Dolly Read online

  ‘Yes, Hugo looked much older, I thought.’

  ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ he enquired. They usually drank a cup of tea in the evenings, a habit which I have inherited.

  ‘Tea!’ said my mother. ‘I will invite them to tea! At the weekend, before they go back. I should like them to see the flat. You will be here, won’t you, darling?’

  My father, who usually went for a very long walk on a Sunday afternoon, winter or summer, a walk which he would be obliged to forego, merely said, ‘Of course.’ I repeat, he was an honourable man, although my mother knew that he thought her brother a lightweight, married to another and lighter weight. I think he merely considered them no business of his. He had not inherited much in the way of family affections, and regarded my mother, whom he loved, as supplying all his emotional needs. ‘They may not come,’ he warned her. ‘We are quite a long way from Maresfield Gardens. Quite a step to take on a Sunday afternoon, when public transport is not exactly at its best.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they’ll come,’ said my mother.

  The next day I got a sandwich and milk for my lunch, as Miss Lawlor and my mother made small delicate butterfly-shaped cakes and pastry tartlets ready to be filled with fruit. These were covered with clean tea towels and stored in the larder.

  ‘Toasted teacakes, I thought,’ said my mother. ‘And cucumber sandwiches.’

  ‘I’ll come in after church and give you a hand,’ said Miss Lawlor.

  ‘That is so kind of you, Violet.’

  ‘Will you want me to hand round?’

  ‘I shouldn’t dream of spoiling your Sunday afternoon. Jane will help me, won’t you, darling?’

  Silver teapots and cream jugs were polished; more clean tea towels laid over more plates. There was enough food for at least ten people.

  My main interest in all this was not in the handing round, which I had done on numerous occasions and which I thought I did rather well: my expertise was beginning to bore me. I did not particularly look forward to seeing Dolly again, since, like my father, I thought she had nothing to do with me. But I did look forward to seeing my uncle Hugo, since I thought he might turn out to be a friend. My mother had told me that he was very fond of me, yet how could that be when he hardly knew me, and I knew him not at all?

  ‘He sent you that lovely coral bracelet when you were born,’ said my mother. ‘You cut your teeth on it. He saw you when you were a baby, you know. He said he thought you were beautiful.’

  We are always kindly disposed towards those who have the good taste to think that we are beautiful. Yet Hugo’s actual presence filled me with a vague disappointment. He had perfected the same meaningless smile as Dolly, to whom he delegated the business of greetings and compliments.

  ‘So this is Jane,’ he said, in a deep, beautiful yet actorish voice. Having said that he showed no further interest, but subsided into my father’s armchair, joined his hands at the fingertips and smiled beatifically into the distance. I examined him carefully, and was not predisposed in his favour. He seemed to me to be rather fat, or perhaps merely shapeless round the waist. Both my parents were thin and I was used to their more modest proportions. Hugo, leaning back in my father’s chair and gazing at the ceiling, did not show to his best advantage. In addition his hair had receded, and he wore thick, slightly tinted glasses. When he took these off his eyes looked alarmingly naked. He glanced frequently at his wife, who was tremendously dressed up, as if for a wedding. A fragrant mink coat had been deposited on my parents’ bed; what was revealed was an artfully draped silk dress, at which my mother exclaimed in admiration.

  ‘That is Belgian work, my dear. C’est fait à la main, tout ça.’

  Again the foreign words, which distanced her from me and from my mother.

  ‘Not too much trouble getting here, then?’ asked my father genially. He was already bored.

  ‘Oh, we hired a car,’ said Dolly. ‘The chauffeur will call for us in about an hour.’

  ‘Oh, but that is far too soon,’ protested my mother.

  ‘But darling Etty, we are expected out for drinks in Highgate. And how else should we have got here? You live in the middle of nowhere, you know.’ She gave a small annoyed laugh. She seemed as bored as my father, but less able to hide it. She regarded the afternoon as a chore, as it no doubt was, and had no reason to impress my mother with her stoicism now that Hugo was apparently restored to health. She had highly polished social manners which nevertheless released something of her original intentions, so that my mother felt it her duty to express gratitude that Dolly had bothered to visit her at all. One felt dissatisfaction in the air, and also tiredness, frustration, all covered up by a tremendous show of goodwill, of resolute generosity.

  ‘Then we’d better have tea straight away,’ said my mother humbly. ‘It’s all ready. Jane will hand round.’

  When we returned from the kitchen, having removed the shrouds from the plates of cakes and sandwiches, Hugo was shaking his head ruefully over the disastrous bridge hands he had held on the previous evening.

  ‘Couldn’t do a thing with them,’ he went on, although my father, who did not play bridge, could not have been interested. That was their way, I was to learn, to trail one entertainment on to the next, so that one always heard a great deal about what had happened on the previous occasion.

  ‘No thank you, dear,’ said Dolly, as I relentlessly proffered plate after plate of food. ‘I never eat in the afternoon. And you shouldn’t either,’ she warned my uncle, as he took two sandwiches and laid them in his saucer, where they absorbed a little tea.

  ‘You see what a terror I married,’ he said to my father, who was not used to such playfulness from men. He leaned over perilously, dislodging a little more tea, and pinched Dolly’s cheek. She smiled a small taut smile.

  ‘At least you can make up for it this evening,’ she said. ‘We’ll be going on later for bridge,’ she explained, in the face of my mother’s constraint. My father turned away and busied himself with his cup. When he turned back towards us his face was entirely serious.

  I examined Dolly, leaning against her chair for a better view.

  ‘Don’t do that, dear,’ she said. I registered the fact that she did not like children.

  I could see that she was in the grip of some tremendous impatience, although the journey to Prince of Wales Drive, in a hired car, could not have been very arduous. With the percipience of childhood I sensed that she was struggling against increasing weight or some such bodily discomfort. Women were not yet quite as at ease with themselves as they are today. In 1969 or 1970, when this tea-party must have taken place, they had heard the calls of liberation but had not yet developed into those speedy slimmed-down versions of themselves that they were to become in the 1980s. And then I think that work had a great deal to do with this transformation. Women who did not work, like my mother, or, more conspicuously, Dolly, aged more quickly and along more traditional lines. Dolly must have been in her middle forties at this time and was aware that the age of fading attractions had arrived. More specifically, she was aware of such fading in her husband, who, after youthful good looks, had developed a complacent personality and a saurian aspect, the smile still on his face, his eyes frequently closing behind his glasses. His evident comfort in my father’s armchair, and his absent-minded but constant ingestion of my mother’s food, as if his restoration to the bosom of his family had temporarily effaced his social pretensions, had bred an indignation in Dolly, whether she was aware of it or not. Like an automaton he continued to deal out largely meaningless social noises, none of which was of relevance to my mother or my father, but a loosening of the usual performance had taken place, and he seemed both older and younger because of it, younger because he looked to my mother with a sort of trust, which might have been quite foreign to him in his usual everyday incarnation, and older because he no longer had the means to charm and to please, as had formerly been his habit, and his right.

  Dolly, despite her constrictions, wa
s still a handsome woman. I was aware of this, as I was simultaneously aware of a sense of strain and frustration, for children are alive to these conditions in the adults who are supposed to be superior to them. Dolly made the same impression of blackness and of whiteness as she had made in the course of that visit to Brussels, although the dress she was wearing was of royal blue silk with a pattern of tiny white diamonds. Out of its draped neckline rose a throat that was full at the base and slightly suffused with colour: this must have conveyed to me the impression of frustration which was so at odds with her otherwise impeccable appearance. She was a vivid woman, with a questing ardent expression, as if she could not bear to be wasting time, as she evidently thought she was doing on this occasion. This sharpness of gaze gave her an air of vanity, which I dare say was justified. Her hair and eyes were dark, her skin a beautiful clear olive and flushed over the prominent cheekbones, but her most characteristic feature was her mouth which was long and thin, the lips as smooth as grape skins, the lipstick worn away into an outline by her eager tongue. When the lips were drawn back, into one of her exclamatory laughs, the laughs she lavished on more brilliant assemblies, the teeth appeared, flawless and carnivorous.

  As a child I was aware of her bulk, which I thought a trifle unseemly, or at any rate uncomfortable. She had a squat European figure, with shortish legs and a full bosom, the whole thing reined in and made impregnable by some kind of hidden structure. I was aware too of a sense of heat which came less from her actual body than from the ardour of her desire. Why this should be I had no idea: I simply assumed that she wanted to be elsewhere, as of course she did. With hindsight I now see that she was seriously put out by Hugo’s losses at cards on the previous evening and was impatient to get on with the next game, in which it was to be hoped that he would have better luck. They continued to discuss their temporary condition with my parents who grew bewildered at their insistence on the importance of the game, almost as if it were a profession, as indeed it might have been. When pressed to take it up—and as astonishment was expressed that they did not already play—my mother explained, blushing slightly, that she and my father preferred to read.

  ‘Oh, read,’ said Dolly. ‘Well, of course, I am a great reader myself, but in our circle one has to mix, otherwise one would know no one.’

  ‘I suppose you have a great many friends,’ said my mother.

  ‘Yes, I can certainly say that we are well liked. Not that we mix too much with the expatriate community, except for bridge, of course. Our dear friend Adèle Rougier is the one we see most constantly. Her husband was our ambassador to Zaire, you know. She has a most beautiful house in the Avenue des Arts. Very well off, my dear. Now that she’s a widow she seems to lean on me, and of course I do my best to help her. And she adores Hugo.’

  ‘How did you find Mother?’ This question was asked, in a lowered tone, of Hugo.

  ‘Grumbling, as usual. I managed to cheer her up, but she really is an old misery. I wonder you don’t go over there more often, Etty, though I can hardly blame you for staying away.’

  ‘The sad fact is that Mother and I don’t get on. She is too tough for me. She never forgave me for being born just when she thought that part of her life was over. Anyway, she always preferred you, Hugo. She doted on you, still does.’

  Hugo laughed complacently. I later read Freud’s remark that the man who has been his mother’s favourite will feel a hero all his life, and although I had known him so little I applied the verdict to Hugo straight away.

  ‘Oh, Hugo goes down very well with the ladies,’ said Dolly. This was evidently true: he had an easy way with compliments, was adept at putting a woman at her ease with the sort of flattering badinage which means very little. It was as much his stock-in-trade as the bridge games, on which they seemed to have a considerable dependence. If I could see him now, and if he had lived, I would have pictured him at the bridge table, a cigarette smouldering in a glass ashtray at his left hand, his eyes watering with the smoke and the lateness of the hour, the amiable smile still on his lips. I can see him quite clearly, but I cannot see Dolly at his side. I was aware, even at that time, that of the two of them Dolly was the more viable. There was something collapsed and self-indulgent about Hugo, whereas Dolly was made of stronger, more durable material. When she said that Hugo went down very well with the ladies it seemed to me that she detached herself from this remark, as if she registered its applicability but no longer believed in it herself.

  The time, Hugo,’ she reminded him. ‘Don’t forget the time.’ And turning to me. ‘I expect you want to go off and play, don’t you, Jane?’

  I recognised this as a ploy to get rid of me but failed to take the hint. At that age I thought myself indispensable to any gathering. In any case I was fascinated by Dolly and her many contradictions. It no longer seemed strange to me that she had no children, for I thought she might have been angry with them, as she was certainly ready to be angry with me. The slightly swollen throat alerted me to hidden reserves of bad temper. Whether my presence inhibited the conversation or not was a matter of indifference to me. I was beguiled by the fat necklace of artificial pearls which clasped that swollen throat. She saw me looking at them, and said, with a glint of humour, They’re not real, Jane. The real ones went a long time ago. Maybe you’ll do better than I have. But they’re pretty, aren’t they?’

  That was the only time I saw her face soften. Quite soon after that, and for no reason I could make out, it resumed its mask of irritability. As the afternoon wore on her impatience grew, until finally she heaved herself to the edge of her chair and announced that it was getting late, that the car would soon be returning, that they must not keep their friends waiting, that it would take an age to get to Highgate.

  ‘Why don’t you move, Etty? North London would be far more suitable. You would be nearer Mother, for a start. And it would be better for Jane later on.’

  ‘Why would it?’ I asked.

  She ignored me.

  ‘Well, goodbye Etty, Paul. Come and see us again soon, when I have more time to show you round.’

  ‘Will you ever come home?’ asked my mother.

  ‘You never know,’ said Hugo. ‘For the time being I can see no change. The job is there, and I seem to be well liked. And of course Dolly is a great success with everyone.’

  ‘Don’t forget us,’ said my mother, who was aware that the afternoon had been a failure of sorts, although everything had been done correctly. I sensed that she was blaming herself; my father, who was always quick to defend her, sensed this as well and moved to her side. Together they looked less vulnerable. I knew that they were measuring themselves ruefully against the expectations of Dolly and Hugo, that Dolly and Hugo had reminded them uncomfortably of family ties which they had long ago sought to sever, so as to be all in all to each other, that they felt suddenly at a loss, as if they had not done as well as they had thought or anticipated, and that I was there to be brought up by the two of them alone, without the support of brothers or sisters, or, it was clear, uncles or aunts. My uncle had withdrawn from responsibility, while Dolly was already thrusting her hands into her gloves. If anything were to go wrong with our little family there would be no help from that quarter. At this point my father put his arm round my mother’s waist, as if he too shared this realisation. There was nothing to signal hard times to come, but a moment of apprehension had been shared. He was anxious to see the back of Hugo, of whose luxurious and childish nature he could not but disapprove. As far as Dolly was concerned he withheld all comment, both then and later. I believe he felt for her a certain ironic admiration, while disliking her intensely. Finally he was as eager to see them go as they were to leave. Air was kissed on both sides of my mother’s face; hands were shaken.

  ‘Give me a kiss, Paul,’ said Dolly. ‘Not frightened of me, are you?’

  He laughed, and kissed her.

  ‘And we thought you’d never get yourself married,’ she said to my mother. ‘But you did rather well fo
r yourself in the end, didn’t you? Clever girl. Goodbye, Jane,’ she added sharply. ‘Don’t forget. Always make a good impression.’ I thought this another indication of her failure to understand children, but by this time I was tired and bored, but not too bored to notice how her spirits rose as she was delivered of this family chore and could look forward to the evening’s entertainment. By the time she reached the front door she had been transformed into a glamorous and pretty woman. And I noticed something more: an excitement, a girlishness, unexpected in that almost matronly figure, as if in the course of that evening, or of the next, or of the one after that, some event might occur, some meeting, some transforming circumstance, that might just change her life for ever.

  The next thing we heard was that Hugo had died, suddenly and unexpectedly.

  There must have been an influenza epidemic at that time for both my parents were ill and Miss Lawlor moved in to look after us all. It was nearly spring, but it felt like bitter winter: the light was white, hard and unfriendly, the ground like iron. My parents moved round the flat cautiously, as if not too sure of their ability to do so. My father was the more affected and had to take several days off from the bank, where he worked as an investment analyst; he found being at home in the daytime mildly disturbing, evidence of an unsuspected change in his normally robust health. My mother spent her days on the sofa in our drawing-room, too tired to read.

  It was in this melancholy atmosphere that the telephone call came from Brussels, to say that Hugo had died after a bout of flu which had turned to pneumonia of a particularly virulent kind. The call was from a strange woman who spoke English with a pronounced accent and who said that she was looking after Dolly. Dolly, apparently, was too stricken to speak to anyone. All arrangements had been made, said the voice, and abruptly ceased. Attempts to get back to Dolly’s number were unsuccessful: either there was no answer, or the call was answered by strangers. Finally my father got through to Annie, who seemed both alarmed and annoyed.