‘Quite charming,’ she would go on, losing interest. ‘Put them there, would you? I’ll see to them later.’ Any flowers I brought her, and I brought her many, always ended up on a side table, sometimes to be put, much later,into a vase, sometimes to stay there until they ended up in the wastepaper basket.
It was all a long time ago. She was nearly eighty when she died, and I am getting on for seventy. She never came to terms with age: in a sense she never had to, for she never lost her power. For myself things have been different. I was always hapless, timid. Yet age has dealt with me kindly so far. I keep well, and although I have put on a little weight my figure is still quite trim. I make the most of my appearance, follow the fashions, abide by my mother’s rule: brown in the autumn, navy in the spring. One or two people still remember me from the time when I sang on the wireless. I was Fay Dodworth, quite a favourite in those early days. I did the lighter sort of ballad, the serious spot on various comedy shows, before they all became too sophisticated. I had a pretty voice. Some said I was a pretty girl, although standards were lower then: one could be admired for such things as wavy hair or high cheekbones or a small waist or even a straight back. I was not sorry when it all came to an end; I never had the temperament for a performer. But I made a little comeback when I read the serial on ‘Woman’s Hour’: my voice was still musical, and my diction had always been good. That brought me quite a few letters from people who had listened to me in the early days. I felt quite bucked. Nothing of note has happened since then, but I keep busy, and cheerful. I have been complimented on my high standards. I do try to keep them up.
Of course, I know the truth of how I really look, at night, with my hair down. I watched, almost objectively, the emergence of the asexual body, the body that must be treated with care, until it finally takes over, at the end. As my figure lost its definition, became subject to greater gravity, I knew that love was gone for ever. But it is the same for everyone,I told myself; everyone is bound by the law of change. One evening, I remember, I looked in puzzlement at my long hair, from which nearly all the colour had gone, and felt the softness at my waist. I wept then, briefly. But I slept that night as usual, and in the morning I woke and thought how foolish I had been. I am always light-hearted in the mornings. The late afternoon is my bad time, when the light goes. I get nervous then, and long for someone to come. At those times I feel fatally like my mother, waiting in the dusk for me to wave to her as I approached the house. But after a while I get up and make a cup of coffee and switch on for the news. There is absolutely no point in giving way to melancholy. There is always another day, or so I like to think.
‘Arcady’ was my song. ‘Arcady, Arcady is always young.’ I sang it at the end of the programme, sometimes as an encore. Such a pretty song. And I sang ‘Only Make-Believe’, and ‘You Are My Heart’s Delight’, and ‘I’ll Be Loving You Always’. Beautiful songs, all of them. Sometimes the words come back to me, even now, but I try not to think about the melodies, which, since I have grown older, strike me as unbearably sad, plaintive, modest, wistful, redolent of everyday disappointments, even tragedies. I try not to brood, although I suppose I have as much to brood over as anyone else. So much gone. So much lost. But then I rally again, somehow or other. I have been lucky, really: nothing drove me off balance, which is so important if one at least tries to keep one’s dignity. On the whole my life has been very easy, very pleasant. I was a pretty girl, I married well … It all seems a long time ago. But what most women want I once had. I try to remember that.
TWO
MY FATHER, JIMMY DODWORTH , was a cinema manager, in the days when cinema managers stood in