The Queen of the Tambourine Read online

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 1991 by Jane Gardam

  First publication 2007 by Europa Editions

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco

  www.mekkanografici.com

  ISBN 978-1-60945-037-3

  Jane Gardam

  THE QUEEN OF THE TAMBOURINE

  For Rhododendria

  For she’s the Queen

  Of the Tambourine

  The Cymbals and the Bones

  Music Hall Song

  7 February

  Dear Joan,

  I do hope I know you well enough to say this.

  I think you ought to try to forget about your leg. I believe that it is something psychological, psychosomatic, and it is very hard on Charles. It is bringing both him and you into ridicule and spoiling your lives.

  Do make a big try. Won’t you! Forget about your bodily aches and pains. Life is a wonderful thing, Joan. I have discovered this great fact in my work with the Dying.

  Your sincere friend,

  Eliza (Peabody)

  Feb 17th

  Dear Joan,

  I wrote you a quick little note last week and wonder if it went astray? I know that you and I have not known each other for very long and have been neighbours for a very few years, but somehow I feel I know you very closely. Perhaps it is because we first met in Church. I remember the sudden appearance of this new yet somehow rather familiar woman sitting in the side aisle, your glassy, slightly hostile look. You seemed suddenly to have materialised there by some accident of the light. I remember that you did not kneel or bow your head. And when you were asked at the Church door whether you would like to join something or do the flowers, a look came into your eyes, and I have never seen you in Church again.

  In my note I perhaps presumed on a friendship that was not quite as strong as I had imagined, and spoke perhaps peremptorily about your leg? Please forgive me if I have said too much, but I do hate to see Charles looking so low. A man whose wife has an undiagnosable leg at scarcely fifty is liable to be a “figure of fun.”

  Why not come over and see me? I’m busy with marmalade and have found a clever ruse for dealing with the pith that might interest you. It makes the marmalade wonderfully translucent.

  Your sincere friend,

  Eliza

  March 6th

  Dear Joan,

  It is now more than a fortnight since I dropped you a little note about your leg and I know that you have that dog that eats letters and just wondered if it and my second little message had gone astray? Nobody seems to have seen you lately, or even Charles, and the windows at thirty-four seem all to be shut. I asked Henry to go and investigate the lights when he went lamp-posting round the block last night with Toby, and he said there were definitely lights there, but they may I suppose have been only phased lights. Perhaps you have all gone unexpectedly away?

  If you did not get my notes, they were just to say how sorry I am about your leg that never seems to get any better even after all the consultations you have had. I know the sadness when consultations come to nothing, through my work with the Dying. But, as I tell them, these things can be psychosomatic, even at the eleventh hour, and can sometimes easily be talked out either with a professional, often on the National Health—though I’m sure that Charles would never stint—or with somebody caring, like myself.

  I would be more than ready to do this. Charles once said that at Oxford you were quite a pretty girl, and we all hate seeing you so sick—whether it is in mind or body.

  Do answer this. Henry is taking it on the lamp-post run now.

  Your affec friend,

  Eliza

  March 20th

  Dear Joan,

  I have just seen Charles going off down the hill to work and he is looking very haggard. I have tried to telephone you, but there is no reply. This makes me think that perhaps you are ill, and I am only too ready to do whatever I can, except on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday mornings when I am busy with the Dying, and Wednesday afternoon which is Wives’ Fellowship. No hope of seeing you there, as you once made very clear indeed!! In fact the second time we met you told me, with your splendid, incisive clarity, your views on the dear old “Wives.” You would not listen when I told you that our friendly meetings are not really only for the wives of professional men, but for all of us without nine-to-five professions who believe that woman’s ministry is in the home, in God and marriage and “soldiering on”—which of course you do. Everyone has always said you are a terrific “stayer.” Your garden is weedless and your dog so beautifully clean—as is your car. And you’re a wonderful friend and neighbour, and, of course, mother, which is a mysterious area for me.

  I have prayed about your leg, Joan, and hope that if you received my first note it did not upset you. I’m afraid I’m very forthright. At the “Wives” they say I’m “fifth-right”—you see, there are some witty people there—and I do call a spade a spade. I do this even at The Hospice for the Dying. Be sure I shan’t mind a bit, Joan, if you go for me for what I said. The patients often go for me. One of them said the other day, “Any more spades and I’ll send for Sister Phyllida.” But I can take anything, Joan, anything you like to say, for the love of Our Lord who endured all things for us.

  And please understand that I don’t rule out that your leg may be hurting. Psychosomatic illnesses are often painful. I know this only from hearsay, of course, never having had such an illness myself, in fact I have never had an illness in my life, but I pray that this may in no way harm my credibility (in the jargon of the Age) or the affection I have always had for my sick friends, of whom, Joan, I count you one. Your absence these last weeks has really upset me. I think of it all the time. It has made me all the more eager and affectionately determined to help you.

  Your loving friend, E

  PS Anne Robin told me yesterday that she saw you in the distance at the Army and Navy Stores the other day, so I know that at any rate you are on your feet. Henry has promised me that he will ring Charles at the Treasury today, as you have no answering-machine at thirty-four and there is no reply to any call or knock. We want you both to come here to dinner. Do come and don’t be upset by me. I have been wondering actually if you would like to come along and do some work with the Dying? I’m sure Mother Ambrosine would accept you, if perhaps you could disguise the leg-iron with trousers or a long skirt.

  Or a drink one lunchtime? Or lunch at the Little Greek?

  Affec, E

  April 1st

  Dear Joan,

  I am sending this letter to the first of the addresses on the list you left for poor Charles to find on the hall table of thirty-four, it seems many weeks ago. We managed to contact Charles at last only yesterday—quite a month after you left him. I have lain awake all night, worrying and praying and asking forgiveness just in case my little note had anything to do with your disappearance. I can’t believe that it could have done. It was only a gesture, tossed out in good faith from one friend to another. I am apt to write without reflection, believing in the Will of God.

  It was very hard to discover anything from Charles when we finally got him over here and sat him down to dinner—with which he merely played. He has lost weight, is thinner than ever, and I am sure has been eating only frozen, and, so it appears, have the children. I did not say in my earlier notes, Joan, that Simon and
Sarah have been going up and down the road looking scruffy in the extreme, not ethnic or bleached or oddly barbered, as would be natural, but scruffy. They come home from school eating things out of bags, in the Road, and carry cartons with straws sticking out. They throw the cartons in hedges.

  Charles is frantic, Joan. At least, to be perfectly honest, he is clearly frantic underneath. He is, I know, not somebody who shows his feelings easily. Or even at all. Only you, Joan, can know what he must be going through: first there has been the ridicule of you with that leg, going up and down with Sainsbury plastic bags because you could no longer drive the car. Then there was the humiliation of your leaving him. And leaving him, I understand, in the car! And, as he has at length told us, leaving him with a pair of good shoes on your feet, and without the leg-iron which he says he found lying in the bed. Like some totem. An evil joke. A malicious act.

  Of course I am naturally prey to mixed feelings about all this, because my note has in one sense done great good. You have flung away the leg-iron, Joan. This—though I did not go into it in my notes—is what I have prayed you would be able to do. I spent several sessions in prayer on the subject in Church and around the house. What I cannot understand, however, is how Our Lord took my point perfectly about the psychosomatosis of the leg but allowed you in the method of abandoning the leg-iron to hurt—to the very quick—dear old Charles.

  Poor, poor bewildered Charles. He tells us that you left the list of box-numbers and Consulate telephone numbers on the hall table alongside my first note and that there was laid across them some sort of metaphor: an ear of corn. I can’t think where you can possibly have found it at this time of year unless it was from the Gargerys’ rabbits; or what it meant. No message, he said, of any other kind, not even a kiss or a goodbye.

  Joan, I have to say this. I think that you are ill. I know that the whole business began when I wrote to say that you were not, but at “Wives” today, when we were discussing it all, the general opinion is that you need HELP. After all, any woman must be sick who can leave that wonderful house, those two energetic children, all Charles’s money and dear, uncomplaining Charles himself. We have asked him to come and stay with us for a while and he has not actually refused. Is thinking about it. The children, he says, are quite capable of looking after themselves and never notice him, their A Levels being now so close. I can always run across with a quiche.

  And that is another thing, Joan. The A Levels. How could you leave Simon and Sarah so close to their A Levels? One thing I, childless though I am, know is that then is the moment the young need a Mother’s love. We live in competitive days.

  I am trying not to be angry with you, Joan. I am trying to put what you have done in context and see it in proportion to the big, the serious act of life, which is Death. I have talked about it to one of my patients at The Hospice, or rather, I talked about it and he watched me, opening one eye. He listened wisely. The Dying have much to teach us, Joan, particularly not to ask too much of life—this life. Turkey, Afghanistan, Nepal, China—all this was done by Victorian women, Joan. There is no need for us to follow the intrepid trail again. It is the interior, spiritual trail that the new and liberated woman has to work at now, and there is no need to go to the East for that. There are splendid meditation classes to be had in Woodlands Road. You are not seventeen, Joan.

  I put all this to Mother Ambrosine, but you know how cynical the truly good can often sound. Mother Ambrosine said, “You seem very taken up with this Joan and whatever it is she’s up to, Eliza,” and that is true. I am. I just so wish, Joan, that I knew why. Why and how you could ever leave an attractive, loving man like Charles after all the tranquil years.

  Affectionately, E

  May 10th

  Dear Joan,

  I am now writing to the Consulate in Prague, which is number three on your list, and, if you are there, by now I do hope you are managing to see the sights a little and take photographs. I believe that there are lovely puppet-theatres in Prague and they would make a good talk for the “Wives.” I wonder if you could possibly manage slides? I am writing in faith. I understand that Charles has had not one word from you and, when he comes to dinner, which is most evenings now, we all have a tacit agreement not to speak of you. I do speak to him about the children because they are almost present with us. We can hear the roar of their parties across the road, even while we are eating. He munches on. They continue far into the night.

  I am worried about Sarah. I met her in the street the other day and congratulated her on being made a prefect and all she said was, “Shitto, isn’t it?” I always say to her, and to Simon when I see him, “Any news?” but now Sarah only stares at me and poor Simon slopes off on that bike with the plastic radio on the handle-bars that bellows out Brahms.

  I have to tell you everything about S and S, Joan, Prague or no Prague. It is your duty to know. I seriously think that Simon has been taking drugs. He has that bright look, and there is something about the shoulder blades. Also—and I have mentioned this to Charles—I saw Sarah coming home very late the other night with a young man and she took him into the house with her. Certainly there was (after some time) music, and it was Mozart, but it was after one A.M.

  Joan, it is the Mother’s duty. How can you leave your children at this time in their lives? I shall write again to your next address on the same lines, though how long it will take to be delivered to Kurdistan I cannot think.

  Charles is spending a great deal of time with Henry now and I think that Henry is helping him a little. As you know, since Henry became a lay-reader he has had thoughts of entering the Church—after his retirement from the Foreign Service. As a beginning, he is learning counselling, and I believe that Charles reaps the benefit.

  Charles is eating well now, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know. He and Henry after dinner sit and talk a great deal to one another. They talk quietly and I sit at my tapestry.

  Joan, I sometimes wonder if you went off like that in the hope of making Charles jealous? Let me tell you that, if so, it was a false hope. Watching him, as he sang in the Church choir last week his long, ascetic face, his great nose, his gentle glasses—I can assure you he will never look at another woman.

  If he were the type for that—I may as well say it straight out, as I always do—if he were, as would be natural in a healthy man of his age, to turn elsewhere for comfort, he would surely turn to me. I do tend to captivate men because of my looks. This is not conceit but fact. I tend to get on with men very well. Henry used to say I had an unfair start—“Flat chest, long legs, black eyes, red hair.”

  Initially at any rate I get on with them. When she presents me for the first time to the Dying, Mother Ambrosine says, “Don’t talk Eliza. Just let them look.” This is sometimes a sadness. My looks are something of a burden even now at fifty. They are something I have never been able to put to use. Henry used to say that I should have been on the silent films or waving a hoop at the circus. This last is a quaint and imaginative thought.

  Anyway, Joan, Charles does not look in my direction. I believe that there has been no other woman in his life but you. He lives for the day of your return, and your explanation.

  He also knows, Joan, that you have not left him for another man—though I don’t believe the thought would have occurred to him at all if I had not asked. He trusts you so. Anne Robin said that in the Army and Navy Stores you were buying only a single tent and sleeping bag and making enquiries for only one defensive weapon. You were certainly travelling alone.

  I shall continue to write, Joan, feeling as I do rather responsible for you. I know that one day soon you will remember the real life of every day, and dear Charles. If you do get to Kurdistan, I believe there are carpets. I hope you’ll buy one. It would look lovely in the hall at thirty-four. It is a good idea, Henry and I always found in our years and years of travel, to bring something home for which the country is famous. This is a better memory than just to rely on what is in the head, or books that dwell on a
general aura of romance. Don’t for goodness sake drink the goats’ milk. That is something I do know about.

  Yrs, Eliza

  August 12th

  Dear Joan,

  I am sending this letter with the parcel you requested in your note, though, I may say, had the note not been in your handwriting, which I know from Christmas cards of yore, with “picture of bearer” attached, I would not have allowed said bearer over my doorstep. But I have not met a Kurd for many years.

  I must say he’s very good-looking. And very young. It is a pity he speaks so little English and that he arrived at an unfortunate moment. Charles, Simon and Sarah had all just walked in to tell us the great news that Sarah has won a place at St. Hilda’s at Oxford and Simon a musical award at Cambridge!! The young are odd now. When the Kurd walked in S and S were standing stolidly, Sarah pulling books out from the wall and dropping them on chairs, yawning, and Simon twanging his braces. Charles had brought some champagne and Henry had just poured it. Naturally we offered some to the Kurd, who downed a glass very quickly, took a flask of clear liquid from his pocket and dribbled it into glasses all round. He dribbled some out for the children too. Although they are of course strong teetotallers as a rule and Green as grass, they drank it and began to make arrangements with the Kurd for the rest of the evening, although I had hoped that everyone would be staying for dinner here and I had a couple of frozen cauliflour-crumbles going round at that moment in the mike.