Faster! Faster! (29 page)

As she turned towards the river, Claudia once more realized that she felt as much tired and shaken as though she were recovering from a long illness. She became aware that she was driving badly, wavering in her decisions, and slightly nervous and unready in all her movements.

I
must
take hold of myself, she thought.

For a moment she envisaged the possibility of taking her car back to the garage and herself returning to Sal's flat for the night. She knew her partner well enough to feel certain that she would meet with no comment.

How silly. As if it mattered whether other people commented or not!

The traffic was heavy and it was only possible to crawl at a snail's pace.

Her thoughts veered round to Copper and the letter that she had received from him that morning.

A very short letter and not an eloquent one, but Copper had made it clear that he had actually accepted the secretaryship of the club and undertaken to find the capital required. No doubt he meant to borrow it. If Claudia didn't offer to lend it to him then Adolf Zienszi would, or perhaps his friend Branscombe.

Anyway he'll get it, thought Claudia. She conscientiously told herself that to see Copper in a job must be the greatest possible relief. Financially, as
well, it would ease the strain upon her.

If she wasn't so tired, she'd be glad.

A thought pricked somewhere at the back of her mind. For a moment she was unable to grasp it.

Arling.

Copper might want them to leave Arling, to go and live somewhere that would give him the chance of getting home for the week-ends at least.

One would have to consider that very carefully of course. Arling was expensive and the mortgage a heavy drain. Still, it was being paid off by degrees, and once it was cleared, the house might be regarded as a good investment.

And she loved it so! To see her own children growing up where she had grown up—to make them familiar with everything that was most strongly associated with her own youth … it was like an extension of the past into the present, identifying her own childhood with theirs.

What was it that Anna had said?

“You bought Arling because you wanted to see yourself again in your children—you wanted home to be associated in their minds with you primarily. …”

How little Anna understood!

Approaching Westminster Bridge, Claudia slowed down again. The traffic was very heavy and the roads greasy and slippery from the rain.

Presently the car was brought to a complete standstill.

She wondered whether Copper would get a new car for himself now. Of course he would. The old Morris was fit for nothing but the scrap-heap.

Perhaps Copper wouldn't succeed in keeping the job. He hadn't, Claudia thought, much staying power, and he'd got into the habit of drinking just a little too much. He ought to realize that it wasn't any too easy, nowadays, to hold down a responsible position. There were so many waiting eagerly to displace the inefficient, the elderly.

Detached phrases, with which she would explain this to Copper, floated through her mind.

The close-crowded vehicles began to move again, led by a seemingly endless procession of trams, and Claudia slipped into bottom gear and turned onto the bridge.

Impatience suddenly possessed her and she thought with dismay of the long drive ahead of her, the necessity of unpacking, even the labour of preparing herself for bed. But she'd be all right after a night's sleep. Able to go up to the school and take Maurice out in the morning, before sitting through the play in the afternoon. She wouldn't have disappointed him, even in the smallest degree.

“Aren't you, all day and every day, acting as the perfect mother … dramatizing yourself as the world's worker? …”

Anna's searing, intolerable words flashed into her mind.

With an irrational impulse to move faster, as if by so doing she could escape from her thoughts, Claudia took advantage of the slowing-down of the tram ahead, accelerated, and endeavoured to pull round it.

A second later she perceived, on the other line,
the slow, jerky advance towards her of the second tram.

Startled, she wrenched at her brake, felt the car slew beneath her as it skidded round, heard the long-drawn screech of violently-applied brakes and a man's horrified shout.

The on-coming tram loomed above her, monstrous and menacing.

As the ship ploughed her steady way across the Atlantic Taffy leant over the side and gazed, fascinated, at the churning depths far below.

Supposing one of the small children on board were to fall in, would she have enough courage to spring in after it? How utterly helpless she'd feel, swimming about that boundless green waste, with the waves slapping at her relentlessly!

Quickly abandoning that aspect of her fantasy, Taffy rehearsed instead the comments of the other passengers, particularly those of the tall boy from Santa Barbara with whom she had danced the evening before.

He was too young, of course, but she'd quite liked him—and it was exciting that he should like her so much—better, apparently, than any of his own compatriots, although the American girls on board seemed to Taffy far prettier, more competent, sophisticated, and above all much, much smarter than herself.

At least, she thought wistfully, it was a mercy that black and white both suited her sandy colouring so well.

“The slender figure of a young girl in deep mourning was silhouetted against the sky. Her face was set towards the New World. Fearlessly she envisaged whatever might await her there.”

Could one envisage something if one didn't know what it was?

Perhaps not.

It was pretty exciting, though, to be going to College in America. For two years she wouldn't see England again. When she next saw the white cliffs of Albion a world of experience would lie behind her.

England would always be home, although Arling was to be sold.

On the whole, Taffy didn't feel that she would regret Arling very much. The new house was smaller and much more modern and could be run with two maids. And His Lordship wasn't there, to resent transplantation.

At the thought of her old friend, put painlessly to sleep and buried under the willows at Arling, Taffy felt hot tears pricking at the back of her eyes. She fiercely fought them back and turned quickly in search of distraction.

An American brother and sister, both young, were setting up their portable gramophone on the deck. They smiled at Taffy and invited her to come and listen to their new records.

“D'you know a marvellous one called ‘Icecream Blues'?” they earnestly enquired.

“No. It sounds too marvellous,” Taffy responded eagerly.

They put on the record, and in another moment the heavily stressed syncopated rhythm of the new tune broke into the afternoon quiet, rousing from somnolence a few well-rugged elderly forms, prone in deck-chairs.

Their looks of wrath and dismay passed unperceived.

The young American seized Taffy and began to dance with her, solemnly and with almost professional skill. She followed him expertly, secretly amazed and delighted by her own proficiency, and hoping that people were watching them.

Anna Zienszi rose from the bridge-table, slim and graceful and smiling, her pearls swinging against the soft black-and-white check of her tailored frock.

“Thank you
so
much, partner,” she said to the entranced old gentleman with whom she had been playing a highly successful rubber.

She went to her state-room, powdered her nose and renewed her lip-stick, and then proceeded to the Tudor lounge—a synthetic affair of panelling and gilt mouldings—to write letters.

Her husband sat in a corner there, reading a detective novel.

He looked up and smiled as she stopped beside him.

“How did the Bridge go?”

“Very well. I played with the General and we won all the time. I held the most heavenly cards.”

“You always do.”

“Nearly always,” she assented. “Which proves that the proverb, like most proverbs, is utterly wrong.”

“Does it, my darling?”

“Of course.”

She laid her hand lightly on his for a moment, her eyes shining.

“I thought I'd write some letters. I shan't have a minute in New York.”

“You certainly won't. I'll like to show Taffy around a little in New York, won't you?”

“Surely. Adolf, she's having a wonderful time, isn't she? I never saw a girl adapt herself so quickly to new surroundings. Does she ever remind you of Claudia?”

“A little.”

“She does me. Oh, Adolf!”

He looked at her, quick to catch the underlying note of pain in her voice.

“She's harder than Claudia, in a way—less vulnerable. And I don't think that fundamentally she's really very like her.”

“Nor I. Taffy'll develop into a grand woman one of these days, if she gets enough scope.”

“She'll get enough scope, I think.” The unspoken
“now”
was in the air between them. “I shall always be so very, very glad that Claudia telephoned to me—that last evening. I don't know how I could ever have borne it but for that, when I think of the things—the dreadful things—I said to her,” Anna said, very low.

“Don't you think, perhaps, that the very fact that she did telephone shows she understood—she knew you hadn't said the things because you meant to hurt her?”

“Perhaps. Yes, I think so. When we were children I used to feel that Claudia was so wonderful—
so tall and clever and knowing so much—I thought she knew everything. We both tried to carry that relationship on into our grown-up life, and of course it wasn't possible.”

“Perhaps Claudia never quite saw that,” Adolf suggested. “Perhaps she didn't face the fact that it wasn't possible, and so she resented criticism. But affection—which is the thing that matters in the end—was there between you all the time.”

Anna nodded.

“That's why she telephoned, that evening,” she repeated.

There was a silence.

Then Anna said:

“I must write to Mother.”

“She'll like that.”

“Yes. I'm going to be better about writing. Adolf,
make
me send Mother a long letter every week. Do you know, Claudia used to write to her once a week, always, when she didn't see her? She'll miss that dreadfully.”

“Maybe later on you'd like to have her visit us, if she'd come so far.”

Anna laughed.

“She wouldn't. But you're a darling to think of it. I'll write to her, and tell her how Taffy gets on, and we'll be coming home again next year, or the year after.”

“Sure we will, honey. Sooner, if you want to.”

“Adolf, have you wirelessed for our reservations yet?”

“Not yet. But I will. I thought you'd like to get in touch with one or two people, maybe, and fix
up a little dinner or something, for Taffy's first evening.”

“I would. Not the first evening though—the second. That'll give me time to go and have a facial, and get my hair fixed and call up some of my friends. It'll be fun to see Broadway again.”

“You like it over there, don't you?” he said fondly and proudly.

“I love it. Taffy's going to love it too. Adolf, have you found out anything about that boy from Santa Barbara? The one she's going about with all the time.”

“Yeah. He's all right. I know an uncle of his, I believe. Wall Street.”

“She's going to be a responsibility!” declared Anna gaily. “It'll be grand, having a daughter. I like them better, all ready-made, grown-up,” she added quickly, lest he should think she regretted their childlessness. “Look, Adolf, let's think up some people now that we'd like to see in New York. Then you can send off the radios to-day or tomorrow. They say we'll be in by four o'clock on Tuesday.”

He took out a little gold pencil and found paper on the desk.

“Now let's see,” began Anna earnestly, knitting her brows. “Who is there?”

Absorbed, she gave her whole mind to considering the question.

To the infinite horror of Mrs Peel, it was Sal Oliver who appeared in person, in response to an
appeal made that morning to London Universal Services.

“This is very good of you,” said Mrs Peel in disgusted accents, “but I'm afraid I only wanted an inventory made, before letting my flat.”

“I know. We quite understood that. But I do sometimes do this kind of thing myself,” Sal answered gently.

To the ears of Mrs Peel she only sounded a shade less self-assured and objectionable than usual.

“I can help you, of course,” she observed grudgingly. “The silver is listed already, and most of the linen. It will only need checking. Won't you take your things off in my room?”

“Thank you very much.”

When Sal came back, wearing an overall and without her hat, they did not at once begin work.

Mrs Peel stood poised above a small table covered with a piece of green baize, on which were ranged small bundles of tea-spoons and the like, grouped round an enormous fish-slice that looked as though it had never left the retirement of its old-fashioned case lined with red velvet.

She fixed her pale, prominent eyes on Sal, and patted her pompadour with the familiar gesture.

“Do sit down. How are things going at the office?”

“Not too badly,” Sal said. “I think sooner or later we shall have to get somebody else in, but not just yet. It won't be very easy to find the right person.”

“It would be impossible,” said Mrs Peel jealously,
“ever to find anyone to replace my daughter. Naturally, I know she left everything in order, and of course you'd worked with her for years and knew her methods—but if ever there was anybody who seemed to be indispensable——”

She broke off and unseeingly fingered one of the little piles of silver.