Mortimer Penelope - The Pumpkin Eater

“Who’s he?”

“This old General who’s invaded Spain. I mean, it’ll probably ruin the rest of my life, not spending these holidays with Brian. I should think we might have got engaged quite easily.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s jolly bad luck for you.”

“Well, it’s all right for you. You’ve got Him to think about.”

“Yes,” I said fondly.

“There’ll be no one to talk to in Littlehampton and you know what the boys are like, common , and anyway Mummy’ll have her eye on me every minute. When I’m with Roger she thinks I’m safe, if only she knew. Oh, I hate that Franco, I hate him, I just hate him!” She plunged her face in her hands and appeared to cry. I was very sorry for her. It seemed brutal to be going home to the intense and uncertain pleasure of the rope-walk and organ loft, and although I had no intention of sharing them with Ireen it did seem to me that she might be quite harmless at the swimming baths or on bicycle rides or in the cinema. It might, in fact, make me seem more independent and casual to the clergyman’s son if I took a friend along (that’s what I would say: “I brought my friend along”). Also, although she would discover that he was only seventeen, she would certainly be impressed by his tweed jacket with the leather elbows and the nonchalant way he smoked Gold Flake, without coughing. Then, too, she would help to fill in the unendurable days when he was in one of his moods. We could even go and call at the Vicarage, if there were two of us. We might even be allowed up to his room.

“Would you like,” I blurted. “Would you like to come and stay with us for a few days, I mean I know it’s not Spain or anything like that, but it might be a bit more fun than Littlehampton, I mean for a bit. Well, you could ask your mother, couldn’t you?”

She looked up in the middle of a sob. “Will He be there?”

“Oh yes,” I said recklessly. “He’s always there. He’s working very hard, you see. For his Higher.”

“Has He got a friend, do you think?”

“I don’t know. I don’t actually know his friends. But I mean he must have some friends. Well, we could ask.”

“I’d love to come,” she said. “I really would. I do think you’re sweet.” She added brightly, and without conviction, “You must come and stay with us one holidays too. I think you’d get on awfully well with Roger. You’re just his type.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I should think this stupid war or whatever it is will be over jolly soon. Then you could come to Spain.”

“Oh yes,” I said. “That would be lovely.”

But the war went on and Littlehampton was inescapable for Ireen. She wrote me many anguished letters in which she said that the only thing that prevented her from suicide was the prospect of coming to stay with me “and meeting Him .” I told the clergyman’s son, “My friend, the one who’s coming to stay, is terribly unhappy. She was going to Spain, you know. Then she couldn’t, because of this war.”

“Gosh,” he groaned, “Gosh, I wish I would go to Spain.”

“Well, you’ll have to wait till after the war, won’t you?”

“There won’t be any point after the war,” he said. “You idiot!”

I grew increasingly nervous as the time for Ireen’s visit came nearer. I hoped he wouldn’t call me an idiot in front of her. He was so unpredictable. My mother, sensing what she felt to be a lack of confidence, arranged for me to have a permanent wave. I refused, and she began to worry about me, dabbing at me all the time to tuck me in or straighten me up or smooth me down. I heard her say to my father, “She doesn’t seem to be like other girls,” and he said, “Count your blessings, Mame, she’s a beauty.” This hardly comforted me. I was not worrying about myself.

Ireen’s train arrived in the early evening, so luckily I did not have to make any plans for that day. Tomorrow I would take her round the factory and meet the clergyman’s son at the Copper Kettle for what my parents called “elevenses” and perhaps play tennis in the afternoon. I knew she didn’t like reading, and rather doubted whether she would have the patience for mahjong. What would I do with her if rained? Worrying, I did not notice her as she came up the platform. In any case, I was looking for someone else.

Ireen was wearing what I later heard her describe as a powder blue costume. Her hair was rolled in a perfect sausage at the nape of her neck, and another bobbing over her rather low forehead. She wore high heels, a necklace and lipstick. She was carrying a handbag as well as a suitcase. I thought she looked perfectly frightful. I was horrified. I hardly heard a word she said as we went out of the station and I didn’t dare look at the ticket collector, whom I had known all my life. All the way home in the taxi — my father had gone in the car to a meeting of the Cricket Club — I answered her in terrified monosyllables, keeping my bare toes clenched inside my sensible sandals, feeling the sweat of embarrassment behind my knees and in the barely perceptible folds of my breasts. Oh God, I prayed, make her have a bath, make her put on some proper clothes — oh God, please don’t let her be like this. She had gone to the fair, she said, with a boy from the chemist’s and her mother had been simply livid. “Gosh,” I said dully, hoping we would have a crash in which our corpses would be mutilated beyond recognition. Her lipstick, newly applied, had come off on her front teeth. I felt sick with shame for her.

My mother, after a slight buck of astonishment, took Ireen very well.

“Of course you’re a good deal older than this one,” she said, giving me a brisk pat. She frequently called me “this one”, as though I were one of a litter, and always accompanied it with this affectionate cuff which was sometimes quite painful.

“She’s not,” I said bleakly. “She’s younger.”

“I’m fourteen and a half,” Ireen said, “but of course everyone thinks I’m at least eighteen.” She gave me a nasty, tolerant look and added, “In the holidays.”

“Well, there you are!” my mother exclaimed pointlessly. “This one will be fifteen in November and look at her!”

They both looked at me and I hated them. I was clean, I was thin, and — a great rush of warmth came over me — I was loved. For all my lack of waves and beads and grubby swansdown puffs and lilies of the valley, I was loved, which was more than they were. I couldn’t say this to my mother, but she seemed to sense it because she gave me a quick, conspirator’s smile and I almost thought she winked. “Of course there are those,” she said, slapping my bottom as she passed by, “who can put up with her …”

It was not so bad, after that, being left alone with Ireen. She talked incessantly as she unpacked, and I sat on the window sill looking down at the ugly town with its church spire soaring steady and grave above the mess of houses. In one great leap from here I could alight on the spire; then swoop, with a graceful diving motion, through his bedroom window, drifting about his bent head like vapour, pouring myself into his ears and mouth, wreathing myself round him warm, searching, invisible as air…

“Are you meeting Him tonight?” Ireen asked.

“No. Tomorrow.”

“I simply can’t wait. I’m sure he’s absolutely gorgeous.”

“We might play mahjong if you like tonight. My father’s got a craze for it.”

So after supper, indeed, we played mahjong. My father was very courteous to Ireen, explaining about the four Winds and so on, and he even built her wall for her, which I thought was unnecessary. She had changed into a sort of crepe dress, which I guessed had once belonged to her mother. She giggled a great deal, just as she did at school; but while at school it seemed perfectly natural, I found myself wondering now what she found so funny, and why the simplest word from my father could set her off on this uncontrollable spluttering.