My father was far from heartless – he’d been over-indulgent in his time – but now it was ‘No, dear, you’ll just have to cope as best you can and sell that expensive house and those cars, eat sensible food instead of that rubbish you buy, and maybe it will do the children good to appreciate that money doesn’t grow on trees.’
Ah yes, we were feckless, they’d always known it: we chucked socks away instead of mending them; we didn’t stick slithers of soap together; we failed to use up every dried-up scrap in the fridge; we bought a new washing machine this year while Mum had had hers since she was married…
Ah yes, we were reckless: we bought gifts like computers and new mountain bikes; we went round Safeways and M&S and picked up lemon and garlic chickens, prickly pears, and avocados with sauce; we even bought pre-wrapped carrots and salads, and all for such a shocking price!
‘Why all these foreign sauces?’ Dad would ask. ‘Whatever’s the matter with gravy?’
Dark days. Hard times.
Sam would die before he asked his own father. They’d always been so competitive – that was their relationship since he’d been a small boy and he’d thrived on it. But now, since this catastrophe hit us, he’d not even told him that the firm had gone down.
So I said I would try for the loan – just to placate him. ‘But not in any threatening way. I’ll ask Jennie to come and have lunch and I’ll try and bring it up casually. But don’t hold out much hope, Sam, will you? Things can’t be the same between us, not now, not after all that’s happened.’
Sam’s smile was far from pleasant. But he didn’t follow up my promise with scathing remarks or sarcastic sneers. I had finally agreed to his mad request and he had to be satisfied with that. Maybe I could approach Jennie in a way that didn’t sound like begging – make it sound as if lunch and a reconciliation were all I was interested in. But following on our last meeting there wasn’t much chance she would believe me. Would she suspect some ulterior motive?
I had to try, for Sam’s sake.
But if Jennie refused to see me, then that would be the end of the story.
The thought of it actually made me feel sick.
THIRTY-FIVE
Jennie
THE THOUGHT OF IT actually made me feel sick.
Meeting with Martha. Should I? After everything…?
This wasn’t love else I wouldn’t have gone. Love requires respect, and how could I respect a woman who collaborated with her husband to bring me and my family down by betraying such a confidence? The fact that it was a he was irrelevant. I guessed that Sam was the one who gave the Mirror their centre-page spread. And Martha was still with him – still, no doubt, his uncritical and all-worshipping chattel.
It wasn’t love and it wasn’t transferable. I had struggled hard to replace my idol, my long-term supreme being, with Hogg, but to no avail. Hogg had the hallmarks of a far more suitable champion – male for a start, sophisticated, amusing, worldly and, what’s more, a success, while Martha still grubbed around for peanuts on the Express. Nevertheless, after her surprise phone call, all struggles for freedom ceased. She was interested in me again, she wanted to meet me, I didn’t care what for, and I found to my horror that my block disappeared merely on the strength of one stilted communication.
Our meeting at the gallery didn’t count, that had been impersonal, she was there because she was press; she had not replied to my private invitation. And that took place before I realized the terrible truth that I now accepted – without her and the anguish she brought me, I was empty, I simply couldn’t work. Martha’s phone call was different… she gave me no clues as to the reason for meeting and this provided hours of fascinating speculation.
Could it be that she missed me?
Could it be that she had finally found out about Sam and Tina, and was desperate to apologize and make up for that revenge campaign which had surely been instigated by her? No-one else in the Close would have had enough influence to turn the others so completely against me.
My life was full now: I travelled, I dined, I socialized. This made me an interesting person, so maybe Martha wanted part of the action. What laughs we would have if we travelled together – we’d go shopping, she could choose my outfits; I could drop Gloria with her strict advice and too glossy image, and revel in Martha’s company again.
‘I was afraid you wouldn’t see me after…’
‘The Mirror exposé, or the Close campaign?’ Martha bowed her head, closing her eyes against my accusations. She hadn’t changed. Had I feared she might? She was blowzy, fat and beautiful, and her silk strapless dress was her own design – nobody else would have mixed those colours. We were sitting in the window seat at the town’s best restaurant, Willies. That was Martha’s idea. She knew I travelled around; this local venue was convenient for me – I could walk there from my house. Where was her car? She arrived by taxi.
The change of status was apparent at once. For all those years, I had been the needy one and Martha the bountiful giver, and I was shocked by the subtle reversal. I stared at her as she studied the menu, as the firelight played over her face, and I thought how I’d wanted to end my life, how I’d yearned to change places, and how I’d even hurt my child in a sick bid for this woman’s attention… But instead of remorse, there was nothing but a perverse sense of joy to discover that my passion still lived – there could be nothing worse than the death of it; there could be nothing worse than the disillusion of seeing the adored one as mundane, almost distasteful once obsession had died. And I knew this, as everyone knows it.
I adored her.
‘I don’t know what I can say to you about what went on in the Close,’ said Martha. ‘I wasn’t happy with it then, and now I can hardly believe it happened.’
I didn’t like this inferior approach. I didn’t want to see her made weak.
‘What’s the point in talking about it? It happened. We’ve gone. That was another life.’
She shook her head, closed her eyes again, and I hated this new subjection. As if unable to meet my eyes, Martha twisted the stem of her glass and watched that instead. ‘It just snowballed out of all control,’ she went on, in spite of my stated lack of interest. ‘It sickens me, I can’t explain it and there are no excuses for it.’
I went along the route she had chosen. Maybe she needed to know where I stood. My anger was still there, fuming inside, but all I said was, ‘The children were miserable. Very hurt.’
She fumbled with her unwieldy bag, delved around for her fags, offered me one and then said, ‘Sorry. I was forgetting… do you mind if I do?’
What? What was this? Now it was my turn to look away. This was abject surrender on her part. Her fake subservience was intolerable.
I said, ‘I heard about Sam, about the bankruptcy. It must be horrendous – you must be shattered.’ In the old days she would have collapsed dramatically, raved on about creditors’ meetings, bailiffs, settlements, receivers and liquidation. Her experiences over the last few weeks must have been horrific, not least the fear of losing her home… but all she said was, ‘We’re in a mess, Jennie, it’s been quite a shock.’ And then, for the first time, she met my eyes.
I thought I’d convinced myself not to bring this up, but her reserve riled me so much that I tried to break through it by asking, ‘And Sam, how’s he bearing it, and has he told you the truth yet?’
‘Isn’t there enough shit between us without you digging around in that? Can’t you and I forget the past?’
‘Hah!’ I still admired the nerve of the woman and her resistance to facing reality. There was no future for either of us if she still believed I could shatter her marriage with a lie so outrageous as that. But could I blame her, bearing in mind the story I’d told about Sam and me in bed that Christmas? What demon inside me invented these lies and was he still there scheming, biding his time…?
I didn’t expect her question. ‘Was that true, Jennie – Sam and Tina?’
If I said I had lied she would forgi
ve me and I’d see that fond look in her eyes. But if I insisted I’d told the truth, she might get up and walk away. I tried to avoid the decision. ‘Does it matter any more?’
‘It does to me.’ It was then I first noticed how drained and weary she looked under that clever make-up.
‘Yes, at that time it was true. He was seeing Tina, I saw them together. Twice. Quite apart from the fact that Tina admitted it herself. But now I haven’t a clue if it’s finished or still going on. Maybe the fact that I told you stopped them in their tracks. They would have been pushing it after that, if they’d gone blithely on. You ought to know, would Sam be so stupid?’ Had she taken this message on board, or was she still in denial? Would she answer me, or turn round and stalk off? I held my breath and waited.
‘No,’ said Martha, ‘I don’t think he would.’
‘You still adore him, don’t you? It doesn’t matter to you what he does.’
It took her a while to answer. It wasn’t like Martha to be so hesitant. ‘It’s not the same any more, Jennie. It hasn’t been for a while now. Most of the viciousness heaped on you came from Sam and I believed he was genuinely furious because you’d set him up so unjustly. But now I’m wondering if it was guilt… and sheer rage… which drove him.’
‘It doesn’t take much to work out that answer.’
Martha toyed with a marinated prawn – again, nothing like her greedy self. ‘But that’s not the worst part of what’s going on, the mess I told you about isn’t that.’ She held her fork to her mouth and stared at me. I had to wonder what was coming. ‘It’s money,’ Martha confessed in a whisper. ‘Or the lack of it. All this is killing Sam, and it looks as if when everything’s over we’re going to end up homeless.’
‘Money?’ Stupid as ever, I still couldn’t get my head round why she was talking to me about this.
Money? Is it really one of the most important things in life, important in the simplest sense? I don’t think so. I think it is only important as a lie, the biggest lie that civilization has ever told mankind. I think it’s the giant token for all the rubbish in the world and a false one at that, like a one-armed bandit paying out tokens that you can’t cash anywhere else but in the pub where you’re playing it. A promise of power that produces paralysis; a promise of happiness that leads you into the uneasy world of the opium-eaters, the false friends, the false lovers – that false and exquisite environment; a magic talisman in a world of unreality:
The chink of gold. The rustle of notes. And money had handed Martha to me.
‘Nobody is prepared to help us,’ Martha went on pathetically. ‘We’ve tried everybody we know, every loan company – but Sam’s a bankrupt and they won’t touch him.’ There were brilliant tears behind Martha’s eyes. ‘It would mean so much to us if somebody trusted Sam now – of course he would repay any loan with interest, given the time to get back on his feet. He’s an enterprising person, you know that, Jennie. He’s full of energy and ideas, he works himself into the ground. It wasn’t his fault that the company failed…’
‘Where’s all this leading, Martha?’
‘This is so degrading,’ she said. ‘I told Sam I wouldn’t do it, but to see him so destroyed, so despairing and getting worse, is more than I can stand…’
‘You want my money? Is that why you’re here?’ Why did she think I would sympathize with Sam after the years I had spent with begging bowl in hand, not hoping for money but for Martha’s attention, drip by drip. And who had cut off the source of my sanity? Sam Frazer, with no compunction. He’d been to blame for every bad thing that had happened to me and my children. But Martha was ahead of me.
‘I understand that you’ll find it hard to forgive Sam for what he’s done. But don’t forget, Jennie, for years Sam and I put up with one hell of a lot from you. Not your fault.’ She held up her hands as if to provide a buffer for any angry denial. ‘Not your fault, I know that; we both understood that you couldn’t help what was going on inside your head. We were as patient as we could be, not just me but Sam too, particularly when Stella died. We did what we could to help you, Jennie. We tolerated all kinds of shit from one year to the next…’
I said, ‘You were very kind.’
‘I couldn’t love you back, Jennie, which is what you really wanted. I had other commitments – the kids, Sam, my work – and I hadn’t the energy or the will to give you everything you demanded. You can’t call me unreasonable, I forgave you so many times.’
‘No-one can love me like I want them to,’ I said with a sudden, deep sadness. ‘I make sure I choose people who can’t. Who else would give all their love to their next-door neighbour – a woman, at that?’
Martha smiled wryly. ‘I did give you something unique and important. I gave you the anguish you needed for your work.’
She had obviously read the article when I’d gone on about pain being a spur. She had known and understood at once what I was referring to.
‘You gave me that,’ I had to agree. ‘But I might have been happier without my work, just being normal, at home with my children.’
‘Being normal and at home with your kids was the reason you had all that spare passion.’ She sounded annoyed that I still hadn’t sussed it. ‘More on your mind and you might have stayed sane. You mustn’t blame me for your inhibitions, or for their painful release.’
‘Anyone but you and I would have been fine. Any other neighbour and I might have lived a contented life. I would have enjoyed being a good wife and mother and been satisfied with my lot. But you came along and the madness took over. You were everything I wanted to be, I envied you, I admired you, I needed you…’
‘Not any more,’ said Martha firmly. ‘You’re assured, poised, assertive, confident.’
‘But, Martha, you gave me all that.’
‘No. No.’ She slumped in her chair and it looked as if I had depleted her with my relentless assertions. It looked as if I had sucked her dry like bats suck from the legs of donkeys, like spiderlings feed on the entrails of their mother.
‘We did have some laughs, though. We had some fun, didn’t we? There was that, too?’ I could tell by her eyes that she hadn’t laughed much lately. ‘How’s the job?’ I had gone too far, I had to bring some light to this meeting.
‘Boring,’ she said. ‘Pitiful pay. Our debts are incredible, they go up daily.’ Flames flickered over brass and glass and the shire horse table-mats. Martha sounded like me, not her. Negative vibes, totally hopeless. I had fed off her for so long, now she needed a food source, too. For the first time Martha needed me.
‘You are asking me for money.’
‘I don’t know, Jennie. I was going to, that’s why I came today. But I see now that it’s impossible. It was Sam’s idea, by the way, not mine. He’s drinking a helluva lot at the moment.’ Her face tightened up with the kind of quiet anger I had seen directed at me in the past, particularly the time I spread the rumour that her drinking habits were out of control. She went on tiredly, ‘Sam convinced me that you owed us something after that wicked he about him and Tina.’
I pitied her then, really pitied her, and I hated this new experience. This was Martha sitting dejectedly in front of me, Martha demeaning herself – Martha who for so long had been the one solid feature in my tortured mind.
‘Jennie, you should turn to religion,’ she finally announced as if reading my mind. Were my feelings so transparent? And then she refilled her glass once again. ‘Let’s face it, it’s a God you’re after, not some feeble human relationship. Jesus wouldn’t hurt you. Jesus wouldn’t walk away.’
‘Jesus was weak. They crucified Jesus.’
‘But God’s not. God’s a bastard. He fixed that crucifixion himself.’
‘But now you’re trying to foist him on me?’
Neither of us smiled. ‘Worship somebody from afar, that way you won’t be fucked up by their foibles. Some celebrity, some footballer or pop-star, and yes, I would foist them on you if it meant the traumas between us would end.’
‘But you are dealing with the stuff of pain. You design your requirements with that aim in mind.’ The way she said pain made it sound like a dart with the tip soaked in a deadly poison. ‘And if you need to release the creative, the pain level has to rise even higher. Yours isn’t a pleasant passion, Jennie, and it has a repellent effect on others.’
One minute she was after my money, the next she was on the attack. I had to admit, ‘I don’t choose to be like this.’
‘At some subliminal level you do,’ Martha answered hotly. ‘You go for it in the same way junkies go for their fix. Your drug is unrequited love, and it’s sick. It’s a killer, it’s as bad as heroin.’
‘What do you want?’ I asked her. ‘How much?’ We might as well reduce this to the basics. I might as well admit that her reasons for wanting to see me again were no more personal than going to the hole in the wall for some cash.
‘It might sound a lot…’ she started, fiddling with her glass once more.
‘How much?’ With every question, I reduced her. With every question, our roles were reversed.
‘Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. To be paid into a Guernsey account, under a name to be decided. Don’t worry, I won’t let Sam touch it. To be kept completely separate, to be managed by me for personal expenses… a home, for a start, food for the kids, some kind of old car… to be paid back over twenty-five years at an interest rate to be agreed on…’
Jesus Christ. But my latest work, which excited Hogg, was going to the US and with a price label not far off that amount. I knew that Graham wouldn’t care – what I did with my money was my affair. And he would understand if any decision of mine concerned Martha. We had our house, no mortgage needed. Our investments would keep us comfortably off, and our pension and insurance plans were sufficient for anyone’s needs. Even if my block came back, even if I stopped working today, Graham and I were secure… he wanted to keep his job anyway… and wasn’t this all thanks to Martha? Didn’t I owe her this much?
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