by Roger Curtis
‘Maybe I just worked it out.’
‘Then a bit of background, perhaps. For example, Edwin once said you had a sister.’
‘Elizabeth, yes.’
‘Older, younger? More beautiful… no, that’s impossible.’
‘Three years older, cleverer and, yes, more beautiful.’
‘Then you must have envied her.’ He leaned forward and gazed at her, as if to discover why her expression had changed.’
‘I admired her. Worshipped her sometimes. But envied her, no. She was a very unhappy person. I’ve no idea why.’
‘Perhaps your parents favoured you.’
‘We can definitely rule that out.’
‘You were persecuted? As a child?’
‘A bit, but I think I was more an irrelevance.’
‘So what made your sister… relevant?’
‘I’ve never thought about it in that way.’
‘Maybe you should. Didn’t she confide in you?’
‘We shared a room, when I was very small. Later we had our own, of course, next to each other. She made up for what my parents lacked: the ability to channel any affection they had for me. My father because he didn’t know how, my mother because she was weak and seemed to copy him.’
‘But it was not you they resented.’
‘Resent? That’s a strange word.’
‘But strikes a chord?’
‘There was always an atmosphere. They seemed for ever to be on edge. I’ve no idea why.’
‘Really no idea?’
For the first time that evening he smiled the wide captivating smile with which he had first greeted her at the Massingham Tower.
She barely noticed Jamela topping up the wine glass in her hand. Mark raised his. ‘To our future.’
‘That’s rather vague, but okay, to our future.’ They clinked glasses and suddenly she caught his meaning. ‘You mean our future together?’
‘Sorry. Deep down I’m a simple, shy man.’
She should resist, get up and demand to be taken home. The ride here, this house, the balmy evening no doubt deliberately chosen – how long had he been waiting for that to come along?
‘I ought to be getting back,’ she said. ‘A busy day tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow is your day off.’
‘Really? I see I can’t win.’
‘Look around you, Sarah Jane. This could be yours. You need want for nothing.’
‘But you mentioned strings.’
‘One is that you disentangle yourself from London hospital life. Beckenham would be a pleasing backwater.’
‘And two?’
‘That we would allow each other…’ For the first time she saw him blush. ‘… a certain… latitude. You have cast your net wide Sarah Jane, everyone knows that. It would be difficult for you to… Which brings me to the purpose of this evening.’
‘We don’t yet know one other.’
‘Exactly that.’
The meal over they wandered into the conservatory. ‘Myra had a deft touch. To me this is a glasshouse worthy of Kew. And all this in only ten years. These rare Attelea palms, see how they’ve reached almost to the roof. I’ll find it difficult to cut them back.’
‘Extend the roof upwards, then.’
It raised a small smile. ‘The Massingham solution, you mean?’
From the glass door to the house the marble floor of the conservatory widened into a central area with cushioned benches and tables; from there wide doors opened southwards onto the lawn. In the centre, as the focal point of the whole structure, stood a fountain, or, rather, a perfect dome of water, seemingly motionless and barely identifiable as such until you touched it. ‘You have to listen hard to hear it, so precise is the engineering,’ Mark said. ‘But watch.’
He had taken from his pocket a leather box a little smaller than a Rubik’s cube. He inserted his hand into the flow so that the waters parted, forming an aperture. Then, with his other hand, he placed the box on what must have been a shelf inside. ‘That’s secret,’ he said, savouring her fascination and forestalling her question. Withdrawing his hand the waters closed, becoming immediately perfect.
They sat together on a bench above the lake, under a bright moon in a sky dabbed with wispy cloud. Scents of jasmine and honeysuckle, and others Sarah did not recognise, wafted from the pergola behind. Mark placed an arm around her shoulders. It was the first time he had touched her, properly touched her. It was the moment she had longed for since the day they had met. He said, ‘You asked what I wanted. What I want is you, Sarah Jane, and have done since you came down those stone steps in the Tower and I willed you to stumble so that I had an excuse to hold you.’
Back in the house she was surprised to find Jamela waiting for them at the foot of the stairs.
‘I haven’t brought my…’
‘You will have everything you need,’ Mark said. ‘I’ll join you when you’ve made yourself comfortable. Jamela will tell me when.’
She followed Jamela’s sinuous progress up the stairs. The girl stopped on the landing, full in the moonlight flooding through the window. She raised her arms above her head and rotated her body, slowly, in a complete circle. Her eyes widened in invitation. What did she know, this girl? But this time Sarah’s thoughts were wholly elsewhere. The test passed, Jamela lowered her arms, smiled and walked on into the bedroom. ‘It will be wonderful,’ her expression said. She left Sarah contemplating a complete collection of her favourite toiletries neatly arranged on the dressing table surface.
She awoke. There was no-one to pull the curtains or bring her tea. But there was an envelope on her pillow. She opened it with trembling fingers and read the note:
My Dearest Sarah Jane
Do not be alarmed that I left early for town. I thought you would wish to have time to reflect without being under any pressure. The house is yours for the day if you need it and no-one will disturb you. There are no longer doubts on my side.
If you decide that the future is for us you should retrieve the little box from the fountain. If not just press the blue button on the phone and a taxi will be at the gate in twenty minutes.
Affectionately,
Mark
There was a perfect stillness about the house that had bitter-sweet resonance. She’d felt something similar the day her sister was buried and she’d returned home ahead of the others to prepare the food, though actually to grieve. The clock chiming – as the longcase clock in the hall at Hightower did now – seemed then to mark off a period of existence that could be put behind, telling that whatever came next could not possibly be as difficult. The difference now was the element of choice. The future was for the taking. But could she just throw herself upon fortune?
In the morning room breakfast was laid out for her. She poured herself some coffee – food could wait for later – and wandered with it into the kitchen. Gone were any signs of activity, as there must have been, in clearing up from the night before. She smiled at Mark’s deception with the hamper. No picnic basket could have included the dishes that Jamela served. The girl, too, seemed to have gone.
Out in the garden the warmth of the sun had brought myriad insects to hover over the richly coloured beds of acanthus, canna and ligularia. At the lake dragonflies skimmed the clear water. She saw a tiny rowing boat moored there and climbed in. Lying back with her arms over the sides, she paddled it to the centre with her hands. Lazily turning the boat in the water she took in the woodland beyond the paddocks, then, nearer, the cedar stables, silent and empty. Between them and the house lay the rose garden. She paddled to the shore, tied up the boat and made for it, hoping that new sensations there might inform her decision.
Was there really a choice? Did she know enough about him? Enough to know that he was unlikely to be physically threatening, for
he was not alone in doing his homework. Given safety, there was a promise that her freedom would not be too harshly limited. Saying goodbye to Catherine’s would be no hardship after all that had happened. And while patients were important to her, she was no altruist, or so she thought. The Beckenham hospital would be an ideal compromise. Shouldn’t she ask someone, just to be sure? But there was no-one, was there? She had no friends, not even a functional mother. So, then, what the hell. She marched into the conservatory.
The perfect dome of water shimmered in the sunlight filtering through the palm-fronds above. She sat on one of the benches and stared at it, knowing that she had reached a landmark in her life. Then she thrust her hand in and with the other extracted the little box. It contained the expected diamond ring, which she placed on her finger; there was also a set of car keys.
She drove back to town singing in her own brand new, flame-red Lamborghini. She hoped that Elizabeth – wherever she was – would be happy for her.
SHIRLEY HILLS
May 1986 – May 1987
9
The years of her marriage – her time at Shirley Hills – had been squandered; that she now knew. The paradox was that she’d taken refuge in the very things that, deep-down, repulsed her. The allure of an affluent suburban lifestyle had been a kind of safety net when her contract at the Beckenham hospital had ended and she’d chosen not to renew it. The decision had been reinforced by her friends – or perhaps more likely Mark’s, especially those whose husbands were not succeeding – for whom such a lifestyle was the pinnacle of ambition. Their dictum – ‘you’re so lucky’ – could have been the motto for the group that surrounded her.
One day she had glanced down before sitting at her dressing table. She saw the embroidery of the seat was becoming threadbare. Sitting there, day after day, month after month, she’d peered into the mirror with ever increasing frequency and closeness at the tiny valleys that were beginning to cross her forehead and the arrow heads pointing to the corners of her eyes. She would never admit to herself that it was only she who saw them, though she was right in thinking that her friends – such as they were – did from time to time have her face under surveillance.
Stretching back over the five years since her marriage were those three-weekly rituals that were Mark’s social gatherings: lunches in preference to dinners; barbeques rather than buffets indoors. And here was another paradox: for all his charm to the outside world as a bon viveur she knew now that he had the makings of a recluse. She saw it in little, trivial things: undue attention to the integrity of the perimeter fences and hedges; his switching of the telephone to automatic answering when he was sitting by it; an extravagance in his ordering for the wine cellar, as if some alien force was about to lay siege.
But to outsiders they were still the same privileged couple, wanting for nothing.
The first dent in that outward image came when Mark was asked to be godfather to the Simpkins’ second child. Against her better judgement, Sarah-Jane had accompanied him. It was the fact of being a second child that had struck home, and she had felt the eyes around the font all asking, ‘And why not you?’ The ‘why not’ she had never previously thought to address. Whatever the reasons for her childlessness were, they seemed to reside in the preservation of her figure and a temerity towards disturbing a non-challenging, if dull, existence. The christening had forced her to think about eventualities.
Did Mark want children? Had they ever discussed it? In not discussing it she had assumed not, and perhaps he was as scared as she about introducing a factor that might break the fragile shell that contained them both. But the idea of a child must have taken root, for more than once, in a bookshop, she had found herself drifting towards the maternity care section; and on another occasion, at the doctors’, she’d leafed through the pregnancy pamphlets on the rack. Yet in spite of that, she had not once suggested to Mark that they should not ‘take precautions,’ as he called it. Why was that? Perhaps she knew that infidelity – his, not hers, in this instance – could present a real hazard to her; and she didn’t need to be medically qualified to appreciate the risks of unprotected sex in their particular social stratum. That, she knew, was not the reason, but she was at a loss to say what was. Alice had once hurt her by saying – as if innocently, but she could not be sure – ‘I don’t really see you as a mother, Sarah’ and holding her gaze just long enough to see whether she had been stung by it. These thoughts – which came and went at all sorts of odd times – were like dancers around a totem pole; their origin was obscure, but they were becoming more persistent.
It was not long after such thoughts began to surface that Mark suggested they take on an au pair.
‘Whatever for?’
‘Just that you’ve been looking tired lately.’
‘Too much sitting and staring into the mirror.’ The sarcasm of her self-criticism was usually lost on him.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘A companion would get you out of yourself.’
‘And how do we go about that?’
‘Girls are always writing for work with the Foundation. I’ll bring back a selection of their letters.’
She knew what to expect: a choice already made from a handful of letters passed to her over the breakfast table. Only one deserved a second look, and then only because the English was just intelligible. Marguerite Renard, eighteen years old, six weeks at a Cambridge language school after her baccalauréat. And not much else apart from liking the English.
At the top of the letter, Sarah-Jane noticed, was a discoloured spot that might have been dried adhesive gum.
‘No photo with it?’ she asked.
‘I expect it fell out when I gathered them up. I’ll check my desk.’
‘You do that.’
From this exchange Sarah-Jane deduced that the girl was at least pretty. Then something curious happened: an unexpected shiver of excitement passed through her body. It was inexplicable because the first thought of another woman sharing the house should have been of flashing red lights.
They drove together to fetch her from East Croydon station and found her absorbed in the billboards extolling the night life of Croydon. As she turned, the dark hair blew across her face. She parted it with her hands, revealing a pair of brown eyes that simultaneously expressed amused boldness and timid uncertainty.
Sarah-Jane looked instinctively towards Mark and the girl for signs of mutual recognition but could find none. The two kisses that should have been perfunctory were held just long enough for Sarah-Jane to feel the warmth of her cheeks. Mark carried her rucksack to the car. You must sit in the front, she told Marguerite; then, from behind, she scrutinised the pair carefully for portents of things to come.
In the weeks that followed, to Sarah-Jane’s immense relief, the girl proved adept at establishing her own work patterns around her new mistress. The question of why she was there gradually receded from her mind. In spite of Marguerite’s occasional flights of Gallic ebullience the two women became, if not exactly friends, then at least sympathetic towards one another. At times they were even glad to be in each other’s company.
It seemed to be the arrival of Marguerite that re-invigorated Sarah-Jane’s relationship with Alice. No matter that it was probably prompted by curiosity on Alice’s part. After all, Sarah-Jane had nothing else new or of particular interest to offer.
When Alice had married Brian some four years before – and about a year after Sarah-Jane had left Catherine’s – the couple had bought a dilapidated Georgian house in Putney. She remembered stomping around the echoing rooms while Alice relayed Brian’s grand plan for restoration.
Almost a year later Sarah-Jane and Mark were invited to see the outcome. Remembering Brian’s meticulous attention to detail, Sarah-Jane was not surprised at the result. What did surprise her was Mark’s apparent familiarity with the house: for example, how he approached a certain armchair i
n way that could only have been habitual; how his attention was drawn to a particular painting that Brian told her afterwards was the only one that was new. But then he and Brian were friends, so why should that not be so? ‘Yes,’ said Alice, ‘Mark’s here quite often, but usually when I’m out.’ When she thought about it afterwards the visit told her as much about her relationship with Alice – whom she sometimes met in town – as it did about her husband.
Events arise in life that, with hindsight, are turning points. The Prestons’ first encounter with Mrs Adams was one of them. Mark – how well she would come to remember it – was leaning against the mantelpiece, boring her with his latest business venture. They watched her coming up the drive, in measured and determined tread, collecting box in hand.
Tell her to come in, Mark had shouted to Marguerite. The woman paused in the doorway, a brown-grey figure of middle age and above average height. Her body had an angularity begging to be set off by uniform, because the features had horizontal elements, like the wide firm mouth, the short fringed hair and even the flatness of the uppers of her brown leather shoes. Mark would later brand her Salvation Army; Sarah-Jane likened her to an ageing Julie Andrews with chronic indigestion. She greeted them with uninvited shakes of the hand and an unwavering smile.
She had a grand-daughter with cerebral palsy, Clare, her widowed son Jack’s girl. That’s how it had begun. Now she spent most of her time collecting for medical charities; this one happened to be for a scanner but there were three or four others whose committees she chaired.
Mark must have liked her, otherwise he would not have asked.
‘I will put a golden guinea into your box for five minutes of your time,’ he said, writing a cheque for a hundred pounds for the Beckenham Hospital Scanner Appeal and waving it in front of her nose. ‘I have a distinguished medical colleague who is on his way to establishing a new plastics unit at that very hospital. Is that the sort of thing you and your friends might be interested in? My own involvement, I must tell you, is strictly on the construction side.’