Marking Time (37 page)

She hadn’t replied. She had not been back to the flat – not once – since the night she had spent in it with Philip, and this had been comparatively easy, since her mother had
hardly been there either. It seemed now in small and piercing ways to be exactly as she had left it that morning. Even the same small and cracked piece of Morny lavender soap lay in its dusty
declivity in the bathroom and the kitchen contained the remains of a packet of coffee that she had used. She had not thought she would return, and coming there with Rupert added another dimension
to her discomfort.

‘Poor little Zoë: you had to sleep on this,’ he had said when they arrived and he sat on the sofa to read through the list her mother had sent of the things she wished packed
off to her.

For a mad second she imagined herself saying calmly, ‘I was raped on it actually.’ Unable to stay in the room with him, she said that she would pack the clothes, and that he had
better do the kitchen. ‘We don’t want to spend all day here.’ She almost snatched the list from him as she added that there was no point in his reading it. In the bedroom, she
collapsed on the slippery pink counterpane decorated with machined chain stitch, suffused with guilt and irritation at herself for being horrid to him and for agreeing to let him come to the flat
at all. Alone, she felt, she might have gone back over the whole affair one last time, have exorcised or written off the whole Philip episode – might have been able to rationalise her further
deception of Rupert (as long as she didn’t
tell
him, she had to continue lying) as simply evidence of loving him, of not wanting to hurt him. If only she hadn’t been pregnant,
had
the baby, she thought, she might have been able to confess the rest of it. He would be hurt and angry, but when she told him how desperately sorry she was, she felt he would forgive
her. But not the child. After years of refusing to have his child, how could he bear her to have been what must look like wilfully careless that one night? As though she’d
wanted
this other man’s baby?

‘The jar of flour has got extraordinary little flies in it! Are you all right, darling?’

‘Just trying to think about where to begin. Perfectly all right. Chuck out all the food things.’

It did not take long to pack her mother’s clothes. Moths fluttered out of her grey squirrel coat, which she had had ever since Zoë could remember, but apart from the moths it was
terribly worn – it had better go.

It would be nice to give her a new one, she thought, but she had no money excepting what Rupert gave her and Neville’s school fees had more or less eaten up the small difference in salary
that working for the firm had made (the Brig did not believe in paying his sons a penny more than they were worth, and Rupert would be paid even less in the Navy).

When she had finished in the bedroom, she found Rupert in the sitting room looking at an old photograph album that had been lying on the desk.

‘Couldn’t we keep this?’ he said. ‘It’s almost entirely pictures of you from birth upwards. I could write to your mother and ask if I might have it?’

‘You’ve got pictures of me: Mummy gave you some.’

‘Not these. I should hate these to get lost.’

‘I should have thought from today that you could see that Mummy didn’t throw things away much.’

The rest of the time in the flat had been like that: she had been filthy to him – everything that he had done or said provoked her; and everything that she found there seemed to compound
her guilt, which by then had extended to her mother. Her mother’s diary, an expensive and belyingly gay scarlet leather one that was almost blank – ‘get hair done’ would be
the only entry for a week; or, ‘take winter coat to cleaners’. Regularly, every month, there was ‘bridge with Blenkinsops (here)’ or, on alternate months, ‘(with
them)’. Hardly anything else. The loneliness shrieked at her. And the possessions! The sitting room was full of objects that succeeded in being unnecessary and undesirable – the kind of
things that would be given by someone who neither knew well nor cared for the recipient: things made of pottery, raffia, sealing wax, dolls dressed in ethnic costumes, fans, wax flowers and endless
photograph frames, made of silver, leather, brass, shells, passe-partout, and practically every one except for two of her father contained pictures of herself. In the bottom drawer of the rickety
little bureau, she came across a box that was full of her baby and childhood clothes. It was ridiculous that her mother had kept them all these years. She said something of the kind to Rupert and
then immediately wished she had not, because of course she knew very well why they had been kept. But Rupert only said, ‘It’s because she loves you, darling.’ He was kneeling on
the floor wrapping the frames in newspaper and putting them into a tea chest. He had stopped commenting on the photographs, and sounded weary.

When they had finished, he said that they were going to a pub – he needed a drink.

The pub had only just opened and was almost empty. ‘Gin and It?’

She nodded.

It was one of those cavernous pubs with a lot of mahogany panelling and frosted glass, a coal fire and all the chairs covered with mock red leather. She chose a table in a corner, and waited,
feeling dirty and dispirited, for her drink.

‘He let me have a packet of fags.’ He put the glasses on the table. ‘I got us doubles.’

‘I was wondering’, he said when he had lit a Goldflake from the packet of ten, ‘whether you’d like to have your mother to stay for a bit at Home Place. I’m sure the
Duchy would make room for her . . .’ He looked at her face and then added, ‘Or you could go to the Isle of Wight for a week or two, if you like.’

‘She wouldn’t want to come to Sussex, and I can’t stay with her – her friend wouldn’t want me.’

‘You don’t want to see her?’

‘It isn’t that.’

‘But you feel so guilty about her, Zoë. Don’t you want to do something about it?’

‘I don’t! I don’t feel guilty. I do feel sorry for her.’

‘That’s not much use to her, though, is it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I didn’t realise, until today, how much her life is bound up in you. Suppose I should have – you are her only child. And you’ve been grumpy and defensive all day, so I
know damn well you feel guilty.’

There was an angry silence. Then he reached out and took one of her resisting hands. ‘Darling. It’s not wicked to feel guilt, it’s just sad and useless. I found that out when
Isobel died. The only thing that stops it is admitting to yourself what you can’t do, and doing what you can.’

She stared at him frightened: he had almost never spoken of Isobel since before their marriage.

‘What could you do about
her?
After she was dead?’

‘Look after our children, for her as well as for myself. You know about that. You’ve started to do it with Clary.’

‘
She
started it,’ she said, her voice uneven.

He gave her hand a small squeeze, and put it back on the table.

‘You
connived
,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get us another drink.’

Watching him walk away from her to the bar, she was suddenly flooded with every ingredient of love, some familiar, some quite new to her: she felt tender, fortunate, and unworthy, and filled
with a longing to do anything to make him happy.

They went back to Hugh’s house where they were staying the night, had dinner with Hugh at Ciccio’s in Church Street. (Rupert had said earlier that he hoped she wouldn’t mind as
Hugh had to spend so many evenings by himself, and she
had
minded when he said it – had taken it as a slight – but by the time it happened she didn’t mind at all and in
fact it was a lovely evening.)

‘If you two want to go to dance somewhere, don’t mind me. I’m ready for bed,’ Hugh had said when they had finished their coffee and Strega. Rupert had looked at her, and
she realised how often he had let her choose, and started to blush as she said she didn’t mind which they did. So they all went home, and that was when Juliet began. She had conceived her for
Rupert – had had no idea of the intense joy their child would bring her. But he had been away when she was born . . . might never know anything about her.

Sitting in the chair by Juliet’s cot and remembering all this, she began to acknowledge his absence, began to mourn it for the first time – to allow the terrible fever of hope that
it was only absence to infect her as she wept and begged silently for his life.

‘Bet you didn’t know that, Miss Milliment.’

‘Indeed no. I had always thought plane trees occurred in this country far later than Chaucer.’

She had been reading over the Brig’s latest chapter of his book about trees in Britain, a task she had taken over from Rachel who had had to go to London for the weekend.

‘Most people seem to think that they were brought here about the time of the East India Company. Utterly wrong, as you can see.’

‘John Evelyn has rather a good account of Xerxes and a plane tree.’

‘Does he now? Amazing feller. Find it and read it to me, would you?’

Miss Milliment obediently hoisted herself to her feet and pattered over to the large glass-fronted bookcase. Finding a book in it was a great trial to her, as the bookcase stood in a dark corner
of the study, and the books were not arranged in apparent order. Rachel, of course, would have known where it was. She hunted, but she could only read the spines of the books by taking each one
out. ‘I’m afraid I may be some time finding it,’ she said apologetically, but the Brig did not seem to notice: he was in full spate about the tremendous size of plane trees he had
known at Mottisfont, some rectory in Sussex, and the avenue at Cowdray Park, and at the same time feeling for his whisky decanter with purple gnarled old hands . . . ‘Find me a glass, would
you, Miss Milliment?’

She stopped looking for the book and searched for one of his immensely heavy cut-glass tumblers. The room was so full of furniture, papers and books that her passage through it was
difficult.

‘There’s that piece of Pliny’s somewhere, about eighteen fellers eating inside a hollow tree. Just read that to me, would you? It might be suitable.’

Pliny she
could
find, because he was lying on the desk, but finding the piece that he wanted was another matter. Fortunately for her, a car arrived which the Brig identified as
belonging to Hugh; she was asked to find another glass, the monologue on the girth of plane trees ceased, and he became fidgety in his desire to hail Hugh at exactly the right moment so as to
entrap him. ‘Is that you, Hugh?
Hugh?
Is that you? Ah! The very feller I wanted to see. Have a drink, old boy. Thanks, Miss Milliment. She’s been reading to me because Rachel
went to London to sort the books at Chester Terrace. Should do the same with my cellar. Do you remember when you came on leave and all I’d got was three bottles of what I thought was
undrinkable claret? Bought it for one and nine a bottle in an auction – twelve cases; I’d taken to giving it as wedding presents it was so bloody awful – and we got those three
bottles up and they were absolutely superb! Remember that?’

Hugh said that that had been Edward’s leave. Miss Milliment put the second glass by the decanter and retired. As she left, she heard the Brig saying that in that case, Hugh would not know
the story: he thought it had been a Mouton-Rothschild 1904, but it might have been ‘05 – anyway, whenever he tried it, it had never seemed to come round . . .

Miss Milliment trotted across to the cottage over the garage that was still called Tonbridge’s cottage, although he and his family had only occupied it for a few weeks two years ago. Her
room, one of the two upstairs, was small, but it looked onto the pine wood at the back of the house which smelled lovely after rain. For a while she had been at Pear Tree Cottage, but now that
everybody had moved back into Home Place she was here again, and although it was a very bare little room, she liked it. Dear Viola – so thoughtful – had come to inspect it, had felt the
blankets on the bed – only two and an eiderdown – and had said that she needed at least two more, which was true as the ones on the bed managed to be both thin and felty. She had also
offered the wonderful luxury of a bedside lamp, and got her a small table at which she could write letters. Most thoughtful, but unfortunately there was nobody really for her to write to. She
had
had to write to her landlady in London to say that she was giving up her room there, and
then
she had had to make the journey to London to collect the remainder of her things.
It had been rather unpleasant as well as extremely tiring. She had burned her boats where that lodging was concerned. And then she had suddenly felt, as she returned in the expensive taxi from
Stoke Newington to Charing Cross station, that now she was homeless. The thought caused her moments of such overwhelming panic that she had had to speak quite severely to herself: ‘Now,
Eleanor, you must cross that bridge
when
you come to it,’ But this had been succeeded by her wondering whether at some point one became too old to cross
any
bridge. She had
tried, in the train, to read – she had come across a second-hand copy of minor eighteenth-century poets for a penny at the church bazaar last Christmas. But the panic, though it had subsided
to anxiety, had not gone, and kept washing over her in irregular surging waves. She told herself that it was because the landlady had been rather unpleasant about everything: ‘It’s all
right for
some
,’ she kept saying. No doubt she was upset at losing a long-term lodger, but it seemed sad that she had stayed so long there and ended by being so resented. Perhaps it
had always been so, and she had stupidly not noticed. She had tried not to be a nuisance but, of course, that did not guarantee that she had succeeded. She had had no extras: no coffee for
breakfast like Mrs Fast; no laundry done like Mr Marcus. All that was behind her, she told herself with repeated firmness. But what lay ahead? There would come a day when dear Polly and Clary and
Lydia would not need her any more, and Roland and Wills would still be too young.
She
, on the other hand, might find that teaching anyone was beyond her. Her eyesight had become much
worse: she knew that she needed new spectacles, but was so afraid that this would not make the difference that it used to do, that she had not made the effort to go to Hastings or Tunbridge Wells
to procure any. Her knees had become painful: in the early mornings, if she stayed in one position for too long, if she was on her feet for more than a few minutes; in fact, nearly all the time.
‘Really, Eleanor, I am getting rather tired of your troubles. What was that song? “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.”’ She tried to smile,
and tears came to her eyes. She wiped them carefully with a handkerchief that rather needed to be washed, and went back to her poetry.