The Blue Bedroom: & Other Stories Read online

“Have you got any?”

  “Yes. I have one precious bottle which I keep for closest friends. I suppose Gilbert qualifies, and if you want you can certainly try a reviver, but it seems rather a waste to pour the stuff over a dead fish. Like casting pearls before swine.”

  Clodagh did not reply to this. Instead, she rolled up her sleeve, put her hand into the tank, and touched Gilbert’s tail with a gentle finger. Nothing happened. It was hopeless. Bill went back to the pan of sizzling bacon. Perhaps he was being a bit mean about the whisky. He said, “If you want, you can…”

  “He’s waggled his tail!”

  “He has?”

  “He’s all right. He’s swimming … oh look, darling.”

  And, indeed, Gilbert was. Had righted himself, shaken out his little golden fins, and was once more on his regular circuit, right as rain.

  “Clodagh, you’re a miracle worker. Look at him.” In passing, Gilbert’s fishy eye met Bill’s. He knew a moment’s annoyance. “Stupid bloody fish, giving me a fright like that,” he said to it, and then he grinned in relief. “Emily will be overjoyed.”

  “Where is she?”

  He remembered the funeral. He said, “She’s in the garden with Anna.” For some reason he did not tell Clodagh about the plans that had been made. He did not tell her what they were doing.

  Their mother smiled. “Well, now that that little problem’s been resolved, I’m going up to have a bath. I’ll leave you to break the happy news,” and she blew him a kiss and took herself off upstairs.

  Minutes later, as the bacon sizzled and the coffee perked, the two little girls reappeared, exploding through the open back door in a whirlwind of excitement.

  “We’ve found a lovely place, Bill, under the rose bush in Mummy’s border, and we’ve dug a huge hole…”

  “And I’ve made a daisy chain…”

  “And I’ve made a sort of cross out of two bits of wood, but I’ll need string or a nail or something to hold them together…”

  “And we’re going to sing a hymn.”

  “Yes. We’re going to sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful.’”

  “And we thought…”

  “Let me tell him…”

  “We thought…”

  “Now, just listen.” He had to raise his voice in order to make himself heard over the din. They fell silent. “Just listen for a moment. And look.” He led them over to the fish tank. “Look.”

  They looked. They saw Gilbert, swimming around in his usual pointless fashion, his fragile, translucent tail flicking, his round eyes looking no more lively than when he had been presumed dead.

  There was, for a moment, total silence.

  “See? He wasn’t dead at all. Just having a kip. Mummy gave him a tickle, and that stirred his stumps.” Still silence. “Isn’t that great?” Even to himself, he sounded quite sickeningly hearty.

  Neither little girl said a word. Bill waited, and then, finally, Emily spoke.

  She said, “Let’s kill him.”

  He found himself torn between horrified shock and uncontrollable mirth, and for a second it was touch and go as to whether he actually struck the child or dissolved into laughter. By a superhuman effort he did neither of these things, but there was a long and pregnant pause before he finally said, with monumental calmness, “Oh, I don’t think we want to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because … it’s wrong to kill any living creature.”

  “Why is it?”

  “Because life is given to us by God. It’s sacred.” Even as he said this, he felt slightly uncomfortable. Although he had been married to Clodagh in a church, he had not thought about God, in this everyday sort of way, for a number of years, and now knew a pang of guilt, as though he were taking the name of an old friend in vain. “It’s wrong to kill anything, even if it is only a goldfish. Besides, you love Gilbert. He belongs to you. You can’t kill the thing you love.”

  Emily’s bottom lip protruded. “I want to have a funeral. You promised.”

  “But not Gilbert. We’ll bury someone else.”

  “What? Who?”

  Anna knew her sister well. “Not my Action Man,” she stipulated firmly.

  “No, of course not Action Man.” He cast about for ideas, and was visited with a brainwave. “A mouse. A poor, dead mouse. Look…” Like a conjurer, he opened the trash can with his toe on the lever, and produced, with a certain flourish, Breeky’s hunting trophy, holding its small stiff body up by the tail. “Breeky brought it in this morning and I took it away from him. Surely you wouldn’t want a poor old mouse to end up in the dustbin? Surely he deserves a bit of ceremony?”

  They stared at his offering. After a bit, Emily said, “Can we put him into the cigar box like you said?”

  “Of course.”

  “And sing hymns, and everything?”

  “Of course. ‘All Creatures Great and Small.’ Nothing could be much smaller than this.” He found a paper towel, laid it on the dresser, and placed the body of the mouse carefully upon it. Then he washed his hands, and drying them, turned to face the two little girls.

  “What do you say?”

  “Can we do it right away?”

  “Let’s eat breakfast first. I’m starving.”

  * * *

  Anna went at once to the table, to pull out a chair and settle herself, but Emily lingered for another reassuring check on Gilbert. Her nose was pressed against the glass wall of the tank, her finger traced a pattern, following his convolutions. Bill waited patiently. Presently she turned her head to look at him. Their eyes met in a long, steady stare.

  She said, “I’m glad he wasn’t dead.”

  “Me too.” He smiled, and she smiled back, and all at once looked so like her mother that, without thinking, he opened his arms to her, and she came to him, and they hugged, without words, without needing words. He stooped and kissed the top of her head, and she did not try to wriggle away or detach herself from this, their first tentative embrace.

  “You know something, Emily,” he told her. “You’re a good girl.”

  “You’re good, too,” she said, and his heart was filled with gratitude, because somehow, by the grace of God, he had neither said nor done the wrong thing. He had got it right. It was a beginning. Not much, but a beginning.

  Then Emily enlarged on this. “Really, really good.”

  Really, really good. Perhaps in that case, it was more than a beginning, and he was just about halfway there. Filled with gratification, he gave her a final hug and let her go, and at last, in happy anticipation of the mouse’s funeral, they all sat down to breakfast.

  The Before-Christmas Present

  Two weeks before Christmas, on a black and bitterly cold morning, Ellen Parry, as she had been doing every morning for the past twenty-two years, drove her husband, James, the short distance to the station, kissed him goodbye, watched his black-coated, bowler-hatted figure disappear through the barrier, and then cautiously, because of the ice on the road, drove home again.

  As she trundled down the slowly waking village street and out into the gentle country that lay beyond, her thoughts, disjointed and undisciplined at this early hour of the day, flew around the back of her mind like birds in a cage. There was always, at this time of the year, an enormous amount to be done. After she had washed up the breakfast dishes she would compose a shopping list for the weekend, perhaps make mince pies, send a few last-minute Christmas cards, buy a few last-minute presents, turn out Vicky’s bedroom.

  No. She changed her mind. She would not turn out Vicky’s bedroom and make the bed until she knew for certain that Vicky would be with them for Christmas. Vicky was nineteen. In the autumn, she had managed to find herself a job in London, and a small flat, which she shared with two other girls. The break, however, was not total, because at weekends she usually came home, bringing sometimes a friend, and always a bag of dirty laundry for her mother’s washing machine. The last time she had been back, Ellen had started making Christmas
plans, but Vicky had looked discomfited and had finally plucked up the courage to tell Ellen that, perhaps, this year, she wouldn’t be there. There was some talk about joining a young party who were taking a villa in Switzerland for the skiing.

  Ellen, taken completely unawares by this bombshell, had managed to hide her dismay, but privately she reeled from the prospect of a Christmas spent without her only child, and yet knew that the worst thing any parent can do is to become possessive, to refuse to let go, to expect, in fact, anything at all.

  It was all very difficult. Perhaps, when she got home, the post would have arrived, and there would be a letter from Vicky. She saw the envelope lying on the door mat, Vicky’s huge writing.

  Darling Ma. Kill the fatted calf and deck the halls with holly, Switzerland is off, so I’ll be home to spend the festive season with you and Dad.

  So certain was she that the letter would be there, so impatient to read it, Ellen allowed the car to pick up a little speed. The pale light of a midwinter morning now revealed the frozen ditches and black, frosty hedgerows. Small lights shone from cottage windows, and the local hill was capped with a drift of snow. She thought of Christmas carols and the smell of spruce, brought indoors, and was suddenly touched with excitement, the old magic of childhood.

  Five minutes later, she parked the car in the garage and went into her house through the back door. The kitchen felt blissfully warm after the icy outdoors; the remains of breakfast lay on the table, but she ignored this and went through to the front hall to look for mail. The postman had called, and a pile of envelopes lay on the door mat. She stooped and picked them up, so certain of a letter from Vicky that when she found none, she thought she must be mistaken, and leafed through the pile for a second time. But there was nothing from her daughter.

  For a moment she was overwhelmed with disappointment, and then, with an effort, pulled herself together. Perhaps the afternoon post … It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. She took the pile of envelopes back into the kitchen, shrugged off her sheepskin coat, and sat down to open the mail.

  Mostly cards. She opened them, one by one, stood them up in a semicircle. Robins and angels and Christmas trees and reindeer. The last was huge and extravagant, a Breugel reproduction of a skating party. With much love from Cynthia. Cynthia, as well, had written a letter. Ellen poured herself a mug of coffee and sat down to read it.

  A long time ago Ellen and Cynthia had been best friends at school. But after they had grown up, their ways had diverged and their lives taken totally different directions. Ellen married James, and after a spell in a small London flat had moved, with their new baby daughter, to this very house where they had lived ever since. Once a year, she and James went on holiday … usually to places where James could play golf. That was all. The rest of the time she did the sort of things that women, all over the world, spend their time doing. That is, shop, cook, sew, weed the garden, wash clothes and iron them. Entertain, and be entertained by a few close friends; dabble in a little social work and make cakes for the Women’s Institute fair. It was all quite undemanding, and, she knew, a little dull.

  Cynthia, on the other hand, had married a brilliant physician, produced three children, started her own antique business, and made a lot of money. Her holidays were unimaginably exciting, driving across the United States, or walking the mountains of Nepal, or going to visit the Great Wall of China.

  While Ellen and James’s friends were doctors or lawyers or business colleagues, Cynthia’s house in Campden Hill was a gathering point for the most fascinating people. Famous faces from television peppered her parties, writers discussed existentialism, artists argued abstractionism, politicians indulged in weighty debate. Once, staying overnight with Cynthia after a day’s shopping, Ellen had found herself at dinner between a Cabinet minister and a young man with pink hair and a single earring, and trying to make conversation to either of these individuals had been a testing experience.

  Afterwards, Ellen had blamed herself. “I’ve got nothing to talk about,” she told James. “Except making marmalade and getting my washing white, like those awful women on television advertisements.”

  “You could talk about books. You get through more books than any person I know.”

  “You can’t talk about books. Reading is simply experiencing other people’s experiences. I should be doing something, making experiences of my own.”

  “How about the time we lost the cat? Doesn’t that count as an experience?”

  “Oh, James.”

  It was then that the idea was born. She’d never done anything about it, but it was at that moment that it had been born. When Vicky left home, perhaps she could…? She mentioned it in a casual way to James a few evenings later, but he had been reading the paper and scarcely listened, and when she brought it up again a few days after that, he had, in a quite kindly way, doused it with unenthusiasm, as though he were emptying a bucket of water over a fire.

  She sighed, abandoned ambition, and read Cynthia’s letter.

  Darling Ellen. Just had to put a note into the card to say hello, and give you some news. Don’t think you ever met the Sanderfords, Cosmo and Ruth, when you were here.

  Ellen had not met the Sanderfords, but that did not mean that she did not know exactly who they were. Who had not heard of the Sanderfords? He a brilliant film director, and she a novelist, creator of wry, funny novels of family life. Who had not watched them in discussion panels on television? Who had not read her articles on the bringing up of their four children? Who had not marvelled at his films, with their oblique and original approach, their sensitivity and visual beauty. The Sanderfords, whatever they did, were news. Just to consider them was enough to make an ordinary, humdrum mortal feel completely inadequate. The Sanderfords. With a sinking heart, Ellen read on:

  They divorced a year ago, very amicably, and can still be observed from time to time, lunching together. But she has bought a house near you, and I’m sure would love a visit. Her address is Monk’s Thatch, Trauncey, and the telephone is Trauncey 232. Give her a ring and say I told you to call. Have a marvellous Christmas, with very much love, Cynthia.

  Trauncey was only a mile away, practically next door. And Monk’s Thatch was an old gamekeeper’s cottage, which had had a For Sale sign up for months. Now, presumably, the For Sale sign had gone, because Ruth Sanderford had bought it and was living there, on her own, and Ellen was expected to get in touch.

  The prospect was daunting. If only the newcomer had been an ordinary person, a woman alone, needing company and the solace of a comfortable friend, then it would have been a different matter. But Ruth Sanderford was not an ordinary person. She was famous, clever, probably relishing her newfound solitude after a littering life of artistic achievement, coupled with the sheer grind of bringing up four children. She would be bored by Ellen, resentful that Cynthia had ever even suggested that Ellen should get in touch with her.

  The thought of the cold reception her tentative advances might precipitate caused Ellen’s imagination to turn and flee in horror. Sometime, she would go. Not before Christmas. Perhaps at New Year. Anyway, now, she was too busy. There was so much to do. Mince pies to make, lists to be written …

  Firmly, putting Ruth Sanderford out of her head, she went upstairs and made her bed. Across the landing, the door of Vicky’s bedroom stood shut. Ellen opened it and looked inside, saw the dust on the dressing table, the bed, piled with folded blankets, the closed windows. Without Vicky’s possessions, it had a strangely impersonal air, a room belonging to anybody, or nobody. Standing there in the open doorway, Ellen suddenly knew, beyond doubt, that Vicky would be going to Switzerland. That Christmas must somehow be endured without her.

  What would they do, she and James? What would they talk about, sitting at either end of the dining-room table with a turkey too big to eat? Perhaps she should cancel the turkey and order lamb chops. Perhaps they should go away, to one of those hotels that cater to lonely, elderly people.

  Sh
e closed the door swiftly, shutting away not just Vicky’s deserted room, but the frightening images of old age and loneliness that must come to us all. At the far end of the landing, a narrow staircase led up to the loft. Without any reason in mind, Ellen went up these stairs and through the door that led into the huge attic with its slope-ceilinged roof. It was empty save for a few suitcases and the bulbs she had planted for the spring, now shrouded in thick blankets of newspaper. Dormer windows and a spacious skylight let in the first pale rays of the low sun, and there was a pleasant smell of wood and camphor.

  In a corner stood a box containing the Christmas tree decorations. But would they have a tree this year? It was always Vicky’s job to dress the tree, and there seemed little point, if she wasn’t going to be here. There seemed, in fact, little point in anything.

  Say I told you to call.

  Ruth Sanderford was back again. Living at Monk’s Thatch, a short walk away across the frosty fields. All right, so she was famous, but Ellen had read all her books and loved them, identifying with the harassed mothers, the angry, misunderstood children, the frustrated wives.

  But I am not frustrated.

  The attic was part and parcel of the idea that she had had; the scheme that James had dismissed out of hand, the plan that she had allowed to die because there was no person to give her a little encouragement.

  James and Vicky. Her husband and her child. All at once Ellen was fed up with the pair of them. Fed up with worrying about Christmas, fed up with the house. She longed for escape. She would go, now, this minute and call on Ruth Sanderford. Before this brave new courage seeped away, she went downstairs, bundled herself into her coat, found a jar of homemade marmalade and another of mincemeat and put them into a basket. As though she were setting out on some intrepid and dangerous journey, she stepped out into the icy morning and slammed the door shut behind her.

  * * *

  It had turned into a beautiful day. A pale, cloudless sky, sparkling frost on the bare trees, the furrows of plough iron hard. Rooks cawed from topmost branches, and the air was icy and sweet as wine. Her spirits rose; she swung the basket, savouring her rising energy. The footpath lay along the edge of the fields, over wooden stiles. Soon, beyond the hedgerows, Trauncey came into view. A little church with a pointed spire, a cluster of cottages. Over the last stile, and she was in the road. Smoke rose serenely from chimneys, gray plumes in the still air. An old man, driving a pony and trap, clip-clopped by. They said good morning. Ellen went on, up the winding street.