‘Well then?’
‘She won’t agree to come in.’
‘I can’t force her,’ Victor said.
I would have done. I would have persuaded, then threatened her, finally dragged her by the hair. It wasn’t fair. To Victor. To me. Not that there was any guarantee that she could be cured or that Victor would have left her if she had been. It was just a bee I had had in my bonnet since the operation, its buzz insistently loud. When I got back to work again, gradually, slowly, becoming with every week more my old self, I stopped nagging Victor and everything fell once more into place.
I came to measure my life, to count the passing of the years, vicariously, against the growth of Lucy; as if instead of having my appendix removed I had actually given birth to her. I had two lives. I had my own, at work and with my friends and family, seeing Victor three or four times a week, our holidays, and speaking to him almost every day; I also had Victor’s life, with Molly and the children, sharing every vicissitude, every drama endemic to family life. I suffered, waiting anxiously for the results with Victor, while the boys struggled with entrance examinations for the schools to which Victor was determined they should go. I followed their progress from scared juniors – no more almost than babies turfed summarily out of the nest – to responsible seniors, sharing Victor’s pride and joy at their academic progress, living with him through Gavin’s near death from drowning while canoeing in Wales with the school, and Tristan’s term-long battle with glandular fever. I anguished with him over ‘O’ levels and ‘A’ levels and afterwards Oxbridge. I felt that I knew them intimately. William like his father, strong-willed and determined, Tristan, Molly’s gentle ghost, his face permanently in a book, living his life inside his head, and Gavin, athletic and fearless, charming his way through his academic work and shining on the sports field.
And Lucy. Lucy. I loved her right from the start as if she were my own child.
After her birth, a tiny, perfect, fragile, blue-eyed doll, appealing even in the photographs, I knew that there would be no question of Victor every leaving her, let alone Molly. Perhaps because she was a girl, after three boys; perhaps because, owing to Molly’s immobility, Victor was more intimately concerned with her upbringing. I don’t know; only that from the very beginning, in her father’s eyes, Lucy could do no wrong. Whatever Lucy wanted, Lucy had. I warned Victor that he was storing up trouble for himself.
As I studied the photograph of the christening, looking at but not seeing the family group, Molly on the sofa with Lucy in her long gown on her lap, Victor next to her, with his arm round her, looking adoringly at his daughter, the boys in self-conscious poses, I admitted, for the first time to myself, that I had reached a watershed and that I would live as Victor’s mistress for the rest of my life.
I don’t know why it never occurred to me that it might possibly be for the rest of his.
The Second Part
It was Victor’s photograph on the front page of The Times, when he got his knighthood for services to industry, that brought home to me the fact that we had been together for thirteen years. I noticed suddenly that his figure had become stocky, rather than slight, the hair receded from his forehead and that there were lines, a fine network round the eyes, where none had been before.
Time had crept up on us. We had remained faithful. What we had was not a marriage but neither did we have the squabbles over money, religion, politics and children which were indigenous to it. There were personal differences. Idiosyncrasies on both sides which at times were infuriating. Because of the very nature of our relationship we were able to make allowances and had no desire to make each other over.
My parents, who even now, incredibly, did not know about Victor, had long ago given me up as a bad job. I was still a ‘spinster’ to them, as I had once been the ‘Ice-Bank’ at the hospital. My life had not changed as far as they were concerned and I could not reveal to them its richly embroidered tapestry. They lived in the past, my mother in particular. She had been brought up to believe that a wife’s duty was to support her husband, advance his career and bring up his children, and that it was a lifelong commitment. She was aware that the next generation had wider expectations but saw them as unhappy and confused with no guidelines. People needed to be told, she said, how to behave. She may have been right. She would certainly not have understood about Victor.
She and my father were never apart. They had not been separated except for the war years and when Jennie and I were born. My father even came home for his midday lunch and mother seemed not to mind that a great many hours of every day were spent in the kitchen. When Jennie and I teased her about it she smiled, an enigmatic smile, as if she were in possession of some secret to which we did not have access. Perhaps she was. They certainly seemed content.
When my mother developed cirrhosis of the liver with bleeding varices and was dead within three weeks, it was as if a thunderbolt had hit. My father was stunned, numbed, devastated. It was a bolt from the blue which completely felled him. Later he struggled to his feet and functioned but he never completely recovered; such was the nature of his dependence. As an old man his talk was always of ‘your mother’, the passage of the years turning her into a saint instead of the loving, lovable mater familias she had been.
I had not imagined I would be so affected by her death myself. Mistakenly, I was under the impression that with adulthood one outgrew mothers and their removal from the scene would be no more traumatic than the passing of any other relative not in the first flush of youth. My acquaintance with death had been mainly through my work and was intellectual rather than emotional. I was totally unprepared for the obscene shock I received, the feeling of impotent rage and unfairness, the sensation of my own increased vulnerability and later the depression which tore me apart. Any time I spent at home, after her death, was haunted by the spectre of her presence, her image, her opinion on a hundred familiar topics, her quick step and the sensation of caring with which she filled the house. The emptiness was a void which was never, could never be, filled. I heard her voice in many of the decisions I later made.
Victor was incredible, gentle, patient, seeming to understand. Like a child he comforted me as in the past I had comforted him. Love – romance – had changed. As well as our physical needs there were emotional ones. As we grew older we discovered the need for sympathy and understanding as well as sex. I suppose we were no longer ‘in love’ – ringing up just to hear each other’s voices, white flowers every day – ‘love’ had taken its place. There were still the white flowers, when Victor was moved to send them, but as well as lovers we had become companions, confidants, friends. Despite its sporadic quality, seen over the years it was a life that we lived together. There was birth and death, disappointment and sickness, exultation and despair. The despair, disappointment too, was over Lucy.
She was spoiled by Molly who, unable to establish a warm, physical relationship with Victor, directed many of her feelings towards her daughter. It could not have been difficult. Anyone seeing the rounded limbs, the wide blue eyes, the blonde curls of her early years was instantly captivated.
It was easy to love her. According to Victor she was an affectionate child, profligate with her smiles and her embraces. And she was no trouble. Perhaps because from the beginning she got her own way. Knew how to get it. If there was a dispute with the boys, it was always they who were in the wrong. Sometimes it was patently unjust and I would tell Victor when he related a particular incident to me. He could not see it. It was her brothers who were selfish, greedy, uncharitable. Lucy could do no wrong. It did not take her long to realize this, to manipulate and exploit, to turn every situation to her advantage while at the same time retaining her charm. The tears had only to fill the saucers of her eyes for those around her to weaken. It was a strategem she never lost. She tried it on the Bench when later, in adolescence, she was to come before them for stealing. She tried to break their hearts as she had learned to break others. As she broke Victor’s. Lucy
was his blind spot, his Achilles heel. I was amazed that one so rational, so perceptive in every other respect, could be so blinkered as far as his only daughter was concerned. I was glad that he did not live to read of her death in a cellar from an overdose of heroin. Aged twenty-one.
It was Jennie who brought home to me my involvement with Victor’s child. I followed the exploits of Tristan and William and Gavin but more as an observer. With Lucy I was caught up in the wide net of her machinations.
Jennie and I were having an evening alone; Trevor was on business in Germany and I had gone over to Barnes to keep her company; Bonnie, her youngest who was three months younger than Lucy, was upstairs doing her homework. Jennie, who took after mother and was good with her hands, had started a small craft business which she ran from the house. She made pony-tail holders and hair slides and other gimmicks according to the fashion and sold them to the stores. Her sitting-room was littered with plaster pigs, the latest craze.
She was decorating her Christmas tree and I was helping her, tying fine twine through porcelain cherubs and silver stars.
‘We’re giving Bonnie dancing lessons,’ Jennie said, holding the string in her teeth. ‘She’s suddenly gone ballet mad. Of course she’s too old to start and will probably be too tall but Trevor says to let her get it out of her system. She wanted either that or a new bike but Trevor says she can make do for a bit longer with Thomasina’s old one.’
‘Lucy’s getting a bracelet,’ I said, ‘to match her locket. Victor’s having it made.’ I took a photograph from my bag, of Lucy, in a blue, watered silk, low-necked dress, wearing the locket. I handed it to Jennie who finished tying the piece of twine onto her silver star. ‘It’s not a very good photograph, but you can see the locket. It has tiny pearls all round it. The bracelet will be the same.’
Jennie looked at it, Lucy with her mother’s face and Victor’s eyes, and handed it back. I gave her another from the envelope I carried with me. ‘This is Victor with Lucy outside the house. Gavin took it, just a cheap camera. Lucy closed her eyes at the wrong moment.’
‘Anyone would think she was your daughter,’ Jennie said.
She was, although I was not her mother. Through Victor I followed her through babyhood and school, childhood and precocious adolescence. Through his eyes I watched her at dancing classes and in the end of term concert; in the garden, playing cricket with the boys who must be careful not to bowl her out too soon; and on the sands, Molly, in a wheelchair, watching her at play. I lived through mumps and measles, and whooping cough from which she nearly died – suffering with him – and the dreadful time she fell off a ladder she should not have climbed, almost losing the sight of one eye which eventually was saved. Concerning her welfare he asked my opinion and took my advice. There was no aspect of her life which was not familiar to me, yet in the street she would have passed me by.
‘It’s a pity things did not turn out differently for you,’ Jennie said, ‘that you never had children of your own.’
‘I would have made a rotten mother. I’m too selfish.’
‘Motherhood is not synonymous with all the virtues. We do what we can. The best that can be said is that one muddles through. I saw Victor being interviewed on television.’
‘He’s busy trying to get the government out of the mess it’s in. I hardly see him.’
‘I suppose you’ll be going away,’ Jennie said, ‘after Christmas.’
We always went in January. Somewhere hot. Jamaica, Peter Island, the Seychelles.
‘We’re not going this year.’ I picked up a cardboard snowflake to hide my disappointment.
Jennie raised her eyebrows.
‘All the girls in Lucy’s class go skiing. Victor’s taking her to Zermatt.’
A boy on a skateboard, loose-limbed as rubber, streaked past us, momentarily obscuring our view of the lake and weaving his way through the crowds.
‘Someone will get hurt,’ Victor said. ‘It shouldn’t be allowed.’
‘It’s not.’
There was a notice by the gate ‘No skateboards’.
Regulations were made for disregarding. It was a sign of the times, as were the visitors in strange garb from oil-rich countries who had come to share the splendour of our roses. There were other signs too. Innocent citizens held hostage, kidnaps, hijacks, bombs – planted by extremist groups amongst unwary civilians – riots, racism, rape. The imminent collapse of civilization as we knew it was predicted. It was not discounted by the endless stream of convenience talk, sauce for the convenience foods, spewed out daily by the media and threatening to immobilize our minds.
On a personal level I felt untouched until I stood before the glass. I had never been a follower of fashion. I did not ‘think big about greatcoats’, get myself up like a ‘Navajo Indian’, or ‘put a sparkle at my feet’, according to the whims of the magazine editors. I attempted to make the best of myself, not least for Victor, and lately it had needed more care. My weight remained constant but the countenance I grew up with had conceded to the years and no longer reflected my true inner emotions. While my heart still danced, the slackened muscles had difficulty, sometimes, keeping the rhythm; I had been tinting my hair for years but there was nothing I could do about my face. Victor still loved it in its middle age. I tried not to look too often in the mirror.
Victor stared at the newspaper on his lap. On the front page was a picture of Lucy. Today it was as if the roses did not exist. He had not even glanced at Madame Louise Laperrière. He was watching the young girls, their hair tied back or loose around their summer arms, and thinking about Lucy.
‘It all started,’ he said, ‘that winter in Zermatt.’
But of course it had begun long, long before.
I remember the year, the Zermatt one, not only because I was alone when I should have been away with Victor, but because before he left he filled the flat with white hyacinths. There were bowls of them everywhere in curled bloom. The smell was overpowering, filling my nostrils wherever I went. I thought of him often, imagining the good time he must be having with Lucy, that they would come back happy and bronzed, hopefully with no broken limbs.
They were bronzed all right, Victor at any rate, but there was nothing about his expression to indicate that the holiday had been a success.
‘In bed with the skiing instructor,’ he said. ‘Fifteen years old!’
It was the beginning. Luckily she didn’t get pregnant. Not on that occasion. Later, of course, at least once that we know of. But there was worse. She lied and stole. She was expelled from one school and ran away from another to become a groupie, following a band from gig to gig. On medical advice she went into analysis but did not keep her appointments. There was no holding her. She walked out of the house after a row with Molly, not letting Victor know where she was. He put a tail on her and grew increasingly sombre over their reports. He extracted her from a Spanish jail and flew to Delhi when she contracted hepatitis. On each occasion she opened the wide blue eyes at him promising to be good. His disappointment in her was not mitigated by the fact that the boys gave him no trouble. William had a successful microelectronics company producing home computers; Tristan had stayed up at Oxford as a don and Gavin, who took after Victor in his love of animals, was almost qualified as a vet.
The newspaper photograph did not do her justice.
‘Lucy Fleur (she was Victor’s flower) Pattison. Daughter of Industrialist Sir Victor Pattison…’
She had stolen a handbag from Harrods. With no subtlety. Almost as if her life had been going through a dull patch and she needed something to liven it up. Perhaps she did. In the photograph her hair was tousled and her mouth defiant. It was a poor likeness but nothing could diminish her beauty. Her essence of Molly with a dash of Victor.
I put my hand over his, knowing there was nothing I could say to take away the pain.
From the way he looked at Lucy’s image you could sense that more than anything he wanted to pick her up out of the gutter, to sponge away,
expunge, her wild, misspent youth and set her up again on the pedestal on which he had raised her. He would never, could never, believe in her dissolution. His principles would not allow it.
‘Did I do something wrong?’ He put his head in his hand.
From the moment she first stamped her foot. I remained silent. We had discussed it of course over the years. He hadn’t taken kindly to my condemnation of his indulgence of Lucy. Perhaps she would have turned out the same anyway. Who knows?
It was after this, after what we always referred to as ‘Lucy and the handbag’, when she was fined and put on probation, that Victor began to talk about what would happen if he were to die when he was in bed with me. If anything were to happen to him I must never let him be found in the flat. One black sheep in the family was more than enough. He made me promise, over and over again, that if I had anything to do with it there would not be another.
My practice – Pathological Investigation Centre – as it is now called, about which in the beginning I had had such doubts, had taken wings. There were a dozen of us altogether including nurses, secretaries and technicians, and we were hard pressed from morning until night. Bob, already balding, was my right hand. He was married now with two children and the aspidistras in his conservatory had given way over the years to prams and baby buggies, bicycles and football boots. I thrived on the activity of the Centre. It occupied me when Victor was not there. It had also made me rich. Money rolled in from banks all over the world. Because of Victor I spent very little of it and had made a will in favour of my goddaughter, Bonnie. There was no one else.
Bonnie pitied me.
On her fifteenth birthday I had taken her to lunch.
She had looked at my unringed hand and said: ‘Why did you never get married, Auntie Jean?’
‘Too busy.’
A Loving Mistress Page 10