Casting Off (63 page)

That first evening, when she had the house to herself, when there was only the faint though pungent aroma of Evening in Paris to remind her of her sister’s existence, she had had three enormous gins and indulged in an orgy of Brahms on the gramophone. Before going to bed – without supper, she couldn’t face doing anything about that – she opened the windows on the first floor to disperse that scent that made her feel positively queasy. It was February, and freezing. She had to get up in the night to close the windows.

She had got so tired, working and coping with the house and dealing with Evie, that she decided to have a late morning and lay in bed listening to the news. Evie had insisted on having the wireless in her bedroom when she was ill, and Sid had moved it into her own room when Evie got better. The main news was the announcement that Britain would quit India by June 1948. There had been stormy scenes in the House of Commons due to Attlee’s decision to remove Lord Wavell and appoint Lord Louis Mountbatten in his place to oversee the transfer of the Indian dominion to self rule. Mr Churchill, as leader of the opposition, had been furious, but he failed to get any change out of Mr Attlee. She wondered if the latter knew what he was doing. In spite of the coal mines being nationalized, there was an acute shortage of coal; food rations had effectively been cut again – unless you counted being allowed twopence more corned beef per week. It had been a winter of strikes and power cuts and altogether a good deal of hardship for a victorious nation.

All that day, when she braved the awful weather to do the shopping, stuffed yet more newspaper into the cracks of the old window frames to keep out the worst of the draughts, made a succession of hot drinks to warm herself up, she wondered why she wasn’t feeling brighter with Evie gone at last. She should be rejoicing, but in fact she felt more and more depressed, and also unable to eat. At least, she kept thinking she was hungry, but when she actually tried to eat anything, she couldn’t manage it. She felt sick, and by the evening had a raging headache and a temperature. She retired to bed and the next day felt very much worse. In fact, so ill that she could not face going down to the kitchen in the basement, and spent the day on glasses of water from her tooth glass in the bathroom.

Later, she was not sure how much later, but something like two or three days, she heard the doorbell ringing more than once. The mad thought that it might be Rachel got her out of bed and she lurched down to open the front door, to find the Duchy wrapped up to her chin and carrying a bunch of snowdrops.

‘I was passing this morning,’ she said, ‘and I saw the milk bottles outside your door and thought perhaps you might not be well, as you hadn’t fetched them in. My dear Sid!’

For the sight of a familiar face, and the kind, calm voice that became full of concern, was too much for her. She collapsed on the hall chair. She managed to say that she was not very well, and then she must have passed out, for the next thing she knew was that her head was between her knees and she could hear the Duchy telephoning.

‘I’ve rung the doctor,’ she said. ‘Do you think if I helped you, we could get you back into bed? My dear, you should have rung us, we are so near and we could have been round in a trice.’ Even then, she noticed that the Duchy did not use Rachel’s name.

She stayed until the doctor came, who said that Sid had jaundice. The Duchy went down to the kitchen and made a pot of very weak tea. ‘No milk, I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘but a hot drink would do you good.’

She had left, saying that she would be back tomorrow. ‘Only give me a key,’ she said, ‘then I won’t have to get you out of bed.’

But it was Rachel who arrived, and not the following day but later that evening. She came with a tin of soup and some fruit, and there was no dramatic reunion. Sid felt too ill to express either surprise or delight, and she – Rachel – seemed intent upon looking after her exactly as though they had been meeting every few days for the last months. She got clean sheets and made her bed; she brought her a basin of hot water to wash; she gently combed her hair. She heated the soup and encouraged her to drink it. ‘Don’t try to talk, darling,’ she said. ‘I know how weak you must feel. One of the nurses at the Babies’ Hotel had jaundice and she felt terrible. I have made you some barley water: the doctor says it’s good for you to drink as much as possible.’

The next morning when Sid woke up she was there, and it transpired that Rachel had stayed the night in Evie’s room.

‘You shouldn’t be left alone,’ she said.

Rachel nursed her for weeks. She, Sid, had turned the unbecoming yellow that accompanies the disease, and she felt so weak that she would lie for hours wondering whether she had the strength to push her hair from her forehead. Rachel had been a wonderful nurse. Nothing was said about their recent separation, only one day when she had tried to say how grateful she was, she saw Rachel begin her painful blush as she answered, ‘You don’t know how much pleasure it gives me to be able to do anything for you.’

She accepted, she basked in the affection and care. When she was better, Rachel would go back to her home in the afternoons. Then, eventually, Sid was up and about and able to sit in the garden on fine days and the Duchy sent bunches of tulips and bottled fruit she had brought back from Home Place. Then she actually went there for a blissful week in April with the Duchy and Rachel. They went by train and Tonbridge fetched them from the station. The Duchy gardened all day, and sometimes in the evenings Sid would play the familiar sonatas with her while Rachel lay on the sofa, smoking and listening to them. They slept in separate rooms, and when they had retired for the night, she would sit by her window with the scent of wallflowers rising up from the beds on the front lawn and feel the stirrings of her old longing for Rachel’s arms, for her kisses, for her endless presence, and wish that her lover were a Juliet, for if she were . . . ‘the more I give to thee, the more I have for both are infinite’ was a line that recurred during those solitary spring nights. And then the Duchy had suddenly to go back to London three-quarters of the way through their week. The person hired to look after old Aunt Dolly could not stay the course: she had some family trouble and rang in distress to explain this. And she had thought that that would be the end of it. Rachel would have to go back with her mother. But the Duchy would not hear of it.

‘You are to stay and finish your week,’ she had said to Sid. ‘It is doing you so much good. It is doing you both good,’ she had added, still looking at Sid with that frank, direct gaze that seemed to see so much.

That night Rachel came to her room, sat on her bed, trembling. ‘I want to spend the night with you,’ she said. ‘I always have, but I’ve been selfish about it.’

‘My darling, you are the least selfish person I’ve ever met in my life—’ she began to say, but Rachel had put her hand over her mouth and said, ‘I mean, if one loves somebody – there are things . . .’ Her shaky small voice had tailed away. Then she took a breath and said, ‘I think you ought to show me, because I don’t know. I honestly and truly never knew – but whatever I thought about it is probably wrong, you see.’ And she could see what it cost Rachel to look straight at her, as she said, attempting a casual little laugh: ‘Of course, I shall probably turn out to be absolutely no good at it . . .’

It was then that she had realized the meanness of not accepting this offer – this most loving gift. If she stood upon her pride – she did not want to be presented with any sort of sacrifice however lovingly offered – nothing would change. Rachel had had the courage to risk, and so must she. As she pulled back the bedclothes and Rachel was beside her, Sid put her arms round her shaking shoulders, and said, ‘I love you, and if nothing comes of this I shall continue to love you till I die. We are both afraid, but we need not be afraid of that.’

Afterwards she thought of the Ice Maiden, the Sleeping Beauty – the single kiss was not enough, but they had made a beginning.

‘You said you had something important to tell me.’

She told him.

‘But – where will you go?’

She told him.

‘But what will you do? How will you earn your living? I mean, you won’t be able to afford to pay Nannie.’

‘I thought it would be best if I left Sebastian and Nannie with you. I could look after him on Nannie’s days out.’

He thought for a moment. ‘It’s all rather a
shock,
darling,’ he said, ‘but I suppose you’ve thought about it all. The implications. Couldn’t you live with one of your parents for a bit? Think it all over?’

‘No. My stepmother or whatever she is wouldn’t want me, and I certainly don’t want to live with Mummy.’

‘I see. I can’t afford two establishments, you know.’

‘I know. I’m not asking you to keep me.’

He looked at her. It was a hot grey day, and she wore a sleeveless coffee-coloured linen dress and white sandals and her long silky hair was held back by a brown velvet snood. She was twenty-four, they had been married for five years, and her appearance still gave him pleasure, but almost everything else about her was unsatisfactory.

‘I’m sorry you don’t love me,’ he said, and she answered politely, ‘So am I.’

‘I suppose it was the war – we should have waited until it stopped. Or don’t you think that that would have made any difference?’

‘I don’t think so.’ She was lighting yet another cigarette. She smoked too much, he thought.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. ‘Try to get back to the theatre?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t think I’m good enough. I’ll get some sort of job. I suppose we’d better have a divorce.’

‘You have no reason for divorcing me. I didn’t ask you to go.’

‘I know. I thought you’d prefer to divorce me. I don’t mind. There are two things . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘I wondered if it would be possible to have a little money, a small allowance for when I am looking after Sebastian. For bus fares and taking him to the Zoo – things like that. Because, at any rate to begin with, I shan’t have much money.’

‘What’s the other thing?’

‘Well,’ he saw she was beginning to blush, ‘I thought that as I haven’t really got any qualifications for a job, perhaps you would consider letting me buy a typewriter and I could buy one of those books and teach myself to touch-type. I don’t know what they cost, but perhaps I could get a second-hand one.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No.’

‘I can see that you won’t miss me,’ he said with some bitterness, ‘but what about Sebastian? It is surely very odd of you to abandon him like this?’

‘I expect it is. But I couldn’t possibly keep him in the way he is being kept now. I could never afford Nannie, and how would I earn the money to keep him if I had him with me all the time? Anyway, I’m not much of a mother. I never have been, you know that.’

He thought of all the things his mother had said about Louise’s lack of maternal feeling and was silent. This was one of the most unsatisfactory – and unnatural – aspects of her.

‘I’ll get my secretary to find out about a typewriter for you,’ he said. ‘And of course I’ll give you a small allowance for Sebastian.’

‘Thank you, Michael. I really am grateful. And I’m sorry I’ve been such a failure as a wife. I’m sorry,’ she repeated, less steadily.

‘When do you plan to leave?’

‘I thought some time this week. Tomorrow, probably. Polly is going to her father’s at the weekend until her wedding, and she will show me how everything works before she leaves.’

‘And you will be alone there?’ It occurred to him that that must be a daunting thought to her.

‘To begin with anyway. But Stella might be getting sent back to London, and if she is she will share the flat with me, and if she doesn’t, I’ll have to find someone else. Because of the rent. It does seem better, if I’m going, to get on with it.’

‘Yes. I think it would be.’

That was that.

‘My poor darling! What a thing for you!’

‘Well, Mummy, I think it is really for the best. We weren’t having much of a life together – haven’t for ages.’

‘What about Sebastian?’

‘She’s leaving him with me.’