Part 18 (2/2)

'Dear, there is an ”h” in ”house”, you know.' Dorothy could bring out Bonny's blushes, hardly making an effort. When they went on holiday together, while Bonny fetched and carried for the older girl, Dorothy drew up a list of words that Bonny should take special care with. 'Our fork belongs on our plate, not in the air. I had a nanny who said that.'

When I dozed, the pain in my face sometimes dulled to a tightness and for the first time, probably, I tried to smile. The two girls were on holiday in Menton, and when Blane came into their lives he naturally took Dorothy out, leaving poor Bonny to mooch about on her own, since it wouldn't have been right for her to tag along. 'Of course I don't mind. Of course not.' She tried to keep her spirits up by eating ice-cream or going to look at the yachts.

I was aware of making no effort whatsoever. I controlled nothing. Faces and words and voices flowed over me. 'Such an unhappy thing!' Blane exclaimed. 'Such rotten luck!' Dorothy had developed appendicitis. An ambulance had come. 'You need a cognac,' Blane insisted. 'Or a Cointreau. No, Bonny, I absolutely insist. Poor girl, how wretched for you too!' Dorothy's holiday was a write-off. Every morning Blane called for Bonny in his Peugeot and drove her to the bedside of her friend, who usually had made a list of things she wanted. Afterwards Blane and Bonny lunched together in the Pet.i.t Es-cargot.

Three months ago Blane had inherited Mara Hall, a great house in its own park in Shrops.h.i.+re. But as soon as he had done so he left England, being fearful of the house even though he loved it.

'My mother died when I was one and a half. There was always just my father and myself.'

'No brothers or sisters, Blane?'

'No brothers or sisters.'

Bonny thought how lonely that must have been: a boy growing up in a great house with only his father and the servants for company. His father was severe, expecting a lot of his heir.

'I'm a coward, I dare say. I'd give the world to take everything in my stride. I'm running away. I know that, Bonny.'

'Was your father '

'My father did things perfectly. He was a strong man. He married the woman he loved and never looked at another. The servants and his tenants adored him.'

There was a head gardener at Mara Hall, and several under-gardeners. There was a butler and a cook and old retainers in the way of maids, all of whom had been there as long as Blane could remember. Once there'd been footmen, but that was ages ago.

Mara Hall was more vivid than the shadows of nurses whose speech I did not understand, and the odour of an-aesthetic: the lawns and the tea roses, the mellow brick of the house itself and of the kitchen-garden walls, the old ornamental ironwork. I felt as Bonny felt overawed with wonder. Bonny had not been abandoned in a bleak seaside town by a couple who rode a Wall of Death; but something like it was in Bonny's past, even if it did not come out in the story. I felt that strongly now; I never had before.

'It sounds so lovely, Blane. Your home.'

'Yes, it's lovely.'

They walked in the evenings on the promenade. He would marry Dorothy, Bonny thought, and take her to Mara Hall. Dorothy was capable as well as beautiful. Dorothy would gently lead him back to his responsibilities. He would become as strong as his father; he would do things as perfectly.

'Dear Bonny,' he said, in a tone that made her hold her breath. She could not speak. The sea was a sheet of gla.s.s, reflecting the tranquil azure of the sky. 'Dear Bonny,' he said again.

The doctors who attended me conferred. One spoke in English, smiling, telling me I had made progress, saying they were pleased.

'I'm glad you're pleased,' I replied.

'You have been courageous, signora,' the same doctor said. 'And patient, signora.'

They pa.s.sed on, both nodding a satisfied farewell at me. Blane took the modest creature's arm; she trembled at the touch because no man had ever taken Bonny Maye's arm before. No man had ever called her dear. She'd never known a heart's companion.

'Much better,' Dorothy said, but it was their last day in Menton. She'd left her dark gla.s.ses on her bedside table and Bonny went to fetch them. Blane drove her to Bordighera and Bonny miserably ate an ice-cream on the front. She wrote the postcards she should have written before, to the other girls in Toupe's Better Value Store. She'd be back before they received them.

Once only the story was interrupted by the ravenous features of Ernie Chubbs, his eyes seeking mine from the shadows of the Al Fresco Club, his fingers undoing my zips in the motel room. There was an old mangle in the motel room, and a tin bath in which kindling was kept. I knew all that was wrong. 'It wouldn't do to tell,' Ernie Chubbs said. 'Good girls don't tell, Emily.' That was wrong also. It wasn't Ernie who'd ever said good girls don't tell, and Ernie Chubbs hadn't been ravenous in that particular way.

The chill f.a.g-end of a nightmare, darkly colourless, something like a rat in a drawing-room, went as quickly as it had arrived, crushed out of existence by a warmer potency. 'Well, really!' Dorothy was a little cross when they returned from Bordighera. She lay down to rest and complained that the bedroom was too hot and then, when the window was opened, that the draught was uncomfortable. She wanted Vichy water but they brought her Evian. Impatiently she stubbed out a cigarette she had not yet placed between her lips.

'Bonny,' he said, leaning on the open door of the little Peugeot. 'Oh, Bonny, if I could only make you happy!'

He is the kindest person I have ever known, she thought. He knows I love him; he knows I have been unable to help myself. This is kindness now, to speak of my happiness when it is his and Dorothy's that is at stake. They have had a little tiff this afternoon, but soon they will make it up. Tonight he will ask Dorothy to marry him, and after tomorrow I shall never in my life see either of them again. Dorothy'll be too busy and too full of happiness ever to return to the table-tennis club. There'll be the wedding preparations and then the honeymoon and then the return to Mara Hall.

'Look, Bonny,' he said, and in the sunlight sapphires sparkled. He had snapped open a little box; the slender band of gold that held the jewels lay on a tiny cus.h.i.+on. 'I bought it for her,' he said, 'three days after we met.'

'It's beautiful.' The words choked out of her. Tears misted her vision. She tried to smile but could not.

'I have to tell you that, Bonny. I have to tell you I bought it for Dorothy.'

She nodded bleakly.

'I might have offered it to Dorothy this afternoon. I could not, Bonny.'

Again she nodded, not understanding, trying to pretend she did.

'I can only love you, Bonny. I know that, if I know nothing else in this world.'

'Me? Me? Me?'

'Yes. Oh yes, my dear.'

His face was smiling down at her bewilderment. His lips were parted. She heard herself saying she was nothing much, while knowing she should not say that. She heard him laugh.

'Oh, but of course you are, my dear. You are everything in this world to me. Darling, you are the sun and the stars, you are the scent of summer jasmine. Can you understand that?'

She flushed and looked away, thinking of Dorothy and feeling treacherous, and more confused than ever. She wanted to laugh and cry all at once.

'Darling Bonny, you have the lips of an angel.'

His own touched the lips he spoke of. The gentle pressure was like fire between them.

'Oh Blane, Blane,' she murmured.

'Say nothing, darling,' he whispered back, and in some secret moment the sapphire ring found her engagement finger.

I would like to have married and had children. But Ernie Chubbs, swearing to me that he took precautions, never did so. In my a.s.sociation with him I had no fewer than four abortions, the last of them in Idaho. I would not have children now, they told me then. 'Sorry, girlie,' Ernie Chubbs said. 'Fancy a chilli con carne sent up?'

Crimson spread on denim. A hand that was crimson also bounced back from the ceiling, dangled for an instant in the air, fingers splayed. A screeching of terror was different from the screams of pain. Even while it was happening you could hear the difference.

'Twenty pound,' Mrs Trice said. 'That's what he give. He likes a child, Mr Trice does. He got the dog for nothing.' Rough type of people she said, to profit from a baby. 'You b.l.o.o.d.y give it back,' I said to him, 'but they was gone by then. Fifty they ask, twenty he give.' Rum and Coca-Cola, Ernie asked for in the Al Fresco, a fiver a time. 'Easy money,' Mrs Trice said, lifting a slice of Dundee to her lips. 'Travelling people's always after easy money.'

'Lightning,' I said myself. 'The train was struck by lightning.'

The strength of the drugs was daily reduced; tranquillity receded little by little. At 21 Prince Albert Street I stirred milk in a saucepan, and Mrs Trice was furious because the milk burnt and milk cannot burn, apparently, while it is stirred. It was in the back-yard shed at 21 Prince Albert Street that the mangle was, and the kindling in the bath. It was in the back-yard shed that the man I took to be my father wept and said we mustn't tell, that good girls didn't. It was his face that was ravenous, not Ernie Chubbs's. Ernie loved me was what I thought.

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