They walked down the short drive, past the chapel that once had been the gate-lodge. They caught a bus after a wait of half an hour, during which she began to talk again, telling him more about Peggy Urch, who reminded her of another friend she’d had once, a Margy Bassett. In her room in Sans Souci she went on talking, spreading out on the bed triangles of cheese, and tomatoes and rolls and biscuits and oranges. They sat in her room when they’d finished, eating Rollo. At six o’clock they caught a bus back to Elton Grange. She wept a little when she said goodbye.
Michael’s mother did not, as it happened, ever arrive at Elton Grange at half-term again. There was no need for her to do so because his father and Gillian were always able to come themselves. For several terms he felt embarrassed in the presence of A.J.L. and Outsize Dorothy and Miss Trenchard, but no one at school mentioned the unfortunate visit, not even Swagger Browne, who had so delightedly overheard her assuming the P.T. instructor to be one of the boys. School continued as before and so did the holidays, Saturdays in Cranleigh and the rest of the week in Hammersmith, news of Mr Ashaf and Dolores Welsh, now Dolores Haskins. Peggy Urch, the woman in the flat upstairs, often came down for a chat.
Often, too, Michael and his mother would sit together in the evenings on the sofa in front of the electric fire. She’d tell him about the rectory in Somerset and her father who had received the call to the Church late in his life, who’d been in the Customs and Excise. She’d tell him about her own childhood, and even about the early days of her marriage. Sometimes she wept a little, hardly at all, and he would take her arm on the sofa and she would smile and laugh. When they sat together on the sofa or went out together, to the cinema, or for a walk by the river or to the teashop called the Maids of Honour near Kew Gardens, Michael felt that he would never want to marry because he’d prefer to be with his mother. Even when she chatted on to some stranger in the Maids of Honour he felt he loved her: everything was different from the time she’d come to Elton Grange because away from Elton Grange things didn’t matter in the same way.
Then something unpleasant threatened. During his last term at Elton Grange Michael was to be confirmed. ‘Oh, but of course I must come,’ his mother said.
It promised to be worse than the previous occasion. After the service you were meant to bring your parents in to tea in the Great Hall and see that they had a cup of tea and sandwiches and cakes. You had to introduce them to the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Michael imagined all that. In bed at night he imagined his father and Gillian looking very smart, his father chatting easily to Mr Brine, Gillian smiling at Outsize Dorothy, and his mother’s hair fluffing out from beneath her headscarf. He imagined his mother and his father and Gillian having to sit together in a pew in chapel, as naturally they’d be expected to, being members of the same party.
‘There’s no need to,’ he said in the flat in Hammersmith. ‘There’s really no need to, Mum.’
She didn’t mention his father and Gillian, although he’d repeatedly said that they’d be there. It was as if she didn’t want to think about them, as if she was deliberately pretending that they’d decided not to attend. She’d stay in Sans Souci again, she said. They’d have a picnic in her room, since the newly confirmed were to be excused school tea on the evening of the service. ‘Dinner at the Grand, old chap,’ his father said. ‘Bring Tichbourne if you want to.’
Michael returned to Elton Grange at the end of the Easter holidays, leaving his mother in a state of high excitement at Paddington Station because she’d be seeing him again within five weeks. He thought he might invent an illness a day or two before the confirmation, or say at the last moment that he had doubts. In fact, he did hint to the Reverend Green that he wasn’t certain about being quite ready for the occasion, but the Reverend Green sharply told him not to be silly. Every time he went down on his knees at the end of a session with the Reverend Green he prayed that God might come to his rescue. But God did not, and all during the night before the confirmation service he lay awake. It wasn’t just because she was weepy and embarrassing, he thought: it was because she dressed in that cheap way, it was because she was common, with a common voice that wasn’t at all like Gillian’s or Mrs Tichbourne’s or Mrs Carson’s or even Outsize Dorothy’s. He couldn’t prevent these thoughts from occurring. Why couldn’t she do something about her fluffy hair? Why did she have to gabble like that? ‘I think I have a temperature,’ he said in the morning, but when Sister took it it was only 98.
Before the service the other candidates waited outside the chapel to greet their parents and godparents, but Michael went into the chapel early and took up a devout position. Through his fingers he saw the Reverend Green lighting the candles and preparing the altar. Occasionally, the Reverend Green glanced at Michael, somewhat suspiciously.
‘Defend, O Lord, this Thy child,’ said the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and when Michael walked back to his seat he kept his head down, not wanting to see his parents and Gillian. They sang Hymn 459. ‘My God, accept,’ sang Michael, ‘my heart this day.’
He walked with Swagger Browne down the aisle, still with his eyes down. ‘Fantastic,’ said Swagger Browne outside the chapel, for want of anything better to say. ‘Bloody fantastic.’ They waited for the congregation to come out.
Michael had godparents, but his father had said that they wouldn’t be able to attend. His godmother had sent him a prayer-book.
‘Well done,’ his father said. ‘Well done, Mike.’
‘What lovely singing!’ Gillian murmured. She was wearing a white dress with a collar that was slightly turned up, and a white wide-rimmed hat. On the gravel outside the chapel she put on dark glasses against the afternoon sun.
‘Your mother’s here somewhere,’ his father said. ‘You’d better see to her, Mike.’ He spoke quietly, with a hand resting for a moment on Michael’s shoulder. ‘We’ll be all right,’ he added.
Michael turned. She was standing alone, as he knew she would be. Unable to prevent himself, he wished she wouldn’t always wear head-scarves. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said.
She took his hands and pulled him towards her. She kissed him, apologizing for the embrace but saying that it was a special occasion. She wished her father were alive, she said.
‘Tea in the Great Hall,’ A.J.L. was booming, and Outsize Dorothy was waddling about in flowered yellow, smiling at the faces of parents and godparents. ‘Do come and have tea,’ she gushed.
‘Oh, I’d love a cup of tea,’ Michael’s mother whispered.
The crowd was moving through the sunshine, suited men, the Reverend Green in his cassock, the Bishop in crimson, women in their garden-party finery. They walked up the short drive from the chapel. They passed through the wide gothic arch that heralded the front door, through the vestibule where the croquet set was tidily in place and the deck-chairs neat against a wall. They entered what A.J.L. had years ago christened the Great Hall, where buttered buns and sandwiches and cakes and sausage-rolls were laid out on trestle tables. Miss Trenchard and Miss Arland were in charge of two silver-plated tea-urns.
‘I’ll get you something to eat,’ Michael said to his mother, leaving her although he knew she didn’t want to be left. ‘Seems no time since I was getting done myself,’ he heard his father saying to A.J.L.
