Read Online Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Penelope Fitzgerald
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The slippers made him feel less tired.
‘There are more queries from Grace than from Dreadnought , aren’t there?’
‘I’m not sure. I’ve never worked it out exactly.’
‘They’re not worth talking about anyway. I expect they talk about us.’
‘Oh, do you think so?’
‘They say “There goes that Mrs Blake again. She turns me up, she looks so bleeding bored all day”.’
Richard did not like to have to think about two things at once, particularly at the end of the day. He kissed Laura, sat down, and tried to bring the two subjects put to him into order, and under one heading. A frown ran in a slanting direction between his eyebrows and halfway up his forehead. Laura’s problem was that she had not enough to do – no children, though she hadn’t said anything about this recently – and his heart smote him because he had undertaken to make her happy, and hadn’t. Nenna, on the other hand, had rather too much. If her husband had let her down, as was apparently the case, she ought to have a male relation of some kind, to see to things. In Richard’s experience, all women had plenty of male relations. Laura, for instance, had two younger brothers, who were not settling very well into the stockbrokers’ firm in which they had been placed, and numerous uncles, one of them an old horror who obtained Scandinavian au pairs through advertisements in The Lady , and then, of course, her Norfolk cousins. Nenna appeared to have no-one. She had come over here from Canada, of course. This last reflection – it was Nova Scotia, he was pretty sure – seemed to tidy up the whole matter, which his mind now presented as a uniform interlocking structure, with working parts.
Laura was very lucky to be married to Richard, who would not have hurt her feelings deliberately for the whole world. A fortnight with her parents, he was thinking now, on their many acres of damp earth, must surely bring home to her the advantages of living on Lord Jim . Of course, it hadn’t so far done anything of the kind, and he had to arrive at the best thing to do in the circumstances. He was not quite satisfied with the way his mind was working. Something was out of phase. He did not recognise it as hope.
‘I want to take you out to dinner, Lollie,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘You look so pretty, I want other people to see you. I daresay they’ll wonder why on earth you agreed to go out with a chap like me.’
‘Where do you go when you take people out to lunch from the office?’
‘Oh, the Relais, but that’s no good in the evening. We could try that Provençal place. Give them a treat.’
‘You don’t really want to go,’ said Laura, but she disappeared into the spare cabin, where, unfortunately, her dresses had to be kept. Richard took off his slippers and put on his black shoes again, and they went out.
6
M ARTHA and Tilda were in the position of having no spending money, but this was less important when they were not attending school and were spared the pains of comparison, and they felt no bitterness against their mother, because she hadn’t any either. Nenna believed, however, that she would have some in the spring, when three things would happen, each, like melting ice-floes, slowly moving the next one on. Edward would come and live on Grace , which would save the rent he was paying on his rooms at present; the girls, once they were not being prayed for at the grotto, would agree to go back to the nuns; and with Tilda at school she could go out herself and look for a job.
Martha could not imagine her mother going out to work and felt that the experiment was likely to prove disastrous.
‘You girls don’t know my life,’ said Nenna, ‘I worked in my vacations before the war, wiping dishes, camp counselling, all manner of things.’
Martha smiled at the idea of these dear dead days. ‘What did you counsel?’ she asked.
The girls needed money principally to buy singles by Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard, whose
‘There are more queries from Grace than from Dreadnought , aren’t there?’
‘I’m not sure. I’ve never worked it out exactly.’
‘They’re not worth talking about anyway. I expect they talk about us.’
‘Oh, do you think so?’
‘They say “There goes that Mrs Blake again. She turns me up, she looks so bleeding bored all day”.’
Richard did not like to have to think about two things at once, particularly at the end of the day. He kissed Laura, sat down, and tried to bring the two subjects put to him into order, and under one heading. A frown ran in a slanting direction between his eyebrows and halfway up his forehead. Laura’s problem was that she had not enough to do – no children, though she hadn’t said anything about this recently – and his heart smote him because he had undertaken to make her happy, and hadn’t. Nenna, on the other hand, had rather too much. If her husband had let her down, as was apparently the case, she ought to have a male relation of some kind, to see to things. In Richard’s experience, all women had plenty of male relations. Laura, for instance, had two younger brothers, who were not settling very well into the stockbrokers’ firm in which they had been placed, and numerous uncles, one of them an old horror who obtained Scandinavian au pairs through advertisements in The Lady , and then, of course, her Norfolk cousins. Nenna appeared to have no-one. She had come over here from Canada, of course. This last reflection – it was Nova Scotia, he was pretty sure – seemed to tidy up the whole matter, which his mind now presented as a uniform interlocking structure, with working parts.
Laura was very lucky to be married to Richard, who would not have hurt her feelings deliberately for the whole world. A fortnight with her parents, he was thinking now, on their many acres of damp earth, must surely bring home to her the advantages of living on Lord Jim . Of course, it hadn’t so far done anything of the kind, and he had to arrive at the best thing to do in the circumstances. He was not quite satisfied with the way his mind was working. Something was out of phase. He did not recognise it as hope.
‘I want to take you out to dinner, Lollie,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘You look so pretty, I want other people to see you. I daresay they’ll wonder why on earth you agreed to go out with a chap like me.’
‘Where do you go when you take people out to lunch from the office?’
‘Oh, the Relais, but that’s no good in the evening. We could try that Provençal place. Give them a treat.’
‘You don’t really want to go,’ said Laura, but she disappeared into the spare cabin, where, unfortunately, her dresses had to be kept. Richard took off his slippers and put on his black shoes again, and they went out.
6
M ARTHA and Tilda were in the position of having no spending money, but this was less important when they were not attending school and were spared the pains of comparison, and they felt no bitterness against their mother, because she hadn’t any either. Nenna believed, however, that she would have some in the spring, when three things would happen, each, like melting ice-floes, slowly moving the next one on. Edward would come and live on Grace , which would save the rent he was paying on his rooms at present; the girls, once they were not being prayed for at the grotto, would agree to go back to the nuns; and with Tilda at school she could go out herself and look for a job.
Martha could not imagine her mother going out to work and felt that the experiment was likely to prove disastrous.
‘You girls don’t know my life,’ said Nenna, ‘I worked in my vacations before the war, wiping dishes, camp counselling, all manner of things.’
Martha smiled at the idea of these dear dead days. ‘What did you counsel?’ she asked.
The girls needed money principally to buy singles by Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard, whose
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