sophisticated. I said, ‘I don’t know what I want.’
That was the real trouble. Boredom saps the will. It makes you feel you no longer have the power to choose. All I could see was the present stretching indefinitely into the future.
But two months later everything changed. My father died. And three weeks after that, on the 19th July 1952, I met Henry Appleyard.
Memory bathes the past in a glow of inevitability. It’s tempting to assume that the past could only have happened in the way it did, that this event could only have been followed by that event and in the order they happened. If that were true, of course, nothing would be our fault.
But of course it isn’t true. I didn’t have to marry Henry. I didn’t have to leave him. And I didn’t have to go and stay with Janet at the Dark Hostelry.
During her last year at Oxford, Janet decided that after she had taken her degree she would go to London and try to find work as a translator. Her mother’s contacts might be able to help her. She told me about it over another cup of tea, this time in her cell-like room at St Hilda’s.
‘Is it what you want to do?’
‘It’s all I can do.’
‘Couldn’t you stay here and do research?’
‘I’ll be lucky if I scrape a third. I’m not academic, Wendy. I feel I don’t really belong here. As if I got in by false pretences.’
I shrugged, envious of what she had been offered and refused. ‘I suppose there are lots of lovely young men in London as well as Oxford.’
‘Yes. I suppose so.’
Men liked Janet because she was beautiful. She didn’t say much to them either so they could talk to their hearts’ content and show off to her. But she went out of her way to avoid them. Janet wanted Sir Galahad, not a spotty undergraduate from Christchurch with an MG. In the end, she compromised as we all do. She didn’t get Sir Galahad and she didn’t get the spotty undergraduate with the MG. Instead she got the Reverend David Byfield.
Early in 1952 he came over to Oxford for a couple of days to do some work in the Bodleian. He was writing a book reinterpreting the work of St Thomas Aquinas in terms of modern theology. That’s where he and Janet saw each other, in the library. It was, Janet said, love at first sight. ‘He looked at me and I simply knew.’
Even now, I find it very hard to think objectively about David. The thing you have to remember is that in those days he was very, very good-looking. He turned heads in the street, just as Janet did. Like Henry, he had charm, but unlike Henry he wasn’t aware of it and rarely used it. He had a first-class degree in theology from Cambridge. Afterwards he went to a theological college called Mirfield.
‘Lots of smells and bells,’ Janet told me, ‘and terrifyingly brainy men who don’t like women.’
‘But David’s not like that,’ I said.
‘No,’ she said, and changed the subject.
After Mirfield, David was the curate of a parish near Cambridge for a couple of years. But at the time he met Janet he was lecturing at Rosington Theological College. They didn’t waste time – they were engaged within a month. A few weeks later, David landed the job of vice-principal at the Theological College. They were delighted, Janet wrote, and the prospects were good. The principal was old and would leave a good deal of responsibility to David. David had also been asked to be a minor canon of the Cathedral, which would help financially. The bishop, who was chairman of the Theological College’s trustees, had taken quite a shine to him. Best of all, Janet said, was the house that came with the job. It was in the Cathedral Close, and it was called the Dark Hostelry. Parts of it were medieval. Such a romantic name, she said, like something out of Ivanhoe. It was rather large for them, but they planned to take a lodger.
The wedding was in the chapel of Jerusalem, David’s old college. Janet and David made a lovely couple, something from a fairy tale. If I was in a fairy tale, I told myself, I’d be the Ugly Duckling. What made everything worse was my father’s death – not so much because I’d loved him but because there was now no longer any possibility of his loving me.
Then I saw Henry standing on the other side of the chapel. In those days he was thickset rather than plump. He was wearing a morning suit that was too small for him. We were singing a hymn and he glanced at me. He had wiry hair in need of a cut and straight, strongly marked eyebrows that went up at a sharp angle from the bridge of his nose. He grinned at me and I looked away.
I’ve still got a photograph of Janet’s wedding. It was taken in the front court of Jerusalem. In the centre, with the Wren chapel behind them, are David and Janet looking as if they’ve strayed from the closing scene of a romantic film. David looks like a young Laurence Olivier – all chiselled features and flaring nostrils, a blend of sensitivity and arrogance. He has Janet on one arm and is smiling down at her. Old Granny Byfield hangs grimly on to his other arm.
Henry and I are away to the left, separated from the happy couple by a clump of dour relations, including Mr and Mrs Treevor. Henry is trying half-heartedly to conceal the cigarette in his hand. His belly strains against the buttons of his waistcoat. The hem of my dress is uneven and I am wearing a silly little hat with a half-veil. I remember paying a small fortune for it in the belief that it would make me look sophisticated. That was before I learned that sophistication wasn’t for sale in Bradford.
John Treevor looks very odd. It must have been a trick of the light – perhaps he was standing in a shaft of sunshine. Anyway, in the photograph his face is bleached white, a tall narrow mask with two black holes for eyes and a black slit for the mouth. It’s as if they had taken a dummy from a shop window and draped it in a morning coat and striped trousers.
A moment later, just after the last photograph had been taken, Henry spoke to me for the first time. ‘I like the hat.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, once I’d glanced over my shoulder to make sure he was talking to me and not someone else.
‘I’m Henry Appleyard, by the way.’ He held out his hand. ‘A friend of David’s from Rosington.’
‘How do you do. I’m Wendy Fleetwood. Janet and I were at school together.’
‘I know. She asked me to keep an eye out for you.’ He gave me a swift but unmistakable wink. ‘But I’d have noticed you anywhere.’
I didn’t know what to say to this, so I said nothing.
‘Come on.’ He took my elbow and guided me towards a doorway. ‘There’s no time to lose.’
‘Why?’
The photographer was packing up his tripod. The wedding party was beginning to disintegrate.
‘Because I happen to know there’s only four bottles of champagne. First come first served.’
The reception was austere and dull. For most of the time I stood by the wall and pretended I didn’t mind not having anyone to talk to. Instead, I nibbled a sandwich and looked at the paintings. After Janet and David left for their honeymoon, Henry appeared at my side again, rather to my relief.
‘What
