Sleeping Tiger (2 page)

“It's very pretty. Really.”

“I'm sure it is. And now I have news for you. I spoke to Mr. Arthurstone, and he has agreed to give you away.”

“Oh!”

Mr. Arthurstone was Rodney's senior partner, an elderly bachelor, very set in his ways. He suffered from arthritis in his knees, and the thought of coming up the aisle—supporting, rather than being supported by, Mr. Arthurstone—was daunting.

Rodney went on, with raised brows, “Darling, sound a little more pleased than that.”

“Oh, I am. It's so nice of him to say he'll do it. But, really, does anybody have to give me away? Can't we just go to the church together, and you and I walk up the aisle and then get married?”

“That really wouldn't do at all.”

“But I hardly know Mr. Arthurstone.”

“Of course you know him. He's looked after your grandmother's business affairs for years.”

“But that isn't the same as knowing him.”

“You only have to walk up the aisle with him. Somebody has to give you away.”

“I don't see why.”

“Darling, this is the way things are conducted. And there is no one else. You know that.”

And of course, Selina did know that. No father, no grandfather, no uncle, no brother. Nobody. Only Mr. Arthurstone.

She sighed deeply.

“I suppose so.”

Rodney patted her hand again.

“That's my girl! Now, I've got a surprise for you. A present.”

“A present?” She was intrigued. Was it possible that Rodney, too, had been affected by the springlike gaiety of this bright March day? Had he, while walking to the Bradley for his lunch date with Selina, been induced into some charming boutique, bought her some useless frivolity to bring a little romance into her day? “Have you, Rodney? Where is it?”

(In his pocket? Expensive presents come in small parcels.)

Rodney reached behind him and produced a package wrapped in stationer's paper and string, which obviously contained a book.

“Here,” he said.

Selina tried not to let her disappointment show on her face. It was a book. She hoped that it was a funny one.

“Oh, a book!”

It felt heavy, and hope that it might make her laugh died. It would be an instructive, thought-provoking volume, touching intelligently on various social problems of the day. Or maybe a travel book, with eye-witness accounts of the garish customs of some Central African tribe. Rodney was a great one for improving Selina's mind, and it distressed him deeply that she showed such a marked partiality to magazines, paperbacks and detective stories.

It was the same in other fields of culture. Selina loved the theatre, but could not enjoy a four-hour endurance test about two people living in dustbins. Likewise she was devoted to ballet, but preferred her ballerinas to wear tutus, and waltz to Tchaikovsky, and her musical appreciation did not include solo violin concerts which invariably left her teeth feeling as though she had lately bitten on a sloe.

“Yes,” said Rodney, “I've read it myself, but I was so impressed by it that I bought you a copy of your own.”

“How very kind.” She weighed the parcel up. “What's it about?”

“It's about an island in the Mediterranean.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It's a sort of autobiography, I suppose. This chap went to live there about six or seven years ago. Converted a house, became very much involved with the local people. His comments on the Spanish way of life struck me as being very balanced, very sane. You'll enjoy it, Selina.”

Selina said, “Yes, I'm sure I shall,” and laid the parcel down on the sofa beside her. “Thank you very much, Rodney, for buying it for me.”

After lunch, they said good-bye on the pavement, standing facing each other, Rodney with his bowler tipped forward over his nose, and Selina carrying the new parcel and with her hair blowing over her face.

He said, “What are you going to do with yourself this afternoon?”

“Oh, I don't know.”

“Why not toddle along to Woollands and try to make up your mind about those curtains? If you could get hold of some patterns, we could take them along to the flat when we go to-morrow afternoon.”

“Yes.” It seemed a sound idea. “That's a good idea.”

He smiled at her encouragingly. Selina smiled back. He said, “Well, good-bye then.” He did not kiss her in the street.

“Good-bye, Rodney. Thank you for lunch. And the present,” she remembered to add.

He made a small gesture with his hand, indicating that neither the lunch nor the present were of any account. Then, with a final smile, he turned and walked away from her, using his umbrella like a walking-stick, and edging swiftly and in a practised fashion between the crowds on the pavement. She waited, half-expecting him to turn for a final wave, but he did not.

Selina, alone, sighed. The day was warmer than ever. All the clouds had been blown away, and she could not bear the thought of sitting in a stuffy shop trying to choose patterns for sitting-room curtains. She walked aimlessly down into Piccadilly, crossed the road, at peril of her life, and turned into the park. The trees were at their prettiest, and grass beginning to be new and green, not brown and dingy with winter any longer. When she walked on the grass it smelt bruised and fresh, like a summer lawn. There were spreading carpets of yellow and purple crocuses, and chairs, in pairs, under the trees.

She went and sat in one of the chairs, leaned back with her legs sprawled and her face turned up to the sun. Soon her skin began to prickle with its warmth. She sat up, and shucked off the jacket of her suit and pushed up the sleeves of her sweater, and thought, I can just as easily go to Woollands to-morrow morning.

A child passed, on a tricycle, with her father walking behind, and a little dog. The child had on red tights and a blue dress and a black band on her hair. The father was quite young, in a polo-necked sweater and a tweed jacket. When the child stopped her tricycle and went over the grass to smell the crocuses he made no attempt to stop her, but watched, holding the tricycle so that it wouldn't roll away, smiling as the little girl bent over, revealing a charming expanse of red tights. The little girl said, “They haven't got a smell.”

“I could have told you that,” said her father.

“Why haven't they got a smell?”

“I haven't any idea.”

“I thought all flowers had a smell.”

“Most of them do. Come along now.”

“Can I pick them?”

“I shouldn't.”

“Why not?”

“The park men don't like it.”

“Why not?”

“It's a rule.”

“Why?”

“Well, other people like to look at them. Come along now.”

The little girl came, clambered back on to her trike and pedalled off down the path, her father behind her.

Selina watched this small scene, torn between pleasure and wistfulness. All her life she had listened in on the lives and conversations of other families, other children, other parents. Their attitudes towards each other caused her endless speculation. As a child, taken to the park by Agnes, her Nanny, she had always hung shyly about at the edge of other people's games, longing to be invited to join in, but too timid to ask. It was not very often that she was invited. Her clothes were always too tidy, and Agnes, sitting knitting on a nearby bench, could look very forbidding. If she thought there was a danger of Selina becoming embroiled with a set of children whom old Mrs. Bruce would obviously consider “unsuitable,” then Agnes would roll up her ball of wool, spear it with needles, and announce that it was time to walk back to Queen's Gate.

Here, they were a household of women—a small feminine world, ruled by Mrs. Bruce. Agnes, who had once been her maid, and Mrs. Hopkins, the cook, and Selina, were all her obedient subjects, and a man, unless it was Mr. Arthurstone, Grandmother's lawyer, or, in more recent years, Rodney Ackland, representing Mr. Arthurstone, had scarcely ever entered the house. When one did—to mend a pipe, do a bit of painting, or read the meter—Selina was invariably found in his company, asking questions. Was he married? Did he have children? What were the children called? Where did they go for their holidays? It was one of the few things that made Agnes cross.

“What on earth would your grandmother say if she could hear you at it—keeping the man from his work?”

“I wasn't.” On occasions Selina could be stubborn.

“What do you want to talk to
him
for?”

She could not answer because she did not understand why it was so important. But nobody would talk about her father. His name was never mentioned. Selina did not even know what he had been called, for Mrs. Bruce was her mother's mother and Selina had taken her name.

Once, indignant on some score, she had asked outright, “I want to know where my father is. Why haven't I got one? Everybody else has.”

She had been told, coldly, but quite kindly, that he was dead.

Selina was taken regularly to Sunday school. “Do you mean he's gone to heaven?”

Mrs. Bruce had tugged at a tiresome knot in her tapestry wool. The idea of That Man consorting with the angels she found hard to swallow, but her religious discipline was strong and it would be wrong to disillusion the child.

“Yes,” she said.

“What happened to him?”

“He was killed in the war.”

“How killed? How was he killed?” (She could imagine nothing more horrifying than being run over by a bus.)

“We never knew, Selina. We really can't tell you. Now—” Mrs. Bruce glanced at her watch with an air that indicated the conversation was closed. “Go and tell Agnes it's time for your walk.”

Agnes, when tackled, proved a little more forthcoming.

“Agnes, my father's dead.”

“Yes,” said Agnes. “I know.”

“How long has he been dead?”

“Since the war. Since nineteen forty-five.”

“Did he ever see me?”

“No. He died before you were born.”

This was discouraging.

“Did
you
ever see him, Agnes?”

“Yes,” said Agnes reluctantly. “When your mother was engaged to him.”

“What was his name, Agnes?”

“Now that, I cannot tell you. I promised your grandmother. She doesn't want you to know.”

“Well, was he nice? Was he good-looking? What colour was his hair? How old was he? Did you like him?”

Agnes, who was also highly-principled, answered the one question that she could answer truthfully.

“He was very good-looking. Now, I think that's enough. Hurry along, Selina, and don't drag your feet; you'll scuff the toes of your new shoes.”

“I'd like to have a father,” said Selina, and later that afternoon spent half-an-hour or more standing watching a father and son sail their model yacht on the Round Pond, edging nearer and nearer all the time in the hope of listening in to their conversation.

*   *   *

She found the photograph when she was fifteen. It was a depressing, wet London Wednesday. There was nothing to do. Agnes had her day off, Mrs. Hopkins was sitting with her arthritic legs on a footstool, immersed in the
People's Friend.
Grandmother had a bridge party. Muted voices and the smell of expensive cigarettes stole from behind the closed drawing-room doors. Nothing to do! Selina, prowling restlessly, came into the spare bedroom, looked at the view from the window, made a few film-star faces into the triple mirror, and was just on the way out when she noticed the books in the small cupboard between the two beds. It occurred to her that she might perhaps find a book she had never read, and with this idea in mind she went to kneel between the beds and run her forefinger along the titles.

It stayed still at
Rebecca.
A yellow-jacketed war-time edition. She took it out and opened it, and a photograph fell from the closely-printed pages. A photograph of a man. Selina picked it up. A man in uniform. Very dark-haired, with a cleft in his chin, his eyebrows irregular, his black eyes glinting with laughter although his face was set in suitable solemn lines. He was a soldier, tailored and well-buttoned, with a glimpse of gleaming Sam Browne across one shoulder.

There was the beginning of a wonderful suspicion. Somewhere, behind the dark amused face, was a suggestion of Selina's own. She took the photograph to the mirror, trying to find resemblances in the planes of her face, the way her hair grew, the squared-off corners of her chin. There wasn't much to go on. He was very handsome, and Selina was plain. His ears lay neatly against his head, and Selina's stuck out like jug-handles.

She turned the photograph over. On the back was written:

Harriet, darling,

from G.

and a couple of crosses for kisses.

Harriet had been her mother's name, and Selina knew then that the photograph was of her father.

She never told anybody about it. She slid
Rebecca
back into the shelf, and took the photograph into her room. After that, she carried it everywhere with her, wrapped in thin paper to keep it clean and crisp. She felt now that she had, at least, a root, however, tenuous, but it still didn't fill her need, and she still watched other families, and still listened in to other people's conversations.…

*   *   *

A child's voice penetrated her thoughts. Selina had been dreaming in the sun. Now, awakened, she was aware of the endless roar of Piccadilly traffic, car horns, and the high-pitched chatter of a baby girl, sitting in a pushchair. The other little girl on the tricycle and her father had long since disappeared. Other groups had taken their place, and a loving couple lay, entwined with complete abandon, only a few yards from where Selina sat.

The wooden chair had grown uncomfortable. Selina shifted her position slightly, and the parcel that Rodney had given her slid off her lap and fell on to the grass. Stooping, she picked it up, and aimlessly, without a thought, began to undo it. The dust-jacket of the book was in glossy-white with the lettering in red: