When I Was Otherwise (33 page)

“I said—who is it? Have you come to harass me again? I can't take any more of it. Do you hear me? I can't stand any fresh persecution.”

“It's Dan. Please let me in, Daisy. Turn on your—”

“Go away! Don't think you can unsettle me by stealth and silence and testing the handle of my door. This is my home. I'm sticking to it. I won't allow you to throw me out.”

“Turn on your hearing aid!”

“Go away! I know that you're still there.”

She remembered her hearing aid.

“Is it Dan?”

He had caught the screech and whistle. “Daisy, I want to talk to you.”

“Are you alone?”

She had to repeat the question.

“You're quite sure you're alone? No she-devil lurking round the corner waiting to lambaste me?”

“Yes, I'm alone. Completely…utterly…alone.” Even she could detect the weariness.

“Wait, then. Hold your horses.”

She pulled back the chair. Dan stood inside the doorway, florid and fat and somehow a little absurd, breathing hard from his exertions, or apprehensions, yet exuding that air of kindliness and bewilderment which was as much a part of him as the Harris tweed jacket he always wore.

Also an air of tiredness and uncertainty and loss.

“Are you coming down to supper?” he asked; making a desperate bid to smile—even, ideally, to convey some impression of normality. It was as if he were saying: Let's all pretend this has been an evening much like any other. No caterwauling and no barricades. As far as I'm concerned, Daisy, that's the only way we'll ever manage to get through it.

But Daisy glared at him defiantly. “Do you think that I could swallow a crumb? With
her
? That harridan downstairs? If you think that, you must be just as mad as she is!”

“You know, old girl, it wasn't entirely her fault. You've got to come clean and own up.”

“Old girl? Come clean? Where do you find these up-to-date expressions?”

“I really feel you should apologize.”

“Because it's not as if you even read much, is it? No. How often do I see you sitting down with a book? Weren't you ever
taught
to appreciate good literature? I mean, before they put you into hairnets? Your world must be an exceedingly drab one. No television. No colour. Nothing but that crackly old wireless. Which I daresay half the time you can't even hear.”

“Please, Daisy,” he said. “Please, old girl.”

“A household without books! Just a few small shelves: Agatha Christie and Dornford Yates and
Gone With The Wind
. Henry was the same, of course. He may have had a book in his hand the first time I encountered him but that was by no means typical—oh, no—you only have to ask Miss Austen about the dangerousness of first impressions! Thank heaven
I
came from a more cultivated background. My father may not have been up to very much, all-round, but at least he was a man of letters. A schoolmaster. Did I ever tell you that?”

Dan didn't answer. But he met her gaze and held it, until she looked away in irritation.

She sat again and sighed impatiently.

“
Apologize
? For what, I'd like to know? For getting myself practically beaten up?”

“What was that, Daisy?”

“Apologize for
what
?”

“Well, in the first place for having lost her, as she says, another pair of friends. She thinks they might have been good ones. You know how she loves to have people to talk to. And they're the only neighbours we've had in a long while who have taken any interest.”

“Interest? They were almost peering into our account books.”

“And I must say they did seem fairly pleasant.”

“It's
next
time they'll want to see the private correspondence!”

“But Marsha doesn't imagine they'll ever want to come again.”

“Why not? She can tell them I'm an actress, can't she? She can tell them I was learning the lines of my new play. There! It isn't true but it's inventive. Would you or she have thought of it? No, of course not! Which shows again how much you need me! And to make it more convincing I shall give them Juliet. ‘O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet.' Etc, etc, and so forth.

She can tell them I'm Edith Evans. I'm sure
they
won't know the difference. And perhaps that way when they do come again we could even charge admission.”

The prospect of it, for a moment, seemed to brighten her.

“Though it goes without saying—Juliet was your original prize ninny! I certainly wouldn't have messed things up in the dopey fashion
she
did.”

Dan smiled too—less dreamily than Daisy—and with relief.

“To begin with,” she went on, “I'd never have taken that dose. No fear! Not even to end with, either!”

“That's right, old girl. That's right. We could all get on so well together if only…”

There was a pause.

“If only what?” The smile had disappeared.

He was annoyed with himself. He answered slowly and consideringly. “Well, if only you were occasionally just a little more careful about some of the things you said. That's all.”

“No, it isn't. No, it isn't, not by a long chalk!” She pursed her lips. “You don't mean occasionally, do you? You mean always. You don't mean
some
of the things. You mean all of the things. I've got to live in a straitjacket. Is that your implication? Well, I can't do it. The straitjackets of this world are for Marsha—perhaps even for yourself as well—who knows? But this morning I thought we understood each other.”

“And now?” Dan propped himself against the doorjamb, weighty with disappointment. He still hadn't caught everything she'd said but at least his ear seemed more attuned. “And now?”

“And now? And now?” she parroted. “‘And now' we'd better
all
of us take a dose!—have done with it,” she said.

Dan again breathed heavily. “If anyone in this family is in need of a straitjacket, Daisy, probably a lot of people would say it's neither me
nor
Marsha.”

“I see,” said Daisy, very quietly (for her). “I see. So already you plan to have me certified, the pair of you?”

“Oh, don't be so stupid! Just come and eat your supper. Without another word.”

“Ah, ha! From censorship to suppression! That was fast. But I'm sorry. I can't eat in a straitjacket. I can't reach for the condiments.”

Fast? Yes! This whole thing was proceeding
much
too fast. She realized that. But as always at these times (things were often going too quickly for her, getting out of hand, bumping down the hill like a crazed toboggan, when all she wanted out of life was interest, not speed), as always at these times she was totally powerless to do anything but step on the accelerator.

“And possibly I'd be better off in an asylum. At least I could stare at the white walls and perhaps find a modicum of entertainment
there
. At least it would get me away from this loony bin and its two keepers—who ought to be its inmates; it's a very odd reversal. At least it would get me away from Erica's wallpapers! My God. I wouldn't use
those
to wipe my bottom on, let alone decide to put them on display!”

She added: “I apologize for the crudity. But there are some things which can positively drive you to it. Those wallpapers make up a good proportion of them.”

She added further: “Credit where credit's due, however. This one in here isn't actually so bad. You must both have had an off day.”

Dan's face had gone a deeper shade of red; and he spoke thickly, as though he were suddenly having trouble with his enunciation.

“All right, Daisy. If that's the way you feel.”

“Where are you going?”

“Downstairs.”

“Yes! Just slope off! Why does nobody in this house ever stop to finish a conversation?”

“Probably because they can't wait to get away from
you
! I'm going downstairs to telephone.”

She had heard the second part but not the first. “Oh, that's nice,” she told him. “Who's going to have the privilege, on
this
occasion, of enjoying such a stimulating exchange of ideas?”

“The doctor,” he exclaimed. “I shall now do what I ought to have done years ago! But you see, Daisy, I hadn't then had the benefit of one of your own stimulating ideas! I'm going to take the first steps towards having you committed.”

45

And he thought he really meant it, too. He certainly lurched downstairs in the enraged belief that the hall table, which had the telephone on it, was his proper destination. He had even pulled out the table drawer and extracted their leather-bound address book; had opened it up under B and laid it face down on the runner while he took out his glasses.

But by then his vindictiveness—and therefore his momentum—was already on the wane. He considered the unopened spectacle case, weighing it absently in his palm, then returned it to his pocket. He shut the address book and likewise returned it to its place.

Whereupon, he gave a start: even as he was closing the drawer the telephone had shrilled. It didn't often ring and he'd been so alarmed by its abruptness—the mechanism set at full volume—that now for several seconds he merely stared and wondered if some jerking of the drawer might have activated it. Marsha walked towards him, woodenly, coming from the lounge. Dan picked up the receiver as though experiencing a dream.

He intoned their number.

“I'd like to speak to Mrs Daisy Stormont,” said the voice at the other end of the line. “This is long distance.”

The woman sounded very clipped; there'd been no ‘good evening' or anything like that. For some reason Dan assumed she was the operator. This didn't please her.

“I happen to be one of Mrs Stormont's nieces,” she informed him acidly. “You can tell her that it's Colleen.”

“Oh, my goodness.” Dan suddenly emerged out of his trance. “You're speaking from Ireland.”

“No. Not from Ireland. We haven't lived in Ireland for fifteen years. If it matters I'm speaking from Bournemouth. Is

Mrs Stormont there?”

But in fact she sounded quite relieved to hear her aunt couldn't come to the telephone.

At first Dan wondered, though, if he might have made a mistake: at least it could have been a means of persuading her downstairs. Then, almost immediately, he realized he had done the right thing.

The woman's father—Daisy's brother—had just died.

The death had taken place in a nursing home in Bournemouth. Dan offered his condolences. “Had your father been very ill? I don't think Daisy knew about it.”

“No, he was hardly ill at all. He was lucky.” He'd been eighty-four years old. He'd had a fair crack of the whip. It was a blessing in disguise.

The funeral would be next Friday. The niece doubted that Daisy would be able to come but she and her sisters had supposed she ought to be given the opportunity. If she did come, the woman continued, she herself could put her up on the Thursday night but unfortunately she and her family had arranged to leave Bournemouth for the weekend early on the Friday afternoon. Would he make this very clear to her?

Dan also doubted that Daisy would be able to go but he didn't reveal this. The niece's tone and manner did more than even her news—perhaps more than anything else within reason could have done—to arouse his feelings of partisanship for the woman who had just ridiculed his dead wife; or at least his dead wife's choice of wallpaper; it amounted almost to the same thing. He said: “Yes, I should think she'd like to come. It would make a break for her.”

It crossed his mind as he said it that it would also make a break for Marsha and himself.

“A break? That seems rather an odd choice of word, doesn't it? Under the circumstances.”

“I'm sorry. Could you repeat what you said?” He pressed the receiver closer to his ear.

She did repeat it, more or less.

“I'm sorry,” he said again. “Yes, you're right. I know this is going to be a most unpleasant shock to her.”

He looked at Marsha. She too, he could tell, had caught his feelings of hostility towards the woman on the phone. Or was that just wishful thinking on his own part; she could certainly have heard little that the niece had actually said? But earlier Marsha had cried, “I'd like to push her under a bus; I truly would; I mean it!”, referring, of course, to Daisy. Any transference of such hostility, thought Dan—and so very speedily at that—could only be a miracle.

“I'm really not sure how we're going to break it to her,” he said into the mouthpiece.

“Oh, she'll be all right,” replied the woman. “She's tough as old boots. Besides. They hadn't seen each other for donkey's years. There was no love lost between 'em, not a jot.”

“But even so. Memories of youth…of shared experience …”

“Oh, you'll forgive my saying so, I'm sure, and perhaps you know her better than I do, but I think that's pure malarkey.”

It sounded like something her aunt might have said; and yet—not quite.

“Has she got your number?” asked Dan.

She probably had (change-of-address cards had been practically the sole correspondence between brother and sister; or, more accurately, between nieces and aunt) but this particular niece now repeated it three times over. Dan just couldn't get it right, although Marsha held the paper for him. In the end he pretended that he had. The woman's tone reminded him: long distance.

“Well, anyway, I hope the funeral goes smoothly,” he said at last, “and that afterwards you'll all have a nice weekend away to get over it.” He winked at Marsha. He was glad he'd thought of this retort in time—it was the sort of thing which usually only occurred to him too late, and he knew that Daisy would appreciate it. “At least it ought to make a break for you,” he said.