The Choice Page 10

  As Eleanor stares at the swirls of oil on canvas, at the brushes soaking in turpentine, feeling her father’s spirit everywhere, she hears the echo of his voice:

  “Find Moira for me. Tell her I’m sorry.”

  Tears sting her eyes. She picks up her father’s shabby tobacco pouch, taking a pinch of the stuff in her fingers, relishing its familiar sweet-and-sour scent.

  “Moira’s not here, Daddy. God only knows who and where she is – but she’s certainly not in here.” She puts down the pouch. “And what were you sorry for, I long to know… What were you sorry for?”

  Getting There

  Woodstock, 1936

  Felix Mitchell is only slightly drunk.

  After that cup of tea on the train – thick, sweet medicine – and the courteous sympathy – it seemed genuine, the man in uniform had piercing blue eyes that looked into his, offering understanding and comfort – Felix slithers onto the Oxford platform and takes a very deep breath.

  The air smells of soot and green fields.

  He reckons it’s around midday, give or take a couple of hours. He marches across the station forecourt to The Royal Oxford Hotel and orders a beer. The air stinks of tobacco. His feet have stopped sweating. Now his hands shake. His palms are damp.

  But his heart is beginning to gather strength.

  He asks the barman where he should go for Woodstock, and catches a rattling old bus. It bumps over icy puddles, the surrounding fields white with snow, the sky a matching colour. Two old women behind him never stop clacking, not for a single minute. Why the hell can’t they shut the fuck up? It’s not as if anything they’re babbling about is of the slightest interest. The price of eggs! As if anyone could waste their energy discussing those tasteless oblongs that happen to fall out of a hen’s hind-quarters. Although come to think of it, if he had a couple of eggs right now, he’d sure know what to do with the bloody things…

  Felix stares out of the grimy window, seeing fields, then seeing nothing but white sheets of memory. The bus’s wheels rumble, shaking the hat off his head. It rolls into the grubby aisle. A woman bends to retrieve it, giving it to him with a smile. He glowers back at her. The teeth vanish, the smile fades.

  In Woodstock, Felix heads instinctively towards the centre of town. He doesn’t have to open his mouth and ask anyone. Besides, there’s that sign. He sees it suddenly emerge behind a horse and cart.

  The Bear Hotel

  He stops beside it, looking up at the sign and the painting. He knows it’s the most expensive hostelry in town. If it costs him a year’s money, he doesn’t care. He hopes Walter will have left him something in his will. He intends to spend every penny in The Bear.

  By this time he’s totally sober. His mouth tastes of cabbage. He swings his paint-spattered hold-almost-nothing from one sweaty palm to the other.

  And in he goes.

  They give him a small room overlooking the square, the stocks – Christ, just imagine being locked in that contraption – and the town hall.

  It will serve. The bed looks soft and inviting. The sheets are pristine. Why can’t his sheets ever look anything like these? Perhaps, tonight, he’ll manage to sleep. In any event, if he can get through the ceremony tomorrow, he’ll be out of Woodstock as fast as his shabby shoes will carry him.

  Felix washes his hands in a bowl of tepid water, holding a cake of soap to his nose. It smells of lavender and old ladies, but nice ones, intelligent ones, who have time to read and paint and garden, not merely jabber about eggs and the price of lardy cakes.

  He examines his hands. There’s paint underneath his nails. He scrunches his fingers into a ball to hide the stain, and opens his door. Down the narrow stairs he slithers. Their steepness could be lethal, specially if you’d swallowed one too many. If he drinks again tonight, he’ll need to take care.

  He walks diffidently into the bar.

  He chooses a corner seat, tips his shabby hat over his eyes and nurses a beer. At least it tastes better than the one in Oxford. He’s starving but he can’t even think about ordering food. If he does, up it will come in undigested lumps all over the red velvet carpet…

  Does he fall asleep?

  He can’t remember.

  He may have dozed off for several minutes but then he hears voices. Two men have walked into the bar, bringing with them the tangy smell of the open road.

  “Shall us sit ’ere?”

  “We allus do.”

  “What’ll you ’ave?”

  “The usual… Thank ee kindly.”

  “So… How are you?”

  “Oh, you know… Fair to middlin’.”

  “Come on now. You can do better than that.”

  Laughter of a reluctant rumbling kind.

  A pause.

  Then: “They’re buryin’ You-Know-Who tomorrow.”

  “Aye.” Silence. “Not afore bleedin’ time, either. Scuse my language, but not afore bleedin’ time.”

  “Aye.”

  There are sounds of slurping and sighs of satisfaction.

  “This small town of ours…” The voice reeks with righteous gusto. “It’ll be a better place without him. He was the filthiest, most disgustin’ man I ever met in all my born days. Walter bleedin’ stinkin’ Drummond. The most disgustin’ creature in the whole wide world.”

  Walter Plans Ahead

  Oxford, 26 October 1935

  It’s a glorious autumn morning, and a Saturday. The glow of an Indian summer is about to fade but for this moment, this magnificent last herald of warmth and contentment holds Oxford in its hands.

  The city looks its best. It’s still early, the streets are quiet. The crowds have not yet gathered, jostled and pushed. If you know where to look, in the sacred corners of gown, not town, there’s no more beautiful place in all the world.

  Walter certainly knows not only where to look but where to hide. He knows how to scamper from quadrangle to alleyway, always with his sketchpad as his excuse, his cast-iron alibi. Everyone knows him. The porters of the Oxford colleges at their elaborate gates; the traders in the Covered Market with their oily hands and piercing voices: he can give them all a nod and a wink.

  It’s so easy. It’s so delightful.

  On this particular morning in Woodstock, Walter says a fond farewell to his darling Anne. He tells her he’ll be very late back that evening, he has various business meetings, not to wait up. Used to his ways, she never asks awkward questions. He jumps into his Bullnose Morris; he’s off and away.

  What bliss! What a delicious sense of freedom. He has the whole of this glorious day and then the long evening at his command. He has an intelligent – if rather plain – daughter to collect from Somerville. What’s more, today of all days he also has his daughter’s best friend, Perdita Willoughby-Jones…

  Of course, he’ll have to be particularly careful about this quite extraordinary challenge he has set himself… His many other wicked dalliances – Walter checks his dapper moustache in the driving mirror – pale into insignificance when he thinks about seducing Perdita. In the past he’s always avoided having anything remotely sexual to do with any of Eleanor’s friends. He’s not crazy, is he? He doesn’t want to court trouble where he needn’t find it.

  But there’s something about Perdita that Walter can’t resist. She is the bee’s knees, the cat’s whiskers, the icing on the cake of all his conquests. Most of them are barmaids or flower girls. Girls too frightened to open their mouths for anything but his own thick, probing, insatiable tongue. And too poor to be anything but grateful for his tireless generosity.

  How he can be generous!

  Only he knows how to give a girl a really good time – and that poignant little gift at the end of it. A posy of violets. “Press these in your Bible and think of me, angel mine…” “Wear this little brooch here, near the fla
wless skin on your neck… That neck of yours… Never have I seen such a neck.”

  Ladies of Oxford, on this glorious autumn morning, here I come!

  Walter starts to think about Perdita again. He knows he’s beginning to be obsessed with the girl. He has even drawn imaginary sketches of her stark naked. Some in charcoal, several in coloured pencils. The coppery tones of her hair, the cream of her complexion… Of course, he’s always extremely careful to push the sketches into his hideaway. Nobody will ever find them. And he always feels so joyful and clever when he knows they’re his own little secret.

  How far will he manage to get with Perdita on this most beautiful of days? Will she be an easy conquest? Will she say no? Will she make him wait? How patient is he prepared to be?

  Walter reaches the roundabout. He starts to sing Cherry Ripe. His mellifluous hum buzzes around his little car – his own small but wonderful world – like the sound of bees in Blenheim’s grass by its magnificent lake. It’s like chanting hymns with that rather plain daughter of his – but more enjoyable. In church he has to be careful what he’s thinking, just in case God can read his thoughts. We wouldn’t have Him read our thoughts, now would we?

  Soon he’ll be able to see Perdita’s fantastic face again.

  “Cherry ripe, Cherry ripe, Ripe I cry…”

  Walter plans ahead.

  He’ll gently touch Perdita’s shoulder as he gallantly escorts her and Eleanor to the Cadena Café, making sure he walks between the two young ladies at all times.

  “Full and fair ones…”

  Watch her lips curl around her coffee cup.

  “Come and buy…”

  While talking mostly to his darling daughter about her week.

  Fuller’s walnut cake. He must remember to ask for Fuller’s walnut cake. Walter makes a mental note. And buy something for Anne. Something. Anything… I mean, what on earth do you buy for a woman who already has everything and spends most of her time playing bridge with her stupid overweight friends?

  A driver in another car honks at Walter as they pass each other at the bottom of the Woodstock Road. Walter honks back. That’s old thingy, whatsisname, right! One of the porters from Balliol. Great chap, always ready for a pint at the end of a long and most rewarding day. Having one’s tongue down a young girl’s throat is very thirsty work. Remember that time when…

  Walter chortles. He slaps his thigh with a gloved hand. That was a good day! And this glorious Saturday might just turn out to be its match!

  Walter parks his Morris in Beaumont Street. He checks his watch. He’s early. He has a spare half hour. With a nimble hop, skip and jump, he flits across Wellington Square, doffing his splendid new hat here, there and everywhere. Even the blackbirds envy him. When he reaches Little Clarendon Street, instead of turning right he spins to the left. He decides to do something he very rarely does because it brings back painful memories. He’ll cross Walton Street into Walton Crescent and dart past the house he once shared with Moira.

  Sometimes, in such spare half hours, Walter broods on his past lovers, wondering why it is that in the fifty years of his life he has had encounters with so many different women. The house he shared with Moira – Walter zooms past it, glancing in its windows – looks much the same. God, they had some happy times there! He remembers pushing Felix’s perambulator in and out of the narrow front door, dancing the child in his arms as their first Christmas tree sparkled down on them. He remembers the first time Moira came to his bed, her hair loose and flowing, her gratitude, the smoothness of her skin. Then he remembers raging in and out of the house, black with jealousy, when he first spotted Moira with Pierre Tessier. He’d been perfectly right to haul his family off to St Ives, for their own protection. Walter bites his lip as he walks up the road again.

  Of course, he regrets what happened in Cornwall. Sometimes he’s overcome by a tidal wave of guilt and remorse – and a longing to see Moira again that cuts deep into his heart. If he had his time there again, he’d never have behaved like that. It had all been Moira’s fault. Look how hard he’d fought to keep their small family together!

  And then there’d been Lillian… What an amazing stroke of luck to have found her that evening in London. Walter had thought that, after Moira, there’d never be another woman in his life. He couldn’t take the pain of it, the desperation of loving another human being so much. But Lillian had swept him off his feet. She’d decided within an hour of their meeting that she wanted him in her bed, and the next morning she’d asked him to move into her studio in St John’s Wood, so he’d never be lonely again.

  Walter had jumped at the chance. He hated living alone, he pined for Felix. He’d never known such a confident, voluptuous woman. Lillian adored sitting for him in the nude. She’d sculpted his head and shoulders in bronze as he posed for her. He’d been astonished and impressed by the result. When she asked him to marry her, Walter had thrown caution to the wind and agreed. How could he put his life on hold for a lover who’d vanished into a Cornish storm and might never return?

  And then, just when Walter had settled into blissful married life, adamant he’d never need another lover, Lillian had died on him, had sickened and vanished from his life within the terrifying space of a single week. Walter brushes tears from his eyes at the memory. Who could blame him for behaving as he does after being hammered to the ground by such unbelievable bad luck?

  Walter continues to justify his life to himself as he dances up to the portals of Somerville. Life as a widower had been impossible. Meeting Anne in Blenheim… Walter knew she’d be a safe, conservative, devoted wife. Much too unadventurous in bed for his liking, especially after Lillian, but there were other ways he could swiftly quench his voracious appetite…

  “Daddy!” Eleanor chirps with delight. “Right on time, as always!”

  “My darling girl!” Walter gives Eleanor a fatherly hug. Over her shoulder his eyes meet Perdita’s. “I have such plans for us… First we’ll have delicious coffee and cake at the Cadena. Then we’ll do some shopping. I need to buy your adorable mother some fur-lined gloves… Then we’ll have a spot of luncheon.”

  Again, his eyes meet Perdita’s.

  “And then,” he says, “I thought we could go to the picture house on Walton Street to see one of those ravishing musicals… I think they’re showing Top Hat with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. How does that sound?”

  “Perfect, Daddy darling,” Eleanor says. “Absolutely perfect, as always.” She turns to her new best friend. “Isn’t he the best father in the whole wide world?”

  Perdita’s gloved hand sends a frisson of delight up Walter’s arm. “I’m sure he is,” she says. “But he’ll have to prove it, won’t he?”

  As the day bubbles along, Walter becomes bolder and more flirtatious. Eleanor – how divinely naïve his daughter is – notices absolutely nothing, Walter makes sure of that. If he winks at Perdita, it’s behind Eleanor’s back. If his hand brushes Perdita’s, Eleanor, walking the other side, can’t possibly see it. When he pulls out a chair for Perdita to sit on, Eleanor assumes he’s acting like a proper gentleman, not admiring the curve of Perdita’s waist and bottom.

  Walter’s real opportunity comes when they’re sitting in the back row of the picture house. Just before the Pathé News, Eleanor slips away to powder her nose.

  Walter seizes his chance. “Let me take you out for a champagne supper,” he whispers in Perdita’s ear. “Meet me tonight on the corner of Walton Crescent at half-past nine. It’ll be dark by then. Nobody will spot us if we’re careful.”

  Her lips hardly moving, Perdita murmurs, “An invitation I can’t possibly refuse, Mr Drummond… I’ll be there.”

  “Excellent.” Walter’s heart thrums with excitement.

  “And what should I wear for this grand occasion?”

  Walter’s fingers daringly brush Perdita’s thigh.
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  “As little as possible,” he says.

  Bonfire Night

  Oxford, 5 November 1935

  It seems as if the whole of Oxford is on fire.

  Every back garden boasts its own funeral pyre. Small boys race up and down their street, trundling small carts behind them. Their small bonfire-night guys may be roughly made but they are readily identifiable. Royalty and academia feature the most.

  Behind her elegant desk lamp overlooking the quiet courtyard, Helen Darbishire, the principal of Somerville College, works on. She never quite gets to the end of those papers she must sign. In order to give them her unique inky signature, she has to read them first, but when she’s tired her mind wanders to Wordsworth’s “bliss of solitude” and she has to start all over again. And then there are the letters she must write, the endless, diplomatic, carefully worded letters. You never know who else might read them.

  And the decisions she has to make! All those ghastly decisions!

  A volume of Wordsworth’s poems sits at her elbow. Through thick and thin, his poems guide her, steer, cheer and save her intellectual life. They’re her only real escape from being a principal. Where would she be without them?

  But as usual she’s not allowed to open her much-thumbed volume until a tiny voice in her head says, “You’ve had quite enough for one night… Demain, c’est un autre jour.”

  ***

  There’s a tap at the door.

  Helen Darbishire immediately knows whose knuckles that tap belongs to.

  “Come!”

  The door opens. The man is tall, thickset, comforting. Her Head Porter.

  “Scroggs!” With great relief, the principal lays down her black Parker pen. Give the thing a rest, for heaven’s sake. How many miles does it motor every day?