Imaginative Experience

by Mary Wesley

  ‘He wants his friend.’ Mr Patel checked the goods and, taking the man’s money, gave change.

  ‘Still not with you,’ said the man. ‘But your kid seems upset,’ he persisted. ‘Unhappy.’

  Standing immediately behind the man, Rebecca felt an urgent wish to kick him. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘you are holding up the queue.’

  ‘But the kid’s unhappy,’ said the man. ‘It’s—’

  Rebecca said, ‘Please move.’ She was larger than he was.

  He moved. He would not dare accuse the shopkeeper of cruelty and yet, standing aside to let her pay, he lingered. Mr Patel checked Rebecca’s purchases, put them in a bag, took her money and gave her change. Then, catching her eye as he handed the money, he said, ‘His friend is dead,’ in a voice so low she barely heard him.

  Rebecca said, ‘Dead?’ Standing by the counter, her hand holding her change was arrested on its way to her purse as she gazed into Mr Patel’s oriental eyes.

  ‘If there’s one thing I won’t put up with it’s the bullying of children,’ said the man who had spoken before.

  Rebecca said, ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Come along, Tim.’ A girl Rebecca had not noticed took the man’s arm. ‘Don’t make a nuisance of yourself,’ she said, giving his arm a jerk. ‘You should not go to the pub before you shop,’ she said, leading him away. ‘Sorry, Mr Patel,’ she called as she pulled him out into the street past Maurice Benson, who was lingering in the doorway.

  In the street Tim began to mutter, then yelled, ‘Bloody Pakistanis,’ and the girl yelled back, ‘Mr Patel is Indian and—you—are—a—bloody—racist, you really are, it comes out when you’re drunk!’ And to Maurice Benson’s amusement she smacked his face. Then she said, ‘Don’t you remember? Those two babysat for each other? The Eddisons told us. The Patel kid misses his friend, that child upstairs who drove the Eddisons mad with his noise? You know, the one that was squashed in the accident.’

  ‘Decapitated,’ said Tim. ‘Oh! Oh dear!’

  The girl said, ‘Yes! The one on the top floor above us.’

  Tim said, ‘Oh! I get it. Oh my God! Shall I go back and apologize?’ He turned on his heel.

  The girl said, ‘No. Leave it. Come along home.’

  Maurice Benson followed them discreetly to note their address, while Rebecca, who had no cause to notice Maurice Benson, headed for the bus stop and home.

  TWELVE

  AFTER HIS TUSSLE WITH the cupid Sylvester had lolled gloomily on his sofa. He had not told Rebecca that he would probably be away for a month or even two, if he took a holiday at the end of the business trip proposed by his partner. He was afraid she would volunteer to keep an eye on his house, pay Mrs Piper for him, forward his mail. Worse, she would say he did not need a cleaning lady while he was away and suggest he sack Mrs Piper. ‘Then,’ he could hear Rebecca’s voice saying, ‘when you come back I will engage reliable Mrs Andrews for you.’

  Can it be, Sylvester asked himself, that I am afraid of Rebecca?

  Yes, a bit.

  Do I want to go to America for a month? I could ski in Colorado. ‘Miss the worst of the winter,’ his partner had wheedled. ‘Meet new and amusing people, have a complete change, do you good,’ John had said in that fruity voice of his, meaning forget your divorce. Sylvester had said he would think about it. Now he sat staring at his father’s desk. Was it not time, this piece of furniture suggested, that he snapped out of it and got back to work on the novel whose gestation marriage to Celia had brought to a halt? Had there not been a plan, prior to Celia, to take a year off, let the house to rich Americans, borrow a remote cottage and polish off the next book? There had, but Celia had not cared for the idea. ‘Five wasted bloody years,’ Sylvester muttered as he reached for his empty glass. Rising, he took a step towards the door and the bottle downstairs; it was still quite difficult to think of Celia without alcoholic fortification. But he paused to answer the telephone, which had begun to purr.

  ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Yes, it’s me. Hallo? Well no, not yet, I’m thinking about it, mulling it over. Don’t harass me—No, I don’t mean that, no—Tell you what, I’ll let you know tomorrow. Yes, definitely, yes—Yes, I said so, didn’t I? Sorry, I’m a bit distrait—Yes, yes, of course I will, goodbye.’ He replaced the receiver.

  There had been a first draft of novel two. Where was it? He put down the empty glass and went back to the writing table. Mrs Piper had polished the outside but she would be shocked by the mess inside, he thought as he pulled out the drawers: old bills, old letters, programmes, snapshots, pencil stubs, exhausted rubber bands. Ancient cheque stubs, rusting paper clips, out-of-date stamps, a plethora of rubbish—all useless. He began to hum. ‘Nothing, nothing of interest, let’s chuck it away,’ and seized with the subtle delight of destruction he began tipping the contents of the drawers into the waste-paper basket. ‘No manuscript,’ he sang, ‘what did I do-oo-oo with it? Did I destroy it? Oh!’ he cried in painful recollection. ‘I gave it to Celia, to bloody-uddy Celia and she left it behind in our honeymoon hotel. Oho-ho, how could I have forgotten?’ he roared. (Celia had detested his singing.) ‘She laughed at it, la-la-la-laughed,’ he sang in a loud bass voice. ‘Laughed.’

  He shook the contents of the last drawer over the waste-paper basket. ‘And, oh! Here you are laughing, you bitch! Celia posed laughing in the South of France.’ He snatched a photograph from the pile of papers and tore it across. ‘And there you go,’ he sang, dropping the bits into the basket. ‘I gave you my heart,’—he was chanting now in recitative—‘and you made it plain that you had little use for it except as a stepping-stone back to boring old, rich old Andrew Battersby and his grand-new-house-No! Let’s call it a mansion on the edge of Barnes Common. What was a romantic dream for me was merely a temporary perch for you,’ Sylvester roared.

  ‘Right,’ he said, feeling better. ‘I shall leave a note for worthy Mrs Piper and she will expunge all trace of Celia from the drawers of the writing table as she so excellently has from the house.’ And he gathered up the trash and carried it to the dustbin. On his way back he decided to buy a fresh stock of writing paper, envelopes and typing paper, folders and biros, and start the new novel.

  ‘Wellington’s Valet,’ he said grimly as he picked up the telephone and dialled his partner. ‘When I get back,’ he said out loud. ‘Hallo, John? You there? I’ll go—yes, I said so. Yes—OK. I’ll be in tomorrow and we can discuss. Bye.’

  Gosh, thought Sylvester, I made up my mind. It was not so difficult. A month in the States, then back refreshed to the office, the desk and the novel. This merits a celebratory drink; there may be life after Celia yet.

  In the kitchen, pouring whisky, he whistled cheerfully; tomorrow he would plan his itinerary, buy his ticket, fax all the people he needed to see in New York and on the West Coast; but first, even before he went to the office, he would buy that stationery, make sure there was something to come back to.

  The book mocked by Celia had been about Love. It had even begun with a quote from A. N. Wilson: Falling in love is the greatest imaginative experience of which most human beings are capable. ‘It is also a pitfall,’ Sylvester muttered. ‘A trap, and not one Celia fell into.’ Sipping his whisky he looked out into the area and, observing that the garden cherub had been cleared away, thought sourly that it had been the closest approximation to a child that his ex-wife had been willing to give him. The novel, when he wrote it, would definitely not be about Love.

  On leaving the kitchen Sylvester saw, on what he was beginning to think of as Mrs Piper’s pad, a message. It read: About your garden. The work can be done Wednesdays and Fridays at five pounds an hour. Should you care to give carte blanche as to plants and planting, work can begin instanter. I would suggest you open account at a garden centre (here were listed three with telephone numbers) then dung, compost, shrubs, bulbs, plants, etc. can be ordered at once and work put in train while you are out. J. Piper. There was a PS which said: Please state spending limit.

&n
bsp; ‘Carte blanche,’ Sylvester murmured, ‘put in train … dung … compost. This old biddy is what my mother would have called a treasure.’ Perhaps, he thought as he went upstairs to change his clothes before going out to dinner, she is not as old as I suppose and the recipient of the five quid an hour is her boyfriend? No, he thought, taking off his trousers, it will be her son-in-law and whichever, he thought, getting into the bath, five quid an hour is peanuts. I must leave her a note. Oh, he thought, I must tell her I am going away and arrange that she gets paid. Of course Rebecca would arrange that for me, he thought as he soaped his feet, but then Rebecca would also know and impose a good gardener and a better garden centre. It was imperative to manage without her. Lying in his bath, Sylvester thought ruefully of his kind, bossy, erstwhile secretary, who had driven the whole office mad with her efficiency and monthly threats of resignation. It had taken all the courage he possessed to take her up on it one day and bid her goodbye. His partner John had been right when he said, ‘You should not have said, “But we shall remain friends”,’ for here she was still bossy, still friendly and out of office hours! Celia would not have made that mistake.

  Sylvester stood up in the bath to soap his parts, then, lying back in the water, he remembered his ex-wife’s singular lack of interest in the erotic. Not for her was there any delight in sexual juices; she lay back and thought of something, probably Andrew Battersby’s income. He had even once, when persuading her of his marital rights, found her lying back and reading a novel straining her eyes sideways, quite a feat when one thought of it.

  It had not even been a well-written novel, he remembered, as he stepped out of the bath and reached for his bath towel. He had shrivelled inside her and withdrawn. Withdrawn, too, from their marital bed and without much dignity. There was no other bed in the house, the sofa in the sitting-room being too short for his long legs; he had finished the night dossing down in the bath.

  Sylvester did not much enjoy the dinner. His hosts, old friends, steering away from any mention of Celia, had been altogether too tactful. His fellow guests, a merchant banker and his wife, whom he had not previously met, had too obviously been primed as to the break-up. The sixth member of the party was not, as he had expected, an unattached female but his cousin Hamish Grant who, having reached the age of fifty plus neither poor, unattractive nor homosexual but unmarried, was something of an enigma.

  However, the food was good, the wine too, his hostess pretty and the conversation an informed mix of politics, travel and opera; Sylvester felt he should have enjoyed himself more than he did. When the party broke up he said he would walk home, it was not far. Hamish suggested that he keep him company for part of the way, so they watched the banker and his wife drive off in their Mercedes and set off walking in the frosty night, side by side, Hamish swinging an umbrella.

  Presently Hamish remarked, ‘That was a succulent pheasant,’ and Sylvester said, ‘And a very good claret.’ Another hundred yards and Hamish asked, ‘You staying on in your little house?’ To which Sylvester rather huffily replied, ‘I see no reason to move,’ and Hamish pleasantly agreed. ‘No reason at all. You lived in it long before you married.’

  For another couple of hundred yards neither cousin spoke. Then Sylvester, not wishing to appear churlish to his older relation, said in a conversational rush, ‘I think of my bit of Chelsea as a village. I have a local woman to clean, at least I suppose her to be local. I advertised in my corner-shop; I have a corner-shop. The owner greets me by name; I buy my papers there, have an account. If I don’t actually know my neighbours, I know them by sight.’

  And Hamish, laughing, said, ‘Of course! I find the same thing in Kensington. It’s all still there if you look. Napoleon of Notting Hill, Chesterton,’ which pleased Sylvester, who had not thought of Hamish as particularly well read. ‘My mother,’ Hamish went on, ‘sent you a message, by the way. She says come and stay any time, if you want a change of scene or a breath of fresh air, and she will put you to work in the Wood.’

  But Sylvester, rearing touchily away, exclaimed, ‘Very kind of Aunt Calypso, but I haven’t a car at the moment.’

  To which Hamish replied equably, ‘I suppose Celia took it. You could go by train.’

  ‘It was registered in Celia’s name.’ Sylvester surprised in himself a vestige of protectiveness, then he said, ‘I did use the train the other day. I’d been to the country for the weekend. A woman punched the alarm and stopped the train.’

  Hamish said, ‘I’ve always wanted to do that, but I never had the nerve—’

  ‘There was a sheep stuck on its back; she wanted to rescue it.’

  Hamish asked, ‘And did she?’

  Sylvester said, ‘Yes.’

  Hamish exclaimed, ‘What a splendid woman!’ And then he said, ‘I think our ways part here.’ They had reached a street corner.

  Sylvester suggested, ‘You could come in for a nightcap?’ He liked his cousin, whom he had never known well, and did not want to part.

  But Hamish said, ‘Thank you, I won’t. I have to start early, I’m driving to Scotland.’ He added, ‘Don’t forget my mother’s invitation,’ and Sylvester said, ‘Please thank her for me, she is very kind. Tell her I am going to America for a month.’

  ‘During which time I hope your divorce comes through.’ Hamish stood leaning towards Sylvester, both hands on the handle of his umbrella. ‘You may note,’ he said, ‘that I do not share my mother’s aptitude for tact. I apologize.’

  Sylvester said, ‘It’s all right, actually I am rather relishing my single state. I rather suspect your ma did not much like Celia.’

  To which Hamish laughingly replied, ‘She detested her, said she was put off when you got engaged to her by the way she could not keep her hands off you. “Kept fingering” was Mama’s expression.’

  ‘That did not last,’ Sylvester said drily and Hamish said, ‘Hah,’ and struck the pavement with the ferrule of his umbrella.

  The cousins said good night and parted, Hamish swinging briskly towards Kensington, while Sylvester, turning into his cul-de-sac, let himself into his partially empty house where, still congratulating himself on his solitary status, he went contentedly to bed.

  But did not sleep, for his mind was enviously full of his cousin Hamish and his bachelor state. Then he remembered the family theory that Hamish’s avoidance of marriage was not intentional but due to unrequited love for a woman older than himself, their cousin Sophie, who, when everyone imagined her set as a spinster, had married another cousin, Oliver Ansty. Perhaps Hamish is not the happy soloist he appears, thought Sylvester, turning over in bed appreciating the space. All the same I envy him; he had not had the humiliation of being cuckolded by a woman like Celia. And, thinking of Celia, he turned over so violently that he displaced the duvet, which fell to the floor. Retrieving it, Sylvester remembered his Aunt Calypso’s expression as relayed by Hamish, ‘kept fingering’, and felt quite sick. It was so apt; he could hear his elderly relative’s cool voice. Oh, curse Celia, Sylvester grumbled. ‘I must get to sleep,’ he muttered out loud. Try counting sheep, he exhorted himself, thoroughly awakened by the thought of Celia. How many sheep had been in that field when the girl stopped the train? Why had he not noticed? More to the point, he thought, reverting to his niggling lingering pain, why had he not noticed how quickly, how soon after their marriage, Celia had begun to salvage her burned boat and recapture her first husband? Hamish was right, Sylvester thought. I must stop playing dog in the manger, stop letting her stew from, let’s face it, spite, get it over, sign all the papers, hurry the solicitors up—I’ll do it tomorrow before I go to the States—then I can go with a clear conscience. Resolution made, Sylvester turned on his side. There was only one sheep in that field, he remembered it now. Just the one sheep and the girl.

  THIRTEEN

  WHEN THE DOG SAW Julia Piper turn into the street it ran towards her as to a long-lost friend and Julia, who had never before set eyes on the animal, stood stock still, remembering that
brief period in her life with Giles which had been one of unadulterated joy.

  The dog, an animal of mixed and complex breed, chucked its head under her hand, nudging persuasively with its bony skull, pleading for a caress, all the while chuntering and whimpering in a pleased and conversational manner. It had a roughish coat, dark brown along its spine, fading to ginger and cream flanks. Its intelligent eyes were partly obscured by tufts of hair. It was a large dog and nobody had thought to dock its tail to make it look smart.

  The dog in Paris had been similar but with a darker coat; it, too, had a knowing expression, but it had been older, less demonstrative and trustful than the creature whose head she fondled now.

  The Paris dog had appeared outside the cafe where they sat holding hands. It wove its way among the tables carrying its tail high, its flanks brushing against the customers’ legs. Making a beeline for Giles, it rested its head on his knee and gazed up into his face. Giles had dropped her hand and stroked the dog, scratched its ribs. She had watched it close its eyes in ecstasy when he patted its flank, and gravely, without snatching, it had accepted a lump of sugar.

  The chestnuts were in flower and the sun was shining on that afternoon as it had on previous days. In the parks and gardens there were beds of iris and the air was scented with lilac. In the Luxembourg Gardens the gravel crunched under their feet and water splashed cool in the fountains. The dog, who had followed them, lapped the water, and the water dripped from its furry jaws. Giles put his arm round her shoulders as they walked; when she leaned her head back her neck rested on his bare arm. He carried his jacket and walked in his shirt-sleeves. As she lifted her face to the setting sun, feeling its warmth, Giles had said, ‘What about dinner? An early dinner. I am feeling hungry.’

  They ate in a restaurant in a quiet courtyard off a side-street where they had eaten the night before and the two nights before that, sitting each time at the same table. They ate fresh asparagus and veal with cream and mushroom sauce, and strawberries dusted with sugar. Giles drank Chardonnay while she drank water. They ordered coffee and Giles drank brandy. She felt supremely happy and secure talking to Giles, watching the people round them, listening to the chatter.