Dreams of Another Day, page 6
‘Oh, I think so,’ she said; laughing with him.
‘Mingie, darling!’
Flixe’s voice from the door made Ming push herself up from the downy depths of the sofa.
‘Hello, Flixe,’ she said. ‘You look glorious. Aren’t you even feeling sick?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Flixe, smoothing the violet silk dress down over her still-slim waist. ‘Only Andrew made me the least bit sick. I’ll get tired later on and my wretched ankles will swell, but I feel wonderful now. How are you?’
She looked so anxiously at her sister that Ming held her off with a hand against her shoulder.
‘I’m perfectly all right again now,’ she said firmly. ‘Something smells superb. What are you cooking?’
‘Búuf bourguignon,’ said Flixe. ‘But never mind that. I’ve asked a frightfully nice stockbroker this evening, and he ought to be here any minute now. He’s called Charles Bederley and he’s much brighter than a lot of them, so don’t dismiss him just because he’s in the City.’
Ming promised that she would behave, which made Peter Suvarov smile because in all the years he had known her she had never been anything but impeccably polite.
Later, as they were all sitting around the candlelit table eating Flixe’s casserole, he watched in increasing amusement as Ming cross-examined the young man about his work, his clients, his own opportunities for making money, and the possibilities of women doing the same job. At that question the young man laughed and laid down his knife and fork.
‘I shouldn’t have thought they’d want to,’ he said. ‘The Stock Exchange is a cross between a beer garden and a prep. school. Much better stay at home and spend the profits. Hah! Hah!’
Peter Suvarov, who had been listening without contributing anything to the conversation, watched Ming’s face in the dim but mellow light of the six white candles and saw her delicate features harden. Interested in the measurable changes in her, he wondered what Constance Wroughton could have been saying to her in Egypt and decided that it was time to take part again.
‘Have you been reading Le Deuxième Sexe, Ming?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Not for ages,’ she said, turning away from the stockbroker to face her brother-in-law. ‘I bought a copy in Paris years ago, but I never managed to stagger through more than about a third of it, although I did read the conclusion. Did you ever read it, Flixe?’
‘I browsed through the translation when it was first published here. My French isn’t up to the original. I found quite a lot in it that interested me – relations between mothers and daughters mainly.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Ming, who had been an unhappy witness to some quite vicious arguments both her elder sisters had had with their mother. ‘I think the things that stuck in my mind the most were her pointing out that girls are brought up never to expect to take responsibility for themselves and that Balzac advised men to treat women as slaves while persuading them that they are queens.’
‘Oh, I say,’ protested Charles Bederley with a jolly laugh. ‘Isn’t that going a bit far? I mean, hardly any men nowadays treat women as slaves. It’s the other way round, really. My poor brother-in-law beavers away at his job while my sister swans around buying things – and criticises him for not making enough money.’
‘Poor him,’ said Ming with her usual sweet smile. Charles Bederley was quite deceived by it and smiled back in warm approval until she added: ‘What did your sister do before they were married?’
‘She was at Central Office for a bit; you might have known her. Sarah Bederley.’
‘I think I do remember her. Very efficient and well thought of. Why did she stop?’
‘She got married,’ he said as though talking to a rather stupid child.
‘And so,’ said Ming, feeling as though something in her brain might swell and swell until it split her skull if she did not get it out in words first, ‘although you resent the idea of women “swanning around spending money earned by men” you assume that they will give up their own jobs and salaries on marriage. That seems rather unfair.’
‘Ming!’ said Flixe crossly before Charles Bederley could bring himself to answer.
Before Ming could either protest or justify herself, Charles, who was finding it hard to equate her slender figure and extreme prettiness with her ideas, asked her whether she worked.
‘As you know, I used to be a secretary in the House of Commons,’ she said as calmly as though the little scene had never happened. She felt ashamed of her small outburst but was still too angry to make herself apologise. ‘And then I had to leave when I was rather ill. I’m just setting off on a new career – I hope – as a journalist.’
‘Ming! What good news,’ said Flixe. ‘Writing for Connie’s magazine? That’s terrific. What are you going to do?’
‘Oh, a variety of things,’ said Ming, having scooped up the last of her beef. ‘Possibly television reviews when I’ve bought a television; the odd political piece; and I want to do something on women and money …’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Charles Bederley, sounding relieved, ‘no wonder you’re in a state about women spenders.’
‘Hardly a state,’ said Ming, ‘but I do worry that so few women are in control of anything more than pocket money. I want to write about women who make it for themselves, only I don’t know any.’
‘I don’t think I do, either,’ he said. ‘Of course we’ve got lady clients with family money.’
‘There’s always Julia,’ said Flixe, getting up to fetch the pudding, while her husband cleared the plates. ‘She makes quite a lot at the Bar. Why not go and talk to her? Her children are growing up most peculiar,’ she added over her shoulder. ‘I really don’t think it can be good for them to have a mother who is so preoccupied with other things even when she can spend time with them at home.’
Left alone with Charles, Ming pre-empted any more argument by asking him whether he was planning to go abroad in the summer and talking about Egypt. He found travel a much easier subject to discuss than the right of women to be taken seriously and by the time Peter was handing round plates and Flixe was offering a chocolate-and-chestnut pudding Charles had relaxed.
When they had finished the pudding Flixe whisked Ming up to her bedroom for a gossip while the two men drank their port. Ming, determined to forestall any criticism of her attack on Charles Bederley, asked Flixe about Julia.
Interested, as always, in working out why people behaved as they did and the effect their behaviour had on themselves and their families, Flixe described her friend’s career and the deleterious effect it was having on her two children.
‘I always rather liked her husband,’ said Ming, who had known him slightly when she worked in the House of Commons. They had not often met because David Wallington was a member of the Labour Party, but they had occasionally run into each other in the corridors.
‘It must be difficult for him having a working wife,’ said Flixe, ‘particularly in that world, where wives have such a big part to play.’
Ming laughed.
‘I don’t suppose there are many garden fêtes to open in south London,’ she said. ‘Look here, hadn’t we better go down? I can’t imagine poor old Peter wanting to spend hours with that pompous young man.’
Flixe raised her smooth eyebrows and shrugged.
‘I did so hope you’d like him,’ she said. ‘You are horribly picky, you know. And you’re missing out on such a lot.’
Ming only smiled. It was not a subject she was prepared to discuss with her sister.
‘By the way,’ said Flixe as she reached the door of her bedroom, ‘have you been injected against polio yet?’
‘No. I thought there was only enough of the vaccine for children so far.’
‘There isn’t even enough for all of them yet,’ said Flixe drily, ‘but that’s on the Health Service. You can get it privately. I do think you ought.’
‘I probably will in the end, but there’s no real urgency.’ Ming stopped for a second to look at her reflection in the long pier-glass by the door and twitched the hem of her straight-cut black dress.
‘Haven’t you heard about Caroline Hazeldene?’
Flixe’s voice distracted Ming from her critical appraisal of her own reflection and she turned round at once.
‘No. She hasn’t got it, has she?’
‘She had it,’ said Flixe slowly. ‘She died last week.’
Ming put a hand against the wall, feeling suddenly dizzy.
‘Poor Jack,’ she said, thinking of the man she had known since childhood. ‘He loved her so. Oh, Flixe, it’s too cruel. They’ve only been married four years.’
‘I know; it’s ghastly. And there are the children, too. He’ll have to bring them back from Cyprus and if he stays in the army they’ll have to be parked with one or other lot of grandparents. It doesn’t really bear thinking about.’
As they went silently downstairs to join the men in the drawing room, Ming thought about Jack Hazeldene. His father had been in the same regiment as hers and since the two families had shared many of the same postings they had seen a lot of each other. Ming and her twin had played with Jack, ridden with him, danced with him and grown up with him, almost as though he had been their brother.
Since the war her life had diverged from his and they had met less often, but she still minded about him. The thought of what he must be feeling horrified her.
Ming was still abstracted when they reached the drawing room and she sat on the sofa beside Charles Bederley without speaking. Puzzled but still impressed by her lovely face, he set himself to charm and entertain her. She did her best to reciprocate, but his assumption that as a woman she would be both predictable and uninterested in anything much beyond her own social life irritated her more and more until she snapped at him.
When he had said goodbye and left the house, Flixe took Ming to task for being ‘beastly’ to him, and making him feel uncomfortable.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ming. ‘I didn’t mean to do that. I was thinking about poor Jack and that must have made me angry. But it was a nice party, Flixe. Thank you.’
‘Are you all right?’ her sister asked, helping Ming into her coat. ‘You don’t seem yourself at all.’
‘To tell you the truth,’ said Ming, settling her shoulders into the coat and doing up the big black buttons, ‘I am beginning to believe that I have never yet been myself.’
‘Hurray!’ said Peter from the drawing-room doorway. Flixe turned round and made a face at him. He grinned at her, shook his greying head and said: ‘Keep it up, Ming.’
She also turned to look at him, her fair head framed in the big, upturned collar of her black coat. Watching his saturnine face, she remembered that he had always known more about her than anyone else and she walked back down the hall to kiss him.
‘Goodbye, Peter,’ she said.
‘Goodbye, my dear. It’s wonderful to see you breaking out of the chrysalis. Don’t let anyone try to make you stay inside.’
Ming laughed.
‘I’ll try not to, but I hope the butterfly turns out at least to be a painted lady and not just a cabbage white after all this time.’
Chapter Five
The first thing that Ming did the next morning was to write to Jack Hazeldene. It took her hours to produce a letter that was neither sickeningly sentimental nor too cold to show him how much she sympathised with him, but eventually she found a way to put what she really felt into words and hoped that he would understand.
The letter written and posted to the British Forces Post Office in Cyprus, she set to work for Connie and Max, telephoning all her old friends and acquaintances to find out whether they could introduce her to any successful professional women who might help with her article. She also took the opportunity to tell each friend about the magazine and tried to persuade them all to subscribe.
Ming knew perfectly well that to get enough new orders she would have to range far beyond her own circle, but she thought it would be useful to hear the reactions of people she liked before she drafted any press-releases or advertisements.
One or two of her friends agreed to take the magazine at once but others not surprisingly wanted to see what they would be buying and so Ming went to lunch or tea with them, taking back issues with her and explaining the ways in which the new version would be different. During her first two visits Ming stressed the magazine’s power to alleviate the boredom that all her friends agreed was an inevitable part of the life of a mother at home with small children, but she quickly discovered her mistake.
‘Oh, I can see that it would,’ said one of her friends with immense feeling. ‘And I could really do with it, but we just couldn’t afford it, Ming. Four bob a month! John hardly makes a thousand a year and we’re going to need every bit for school fees. I’ll have to get it from the library. Do all libraries have it yet?’
Making a mental note to find that out from Connie, Ming revised her plans and at the next house she visited she reluctantly followed the advertising psychologist’s advice.
‘You see, Serena,’ she said to an old school friend, who was anxiously trying to teach her eighteen-month-old son to build a tower of coloured wooden bricks while a red-headed four-year-old rampaged at the other end of the nursery, ‘I know how easy it is to get cut off. Flixe is so busy with her brood these days that she hardly even knows who’s in the Cabinet, let alone what is going on abroad or who’s writing or painting the best things now. The magazine will have lots of political articles as well as the arts.’
The baby, whose bright dark eyes and wide smile had made Ming want to pick him up and cuddle him, suddenly lost his temper with the red and green bricks he was trying to balance and hit them down on his half-built tower.
‘I’m not surprised she’s cut off,’ said Serena just as four blocks tumbled to the floor. ‘No, Robin, not like that. Put it on carefully. No, if you hit it, you’ll knock all the others down. Try again.’
His cheerful face trembled and then creased and he let out a roar of frustration.
‘It’s all right; don’t get cross. Mummy will help build it up.’
Serena raised her head again, pushing her lank, unwaved hair behind her ears. Watching the effort she was making with her younger child, Ming realised exactly why she looked so tired.
‘I occasionally try to read serious books, but by the time I’ve put them both to bed and dealt with supper I’m worn out. I sometimes wonder if our mothers weren’t more sensible having nannies for us,’ Serena said.
Before Ming could answer the elder boy uttered a war cry, seized on the striped curtains and swung himself in a wide arc to crash against the radiator and collapse in a heap on the floor. Serena left Robin in Ming’s care and went to attend to Eric.
Ming tried to mop up his tears and then to help with the building, but her efforts were spurned and so she simply waited for Serena’s return.
‘I don’t know,’ Ming said then. ‘Flixe has frequent arguments with friends who have nannies because she thinks that nannied children tend to be slower, besides being damaged by not having enough maternal attention. She’s an avid reader of people like Dr Spock and John Bowlby, you see.’
Ming watched the two lively, bright-eyed but tiresome boys who were absorbing so much of her friend’s attention. Smiling slightly, she added: ‘Perhaps she’s right: the children I’ve seen with nannies are much duller than yours.’
‘Are they? That’s something I suppose. But doing it oneself does mean one gets so boring. Sometimes when George comes home wanting intelligent conversation to amuse him after the office I can hardly string two words together and all I want to tell him is what happened in the fish queue and how infuriating the boys have been all day. And,’ Serena added, looking almost demented, ‘the most infuriating thing is that as soon as they see him they behave angelically and he assumes that it’s been my fault all day that they’ve been unspeakable. Of course I do love them.’
‘Of course you do,’ said Ming, seeing for the first time exactly how much guilt there was in such women for advertisers to use. She suppressed her instinctive desire to comfort her old friend and said: ‘But The World Beyond isn’t a book – it’s a slim magazine and it has a vast amount of interesting stuff in it. You’d …’
Eric threw a fluffy duck straight at the fire. The duck bounced off the wire guard and landed in the shaky tower. Almost before Robin had noticed it, Serena whisked it away.
‘That’s my duck,’ said the child.
‘I know, Robin. And I’m keeping it safe for you. See, here it is in the chair.’ Over his head she raised her shaggy eyebrows. ‘You see, Ming?’
‘I see.’ Ming’s answer was quite sincere. ‘I can’t imagine how you ever have time to do anything else at all.’
Robin, bored with his building at last, heaved himself to his feet, grabbed the duck from his mother’s chair and carried it carefully towards the other side of the room. His red-haired brother was investigating the inner workings of some clockwork toy he had found in his toybox.
‘But at least if I did manage to read your mag. I’d have something to talk about apart from nappies and potty training … Robin, no! Come away from the fire. Eric, stop that; you’ll break it. You must be careful. Here, come and help Robin build his tower again. Sorry, Ming.’
‘It’s a shame to distract you, Serena. I’m probably making them more rumbustious than they would otherwise be. I’ll leave you in peace.’
‘God no! Don’t go. It’s wonderful to have an adult to talk to. You can’t imagine how I long for one. Day after day, walking round the park and coming back to this,’ said Serena. ‘I must say, I do think perhaps I’d better take your magazine. I might even have something to discuss at the rare dinner parties we go to. Would I have to commit myself for a whole year?’
Ming shook her fair head, feeling a sickly mixture of guilt and triumph. Having made her first sale face-to-face, she stayed to drink a cup of tea. Before she left she asked her friend to write to the magazine whenever she disagreed with any of the opinions in it and to Ming herself if she thought of subjects she would like to have covered in it.
