Bilgewater Read online

  The study grew yet tidier; bleaker and bleaker. The chess set was removed first from the fireside stool to the desk, then, when she set to work tidying the desk, elevated to the bookcase. When it was noticed to be on a tilt there, by father, Miss Bex decided to put it sensibly away in a cupboard, and father made no demur at any of this. His shoe-supply disappeared from under his desk, his bottles of rosé from his side desk shelf. Only the Botticelli gleamed at her still with its demon-cold, cruel, Spring, Grace Gathering eyes.

  “It’s a terrible thing to say,” said Bex, the Sunday evening, “but I’ve never felt I really liked that painting much. I could never live with it. It makes me—slighdy frightened. More shortbread?”

  “I must go now, Miss Bex.”

  “Now that you are an Old Girl, Marigold, can’t you call me Ursula?”

  And I spent my time not doing things. I set out to see Mrs. Rose. I got a sort of obsession about Mrs. Rose. I wanted to tell her about the beads in the pot and say how lovely the food had been; that I was so terribly sorry about Jack going off with Mrs. Gathering. I got to the door of the Dentistry in the bus, and then let the bus pass by and ended up somewhere in Billingham in a maze of dingy houses and walked there for hours and then went home. On the Sunday I decided to go and see Mr. Boakes and set off again in the same old bus. I got to the church in time, but the sight of the white-haired ladies, all helping each other in, and the dismal clank of the bell pulled by Mr. Boakes’s little woollen paws filled me with tremendous gloom and I passed by and looked in shop windows, Sunday-locked shops, examining samples of wall-to-wall carpet and imitation leather sofas. Then I went back home again and found I’d missed lunch. On Monday I went over to the Comprehensive, skirted the buildings and stood on the cliff top where the hay-cocks had been and Grace so all-powerful and quiet, holding her wet nails to the ocean. There was nothing there but the loop of wire swinging in the cold wind.

  On the Tuesday I went by train to Durham and it rained. The cathedral was cold and draughty and crowded. Children cried and shouted. One—inside in the main aisle—was sucking an ice-cream. In the Galilee Chapel, the tomb of the Venerable Bede looked dark and dreary—a block of stone covering nothing. The tea shop was shut. A card on the door said Closed for Alterations. There were signs of builders there, a bar being built, a counter for plastic trays.

  On the Wednesday—the last day for a telegram from Cambridge if either Boakes or I were to be worthy of inspection (for at Oxbridge, you are only told if you are wanted. If they don’t want to see you, you hear nothing)—on the Wednesday I decided that I would go to Terrapin’s.

  There was a piercing, cold wind and sleety rain and I got out of the bus, this time in daylight at his broken-down and noble gateway and stood looking up the drive. It was shorter than it had seemed in the dark. You could see from the gate where it curved round to the terrace. The tall swaying trees were only moth-eaten pines. There was a heap of rubbish beside the lodge, which had boarded up windows and pieces of wood nailed across the door. I could not see the Hall, not even its tower, and I stood about on the windy empty road and caught the next bus home.

  Boakes was in his room when I got back, reading away about the Perpendicular and Decorated, eating a thick piece of Dundee cake. His glasses were crooked. He looked silly and plain. I said, “I suppose no post came?”

  “No.”

  “We haven’t got in then.”

  “It seems not.” He smiled imperturbably. “Come and have some tea.”

  I wandered away downstairs and to the study and found, as usual, Bex sitting on the sofa very close to father and looking appealingly or so she thought into his face. He wasn’t actually looking back, but there was something about him that was new. It was a sort of—what? A sort of renunciation, a relinquishing, a giving up. The fingernails were slipping from the precipice, the towel was being handed over—as I watched he began slowly to unravel his muffler. He gave it her and she tenderly patted it away, and I knew what I had been running away from all week and much longer—since I had come back from Jack Rose’s, since Bex had installed herself each tea-time, since well OF COURSE—since Paula had gone away. “She’s got him,” I thought. That’s why Paula left. “He’s had it. And so have I.”

  “There was nothing from Cambridge?” I had to say something and it just came into my head. Nothing on earth would normally have made me show to Bex that I cared. It was just that I had to speak, to break the spell between them, and this came cut.

  She looked across at me and gleamed with her teeth and said in a horrible, falsely gentle way, “I’m afraid not, dear.”

  “Was there, father?”

  He was fluttered and fussed. “Um—no, dear. No.”

  “Shall I go?”

  “Go?” he said.

  “You seemed busy.”

  “No, no. Of course not.”

  “Perhaps she could just see about Boakes being in? Couldn’t she William? Just see that he can take charge while we’re out?”

  “Out?”

  “Yes dear—your father is coming for a little quiet supper with me. Now that all the exams are over and term ending, there is no real need for him to be in the House.”

  “I do know that,” I said. “I’ve lived here for some time.”

  “Marigold,” said father, “you’re being rude.”

  “Are you really going out?” I said.

  “Well—er—um.”

  “Of course your father’s going out. My dear, your father doesn’t go out enough. It is quite ridiculous.”

  “But it’s Thursday.”

  “Whatever has that to do with it?”

  “He never goes out on Thursdays.”

  “Whyever not?”

  “Well, it’s his Thursday.”

  Father said, “My dear Miss Bex—Ursula—I’d quite forgotten. So it is.”

  “Whatever is all this about?”

  “My dear—I am so very sorry. I always have some very old friends here on Thursdays. Hastings—Benson, Coleman and—er—dear Old Price.”

  “But really,” she said, “this is ridiculous. How long has this been going on?”

  “Oh well—many years. Since we were all—”

  “But they are all years older than you!”

  “Yes. Of course. But you see nevertheless we are very old friends.”

  “And is Marigold in on this little festivity?”

  “Not exactly. Not for a while. Not since she was a baby. She always spends—spent—Thursdays with Paula. Oh dear,” he said but quite firmly, “I am afraid that this cannot be changed.”

  Miss Bex went dark red and began to tap her foot and then her hand. It might have heen a Hamlet lesson. “But I have prepared a sole,” she said. “I should have been told about this.”

  Father, with his most sweet and helpless smile said again, “I am so sorry.” And I felt a gleam of hope as Bex flushed darker yet.

  “I’ve never heard anything so stupid in my life,” she said. “You’re turning yourself into a fossil—living here, entertaining no one but a lot of old men—your House at sixes and sevens—your helpless daughter—the sooner your atrocious Headmaster and his family sacked the better—senile staff—place go Comprehensive—in Line with the Times. Your servants may walk out on you—this ‘Matron.’ I will not. Keep your Thursday if you must. I will stay for it.”

  “Oh Miss Bex,” I said, “No one ever stays for it. It is an all-male affair.”

  “What rubbish,” said Bex and put out both hands towards father. “Dear William! Dear Bill.” I saw him waver. I saw him hesitate. He is the most easily pleased of men. He blinked. I could hear him think, “She can’t really have said all those awful things. I dreamed it.” He took her hands.

  And I couldn’t bear it. I fled. I rushed out of the door with tears behind my glasses blinding me. There was nobody left now. Hea
d down I plunged at the front door and the winter dark, and bent down I plunged into Paula striding in from it towards me.

  “The Lord Ins Murzy, what’s happnin’?”

  “Oh, oh.”

  “My lover, what’s happnin’?”

  “Wherever have you been? Oh wherever have you been? I wrote a week ago. He’s getting married. He’s marrying Miss Bex. He hates her but she’s caught him. Mrs. Gathering’s gone off with Jack Rose and Terrapin’s gone off with Grace Gathering and Boakes and I haven’t got into Cambridge and we’ve had a measles and a flu epidemic and Easby nearly died. Why didn’t you get here quicker?”

  “I’d gone down to Uncle’s farm. The letter missed me. I only got back to Budmouth this morning.”

  “But it’s Father’s Thursday—and Bex is staying—”

  “Ho, she is, is she?” said Paula. “Well in just one minute we’ll see. Keep my taxi. Here—here’s two telegrams from Cambridge waiting as usual at the post office. Seems nobody cares if I don’t. Time immemorial they’ve been collected. Sittin’ there waitin’! One Boakes. One Green. Wait on. Old your ’osses.”—and she vanished with her great whoosh of hair into the study. I stood with the telegrams and in seconds Bex was out, with Paula alongside, blazing of eye.

  Bex went whirling by into the darkness, and I heard Paula’s taxi starting up and driving away.

  Paula came back. “Well, there now.”

  “Oh Paula! She’d asked him to supper. She’d prepared a sole.”

  “She should look to her own. Here. Quick while I ring Boakes.”

  In the study father stood and his face was so joyous and young I had to stop for a minute and just look at him. Paula sent for Boakes on the House phone, and as we waited for him she flew about, rushing at the fancy tea tray, reinstating the chess stool, exclaiming at piles of neat papers, flicking matily with her scarf at the Botticelli. “There now,” she said to Boakes. “Open them.”

  I realised that I was standing holding telegrams.

  “Left at the post office. Time out of mind. Always left for me to collect. First time I’m not here in seventeen years—forgotten! I always at least remembered to telephone through.”

  Father looked ashamed. “Paula,” he said, “we’ve been having a very terrible time. I’ve hardly been at home. Marigold has done splendidly—”

  “What has Marigold done?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “But I’ve not got an interview at Cambridge. I’ve got three. 9:30 and 11 A.M., 4:30 P.M.—day after tomorrow, signed Peace.”

  “So have I. Three interviews,” said Boakes, re-settling his glasses. “Signed ‘Master’.”

  “My dear, my dear,” said father, his face with its lovely smile. “You’re in, you’re in. If there are Further Interviews they are thinking—ah. Hum—in terms of an Award. A Scholarship. You too, Boakes.”

  “That’s nice,” said Boakes calmly as I burst into tears and Paula with a cry of triumph flung herself wildly into father’s arms.

  Uncle Edmund Hastings-Benson arrived at the same time and stood for a while bewildered. Puffy Coleman coming up alongside, holding a tin of Old Fashioned Peppermint Humbugs for Posy Robinson, let his mouth fall open and forgot to turn sideways. Faint snuffles could be heard beyond as Old Price negotiated the hallstand.

  “What’s this then, Boakes?” said Pen.

  “I think Marigold and I might get Scholarships to Cambridge.”

  “And,” said I, loud and clear, “Paula is going to marry father.”

  “And Miss—er—Bex?”

  “She’s eating Dover sole.”

  “A good fish,” said Old Price. “I remember how we missed it in the Boer War. Or was it the other one? That was a terrible business with Africa.”

  Boakes said he had to ring up his father. Uncle Pen said we would now open Posy’s parents’ champagne. Puffy said why should not he and Boakes’s father and Pen drive me and Boakes to Cambridge for our interviews tomorrow in Uncle Pen’s Rolls.

  But Boakes—said, No. Bilge and I, he said, would really rather prefer to be by ourselves. And to my great astonishment I found that I agreed to this, with a very particular sort of excitement.

  EPILOGUE

  The principal walked right down the stairs with the candidate and out of the front door with her. When the candidate looked slightly surprised, the Principal nodded at her just like anyone. “I’ll set you,” she said.

  “Oh—thank you.”

  “Do you still say ‘set you,’ ‘set you home,’ Miss Terrapin? I come from your bit of the world you know.”

  “Yes we do. Yes I did,” said Miss Terrapin.

  She and Lady Boakes walked across the courtyard, past a fountain. The coloured windows of a chapel hung against the dark. “What a strain these interviews are,” said Lady Boakes. “When I had mine I had just caught the flu and my husband—the young man who became my husband—was catching the measles.”

  “What awful luck.”

  “No it wasn’t.” Lady Boakes chuckled. “It was our own silly fault.”

  Miss Terrapin was at a loss.

  “I went to your school you know,” said the Principal.

  “Oh yes,” said Miss Terrapin. “You’re on the board—the Honours Board.” She put her head back and laughed and two young men passing stopped talking to look at her bright face and curious pink-gold hair. “I saw your name in letters of gold every morning in prayers. The top of the list.”

  “How ghastly,” said Bilgewater.

  “Have you never been back?” asked Miss Terrapin.

  The Principal had stopped to examine a fountain, which she must have been able to examine many times before. It was a very cold day. Miss Terrapin had a train to catch.

  “No. I don’t seem to have been back. My people moved to Dorset—my father had a chest. Then we have my old father-in-law here in Cambridge, and I have a very ancient Uncle here.”

  (She’s very chatty.)

  “We don’t go about much,” said the Principal, moving on again over the Quad. “Except abroad of course to see the buildings.”

  (Buildings? She’s nuts.)

  “With my husband.”

  (Lord yes of course. Buildings. Old Sir Edward Boakes. Architect-architectorum. Excellentissimus. Magnificissimus.)

  “There is an old Mrs. Rose I write to at Christmas—a friend of my mother. Retired dentist—”

  (Whatever next!)

  “Do you know her? Ironstoneside?”

  “Er—no.”

  “You still live—?” said the Principal.

  “At Marston Hall. My father—It’s a theatre.”

  “I’ve heard I think.”

  “Experimental.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes—well he’s a bit of a genius. And sometimes the experiments aren’t—well, all that successful.”

  “No.”

  “It’s a bit scruffy but it’s a lovely house. The new estates have reached all up round it now—right up to the terrace. But we’ve hung on somehow. Mother hated it.” (I’m babbling.)

  “Your mother—?”

  “Oh, she went off.”

  They stood under the archway of Caius and the Principal said how delighted she had been to meet Miss Terrapin. “You have your father’s cheekbones,” she said, “and your mother’s charm.” They shook hands once more, and both looked sensibly left and right before Miss Terrapin attempted to cross the foggy road.

  “Is the tower still there?” asked the Principal suddenly.

  “No. We took it down. At least the old creature who looks after us—him—made us. She said it would do for us, come down on us if we didn’t.”

  “She would.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Will you tell your father,” said Lady Boakes, chin down in her good fur coa
t like a small owl—“Will you say I’m sorry. About the tower.”

  “Funny woman,” thought the candidate. I wonder why father thought—? Can’t ever have been pretty. She looked hard at Lady Boakes’s face and thought it seemed saddish.

  “It had to come down,” she said kindly. “You see it really was getting unsafe.”

  “It was always unsafe.”

  Shall I tell her? thought Miss Terrapin. Can’t do any harm. I’m not coming here. I’ve decided. I don’t know when I decided but I have decided. I’m going to RADA—I’ll shack up with mother in the Earls Court Road.

  “Father was absolutely crazy about you,” she said and skipped across Trinity Street. Two cyclists seeing her bounce like a light into Market Square wobbled together in the mist and fell off.

  I’ve done it now all right, thought Terrapin’s daughter. Let’s hope I’ve got into RADA now! What a thing to say to Lady Boakes—first woman Principal of Caius and blaa and blaa! She turned and was even more unnerved to see the Principal still standing solemnly on the kerb. You can see she’s never done anything silly in her life, thought Miss Terrapin and growing sillier herself she gave a jaunty wave.

  Oh help! Oh worse and worse! she thought. I have jauntily waved!

  But Bilgewater, across the winter afternoon, waved back.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jane Gardam is the only writer to have been twice awarded the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel of the Year. She is winner of the David Higham Prize, the Royal Society for Literature’s Winifred Holtby Prize, the Katherine Mansfield Prize, and the Silver Pen Award from PEN. Her novels include God on the Rocks, shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Old Filth, finalist for the Orange Prize; The Man in the Wooden Hat, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Last Friends, finalist for the Folio Award. She lives in the south of England near the sea.