The Queen of the Tambourine Read online

  There are in both Charles and Henry vast plains of silence and inscrutability and secrecy which I have always accepted that I must not question. In Henry’s job there are many things he has had to keep utterly to himself. It is his life apart from the job that I’ve just discovered enrages me: the traditional notion that his wife must accept that he should stand somewhat apart. Consciously apart. Not separate as we all are.

  I suppose I’ve given him a hard time. I seem unable to get things right. I jump in while the heavenly host hangs back in terror. I do it at The Hospice. Often I’ve expected the sack from there and I expect that is why I don’t have much to do with the very imminently Dying and rather more to do with the stacking of the dish-washers. Some of the Dying don’t mind me, though. Barry says, “D’you know what you are, Cock, you’re a cure.” I’d not be surprised if Barry recovered, if you want to know—though it is a secret not usually admitted even to myself.

  Joan, I do wonder where you are. I’d say that I wish that you would just walk in and we could talk, but if I’m totally truthful I don’t want you to do that. Writing to you has distanced you from me, and I cannot remember even what you look like now. I dreamed of that Kurd the other night and awoke crying. I wonder just what he meant to you, how many others there have been and how far you went with them? Did you go off simply looking for men? Was it only middle-aged lust? Oh, I don’t believe so. Was your flight menopausal? You always looked so bright and sensible, untroubled by the dark. Joan—instruct me.

  It is getting dark in Rathbone Road now. Best thing for me to do is to get off to The Hospice in case Barry’s gone, or something. It would be appropriate for the day. It would fit the Jobian spirit of things. But perhaps enough has happened for one Christmas afternoon.

  If you could write—?

  I’ll post this in the letter-box by the Little Greek when I go out with the dogs, though it won’t be collected for days, being Christmas-time. Joan, if you could write now, and tell me this and that. You’ll be in Dacca soon, my own old landscape. Perhaps I could even come out and join you for a bit? I’d be very happy to do that. I don’t feel awfully well these days.

  I hope that you are having a happy Christmas.

  Your friend, Eliza

  January?

  Dear Joan,

  The blackness of Christmas Day is now about a month ago and it is a very long space between letters. I have to ask myself, I suppose, just why it is that I continue to write. You were never really a friend. I knew from the moment I met you, and your irreproachable open face became wary, that you wanted to steer clear of my friendship. I sensed that in me you saw all that you must at almost any price avoid.

  How I envied you as I stood sometimes—often—at the window. You were always so busy, tearing about in your little car, your front door ever open, your house always full of people. Young, easygoing people. Long lunches, Garden parties for charity. So well-organised, yet so informal. The way you would take the dog for a walk every day at precisely 2.45 and be back at 3.30. Your clothes always so right, your hair like a girl’s. When you began to go grey you still looked young and sexy. And the way you laughed—laughed and called and waved as you jumped in the car six times a day and more. We all could hear your laugh all down Rathbone Road. We listened to your laugh—now it seems to me—uneasily.

  Then I suppose I witnessed, one by one, all the stages of your disillusion, though I did not at once recognise that this is what they were. I tried to be friendly but always was met by the bright, over-enthusiastic glance that stands as a rampart. Then a sidelong, resentful and, if you don’t mind my saying so, rather conceited glare. I did not like it, nor the way you began to lift part of your upper lip, so tired, so world-weary you had become. It was on the way to being a sneer. It was a sneer. I pitied the sneer and prayed for you.

  I suppose I was only observing in you what was to be seen less dramatically in many women of our age in Rathbone Road: boredom, ennui, knowledge. The rich, middle-class, educated Englishwoman, tired at last by the rigours of mid-stream life, looking in the glass in the morning and seeing the face of a middle-aged woman look back. And unable to greet her.

  The only one I can totally exclude from all this is Marjorie Gargery who is so fortunate in her tenacious absorption in her children’s examination results. Having had a “long family” Marjorie is safe for many years. Sam, if you remember, is still only five, and the four girls still at school. Hepzibah, being so clever, will supply Marjorie with interest and anguish through several post-graduate degrees, right up to the excitement of whether or not she will make Professor. Gladiola is a fecund child who will have many clever children and Marjorie can guide their progress with luck until her death. The great mysteries of puberty are to come for these girls yet of course. They may all go off examinations. I thought that Emma was looking distinctly odd the other day. She was mumbling about the National Front. And Grizel is getting very thick with her sports mistress.

  There has been a loosening of behaviour in Rathbone Road since you left, Joan. I do not mean an excess of immorality. I mean that we talk to one another rather more. The result of your flight has been a divided Road. There are those who have become more reflective, others more showy. Anne Robin has taken to wearing a huge long rounded garment rather like an aubergine or a Sultana’s maternity dress. It covers her whole body, which is not at all a bad thing. Others have become even more set in their old mould, especially the women over fifty, the Memsahibs, the “Senior Wives.” I met two of these last week at an SW sherry party and the talk turned again to you. I said that you were very much missed and Lady Gant said she hoped that you were happy, she was sure, wherever you had gone, but somehow she doubted it and “that is all I have to say.” I said to Anne Robin, “So they have spoken,” and Anne said, “Some of us have shown our teeth.” She stroked the front of her bell-shaped gown and said, “There’s a code we still don’t break here.”

  Why, Joan, do women bare their teeth at women who have moved off from their husbands? Lady O could not stand Charles. I’m sorry, but you probably know. Something about when he made a pass at her at a Gargery barbecue. Oh no—couldn’t be. She’d have rather liked it.

  I was very fond of Charles once, you know. Some months ago I thought I was in love with him and was in a panic about it. Part of it was excitement that the old stirrings were not dead, part horror that all might start up again. I wrote to you. A silly letter. Did I post it? Some I have, some I have not. None has been returned to me as none has been answered.

  Living alone now, that is to say alone but for the two dogs, for Charles never suggested he take yours with him to Dolphin Square nor did Henry consider taking Toby, living alone I am having every opportunity to study not only the progress of my emotions but the nature of emotion itself. I have not done anything of the sort since my two short years at Oxford when I read some Moral Theory. I had thought it long long forgotten.

  But a little must have stuck, for every morning now as I wake I find that I can slip easily into an analysis of my moral principles and my “heart.” And with the fading out of sex these past three years I am able to observe and record myself and the emotions of those about me with a delighted clarity—even, I fear, with some conceit, for I know myself at certain moments to be both detached and wise, rather as if I were the only sober person at a drunken party.

  Or at least that is what I was saying to myself, Joan, from September to Christmas Day and all through that dreadful black and white afternoon when the snowy lumps fell off the trees, splat, splut, fouling the humps of the grave-like flower beds. A nightmare afternoon. Once, I remember, I saw a black stone on the rockery begin to move. It came steadily forward over the whitened grass. It was the next-door tortoise, come up for air on a midwinter day. The day Charles and Henry went away together.

  My detachment lasted through that afternoon even so, and all through my letter to you. The house was warm, the fire was bright, the dogs for once were both asleep, and there was enough
food in the house for me not to have to shop for weeks. There would be no more shirts to wash and iron, no more darning of socks—dead black fish with holes for a face (I am the last woman in Europe with a darning needle), no more answering of invitations to things to which I am not invited, no more being secretary, keeper of diaries, payer of bills, chatelaine.

  Paying bills? I did just think somewhat about that. I will pray about it, I thought, and as soon as the banks are open again I will draw out everything from the joint account.

  As I reached the end of my letter, and more or less asked you if I could come out to Dacca to join you there, I found that my eyes had turned to the wall beside the fireplace where hangs the portrait of Henry’s ancestor, painted by the pupil of Gainsborough, and into my mind came the thought, “twenty thousand pounds.” These were the words that Barry had uttered. He had asked me where I lived, about my house, how it is decorated, what is in it. When I got to the portrait he said, “If it’s the pupil of Gainsborough I’ve heard about, it’s worth twenty thousand pounds. I could get you that from a man in Epsom.” There’s gypsy blood in Barry—horses, cars, antiques.

  I looked at the face. Just like Henry’s. Narrow like a goat. I walked across to the picture, took it from the wall and peered at it to see if there was a signature. I turned it back to front and felt the splintery, cracked wood across the back. I turned it round again and tried to look into Henry’s eyes. I made the discovery, Joan, that Peabody eyes are not the sort you can look into. Black—currants. I propped the picture on the desk and thought of Epsom.

  The telephone rang. I was slow to answer. Before I answered I turned the picture round. “Hullo?”

  “Thomas Hopkin.”

  “No, it’s Eliza Peabody.”

  “I’m Tom Hopkin.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “That is so.”

  “I’m down the road in a call-box. Just wondered if I might catch you.” I decided, Joan, that this must be some sort of intricate private detective hired by Henry. Then I thought, what could there be to detect? Unless Henry has left me out of some paranoid and uncommunicated jealousy. Of what? Of whom? Barry is not even likely to have ever crossed Henry’s mind and is dying of AIDS.

  Barry, to Henry, would be an unknown entity. “The Common Man.” He would say of course—and believe—that Jesus loves Barry, which would let him, Henry, out. And fancy, I thought, a private detective working on Christmas Day!

  All my life I have felt events to be the result of my own sins. “I have done nothing wrong,” I said aloud. “It is Henry who has left me.”

  Silence. I was about to put down the telephone when it occurred to me: This is not a private detective. It is a burglar. He is probably trying all the numbers in the Street to find who is in and who is out. Christmas Day is the burglars’ birthday. He has found that I am in, and that I am alone.

  “There are a great many people here,” I said, “I am giving a party. I’m afraid I can’t talk any more and I must feed my bull-terriers.”

  “I only wanted to drop in some presents,” said Tom Hopkin. “They are from Joan. I have just flown in. Would it be convenient?”

  Well, Joan. Of course I said yes.

  Then I realised what a very silly position I had landed myself in, solitary in the house. I wondered if I might in some way create the atmosphere of a jolly crowd, perhaps a sleepy, post-prandial murmur. I turned up the television very loud and also a cassette recorder and made it play a cheerful medley. The Requiems I laid aside. I shut the kitchen door so that the dogs could be heard but not seen.

  Predictably, when the bell rang they both set up a furious barking and Tom Hopkin, when he stepped in, was met by a considerable impression of suburban Christmas life.

  He stood on the mat, his arms full of parcels. Snowflakes stuck in splashes on his floppy hair and loose splats stuck to his big glasses. “Tom Hopkin,” he said, “British Council. Bangladesh, but that is not the bark of bull-terriers.” He went to the kitchen door and let them both leap at him. “Jack Russell,” he said to Toby, “shut up. Poodle, let go my leg.”

  “I’m afraid he won’t. He’s not a bull-terrier but he has bullterrier pretensions. Please keep the parcels from him. He eats paper. He’s Joan’s. I think he is one of her reasons for going to Bangladesh. Oh dear, we’ll never get him back in his basket.” I had to shriek these words.

  “Basket,” commanded this man, kicking out, and Toby went and hid under the kitchen table and your dog snarled uncertainly and slunk off and sat with his back to the audience under the stairs. “I said BASKET,” roared your friend. Both dogs made for these with hung heads. They sat tense, with upward-rolling eyes, curious and yet accepting. Tom Hopkin shut the door on them and we walked into the sitting room while I watched the snow melting all over him and his glasses clear, like a robot weeping. Eyes that were not at peace.

  “Could you,” he asked, “turn a few things off?”

  “Off?”

  “The noise.”

  I did. Television. Tape-deck.

  “Radio?” he asked.

  I did.

  “Was that the party?”

  “Well, yes. I thought you might be an intruder.”

  “Ah.”

  “You see, Joan has obviously changed. We don’t know much about her now. The last friend who came, a Kurd, got very drunk. He wore a green dress.”

  “Oh, Tacky,” he said.

  “I’ve no idea. It’s possible.”

  “Good deal of hair?”

  “Oh, well, yes,” I said and he said, “How prettily you blush in the firelight. I do hate to ask, but is there anything to eat? I’ve not eaten since yesterday.”

  “It’s Christmas Day—nothing to eat?”

  “I’ve been on a plane. I don’t eat on planes. I fast. I sip water.”

  “Do you—eat ordinary food? There’s turkey and everything. And plum pudding and mince-pies.”

  I went to the kitchen where the dogs gave me puzzled glances, but stayed put. I prepared a feast. I said, “It will take a few minutes to warm up the plum-pudding,” and he came to the kitchen door and said, “Plum pudding. What a beautiful Victorian memory. “Christmas was once every day. Gastronomically. You are an old-fashioned girl. D’you think, as it heats up, I might take a bath?”

  He was sopped through, I now noticed. I could hardly say no. Indeed, before I could say anything he was off up the stairs and there was a roaring of taps.

  I followed and said, “Here’s a towel,” and his bare arm came round the door for it. “Hang on,” he said. “Could you be sublime?” and passed out all his clothes. All of them. Socks. Y-fronts. Shoes. “Could you just drape them round the stove?”

  “And what will you wear?”

  Silence.

  “Would you like some of Henry’s?”

  “Would it be possible? A dressing-gown would do. Until mine are dry.”

  “Yes. All right. Henry’s dressing room’s on the left,” and, downstairs, arranging brandy-butter in a fresh glass dish, I called up, “Take anything. He has packed all he needs,” and poured myself a huge glass of wine, using the goblet vase which I usually put tall flowers in, and which stands on the kitchen sill. We had taken not one sip of wine at Christmas dinner. Henry and Charles had now and then lifted their glasses, wetted their top lips and dolefully dabbed at their mouths with sacramental slowness. I had drunk nothing.

  I refilled the vase.

  “On our knees would be nice,” said Tom Hopkin, your friend, suddenly appearing, and I spun round and shrieked, for he was wearing full evening dress. Black tie and rose-coloured smoking jacket and Henry’s favourite evening shoes. His face was rose-coloured, too. His hair silky, blond and clean. “What-ho,” he said twirling Henry’s monocle on a chain. “We don’t do much of this in Bangladesh.”

  I said, “On our knees?” The curate’s anxious face sprang to mind. “Are you a parson?”

  “A parson? I’m the Bri
tish Council. I meant the supper. Could we have our supper on our knees?”

  I waved the glass dish about.

  “Supper,” he said. “Here—out of the way—I’ll finish it. Go and put a dress on. A nice one. Take a glass of wine with you,” and he topped up the vase.

  So I went upstairs and changed into the gold dress and gulped down the wine and stood looking at myself. I burrowed around for lipstick and after I had put some on I took it off again. Lipstick is ageing. I poured scent on myself. Then I put up my hair.

  Then I took it down.

  Two trays of turkey. A new bottle open by the fire. Your friend observed me through Henry’s eye-glass. “She sent some earrings to go with that,” he said. “Catch.”

  I opened the earring parcel, Joan, and said, “But they must weigh ten tons.” Then I screwed them in and found that they weighed feathers. I said, “They’re like the Fair on the Common. They’re like tambourines. They tickle my shoulders,” and found that silence had fallen in the room and Henry’s monocle shone with a steady gleam. “Lucky earrings,” said he. “Pouilly-fuissé? What shall we play on the tape-deck?”

  “Most of them are Requiems. I don’t think I want any music.”

  “I certainly don’t want Requiems. Are you quite comfortable?”

  “Oh yes, very.”

  “And I see that you were hungry.”

  I looked down and saw that I’d eaten all my turkey, cold roast potatoes, bread-sauce, two kinds of stuffing and a green salad, my glass was empty and there didn’t seem to be much pouilly-fuissé left in the bottle. I thought: Eliza take care, why was he asking if you were comfortable? And I tried to gather myself together to say something safe and hostess-like, such as: “Well, I am glad you—decided to telephone and how is Joan?” But all that came out was a sigh, and I lay back and wished.