Casting Off (12 page)

She chose coffee, and while Stella was ordering it she went to the lavatory. While there, she thought of Mrs Rose telling her to try to advise Stella to find a more sensible job. The idea seemed even more absurd than it had when suggested: Stella seemed in no need of any advice. Then she realized that she knew nothing about Stella’s work or life, that the whole of the lunch had been spent on her problems, and that Stella’s advice – that she should make sure that there was nothing she could do to mend her marriage – had not been hostile, was in fact, nothing more than difficult good sense.

But when she returned to their table, which now contained only the three purple asters in a green glass vase and their cups of coffee, it was Stella who said, ‘Sorry, Louise. I have been a bully. I’m afraid it runs in the family. Everybody at home is always telling everybody else what they ought to do. It’s fatal to ask advice of a Rose – you get it with interest.’

‘No, I asked you because I knew you’d be sensible. It just seemed rather frightening.’ Then she added, ‘I don’t want to get like poor Aunt Anna.’

Stella shot her a sharp look. ‘I know you don’t, so you won’t.’

‘Tell me about you. I know nothing about your job or anything.’

‘I’m learning to be a journalist.’

‘Why here?’

‘You have to start somewhere. The approved method is to get yourself on to some provincial paper where you report on absolutely any local activity that’s going. I do weddings, amateur dramatics, sports, accidents, prize-givings, feˆtes, bazaars, charity events – everything. Pappy is furious. He wouldn’t mind if I was on the
Times Educational Supplement
, or even the plain
Times
, but he can’t stand the idea of me scribbling on about the colour of bridesmaids’ dresses or how much money a bring-and-buy stall made. He says I’m wasting all the money he spent on my education. I should be training to be a doctor or a lawyer,
he
says. And Mutti continues to dream of some splendid marriage for me to a very rich, very English man. I had to leave home because whenever they stopped getting at me, they started arguing with each other. And Aunt Anna thinks I should be working with the children who have been sent here from camps.’

‘I didn’t know there were children here.’

‘There are several places in the country. Pappy offered to be a medical adviser, but he fell out with them because they were so strict about the food being kosher. He said in view of the state of the children
and
rationing it was idiotic to make it even harder to rehabilitate them.
I
had a row with him about that.’

‘Why? You’re not religious, and you’re certainly practical. Surely you’re on his side about that, at least?’

‘It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with him personally, I just thought he should have been able to see the other point of view.’

‘Well, what is it? I should have thought that the only thing that mattered was to get them well.’

‘Their Jewishness mattered. They lost everything from being Jewish – their families, their country, their homes, their livelihood. All they have left is what they are. The older Jews did not want the children to forget or discount that, and religion
is
a core. But Pappy cannot get past his own disbelief. He always thinks people should think as he does. And, naturally, do what he says.’ She smiled her cynical, affectionate smile. ‘It’s easier not to do what Pappy wants away from him.’

‘So you have a flat here, or something?’

‘Digs. I live as you did at Stratford. One day I shall graduate to a better newspaper – in London, or Manchester, or Glasgow. At least I’m ambitious. Pappy approves of that.’

She was silent for a moment, then she said abruptly, ‘I did think of offering to go and help those children. Then, when it came to writing the letter, I couldn’t face it.’

It was some confidence, confession, she was not sure what.

‘It was such a
chance
, you see. Such a small,
little
chance. In the thirties, Pappy was a consultant at a big hospital in Vienna. He had evolved a new way to treat stomach ulcers and one morning he arrived at the hospital to discover that another doctor had cancelled his treatment. He had a violent row with the doctor, who called him a damn arrogant little Jew, so he walked out of the hospital and decided to come to England. He knew he would have to qualify all over again to practise here, but he was prepared to do that. We left Vienna the following week. I was thirteen then, and I minded leaving my friends and school and all my things. But if that man had not insulted Pappy that morning, he might not have come here.’

Louise stared at her, beginning to see what she meant.

‘So. Sometimes the knowledge that one has escaped a certain fate makes one even more frightened of it.’

Three

THE WIVES

October–December 1945

‘
How
long did you say you’ve known this chap?’

‘I didn’t – but ages. He was a sort of friend of Angus’s.’

‘But he’s married, you told me.’ ‘Yes, John, I did. But he wants to marry me.’ ‘That’s no good if he’s married already, though, is it? I mean, it’s not quite the thing.’

She watched a thought strike him. ‘Unless he’s thinking of getting a divorce.’ She had forgotten, with all these years that he had been away, how slowly the penny dropped with her dear brother.

‘Well, yes, he
is
thinking of that.’

She watched his face, once so florid and full of creases that denoted how much so many things puzzled him, now clear to the seamless vacuity that any small resolution afforded, but now his skin was the colour of yellowing paper, the ginger moustache was gone, his hair, once so thick and coppery, was dry and dull and receding – his whole body seemed to have shrunk inside his uniform.

‘Can’t help worrying about your happiness, Diana, old girl. You’ve had such a rotten time – Angus dying and all that.’

He had eaten all of the small bowl of potato crisps she had put out for him, but his whisky and soda was barely touched. He was younger than she by three years, but now he looked like a frail, middle-aged man. He had been in the Army before the war, had disappeared with the fall of Singapore and nothing had been heard of him for nearly two years after that. She had thought him dead, and then information had trickled back that he was in a prisoner-of-war camp. He had been repatriated a month ago after some weeks in a hospital in New York where, as he put it, they had fattened him up. God knows what he must have looked like before they had done that, she thought now. She was very fond of the old boy even when, as nearly always, he proved slow on the uptake.

‘Darling, you’re the one who has had a rotten time.’

She got up and poured some more crisps out of the packet into the little bowl beside him, and almost before she had finished pouring, he had started to eat them.

‘Supposed to eat little and often,’ he said with an apologetic laugh. ‘I don’t have much of a problem with the often side of it.’

‘If you’ve been starving for years, I’m not surprised.’

‘Bit of a greedy pig, I’m afraid.’ He picked up the bowl. ‘We used to get a bowl just about this size of rice each day.’

‘Was that all?’

‘Well, sometimes there were some vegetables, if we managed to grow any or if we had anything to barter for them. Mostly it was just rice. And the water it was boiled in. People used to try and grow things, you know, but quite often the Japs used to drive a jeep over them – plough them up. Used to wait sometimes, until the stuff was nearly ready to harvest, and then bingo!’ He saw her face, and said, ‘They didn’t always do it. It was one of the punishments if they thought anyone overstepped the mark.’ He reached into his pocket and took out a gleaming new pipe. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘Of course not, darling.’

While he was unwrapping his oilskin pouch and tweaking out the oily shreds of tobacco, stuffing the bowl of the pipe with unsteady fingers, the thought recurred that perhaps Edward might have some sort of job for him, and she prayed that they would get on with each other. The trouble would not be with Edward, it would almost certainly be with John. Her brother’s ideas and opinions were hard to come by but, once acquired, he tended to stick to them. She had not dared to tell him that Edward had ‘helped’ her acquire the short lease on the mansion flat overlooking Regent’s Park where she and Jamie and Susan now lived. And she certainly had not revealed Susan’s parentage. She had explained all this to Edward, in case he dropped a brick of any kind. God! How she longed to feel free of all this hole-in-the-corner business, to have a proper house, large enough for all four children, with servants and possibly even her own car. Edward had still not told his wife of his intentions, and she would not feel safe until he had, although she knew that it was useless to push him. But she was also deeply worried about her brother, who seemed to have returned from four years of hell totally unequipped for peace-time life. He had always been in the Army, who now, after an extended leave, was chucking him out. In the weeks that he had been back, she had realized how poor his health was: attacks of malaria and some obscure stomach bug that came and went periodically prostrating him. Although he was not very communicative, she sensed that he was lonely and utterly at sea. If only he was married! But he wasn’t. The one or two girls she remembered him going out with before the war had never lasted, but with a mass of surplus women there must now be around perhaps she might find him a wife. He was not bright, but he was kind and honourable; he might bore the woman he married but he would look after her. She knew that as he was so lonely she ought to have invited him to stay in the flat, but that would mean that Edward would never be able to stay the night. Or – anything.

‘Supposing his wife won’t give him a divorce?’ He thought for a moment, and then added, ‘I mean, one couldn’t blame her. Divorce is a bit
orf
, isn’t it? Shouldn’t care for it myself.’

‘Oh, Johnnie, I don’t know! Edward seems to think she will.’

The door-bell rang (‘Good for him, he’s remembered he hasn’t got a key’) and as she got up to answer it, she said, ‘Don’t let’s talk about all that tonight. I just wanted you to meet him. He’s going to take us out to a lovely dinner. Let’s all just have a nice time.’

Edward was wonderful with him; when he wanted to be charming, there was nobody to beat him . . .

‘Let’s have a bottle of champagne as it’s my birthday,’ he had said when they got to the Ivy.

‘Is it really? Many happy returns.’

‘He always says it’s his birthday when he wants champagne,’ she had explained.

‘You mean they wouldn’t serve it to you if it wasn’t your birthday?’

‘Oh, Johnnie, of course they would. It’s just a joke.’

‘A joke.’ He thought for a bit. ‘Awfully sorry. I seemed to have missed the point.’

‘He feels he has to have an excuse,’ she explained.

‘And any excuse is better than none.’

‘Ah.’

Edward ordered dinner: oysters for them, but John had smoked salmon, partridges, John had a plain grilled steak, and chocolate mousse – John did have that. When they reached the coffee and liqueurs stage, John asked if he might have a crème de menthe
frappé.
‘One of the things we used to talk about in the camp,’ he said, ‘you know, go round the hut and each of us say something we looked forward to when we got home.’ He stirred the mixture with its straw. ‘Partly the ice – it was so damned hot, it seemed like a marvellous luxury.’

‘I know just what you mean,’ Edward said. ‘We used to talk about hot baths in the trenches.’

‘Pretty difficult to have a hot bath in one of them—’

‘No, I meant when we were in the trenches, we used to dream about hot baths. And linen sheets, you know, that sort of thing. Of course,’ he added, ‘it was different for me. I got leave from time to time. You poor beggars had to stick it out.’

‘But more people died in your war, didn’t they, darling?’ she said.

‘Dunno. I read that fifty-five million died in this one.’

‘And they say that people are still dying from those terrible atom bombs,’ she said.

John, who sat between them, had been turning his head from one to the other during this exchange – like someone watching tennis.

Now he said, ‘Made the Japs surrender though, didn’t it? Don’t know how many more people would have died if we hadn’t’

‘But it does sound such a horrible way to die!’

She noticed that the two men looked fleetingly at each other and then away, but it was as though some unspoken, unspeakable message had passed between them. Then Edward said: ‘Well, at least the war’s
over
, thank God. We can turn our minds to something more cheerful – like the bloody dockers.’

Then, as John was beginning to wonder what was cheerful about – what was it? forty-three thousand of them on strike, Edward said, well, income tax. Who would have thought that a socialist government would reduce income tax, although heaven knew it was high time; one up to Mr Dalton, whom he’d met briefly when he’d been President of the Board of Trade – nice, unassuming bloke, he’d thought him. Then he’d turned almost affectionately to John and asked what were his plans.

‘Haven’t really thought. Been sort of getting used to normal life. Got six months’ leave, then I’ll have to find something.’

‘You’re not staying in the Army?’

‘I’d like to, but they don’t want me, I’m afraid.’

‘I say, that’s bad luck! Have another of those things?’

‘No thanks. One’s enough for me.’

‘Thanks very much for that wonderful dinner,’ he said, when they dropped him at his club. ‘Be in touch,’ he said as he kissed her cheek, in tones that were uncertainly poised between a command and a plea.

‘Of course,’ she had said.

They watched him mount the steps, turn to wave at them and then go through the outer doors to be received by the hall porter.

‘Poor old bloke,’ he said.

‘You were sweet to him.’

He put his hand on her knee. ‘Isn’t it a bit lonely – living in his club? Couldn’t you put him up in one of the boys’ rooms?’