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    The Girl in a Swing

    Page 6
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    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

     


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