the time when you've got to do for yourself what she used to do, find yer own backbone. She were a strong woman, my friend Gracie, though she never made it to five foot, and I'll not see you fold up and collapse without her. Where you living, did you say?'

He tried to explain about the Squadron Leader, how lonely the man had been without his wife, how sorry the vicar had felt for him, but she wasn't prepared to accept that.
‘You're
the one that's lonely! Vicar was trying to give
you
something to do with yourself. It's six months she's been gone; how much longer you going on like this? Where's he live, this posh fellow?' When Roy told her, she made a great parody of falling about impressed, squawking in a la-di-da accent, roaring with cracked gusts of laughter. ‘Up there! Well I never did! I wish
Gracie was here – how she'd have laughed. “My Roy,” she'd a said, “up there with the nobs! He'll never be able to enjoy it, though. He'll be blacking their boots in no time.”'

This was uncomfortably close to the truth, so Roy said, ‘Don't you be so sure. I'm taking his car - one of those big German jobs, a Mercedes - over to June's next week, then driving her down with the boys to visit Alan.'

Molly's eyes streamed with fresh laughter. ‘Turning up at prison in one of them gangster's cars! Ooh, I don't believe it! Well, it'll give the boys a thrill, anyway.
And June:
she always liked a bit of swank. She weren't a bad lass underneath those trashy looks. Grace was never too hard on her. She knew what a difficult bugger young Alan could be.'

Roy found himself angered by this glimpse into a side of his wife that he'd scarcely known. ‘It's all very well for you,' he muttered, ‘your old man went years ago. You might show a bit more respect for her memory.'

‘
I
respect her memory,' said Molly, ‘
I
respect her, but look at yourself. You look like a wet week. She were a fighter, your Grace, so don't you make her into some goody-two-shoes. She were flesh and blood, tough and bright and ready for a laugh, and she'd be mad if she could see you now.'

‘I thought you'd listen to me,' Roy grumbled. Thought you'd cheer me up, make me feel a bit better. Thought we could chat about the good old days.'

Molly leaned forward and patted his arm. ‘And so we will, lovey, next time. My knee's playing me up rotten today, that's why you got the sharp edge of my tongue. Give me some warning next time, time to do me hair and paint a smile on me face. There you are, off you go - I'm ever so pleased with them fresh vegetables. Course you miss her. Life goes on, though, and you got to trudge along with it.'

Reginald sat in the drawing-room wondering what to do with himself. Southgate had been here for no more than a month, yet already he'd grown used to his presence about the house. It wasn't Aggie's day, it wasn't the gardener's day, and Southgate
had taken himself off soon after breakfast to poke about in his allotment. Reggie poured a stiff drink at eleven to fortify him before ringing Liz. But when he dialled her number in the shop, she said briskly, ‘Sorry, love, can't talk - I'm snowed under with customers. Give me a buzz at home sometime.' That deflated him. Two empty hours suddenly yawned, instead of a flurry of action. He'd pictured himself sweeping her off for a drink, better still lunch … Why did she have to
work?

He would have liked to go upstairs and peer into Roy's room, see how the little bloke had arranged it, take a look at his things, but the voice of Nanny, still the voice of his conscience, wouldn't allow it. ‘Don't you meddle with what's not yours, barging into other people's business without a by your leave. Everyone's entitled to their privacy and what you don't know can't hurt you.'

They were the cadences, it was the morality of the nursery, and it had served him well enough. Christianity had never sunk in so deep. Pity the nursery didn't have rules for dealing with women. That's where Nanny had let him down. From her he had learned that all comfort, all warmth, all order and well-being came from women. From his mother he had learned that women of his own class,
ladies
, were soft-voiced, precious, unfathomable. He could hardly think of them as having bodies at all, and it was other boys who had initiated him into the astonishing pleasure of ejaculation. Later on came the realization that some women - not his own kind, but fast, Bohemian types - could be cajoled, mastered and enjoyed. Waafs had taught him the ordinariness of women; that, as well as sobbing or giggling, they could be coarse or, in a crisis, strong, but above all that they too wanted
sex
, which meant they were not as different from himself as he had been brought up to believe.