Stefan decided to have one last try and the car started. He eased out of the garage and switched on the headlamps which revealed Fred, trying to look as if he had just emerged from the house. Stefan drew up alongside him.
‘If you’re heading back to Allnorthover, I might as well come too.’ Fred got in the back next to Bella and when they arrived at the Clock House, carried her up the steps. In the time it took him to free a hand and open the door, he and Mary had been standing close together for too long. Each felt it and stayed there, as if put in place.
Fred spoke to the door. ‘You know I didn’t say it, not like that.’
‘They made it into something more than it was, not you.’
‘The thing is … of course it wasn’t what it seemed, not at all, but it sort of raised the idea.’
‘The idea?’
‘Of us.’ He could hardly speak.
When everyone had left or gone to bed, Clara returned to the attic. She wrapped up the painting and put it away. She had finished it the day after Jacob had come to her studio for the last time, when they left together and he stopped in the doorway and waited, inviting Clara to press past him. As she did so, she looked into his eyes and thought how difficult that fractured yellow-green was to get right and how the shadows either side of his nose ought to be bluer and deeper. Jacob permitted this scrutiny, and this moment of intimacy might have passed with grace had he not suddenly dug his fingers into Clara’s bottom. His face was blank, as if he had stopped knowing and thinking, and later Clara decided that the Jacob who rubbed himself against her with such animal honesty was not conscious, and so was not the real him. She was more troubled by her own confusion. It was he who stepped back, although she had meant to.
SIXTEEN
Fred and Mary stayed on in Allnorthover, while Juliet returned to London. She was flying back to Littlefield on New Year’s Day. She sat in the cold and the dark and did not venture out, unable to envisage anything beyond Khyber Road and its trapped echoes. If she went into the kitchen she saw Fred weeping, in her bedroom Jacob turning away, and everywhere, anywhere, she wanted to see Tobias. She felt the loss of him now as if he had taken something into his death that belonged to her and which she needed. She wanted his advice (when had she ever asked for his advice?). If she asked Carlo, he would say something encouraging; Fred would say something irrelevant and now she couldn’t ask Clara because Clara was trying to take over.
Sara phoned and they met for a drink. She let Juliet tell her stories about Rogen and Merle, Terence and the sports bar, Buckie and the axe, and listened to her complaints about the snow. Eventually, she told Juliet that she was getting married and Juliet was taken aback to find that she could not think whom to. Later that night, crouched in front of the fire at Khyber Road, Juliet realised that she was more miserable and uncertain than she had ever been in her life. She phoned Ritsu.
‘I feel awful,’ she said by way of greeting.
‘Juliet? What’s happened?’
‘I just feel awful.’
‘I’m sorry for you, I really am, but can this wait till the morning? It’s very late.’
‘Is it?’
‘You must still be on American time.’
‘I am?’
‘Not to worry. Let’s speak in the morning.’
‘Did you know Sara was getting married?’
‘Isn’t it great?’
‘I don’t even know him.’
‘No, but –’
‘Nobody tells me anything. It’s as if they’ve all decided to punish me. Why do you want to punish me?’
‘I know you’re upset but I really have to go. It’s late and I’ve got –’
‘How would you feel if your brother was killed and your parents decided that instead of helping you get through Christmas, they would bugger off?’
‘I don’t have a brother, nor indeed any parents.’
Had Juliet known that? She couldn’t remember. ‘But what about me?’
‘This isn’t about you. Your parents going away, your brothers and sister – it’s not all about you. I am hanging up. It is the middle of the night, and I’ve got someone here.’
‘You’ve got someone too?’
‘Go to sleep, Juliet.’
Juliet decided that she had been so emotional because she was unwell and the next day developed a fever. She shivered, sweated and ached, and lay in bed detailing the ways in which people were punishing her. All she had done was go away and not because Tobias died – she had been planning to go already. She had got involved with a married man, but he had already left his wife and anyway she ended it by going to America. And once she had gone, everyone – Clara and Jacob and Barbara, Ritsu and Sara and Hannelore, Mary and Fred – had moved closer together. They were going on happily without her, as if all it took was a little shuffle and things were once more complete.
Had she ended things with Jacob? She thought about him all the time in Littlefield and he had phoned, even if he hadn’t said anything. Perhaps he was waiting for her to speak. Why not speak? Why not speak now?
She went to sleep like someone in fear of falling – braced and clenched – and in her dreams she did fall so that the plummet of her body woke her and then she was sleeping and falling again, and someone was banging on her skull and demanding to be let in.
It was Carlo, at the front door. ‘You look terrible … and I have to say, disappointed. Were you expecting someone else?’
‘Of course I was!’ Juliet shouted and began to snivel.
Carlo ran her a bath and made a pot of tea. She drank a cup standing up, as if to prove that she was fine after all.
‘How did you know I was ill?’
Carlo had returned from Thailand to a flurry of calls from Fred and Clara, who said that Juliet looked awful and he had to find out why.
‘You’re a doctor,’ was Fred’s argument.
‘So is Dad.’
‘But we don’t want to worry him.’
‘Perhaps she’s just put on weight,’ said Clara, ‘although it looks more like water retention.’
‘She’s on some kind of pill,’ said Fred, ‘I’ve seen her taking them.’
Carlo wanted to eat, drink, sleep. ‘She doesn’t say anything about her backache or bleeding any more, so whatever she’s on must be doing her some good.’
‘But you haven’t seen her!’
‘Everything has its side effects.’
‘Just make sure that she’s taking care.’
‘She could try cutting out salt,’ Clara said.
On the morning of New Year’s Eve, Carlo paid Juliet a visit.
‘You could try cutting out salt,’ he began.
‘What for?’
‘Water retention.’
‘Charming. I know I’m a bit puffy but these pills have made such a difference.’
‘What pills?’
She told him.
‘I haven’t heard of them.’
‘The doctor who gave them to me is in America.’
‘What about your doctor here? What does he say?’
‘The Americans are terribly efficient. They’ve got my treatment all lined up.’
‘You didn’t say you’d had any treatment.’
‘I haven’t yet. Just a few tests.’
‘Which showed …?’
‘That I need some treatment, which I’m going to have as soon as these pills have calmed things down.’
And meanwhile you’re alright, are you?’
‘Maybe I’ll try cutting back on salt.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I have to go out,’ she said, and hurried him back into the street.
‘It’s New Year’s Eve, remember? Do you want to come dancing?’
‘No, I’m sick, remember? And I fly back tomorrow, remember?’
She refused his offer of a lift, saying that she had her bicycle and hadn’t ridden it for ages. She cycled off, then turned back.
Carlo wound down the window.
‘Thailand,’
Juliet said, already wheezing.
‘What about it?’
‘Did you have a good time?’
‘Oh, you know.’
‘Oh?’
‘You know.’
Juliet cycled towards the river. For the first few minutes she found it hard to adjust to being back on the left-hand side of the road and then she was used to it again. What surprised her more was that in four months she had lost all sense of London traffic and its strategies. She had grown used to broad lanes and straight lines. People rarely overtook in Littlefield and braked if they saw someone waiting to cross the road.
Juliet thought of London drivers as mad, visionary lateral thinkers. They judged space via their wing mirrors and thought they could see three opportunities ahead. They saw off hazards with minimal reflexive shifts or obliterating swoops of speed. They cut corners and parked with violent precision. They got as close as they could to one another without touching and hated one another on sight. All this took place at a visceral level. The London driver’s mind was on other things – applying lipstick, putting on tights, eating breakfast, cleaning ears, reading letters, dabbing at toothpaste stains, changing radio stations, singing, and shouting at someone who could not hear them.
The icy air scraped Juliet’s lungs but she pushed herself on, afraid to stop and find out what she was doing. The sun swept across the city like a searchlight, blinding everyone and making the traffic lights all three colours at once. At junctions drivers hesitated, squinted and lunged, while those on the pavement started to blunder and wander.
She was soon crossing Albert Bridge and then cycling along the north embankment pavement. At Lambeth Bridge, policemen in yellow jerkins stood around trying out carrying guns. With talk of war and more bomb scares, the roads leading up to Parliament Square had been cordoned off. Juliet decided to turn back south and only then, as she picked up her bike and carried it down the steps to the river walk, did she admit that she was heading for the Shipping Office. From here she rode straight there, afraid that if she crossed the river again she would not be brave enough to come back over.
In Jacob’s memories of Juliet, she was speaking, frowning or turning away. He had no idea of her as she arrived that day. Her skin was flushed, her eyes muddled and inflamed, her nose was raw and her mouth, which Jacob had found so incongruously coquettish, was colourless and dry. Her hair had been allowed to grow as far as its first full curls, which bristled from her clammy scalp. She looked worn and yearning and to Jacob, less beautiful and more possible than ever before.
By the time Jacob got to feel something, it absorbed him so violently that afterwards he could only remember himself as lost and the thing as the agent of that. From the moment he put his hands on Juliet’s shoulders to steady her, he was overwhelmed.
They sat side by side on the edge of his camp bed.
‘I can’t breathe,’ she said, wiping her nose with her sleeve.
What Jacob was about to say was overtaken by a cough.
‘You’re sick too.’
‘Tea?’
‘Bed.’
They took off their clothes as if they hurt and lay down gingerly, tensing at the weight of the sheet, quilt and blanket as if those hurt too. Even in that narrow space they found enough room to lie apart, each stunned by the apparition of the other. Juliet laid her head on Jacob’s chest and listened to the catch in his lungs, the flight of his heart. He fingered the damp new curls at the back of her neck and was encouraged when her sticky breathing lapsed into a moan.
The heater rattled as it churned air into hot dust. Jacob’s hand moved from Juliet’s throat, between her breasts and under, following the path of her sweat. She turned and raised her hand above her head, exposing the damper, hotter skin under her arm and bringing her nipple to his mouth. She tasted of salt and rust.
‘Christ,’ he said, as someone would only to themselves, ‘Jesus.’
His body was in such a state of weakness that Juliet’s touch provoked the most acute lust he had ever felt. Her hand moved downwards and as it reached his hip, he caught and pressed it against his cock and then his balls, which felt even more tender and susceptible than the rest of him.
He tried to kiss her mouth but she slid to one side, gasping. Then she turned away while reaching back with her hand to tuck his cock between her thighs. He found her wetness confusing; everything about him was sore and dry, and he pulled away and pushed a hand between her legs instead, wanting to be more accurate and gentle but finding her so aroused that he rubbed hard till she came, painfully it seemed, and turned towards him crying, really crying, as she said ‘Fuck me, fuck me now.’
He held his body apart as she gulped and sniffed, then found his way deeper and pressed harder, feeling her temperature rise still further so that the nape of her neck and the dip of her lower back from her high waist down to the long cleft of her bottom grew slippery, and as the spasm of his cough tipped him out of her, she turned in his arms and slid beneath him, melting. She kissed him roughly. His lungs hurt, his head hurt, his groin and back and hands and eyes hurt. He gave in, lay with his full weight upon her and buried his face in the sour, sticky mess of it all.
Jacob was deep in a congested sleep and from time to time began to snore and then turned onto his other side, resettling himself and his breathing. At one point he asked, ‘Are you awake?’ and she began to talk, telling him how much she enjoyed their telephone conversations, ‘Silences, really. It meant a lot to me to know you were there.’
‘Where?’
‘There. At the other end.’
‘The other end of what?’
‘The phone. Your calls.’
He opened his eyes. ‘My calls? You didn’t give me a number.’
‘I left a note in the hole.’
‘The hole?’
‘The hole in our wall.’
‘Our wall? What wall?’
‘Over there. Where we used to send each other messages.’
‘We did? Oh, yes, we did. The hole. Yes. You left me your number?’
‘You didn’t get it?’
‘No.’
‘Did you think it was someone else’s number?’
‘I didn’t get a note. Or a number.’
‘But you called.’
‘When did I call?’
‘Are you still asleep?’
‘Sleep.’
Juliet felt many things and with her body as confused as it was now, this seemed only natural. It had not been Jacob who phoned. She had known this, really, since the last call came and she heard a voice she could have recognised had she wanted to. While she was holding the receiver to her ear mesmerised by the idea of him, the person at the other end of each long silence had been his wife. Ask him now, she said to herself, ask him about the picture. But she did not want to share this moment with Clara or Barbara, and there were ways of looking at it and seeing that it did not matter. And what could he say? That he had done it for Barbara? It did not matter. He had not gone back to her.
Although there were a few more minutes to this day than there had been to the last, no one would have thought it any longer or lighter. By the time Juliet crept out of Jacob’s room, there were fireworks already and she was glad that neither she nor Jacob had mentioned New Year, and that she hadn’t stayed on with him to find out whether or not he marked it. Anyway, she had to fly.
Twilight had flattened the city, which now depended upon lit windows to explain itself. Shallow clouds picked up a smear of oily mauve from the river and low in the west the sun set in a fresh glow which might have been described as apricot or peach had such things come to mind at that time of year.
Juliet cycled over every possible bridge, not admitting that this was all just a matter of dirt and light, and that nothing was as charged or as consoling as it seemed. Perhaps if she had not been feverish or slowed by the small white pills, or if his touch had not exposed the effect of months alone, Juliet might have woken Jacob and questioned him further; she might also
have wondered at herself.
SEVENTEEN
In the morning, Juliet returned to Littlefield. Terence met her at the airport in Boston, and she was overcome by how pleased she was to see him.
‘How did you know which flight I’d be on?’
‘The Dean’s office.’
‘Well, it’s incredibly nice of you. It must have taken hours.’
‘Five hours. The thing is –’
‘I am glad to be back. Isn’t that absurd?’
Only when they were settled and driving west towards Littlefield, did he manage to explain why he was there: ‘Your jape with the axe.’
She had gone back up to her apartment and had waited for the police to turn up or for Buckie to come back and shout, but nothing happened and so she flew home and forgot all about it.
‘It was a joke.’
‘You put an axe through the windscreen of his car.’
‘I slipped on the ice.’
‘And the axe just flew out of your hands?’
‘Well, yes. It was amazing.’
‘You expect the college to believe that?’
‘It was a joke. His face when I produced the axe was so comical, I couldn’t resist. So I marched outside and then I didn’t know what to do.’
‘You slipped?’
‘I really did, and I was holding the axe as if I meant to throw it so –’
‘Didn’t the old man go berserk?’
‘That was the wonderful thing. The axe flew out of my hands, circled perfectly in the air and straightened out just in time to slice through his windscreen. Have you seen a windscreen shatter? It’s remarkable, quite beautiful. Buckie just stared. We both did. Then he turned and ran, only he couldn’t because of all the snow, so he sort of hopped and skidded away. I didn’t see him again.’
‘He went to the Dean. Which could have meant big trouble for you, except that he’s sleeping with her.’
An Irresponsible Age Page 17