The Girl in a Swing Page 6

afford. We were not over-paying her, yet after a few months

  she was delighted to find that she had quite a tolerable credit

  46

  balance, while the issued pin-money was sometimes more

  than she needed.

  I returned from my summer holiday to learn that her

  credit card had been stolen; she told me with pride, however,

  that she had not been foolish about it in my absence,

  having resolutely refused to speak on the telephone to those

  silly, rude men from the credit card place who kept trying

  to ring her up. I rang them up. The thief had been caught in

  Brighton, but not before he had cost the bank �528. I asked

  them what they expected if they issued cards to people like

  Mrs Taswell. The loss remained, of course, theirs and not

  hers: nor, incredibly, did they make any bones about issuing

  her with a new card.

  Mrs Taswell, who was by no means a bad-looking woman

  - rather the reverse - never upset customers (though she

  often formed the most extraordinary ideas and resentments

  about them, which, since she usually told them to me, I used

  to do my best to de-fuse). She could certainly type a letter.

  Indeed, she was a perfectionist and would sometimes type

  it two or three times, while I sat fidgeting and looking at my

  watch. (One could insist on signing and sending Mark I, but

  this was apt to upset her to the verge of tears.) The truth

  about the filing dawned on me only slowly. 'Mr Desland,' she

  would say with an air of grave and conscientious responsibility,

  'I'm afraid I haven't been able to bring the filing up

  to date just for the moment. We've been very busy, as you

  know, and I really thought - I'm sure you'll agree - that it

  was more important to re-arrange those jugs: they didn't

  look at all right on that shelf.' Or 'Yes, I can certainly type

  that for you, Mr Desland. Of course, you do realize that that

  will mean that I shan't be able to get at the filing today?'

  The fact was that she was not capable of understanding the

  contents of the papers, let alone of allocating them to the

  appropriate files. But the ingenuity of her pretexts - unconscious,

  in my belief - showed talent.

  She was, indeed, a strange woman, and had about her

  something of the holy fool.

  Young Deirdre, understandably, did not terribly care for

  47

  Mrs Taswell. I read her a lecture on the importance of being

  able to get on with colleagues ('Just as important a part of

  the job as selling') and, partly so that she couldn't accuse me

  in her own mind of requiring her to do what I wasn't prepared

  to do myself, used to chat with Mrs T. while she

  handled stock or watered the fern-garden (which she kept

  beautifully). One day I gave her, to return for me by post,

  six or seven joke-illustrations and cartoons lent to me by a

  friend, a professional draughtsman in London. One showed

  a row of little angels, of whom the last was wearing a

  grubby robe, with the caption, 'Someone's mother isn't using

  Lamb's Blood'. Later that day she said, with slight hesitation

  but complete self-possession and no trace of emotion, 'I

  hope you don't mind my mentioning it, Mr Desland, but I

  can't help wondering whether your friend really understands

  the full extent of that terrible sacrifice.' I felt like an arms

  millionaire brought face to face with Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

  I replied, 'Well, I don't know about him, Mrs Taswell,

  but I assure you that I for one sincerely accept your rebuke.'

  The incident had a lasting effect on me. In any case, flippancy

  is a shallow and inferior style of humour.

  On this particular morning I had arrived to find on several

  shelves, including one in the antiques corner, printed cards,

  measuring about six inches by three and reading, in Gothic

  script:

  Lovely to look at,

  Delightful to hold,

  But if you drop it,

  Sorry, we say it's 'SOLD! !'

  'Where did these come from, Deirdre?'

  'I reckon she must've sent for they, Mistralan. They come

  in the post s'mornin', an' she's bin all round putt'n' 'em up,

  like.'

  The cards were marked on the back, 'With the friendly

  compliments of-' (one of our wholesalers). I was just explaining

  to Mrs Taswell that while I thought them a splendid

  idea in principle, perhaps the two of us could design

  something better as well as unique to our own premises (with

  48

  any luck she'd forget about it in a day or two), when I glanced

  up and saw Barbara Stannard looking at me with a smile

  that clearly included some amusement.

  I knew Barbara to the extent that everybody knows everybody

  else in a small provincial town (or even, perhaps, as an

  American at Oxford once told another in my hearing, 'in a

  small country like this'). She was the daughter of a gunsmith

  and sports-tackle merchant, whose premises were not

  far from ours in Northbrook Street. The Stannards lived out

  near Chieveley and were well-to-do. Barbara drove her own

  M.G., played a good deal of tennis in summer and sang well

  enough to be given decent parts in the local amateur operatic

  society. She was slim and fair, with a brilliant colouring

  that might have been called florid except that it suited her

  very well. Although I had met her from time to time at

  parties and concerts, I knew little more about her except that

  she was generally reckoned a nice girl.

  'Am I interrupting, Alan?' she asked. 'If you're busy I

  can easily look round for a bit until you're free. If you hear a

  loud crash, just shout "Sold again!" '

  'Nice to see you, Barbara,' I said. Mrs Taswell, selfpossessed

  as ever, made her way down the glass passage,

  gathering up the cards as she went, apparently with never a

  thought for any possible tee-heeing on the part of Deirdre.

  'Can I sell you a forty-two-piece dinner service, or just a

  handsome tin plate for the cat?'

  'It's Mother's birthday on Friday, Alan, and I was thinking

  she might like a piece of antique china. Someone told

  me you've started going in for the real thing, and I'd rather

  get it from you than trek off to one of the Yank traps at

  Wokingham or Hungerford. I'm sure you give better value.'

  What she bought, in the end, was an eighteenth-century

  New Hall cup and saucer, whose vivid, deep-pink and green

  decoration struck me as entirely suited to herself, whether

  or not it might be to her mother. She asked several sensible

  questions and seemed genuinely interested in my modest

  stock.

  Next week she came in again and bought a beautiful little

  earthenware copper lustre jug with blue and gold enamelling.

  49

  I explained that it was late nineteenth-century and not really

  a piece of much antique interest or value.

  'I don't care a hoot,' she said. 'I love the shape. It's got

  what I'd call a desirable comeliness, wouldn't you? I shall

  put snowdrops in
it.'

  This seemed to show the rudiments of good judgement. I

  lent her my copy of Haggar's English Country Pottery and

  a week later took her out to dinner at The Bull at Streatley.

  I remember we talked about Staffordshire, and I went on

  to tell her how the newly-established Bow factory of the

  seventeen-forties had employed immigrant potters from

  Burslem and Stoke.

  'But those must have been very humble, ordinary sort of

  men, surely?' she asked. 'How on earth do we know anything

  about them and their movements at all?'

  'Well, various ways - parish registers, for one. Entries like

  Phoebe Parr.'

  'Who was Phoebe Parr?'

  'Samuel Parr was a potter whose daughter Phoebe was

  christened at Burslem in 1750. She was buried at St Mary's,

  Bow, in 1753. Both entries are in the parish registers. There

  are a lot of things like that - not all so sad, thank goodness.'

  'Poor little Phoebe! D'you think the journey may have

  been too much for her?'

  'We'll never know, will we? During the seventeen-forties

  and 'fifties there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing by those

  chaps between London and the Potteries. Careless Simpson,

  now he's important -'

  'Why on earth was he called that? Did he drop the pots

  or something?'

  'He was Carlos Simpson really, but it was entered "Careless"

  at his baptism at Chelsea in 1747. His father, Aaron

  Simpson, had come down from the Potteries.'

  'I reckon Aaron was the careless one.'

  'He may not have been able to read. I suppose the parish

  clerk had never heard of "Carlos" and was too proud or

  in too much of a hurry to ask.'

  'Caught up with him, hasn't it?'

  As the spring advanced and the chiff-chaff duly showed

  50

  up, the ribes and forsythia bloomed in the blackthorn winter

  and the other warblers returned, I spent more and more

  time in Barbara's company. She came to dinner at Bull Banks

  two or three times and got on well with my father and

  mother, who seemed pleased by our friendship. I remember

  my father giving her a white cyclamen from the conservatory

  - not at all his style as a rule. To him, gallantry to a girl

  young enough to be his daughter would normally be undignified

  - the kind of behaviour he despised in 'Captain'

  Tregowan, a neighbour of ours from God-knew-where who

  had obviously married his plain, stupid wife for her money

  and spent much time in making himself too agreeable to

  everyone in the district. My father gave Barbara the cyclamen

  because she had admired it and because he liked her.

  From English Country Pottery, Barbara went on to Robert

  Schmidt's Porcelain. She accompanied me to a sale at Petersfield

  and bid for a Lambeth Delft platter which she was

  lucky enough to get at a lower price than I had expected it

  to fetch. (It was a pouring wet day and also I believe there

  was a bigger sale at Southampton, which had attracted many

  of the dealers.) Emotionally, she always seemed quite uncommitted

  and detached, and nothing she said or did suggested

  that she regarded our relationship as warmer than

  others she might have - in the operatic society, for instance.

  Certainly she could display warmth on occasion - when the

  platter was knocked down to her she jumped for joy and

  kissed me on both cheeks - and her conversation often included

  a certain amount of light teasing, like her initial sally

  about Mrs Taswell's cards. But nothing obviously affectionate

  or possessive ever showed in her manner - any more

  than in my thoughts of her.

  One warm evening in early June I picked her up, as we had

  arranged, at the Corn Exchange after a rehearsal. (She was

  singing Pitti-Sing; a better part than Peep-Bo, anyway.) We

  drove out through Hamstead Marshall to Kintbury, ate a

  snack supper in a pub and later (trespassing), bathed in a

  secluded, unfrequented pool on the Kennet. Half an hour

  later Barbara, in high spirits, was sitting beside me in the

  car, vigorously towelling her wet hair like a schoolgirl, when

  51

  suddenly she threw the towel into the back, flung her arms

  round my neck and kissed me on the mouth.

  'Oh, Alan," she said, 'I love you so much! I can't not say

  it! I think you're wonderful! I'd do anything for you - and I

  will!'

  Her spontaneity and sincerity were as plain (and as

  pretty) as a flowering almond tree. It was abundantly clear

  that this was no deliberate step in a planned campaign.

  I remember once seeing, in some magazine or other, a joke

  depicting a sailor on a park bench with a girl on his knees.

  Over her shoulder, he was reading from a manual entitled

  How to Succeed with Women. Part 4. The Kill. 'Oh, Mabel,'

  read the sailor happily, 'your words fill me with a kind of animal

  passion.' There was nothing at all like this about Barbara.

  I think perhaps she even took herself by surprise.

  What held me back? What? She startled me? But she

  didn't. There is such a thing as realizing - say, when a dog

  bites or a light fuses - that you knew it was going to happen,

  even if you hadn't consciously anticipated it. A moral

  objection? Oh, no. On the one hand I had always felt sure

  that she must have had some previous sexual experience,

  while on the other I knew that her reputation was good I

  had never heard her spoken of as an easy or promiscuous

  girl. By my standards - a lot of people's standards - she was

  doing nothing wrong in offering herself. If she fancied me she

  was perfectly entitled to have a go, and this was as fair a

  way of setting about it as any other - more honest, indeed,

  in my eyes than any amount of 'Would you care to come in for

  ten minutes?' or 'You don't mind me in my dressing-gown?'

  Well, then, I didn't fancy her? But I liked and respected

  Barbara, who had been at pains to show me that she enjoyed

  my company. She was pretty, ardent and animated, and

  plainly she wanted me - not just anybody. Nor, if I am right,

  were there any strings attached. Anyway, she couldn't possibly

  have maintained, afterwards, that there were. To any

  young man with blood in his veins this was a godsend, if only

  on the level of 'Care for a ticket for the circus this evening?'

  Nervous? How could I feel nervous when I wasn't even

  52

  considering action? Pride? But I thought well of her, and

  this was not charity that I was being offered. You can think

  about your motives until terms become meaningless. Against

  all my principles there floated up, with total unexpectedness,

  a sense of distaste and disinclination. 'Love isn't something

  you decide on balance might be quite enjoyable,' said an

  inner voice. 'It's something that seizes and possesses you,

  sink or swim, win or lose.' I felt, both in body and mind, a

  good deal of what Barbara herself felt - of that I am fairly

  sure. The difference was that that was as deep as her fee
lings

  went. For better or worse, but anyway involuntarily, mine

  needed to go deeper. She didn't bowl me over, and I wasn't

  interested in anything less. In some remote, inarticulate

  region of myself it had been decided that the balance of advantage

  lay in not taking her. Like Mr Bartleby, I preferred

  not to. This was a spontaneous impulse as sincere and unpremeditated

  as her own, and it took me by surprise more

  than she herself had. She was desirable, and a nice girl to

  boot. I'd had plenty of time to see it coming, and now I

  didn't want it.

  I can't remember exactly what was said. I did my best.

  There was no row, there were no tears; not even any cutting

  remarks. Barbara was much too nice to make trouble.

  Later, that in itself gave me a clue. As far as she was concerned,

  the matter was straightforward. She'd made a mistake

  and that was that. It was mortifying, disappointing,

  painful - and therefore to be dropped as quickly as possible.

  As I said, she was sincere; and charmingly undeliberate and

  defenceless, too, in her ardour. She deserved better. But however

  considerate and polite she was capable of being, and

  however much credit she deserved for taking it on the chin

  and not saying anything sharp, should she have had herself

  so much at command? A leaf blown helpless on the wind, a

  trembling fascination close to fear, the compulsive excitement

  of the unknown - what was it the composer Honegger

  said? 'The artist seldom fully understands the material from

  which he is creating.' There was no least trace of these in

  Barbara. A June evening on the Kennet - a boy and a girl

  53

  who've been bathing - the eternal ways of Nature - oh, yes,

  this we can all safely understand. But 'She's all states, and

  all princes I: Nothing else is; Princes do but play us' - that

  it was not, neither to me nor yet to her. So I didn't want it.

  What a prig! Yet it wasn't prig. A prig is superficial, and this

  was just the other way round. My distaste came as a shock

  and a mystery to myself.

  Our relationship never recovered, of course. In what direction

  could it grow? As things turned out, however, both my

  puzzled musings and my embarrassment were swept aside

  by graver events. At the height of summer, with all the

  azaleas in bloom and the flycatcher darting from the tennisnetting,

  my father fell mortally ill. I can hardly bear even

  briefly to recall the miserable business: the surgeon's careful

  words ('There's a very good chance, Mrs Desland, I'm sure

  we can say that'), my mother's heart-rending, dry-eyed courage;

  the hospital smell grown as familiar as one's own shaving

  soap, the letters and papers brought up from the shop

  for discussion - whether they needed to be discussed or not

  - the kind inquiries of friends, like blows on a bruise, the

  lupins and roses cut from the garden, selecting bits from

  The Times to read aloud ('Perhaps we'll leave it there for

  today, my boy. I feel a bit tired, I'm afraid'), Tony Redwood

  casually dropping in, always with some excuse, like the good

  chap he was. Flick ringing up every evening and finally corning

  home before the end of term, with piles of exam papers

  to mark and post back; and always, behind everything, the

  sense of being caught in a current down which we must be

  drawn, faster and faster, to the lip of the weir beyond which

  we didn't want to look.

  Week by week, less and less of my father remained. He

  was no longer the man we had known. It was like the Cheshire

  Cat's grin - and that, God blast it, he retained until it

  was like the last rim of a sun on the sea's horizon. Before

  the end we had plenty of time to get used to our situation.

  The registrar; Tony, so sensible and kind; the undertaker,

  the letters from distant relatives - when the time came I was

  prepared for all of them.

  On the morning of the funeral I went out and cut every

  54

  dahlia in the garden. It was not deliberate, but rather obedience

  to an inclination: perhaps, as Mr Henry Willett might

  have said, a kind of unconscious echo of the ancient Greeks

  shearing off their hair.

  THE loss of a parent catapults you into the next generation.

  The realization can be a support and help even while it disturbs

  - perhaps for the very reason that it does disturb. The

  king is dead; and the desolate prince had better pull himself

  together, or all hell will break loose in a week. It was