She was also teased by another consideration. When the time came, how could she explain her absence to Ian. All right to say blithely, ‘I’ll think of something.’ Another to think it. It wasn’t as if she had a convenient friend to visit, or a relative.
Ian gave her housekeeping money, plus a wage. The latter he kept to a scrupulously fair amount, wisely knowing she wouldn’t feel justified in accepting more. Not being what one would call a proficient housekeeper, she still felt grossly overpaid. He bullied her into writing to her father, to let him know she was well, and in employment.
Her father, who had never been known to keep other than a dry pen, did not write back. Angela did. She was reading the reply at the table she shared with Ian. Val was still upstairs, presumably putting on her morning face. Karen’s own morning face was doleful, matching perfectly the heaviness of her heart. The letter, Angela’s pen was not only well filled, but sprung with an amusing nib, did much to restore her spirits. She felt that at last her father had met his match. He should have tangled with her, years ago.
‘Pleasant news?’ enquired Ian, lifting his nose out of his letter, that had in turn come out of a buff coloured business envelope. Buff coloured envelopes never look pleasant.
‘You could say, inspiring,’ she answered sweetly. ‘Angela wants me to get in touch with her parents. She thinks we should get to know one another. She suggests I pay them a visit.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘You should get to know your stepmother’s kin. Is she your stepmother yet?’
‘Hang on a tick,’ said Karen reading furiously. ‘Not yet. Heck!’ she exclaimed in dismay. ‘You don’t suppose it won’t come off? I mean, why haven’t they tied the knot? What are they waiting for?’
He had seen that same keen look of dismay, once before on her face, when discussing her father’s love. Then, as now, they had shared a table, but a strange table, and they had been so newly acquainted he hadn’t known her name. It had rained hard, the day they met. In the bright, steamy atmosphere of the restaurant she had resembled a kitten, with misery drowned eyes. He remembered producing his handkerchief and wishing he could mop up the misery as well as the wet.
It amused him to remember she would have given anything to put the clock back, even Darling Ugly, the funny troll doll she was so much attached to, to a time before Angela. She had been progressively miserable because she thought her father was going to re-marry; now she was abjectly miserable because she thought he might not. Woman’s prerogative, he supposed.
‘Oh, it’s all right,’ she breathed, her relief heartfelt. ‘It’s further down. The wedding date, that is. It’s fixed for October. I suppose that’s something. She is hoping to come home before then. To do some trousseau shopping. If, and when, she will come to see me.’
‘And give me the once over, I shouldn’t wonder.’
She put her hand to her mouth, smothering an exclamation, and gasped:
‘Do you suppose so?’
What is that meant to signify?’ he enquired drily. ‘Don’t you think I’ll pass the parental eye test?’
She giggled. ‘Angela isn’t old enough to have a parental eye. And I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know! Well, that’s very nice.’ He pretended to look stern and dignified.
No, Ian, she thought, it’s you who’s nice, very nice. But the top layer, the face, dominated by the eyes, dark and satanic, coupled with the brutally bullying tongue, is all villain. Peel it away and you were smothered by the goodness of the man. If he bullied, he did so in your best interest. He made you face up to things that had to be faced up to. Like getting back behind the wheel of a car, to preserve your nerve. If he knew when to bully and prod, he also knew when to comfort and console. Like during a thunder storm.
In comparison, Mitch looked the bonny boy. With a blond forelock tumbling an unfurrowed brow, and bluer than blue eyes. Angels didn’t come looking any better; yet underneath he was all that was bad and selfish.
‘It’s not always what the cover says, is it?’ Her tone, thoughtful, yet seeking, coincided with his own deliberations. ‘No, it isn’t.’
‘How do we know when the cover is wrong? What tells us?’
‘Instinct?’ he suggested.
‘Yes, that’s good. I like that. Mine’s latent, only just coming to the fore. I’m changing my mind about people.’
‘I had noticed.’
‘And realizing it’s better not to be too opinioned.’
‘In the first instance, a less stubborn, more flexible viewpoint can save embarrassment,’ he agreed.
‘I wonder what Angela’s parents are like,’ she said conjecturally, thinking it wise to implant the notion firmly yet squirming because she hated laying bricks of subterfuge when the mood was so mellow. Yet she would need the cover when she and Mitch started playing the clubs, and it was too good an opportunity to pass up. ‘You do think it’s a good idea. For me to visit them?’
‘A splendid idea. Only not this week. I don’t like the thought of leaving Val on her own, not at the moment when she’s showing such remarkable signs of improvement, and I have a business trip planned. It’s overdue, I’m afraid, something I’ve put off too long. If I don’t fly to Paris and haul out an export order, someone is going to haul me out.’
Val, Val, always Val. ‘By the time you’re forty,’ she snapped irritably, ‘you’ll be completely grey and have a brow like a basset hound.’
‘In that case I shall look very distinguished,’ he returned, mystified. What had he said to cause such a large blot on such a beautifully peaceful cover?
He sighed, he tapped his foot, he looked at the clock. Val was taking longer than usual this morning. Karen’s mind leaped again the ten or so years to his fortieth birthday. He would make an admirable husband; like most husbands he would gripe at being kept waiting, and, Val, who always had a last minute something to do—find a hankie, a book, that elusive glove—would certainly keep him waiting. But his patience would always find that last inch of stretch. And he would be faithful; his wife wouldn’t need to fear the dangerous years, between forty-five and fifty-five, because he wouldn’t swop one of her grey hairs for a dolly bird done up in fashion’s latest.
His voice cut through her thoughts. ‘Why so pensive?’
‘I’ve just put twenty-five years on your back.’
‘And that makes you pensive? Is it worse than the grey hair and the basset hound brow?’
‘Much worse,’ she said. ‘Because I shan’t be around to see.’
‘And would you like to be?’
‘Yes, very much.’ It didn’t occur to her to voice other than the truth.
‘Then will you have dinner with me on my fifty-fifth birthday?’
‘Thank you. I should love to have dinner with you on your fifty-fifth birthday.’ It was a joke played out with serious eyes and grave faces.
‘Dates of such long standing should be appropriately sealed,’ he said. Taking her face in his hands, he covered her mouth with his. She willed her lips to remain steady, even though she felt as if she was being slowly turned inside out. The suppressed feelings, the deeply buried urges, came to the surface, suppressing and burying that which had been a front, the unemotional facade the situation had forced her to adopt. Her mind cast out thought, she was incapable of logical reasoning. Her body, which had started off as taut as a bowstring, taut and determined, relaxed by degree. Relaxed, melted, trembled, finally acquiesced to the gentle liberties being taken.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ian, looking troubled as well as grave. ‘For that too-fierce embrace. If it’s any consolation I intended only a light kiss, as befitted the occasion. It got out of hand.’
She wanted to say: ‘It’s all right, my darling. I’m not pressing bounds, or erecting barriers . . . it’s all right.’ But she was enthralled still, completely held in spell, and then it was too late. His eye was back on the clock, and he was saying:
‘Would you mind going up and giving Val a knock. Officiall
y she starts work fifteen minutes before I do, and if she doesn’t get a move on, we’re both going to be late.’
‘Of course,’ said Karen in hasty retreat, barely seeing the stairs for the tears stinging her eyes. She had, for a blissful moment, forgotten there was a girl with a prior claim, a girl with a fragile smile and an elusive quality, hard to define, yet more potent than obvious beauty. Obvious beauty is fierce and compelling, it is the sun with none of the subtle cunning of the sunset. The sunset doesn’t blazon her charms, she doesn’t put on a golden dress, dig her teeth into a man’s skin, alternately burn him up with her brilliance, and dazzle him with her smile. Instead she beguiles and entrenches with a gentler radiance, which quietly and shyly keeps slipping from view. Everyone sees the sun, not everyone sees the sunset.
I can’t even compete, she thought wretchedly. It’s not the sun against the sunset. It’s two sunsets, and mine happens to be the paler one, the unsubtle copy.
The trees were very near today, their heads, closely pressed together, seemed almost to enter the room. It was an illusion, of course, brought on by her fretful mood. The vista was the one she normally saw when dusting Val’s room; today it only seemed touching close because the menace of something creeping and pressing matched her gloom and melancholy.
He was the faithful type. Perhaps if fate had been kind and allowed her to meet him first . . .
The dusting, the straightening, the general putting to rights, the wiping out the smudges and creases of yesterday, had ceased to be novel and had become as routine as a roller towel. Without a beginning, without an end, the job was never done. As soon as one smudge was obliterated, another took its place.
‘Damnation to housework!’ she said, venting her testiness on the empty room. ‘I won’t do any more today,’ she vowed.
She made herself a cup of coffee and gulped it down. Which was stupid, she should have sipped it, to use up some time. A large chunk of morning lay heavily on her hands. Knitting, she thought, was strictly an evening pursuit. Rebelliously she picked up the needles and the ball of russet wool, and cast on. Within five minutes she decided she disliked knitting, disliked it intensely. Dressmaking she found enjoyable. Cutting out, the fascination of watching the scissors slide through the material, machine stitching, whizzing along the seams. A truly satisfying pastime, bringing instant reward. Perfectly suited to her impatient nature. With knitting the stitches had to be assembled side by side, then mounted one on top of the other, with soul destroying slowness.
Why doesn’t Ian do something about Val? she thought. Marry the girl. Or at least come to an arrangement. Perhaps they had come to an arrangement. They might be lovers. No, no, no. She knew with a quickening certainty they weren’t lovers, but the knowledge brought little satisfaction. Simply because she knew Ian wouldn’t find any deep or lasting fulfilment in possession through strength. A man could so easily overcome a moral girl, with just the one priceless gift, that of tenderness. There isn’t a woman on earth proof against tenderness. And the strong ones, who firmly believe they are made of steel, are more vulnerable than their frailer cousins. Steel can’t crumple, it has to melt.
Karen knew she would just melt all over the place if she had to witness any touching pre-wedding preliminaries between Val and Ian.
She hated Mitch, but she needed him more than she hated him. Because it was his hand that would deliver her from this impossible situation.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Mitch, can you arrange a booking, quickly?’ She wasn’t being very sensible, she hadn’t yet come to terms with what Mitch brushed off as nerves, but at least she was being practical. She needed the money, to pay off the debt, to be free of Ian.
Wouldn’t it be easier, less of a strain, just to walk out? No, she’d been through it all, over and over again in her mind. She had to pay the money back first, then walk out.
‘I wish you’d make up your mind,’ said Mitch. ‘First the deal’s off. Then it’s on, so much so that you want me to rush a booking, any booking. Be patient, sweet. I assure you, my want is as great as yours, but we must carefully select the right place for our début.’
‘How patient?’
‘I’ve a man to see tomorrow. I’d like him to see us do a number.’
‘I haven’t got a costume.’
‘You have. I’ve been shopping.’
‘You said I could choose.’
‘Did I? Not to worry, I’m sure our choice would have coincided.’
‘Where is it?’
‘The changing room,’ he waved a hand airily in the direction of the bedroom, ‘is through there.’
The costume was laid on the bed. It consisted of a short skirt, with a full flare, in scarlet with a novelty diagonal overcheck in white. The blouse top was plain scarlet, with wide puffed sleeves, and a low scooped out neck.
She put it on. It made her legs look marvellous. She presented herself to Mitch.
‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got it on back to front. It’s supposed to be worn the other way round.’
She touched the scarlet material at her throat. ‘I wear it this way, or I don’t wear it at all.’
‘All right, darling. Don’t get touchy. I said you could have a choice and that’s your choice. You look charming.’ He caught her by the shoulders and propelled her round. ‘You have lovely shoulder blades. Don’t cover them up, just be careful not to stab me with them.’ He walked round her until they were facing. ‘Why do I get the feeling I daren’t turn my back on you?’
It’s not only a peculiarity of children to want what is denied them. If Karen hadn’t shown her disinterest quite so forcibly, he wouldn’t have given her a second glance. As it was . . .
She ignored both questions, the voiced one and the unvoiced one, and expressed a question of her own. ‘How do I look?’
‘Sweet and sixteen. The image is preserved. How do you feel?’
‘Ridiculous. You’ve dolled me up to look like a cigarette girl.’ She tugged at the wide sleeves, plucked the pelmet of skin. ‘Only not as sexy.’
He chuckled. It was an un-beautiful sound. He went over to the piano, it was by the window, and aimlessly, lazily, with complete lack of absorption—or was it his talent that made it look effortless?—he touched the keyboard. Picking up his fingers, seemingly letting them drop where they wanted, as if they didn’t belong to him, as if he wasn’t personally responsible for the blissful, all the way to heaven, perfect, perfect sound.
‘Come on, doll, to work. And for heaven’s sake, look happy. Everything is just beginning.’ But he was wrong. It wasn’t the beginning, but the beginning of the end. She thought there wasn’t a power on earth that would condemn her for feeling drained and miserable.
Work, even the incompatible variety, can be a solace. And Mitch, the working Mitch, had a special sort of magic about him.
‘I don’t know why you want me,’ she said, when he’d called it a day, praised her feeble efforts, produced coffee. ‘You’d do better on your own.’
‘I tried going solo,’ he said. ‘It didn’t work. To eat I had to take that crummy salesman’s job. I might be the strength behind the act, but I need someone to draw strength from. Someone who looks tear-apart fragile, but isn’t.’
‘Me?’ She flung out her arms, mocking him to cover up something tight and indefinable in her. A feeling, an ache, a desire . . . ? ‘Is it me you’re describing?’
‘Doesn’t it fit in with your concept of you?’
‘No.’ That was it, it didn’t. ‘It fits in with the general notion, though,’ she said irefully. ‘Someday, when I suddenly crumple, somebody is going to get a shock.’
He went behind the piano to look out of the window. ‘What do you know, it’s raining,’ he said. ‘Look at the one legged mushrooms.’
She joined him to look down at the scatter of moving umbrellas. ‘There’s a two-legged mushroom there.’ A boy and girl shared the same umbrella. The girl’s legs tapered into white boots. It was gentle ra
in, as soft as a blown veil. It jewelled the window boxes on the floor below, and glistened the pavement beneath the striding white boots.
‘Val had a pair of boots like that,’ mused Mitch. ‘How is she, by the way?’
‘Improving.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘Ian’s fact. I find it hard to tell.’
‘What does she do? I mean, I know she sees a psychiatrist, but what does she do?’
‘Writes things down in a notebook.’
‘In God’s name, what for?’ He paled, looked peculiar. His expression went unnoticed. Karen was too busy staying her own pang of guilt.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t been interested enough to find out.’
* * *
Ian said: ‘My two girls will have to look after one another while I’m away. Don’t forget to wash behind the ears and eat up all your protein.’ Awkward glances were exchanged. He uttered a reflective:
‘M-m,’ then added: ‘Oh well, I shall only be away for four days. Less if I can manage it. Then back to my piece of accessible heaven.’
‘Is it still that?’ said Karen, the more forceful Eve.
‘Perhaps not,’ he pondered, wondering why. His mind was taken up with other things, or he would have known why. The Garden of Eden had only one Eve.
Ian was away for three days. The days formed themselves into a pattern of housework, of rehearsing, of knitting (not much knitting, three days accomplished a paltry six inches), of watching television.
The notebook had a purple cover, spotted with white dots. It measured seven inches by nine inches. Two thirds way down the pattern of dots was broken by a parallel white bar, two inches in depth. ‘Valerie Stainburn. Notes and Jottings’ was written across this in violet ink.
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