A Rather English Marriage Read online

  ANGELA LAMBERT

  A RATHER ENGLISH MARRIAGE

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter One

  ‘I am afraid your wife is not at all well.’

  Reginald Conynghame-Jervis and Roy Southgate had just been given the same news in the same words, although in separate interviews. Reginald had looked at the doctor and thought, Stupid blighter; I could have told him that. Roy Southgate had understood correctly that his wife was dying. Now both were in the small ante-room that served as a visitors’ waiting-room while their wives were being ‘tidied up’, as Sister had put it with a twinkle.

  The view across the lawns that sloped up the side of the Kent & Sussex Hospital showed that there was no money to spare for the garden. The grass was neatly trimmed, but there were no flowers, no borders, no shrubs. Only the black railings of the fire escapes relieved the expanse of incandescent midsummer green. In a far corner stood a small circular temple crowned with a green dome, like a folly from some rich man’s estate. God knows what it’s doing there, thought Reggie Conynghame-Jervis. He stubbed his cigarette into an overflowing ashtray and said, ‘Ridiculous! Giving them dinner at five-thirty! It’s just for the convenience of the nurses. No one seems to think about the patients any longer. So much for your ruddy NHS.’

  The other person in the room - it was on the late side for afternoon visitors, and too early for the evening batch - was a small, mild bespectacled man whom Reggie had seen several times previously. ‘Oh, I don’t know. They’re wonderful, really. Angels. Just young girls. Some of them aren’t yet twenty. They go off at six, you see. Best to get tea over before then.’

  ‘That’s what I said. All done to suit the staff. You smoke?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks all the same.’

  Reggie snapped open a square silver cigarette-lighter, inhaled, and coughed irritably. ‘Never used to have this trouble with the old Player’s Navy Cut. God knows what kind of rubbish they put into them nowadays.’ He sat down, and his guttural breathing filled the silence.

  Ten minutes later a nurse, older and more senior than the angels, came in, beckoned the smaller man to follow her, and swished away towards Sister’s office. She handed him in and closed the door behind him.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Southgate,’ Sister said. ‘Make yourself comfortable. Now then.’

  Roy Southgate looked at her with docile expectancy.

  ‘Your wife isn’t eating. We’ve done our best to tempt her. Special diets. Soft food, but nourishing. She must eat, you know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, to keep her strength up.’

  ‘But it tires her to eat, and then she mostly just brings it back up, and that tires her even more.’

  ‘Yes. Well. We could try intravenous. Feeding her through a tube.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she’s got to eat. Look, Mr Southgate, your wife isn’t getting any better.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She’s receiving very powerful medication.’

  ‘She’s not in pain though, is she? Not any more?’

  ‘No, she isn’t in any pain.’

  ‘I’d better go and sit by her, then. She knows I’m there. She can tell it’s me.’

  ‘I’m sure she can.’

  Grace Southgate had shrunk and curled and become almost transparent, like a fallen leaf; and like a leaf, she quivered with each breath. Her lips were the colour of water, but dry and flaky. Her eyebrows jumped and fluttered nervously, as though she were dreaming.

  ‘Let me try and peel a grape for you, dear,’ said Roy. ‘Then I’ll put it between your lips and perhaps you could just suck it. They’re nice, these grapes. Very sweet.’

  He held the glistening grape against her mouth, but she only turned her head fretfully.

  ‘Not for now, eh? All right then, dear. I’ll not force you.’

  ‘I’m going off now, love!’ called a cheerful black nurse. ‘See you tomorrow, eh?’

  ‘I’ll be here,’ Roy Southgate said, and turned back to the husk on the bed.

  On the other side of the corridor, in a small side ward, Reginald Conynghame-Jervis fidgeted, stood up, sat down, looked at his wife’s Patient Record, hooked it back over the end of the bed, and thrust his hands into the pocket of his tweed jacket to touch his cigarettes and scratch his balls covertly.

  ‘Better slip out before the hospital shop closes,’ he said. ‘Getting a bit low on fags.’

  His wife smiled tiredly and murmured something.

  ‘What?’ said Reggie, leaning closer. ‘Can’t hear. What d’ye say?’

  ‘Be some in the pub …’

  ‘Dare say you’re right. Do with a drink. How’s the time?’

  Mary Conynghame-Jervis closed her eyes and shifted slightly on the hot pillow. She could feel the hair in scrawny tangles at the back of her head. She opened her eyes again and looked at her husband.

  ‘Reggie,’ she whispered. ‘Reg …’

  ‘What is it? Anything you need? Call a nurse, shall I?’

  ‘Shirts. Still got plenty of clean shirts?’

  ‘Fine, fine.’

  ‘Look after yourself properly …’

  ‘Manage till you get back. Won’t be long now. You just get better.’

  He shifted the vase on the bedside table an inch and then moved it back. The fruit bowl was overflowing with grapes, stout red apples, spotty pears and something exotic the greengrocer had urged on him. Its sweetish, over-ripe smell filled his nostrils. He rummaged for a cigarette again.

  ‘You want the wireless? Shall I put your headphones on? IT MA? Forces’ Favourites?’

  She smiled, with an effort, for an instant, and shook her head.

  ‘Do go now,’ she said. ‘Bit tired.’

  Reginald Conynghame-Jervis and Roy Southgate found themselves walking through the main entrance of the hospital together, just as other visitors were arriving in family groups.

  ‘All well, eh?’ said Reggie. ‘Things looking up?’

  Roy Southgate could not bring himself to nod. ‘How is your …?’ he asked.

  ‘Wife? Oh, fine, fine. Right as rain soon.’

  A week later, in the small hours, Tunbridge Wells was in darkness. Only the street lights outlined the tracery of its town plan, the curving roads sloping steeply downhill to the old, cobbled heart of the town; the brighter lights along the railway glinting on the sweep of track as it looped towards the centre and out again. Among the sleeping houses a few illuminated windows showed where, behind drawn curtains, young mothers bent over their infants; lovers enlaced; and workaholics lay awake worrying.

  High on the hill above the town a crossword puzzle of lighted windows outlined the hospital buildings. At the central desk in Number 3 Women’s Ward a student nurse drooped over her notebook. The sound of groaning, deep-drawn breaths roused her. Her head jerked upright. She stood up, and walked fast to where Mrs Southgate lay in bed 7. She was drawing long, slow, excruciating gasps of air, her face contorted with effort. The young nurse hurried back to the desk and picked up a telephone. ‘Doctor! Can you come, please. It’s Mrs Southgate in Women’s 3. Acute respiratory and cardiac distress. I didn’t want to disturb you, but …’ Her voice trailed away as she realized
that the houseman had already put the receiver down.

  Minutes later he appeared, still tousled, but purposeful and clear-headed. The nurse led him to where Grace Southgate lay. The harsh jugular wheezing had stopped; instead, she was trying to sing to herself in a tenuous voice, frail as a cobweb:

  ‘Sleep, my baby, sleep so softly,

  While your Mummy watches o’er you …

  Dum dum dum de dum and harm you -

  Slee-eep, oh sleep, my son.

  ‘Freddy,’ she murmured. ‘Go to bye-byes, there’s a good baba.’ She looked up at the doctor as he stood over her, his hand cradling her pulse. ‘Oh doctor, I’m ever so sorry. I got you out of bed, didn’t I?’ she said.

  ‘Shush-sh. Not to worry. Just checking you over,’ said the doctor. ‘Quick listen to your chest, hmm?’

  He bent over her as the nurse swished the curtains shut around the bed. Mrs Southgate undid her nightdress obediently to reveal the grey and bony bosom that only her husband and children and a few other doctors had ever seen. The skin fell away in fine pleats, the breasts were long, almost empty folds from which pale blue nipples hung limply. Beneath her skin the tracery of veins ran its gnarled course, and beneath them curved the skeletal shield of her ribcage.

  ‘Breathe in … and out,’ said the doctor. ‘And again for me. In … and out. Once more. In … and out again. Good. Not too easy, is it? Would you like some oxygen, or do you think you could sleep now?’ She nodded, and he buttoned up the front of the nightdress and folded the bedclothes gently back in place.

  ‘Like another little pill to help you?’

  ‘I’m not -’ Mrs Southgate was seized by racking, primeval gasps which rose to a crescendo of extraordinary noise. Her eyes were squeezed shut by the violence of her struggle for air. ‘Oxygen!’ snapped the doctor, and the nurse hurried off, her shoes squeaking rapidly on the highly polished vinyl floor. Other patients muttered querulously, half woken from sleep. With the deep instincts of women who have once been mothers, they struggled towards consciousness. Somewhere, it seemed, a child needed seeing to … oh not now, not again, let me sleep, I’m so tired … I’ll come in a minute, my poppet. A bell buzzed for attention at the nurses’ desk, but they were short-staffed and it was a while before anyone had time to answer it.

  By the time its source was traced and the tall Irish nurse had gone to the side ward she found that, quietly, considerately, not wanting to bother people when they had more important things to do, Mary Conynghame-Jervis had died.

  Reginald sat in a different waiting-room wearing a plain white shirt and his funeral black tie. He had to see the senior social worker at the hospital (‘In your day she would probably still have been called an almoner,’ Sister had explained patiently). He also had to collect the overnight case with his wife’s last few possessions from the hospital: a flowered pink sponge-bag containing Elizabeth Arden’s Blue Grass toilet water, a still-damp face flannel and the soaking solution for her false teeth; a couple of limp nightdresses; and the old lizard-skin handbag from Mappin & Webb that he’d given her for Christmas fifteen years ago.

  Sitting in the same waiting-room was the little man who’d been hanging around the ward all week. Reggie snapped open his Daily Telegraph, folded it back under itself and stared at it. Index, it said; Appointments; Weather. The words ran together in a nonsense jingle. Indexa pointmen swhether. In sex disappointment ever. In depths miss the point forever.

  The Irish nurse who had probably been the last person to see Mary alive had passed him no comforting message, no tender last words. She had asked him whether Mary knew someone called Cecil.

  ‘Your wife had been dozing on and off, and in her sleep she seemed to be talking to Cecil Tushing - that’s who it sounded like. “Cecil,” she was saying. You know who that was, I expect. Family member, would it be?’

  ‘We don’t know anyone called Cecil,’ Reggie had told her crossly. ‘You must’ve heard wrong.’

  ‘I dare say I did,’ the nurse had agreed tiredly. ‘Afraid I can’t be any more help, then.’

  ‘I’m ever so sorry.’

  Reginald looked up. The chap in the corner must have spoken.

  ‘About your wife. So sorry.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Not at all. Very good of you. Well, well. Comes to us all. Nice weather, eh?’

  ‘My dear wife Grace passed away as well, just a few hours later. I know how you feel. Very sorry.’

  ‘Ah. Really? Rotten show.’

  Dear wife Grace, he thought. Bloody silly name. Sounds like that - what was that cat book he used to have to read to his great-nieces? Da-da-da and his dear wife Grace. Orlando, that was it. Orlando and his dear wife Grace. The fellow was still looking at him.

  ‘You got any offspring? You know, children?’ said Reginald abruptly.

  ‘Our girl’s in Australia. Sydney. She’s flying home for … well, for the funeral … We had a little lad, but he … well, he … How about you?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that,’ said Reginald, and he turned pointedly back to his newspaper.

  The door of the social worker’s office opened.

  ‘Mr Southgate? Do come in. I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. And you must be …?’

  ‘Squadron Leader Conynghame-Jervis.’

  ‘Of course you are. Oh dear. Give me quarter of an hour and I’ll be with you’ - she paused - ‘… Squadron Leader.’

  Roy Southgate sat upright in the hard chair, wearing a shiny suit with wide lapels that could almost have been his demob suit. His shoes were highly polished, the laces securely tied in a double knot. He was attentive and perfectly composed; only his eyes were red, and his face looked as though a tracery of cracks and mould had spread across it, like the glaze on a fine old plate.

  ‘Now then,’ the middle-aged woman was saying in a weary voice that struggled to remain kind. It was a well-rehearsed formula. ‘I can give you a very useful check-list of things that have to be done. Not just the obvious - you say you’ve already been in touch with a funeral director - but things like getting your pension book altered; cancelling subscriptions to magazines - those sort of details.’

  ‘Grace liked a good book now and again, but not those women’s weekly things,’ said Roy Southgate. ‘And the post office - well, they’ll know straightaway, being so local. They’ve been ever so kind, asking after her.’

  ‘What about a home help? I dare say you’d like me to arrange for someone to come in temporarily, just to start you off, show you the ropes.’

  ‘There won’t be any need for that,’ he said. ‘I can look after myself. I’m no stranger to dustpan and brush. And I can cook. What with Grace not being well these last months, I looked after the both of us and kept the house spick and span. There’s many another must be needing home help more than me.’

  The woman smiled. He’s not a helpless little old man at all, she thought; how wrong it is to judge by appearances. He’ll manage splendidly, if he does his grief-work properly and doesn’t try to repress it.

  ‘What about… counselling?’ she asked.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Grief - bereavement counselling. It can be very helpful, you know. Help to let your feelings out. I could give you some phone numbers. CRUSE, for instance: they’re not just for widows. Someone you can talk to.’

  His faded eyes filled with tears, which ran out at the corners and made a shining line through the furrows beside his nose.

  ‘Grace and I always talked. I don’t think I could get the hang of it with anyone else. There’s others maybe, calling for that sort of thing, but not me. Thanks all the same. I appreciate the kind thought.’

  He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and tidily wiped his face.

  ‘You can come back to me any time, any questions, problems, just give me a ring or pop in.’

  ‘I’m much obliged,’ said Mr Southgate with dignity. ‘If I could just collect her things, I needn’t trouble you any longer.’ He nodded and smiled at her, took the phot
ocopied list which she extended towards him across the desk, and left the office.

  Reggie was on the telephone. ‘I’m going to spell that for you,’ he said, with his habitual mixture of pride and exasperating slowness. ‘No, not CUN: it’s C-O-N-Y-N-G-H-A-M-E and then the hyphen and then pronounced Jarvis but spelt J-E-R-V-I-S. Old family name and all that. Read it back to me, would you, there’s a clever girl, so I can make sure you’ve got it right?’

  He nodded, tightening his lips at each letter as she read them out…

  ‘I don’t know how it’s supposed to be worded!’ he expostulated, frowning into the telephone. ‘Not allowed to say “died”, eh? Thought that’s what Deaths columns were all about. Never done one of these things before. Mary took care of all that kind of nonsense. Conynghame-Jervis, Marigold - no, she’d tell me off - better make it: Mary, wife of Reginald, and then the date, I suppose …

  ‘Where she died? What difference does that make? Oh all right … Flowers? Well of course people will send flowers. Look here, I’m not paying your chaps any more money. Just the name and date and place, d’you hear? Oh, and where the funeral will be. People will want to come and pay their last respects. Put King Charles the Martyr. It’s very well known in Tunbridge Wells. They’ll find it…

  ‘My address? It’s not me that’s died … The bill? Ah yes, of course; got to make sure you collect your baksheesh.’

  The young woman in the classified advertising department of the Daily Telegraph was patient. Deaths were always the worst. Either people broke down in floods of tears and told her what a marvellous man he’d been and how much everyone had loved him; or she got this disoriented, unfocused anger. Slowly, she repeated the address back to the poor old fogey, thinking, Fancy still calling himself Squadron Leader! The war’s been over for fifty years or whatever.

  ‘The Cedars, Nevill Park, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Yes, I’ve got that, Squadron Leader, thank you. And you don’t want “dearly loved” wife or anything? Very well. Please accept my condolences.’

  A few days later, Roy Southgate slipped into the church of King Charles the Martyr and chose a seat in the upper gallery where he would be unseen but could look down on the congregation. From that high vantage point he saw that the grey and white marble tiles on the floor of the old church were exactly like the vinyl tiles on the floor of the hospital ward; and this piercing memory — for every detail of Grace’s last surroundings stung cruelly - made his eyes fill with tears. He creaked to his knees and bent his forehead on to his knuckles. ‘Look after my dear wife Grace, and this woman, Mary,’ he prayed, adding ‘Of thine everlasting goodness, Amen.’