Without much warning, Poppy died. During a summer holiday at Mrs Roope’s Prospect Hotel she’d complained of pains, though not much, because that was not her way. ‘First day back you’ll see Dr Pace,’ Albert commanded. Two months later she died one night, without waking up.
After the death Alice was at a loss. For almost fifty years Poppy had been her friend. The affection between them had increased as they’d watched one another age and as their companionship yielded more memories they could share. Their children – Alice’s Beryl and Ron, and Poppy’s Mervyn – had played together. There’d been the business of Mervyn’s emigration to Canada, and Alice’s comforting of Poppy because of it. There’d been the marriage of Ron and then of Beryl, and Poppy’s expression of Alice’s unspoken thought, that Ron’s Hilda wasn’t good enough for him, too bossy for any man really, and Poppy’s approval of Beryl’s Tony, an approval that Alice shared.
Alice had missed her children when they’d gone, just as Poppy had missed Mervyn. ‘Oh Lord, I know, dear!’ Poppy cried when Alice wept the day after Beryl’s wedding. Beryl had lived at home until then, as Ron had until his marriage. It was a help, being able to talk to Poppy about it, and Poppy so accurately understanding what Alice felt.
After Poppy’s death the silence she’d prevented when Alice’s children had grown up fell with a vengeance. It icily surrounded Alice and she found it hard to adapt herself to a life that was greyer and quieter, to days going by without Poppy dropping in or she herself dropping in on Poppy, without the cups of Maxwell House coffee they’d had together, and the cups of tea, and the biscuits and raspberry-jam sandwich cake, which Poppy had been fond of. Once, awake in the middle of the night, she found herself thinking that if Lenny had died she mightn’t have missed him so much. She hated that thought and tried, unsuccessfully, to dispel it from her mind. It was because she and Poppy had told one another everything, she kept saying to herself, the way you couldn’t really tell Lenny. But all this sounded rather lame, and when she said to herself instead that it was because she and Poppy had known one another all their lives it didn’t sound much better: she and Lenny had known one another all their lives, too. For six months after the death she didn’t go to Bingo, unable to face going on her own. It didn’t even occur to her to go afternoon dancing.
The first summer after the death, Alice and Lenny and Albert went as usual to the Prospect Hotel in Southend. There seemed to the two men to be no good reason why they shouldn’t, although when they arrived there Albert was suddenly silent and Alice could see that he was more upset than he’d imagined he would be. But after a day he was quite himself again, and when it wasn’t necessary to cheer him up any more she began to feel miserable herself. It wasn’t so much because of the death, but because she felt superfluous without Poppy. She realized gradually, and the two men realized even more gradually, that on previous holidays there had been no conversation that was general to all four of them: the men had talked to each other and so had their wives. The men did their best now to include Alice, but it was difficult and awkward.
She took to going for walks by herself, along the front and down the piers, out to the sea and back again. It was then, that summer at Southend, that Alice began to think about Grantly Palmer. It had never occurred to her before that he didn’t even know that Poppy had died, even though they’d all three been such good friends on Tuesday afternoons at the Tottenham Court Dance-Rooms. She wondered what he thought, if he’d been puzzled by their sudden absence, or if he still attended the dance-rooms himself. One night in the Prospect Hotel, listening to the throaty breathing of her husband, she suddenly and quite urgently wanted to tell Grantly Palmer about Poppy’s death. She suddenly felt that it was his due, that she’d been unkind not ever to have informed him. Poppy would wish him to know, she said to herself; it was bad that she’d let down her friend in this small way. In the middle of that night, while still listening to Lenny’s breathing, she resolved to return to the Tottenham Court Dance-Rooms and found herself wondering if Leo Ritz and his Band would still be playing there.
‘Breakfasts’ve gone down a bit,’ Albert said on the way back to London, and Lenny reminded him that Mrs Roope had had a bit of family trouble. ‘Dropped Charlie Cooke, I see,’ Lenny said, referring to a Crystal Palace player. He handed Albert the Daily Mirror, open at the sports page. ‘Dare say they’ll be back to normal next year,’ Albert said, still referring to the breakfasts.
In Paper Street, a week after their return, she put on her peach-coloured corset and the dress she’d worn the first time they’d gone afternoon dancing – blue-green satin, with a small array of sequins at the shoulders and the breast. It felt more silent than ever in the house in Paper Street, because in the past Poppy used to chat and giggle in just the same way as she had as a girl, lavishly spraying scent on herself, a habit she’d always had also. Alice closed the door of Number 41 behind her and walked quickly in Paper Street, feeling guiltier than she had when the guilt could be shared. She’d tell some lie if someone she knew said she was looking smart. She’d probably say she was going to Bingo, which was what they’d both said once when Mrs Tedman had looked them up and down, as though suspecting the finery beneath. You could see that Mrs Tedman hadn’t believed that they were going to Bingo, but Poppy said it didn’t matter what Mrs Tedman thought. It was all a bit frightening without Poppy, but then everything was something else without Poppy, dull or silent or frightening. Alice caught a bus, and at a quarter to three she entered the dance-rooms.
‘Well, well!’ Grantly Palmer said, smiling his bright smile. ‘Well, well, stranger lady!’
‘Hullo, Mr Palmer.’
‘Oh, child, child!’
‘Hullo, Grantly.’
It had always been a joke, the business of Christian names between the three of them. ‘Alice and Poppy!’ he’d said the first time they’d had tea together. ‘My, my, what charmin’ names!’ They’d just begun to use his own Christian name when Poppy had died. Funny name, Grantly,’ Poppy had remarked on the bus after he’d first told them, but soon it had become impossible to think of him as anything else.
‘Where’s Poppy, dear?’
‘Poppy died, Grantly.’
She told him all about it, about last year’s holiday at Southend and the development of the illness and then the funeral. ‘My God!’ he said, staring into her eyes. ‘My God, Alice.’
The band was playing ‘Lullaby of Broadway’: middle-aged women, in twos or on their own, stood about, sizing up the men who approached them, in the same expert way as she and Poppy had sized men up in their time. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea,’ Grantly Palmer said.
They had tea and Swiss-roll slices and Danish pastries. They talked about Poppy. ‘Was she happy?’ he asked. And Alice said her friend had been happy enough.