‘You’ll miss her terribly.’
‘Yes, we shall.’
In the garden Cosmo walked with his son, who happened in that moment to be saying the same thing.
‘Yes, Cicily’ll miss her,’ Cosmo replied. ‘Dreadfully.’
‘So’ll you, Father.’
‘Yes, I shall too.’
The garden was as pleasant as the house, running down to the river, with japonica and escallonia now in bloom on a meadow bank. It was without herbaceous borders, sheltered by high stone walls. Magnolias and acers added colour to the slope of grass that stretched from wall to wall. Later there’d be roses and broom. It was Mags who had planned the arrangement of all these shrubs, who had organized the removal of some cherry trees that weren’t to her liking, and had every week in summer cut the grass with her Flymo. It was generally agreed that her good taste had given the garden character.
‘There’d been some man, hadn’t there?’ James asked his father as they stood on the bank of the river, watching pleasure boats go by.
‘Robert Blakley. Oh, a long time ago.’
‘But it left a mark?’
‘Yes, it left a mark.’
In the room that had been Mags’s bedroom Cicily said:
‘Misfortune came easily to her. It somehow seemed quite expected that Robert Blakley should let her down.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Just said he’d made a mistake and walked away.’
‘Perhaps it was as well if he was like that.’
‘I never liked him.’
It seemed to Cicily, and always had, that though misfortune had come easily to her friend it had never been deserved. The world had sinned against her without allowing her the joy of sinning. Ready-made a victim, she’d been supplied with no weapons that Cicily could see as useful in her own defence. The best thing that had happened in Mags’s life might well have been their long friendship and Mags’s involvement with the family.
Before lunch they all had a glass or two of sherry because they felt they needed it. It cheered them up, as the lunch itself did. But even so, as Julia said goodbye to her parents, she wondered again how well they’d manage now. She said as much to James as they drove away together in his car, the French clock carefully propped on the back seat, the jewellery in Julia’s handbag. When all these years there’d been a triangular quality about conversation in Tudors, how would conversation now continue?
It would not continue, Cosmo thought. There would be silences in Tudors, for already he could feel them gathering. On summer weekends he would start the Flymo for Cicily; they would go as usual to the Borders in July. But as they perused the menu in the bar of the Glenview Hotel they’d dread the moment when the waiter took it from them, when they could put off no longer the conversation that eluded them. At Christmas it would be all right because, as usual, Julia and James and the children would come to Tudors, but in the bleak hours after they’d left the emptiness would have an awful edge. Mags had chattered so.
Changing out of the sober clothes she’d worn for the funeral, Cicily recalled a visit with Mags to Fenwick’s. It was she who had suggested it, 1969 it must have been, ‘I insist,’ she’d said. ‘Absolutely no arguments.’ The fact was, Mags hadn’t bought herself so much as a new scarf for years. As a girl, she’d always done her best, but living in Tudors, spending most of her day in the garden, she’d stopped bothering. ‘And if Fenwick’s haven’t anything then we go to Jaeger’s,’ Cicily had insisted. ‘We’re going to spend the whole day sorting you out.’ Mags of course had protested, but in the end had agreed. She was quite well off, having inherited a useful income from her mother; she could easily afford to splash out.
But in the event she didn’t. In Fenwick’s the saleswoman was rude. She shook her head repeatedly when Mags stood in front of a looking-glass, first in yellow and then in blue. ‘Not entirely madam’s style,’ she decreed. ‘More yours, madam,’ she suggested to Cicily. In the end they’d left the shop without anything and instead of going on to Jaeger’s went to Dickins and Jones for coffee. Mags wept, not noisily, not making a fuss. She cried with her head bent forward so that people wouldn’t see. She apologized and then confessed that she hated shopping for clothes: it was always the same, it always went wrong. Saleswomen sighed when they saw her coming. Almost before she could open her mouth she became the victim of their tired feet.
They went to D. H. Evans that day and bought a dreary wool dress in a shade of granite. It made Mags look like an old-age pensioner. ‘Really nice,’ the saleswoman assured them. ‘Really suits the lady.’
That was the trouble, Cicily reflected as she hung up the coat she’d worn for the funeral: Mags had never had the confidence to fight back. She should have pointed out to the saleswoman in Fenwick’s that the choice was hers, that she didn’t need to be told what her style was. She should have protested that Miss Harper was being unfair. She should have told Robert Blakley to go to hell. Mags had been far better-looking than she’d ever known. With decent make-up and decent clothes she could have been quite striking in her way.
Cicily brushed her hair, glancing at her own face in her dressing-table looking-glass. No saleswoman had ever dared to patronize her; her beauty saw to that. It was all so wretchedly unfair.
Later that day Cosmo sat in the small room he called his study, its walls lined with old books. He had drawn the curtains and turned on the green-shaded desk light. In the kitchen Cicily was preparing their supper, cold ham and salad, and a vegetable soup to cheer it up. He’d passed the kitchen door and seen her at it, ‘Any Questions’ on the wireless. It was his fault; he knew it was; for twenty-seven years, ever since Mags had become part of the family, it had been his fault. He should have had the wisdom to know: he should have said over his dead body or something strong like that. ‘I don’t care who she is or how she’s suffered,’ he should have insisted, ‘she’s not going to come and live with us.’ But of course it hadn’t been like that, because Mags had just drifted into the family. Anyone would have thought him mad if he’d suggested that with the passing years she’d consume his marriage.
‘Cosmo. Supper.’
He called back, saying he was coming, already putting the moment off. He turned the desk light out but when he left his study he didn’t go directly to the kitchen. ‘I’m making up the fire,’ he announced from the sitting-room,
