Dreams of Another Day, page 31
‘That makes sense,’ said Max.
They got down to work and slowly their pessimism began to dissipate as they discussed future articles. Ideas began to spin between the three of them, sparking off arguments, new ideas, resolutions and at least some of the old excitement.
Ming suffered the obvious anticlimax as she was sitting in a slow train back to Charing Cross. Her compartment was not a smoker, but it smelled stale and dirty, and was cold as well. Condensation streamed down the windows although by then she was the only person in it. She turned on the heater switch, but it had little effect. Bundling her soft, dark fur coat more closely together, she sat, shivering and working on her courage. She wished that she had asked Max what prison had been like so that she knew exactly what she faced.
The train pulled in to Charing Cross at last, and Ming collected her belongings and went to try to find a taxi to take her to Chelsea.
One day, she thought, there might be a tube line that would make life there a great deal easier.
The flat seemed warm and colourful after the dreary, frustrating journey and, as she flopped down on the drawing-room sofa, Ming realised that she had come to think of it as ‘home’in a way that none of the rooms she had ever rented had been, or even her parents’house. It seemed bitterly ironic that she should have achieved a home only just in time to lose it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
While Max was left to run the magazine on his own and Connie was grimly mobilising all her friends and acquaintances to take her about London so that she could be seen by everyone who might have any useful influence, Ming relied on her sisters and their husbands. She knew that she was being wet, but she could not bring herself to court any rejections from people who might share her parents’views.
Connie understood Ming’s fears. To a certain extent she shared them, but she had a thicker skin than Ming and a wider social circle. Having taken up Ming’s challenge, Connie determined to do her best. She packed her smartest clothes, borrowed one of Flixe’s spare bedrooms and shamelessly raided her address book for anyone she had ever met who might be useful.
The results were impressive. A few people pretended they could not remember who she was; and a few others were frank enough to tell her that they disapproved of what she had done; but the rest seemed happy to be seen with her. She went to the opera or the theatre almost every evening; she lunched out every day before going with friends to an exhibition or an afternoon concert. She held her head high. Even Flixe, who knew her well, could not tell whether Connie was really as confident as she seemed.
Ming watched her campaign in slightly shocked admiration and did the best she could to emulate it, ignoring, as far as she was able, the prospects of both prison and financial ruin. Flixe took her to a dress show at Hartnell and introduced her to dozens of useful women. Ming accepted all the invitations that she was sent, instead of refusing most on the grounds that she had too much work to do as usual, she dressed well and did her best to impress her hosts and fellow guests wherever she went.
Evenings with Gerry and Mike were like half-term treats in comparison with the rest. Everyone Ming met at the big, Bloomsbury flat seemed to share Gerry’s opinion that Ming and Connie were fighting for a worthwhile cause. Ming spent hours sitting with Gerry’s university friends, drinking cold Italian wine and eating olives and sharp, dry cheese, and talking. Sometimes they were joined by civil service colleagues of Mike’s, who participated in the easy discussions and gave Ming a feeling of reassurance that she badly needed.
Conferences with Julia and Mr Ratterley helped too, as did the work that still had to be done for the magazine. Ming understood quite well that as long as she kept herself busy she could manage to stay adequately calm. Only when she woke in the early mornings did her fears threaten to overwhelm her. She would wake from nightmares of bars and rats and weevily food in a primitive prison to the more realistic, if just as frightening, anxieties of debt and ostracism.
In the end she went to her doctor and demanded sleeping pills, because she was afraid of what might happen to her if tiredness destroyed her remaining resistance. He wrote out a prescription for a hundred powerful pills. They proved strong enough to knock her out for at least eight hours and, even though they left her feeling dull and stupid, the rest they gave her was a boon.
Occasionally, as she sat in her gold and chestnut-coloured writing room trying to work, she would think through everything that had happened in the last year and try to find some meaning in it, much as she had searched the hieroglyphs and bas-reliefs of the Egyptian temples. But like the warm, dead stone, memories of things she had done and said and things that had been done and said to her carried no meaning. There seemed to be no pattern or reason, unless it was simply that she was being tested for some great challenge.
When she arrived at that fatalistic conclusion she told herself to stop being sentimental and vain. It was absurd to think that her mismanagement and misfortunes could be part of a cosmic plot. She had had some bad luck and she had done some silly things. That, she told herself briskly, was all that there was to it.
By March even Connie’s resolution was beginning to flag and both of them were very tired. The case was not due to be heard until April and occasionally they would look at each other and wonder whether they could keep going. Peter and Flixe started to take them both out to dinner in fashionable restaurants once or twice each week, and Ming forced herself to go to the House of Commons to listen to Prime Minister’s questions whenever she had no other engagements.
David Wallington saw her there about half-way through the month and kept an eye on the gallery so that he could leave the chamber as soon as she got up to go. They met in the lobby as she was hurrying away. It was one thing to allow herself to be seen, but quite another to have to talk to people who might well believe in what Roger was trying to do to her.
When she felt a hand on her arm and heard a man saying her name, she whirled round in a mixture of shock and irritation. Seeing David, her face relaxed.
‘It’s you,’ she said, the relief evident in her voice. ‘How are you, David?’
‘I’m fine. What about you? Julia’s very discreet, but I know you’re going through hell.’
‘She’s being wonderful. Connie and I are both madly impressed and very relieved that she’s on our side.’ Ming managed to laugh. ‘It was good to run into you.’
‘Don’t go,’ said David, almost unwillingly. ‘Won’t you come and have tea with me?’
‘Here? No, I don’t think so. There are rather too many interested people, I think.’
‘Then come for a walk?’
‘All right. But let’s get out of here quickly. There’s Roger.’
David understood the urgency and, putting a steady hand under her elbow, walked her down the long, cold corridor and out of the building.
Parliament Square was bathed in sun, even though the air felt very cold on their faces. Ming noticed for the first time that her upper lip was chapped and becoming sore under the bright lipstick. White clouds were being bowled across the bright blue sky by a ferocious wind that picked up the sharp dust and flung it in their faces. They had walked half-way round the square, waiting for several minutes to cross the road, before Ming realised that David had no overcoat.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve got horribly thoughtless with all this on my mind. You must be freezing. Let’s go back. I’m dreary company in any case.’
‘No. I couldn’t leave you in this state, Ming. Why don’t we just go and sit quietly in the Abbey? It’ll be warmer there.’
He pointed at the open door of the great, grey church and after a moment’s hesitation, Ming let him take her inside. They walked slowly up the long nave, around the grave of the Unknown Soldier and then turned right. Ming, who did not know the building well, was puzzled, but David led her competently past the high altar, on past a huge, dark tomb and into a chapel decked with multi-coloured banners.
Distracted for a moment from her preoccupations, she looked around in delight.
‘I never knew this was here,’ she said, as she took in the glorious vaulting of the ceiling and the contrasts between the cool black-and-white floor and the silken gaudiness of the flags.
‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’ said David, pleased to see the drawn tightness of her face relax. ‘I occasionally drop in here to think when things begin to get on top of me. Come and sit down in one of these stalls. We can be private here. No one will disturb us.’
They sat down side by side in the curved stalls at the left of the doorway, opposite the altar. The silence of the place as much as its incongruous colour soothed Ming and she let her shoulders drop and her mind go blank for a while. David sat, quiet and still, waiting until she needed him.
At last she pulled off her gloves and wiped her bare hands over her face.
‘Thank you.’
‘There’s nothing to thank me for,’ answered David. ‘I owe you so much, you know.’
‘Me?’ Ming was surprised into looking into his face. He smiled down at her.
‘Yes. Before you came to see us last summer I’d got very disheartened with my work and with myself. What you wrote about me and the way you brought out of me the things in which I really believe, gave me back my … my pleasure in both. I’d like to do something much more useful in return than just giving you a few minutes’peace and quiet.’
‘I don’t know that there’s anything else I needed more just then,’ she answered as she leaned against the carved back of the stall. Her conviction that she must have been trying to make him fond of her to bolster her fading confidence disappeared at last. ‘You’re a very kind man, and Julia is enormously lucky.’
‘How’s Mark?’
At that obviously sequential question, Ming turned her head away from him.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him since just after Christmas. We were to have had tea together then, but he had to cancel it and I haven’t heard anything from him since.’
‘What happened, Ming?’ David asked gently. She looked very young and forlorn as she sat at his side in her black overcoat and little fur cap. ‘He adored you?’
With her voice quaking every so often, Ming told David most of the story, breaking off at one moment to add:
‘I seem to spend all my time at the moment complaining to my friends about the things that go wrong. It’s a nasty habit I shall have to break pretty quickly.’
‘Nonsense!’ There was nothing gentle about David’s voice then and Ming looked at him in surprise. ‘Come on: you’re in the middle of a bad time; your friends want to help. It’s unfair to bottle everything up.’
‘All right,’ she said, startled but acquiescent, and told him the rest.
David listened patiently and when she had finished his advice was simple.
‘You must write to him. You can’t simply wait for him to come back for more punishment, Ming. No man is going to go on laying himself open to what you’ve handed out to the poor beggar. If he really doesn’t want to see you, he’ll tell you so and then you’ll know where you are. But my bet is that he’s pining just as much as you are.’
Despite her determination not to fantasise about a happy ending with Mark, Ming could not help letting some hope into her mind. Then she remembered Roger’s letters and the fury they had aroused in her. She shook her head.
‘I can’t. I just can’t force myself on him. He was absolutely clear that he didn’t want us to meet yet and would let me know when he did. After making such a mess of everything for him, I can’t make him see me when he doesn’t want to.’
After a while David took one of her hands in a warm clasp. Not looking at her, he said:
‘I know it’s not considered ladylike to show a man that you care for him unless he’s made the first move, but Mark has made about the first twenty moves. Ming, it simply isn’t fair for a woman with your brains to …’
‘Don’t, David, please,’ she said, closing her eyes. He heard the desperation behind the simple words. ‘You can’t imagine how much I want to, and I mustn’t. Perhaps after the case I could.’
‘What’s the case got to do with it?’
A little of her dormant sense of humour woke as she said: ‘A great deal. After all I might be in prison in a month’s time.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said David with an anger that his wife would have recognised. Ming, who had no idea about his nightmares, was both surprised and rather hurt. He saw that and moderated his voice as he went on:
‘I know that’s technically possible, but it’s absurd to think like that about it.’
‘I’d rather think about the worst that could happen to us,’ Ming answered honestly, ‘and then nothing will be a shock.’
She found that she could not tell even David about the more likely fears that tormented her each morning when she woke before dawn. He watched her face and noticed the way the skin around her lips was roughened, as though she had been biting her lips in the cold.
‘Are you afraid that Mark would think you were chasing him for security now that you’re facing huge costs and a possibly vast fine?’
‘That’s one of the elements of my many nightmares,’ she said casually, shrugging. ‘Don’t worry so much, David. I’ll be all right. My sisters have rallied round superbly. Julia hardly ever loses cases. It’s just the waiting that gets me down so much.’
‘I can imagine,’ he said, longing to bundle her up in a thick fur rug and carry her off to some imaginary place where she would never be troubled. ‘You look worn out. Why not go home now and try and get some rest?’
‘All right,’ she said with some of her old submissiveness. ‘Thank you for bringing me here. I’ll see you soon, I expect. Goodbye.’
David got up as she left and then sat down again on the hard, wooden seat, staring up at the pretty ceiling as he had done so often before. It seemed cruel that Ming should be in such straits when there was nothing he could do to help. He had bottomless faith in his wife, but he had lived with her cases for too long to have any illusions about the legal process and the vagaries of juries.
A black-robed verger appeared and crossed to the far side of the chapel. From behind where David was sitting there was a vast sighing sound and then the first few notes of the organ. Someone had started practising and he sat listening to the Ode to Joy with a wry smile at its incongruity. Even if she were to be sentenced to prison it would be for only a few months, he told himself, and she was strong enough emotionally to survive that.
When the Ode to Joy was over, he stood up, straightened his jacket and tie and went back to his office.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Determined to get a good night’s sleep before the trial, Ming took two of her sleeping pills when she went to bed. They worked admirably and her alarm clock had rung for a full minute the next morning before its urgent clamour reached her brain. She fumbled among the objects on her bedside table, spilling the remaining pills and knocking a book to the floor, until her fingers found the switch that silenced the clock.
With the jangling uncomfortable noise taken over by silence, it was five minutes before Ming remembered why she had taken the pills and ten more before she could force herself out of bed. There was a line of vibrant light between each pair of curtains. Ming pushed herself out of bed and walked barefooted across the bedroom carpet to the hard, blue linoleum of the bathroom floor. She felt hot, as though the pills had raised her temperature as well as drugging her mind.
She ran herself a cool bath and made a cup of coffee to drink while she washed. When the cup was empty and her body temperature considerably reduced, the fuddled sensation in her mind was beginning to clear and the grits in the corners of her eyes had been rubbed away. By the time she had wrapped herself in a huge, soft bath towel she felt as though she might be able to answer a simple question if it were kindly put. She rubbed herself gently dry, put on a dressing-gown and went to collect the newspaper from her hall mat.
Sitting drinking another cup of coffee at the kitchen table, Ming tried to read through every page of The Times as carefully as though she were to be examined on its contents. As she read the first page she found that her eye was merely skating over the paragraphs and not taking in any information at all, but by the time she reached the foreign news she had massaged her mind into working order and felt better.
Returning to her bedroom, she opened the wardrobe doors and looked at the suits and dresses hanging there. Julia Wallington had suggested that both Ming and Connie dress conventionally, without too much sophistication and without trying to look like barristers themselves. Ming picked out a hanger with a pale grey suit on it, felt the weight of the material and put it back with a small grimace.
Drawing back one of the heavy curtains, she saw that not only was the sun bright yellow as it shone down on the river and the newly green trees but that the sky had that unmistakable dazzle that presages a warm day. For days the weather had been typical of April, blustery and freezing cold one minute and then almost like a June heatwave the next.
Rejecting all her suits, Ming instead picked out the dark blue linen dress she had worn to the Wallingtons’house the previous summer. The dress had a matching jacket, which would make it warm enough without making her sweat. With its big, crisp, white collar it looked a little too summery, but she was prepared to put up with that for the sake of its coolness. She had had her hair set very simply the previous day and had planned to make up her face with more than usual restraint.
When she was ready, with a small, navy-blue hat securely pinned to her neat hair and a pair of gloves clasped in her left hand with the handle of her crocodile bag, she went to examine herself in the long glass by her bedroom door. The figure that confronted her looked too young. She made a face at her reflection.
There was no time to change and so she simply added a little more, darker lipstick and a pair of bigger gold earrings before slipping on her gloves.
