Someone Special (68 page)

‘That’s a lovely thing to say, but you had to go through some horrid times before you reached your present haven, and I suspect I’m too selfish and not strong enough to put up with the bad side of marriage. So you could say I’ve opted out. As for children, babies are quite fun but having them’s pretty grim, I’m told.’

‘Oh, childbirth,’ Constance said airily, patting her lips with her napkin and getting to her feet. ‘A means to an end, dear. However, if you’ve not met a man whom you can’t live
without
, then you’re quite right not to marry. And now let’s both get dressed and walk into the city. We can look around the shops, have a leisurely lunch in Garlands or in Prince’s if you’d rather, and then this afternoon I thought we might go for a spin in the country and end up in Yarmouth for dinner.’

‘Sounds lovely – only if you don’t mind I’d rather have tea in Yarmouth than dinner,’ Anna said, trying not to sound too guilt-ridden. ‘The fact is, Mummy, I’m – I’m meeting an old friend this evening. I said Saturday would be all right because you’ll want me round at Gran’s for Sunday supper, and I know you’ve got a dinner party organised for Monday evening and a theatre visit on Tuesday.’

‘An old friend? Male or female? Was it a dinner date,
because if not, we could still go down to Yarmouth and have an early dinner. No, I suppose it would be too much of a rush … who did you say it was?’

‘Oh, just an old friend,’ Anna said, still smiling. ‘Just someone who happens to be in Norfolk this weekend. And now I’m going to go and get dressed because I splashed out and bought the most gorgeous fine wool suit in the Champs Elysées and I can’t wait for you to see it.’

‘Ooh, lovely! Actually, I’ve got a little number which takes pounds off me as well as years … tell you what, we needn’t have lunch in town, we can just have a coffee at Garlands – everyone who’s anyone has coffee in Garlands on a Saturday morning – and after that we can drive to Yarmouth and lunch at one of the big hotels over there, in our new finery. Would you like that, darling? Is it Mabel you’re going to meet, by the by? No, of course not, she’s living in Christchurch Road, you could meet her any time. Did you know she’s just had another little girl? Three in six years! It’s not Tina, is it?’

‘No. I’m meeting Dan Clifton, actually,’ Anna said, relenting in the face of her mother’s blatant curiosity. ‘But don’t get your hopes up – if ever there was a man who was fun to be with but simply not the marrying kind, it’s Dan. Still, he’s a good friend. He writes regularly, rings me up if he’s in France and comes and takes me out from time to time. And he’s in Blofield this weekend, so I said I’d pop into the King’s Head about seven o’clock and we’d have a drink together.’

‘Dan Clifton? Good lord, I’d almost forgotten him, I didn’t realise the two of you had kept in touch.’ Constance opened the door and floated on to the landing, then paused outside her bedroom. Her long, blue-lidded eyes slanted thoughtfully towards her daughter, the expression in them a blend of hope and calculation which Anna remembered well from her youth. ‘Dan’s not married,
old Mrs Lucas told me that much, though no doubt he’s had a great many girlfriends. She dotes on the boy you know, says he’s done awfully well for himself, all things considered. His mother married a foreigner, so old Mrs Lucas had to bring him up more or less single-handed. He certainly drives a very expensive car … what does he do?’

‘He’s something in the diplomatic service, I’m not quite sure what,’ Anna said vaguely. ‘His French is as good as mine, and his German’s a good deal better. He even speaks Italian, though he says not as well, and some Spanish.’

‘Oh, quite a linguist, then. And he visits you in Paris?’ The blue eyes sparkled, the lips curved into an inquisitive half-smile.

‘He visits me in Paris,’ Anna confirmed, her own lips twitching. Constance was incorrigible, she would never change. Let an unmarried man and an unmarried woman enter the same conversation, let alone the same room, and Constance would be matchmaking. ‘But we’re old friends you see, Mummy, and old friends just like to meet, chat, share the gossip around …’

‘He’s rather handsome,’ Constance murmured. ‘Don’t you think so, dear? Awfully handsome, really. I’ve always admired men with very dark hair and eyes and a sort of twinkle about them.’

Anna, about to enter the spare room, paused in the doorway.

‘Yes, he’s nice-looking, successful, and probably courted by every woman for miles around,’ she said. ‘So forget it, Mummy. Danny simply isn’t my type.’

‘No-oo. Because although your father’s fair and Dan’s dark, they do have something in common.’ Constance sighed, then became suddenly brisk. ‘Well, we’ll never get lunch at all if we don’t get a move on. I wonder if we ought to drive up and park on Orford
Hill, in front of the Bell? Oh, see how we get on. Let’s hurry!’

They walked into the city in the end. The sunshine was so warm, the breeze so mild, that neither wore a coat and they swung along arm in arm in their smart clothes, the yellow head and the brown one close together, looking, Anna suspected, more like sisters than mother and daughter.

It was a nice walk, and mainly downhill, which was even nicer. They passed the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital where Anna had visited her friend Betty when Betty’s tonsils and adenoids had been removed. They plunged down St Stephens, glancing at the window displays but not going into any of the shops. Woolworth’s and Peacocks looked tempting, and Gordon Thoday’s, the silk merchants, was a shop which Constance rarely passed, but today, as she breathlessly remarked, if they wanted to get to Garlands while they were still serving coffee they could not afford to linger.

At the end of St Stephens they went along Red Lion Street and then crossed the road and dived down the steps into White Lion Street.

‘Wilson’s!’ Anna said, jerking her mother’s arm and drawing her attention to the shop on their right, from whose open doors came the strains of a popular melody. ‘The hours Tina and I spent in there, choosing gramophone records – I listened to “There’s a Tree in a Meadow” about twenty times in one of their little booths – but I couldn’t afford to buy two, and I wanted Dinah Shore singing “Buttons and Bows” more, at the time. Gosh, that seems a long time ago!’

‘And I went into Brahams and tried on every mink coat in the place when I was a flapper, only I never managed to get the money for even a teeny little mink stole out of your grandparents,’ Constance said dreamily
as they passed the top of the Royal Arcade. ‘Now that
was
a long time ago – ah, happy days! Still, we do all right, you and I.’

Mother and daughter hurried along Castle Street and turned left into London Street, then crossed the busy road and went into Garlands. Anna felt herself begin to smile; this was the stuff of her early teenage years. It was delightful to remember the hours she and her friends had spent hanging around the perfumery, examining every garment on every rack in the big department store and wandering along the aisles luxuriating in the mere presence of such beautiful clothes. Even in the late Forties, with all the shortages, it had been a wonderful place to meet, and the big, brightly lit restaurant in the basement had been the natural gathering ground for young and fashionable Norwich people.

Now pleasantly relaxed, Anna sauntered beside Constance through the department store and down the stairs. It was rather nice to walk into a place and look around to see who you knew, she told herself, and indeed as soon as they entered the restaurant someone hailed them.

‘Connie, old love, what a pleasant surprise! Why, if it isn’t Anna, too! Do come over here and sit with us and I’ll buy each of you the squishiest cake on the trolley!’

A glance was enough to tell Anna that it was her mother’s cousin Ida and her daughter Linette. They were sitting at one of the large, round tables, drinking coffee. Another glance showed Anna that the place teemed with fashionable young men and women, but most of them were a good deal younger than she. Linette, to be sure, was her age, but her cousin was holding a cross-looking baby in one arm and trying to persuade a fat toddler to drink a glass of milk and stop demanding ice-cream. She was no longer the pink-faced, dreamy girl Anna had known but a determined young matron with permed hair, worry lines on her forehead and the beginnings of a double chin.

Everything’s changed, Anna thought dolefully, greeting her relatives, smiling doubtfully at the children, then sitting down and choosing a cake from the display. This place belongs to a new generation, even Linette is out of it down here now. But of course it doesn’t really matter to me because I’m only a visitor in the city; my home is in Paris. I’m far too intelligent and sophisticated to settle for a husband, a semi-detached house in suburbia and a couple of kids. I’m enjoying a varied social life, lots of exciting friends, an important career … why, I wouldn’t change places with Linette for all the tea in China.

‘Don’ wan’ yat milla-milla!’ roared Linette’s toddler. ‘Wanna nicecweam!’

‘Have a bit of my chocolate éclair,’ Anna coaxed, and was told frostily, by Linette, that it was clear that she knew nothing, but
nothing
about bringing up the young. Thank God for it, Anna thought silently, whilst admitting aloud that she had had very little experience with small children. She sat back in her chair and watched her mother absently smooth a hand around the baby’s plump, sticky little face, then take the child on her lap as she chatted to Ida; watched the toddler hurl the mug of milk to the floor so that Linette, red-faced, squirmed under the table trying to find it again. The waitress came over, smiling.

‘Have he hulled that overboard?’ she enquired affably. ‘Here, my man, d’you fancy a chocolate finger, together?’

She gave him a chocolate finger and, instead of shouting that she knew nothing about children, Linette thanked her politely and apologised for the spilt milk. At the next table a slender girl with reddish-gold hair piled into a froth of curls on top of her head shrugged and smiled as she glanced towards the children. She was with a handsome boy of around her own age and she wore her clothes with an air: her long neck rose like a lily from the high collar of a crisp white blouse, her pale-grey flared skirt was almost
ankle length and she wore dark red, high-heeled shoes. She looked fashionable and modern and very, very young … and suddenly Anna was glad that she was going to meet Dan tonight, that she was reasserting her identity, confirming her ability to attract a man, even if he was only interested in her friendship.

And I’m only twenty-seven, she reminded herself hastily. That’s not so terribly old … goodness, I’ve my whole life ahead of me!

By half past six Anna was beginning to regret her promise to meet Dan for a drink. She was fond of Dan; as she had told Constance, they were good friends, but it was one thing to meet him in Paris and quite another to share a drink at the pub in the village, only a mile or so from Goldenstone. People would talk, and Anna did not want them talking about her, especially not to her father.

She had managed to remain on good terms with JJ by dint of meeting him in the city from time to time and sharing a meal but not actually visiting her old home. She would have loved to go back, but not when it meant being entertained by the present incumbent, a girl four years younger than herself.

‘I’d never have remarried if there had been a chance of Connie and me getting together again,’ JJ had told his daughter the last time they met. ‘You can’t blame me, darling – I got so lonely, Goldenstone’s such a huge barracks of a place for a man by himself.’

‘It doesn’t matter; you and Mummy are both happy now, and settled,’ Anna had said gently. She did not believe he was happy; it was common knowledge that his new wife could not cope with the house and was wildly jealous if he so much as looked at another woman. JJ, spoiled by Constance’s feigned blindness, could not get used to having his every peccadillo brought out into the cruel light of day, criticised, talked about
and finally derided. He tried everything, he told Anna. Sulking, punishment-by-absence, extravagant apologies and sheaves of red roses. But nothing made the slightest difference. Felicity got more and more bitter and spiteful, and each fresh discovery was greeted with shouting, screaming and hysterics. In short, she made scenes in a way Constance would never have done.

‘You could try not looking at other women,’ Anna had suggested over the dinner he was buying her in the Grill Room of the Castle Hotel. ‘Have you ever considered that, Daddy?’

JJ looked at her over the top of his glasses; he favoured rimless ones, in the hope that no one would realise his sight was no longer perfect. Anna thought they made him look rather feminine but was too tactful to tell him so.

‘But darling, of course I don’t look at other women! It’s all in the mind, I promise you. I’ve thought of getting Flicky to see a psychiatrist but when I suggested it she went absolutely wild … smashed three vases and a window pane, I was lucky it wasn’t my head!’

‘How did she do that?’ Anna asked, genuinely interested. Felicity had seemed such a demure young creature at the wedding, with her bell of ash-blonde hair and her wide blue eyes. Anna could not imagine her raising her voice in anger, let alone a vase.

‘Oh, when she’s angry she just picks up the nearest object and throws it very hard at me, or sometimes at the wall,’ JJ said, eating salmon in puff pastry with a good appetite. ‘She’s gone through most of the wedding presents and it’s getting embarrassing ringing Mr Gedge up to replace the windows. It still isn’t easy to get glass, so the study one is more or less permanently filled in with cardboard and sticky tape.’

‘Oh, well,’ Anna had murmured. ‘I daresay she’ll calm
down a bit when you have a family, or doesn’t she want children?’

‘Children? We haven’t discussed it.’ JJ stared down at his salmon for a moment as though he had suddenly realised it contained ground glass. ‘Oh no, we don’t discuss having children. I don’t really see Flicky as a mother, and I’ve got you and Jamie, you’re quite enough for me.’

‘I thought it might make her less excitable,’ Anna had said. ‘Like with dogs and things, you know. All that vase-throwing’s a bit immature, wouldn’t you say?’