A Rival Creation

by Marika Cobbold

  ‘We should say to hell with everything,’ he said. ‘Go away somewhere. I’ve got contacts in the States. I could get a job over there. Just think about it.’

  Twenty-nine

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Alistair Partridge had settled his corduroy-clad bottom on Oscar’s desk and showed no signs of moving.

  Oscar sighed and put away the unopened letter he knew was from his friend Larry in Boston.

  ‘Why don’t we do one of those Everyday Stories of Country Folk that’s so popular? We could keep the Village Diary for announcements, and put the new column on, say, page two. Base it on Tollymead. It seems the right sort of cosy village, but mixing in a bit of make-believe to pep it up.’

  ‘I think whoever it is writing in now, has done that already,’ Oscar said.

  ‘We needed to tighten up on our news coverage and the arts,’ Alistair said, ‘I’m with you all the way there, but people like a bit of light stuff, too, gossip, that sort of thing.’ He chucked an A4 page at Oscar. ‘This is this week’s.’

  Oscar picked it up and scanned the page.

  Plans for the forthcoming Fête and Flower Show are progressing well, but we still need more helpers and some more ideas for stalls and attractions too. Details of the next meeting will be posted on the Parish Notice-board. Please turn up and help to make this year’s show one to remember. Yesterday as I was out walking, enjoying the sunshine, I bumped into Laura Brown and her youngest daughter Polly. Laura had that glowing, replenished look not fully explained by her just having had tea at Phyllida Medley’s. I remarked on how well she was looking and she told me that Oliver Bliss and she had settled their differences over the painting and set a new wedding date.

  ‘I’ll put Staffordshire figurines on top of the wedding list,’ Laura told me. ‘It was last night; I was having a glass of sherry with Hester Scott. I kept looking at those funny little china figures she’s got all over the sitting-room, most of them real people, dead real people of course. It made me think, especially the one of Nelson. I mean, one day a man bursting with life and power, hero of Trafalgar, the next a faintly comical ornament on someone’s mantelpiece. So I thought, life’s too short to waste arguing, and I went straight home and called Oliver.’

  Carried away by the good news and the spring warmth, I told Agnes Coulson on our walk the next morning that although power walking was excellent in its way, for a really glowing complexion, love was the thing. Agnes, reasonably, pointed out that at sixty-eight she didn’t have all that much choice.

  For optimum well-being, I include a recipe for Nettle Soup:

  4 grip-sized bunches of young nettles

  1 medium onion, chopped

  1 parsnip, peeled and boiled until soft

  ½ pint good chicken stock

  ½ pint single cream

  salt and pepper to taste

  Blanch the nettles and soften the onion in some fat in a frying pan. Put the nettles, parsnip and onion together with the chicken stock into a food processor. Process until blended. Pour into a thick-based saucepan and add cream and seasoning. Heat gently while stirring all the time. Serve piping hot with crusty wholemeal or granary bread and butter.

  Oscar finished reading and gave the page back to Alistair.

  ‘My wife quite likes the recipes, actually,’ Alistair said. ‘We could have more of those: Phyllida Medley’s chocolate cake, Anne Havesham’s Thanksgiving dinner.’

  Oscar nodded. ‘What we want is a sort of soap in print. See if you can think of anyone to do it. Otherwise, put an ad in, asking whoever it is writing in from Tollymead to come to the office. We can talk a few ideas through, take it from there.’ He gave Alistair a quick smile before reaching for Larry’s letter, tearing it open the second Alistair was out of the room.

  Larry was delighted, he wrote, to hear of Oscar’s plans to come over and he was pretty sure a certain foreign editor on a rival paper was for the chop. ‘Watch this space,’ was how the letter ended and with a little sigh of contentment Oscar leant back in the chair and allowed himself to dream. A new start, a new life just when he thought there was nothing left but bare existence. A life with Liberty, of waking up to find that dimpled cherub’s face next to him and those long eyes, those amazing green eyes, smiling at him. The small room with its battleshipgrey walls and standard office furniture, the piles of newspapers and clippings, disappeared and instead he was at home, wherever that home was, with Liberty.

  It was love that did it, Liberty thought on her walk. No doubt it was love that made her smile when waking in the morning, the way she had when she was still writing, and love that made her really quite kind to others, ready to help and take an interest. Of course it was possible those hyenas felt the same when meeting their mates. Maybe it was just another lot of instincts clubbing together to make an effect. But there again, maybe it was her soul working up towards immortality. All that love could not possibly just vanish with her disposable body. Of course the whole idea of immortality is very un-green, she thought, as she passed the new bottle bank at the top of the road. Recycling was the thing these days, everyone agreed, so were immortal souls that hung around the atmosphere for ever really such a good thing, or ecologically unsound? And did the yellow eyes of a hyena light up with the same spark as hers did when it saw the object of its affections? Was it ready to die for its mate?

  She had just posted some letters and was on her way across to see Evelyn. It was only a while ago that Evelyn would have entered into that argument with spirit and knowledge. But not now. Liberty let herself in with the key Evelyn had handed to her months ago. She tried to visit every day, but it felt more and more like visiting a burial vault. There was decay in the air. Before, there had been a fresh, outdoor feel to the rooms, with the doors and windows flung open to the garden. Now the windows and doors remained shut and the dust and grime from years of neglected upholstery and furniture, the dirt from countless muddy steps, loitered in the still air of the rooms. And Evelyn, Evelyn herself was old. It was passion that had kept her young, passion for her work and for her garden. With her garden gone, she was going too. It was as simple as that, Liberty thought, and as sad.

  Downstairs, Evelyn was nowhere to be found, so Liberty hurried up the stairs calling her name. When there was no answer she got worried and reaching Evelyn’s bedroom, she knocked on the closed door.

  ‘Yes,’ the voice sounded unsure.

  Liberty opened the door and stepped inside. Evelyn was in bed, leaning back against a wad of pillows in her tartan dressing-gown. Liberty checked her watch again. It was ten o’clock, just as she had thought. Normally by this time Evelyn would be coming in from the workshop or the garden for mid-morning coffee, but here she was in bed with her dressing-gown so mucky and crumpled that it looked as if she had slept in it.

  ‘Are you not feeling well?’ Liberty asked her.

  Evelyn gave her an irritated look that somehow cheered Liberty up. ‘Of course I’m well, why shouldn’t I be? I’m always well.’

  ‘Of course you are. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come barging in like this. It’s just that I got worried. You’re usually up so early.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is my usual time for getting up.’ Evelyn looked angry but frightened too. ‘What do you mean I’m always up early? What time do you make it?’ Suddenly she sounded pleading.

  Liberty shifted her weight from one foot to the other. ‘Tennish,’ she said finally.

  ‘I make it seven,’ Evelyn said glaring at her small gold wristwatch.

  ‘I think you’ll find it’s ten,’ Liberty said gently.

  But Evelyn seemed to have lost interest in the whole question of time. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘A day in bed will do me good. Be sure to close the door properly when you leave. I don’t want Linnaeus to get out.’

  Liberty’s mouth dropped. Linnaeus, Evelyn’s cat, had been dead for two years.

  Thirty

  Liberty, wandering across her own neglected garden
, thought her plants were downright tropical in their overgrown lushness, now the sun had finally come out. The first flowers on the mock orange by the back door were opening white and purple at the heart, sending wafts of fragrance half-way down the lawn, and fat drops of rain dripped down on her head from the branches of the maple tree. Maybe she should plant a laburnum at last, right there, next to the maple, now there was no little boy waiting to poison himself with the pea-like pods. It would be nice to think that, long after she was gone, some new owner might point out the yellow-flowering splendour and say, ‘Of course that’s what the house took its name from, that wonderful laburnum over there.’ And he would be wrong.

  She could easily afford a tree. She had finished both her translations ahead of time and had been well paid for what were major pieces of work. She in turn had paid off her overdraft, with some money to spare for a welcome-home present for Johnny, who was returning at last, at the end of July. But before then she was going to Sweden with Oscar.

  ‘We should go away together,’ he had exclaimed a few days earlier, looking all boyish and excited. ‘Get a chance to talk everything through, make plans.’

  She had gone straight out and booked two plane tickets to Gothenburg. From there, she planned, they would travel the short distance to the island where her mother’s family still had a house. None of the cousins had planned to stay that week, so the house was hers. Still, the most difficult part of the arrangements remained: how to hoodwink and deceive, how to fool poor Victoria.

  To Liberty’s relief, Victoria had stopped coming to the classes. She had phoned, sounding relaxed and friendly, to say that she had other things to take up her time and interest now, but she had not said what. Liberty had put the phone down with a sense of wonder that someone who had a talent for getting into print, however slight, could turn her back on that gift with no more thought than you discarded a broken umbrella. Yet Liberty, who would have hugged such a gift to her chest and never let it go, who would have nurtured it and polished it, she had not received it. It was difficult to accept, but she was learning. She was no more suitable for the work she had so desperately wanted to do, than a chimpanzee, or, seeing that a chimpanzee was supposed to be able to write the plays of Shakespeare if left with a typewriter for long enough, perhaps marginally less suited.

  Later, when Oscar came over, she told him about the trip.

  ‘That’s great, it really is.’ He wandered back and forth in her kitchen pulling his glasses on and off, reminding her of Tom in the way he was picking things up, an apple, the tea caddie, oven gloves, and looking at them absent-mindedly before putting them down again, mostly in the wrong place.

  ‘But… ?’

  ‘Oh to hell with it. We have to go.’ He stopped in front of her, looking down at her as she was sitting sipping her tea. ‘Do you realize we’ve never had more than three hours together at any one time? You can’t plan a life that way.’ He pulled a face. ‘I’ll tell Victoria I’m off to do an article on the decline of Swedish shipyards or something.’

  Liberty got up and put her arms round him and because she was feeling guilty, because she too had had a husband snatched from her, she rested her face against his shoulder and mumbled her excitement, as if by being really quiet about it, she could somehow avoid retribution.

  They were having five days away, and on the first, they stood on the small passenger ferry that was bringing them the short distance across the harbour to the island of Carlskil. Pastel clapper-board houses lined the promenade and climbed up the hill towards the old fort which dominated every view and every photo of the island, like an ageing starlet at a première. Liberty turned to Oscar, as proud as if the island were her own creation. Oscar, his arm round her shoulders, was gazing across the water, but when he said nothing about what he saw she gave him a nudge with her elbow.

  ‘Well?’

  He gave her arm a little squeeze. ‘Well what, my cherub?’

  ‘I suppose that’s because of my thighs?’ She looked up at him and he looked calmly down.

  ‘No, because of your face.’ He said nothing more, but continued to gaze across the teal-coloured sea.

  Liberty breathed in the salty air and wondered how she had managed so long without it. Overhead the gulls circled, screeching at a returning fisherman whose catch lay exposed on the deck of his small boat.

  They walked the short way from the ferry landing to the house, Oscar insisting on carrying both their bags.

  ‘All these flag poles,’ he said nodding upwards.

  ‘One for every house,’ Liberty made a sweeping movement with her arm. ‘Even the houses that haven’t got a garden have one, like that.’ She pointed to a bright yellow house with a short pole rigged from the wall, as if from the stern of a ship.

  The last hundred yards were up the cobbled hill towards the fort. As they turned in the narrow lane that led to the gate, Liberty stopped and, making Oscar put down the cases, she put her arms round him and hugged him out of pure happiness at the thought that he was hers for every moment of five days.

  Oscar smiled at her as if he had forgotten how to stop, but he did not ask her what the latest display of affection in the middle of a sandy lane was all about. A few yards further on they stood by the gate to the house. Liberty sighed with satisfaction; it was almost five years since she had been there last, but she had not exaggerated the charm of the white wooden house with its glass-fronted verandah turned towards the sea. The short gravel path, lined with rose bushes that were barely in bud, led straight to the front door. From the window, an emerald green parrot perched in his wrought iron cage peered at them with sapphire blue eyes. Like the frilled roller-blind, he was painted onto the glass panes.

  ‘My grandfather did that, and he helped us paint the rug in my father’s flat,’ Liberty said, putting the key in the lock. ‘Grandfather was very keen on painting, but strictly in an amateur sense. He’d always wanted a parrot but my grandmother wouldn’t hear of it. “Nasty dirty things spreading seed and psittacosis.”’

  ‘Psitta what?’

  ‘Now that’s exactly what my grandfather said.’

  They dumped the cases in the hall and went up the steep wooden staircase. The sun shone through the skylight and onto the pictures of boats and the sea that lined the wall.

  ‘I’ve always loved that one,’ Liberty pointed at a painting of a red sail disappearing round the point of a small peninsula. ‘It really annoyed me that I couldn’t disappear into it the way children always managed to do in books. I would stand for ages at all hours of the night and early morning, eyes closed, hands stretched out, but it never happened. Of course,’ she added as if she still hoped.

  After they had unpacked, Liberty made some tea and Oscar lit a fire in the tiled stove in the corner of the verandah.

  As she lolled in the armchair next to Oscar seated on the sofa, she said smugly, ‘You look comfortable here. Patrick never did. He always had the air of an Englishman indulging the natives. “Wicker chairs… well I suppose it’s all right if you’re a Swede.”’ She took a long gulp of the hot tea, choking as it burnt her throat.

  Oscar put his own mug down on the wooden floor next to him and got up, pulling Liberty out of her chair. Tilting her chin, he bent down to kiss her, and still kissing her, he knelt down, making her kneel with him. He tore his shirt off before unbuttoning the top of her brown cotton dress and slipping it off her shoulders, kissing her neck as he gently pushed her down on the floor.

  Liberty lay naked on the rug, her head resting on Oscar’s chest. ‘Do you think,’ she said, ‘that God made making love so good just because He wanted us to procreate, or do you think He was actually being nice?’

  ‘Oh, He was being nice, definitely. He probably thought we needed some reward for putting up with living.’

  ‘You know when I was writing my books, what I had most difficulties with: showing the hero and heroine as they fall more and more deeply in love. I always felt I should have them say deep and meaningful t
hings to each other, to show what soulmates they were becoming, but the truth is, when you’re first in love, all you do is bonk and talk rot. Well almost anyway.’

  ‘It’s not a bad way of life, bonking and talking rot,’ Oscar said.

  On the island in May there was only one store open mid-week, the others stayed closed until the week-end, when trippers and summer residents flocked across to the island from their homes in the nearby towns. It was a good store, stocking all kinds of different things from muesli to school stationery. Moving through the narrow aisles with Oscar, Liberty picked out frozen peas and meatballs, dried macaroni and fat bars of Marabou chocolate with nuts and raisins. They got loo paper and washing-up liquid as well, and matches and charcoal for the tiled stove. For wine or spirits you had to put in an order in advance at the Monopoly that looked more like a dispensary with its brown-panelled walls and long counter.

  On the way back up the cobbled hill they met the man who had run the fruit and vegetable stall when Liberty had been a child. Liberty stopped and chatted, although she knew he could not hear a word she said. He appreciated the courtesy though, and they parted with big smiles.

  ‘His wife was deaf too,’ Liberty told Oscar as they lugged the bags up the hill. ‘But both of them made it clear that they viewed it as a slight if anyone referred to it. “How much for the bananas today Albert?” you’d ask. “The pears are three kronor for the half kilo,” he’d answer, but you generally left with what you had come to buy.’