Alys, Always

by Harriet Lane

  When I wake before him I find myself inspecting him quite dispassionately in the half-light: the thinning faded hair falling away from his temples, the creases around his mouth and eyes, the liver spots on his hands. The murky stains of age.

  His skin, I think sometimes, is too soft.

  But these are just little details, and I try not to dwell on them.

  One evening we are sitting over supper in the white kitchen in Highgate when Laurence happens to mention Christmas. He’s planning to go to Biddenbrooke with the children, he says, quite casually. Then he sees the expression on my face and puts down his fork.

  ‘Why, Frances – surely you didn’t think we were going to spend it together?’ he says, with a little steely edge of reprimand. ‘It’s our first Christmas without Alys. Their first Christmas without their mother.’

  Of course, I say, I don’t know what I imagined.

  He sees the hurt on my face and reaches across the table. ‘Don’t be a goose,’ he says, more gently. ‘No need to rush. We’ve got lots of time.’

  This comment gives me hope, but otherwise I have to take a lot on trust. I’m careful not to put any pressure on him. I hold back, even as I want to push forward.

  Gradually he lets down his guard, just a little every so often. The Laurence I begin to glimpse in these moments has little in common with the public figure, assured and self-contained and maybe faintly stuffy; he’s someone else, someone less certain, still confused by grief but starting to see beyond it, beginning to have a sense of new possibilities.

  From time to time I see myself through his eyes, and I appear to have plenty to offer: youth, independence, freedom. I understand people, their ambitions and desires, their fears and weaknesses. It’s a talent that he finds both amusing and useful. And I’m new, too, free from associations with his old compromised life, the life he shared out meanly between Alys and those discreet obliging girls. Perhaps it’s not so strange, after all, that we’re together. I try not to think about his affairs; and he certainly does not mention them to me, though I have hope that one day he will make a confession of sorts involving Julia Price, at least.

  This time it’s different, I tell myself. Soon, circumstances will force his hand; soon we will go public. It won’t be an affair at that point, it’ll be a relationship. The girls without names never got that far. Neither did Julia Price.

  But for now, we lie low.

  There are a few scares. We are talking in his kitchen late one evening when his mobile rings, upstairs on the hall table. He leaves it. Not long after we are on our way to bed when we hear the doorbell.

  He is not expecting anyone.

  We stand motionless in the hall, staring at each other like characters in a farce, and then there’s the sound of a key going into the lock. Without thinking I grab my coat and bag off the peg and back swiftly into the sage-green drawing room, a room which is rarely used, pulling the door to after me, while he goes forward to greet Polly.

  I stand in the darkness, my heart hammering, listening to their conversation. She rang earlier; why didn’t he pick up? She’s had another row with Serena.

  Their voices fade into murmurs as they go along the corridor, as he leads her down into the kitchen, switching on lights, the kettle.

  Silently, furtively, I creep out of the drawing room, holding my bag against my stomach so nothing rattles, placing my feet carefully on the red rug to muffle my steps. As I let myself out into the cold night, I remember – with a faint guilty qualm of regret – that there’s no evidence of me left for her to notice: the dishwasher set off, with its pairs of plates and forks and wineglasses; the toothbrush at the back of the cabinet.

  Mary Pym is the only person who senses something has happened. One morning in late November I catch her watching me over her spectacles. I raise my eyebrows in interrogation, and she says, ‘You look different.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Oh yes. You’re up to something, aren’t you?’ She sounds almost affectionate, pleased for me.

  I laugh, trying to sound offhand, and say I don’t know what she means.

  I hear from Polly in early December when she sends a text asking me whether I’m able to come to the end-of-term performance of Footsteps on the Ceiling. I ring Laurence and we agree I should go. Teddy isn’t free that night, which is a relief, but Charlotte Black has also been invited, and I am both daunted and excited about subjecting myself – us – to her scrutiny. I can’t believe we’ll get away with it.

  The auditorium is overheated and as I find my seat I’m already feeling flushed, ill at ease. All around me, groups of parents and friends are bent over programmes, pointing out names.

  Charlotte Black and Laurence arrive together, deep in conversation: my mouth is dry with anxiety as they spot me and make their way sideways along the row towards the seats I’ve saved for them, coats over their arms. I kiss Charlotte and then I kiss Laurence, and suddenly our joint deceit seems awfully conspicuous and foolish. Laurence sits in the middle, and the three of us make small talk for a short while, and then the lights go down.

  Polly has a sizeable part and she’s not bad: she looks lovely and she gets a few big laughs.

  During the curtain call, she shields her eyes from the lights, squinting out into the audience, and when she finds us she waves and blows us kisses.

  ‘You must come and eat with us after this,’ says Laurence in my ear. ‘It’ll be fine, really it will.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I say, not looking at him. ‘Not like this. Don’t make me.’

  In the foyer, I wait with him and Charlotte, surrounded by happy, excited groups of people, and eventually Polly comes out and joins us. There’s someone with her, a tall boy with dark red hair.

  ‘Oh, Frances,’ she says, hugging me. ‘I’m so glad you could come.’

  ‘You were really good,’ I say, meaning it. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Martin,’ she says, tugging on his hand, dragging him out of the conversation he is having with her father, ‘Martin, come and meet Frances.’

  Martin shakes my hand and says he’s pleased to meet me. He’s very striking, with his hazel eyes and pale skin. ‘How do you know each other?’ he asks.

  There’s a tiny weighted pause while Polly and I are reminded of things we’d rather not think about.

  ‘Through my mother,’ Polly says. ‘I’ll tell you the story another time.’

  Christmas comes, and we convene at my parents’ house. ‘’Tis the season to be jolly!’ sings Toby as my mother circulates yet again with a long-suffering expression and a rubbish sack. The house is full of tiny wastepaper baskets and she empties them constantly, as if having a middling-sized bin with anything in it is a sign of extreme slovenliness.

  The suspicion is always that without the wastepaper baskets my mother would have very little purpose in life.

  When I am sent out to the garage to get more green beans from the chest freezer, I see she has taped a piece of A4 to the lid, an index of all contents, with lines neatly scored through ‘cauliflower cheese’ and ‘puff pastry’. Later additions are in green biro: ‘Half sliced granary loaf, Mrs Craven’s apple pie (WI), back bacon (3 rashers)’.

  Hester and Charlie are in the room which used to be hers; the boys are sharing my old one; and I’m on a put-me-up in the study. When it all gets too much, there’s nowhere to escape to. I spend quite a bit of time walking around the village with my hands deep in my pockets, thinking about Laurence not so very far away, wondering whether he will call me (he doesn’t, though he leaves me a message on Christmas Eve to say he hopes I’m ‘having fun’); but I am careful not to advertise these excursions for fear of having the boys foisted on me, which would defeat the object.

  Hester, as usual, vacillates between ostentatious maternal self-satisfaction (‘Lovely sharing, Toby!’) and a desire to spend as much time as possible away from her sons. ‘Probably it’s the overexcitement,’ she confides tipsily on the sofa one afternoon – following a few parched Chri
stmases, Charlie now travels with his own booze – when the boys have been removed to the playground at the end of the village. ‘But they’ve been pushing all my buttons.’ She has just read a book which has made her see that ‘I’ve got into this habit of intervening in every squabble. Boys fight, there’s not much I can do about that, and they need to learn to sort things out without my involvement. So we’ve decided we have to step back, to empower them to find a solution by themselves.’

  After tea, while Rufus and Toby quarrel over the last chocolate Santa in the dish, she takes herself off for a bath. Charlie is slumped behind the Telegraph’s festive quiz, oblivious.

  The noise goes on and on until at last my mother switches on the television.

  Every year at this time I’m forced to face my shortcomings, the many things I lack. And though this year is different, though I have my promotion (which everyone is dutifully pleased about) as well as my secret (which I turn over in my mind when I am alone, consoling myself with its exotic heat), I remain, as far as my family is concerned, the same funny old Frances. Uptight. Increasingly set in her ways. A little bit stuck, perhaps.

  On his return from Biddenbrooke, Laurence gives me a small framed pen-and-ink drawing of the Heath as a late present. He seems low after the holiday. The children had agreed it would be good to do things differently this year, so they’d kept themselves busy and spent the day itself elsewhere, with friends. But as expected, he says, it was a rather wretched sort of Christmas.

  Things appear to be fine at the office: the pages are working well and Mary seems pleased with me. When I am introduced to Malcolm Azaria at the Sunderland prize ceremony I do not mention the Kytes. Instead I ask whether he’d be interested in contributing to the Questioner, and so he starts to write the occasional piece for us. Strangers approach me at literary events: PRs, publishers, other hacks. I’m building up my contacts, putting out my feelers. I begin to feel as if I belong in this world, as if I deserve to be a part of it; as if it accepts me. Respects me, even.

  I know how fickle it is, though, and I’m careful not to attach too much importance to its whims.

  From time to time I find myself next to Sasha in the tea-trolley queue or the lift and she tells me about Oliver: he’s contributing to a late-night arts show on a satellite TV channel, he’s blogging, he might have a book deal. ‘Give him my best wishes,’ I say, and she says she will, but I know if she does mention me, it will be a joke they share over a drink in some bar or other.

  Well, let them.

  The anniversary of Alys’s death is approaching. Laurence has not asked me again about that day. It’s as if he’d like to believe we dealt with it fully when I first met the family all those months ago. But then I’ve found out that he won’t speak to me about Alys at all. When I mention her, asking questions about their shared history or her likes and dislikes, his answers are brief and bland, evasive.

  Although his rebuff is always polite, he makes me feel ill-mannered for inviting it, as if I’m testing his loyalty.

  Maybe that’s exactly what I’m doing.

  ‘Do you mind me wearing this?’ I ask one morning, when his glance snags on the long wool cardigan I’ve pulled on. It’s an amazing colour: an inky-dark purple. ‘I found it in a cupboard, I wasn’t sure if you’d mind.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ he says shortly. The next time I look for it, I see he’s finally cleared her possessions from the chest of drawers and the wardrobe and the hooks in the hallway. All those shoes – the heels with the bright red soles, the walking boots, the ballet flats in silver and bronze and black, the tall Hunters marked with old pale mud – have been removed. The bathroom cabinet has been emptied of its interior skyline of face creams and bath oils. The mascaras and bottles of foundation and the little blunt stubs of candy-coloured lipsticks in their chrome tubes: all gone.

  The wisp of oyster silk is no longer hanging on the back of the bathroom door.

  I’m confused by the way this makes me feel: should I be gratified to see her go, or should I be offended that I’m unfit to use her things? It’s hard to know what to think.

  ‘I see you’ve had a clear-out,’ I say at supper. He tells me Mrs King organised it at his request. Many items were thrown out or given to charity, and the jewellery has been put in a bank vault for Polly, but some of the clothes have been bagged up and put away in the loft. He supposes Polly may want to go through them at some point in the future.

  I want to ask how this has affected him but I know, looking at his face, that I can’t. It’s not something he wants to talk about, and I daren’t push things. Maybe later. Not yet.

  The date comes and goes, and I do not have the nerve to refer to it directly. We make no arrangements to see each other on the day itself, or indeed during the days on either side. I wonder what he and Polly and Teddy have planned, if anything.

  I suspect Teddy takes a day’s holiday and Polly is excused from college and the three of them spend it together. Maybe they visit the grave in Highgate cemetery first thing, followed by a blowy walk on the Heath and a low-key lunch at the Spaniards Inn. I imagine Polly crying all day, off and on. Laurence not saying much but putting his arm around her. Teddy wavering between melancholy and a desire to cheer everyone up.

  On the Friday, as agreed, Laurence comes round to see me. He’s spending more time at mine now; I sense I’m less welcome at the house. Polly’s unplanned visit rattled us both and at some point after that – around the time of the cardigan episode, come to think of it – the flat became the default meeting place.

  He says it’s less complicated this way: ‘It’s easier to be anonymous in a flat. Look – you don’t know anyone on your street.’

  And he’s right: I know the girl who lives downstairs but only to say hello to, and otherwise – apart from the woman at number 18 who recommended her decorator – the road is full of strangers. ‘You’ve no idea how interested my neighbours are in my life,’ Laurence adds, wearily. ‘It really would be much simpler if we didn’t involve them.’

  So he rings the bell, and I let him in.

  ‘I thought of you all on Monday,’ I say.

  ‘That was good of you,’ he says politely. Then he leans towards me and all my intentions, all my questions, blow away like smoke.

  Later that night I lie beside him, listening to his slow and easy breathing, wondering whether things will ever change. I’m starting to be unable to imagine why they would. It strikes me that Laurence is quite content with things as they are: the widower with his discreet little secret. Perhaps he is having his cake and eating it, as he always has.

  I see Oliver as soon as I go in. He’s standing in the corner, nose to nose with S. P. Nicholl. His rather wild laugh travels and unravels across the room.

  He’s wearing skinny jeans and very pointed lace-up shoes and his absurd hair is looking particularly toiled-over. He’s plainly drunk but I still feel daunted by his presence. Maybe I’ll get away without having to speak to him.

  The party – held in an upstairs room at a Soho members’ club – is crowded and noisy. Anne Abbott Smith, the reason we’re all here, is holding court by the window, near the table stacked with copies of her memoir. I’m only showing up to say thank you to Erica, the publicist who gave us the first interview, so I work my way round to her, nodding and smiling at people as I inch past them.

  ‘Hope you were pleased with the coverage,’ I say when I finally reach Erica, and she says she thought Gemma Coke was a little unkind, but oh well, never mind, you can’t look 1,200 words in the mouth.

  At the edge of my vision Oliver is being abandoned by S. P. Nicholl, who detaches himself with almost forensic elegance and floats away in search of more congenial company. Looking around for fresh blood, Oliver lurches off in the direction of the group surrounding Anne Abbott Smith, weaving towards her, a little unsteady on his feet. He pushes past the girl from the Times and into the semicircle and I can see him introducing himself. Oh my, he’s actually bending over her hand
and kissing it. Anne Abbott Smith stares at him stonily, implacable. I can hear him saying, ‘The quality of your prose …’ and that’s enough, I don’t have to stay any longer, I’ve done what I needed to do.

  I’m just at the door when I hear his voice, and he’s calling, ‘Wait up. Frances! Wait up!’

  I turn around, adjusting my expression. I want to look cordial but not too inviting. A little cool. But I soon realise any subtleties are going to be wasted on him tonight.

  ‘Thought it was you!’ he’s saying, clapping his hands on my shoulders and coming in close for a kiss. ‘Good old Frances. Out fishing for diary stories, are you?’

  ‘Something like that, mm,’ I say. ‘How are you doing, anyway? Where are you working now?’

  ‘Bits of radio, bits of telly. ’S terrific fun. Probably going to do a book. Best thing is, no more Mary. How is the bloodless old witch?’

  ‘Oh, missing you,’ I say evenly.

  He cocks his head. ‘You’re taking the piss, aren’t you, Frances. Oh, you are bad.’

  I start to protest, but there’s not really any point, so I shrug and pull my coat tighter and start walking down the stairs, towards the street. Oliver’s right behind me, though his glass is still in his hand.

  ‘Do stay, Frances,’ he says, losing his footing on the last three steps, spilling some wine and then giggling and righting himself. ‘I want to hear how it’s all going without me.’

  ‘Oh, you know. It’s going,’ I say as the door is opened for me and I step into the cold night air. Some taxis go by, and then there’s one with a yellow light. As Oliver follows me out I put my hand up to hail it, but I’m just too late. ‘We’re managing somehow.’