Marking Time (62 page)

‘It was lovely of you to come,’ Louise said. ‘How long can you stay?’

‘Just to tomorrow afternoon, I’m afraid. I’ve got to put in an appearance at home before I go back to Oxford.’

The next morning they went out early. Stella said she’d treat them both to breakfast at the Swan and Doll said she could manage lunch for Stella.

‘Oh, good! Then I’ll see her old dad,’ Stella said.

‘He’s quite mild and boring in the daytime,’ Louise said, ‘and they never talk at meals.’

‘Never?’

‘Well, pass the salt, but that’s all.’

It was a crisp clear day – blue sky, pale yellow sun, rime on the pavements. They went by way of the theatre, because Stella said she wanted to see it in daylight.

‘I’ve heard people say it is so ugly,’ she said, ‘so naturally, I want to see for myself. Although an Elizabethan theatre would have been stupid, wouldn’t it? I
must say I think the Tudor houses look frightfully ersatz. They keep reminding me of houses on the Great West Road.’

‘I’ve never really thought about what houses look like.’

Stella always made her feel narrow-minded, but when Louise said this Stella said, ‘Well, Oxford has made me notice buildings. It’s rather like having a sense of smell, it cuts both
ways, but the lovely ones are
so
breathtaking, and noticing the monstrosities might mean that we have fewer of them in future.’

Outside the theatre there were bills advertising Moiseiwitsch playing a programme of Beethoven on Sunday.

‘Last time I heard him he made me
laugh
he was so awful,’ Stella said. ‘Bang, bang, bang. As though he was trying to make Beethoven hear by shouting.’

‘How’s Peter?’

‘Well, he’s in the RAF – just. His first week, he washed up a hundred and eighty plates each night. He said his hands got like swollen sausages encased in chammy leather.
And
they expect him to play.’

‘To them in the evenings?’

‘Oh, no. At concerts. He’s joined up in a bit that has a lot of musicians but the joke is that although the orchestra is composed of amazing professionals – like the Griller
Quartet –
they
are all, at best, leading aircraftsmen, so a squadron leader who used to conduct a band at the end of a pier does the conducting. But Peter says they just all take no
notice of him so it’s all right. They do expect him to play a lot with hardly any practice and his hands are in a bad way. But it could be a lot worse.’

They were walking by the river now – slate-coloured in its reflection of the sky.

‘Well? And how do you think the war is going?’ Stella asked.

‘The
war?
I haven’t thought about it much.’

‘You mean you haven’t at all. I know you. You don’t read newspapers, I don’t suppose you listen to the news – you haven’t a clue what’s going on. I
suppose you don’t know that the
Ark Royal
has been sunk? By Italians, which almost makes it worse. Rather a blow, with the north African offensive.’

’I didn’t know,’ Louise said. She had no idea what sort of ship
Ark Royal
was. ‘A battleship?’ she ventured.

‘An aircraft carrier.’

Louise suddenly imagined being on a sinking ship. ‘It must be frightening. A horrible way to die.’

‘They didn’t lose many people. Lucky it was the Mediterranean. In the Atlantic it’s too cold for people to last in the water long enough to get picked up.’

‘Michael is in the Atlantic,’ Louise said.

‘Are you in touch?’

‘He writes to me. Do you mean . . .’ she felt hesitant and appalled, ‘do you mean that if a ship goes down, the people in her have no hope? Don’t they have lifeboats and
rafts and things?’

‘Of course they do. But sometimes it happens very quickly, and sometimes it is a long time before they get picked up. And sometimes there aren’t enough boats, and people have to hang
on to them in the water.’

‘How do you know so much, Stella?’

‘I don’t know nearly as much as it sounds. But a cousin of mine was in an escort to a convoy, and he was torpedoed. He told me a bit.’

She did not enlarge upon what he had told her because she recognised that Louise was starting to feel anxious when there would be nothing she could do about it.

When they reached the Swan, who were prepared to let them have some breakfast – scrambled dried eggs, rather muscular sausages and curiously grey coffee – Stella said, ‘How do
you feel about Michael?’

Louise thought. ‘Well, apart from my famous vanity – you know he goes on telling me I’m marvellous, which does make an alluring change, I must say – I don’t know. I
suppose writing letters makes me have some idea. I write to the family – well, Mummy, because she expects it, and sometimes a letter just saying “dear family”. That’s one
kind of letter. Then I write to you, which is a quite different kind of letter. I mean I can tell you
anything
– you’re not going to say I shouldn’t be here or order me
home. Well, Michael is sort of in between. He feels half like a grown-up, and half like an equal. I suppose that’s because he’s fourteen years older.’

‘Do you think you like him because you have some sort of father complex?’

‘Strewth, no!’ As she said that, Louise realised that there was one thing that she had never told Stella – and never would.

‘I suppose’, she said lamely, ‘that I just feel sort of safe with him.’

She saw her friend’s face, the shrewd, ironical smile softened by affection, and they dropped the subject.

She asked Stella about Oxford, and Stella said that in any other circumstances it would be the perfect place for her. ‘As it is, I feel I’m just marking time before I have to do
something completely different where everything I’ve learned will be about as relevant as you and me learning to make a chocolate soufflé was at our cooking place.’

‘Except, I suppose, that everything comes in handy some time or other.’

‘You mean, like learning to be good with sharks, and
then
getting shipwrecked? I think life is one long shipwreck and you learn about the sharks after you’ve been rescued.
Anyway, my father wants me to be a secretary to an admiral or something respectable like that. My mother thinks I should nurse.’

‘And you?’

She shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I wish we could do something together.’

‘I’d like that. If either of us thinks of anything, let the other one know.’

After a silent lunch of ox liver and onions – Fred was pale but relatively affable and chewed his food very slowly, gazing at Stella with an unfathomable expression – Louise walked
to the station with Stella. Feeling the impending separation, they found it more difficult to talk – asked about each other’s families. Each said that they were just the same.
‘They are, aren’t they?’ Louise said. ‘They just go on in the same old way.’

‘I expect they change but we don’t notice. At least you don’t have too many of them to contend with.’

‘I was just thinking that at least you have a nice variety.’

She felt sad when Stella was gone. My best friend, she thought. Well, actually, my only friend. This was rather a bleak thought, and she wondered whether it was because she was not much good at
friendship. There was Michael, of course, but somehow, his admiration made it rather a hothouse: they weren’t exactly
friends,
it was more as though they were playing a game where he
knew the rules better than she did. She had thought that Jay was going to be a friend, but when she’d got back from her stay with Michael’s family, she discovered that he was sleeping
in Ernestine’s room; he avoided her, or made faint, gibing remarks that sounded as though they were of a general nature, but she felt were intended for her. He never read poetry to her, or
stroked her breasts again. And Ernestine had been noisy and flamboyant about being the only person in the company who was having an affair. Having Stella – even for twenty-four hours –
made Louise know how much she missed her. She decided that even a boring war job would be all right if they did it together.

She realised that her throat was sore and that was the beginning of being quite ill, missing three nights of
Maria Marten,
and getting sacked for it.

Mrs Cripps and Tonbridge sat side by side in the dark. They were in the next row to the back, and behind them she could hear the heavy breaths and surreptitious shiftings of
romance. They were watching
King Kong
, and glancing at Tonbridge, Mrs Cripps could see that he was really taken with it although, speaking for herself, she thought it was all rather silly
– a huge great ape soppy about a film star. She would have liked a proper romance, with someone like Robert Taylor or Clark Gable in it, or a nice Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film with a lot
of dancing. But when he’d asked her to the cinema, she’d said yes without caring what was on. It was the outing that she wanted, and the chance to sit in the dark with him without
interruption or anyone knowing who they were. She’d put on her best clothes – her maroon winter coat and her fox fur, where you opened the animal’s mouth and it clipped onto the
tail, and her best hat, dark-brown velour with some pheasant’s feathers draped round the brim and a mustard petersham bow (she’d been asked to remove that as soon as she sat down and
now she was too hot, because she couldn’t keep the hat
and
the fur on her lap at once). This had been a mistake, because underneath she wore her best sateen blouse – a lovely
blue – not a garment she would choose to perspire into but there was no help for it. The ape was wrecking some tall building in New York now – she gave a little gasp in the hope that
that
would get his arm round her, but he only reached out in the dark and patted her hat which, of course, was where he thought her hand would be. He was backward in coming forward, she
had to admit. ‘It’s only make-believe,’ he whispered. Her face gleamed phosphorescently at him; it was not possible to tell whether she was reassured.

He wondered what she would do if he reached out and held her hand. He’d missed the obvious opportunity because her hat was in the way. He tried again and this time succeeded. Her hat fell
on the floor but she paid no regard to it. Her soft, fat fingers enveloped his – he could squeeze them without feeling the bones. She was all of a piece: the thought of squeezing her anywhere
else chirped up his old ticker no end.

‘He’s only a gorilla,’ he whispered; he wanted to add that he’d never let a gorilla near her, but he was afraid of sounding a bit soft.

After the film, she retrieved her hat and they went out into the raw cold. She was glad of it – in her experience ladies did not perspire. He took her to the best tea shop where the
individual cakes were threepence each and a plate of scones – with marge and jam – was ninepence.

He said he thought it was a good film and she agreed that it had been very nice. He was wearing his civvies: a dark blue pinstripe suit that was a bit wide on the shoulders and a very smart tie
with diagonal stripes of blue and red. The tea shop was warm – the windows being blacked out meant that there wasn’t much air – but she could take off the fur and her coat so she
didn’t mind. The scones were rather heavy, and he was quick to point out that they were not a patch on hers.

‘They wouldn’t be,’ she said, sipping her hot, weak tea. If there wasn’t a war on, she would have sent the tea back.

They had never found conversation during meals easy. Usually, she sat and watched him while he had one of his innumerable snacks – and he never put on an ounce, stayed as scrawny as
ever.

Feeling the strain, he talked about the war: gave her his opinion about the Japanese and the United States. ‘There’s no doubt, Mrs Cripps,’ he said, ‘mark my words, no
good is going to come out of
that
. And it’s my opinion that there was no call for Mr Churchill to say we’d join in if they go to war. “Within the hour,” he said. In
my opinion that was going too far.’

‘I suppose it was.’ She was deeply bored by the war and what foreign countries did in it which seemed to be none of their business.

‘But we have to remember that Mr Churchill knows what he’s doing.’

‘You can say that again,’ she said, hoping he wouldn’t.

They had finished the scones now, and both had been eyeing the plate of cakes, always a worry, since no two were the same, and one, at least, noticeably more desirable than the rest. He was a
gentleman. He handed her the plate.

‘Which do you fancy, Mrs Cripps?’ he asked. She had seen him eyeing the jam tart, and took the cocoa sponge instead. Then they could both relax, and, she hoped, talk of more
interesting things. She knew he’d had a letter a day or two ago, because Eileen had brought it in and put it on the kitchen table. She’d never known him get a letter before, and this
one had its envelope typed ‘Mr F. C. Tonbridge’ and the address on it. As soon as he came in for his elevenses she had pointed it out. He had picked it up and looked at it for a long
time before putting it in his pocket. He had never said one word about it. ‘I hope you haven’t had bad news, Mr Tonbridge?’ she had prompted over tea in the evening.