Love Song

by Charlotte Bingham

  Looking round the house, Hope, with only Letty now for company, had seen that everything, from the delicate arrangement of the flowers in their silver and crystal vases, the seemingly casual little gatherings of the chairs and sofas in the drawing room, the Paisley throws across the back of an armoire on the landing, to the arrangement of the hand tinted flower prints in the bathrooms, was Aunt Rosabel, and really very little, if not nothing, either Hope or Alexander.

  Try as they might to enter, reorganize and modernize her house, it had remained, ultimately, that of Aunt Rosabel. Hatcombe was where she and Uncle Harry had lived out their lives, and in some strangely spiritual continuity still survived, for it was they who had made the place what it was. In all humility, Hope realized that she and Alexander might have moved in and repaired it, but when it had come to adding actual quality to its old rooms, and that touch of magical lightness that only true good taste could bring, it was all Aunt Rosabel.

  ‘So dull for you here visiting me, my dear. And what about little Letty?’

  ‘Mrs Shepherd came in.’

  ‘Of course – from the new cottages.’

  They both smiled. It had become one of their little jokes. The ‘new’ cottages were actually Victorian. Very new as far as Hatcombe was concerned, but not quite so new in the late nineteen eighties.

  Shortly after that it seemed a good thing for Hope to go but with promises of returning in the morning overriding mild protests from Aunt Rosabel that there was no need. It was quite obvious that there was every need, for she looked suddenly tired and unable to talk, but also lonely and frightened, so that Hope promised to arrange for her to come back to Hatcombe as soon as she could, the underlying understanding being that if she was going to die, she would prefer to die at home, at Hatcombe.

  Of course Alexander had been informed, and was back at the old house the following day looking suddenly young and carefree, as if he had quite forgotten that his future inheritance had been sold to someone else, and that technically they were, in fact, now homeless, not to mention very nearly penniless.

  They did not kiss exactly, for as soon as she saw him Hope realized that she could no longer bear to kiss him now – for a true kiss requires honesty and is real – so they bumped cheeks and Hope went straight back to the kitchen. Alexander followed her, interested only in hearing whether or not Aunt Rosabel was still alive, and looking almost openly disappointed when he heard that she was.

  ‘Let us pray,’ he intoned, accepting a cup of freshly made coffee from Hope, ‘let us indeed pray that she is carried off to meet her maker very soon, for all our sakes, and then we can get on with our lives.’

  ‘I didn’t hear that.’ Hope opened a fresh packet of biscuits and placed them on a plate in the middle of the table for Alexander and Letty. The little girl was staring up at her father as if she did not quite know who he was, as if he might be a man come to sell them something, or the vicar visiting.

  ‘Is she all right without Verna?’

  Hope half closed her eyes, her back turned to her husband. It seemed to her sometimes that he had a line in tactless utterances that had to be heard to be believed. The avoidance of Verna’s name had been central to Hope’s efforts to help Letty get over the sudden departure of her nanny.

  ‘Biscuit, darling?’ She quickly handed her youngest a biscuit to cover the moment, and tried to look across at Alexander in a new, calmer way, as if he was a lunatic friend who needed advice and help, nothing to do with her, someone quite other, someone of whom the girls might say, Oh, not Alexander calling round again, poor Mums!

  ‘You do realize that if Aunt Rosabel dies it will be much, much harder to prove that she signed the house away when the balance of her mind was affected? I mean I suppose it has occurred to you that she is much better, from your point of view, alive than dead?’

  Alexander nodded, turning away to avoid contact with Hope’s direct, sometimes too honest, gaze. He had actually always hated the way Hope looked at him, he realized now, for she had a way of regarding him, so direct and the eyes so unwavering in their candour, which was utterly disconcerting, even more so now he knew that they were not, either of them, at all as they had been.

  Certainly he could not tell Hope that since last week it did not matter to him in the least if Aunt Rosabel came or went, lived or died, because at last, it seemed to him, he had sorted out a plan for their future. But it was not one that he could confide to Hope, not even whisper to her, Hope still being – in his eyes anyway – hopeless.

  At the same moment Hope too turned away, suddenly chilled, realizing mat she had just said to Alexander ‘your point of view’ and not ‘our point of view’.

  Alexander was the first to break the silence that had fallen, a silence filled only with a sigh of a relationship finally dying between two people whose backs were turned to each other, the sound of Letty sucking on a sponge finger and the click of the central heating system turning itself on.

  ‘Look, let’s all go and see her this afternoon, all right? Masses of flowers and those white chocolates that she likes, and then we can come back here and I’ll stay on with you until we know one way or another. It’s a bit quiet in London at the moment – although things are actually beginning to pick up. A small investment I made …’

  Hope dropped her gaze and picked up Letty. Alexander’s investments were not something that either of them should be required to talk about any more. But at least they could go to the hospital together. At that moment the telephone rang, long and insistent.

  They both stared at each other. At that moment, as neither of them moved towards the phone on the wall that was ringing so insistently, on and on, and on until the sound was more like a woman screaming and neither reached forward or walked forward or even inclined their bodies forward to pick it up, Hope knew with absolute clarity why it was that she had felt no guilt about making love with Jack. It was because, undoubtedly, Alexander had already been unfaithful.

  She knew this with a terrible certainty because she knew that at that moment he was petrified that the person who was ringing might be someone Hope should not hear, just as Hope was terrified that it was Jack ringing her and that Alexander would hear him calling down the telephone to her, ‘Hallo, darling soul!’

  Hope grabbed at the still ringing phone, already knowing that it was Jack, and preparing herself to sound confused and distant so that Jack, who was all too sensitive to voices and people, would know to sound the same in case Alexander might have moved closer to her to listen in on her conversation, which, chillingly, and for no reason she could imagine, he had.

  But Jack knew at once because Hope answered by saying, as if she had been interrupted in the middle of something, ‘—it’s sure to be for you, Alexander’ and only then saying ‘Hallo?’

  ‘Bring the girls round when they break up from school? But of course I’d love to, Jack. Forgive me if I sound a bit strange, but it’s Alexander’s great-aunt, not too well, and you know – must dash. I’ll ring back tomorrow, OK? Oh, and thank you. Sweet of you to call about the girls, really.’

  ‘Jack from up the way, huh? How is the ageing rocker?’

  ‘Fine, I think.’ But remembering the interest in Mrs Taylor-Batsford’s eyes, she quickly added, ‘Haven’t seen him, really, except once we bumped into each other when I was picking up some spoons for Aunt Rosabel in Bradford-on-Avon. Letty, don’t do that, darling.’

  ‘Right, let’s go then. Off to see the old bag—’

  ‘Don’t ever call her that in front of me, Alexander.’

  ‘Oops, sorree, your ladyship, beg pardon I’m sure.’ Alexander smiled, pretending to tease her in front of Letty, although his eyes were cold and humourless and his mouth tightened as it always did when he was corrected. ‘You see, I thought – oh, never mind what I thought. Let’s get going, shall we? This is becoming intensely boring.’

  ‘You go ahead. I must take Letty to Mrs Shepherd. In fact you go on ahead in your car, and I’ll follow in mine.�
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  ‘Oh, bring Letty, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘No, hospital is not the place for littles. Besides, she likes going to Mrs Shepherd, don’t you, darling? Because she has a kitten, and Letty is learning to make the word kitten with her crayon, and read it too. No. You go ahead to the hospital. Aunt Rosabel’s in a private room. Well, the county hospital being the old cottage hospital, that’s all there are, actually. And, Alexander, don’t forget to talk quietly. She is very ill.’

  As always when told to do or be something Alexander looked as if he was majoring in boredom and uninterest, but he nevertheless went on ahead, patting the sides of his navy-blue cashmere coat to make sure of his car keys and whistling slightly off key, which made Hope close her eyes as she realized just how used to Jack she had become, and how unused to Alexander. Jack never whistled, he sang. And Jack was always in tune, with her, with life, with everything.

  Naturally, Alexander being Alexander, he overwhelmed Aunt Rosabel with flowers and chocolates, filling her room with expensive winter blooms, taxing the nurses with not having enough vases, while unwrapping her chocolates and insisting on her eating at least one, for him, threatening not to leave her until she did. And of course Aunt Rosabel being Aunt Rosabel could not resist being petted and spoiled and ate the chocolate, despite her weak state, and her lack of energy, and the look in her eyes that said, I know you’re a rogue, but you make me laugh.

  Hope left them together, having warned the nurses not to let Alexander tire his great-aunt. They’d promised to remove him after twenty minutes.

  Unable to stand the sight of Alexander charming the woman whom he had been, only an hour before, so piously and sincerely wishing dead, she drove off from the hospital, intending to return to Letty, and the house, and some quiet, during which time she planned to compose what she had to say to Alexander.

  But the relief of being away from the hospital and in her car quite alone was so intense that instead of turning towards home and Letty and Mrs Shepherd, towards Hatcombe and their future as a family, Hope took off in the opposite direction, driving blindly into a maze of country lanes, well away from anyone or anywhere she knew. And as she drove, the window down, the breeze blowing her hair, she tried hard to think of what to do, tried to think out her irrational, unbelievable situation, somehow to make a rational, believable plan for them all.

  Whatever happened, she decided, she must not do as she had read that so many other wives did, and that was to confront Alexander with her own infidelity. She had to continue to deceive him, even though she was convinced that he himself must have been deceiving her for heaven only knew how long in London.

  Besides, the one thing that she did see quite clearly was that now was a time not for accusation, but for practicality. There was little point in looking to score points or find proof, about as much point as in trying to turn back the clock. This was the time for her to think of herself. Not of Jack, nor of Alexander, but of herself and her daughters.

  She could not, would never, turn to Jack for financial help. Not only was she too proud, she was too realistic. He had his own children, his own set of cares, which like herself he was only able to lay aside in the passion and romance of their relationship. And besides, what they had together was too precious to degrade with loans and payings back, and all the horrors that those situations so often brought.

  She had parked the car overlooking a view of distant fields, and – as had happened to her before on the few occasions when she was swept away with feelings of misery and futility – it seemed to her that everyone and everything around her was happy and at ease with itself, and with nature. Nothing was stopping the cows wandering through their pastures, a cat from sleeping under the hedge, the postman jumping out of his van to unlock a box in a wall and pluck out the four o’clock letters – they were all just getting on with life while hers seemed to be grinding to a total, terrifying, halt.

  Suddenly it seemed that there was no place for Hope, not even in her own life, let alone in the world. She knew now what it was to contemplate ending it all, to be brought to that edge of despair when nothing any longer makes any sense or matters in the least, and yet some remaining grain of sanity made her realize that she must not panic. She must not go home and confront Alexander with her love for Jack, or with his supposed infidelities. His reaction would be all too predictable – he would simply laugh at her.

  He would laugh at her suppositions about his own life, and – which would doubtless be much, much worse – he would laugh at the very idea of her having an affair with Jack.

  That ageing rocker!

  As she sat facing the fields in front of her Hope thought she could hear Alexander’s voice now, insultingly facetious, just as it had been earlier that morning.

  Indeed as she sat watching the green of the fields that stretched out and away, running from in front of her up towards the sky as if running to touch the end of the world, and the view became slowly obliterated by a light rain, above the sound of the raindrops on her car roof, on the windows, she could hear, all too clearly, Alexander’s mocking laughter, and all too easily imagine the kind of things that he would, or could, say.

  He would stop at nothing until her tender love for Jack had been dismissed and derided, until it had been ground under the heel of his mockery and sarcasm, and within a very few minutes there would be nothing left at all, only a distant faint echo of Jack singing to her in the car, of their love-making, of the feel of his coat against her cheek, of the laughter they shared, the bicycle rides in the hills, the sounds of last year’s leaves as they walked for miles into the woods, the feeling of secrecy, of being just two, and no-one else knowing.

  His sarcasm always had been Alexander’s greatest weapon against Hopeless. If he thought it necessary he would go on the warpath with it against her. He would, if expedient, work to get the girls on his side And, as he had done sometimes when they were growing up, encourage them to mock her.

  Just imagine Mums with an ageing rocker! Your mother’s having an affair with that old rocker up the way!

  It would be terrible. But Hope knew, absolutely, despite all these predictions, that she had to have courage, she had to win against him, not for her sake, or for her and Jack’s sakes, but for those same daughters’.

  She had to be practical, she had to start where her problems had perhaps begun, she had to acquire the one thing which she so spectacularly lacked – namely, money. And it was as she thought about this that she realized that once a wife ceased to love her husband, that was all her life came to be about. That, and the protection of her children, shielding them, which was so strangely ironic, from the very man who had fathered them.

  And so she drove away from the fields and the view knowing now that in fact she did once more have a place in life. Her task was to care and provide for her children, but alone, without either Alexander or Jack. And with this realization came another, more powerful and more glorious, and it was that she had finally overcome her fear of Alexander. At last he could no longer frighten her. Because Jack loved her, Hope was once more strong.

  What was more, by rehearsing Alexander’s mockery, his sarcasm, and his line in suppressed anger, she knew that she had utterly and for ever exorcised any future power that he might have had over her. He could not take anything from her any more. She could become herself at last. In some strange way she had a future which she could now see, a centre, independent of everything except her own feelings about life.

  Yet, unafraid though she might now be of him, once she was certain that Alexander had been cheating on her, Hope herself began to feel like a criminal. She found herself not just spying on him, but planning to spy on him. And not in the usual ways that she had read other women spied on their husbands – looking through their pockets, or listening in to phone calls. All Hope did was to watch Alexander.

  And of course the more she watched him the more he became what his great-aunt Rosabel would call an adulterer, and hand in hand with that fac
t came another more uncomfortable one, namely that Hope had been even more of a fool than she herself could have believed possible.

  Why had she never noticed how often he absented himself to use his car phone? Why had she not noticed how many times certain numbers were recorded on the car phone bill? Why had she never realized how expensive were his aftershave lotions and soap and other toiletries, so expensive that not even Alexander would have contemplated purchasing them for himself, though a grateful mistress might? Even his haircut was of a sophistication which subtly proclaimed itself newly styled from a fashionable salon which would normally have been out of his reach.

  Therefore, in the wake of having triumphantly thought that she had exorcised her fear of Alexander, Hope now acquired a new and worse emotion, that of self-contempt. And it was worse than anything that she had suffered before.

  Much worse than the realization that Alexander was weak and a fool, or worthless, was the bleak truth about herself. The realization that she had been so stupid as to trust him, not to think at any point that he was capable of infidelity, that he might perhaps not have loved her as much as she had used to love him, these thoughts were a hair shirt against which Hope now placed the mind and the body that Jack had told her so very recently, over and over again, that he worshipped.

  And so it was that day after day, night after night, Hope found herself unable to put aside the glaring knowledge of her own stupidity, the exact extent of the pathetic, foolish trust that she had put in Alexander’s remaining faithful to her, and it seemed to her that this inglorious truth was far worse than any jealousy she might have once felt over some mythical woman, or women, with whom he might be, or had been, involved.

  Dully the truth crept towards her in all its shabby reality. She had given up everything for Alexander, her dancing, her life, her body to have his children, what security they had once known – everything – and in return he had taken from her, deceived her, mocked her, and finally ensured, by his greed, that even their children might now be destitute.