A Start in Life Read online

  Ruth, who was by now grey with misery, explained that her parents had had some sort of argument, that her father had not even stayed at home to meet her, and her mother refused to sleep under the same roof. Molly gave a comforting laugh. ‘I’ve heard that one before,’ she said. ‘When they were first married I heard it quite a lot. Helen was always a spirited girl, and George sometimes put his foot in it. Don’t worry, Ruth; it will all blow over.’

  Ruth sighed. ‘They’re not newly married now. I can’t nurse them through this. It’s about time they behaved like adults.’ Ruth still believed that adults adhered to a superior standard of behaviour.

  Molly, who was in some pain, suggested that they all have an early night, and discuss it again in the morning. Ruth agreed. They ate their sandwiches in relative silence. Ruth unpacked their suitcase and turned down her mother’s bed. Helen seemed to have no strength or will left; she sat down abruptly on the edge of her divan and said, ‘You will have to undress me, I’m afraid.’ She held out her arms, like a child. Molly, hovering in the doorway, encouraged Ruth with nods, although her expression was thoughtful. She herself would have liked a little help with her stockings but was too shy to ask.

  With horror Ruth took off her mother’s clothes, which were barely warm and smelled of old scent. She tried not to look at the shrunken breasts, the bony elbows and knees, the slumped and shameful pelvis. She removed the denim cap and slipped over Helen’s head a nightdress of crepe de chine trimmed with lace in a colour Helen had always called orchid pink: ‘my colour’. She brushed her mother’s long hair and tied it back with a piece of tape. Helen put up a slow hand and removed the tape. ‘I always wear my hair loose at night,’ she said.

  When the telephone rang, Ruth darted out of the room, glad to be delivered from the spectacle she had just witnessed. She felt a sudden wave of fury, which she directed against all painters of martyrdoms and depositions. ‘About suffering, they were never wrong, the Old Masters,’ said Auden. But they were. Frequently. Death was usually heroic, old age serene and wise. And of course, the element of time, that was what was missing. Duration. How many more nights would she have to undress her mother, only to dress her again in the morning? Would she soon have to wash her, to bath her, to feed her? Was there any way in which this could be avoided?

  Apparently there was not. For Mrs Cutler, at the other end of the telephone, announced that George was in hospital for a few days, but that it was not serious. ‘A bit of a turn,’ said Mrs Cutler, quite accurately. As she herself was leaving at the end of the following week, she thought it might be better if Ruth and her mother came home. George would no doubt need a bit of looking after once he came out of hospital. And she didn’t like to leave without saying goodbye to them. After all this time.

  She told Helen the news, making it sound less important than it really was, but Helen lost her composure and screamed and wept, and Ruth had to sit up most of the night with her arms around her mother. When she eventually climbed into her own bed, she could not sleep, for Helen, although sedated with the sleeping pills Ruth had found in her bag, was still agitated, and moaned and muttered, streaking her rosy make-up as she moved her face compulsively on the pillow. ‘Is it time?’ sighed Helen and, much later, ‘Darling heart.’ Lying so close to her mother, hearing the words of love, and knowing, in the course of that long night, that she would hear no others, Ruth covered her face and wept.

  In the morning it was still teeming with rain. Ruth got up and made tea, for Molly, who smiled at her lovingly, and for Helen, who looked blankly ahead. Helen was shaky now and Ruth had to steady the cup in her hand.

  ‘We had better make a start,’ she said. ‘When you’re ready, go and use the bathroom.’

  But an hour later, washed and dressed herself, she had to rouse her mother out of a daydream and repeat her recommendations.

  This morning Helen moved stiffly, like an old woman. When she emerged from the bathroom, Ruth saw that she had not washed her face which was now less rosy, less aquiline, and more than a little blurred. Again Ruth brushed her mother’s hair and helped her into her clothes. Helen said nothing. She pointed to Mrs Weiss’s heavy bag which Ruth handed to her. Helen opened it, pulled out her make-up box, which was sizable, and proceeded to ring her eyes with blue and restore her mouth. She blended rouge into her forehead, cheeks and chin, put on her denim cap, and looked at Ruth as if to say, ‘I am ready.’

  Ruth packed the case, stripped the beds, restored the furniture to its rightful place, Molly thanking her repeatedly all the while. Ruth went to the shops and got Molly some more tea, and Molly in her turn insisted on presenting Ruth with at least two pounds of wizened apples. ‘They are unsprayed,’ she announced proudly. Ruth did not know what she meant, but did not intend to ask. ‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, ‘you could let me have a carrier bag?’ After what seemed a lengthy interval Molly was back with a plastic bag imprinted with a cornucopia and the legend, ‘Here’s Health!’; she handed it to Ruth, trying to hide her monstrous knuckles.

  Molly was not sorry they were leaving. She had not slept well and she had not liked the sounds that Helen was making in her sleep. She felt too ill herself to be of much use, and Helen was as uncompromising as ever, although Ruth was a dear, a real dear. Molly would have liked to ask Ruth to stay on but obviously the girl was going to have to look after her father until she got another housekeeper. Helen, of course, would be quite useless. And it was Saturday, and they would be expecting her down at the health food shop. She was quite anxious for them to leave, really. Strange, when she was so lonely most of the time.

  She kissed Helen, who gave a sigh and kissed her back. She kissed Ruth, who tried not to pull her face away. But she was too slow in getting back to the drawing room to see them drive off in the taxi, and to wave goodbye.

  The journey, again, was not too bad. They had a carriage to themselves, and Ruth had bought her mother a magazine. Helen glanced at the cover, then looked out of the streaming window; raindrops trembled and quivered in long diagonal streaks, and she could not see what lay beyond.

  At Victoria, things began to go wrong. Rain drummed on the glass roofs over the platforms, spurted up from the rails. They had to join a queue for taxis, Ruth struggling with the suitcase, the umbrella, the carrier bag, and her mother. Helen shivered. Ruth tried to shield her from the weather. She looked about her beseechingly but met only indifferent or incurious eyes. She realized with alarm that she had very little money left and wondered if she dare change some travellers’ cheques. But she was uneasy about her mother and did not like to leave her alone. The people in the queue seemed ill-disposed; there was no one she would have cared to trust. They shuffled forward, manoeuvring their luggage in front of them. Taxis were infrequent and small arguments broke out. When the taxis arrived they did not always want to go where the passengers wanted them to, and some even drove off empty.

  Ruth put the carrier bag down and took her mother in her arms, fearing for her in this damp and cold and acrimonious place. Helen rested lightly against her daughter, her head almost empty of thought. She had never been a maternal woman, had never felt that hunger that makes a woman reach to caress and stroke a child’s flesh and which is never assuaged. Helen had been too beautiful, too happy, too successful, ever to feel premonitory loss. Now all she knew was that she was cold and uncomfortable, that she was light-headed from the train and the unaccustomed noise, and that she could not quite concentrate on where she was or why she was there. Or why George was not there. Ruth, glancing at her mother, saw her bewilderment; she felt her mother’s heart thudding irregularly through her thin sleeve, and she tightened her arms, trying to give comfort.

  Now Helen drifted, remembering her younger days and triumphs, when there were always people there to take care of things. ‘Your sheltered life,’ George used to say to her jokingly, when she demanded to have a dress chosen or asked him to brush her hair. She had never really got used to doing things for herself, only became vibrant and ind
ependent when on stage. When taking a curtain call she looked and felt indomitable. She was childishly inept in the house. She had never learned to cook and of course would not shop and clean. When she reflected on this, and on the way George had judged her and found her wanting, the pain in her heart, which was now beating like a drum, became sharper. It had all got out of control, like her retirement, which had been involuntary, and her loss of weight and vigour, both of which she now experienced as extreme weakness. A brief spurt of anger (‘Why me? I always gave good value’) dissolved into a weariness which she could no longer measure. She sagged against Ruth, her mouth dry, her throat aching. The denim cap fell off, dropped, got muddy. ‘Leave it,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t matter any more.’ Then she was silent, half supported, sinking towards sleep.

  The taxi which arrived after three-quarters of an hour was driven by a man with severe back pain and a delinquent son. Both were preying on his mind. He brooded as Ruth opened the door, pushed in the suitcase, the carrier bag, the umbrella, and finally Helen.

  ‘Oakwood Court?’ he said. ‘That’s Kensington way, isn’t it? Sorry, love, can’t do it. I’m going back to the garage. Clapham.’

  Helen gave a moan and raised her fingers to her mouth. Ruth looked at her and panicked.

  ‘I think my mother is ill,’ she said, kneeling on the floor with her mouth to the taxi-driver’s window, as if in a confessional. ‘Please, do be kind and take us home. We have no other way of getting there and I can’t put her back in the queue.’

  He looked round. ‘No thanks,’ he said swiftly, for he did not like sick passengers and had enough troubles of his own. ‘Can’t be done,’ he added.

  Ruth had one pound in her purse. ‘I will give you double the money,’ she urged, although she had no hope of even paying the full fare. The magazine slid off Helen’s lap and Helen made no effort to retain it. Ruth looked round at her mother. Helen’s eyes were closed, her hand spread on her chest.

  Ruth screamed. ‘Take me home. Take me home. Take me home.’ Tears spurted from her eyes and her mouth opened like a child’s. ‘Take me home,’ she chanted. ‘Take me home.’

  People looked curiously in at the windows of the cab. A policeman approached from the back of the queue. Cursing, the driver fumbled with the gears and the cab moved off. Ruth continued to sob and for a long time stayed kneeling on the floor, with her head against the glass. She did not dare look back. She knew what she would find.

  By the time they reached Oakwood Court, Helen had died.

  21

  When George came out of hospital, he was very quiet and very slow, although the doctor had assured him that he could and should lead a normal life. It was difficult to assess how the news of Helen’s death had affected him. When Ruth broke it to him he was lying in a small cheerful ward, in strange striped pyjamas; Mrs Jacobs, with Roddy as chaperone, was unpacking small quantities of food and placing them in his locker, against all the regulations. The little parcels and dishes would be removed later by the nurses, but George had given up trying to tell her. In any case, he was afraid she would stop cooking for him.

  When he heard of Helen’s death, he had pursed his lips in the old absent fashion which used to denote deep thought. Then he had sighed and reached for Sally’s hand, and clutching it, had slept for a bit. One tear slid down his cheek. They stood rigidly round his bed, as if he were going to die. A nurse came round with the tea trolley and woke him up and then they knew he was all right.

  On the way out Mrs Jacobs laid a tremulous and restraining hand on Ruth’s arm. ‘You won’t leave him now, will you, dear? You won’t go back to Paris?’ Ruth, who found the other woman’s concern and anxiety rather affecting, said nothing. She had hoped to be able to return to Paris within the month, having found George a suitable housekeeper or else leaving the matter in Mrs Jacobs’s hands. But it seemed that this was not to be. Yet she would have to go back, if only to collect her notes on Balzac. The rest of her things – her cups and saucers, towels, knives and forks – she would have to leave behind.

  She explained this to Mrs Jacobs, whose eyes widened with alarm. ‘Go now,’ urged Mrs Jacobs, ‘while he’s still in hospital. But come back soon. He’s going to feel very lonely.’ So she went to Paris for inside a day, collected her notes, tried to ring Duplessis at the Sorbonne, failed to reach him, had to leave, and came back on the Night Ferry, with her briefcase in her hand. She arrived back in London just in time to collect George, who was being discharged from hospital on that day. Roddy, very handsomely, offered to drive him back to Oakwood Court. Mrs Jacobs hovered in attendance.

  When Ruth opened the door of the flat the air struck her as particularly musty. Mrs Cutler had gone, rather earlier than expected, without washing up the milk saucepan or removing the stained saucer from the kitchen table. There was a note by the telephone: ‘All the best! Keep your chin up!’ Mrs Jacobs, her nose wrinkling with distaste, opened the door of the refrigerator which had not been defrosted for some weeks and cleared out the shiny cheese and the wilting lettuce on which Ruth had been living. George moved slowly into Helen’s bedroom, took off his jacket and left it on the bed, and got into his dressing gown. Then he went into the drawing room and sat down in front of the television and was soon fast asleep.

  Mrs Jacobs did not like what she saw: neglect, decay, staleness. Nobody had cleaned this place out for weeks, even months. She opened as many windows as she dared, not caring to go into the bedrooms, and shook her head slowly when she saw the state of the dining room, the handsome table scarred with rings from hot dishes, and now piled high with Ruth’s books. She could get no sense out of George, whose pills made him drowsy, and Ruth seemed oddly absent, as if she did not care to dwell on their present predicament. She had not even put an advertisement for a new housekeeper in the Lady. And, for once, Mrs Jacobs did not dare to offer to do it for her.

  A routine was slowly established. Ruth would get up and dust the flat and make her father’s breakfast and serve it to him in bed. She found it difficult to break into his inertia, which she attributed to the shock of his wife’s death, and after a time she came to accept it. She would tidy his bedroom while he had his bath, wait until he got dressed, although he would not put on a tie or a jacket, and, sitting him down in the drawing room with the newspaper, she would go out and do the shopping. After lunch George would rest and Ruth could get on with her work. In the late afternoon Mrs Jacobs, escorted by Roddy, would call round with a casserole wrapped in a snowy napkin or a plate of apple cake, which they would eat in the evening. George lived for her visits, and tried to hold her hand, thus putting her into a state of acute embarrassment. With her hand imprisoned, her eyes would wander uneasily to the faded wallpaper, the frayed carpet, the uncleaned windows. Roddy and Ruth would watch impassively, each disapproving of the other. Ruth was thinner and her hair had grown long. She did not pay much attention to what she wore these days. Roddy, on the other hand, was putting on weight; his new pin-striped suit was already a little too tight for him. He had more or less taken over the shop, for his aunt pronounced that her nerves were too bad to allow her to cope. He resented the time he spent ferrying her back and forth to Oakwood Court and wished that George would shove off so that he could be rid of the lot of them. He disliked Ruth but was hurt that she didn’t appear to be more friendly. It was, he thought, the least she could do.

  After Mrs Jacobs and Roddy had left – earlier every day, Ruth noted – George extolled Sally’s virtues. Such a cook, he enthused, such a home-maker. And how Roddy had improved! He really had a future. ‘A very nice nature,’ said George in his new reedy voice. ‘You might do worse, Ruth …’ His voice trailed away as he saw in Ruth’s eye the sardonic gleam he had often noticed in Helen’s. In any case, he did not wish to consider the future. As long as Ruth was there and Sally came every day he had no worries.

  But one day Mrs Jacobs took Ruth on one side and explained to her, a little tearfully, that she was going to stay with her sister Phyllis in
Manchester because her depression was so bad that she did not care to be alone. She promised to telephone when she got back to London although she could not say when that would be. She knew that Ruth would understand. ‘I’ve made him a meat loaf,’ she said, her voice shaking, ‘and an almond pudding. Warm the pudding up a little in the oven, dear, but don’t give him too much. He’s putting on weight again and it’s so bad for him.’

  ‘But what about your flat?’ asked Ruth, who fully expected to have to act as a caretaker. Mrs Jacobs said that Roddy would be staying there while she was away. At that moment Roddy loomed in the doorway with a large carton in his arms. He was well pleased with things as they stood. He had urged his mother in Manchester to get his aunt away from London and he had every hope of taking over the business completely, for he knew his aunt would not come back. He was delighted to exchange his almost but not quite chic basement in Notting Hill for the greater comforts of the Bayswater flat, which he planned to improve considerably. And although he had promised his aunt that he would keep in touch with George and Ruth, he had no intention of doing so. They had his telephone number if they wanted him.

  He placed the carton, which contained George’s sun lamp and his portable grill, on the kitchen table, and prepared to be very nice to them all for the last time. Mrs Jacobs wept openly when she saw George’s things, like abandoned toys, in this untidy place. It was Roddy who had urged her to get rid of them. He was quite keen on the record player and said she could keep that. She did not like to argue with him: he had been so good. But she hid George’s favourite record of Viennese waltzes in a drawer in her bedroom so that Roddy could not give it away. She knew him well enough. As the car left Oakwood Court far behind she sighed and was silent. Roddy, stealing a glance at her, thought she looked much older. He would not be sorry to put her on the train. After that, his mother would have to cope.