Selma stalled. There had been an English setter at Ashcombe who used to dig his paws in, just like that, when asked to go for a walk in the rain.
‘Don’t you want to go?’ Amelia asked her gently.
Selma looked helplessly at her. ‘I don’t need to now.’
Amelia stared somewhere in the direction of Selma’s good leg. She thought, I’d rather be dead, if I was her, I’d rather be dead. But making her voice matter of fact, Sister Morris-like, she said, ‘No problem,’ and, with a smile fixed determinedly on her face, she began helping Selma back to her seat.
On the taxi ride from Basingstoke, Selma brightened, chatting happily, enjoying the drive through the rain-washed streets of Abbotslea. She knew the town from childhood visits to an aunt, and her memories were all of those visits long ago. When the car stopped at a red light, an old woman, her thick legs disappearing inside dumpy suede boots, a plastic rain cover tied round her whispy grey hair, hastened across.
‘Goodness me, some people are hideous,’ Selma remarked cheerfully. She sat there, whiskery-chinned, and missing her teeth, her cardigan spotted with stains, and yet she looked at the woman at the crossing with gleeful disapproval. Selma had been beautiful. Thank God, Amelia thought, that in her mind she still is.
The taxi pulled up in front of the Old Rectory and the driver got out to help extract Selma from the passenger seat. As she was hauled from the car, Selma farted loudly. For a second no-one moved. It was as if the driver’s eyes and Amelia’s were fencing in embarrassed attempts to avoid a meeting, darting here and there, up, down, right, left. Finally, they both spoke at once, the driver inspecting his fingernails, Amelia investigating the contents of her purse. ‘How much do I owe you?’
‘That’ll be nine pounds eighty, love.’
‘No dear, let me.’ Selma, looking as if the little incident had nothing to do with her, leant heavily against the car as her hand scrabbled round the inside of her handbag. She handed a five pound note to the driver before bringing out some loose change which she counted out carefully, her hand shaking, ‘One, two, three, four pound coins,’ she smiled at the driver, ‘and two fifties. Keep the change,’ she added graciously.
Amelia hadn’t cancelled the papers and she picked out the bulky bundle from the box on the gate. She frowned at the study window. ‘I must have left the light on,’ she said.
She helped Selma inside the house and left her in the armchair in the sitting room before getting the bags from outside. ‘I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’ She smiled encouragingly.
The room seemed to Selma, as she waited, like a halfremembered face. There was something familiar about its square shape and regular features, but to whom did it belong? She sat miserably searching her mind, which seemed to her increasingly like a treasure chest to which she had lost the key.
As she heard murmurings from the room next door she grew restless. She had arrived here with Amelia, but where was here?
The sounds from next door grew louder, worrying sounds: muffled, agonized, oddly familiar. Where was Amelia? Selma tried to get up from the deep chair, but, like a woman drowning, each time she managed painfully to rise to the surface, the soft hold of the chair reclaimed her.
At last Amelia returned. She appeared smiling in the doorway, a tray in her hands, just as from the other room a name was called, then repeated over and over again. ‘Gerry, oh Gerry, Gerry, Gerry!’
Amelia stood motionless, listening, then, with the smile still on her face like a hand held in a wave to someone already gone, she walked across the room. Her cheeks were bright pink as she carefully placed the tray on the table in front of Selma.
A few more steps, quicker now, and she reached the study door and flung it open.
The tall back of Gerald’s swivel chair rocked, two thick legs hung over the arm-rests, the toes of the small feet curling and straightening in ecstasy.
The chair swivelled round and she saw Gerald, his face contorted, a girl straddling him, her skirt hitched up over her naked buttocks.
‘Hello, Gerald,’ Amelia said, ‘I didn’t realize you were home.’
Chapter Eleven
Watching Gerald’s attempt to leap from the chair with Clarissa still straddling his waist, gave Amelia a few seconds of intense enjoyment. Slapping her hand across her mouth, she bent over laughing until the sound of Gerald’s voice stopped her.
‘Get off darling,’ he hissed. It was the ‘darling’, that alerted Amelia’s attention.
‘I’m doing my best,’ Clarissa groaned as, swinging herself round on her bare bottom, she managed to stand up. Her skirt slid down over her hips and covered her as she balanced on one foot, threading the other through the leg of her knickers.
Amelia stood silent, looking at the heavily built young woman whose fine blond hair hung in damp tendrils over a square-shaped face that was turning ice-cream pink as she wriggled and tugged at her pants through the fine floral skirt. Amelia looked away.
Gerald stood by the desk. He had pulled his trousers on, but through the half-open fly peeked a corner of his blue-and-white-striped shirt. The one that took absolutely ages to iron; the thought flew through Amelia’s mind, as appropriate as a paper aeroplane at a funeral. ‘Who is this girl? It’s Clarissa isn’t it?’ Amelia answered her own question in a quiet, level voice. Stay calm, she told herself, and any moment now he’ll cross the floor to me. He’ll say how very sorry he is, how it should never have happened. Soon that solid girl with her unremarkably pretty face, will be escorted to the front door and I can begin to deal with all of this. At least now she knew who it was that had squirted lemon into the cream of her existence. Figments of the imagination were notoriously difficult to fight; young women with lank hair and pink-flushed bottoms, should be easier.
‘Of course it’s Clarissa,’ Gerald snapped. ‘I’m sorry,’ his voice softened, ‘I forgot you haven’t met.’
He’s behaving as if we’re at some slightly awkward drinks party, Amelia thought. Next, this Clarissa will be telling me she feels as if she’s known me for absolutely ages. She bit her lip, waiting for Gerald to revert to script.
‘Look, old thing.’ Now Gerald did take a step towards her, but what followed was all wrong. ‘I’m really sorry you had to find out like this, it’s the last thing we wanted to happen. But you see I’ve been meaning to tell you for weeks. You’re so bloody unsuspecting.’ He flung his arms out helplessly, glancing over to Clarissa for support.
‘I feel absolutely awful.’ Clarissa, in control again now that she had her knickers on, spoke with a Perspex-voice, clear and brittle. Gerald moved closer to her and put his arms round her shoulders.
The quiet gesture of realignment hit Amelia like a punch in the solar plexus. Sitting down in the hard chair by the door she doubled over, trying to stop herself from being sick.
‘Amelia darling, won’t you introduce me to our hosts?’ Selma stood in the doorway, having got herself across the sitting room by walking sideways, transferring her hands and weight from one piece of furniture to the next. ‘Amelia, are you all right?’
Amelia sat up slowly. ‘Yes, of course. Fine, absolutely fine.’ She gazed helplessly at Gerald who looked away.
Amelia stood up. ‘Grandma, you remember Gerald. And this is Gerald’s … friend, Clarissa.’
Selma looked pleased with the introduction, saying in a rather grand voice, ‘How very nice to meet you both. It’s most kind of you to have my granddaughter and me to stay.’ She wobbled on her feet and clung on to the moving door. She looked as if she was about to fall but Amelia grabbed the chair and pushed it under her just in time. Selma collapsed on to it with a little thud.
Gerald shot her a worried glance. ‘I think we’d better go.’
‘You can come back later, Gerald, when we’ve all had a chance to calm down,’ Clarissa said with quiet authority.
‘Let her go Gerald, but you can’t, surely you must see that. You can’t just leave like this.’ Amelia’s voice rose and then, bang!
Her fist slammed into the shelf of the bookcase.
The colour rose again on Clarissa’s cheeks, like bright pink dye washing over shiny paper. ‘Gerald, you are not sending me home like some … some trollop!’
At the familiar old-fashioned word, Selma grew alert. ‘Now don’t you fight children,’ she said from her chair.
‘Oh can’t you see this is hopeless, trying to talk like this?’ Gerald said. ‘You can stay here for the present Amelia. Your grandmother too, of course.’ He gave a little nod in Selma’s direction. ‘And I’ll be over in the next day or two.’
Before Amelia could think of anything to stop him, he was at the front door. ‘Really, I mean it. There’s no hurry for you to move out, I can stay at Clarissa’s for now.’ He looked at her and raised his arm, touching her cheek with his index finger in a quick caress. Then he hurried off, following Clarissa down the short path to the gate. As she stood watching after them, Amelia imagined a shadowy image of herself separating like a film from her body and popping up between Gerald and Clarissa, slipping its wafer-thin arms into theirs. Shuddering, she slowly closed the front door behind them and wandered into the sitting room. Her gaze fell on Selma sitting crumpled in the armchair. She felt utterly alone.
‘You have to keep going, for the children’s sake.’ How many times had she read that phrase in a magazine, or heard it spoken by an acquaintance or some sad, faded figure in a television interview? By that evening Amelia knew just what these people meant. She couldn’t throw herself on the bed and weep, she couldn’t rant and rave or shred Gerald’s cashmere sweater. She couldn’t even get drunk on his most expensive wine, not now she had Selma. So, two hours after Gerald had walked out she was cooking onions and carrots which she blended into a thick, smooth soup: easy to swallow, teeth not essential. Then there was the broken china to clear up, after Selma had dropped the plates she was trying to bring over to the sink. Selma had looked down surprised at the blue and white chips scattered at her feet. ‘I seem to be all fingers and thumbs these days. Mind you I’ve never liked working in someone else’s kitchen.’
By nine o’clock, Selma was asleep in the armchair. Amelia woke her an hour later. ‘Bedtime don’t you think?’ she said, working a smile across her lips.
The walking-frame had to be abandoned at the bottom of the stairs. Amelia began the climb backwards pulling Selma along by both hands, coaxing her up step by step. Halfway up they stopped for a rest and Amelia burst into tears.
Selma stared at her and her face crumpled. ‘Don’t cry Amelia. Please stop it. I can’t bear it when you cry.’
Amelia took a deep breath and tried another bright smile. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just a bit tried. Silly me.’
She helped Selma undress, peeling off layers of foundation garments that lent shape to the sagging, grey-toned flesh. Arching her aching back she said, ‘Let’s not bother with a bath tonight.’
At last Selma was in bed. Propped up against two pillows she looked expectantly at Amelia. After a moment she said, ‘You know I think I might just go downstairs and make myself a mug of warm milk.’
‘I’ll do it.’ Amelia came downstairs slamming each foot down so hard on the wooden steps that it hurt. She heated the milk, muttering all the while into the saucepan. When she thought she heard Selma calling, she hurried to the door only to come back to find the milk rising above the rim of the saucepan, flooding down on to the hob. When finally she got back upstairs, Selma was fast asleep on her back.
Three days after Gerald walked out with Clarissa, he returned on his own. He had telephoned to see if Amelia would be in, and now he sat in his usual place at the large kitchen table. Amelia sat opposite him, elbows on the table, her chin resting on the upturned palms of her hands.
‘You all right?’ he asked as if he didn’t know the answer was no.
Amelia looked into the face she knew so well, the long chin and the large grey eyes, not unlike her own in colour, the small white scar on the upper lip. She knew now, she thought, how people in those science-fiction films felt when their loved ones’ minds were taken over by aliens. The man sitting opposite her at the table looked like Gerald, rubbed his eyes with his knuckles like Gerald, had a voice like Gerald’s, but inside she had no doubt, the little green men had taken over.
‘I miss you,’ she said.
Gerald looked mildly irritated. ‘Well, there we are.’ He cleared his throat, drumming his fingers surreptitiously against the edge of the table.
I wonder what he would do if I walked over to him and put my hand down his trousers? Amelia tilted her head a little to one side as she continued to gaze across at him. This man, she thought, has lain naked and vulnerable in my arms several times a week for two years. Suddenly, he is a prohibited area; if I put out my hand and touch his cheek, I’m trespassing.
Trying to sound business-like, rather than pleading, she asked, ‘There is really nothing I can do or say to make you come back?’
‘No Amelia, there isn’t.’ Gerald’s voice was patient, commiserating even, in an impersonal way. It was the voice he used, she thought, when telling Mrs Smith that all avenues had been exhausted in the firm’s attempts to stop Mrs Smith’s neighbour blocking her access with his lawnmower.
Gerald leant across the table towards her. ‘I really am sorry you had to find out the way you did. It’s the last thing Clarissa and I wanted. But it can’t have come as a complete shock. If you were honest with yourself you must have known that things weren’t right between us.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘What?’ Gerald pulled back in his chair. ‘What do you mean?’ Again that awful irritation crept in, making Amelia blink hard to stop embarrassing tears.
‘I mean that I wasn’t honest.’
Gerald sighed. ‘Can’t you see we’re too different? It’s no-one’s fault, but to be truthful …’
‘Truthful and Honest,’ Amelia thought, two paragons often used to prop up the most cruel constructions.
‘… I don’t understand you. Everything you do seems like a game, something to occupy you whilst you drift around waiting for life to start. I take you one way and you come meekly enough, but all the time I have the feeling that you’re floating off in the opposite direction looking for goodness knows what.’ Gerald spoke with sudden passion. ‘I needed someone … someone substantial.’ He looked at Amelia, pleading for understanding.
Amelia stared back at him, horrified. She had given him her love, shared his life for two years, and that was how he saw her: insubstantial, floating, not quite normal. She blinked and swallowed, reeling from his latest punch, seeing Gerald before her again in the chair with Clarissa. Looking helplessly at him, shrugging her shoulders, she said, ‘Clarissa is certainly substantial.’ It was all she could find to say.
‘For Christ’s sake! You’re just hopelessly immature.’ Gerald, his cheeks reddening, slammed his fist on the table. ‘Faced with a serious situation, the best you can do is come up with a juvenile crack like that.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Amelia said but she felt a curious sense of relief; after all she was hopeless, shiftless, nothing was expected of her now.
‘Would you like a drink?’ She stood up from the table.
‘Thanks,’ he nodded, mollified.
Amelia brought a bottle of Chablis from the fridge. The cork fragmented as she drove in the corkscrew just off centre.
‘Here, let me do it,’ Gerald said, as he always did, taking the bottle from her. Then, as if he had only just then remembered Selma’s existence, he asked, ‘Where is your grandmother?’
Amelia pointed to the lawn where Selma sat, her back turned, an emerald green, gold-tassled shawl wrapped around her shoulders. ‘I brought her walking-frame back inside with me.’ She gave a little smile. ‘It was the only way we could get some privacy.’
Leaving Cherryfield had shaken what was left of Selma’s sense of place. Like a young child who had moved too often, she kept close to her granddaughter, the one constant in her life. So now
, wherever Amelia went, she would hear behind her the sound of the wooden legs of the walking-frame, bashing against doors and furniture as Selma, swearing and muttering, shuffled in her wake.
Gerald turned the bottle round in his hand. ‘A bit excessive, a 1983 Chablis?’
‘No,’ Amelia said simply.
Gerald sighed and changed the subject. ‘You might not think you have any reason to like Clarissa, but she suggested I let you stay on here until the end of the summer, to give you plenty of time to sort out a place of your own.’
He really needs to bring her into his conversation, Amelia thought. Like a speaker in a television debate taking sips from the glass of water by his side, Gerald refreshes himself with little gulps of her name.
‘She’s a real brick, is Clarissa,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where I’d be without her. Have some more wine.’
‘No thanks, I’m driving.’
‘You could always stay the night,’ Amelia offered, watching Gerald make up his mind whether she was being helpful or provocative. He settled on the fence and said in a neutral voice. ‘It’s only half past six.’
Amelia glanced unnecessarily at her watch. ‘So it is.’ She smiled brightly across the table at him. ‘What a lot of time we’ve got to chat.’
Ten minutes later Gerald stood up to leave. ‘I’ll come over again,’ he said. ‘There’s still the matter of how to divide up all the stuff.’ He patted her cheek with the quick, embarrassed gesture she had begun to hate. ‘I’ll always be your friend, Amelia. If there’s anything you need you only have to ask.’
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