The Echoing Stones (2 page)

I first met Celia Fremlin at the end of 1969. I was newly arrived in London, a recent graduate from Swansea University, working for a publisher and aspiring to be a writer. Celia was a leading light in the North West London Writers’ Group and the first meeting I attended was in her house in South Hill Park, Hampstead. (Already I had reason to be grateful to her, because she had judged a Mensa short-story competition and awarded me second prize.)

My first experience of Celia’s writing was, I think, her reading of the first chapter of
Appointment with Yesterday,
sometime during 1970. I was transfixed: certainly it was the most vivid thing I ever heard in my attendance at the group. Celia was writing about people who seemed completely real, whose experiences could happen to anyone. The shock of recognition was extreme. Here were women in their own homes, with noise and kindness and fear and desperation all astonishingly true to life. And there was wit – we always laughed when Celia read to us.

Four decades would pass before I could understand something of what was really happening in Celia’s life at the time we met. It was an unpublished memoir by her daughter Geraldine that finally enlightened me. But at those meetings there was never any mention – at least in my hearing – of Celia’s daughter Sylvia or her husband Elia, both of whom had died by their own hand the previous year. It was as if these were, understandably, taboo subjects. Celia’s son, Nick, lived in the same house, with his wife Fran and little son. Their second baby, Lancelot, was born during those years when we often met at South Hill Park. (In due course Nick would publish a novel of his own,
Tomorrow’s Silence
, in 1979.)

I have always resisted attempts to connect a writer’s life directly with his or her work: to do so can often diminish the power and value of the imagination. But in Celia’s case, I have always believed that her novel
With No Crying
would never have been written if Sylvia hadn’t died. The novel is, essentially, about the deprivation and grief that the wider family experiences when a child is lost. It is very well plotted – perhaps the best of all her work. The ‘message’ at the end is honest and wise and sad. It was not published until 1980, and – I believe – not written until a year or so before that, which was over ten years after the agonising events of 1968.

Celia’s short stories are perhaps more telling in some ways. They are certainly unforgettably good. Those in her first collection,
Don’t Go To Sleep in the Dark
, are the ones I especially remember. Many of her stories involve sunlit beaches, couples on holiday, people out in the open air. This contrasts with her novels, which are usually set indoors, often in the winter or at night. Darkness and light is a strong theme in all her work.

I was lavishly praised and encouraged by Celia in my early writing endeavours and I’m in no doubt that she was a real influence on me, if mostly subliminally. She was also very affectionate with my two baby boys, when they arrived in the mid-1970s. When we moved out of London, she came to visit us several times with her second husband, Leslie. She read my first published novel and wrote an endorsement for it. I last saw her in 1999, shortly before Leslie died.

I am highly delighted that Celia’s books are being reissued. Her ability to capture the combination of ordinariness and individuality in her characters and their relationships, which readers find so compelling, is something I have tried to emulate. I have no doubt that these books will find a large audience of new readers, who will wonder why they hadn’t heard of her before.

Rebecca Tope

Rebecca Tope is a crime novelist and journalist whose novels are published in the UK by Allison & Busby. Her official website is www.rebeccatope.com.

“Gentleman, aged 61, retired. Hates theatres, holidays, travel …”

Not quite the stuff to get them queuing up at your door, Arnold reflected glumly, re-reading what he had written. Sucking his pencil – a habit acquired during moments of stress at Primary School, and never quite lost – he continued writing:

“Amiable disposition, adaptable, seeks widow or similar …”

Was that quite the way to put it? What he meant, of course, was a woman past her first youth (well, what else could he expect?) and who had had a reasonable amount of experience of the vicissitudes of married life (or of co-habiting, or whatever) and therefore wouldn’t expect miracles of the man in her life. Arnold was no miracle man, never had been, and wasn’t going to become one. It sounded tiring.

And then, what about that “adaptable”? Hesitantly, he crossed the word out: changed his mind and wrote it in again. It was difficult. Because, really, the important thing was that
she
should be adaptable. It was Mildred’s failure to adapt that had split their marriage wide open only a few months after his retirement. “It’s not fair!” she’d sobbed, slamming the coffee-pot down so hard that coffee slopped all over the table-cloth and even into the marmalade. “First you take early retirement – I
told
you it was crazy – and now you’re trying to drag me off to
this God-forsaken hole at the back of beyond, where it’ll be work, work work from dawn to dusk! Retirement indeed! Slavery more like it! On the slave-plantations they at least had a bit of fun! Old Man River and things. Sing-songs …”

Arnold sighed, remembering it all. Then he raised his eyes from his script with all its crossings-out, and looked out through the mullioned window at the glorious vista of lawn and park-land; somewhat parched now under the late summer sun, but still beautiful. To the right – beyond his range of vision from where he now sat – the gardens began. In his mind’s eye he could see them in all their glory; the blazing red of geraniums, dauntless in the heat, undefeated by the long drought. The dahlias, too, coming out in variegeted brilliance alongside the blue of the larkspurs, the golden fire of the tiger-lilies …

Beautiful! And all his!

Well, in a manner of speaking. Actually he was merely the caretaker and part-time tourist guide – that was how the job had been advertised – but with what a sense of ownership this rôle endowed him! “Caretaker.” The one who cares. Surely the one who cares is, in a profound sense, the one who truly owns? The actual owners – the Commission for the Preservation of Historic Buildings – seemed remote as a dream. They never set foot in the place – not since Arnold’s time, anyway. In what sense do you own a place in which you take no interest, no joy?

Well, there’s money, of course. After four decades of working in the Accounts Department of the local
government
offices, dealing almost exclusively with money, albeit other people’s money, Arnold was certainly not the man to belittle the stuff, but all the same …

Arnold smiled, got up from the desk and walked to the window to get a wider view of his domain. Overseeing the grounds was no part of his official job – he was definitely indoor staff – but all the same, he liked to keep an eye
on what they were up to – or not up to, more often. Now that the hose-pipe ban had been lifted, surely the sprinklers should be out, reviving the parched lawhs? That was Norris’ department, supervising the lawns and gardens, and Arnold had learned very early on that even the lightest word of advice from him – even the most tentative suggstion – would be taken by Hugh Norris as gross interference and insupportable presumption.

Like the earwigs. All Arnold had done was casually to mention having noticed an increasing number of the creatures among the dahlias and Hugh Norris’ face had straightway blazed crimson with rage, right up into his balding scalp with its pale fringe of once gingery hair. He had actually shouted, within hearing of the tourists picnicking by the lake, and Arnold had duly cowered and cringed and apologised. See no earwigs, think no earwigs, mention no earwigs. So be it. Well, he didn’t want Norris complaining of him to
Them
, did he? He might lose his job.

Appalling thought. That he had ever been accepted for the job still seemed to him a kind of a miracle, even after all these months. At his age and with no
qualifications
other than a lifelong interest in English history, nourished by the intensive perusal of the biographies of colourful characters scattered through the centuries, he had expected to find himself in hopeless competition for the job with younger, smarter, properly qualified candidates. People with history degrees, two languages, Intourist training. But he had been calculating, he realised now, without reference to the salary, which was miniscule. “Ludicrous!” had been Mildred’s word for it, when at last he’d nerved himself to tell her about it. Ludicrous, indeed, had the whole project seemed to her and there had been moments, he remembered, when he’d wondered uneasily if she might not be right?

After he’d been accepted for the job, that is. Before
that, sustained by an unacknowledged certainty that he’d never get it, he had allowed himself to revel in the prospect as in an ecstatic dream. And indeed there
was
a dream-like quality in the way the whole thing had come about – the strokes of luck involved, the bizarre coincidences.

If they were coincidences? Or was it, rather, that something deep inside him had for many a long day been watching, watching, for just such a chance as this? Had been scanning the Situations Vacant pages of the evening paper, not idly, as he had supposed, and for lack of anything better to read as he stood crushed against the other commuters on the District Line, but with set purpose; his whole soul secretly poised to pounce on something – anything – which spelt OUT.

It
was
coincidence, though, by any calculation, that the Stately Home advertising for a caretaker should be Emmerton Hall itself, a Tudor mansion situated not three miles away from the village where Arnold had been brought up. He knew it well. It had been in private hands then and going to rack and ruin for lack of money. The overgrown kitchen garden had been a Mecca for the small boys of the neighbourhood. The high wall of ancient red brick, warm and rough against your bare knees as you scrambled up and over it, all came back to him as he swayed rhythmically in the tube train as it trundled its way towards Wembley Park: the plump, rosy peaches which somehow still managed to ripen among the all-embracing bindweed: the purple, half-split plums littering the ground: the murmur of the wasps: and how the most wasp-ridden specimens were always the best and the sweetest. Oh, the taste of them! The hot, sweet scent, and the juice that trickled down your chin!

By the time he reached home, his whole being was lit by a sort of joyous madness which he hadn’t experienced in years. Well, ever, as a matter of fact.

*

“Had a good day, dear?”

“Yes, thank you, dear, not too bad.”

As this was the sum total of their usual conservation on his return from work, it was no wonder that Mildred didn’t notice anything special about it: had no inkling of
how
good a day it had been, and did not bother to wonder why, having hung up his coat, he hurried straight to his desk and started to write a letter instead of switching on the T.V.

At this stage, there was no need to tell Mildred
anything
. Well, why have a row when nothing was going to come of it anyway?

But something did come of it; and from then on, decisions crowded in upon him thick and fast. It was when the question of early retirement from his present job came up that things were brought to a head. The new job at Emmerton Hall was to start in April, in time for the tourist season. His old job, in the Accounts
Department
of the Town Hall, which in the ordinary course of events would have continued for another four years, must now be jettisoned with almost indecent haste: no golden handshake for him, and certainly a much reduced pension. Mildred must be put in the picture and fast. It was only fair.

“You see, dear,” he explained, “it’ll mean a drop in income, obviously, but with the free accommodation and our own home-grown vegetables …”

At first, she didn’t seem to be taking it in.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “You don’t retire for another four years …”

He sighed: started again: and this time, after a while, it did get through.

“You mean
retire
?” she shrieked. “Retire
now
!” and he could see the panic in her eyes. That well-known panic which the word “retire” is apt to arouse in even the most contented of wives. Home for lunch. Home
for tea. Home for mid-morning coffee. Round my feet all day, bored, restless, resenting my friends when they drop in for a chat.

He hastened to allay these archetypal fears as best he could.

“I’ll be tremendously busy,” he reassured her, “all day long. There’ll be a lot to see to, looking after the exhibits … the house … and I suppose the paper-work, too. There’s always a lot of paper-work to any job. And then I’ll be taking the visitors round – guided tours – all that sort of thing. And it’ll be
your
job, too, Mildred. It’s not just for me, we’ll be in it together. They particularly wanted a married couple …”

“You mean they’ll expect me to do the teas, unpaid!” wailed Mildred; and as that was exactly what they
did
expect, Arnold was momentarily at a loss for an answer. He tried another tack. All the interesting people they were going to meet. A Tudor mansion – small as these mansions went, but exceptionally well-preserved: a show place. All sorts of celebrities would come to visit, from all over the world. Why, Prince Charles might turn up! And Princess Di! Eating Mildred’s cakes … telling her they were delicious …

She was softening, just a little. Arnold siezed the moment, laid his hand on her shoulder – and this was quite something, they weren’t a demonstrative couple – and began to plead with her,

“You see, dear, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” he began, and in the moment of saying it, it became true. He
had
always wanted something like this to happen, but until that moment on the Underground, it had never really occurred to him to think about what he wanted. His lifelong job had been a demanding one, though not very interesting, and it hadn’t left any scope for wanting.

Well, he won her round – Prince Charles and Princess Di had helped – and by the beginning of March their home
had been put on the market and the move was under way. By the end of March the business was completed and they were installed in the small flat in the West Wing that went with the job, Daffodils were everywhere; the place was not yet open to the public, and when Mildred complained of the draughts that came whistling along the old stone corridors, he could remind her that summer was coming. March is a good month that way. Whatever goes wrong in March, you can always say truthfully that summer is coming.