Dreams of another day, p.3
Dreams of Another Day, page 3
‘I know. Sometimes it is difficult to remember that.’
Flixe bent down to retrieve a dead flower from the floor. ‘But if we’re to talk of spikiness, you don’t seem altogether serene yourself.’ She straightened up. ‘Trouble in chambers? Or at home?’
Julia gave a short unhappy laugh and recrossed her long legs.
‘Fair comment,’ she said as lightly as she could. ‘You always do see through me.’
From long experience Flixe knew that her friend wanted to tell her something but was so anxious not to bore that she could not begin. Flixe applied a prompt.
‘Well?’
‘You could say it’s home.’ Julia spoke reluctantly. ‘David in fact. He’s not happy either, and I can’t seem to do anything to help.’
Flixe, hearing a note of real sadness in Julia’s voice, put down the basket and went to sit beside her. She had seen the difficulties Julia and David had had to surmount before they married and could imagine the depths of her feelings for him.
‘It’s agony, isn’t it?’ Flixe put a hand oyer Julia’s for a second. ‘But it’s just part of life. We all go through it. You’re not happy all the time: you can’t expect that your husband will be. And there’s nothing you can do except wait until he is himself again. Just like us with Ming.’
‘You’re so sensible.’
‘You don’t sound as though you admire that very much,’ said Flixe, amused.
Julia’s brown eyes lightened and her eyebrows lifted.
‘I do really,’ he said, sighing, ‘but like a child I suppose I want to be told that everything’s all right.’
She looked sideways at Flixe’s lovely, glowing face and almost reached out to touch it.
‘There’s something about you that makes us all come to you for mothering. Do you mind?’
‘It’s my stock-in-trade.’
The words ought to have been light, but somehow they were not. When she saw Julia looking at her, Flixe added:
‘I ought to be good at it since it’s all I ever do.’
‘That sounds as though Gerry’s been lecturing at you to get a job again. It’s none of her business.’
‘Elder sisters are always bossy. They can’t help it. But I’m in no position to get any kind of work just now,’ said Flixe, rather enjoying the loyalty of Julia’s protest. ‘How does David’s misery manifest itself? I can’t imagine him sulking.’
Julia’s eyes dulled again and she turned her head away.
‘No. He could never sulk or snap or anything like that. But it’s obvious all the same. He’s lost his … zest, and everything – even me and the children – seems to need much more effort from him than before.’
Her wide lips thinned and her eyes were full of pain. At last she looked straight at Flixe.
‘It’s horrible to know that he’s having to work so hard to be interested in us.’
There was no answer to that. The sound of the front door opening made Flixe look down at her watch.
‘Five o’clock: time to go and be a mother again.’
‘I know.’ Julia got out of the long chair. Standing, tall and distinguished, she looked down at Flixe and said seriously: ‘I think I’d give anything to have him happy again. Anything at all.’
‘He will be, Julia. Don’t torment yourself or there’ll be two of you miserable instead of only one.’
‘Ah, Flixe!’ Julia was able to laugh again. ‘I’m not sure what I’d do without you. You keep me going.’
‘It’s a two-way process,’ said Flixe truthfully.
Chapter Three
Ming’s flat was cold when she got back to it late the following Friday evening, and it smelled stale. She dumped her luggage in the hall and went into each room to fling open the windows and let in the chilly air of the April evening. Smelling the mixture of damp, dust and petrol as she stood at her bedroom window, she missed the dry, intoxicating warmth of Egypt.
‘But no one throws stones in London,’ she said to herself, turning back into the pretty room, ‘however angry they might be.’
Despite the stuffiness, the whole flat was immaculately tidy and the post was neatly stacked in a fat heap on the hall table with a short note from the charwoman Ming had inherited from the people who had sold her the flat. The few lines explained where Mrs Crook had stowed the provisions she had bought to see you through till Monday, Miss’and hoped that the holiday had been a success. Ming smiled at its friendliness and went into the kitchen to make herself a pot of tea, which she took with her letters into the pale drawing room.
There was very little furniture, because she was still not sure how she wanted the flat to look and did not want to clutter it up with mistakes, and the few things there had nothing in common with each other. The only memorable feature apart from the single painting was the colour of the walls.
Ming had persuaded the decorator, much against his will, to paint them a glowing coral colour and then to apply drastically thinned coats of successively paler and paler colours until he had achieved a pearly finish, through which the original coral appeared like the flush on the inside of a seashell.
The picture was an oil painting, hung over the white chimney-piece, of an unpopulated curving beach on some Scandanavian coastline. It must have been painted during one of the white nights of summer when the sun never really set. The dusky light made the whole scene look strange and still in its restrained lavender and grey-blue colour scheme. Ming had seen the painting in an obscure gallery miles away from Bond Street and loved it for its quiet and lonely peacefulness.
As she did every time she came into the room, she let herself look at the painting and felt soothed by its emptiness. Despite the horrible stoning, she had enjoyed the cruise and revelled in Connie’s company, but she felt curiously satisfied to be on her own again. After a while she went to sit down at the desk and began to deal with her post.
Among the typed envelopes, which all looked as though they were concerned with the legacy her godmother had left her, was one addressed in the distinctive handwriting of a civil servant called Mark Sudley, whom she had met six months earlier in Gerry’s house. Ming opened it at once.
Dear Ming,
Welcome back! Was it wonderful? Did you see egrets and Nile kingfishers and swallows swooping through the temples? I’d love to hear all about it. Could I drop in and see you? There’s something I’d like to ask you about, too. Would you telephone when you’ve got a minute spare?
Mark
Ming smiled. The letter was so like Mark, relaxed, affectionate and wholly unthreatening, that she picked up the telephone at once. Dialling his number, she quickly invited him to share a scratch supper with her that evening.
When he had accepted, she retreated to the kitchen to see what Mrs Crook had left for her. Having looked at the store cupboards, she decided that Mark would have to put up with bacon and eggs. Flixe, she knew, would rustle up some wonderfully aromatic Mediterranean dish from one of Elizabeth David’s recipes, but her own cooking was much less advanced.
She laid the table and took the eggs out of the fridge before going back to her post to deal with the official-looking letters. As she had expected they were mostly about the money she had inherited and she decided to answer them later. The money had been made available to her only four months earlier and she had still not become accustomed to it, although its very existence was giving her a sensation of power that she had never had before.
Several of her personal letters included helpful suggestions from friends of her mother who ran various charities and wanted donations or free labour, but none of them offered Ming the kind of work she wanted. She threw the envelopes into a wicker wastepaper basket and piled all the letters to one side, before looking at the last three envelopes. Two were addressed in her sisters’handwriting and one in Roger Sillhorne’s.
Taking a gulp of tea, Ming decided to throw Roger Sillhorne’s unopened letter straight into the basket with the empty envelopes. He had written to her frequently since her resignation, and all his letters had been filled with a mixture of bullying and cajolery that she had come to find detestable. Just before she had left for Egypt, she had asked him not to write again. Since he had ignored that request, she decided to be ruthless. The letter was torn into four pieces and thrown away.
Brushing her hands together as though to remove some sticky dust, Ming returned to her desk to open her sisters’letters, and found two invitations to dinner.
‘What can we do about poor little Mingie?’ she asked herself sardonically, mimicking her eldest sister’s voice: ‘We really must find someone for her.’
Ming took a moment to remind herself of the fact that she cared a lot for both her sisters and that they interfered in her life only out of the highest and most generous of motives. By the time she telephoned first Gerry and then Flixe her voice held nothing but affection. She thanked each of them, accepted their invitations, answered questions about Egypt and asked about their affairs.
Gerry, childless, talked about her husband, about the undergraduates to whom she taught Russian at London University and about the tricky translation she had just been commissioned to make of a novel that had been recently smuggled out of the Soviet Union. Flixe, on the other hand, had plenty to say about her three children, the youngest of whom was nearly two, despite the fact that Ming had seen them all only a month earlier.
‘She’s growing huge and pretty,’ said Flixe, eventually summing up her enthusiastic account of the family. ‘I’m sure it’s because she’s the only one who’s never had a ration card.’
‘Oh good.’ Ming was genuinely fond of her nephew and nieces. ‘And clever too, I hope?’
‘As a bagful of monkeys. Peter’s delighted with her … and with me: I’m going to have another one.’
‘Heavens! I mean, congratulations. Did you … did you mean to?’
‘Ming, really! Of course we did. I’m not sure what I’d do without a baby,’ said Flixe. ‘You can’t imagine how lovely they are. You ought to try it for yourself.’ There was a short pause, before Ming asked about her brother-in-law.
‘Peter’s the same as always: funny and generous and unknowable and fascinating … just himself.’
‘Good,’ said Ming with a laugh. ‘I’m glad. Well, I’ll see you both on Tuesday week. Thanks, Flixe.’
She put down the telephone, thinking about her sister’s husband. Like both Flixe and Gerry, Ming had met Peter Suvarov during the war. He had been kind to her when her twin had been killed, with an intelligent, slightly astringent, kindness that had helped far more than other people’s more sentimental sympathy. Later he had gone out of his way to make a friend of her, despite the huge gap in their ages. As soon as she had left school he had given her a job in the secret research group he had run all through the war.
Inevitably Ming had fallen in love with him. When he had married Flixe after the war Ming had minded desperately, but she had done her best to keep her feelings hidden.
Her misery had quickly dulled and her feelings had changed from passionate hero-worship and dependence into a slightly cynical liking, which had left her feeling lost. None of the men who had wanted to marry her since the war, and there had been several, had been able to make her feel one-tenth of what Peter had aroused in her. Since even that had gone, she had come to the conclusion that she was incapable of love.
When Mark came to the flat a little later he professed himself delighted to share her bacon and eggs and leaned against the red-painted kitchen dresser while she cooked, talking idly of his colleagues and the occasional frustrations of his work at the Ministry of Defence.
He was a big man, very broad in the shoulder and attractive without being at all conventionally handsome. His skin was smooth and slightly tanned, which made the whites of his eyes very bright; his nose was straight and his jaw pleasantly square. His best feature was definitely his grey eyes, which were full of intelligence and usually lit with laughter. Despite the strength of his chin, his mouth was gentle.
‘You hardly ever talk about your job,’ Ming said, turning from the cooker with the big frying pan in her left hand and a spatula in the other. ‘I’ve often wondered what made you become a peace-time civil servant.’
‘Here, let me help,’ he said, pushing himself away from the dresser. He found two white plates and held them out.
‘I suppose,’ he went on when they were sitting on either side of the grey-and-white formica table, ‘that I was flattered when they offered to keep me on after the war. I thought then that it was the most important job I could possibly do. I still think so, actually.’
‘Why?’ asked Ming, her fair head on one side. ‘I don’t mean that I don’t agree, but I am interested.’ She poured a little pile of salt on to the edge of her plate and began to eat.
Mark smiled at her serious face and tried to concentrate on her question instead of the one he had come to ask her.
‘Because I can’t imagine anything more important – or interesting – than being involved in the running of the country,’ he said at last, cutting off a piece of bacon and plunging it into the glistening softness of the egg yolk. ‘Does that sound fearfully pompous?’
‘Yes,’ said Ming with a wicked smile; then her eyes softened. ‘But understandable, too. Why not politics? Were you never attracted to the House?’
‘Good God! No!’ Mark’s protest was immediate and heartfelt. Then he remembered Ming’s long-held job. ‘Not that I meant to denigrate people who follow that road,’ he said. ‘But their skills are quite different and their preoccupations, too. In fact, I’d say …’
‘With the greatest respect.’ Ming’s interpolation was spoken quietly but with an oddly formal edge in her voice. Mark looked up in surprise and saw that behind the sweetness of her smile she was still laughing at him.
‘Yes,’ he said, laughing back and showing his very white, even teeth. ‘With the greatest respect, I’d say that most – but by no means all – of them are more interested in keeping their seats than in ensuring that the best policy is adopted. I should hate to have to work under that constraint.’
‘But you must have constraints of your own,’ said Ming as she thought about what she knew of him.
His long training in the art of presenting balanced arguments on the most intricate aspects of defence policy had made him into not only a fluent talker but also a man able to subdue his own emotions in the interests of reason. Ming had never seen him angry or even impatient and, although that was one of the reasons why she felt so safe in his company, she occasionally wondered what he would be like if he let emotion rip.
‘What were we talking about?’ she asked when she saw him looking at her much more intently than before.
‘Politics, and the Civil Service,’ said Mark, pushing away his plate. ‘I’d hate to leave the subject with your thinking that I’m pompous. I think the main reason I like the work so much is that it’s interesting and I’ve some colleagues I both like and admire.’
The softness in Ming’s dark blue eyes as she listened to him brought Mark quickly back to his real reason for being in her flat.
‘Ming, there is something I need to ask you.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said, taking her elbows off the table and sitting up straight again. ‘You said so in your letter. What can I do for you?’
Mark licked his lower lip, took a breath and then laughed.
‘I’ve rehearsed it so often that the words I’d planned to use sound all wrong,’ he said.
Ming pushed herself further back in her red-painted Windsor chair. She had an inkling of what he was going to ask and wanted to stop him. Before she could do anything, he said with a whimsical smile that was supposed to disguise his anxiety:
‘You see I very much want you to marry me.’
For a moment she could not say anything or even think. A kind of panic paralysed her mind. As it ebbed, she put her knife and fork tidily together on her egg-smeared plate, looked up at him and said quietly:
‘Mark, I can’t. It never occurred to me that you might be coming to ask something like that or I’d have told you straight away.’
‘But …’ Before he could put words to his question, Ming rushed on.
‘I thought we were just friends. When I saw you before I went away you seemed just as you always have done. And your letter was so ordinary. I would never … I’m so sorry.’
Her distress was so obvious that Mark made himself ignore his own desperate feelings. He reached across the table and took one of her hands in his. Hers was icy cold.
‘Ming,’ he said, really upset. ‘I never meant to worry you. Lots of people must have asked you that question at one time or another.’
‘A few,’ she began, ‘but I’ve never … I can’t.…’
‘You’re afraid, aren’t you? You can’t think that I would try to force you to do anything.’ Mark found it hard to believe that the cheerful affectionate companion of the previous half hour could have put on such nervous stiffness just because she did not want to marry him.
‘I don’t think anything like that,’ she said more firmly, letting him keep hold of her hand. In the circumstances she could hardly tell him that what frightened her most at that moment was the thought of losing his friendship.
‘And it’s not that I don’t like you,’ she said as directly as a child. ‘I do – more, I think, than anyone else I’ve met. I trust you, too. If I could, Mark, I would marry you, but I can’t.’
‘And I thought we got on so well,’ he said with spurious casualness, looking down at their clasped hands.
‘We do,’ said Ming, sounding almost despairing in her need for him to understand her. Marriage to Mark would solve many of her problems, and delight her difficult parents, but she could not bring herself to accept that the sisterly liking she felt for him was love, and she was not prepared to commit herself to anyone without loving him.
‘Then why?’ His question forced her to try to put into words some ideas about herself that she had never articulated before. She found it difficult.
