Some Old Lover's Ghost (13 page)

‘The maid?’ he said. ‘What about the maid I engaged?’ He walked into the living room, treading through heaps of cast-off clothes, trays of dirty crockery, and piles of cheap paperbacks and magazines.

‘She left.’

He thought, looking round him, that he couldn’t blame the girl. He began automatically to tidy up, to fling open windows to let out the stale air. His mother stood watching him, her arms clasped around herself, her silk kimono gaping to reveal a greyish nightgown beneath. She looked forlorn.

He went back to her and kissed her cheek. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said kindly. ‘Why don’t you get ready, then I’ll take you out for coffee.’

While she bathed, he tried to return some semblance of order to the flat. He found the bills stuffed in the flour jar (
Dear Mrs Franklin, I feel it necessary to inform you that your account is now in arrears to the sum of ‖
), and the empty bottles in her old hiding place under the sink. He put the bills in his pocket to settle later, and stacked the bottles in a cardboard box. Sherry, this time, not gin. She must be more hard up than usual.

In an hour his mother reappeared, wearing a lilac silk costume and a black coat and a little hat at a rakish angle to the side of her head. She said brightly, ‘Come on, Max darling, let’s go out on the town,’ and he took her arm and they left the flat. A sullen sea pounded the stony beach, and in the chill sunlight the roofs and minarets of the Pavilion glinted, a fairy-tale palace.

He took her to the Grand Hotel, her favourite. He ordered coffee, and she glanced at her watch and said, ‘Max. Just one teensy sherry?’ and squeezed his arm coaxingly. He asked about Christmas.

‘Such fun,’ she said. ‘I gave a little party – just Doris and Heather and the people from next door. We had a lovely time. Doris brought her new lodger. A charming man. A gentleman.’

Max’s heart sank.

‘And you, darling?’ she enquired.

‘I was in Germany, as you know.’

‘Germany
! she said, eyes wide.

‘You remember, Mother – I sent you a postcard.’

‘How
lovely
!’ Glühwein … and Wiener schnitzel … and …’ Mrs Franklin faltered, her limited and inaccurate knowledge of the Continent letting her down.

‘Yes. Well. Something like that.’ A collection of different images flickered through Max’s memory: Brownshirts interrupting a political meeting in Munich, boots kicking a man’s head as he lay curled in the gutter.

‘Have you seen your father, dear?’ Mrs Franklin’s voice was tentative.

‘We had a drink together just before I went away.’ Max met his father once every six months or so in the bar of the Savoy. They had two drinks and discussed cricket or rugby according to the season. Mr Franklin invariably offered money to Max to cover the most pressing of his ex-wife’s bills, which Max equally invariably refused, and then they parted with a handshake.

‘How was he?’

‘Terrific,’ said Max. He lit himself a cigarette. ‘You said you hadn’t been well, Mother. You look tired.’

‘I’m fine, darling.’ She patted his hand. ‘You mustn’t worry about me. But you are looking terribly thin, Max. I shall go to the shops this afternoon and buy steak and I shall cook it for you myself. Would you like that?’ She beamed at him.

Tilda organized her room, arranging her books on the shelves, buying hooks to screw into the back of the door to hang up her dresses. There was a bed and a table and a washstand and a chair and a rug, approximately three foot by two, on the remaining area of floor. The room was tiny, and in the coldest weather ice flowered on the inside of the window panes, but Tilda loved it.

She altered her dresses to make them more like June’s and Maureen’s, shortening the hems, taking in the waists, replacing large, girlish pink buttons with little pearl ones cut from a cardigan bought in a charity shop. She sold her long plait of hair, and with the money bought herself a pair of silk stockings and a lipstick. She found a pair of second-hand heeled shoes to replace her awful clumpy country boots, and set about getting to know her neighbours. She cooked Michael Welsh rarebit, and spent an evening with Maureen and June, helping them to darn their tights, eating peppermint creams and listening to jazz records. She went to the cinema with Roland one night and Fergus the next, fending off the advances of each. She spent an extraordinary evening at a peculiar nightclub in Hammersmith,
watching Giles Parker, dressed in a red velvet tuxedo, read his poems while a pale, etiolated lady mimed. Celia, sorting out her wardrobe, gave Tilda a short black jacket, a white silk blouse and a blue velvet beret so chic she fell in love with it and wore it every day.

After a fortnight, she found a job in an office. Her duties ranged from typing letters to fending off difficult telephone calls when her employer, Mr Palmer, was ‘indisposed’. Mr Palmer’s in-tray was full of unpaid invoices, and the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet full of empty whisky bottles. The work was dull and tiring, but distracted her, by day at least, from the discoveries that had prompted her escape to London. At night, though, she could not block out the memories. Daragh had married Joscelin de Paveley for her land and money. Daragh’s betrayal had changed her, and that, Tilda thought, she resented most of all. She would never love another man as she had loved Daragh. She had given too much of herself to him: it was as though he had torn a layer of skin from her, leaving her raw and exposed.

Aunt Sarah’s revelations, too, had scoured away at some essential part of her. Tilda had long ago guessed her birth to be illegitimate – the shame had been there in Sarah’s reluctance to talk about her family or about the past, in the disjointed, unrooted life that they had led, and in Sarah’s avoidance of all close involvement with other people. But the rape, and the imprisonment of her mother in the asylum – these were horrors that she could hardly bear to contemplate. At first, Tilda had wondered whether Sarah had told her the truth. She had lied, or she had been mad, as Daragh had said. Perhaps madness ran in the family. Yet she could not quite convince herself. If what Sarah had told her was true, then there was a peculiar rationality to what she had done. Sarah had never followed anyone’s rules but her own; Sarah’s idea of justice was primitive and vengeful. Once, when they had both helped with the harvest at a farm in Norfolk, and the farmer had insisted on serving one dish to his family and another, poorer meal to his labourers, Sarah had spat each day in the silver tureen reserved for the farmer and his wife. Tilda still remembered Sarah’s face as
she had lifted the silver lid: cold, proud, free of both furtiveness and guilt.

Michael leaned over the banister and yelled down as Tilda climbed the stairs after work one day.

‘June has given us tickets for her preview – are you coming?’

Tilda ran to her room and changed her sweater and coat for the white silk blouse and black jacket that Celia had given her. At the theatre she watched with a sense of dazed wonder the silent figures moving on the stage. She was drawn into the tragedy, mesmerized by step and gesture. Afterwards, walking to a pub to wait for the dancers, Roland said, ‘Bloody silly, ballet. Can’t see the point of it.’ Tilda hardly heard him.

Fergus bought drinks; Maureen and June and half a dozen others spilled from the theatre into the saloon bar.

‘Awful – simply frightful—’

‘Eric turned the wrong way. I had to yell at him. I’m sure that half the audience heard.’

Christine said, ‘Where’s Max? Is he late? I shall be furious if he’s late.’

Tilda drank her cider and settled back in her seat, squashed between Michael and Roland. Roland described, at length, a problem with his motor car. On the opposite side of the table, Christine twitched angrily, glancing at the clock.

Michael told Tilda about his thesis. ‘It’s taken me two years longer than it was supposed to. My parents are threatening to cut off funds. I haven’t enough cash left to pay for a typist.’

‘If you can borrow a typewriter, I’ll type it for you.’

‘Would you really?’ Michael beamed. ‘That would be splendid. I say, there’s Max … Max!’ he shouted. ‘Over here!’

Max Franklin, the shoulders of his coat dark with rain, wormed through the crowds to their table.

‘A quarter past ten.’ Christine’s dark eyes were angry. ‘It’s too bad of you, Max.’

‘Sorry, sweetie.’

‘I’ve been waiting for
hours.’

Max looked tired. He took a couple of pound notes from his pocket. ‘Drink, anyone?’

‘I suppose you think you’re so bloody indispensable – I suppose you assume that I’ll just sit here for hours waiting for you—’

Max looked at Christine. Then he said, ‘Well, no, actually. I hadn’t thought about it, to tell the truth. And, really, I don’t care one way or the other.’

Christine’s face turned from pink to white. She moved to strike Max, but he caught her wrist, and said softly, ‘N
O
.’

There was a short silence. Christine hissed, ‘Bastard – you bastard,’ and ran out of the pub. The slam of the door echoed across the bar.

‘Drinks, anyone?’ said Max again, calmly.

Michael stood up. ‘I’ll get them – my round.’

Everyone began to talk at once. Roland said, ‘Busy, Max?’

‘Just trying to finish my piece on the National Socialists’ boycott of Jewish businesses.’ Max lit himself a cigarette and chucked the packet to Roland.

Tilda leaned across the table. ‘Who are the National Socialists?’

Max stared at her. Michael arrived with the drinks. Max said, ‘Where are you
from
, Tilda?’

‘East Anglia,’ said Roland.

‘Even East Anglia has newspapers – the wireless—’

‘Tilda lived in the middle of nowhere, didn’t you, Tilda?’

‘You’d have to live on the bloody moon … You have heard of Hitler, haven’t you?’

‘Sort of …’ She felt angry, suddenly. ‘Instead of being so
clever
, Max, why don’t you explain to me?’

For a moment, she thought she was going to be subjected to the withering sarcasm he had inflicted on Christine. But Max cradled his Scotch in his hands and explained about the Treaty of Versailles and reparations and the collapse of the American economy in ‘29, and its repercussions throughout the world, and Adolf Hitler’s subsequent rise to power in Germany. Then he
stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, and added, ‘Today, there was a boycott of all Jewish businesses in Germany. In other words, if you patronized your usual butcher, baker or candlestick-maker, and he just happened to be a Jew, then your local policeman was liable to have a quiet word in your ear.’

The bell rang for closing time. Roland glanced at Max. ‘Shall we go on to a nightclub?’

Max shook his head. ‘I’ve work to do. I only came here to keep Christine happy.’ He smiled. ‘She didn’t seem to appreciate my efforts, did she?’ He picked up his hat and left the pub.

Arriving at work one morning in June, Tilda found a note pinned to the door. ‘Mr Palmer ill – office closed.’ The cleaner, shuffling downstairs, told Tilda the truth. The business had gone bankrupt, Mr Palmer had had one drink too many and had been knocked over by a black cab on his unsteady way home from the pub. Tilda looked for another job. She tried offices, restaurants and shops. Managers shook their heads at her, explaining that business was bad, or wrote her name and address on a list, promising to get in touch when a place fell vacant. No position ever did fall vacant, or they threw the scrap of paper away as soon as she left the shop. The poverty she saw, walking round London, shocked her. She had seen poverty before, but in the countryside it had seemed somehow less raw, less degrading. Men in cloth caps and elbowless jackets scuffed their heels at street corners. Once she saw a man walking the streets with a sign pinned to his coat: ‘Unemployed plumber. Will do anything.’ Going home in the evenings after a fruitless search for work, Tilda saw the queues outside hostels. Men – and women – in layers of threadbare, dirty clothes, their hair matted, their faces hollow and hopeless.

She had a couple of days’ work delivering flyers to offices in the City, but the press that printed them went bankrupt and disappeared, leaving an empty office and bills – including Tilda’s wages – unpaid. She skipped meals, pretending that she was eating in her room. When there was a party, she drank cider and accepted the cigarettes offered to her because they suppressed
her appetite. Her inability to find work made her feel useless and unwanted.

One morning, she went up to the kitchen at ten o’clock to make tea. The room was empty except for Max, sitting on the window sill, reading the newspaper. Tilda filled the kettle, and lit the gas. Then she reached up for a cup, and the floor seemed to dissolve and her vision to darken from the circumference, until only a pinpoint of bright light remained in the centre.

When she came to, she was sitting in a chair, her head between her knees. Something heavy pressed on the back of her neck. Tilda wriggled, and a voice boomed, ‘Sit still a moment, won’t you?’

After a while her sight cleared and the roaring in her ears went away. Max took his hand from the back of her neck. He said, ‘Perhaps you’ve got flu,’ and touched her forehead. ‘Though you’re not hot.’

Because she was still feeling dizzy, Tilda said feebly, ‘I expect I’m just hungry.’

‘Hungry?’ Max scowled, and stared at her. ‘Haven’t you been eating?’

She shrugged, and wished he’d go away.

‘Are you dieting?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

He leaned against the wall, hands in pockets, watching her. ‘Are you short of cash?’

‘Of course not!’ Tilda hunched her shoulders and looked away, but he persisted.

‘You’ve work, haven’t you?’

‘I had a job, but it fell through. I haven’t worked for three weeks. I thought I’d be able to find something else quickly, but …’ Her voice trailed off.

‘God. Such optimism. You did know, didn’t you, about the other three million unemployed out there?’

She didn’t answer. She hadn’t known, not really. Things like that hadn’t touched the constrained, isolated life that she and Sarah had lived.

Max said, ‘Come on, I’ll buy you breakfast.’