The Fountain

by Mary Nichols

  She turned away to pick up her wine and took a mouthful. It was very cold and refreshingly dry. ‘It wasn’t intentional.’

  ‘No, perhaps not. But it’s what those eyes are saying that I find so fascinating. How did you manage to convey so much bleakness, so much emptiness without them looking lifeless and blank? They don’t, you know. There is life there. It is crying out to be recognised.’

  She gave a cracked laugh. ‘Simon, that’s fanciful. Eyes are eyes. It’s the structure around them, the brows and skin tones, that make the expression. And the mouth.’

  ‘The mouth. Well, I could go on about the mouth too. Smiling and yet not smiling. Oh, it is turned up at the corners; it even shows the teeth a little, but it is a sad mouth. It makes me want to do something about it.’

  ‘Do?’ she asked in alarm.

  He lifted his hand and gently traced the outline of her mouth with the side of his forefinger. ‘I want to see this happy again.’

  ‘I am happy.’

  ‘Are you? Then come and sit down and tell me how you are happy.’

  ‘How?’ she asked, allowing him to draw her to the sofa to sit beside him. She was in a kind of daze, aware there was some truth in what he said, wondering how he could be so perceptive. It wasn’t the picture – or she didn’t think it was – he was using that as a way of illustrating what he meant.

  ‘Yes. Tell me exactly what makes you happy.’

  ‘My children, my home, my friends, my husband…’

  ‘I notice your husband wasn’t first on the list.’

  ‘I didn’t put them in any particular order. Simon, why are you interrogating me?’

  ‘I want to find the real Barbara underneath that…’ He indicated her brown skirt and plain blouse, ‘disguise.’

  She laughed shakily. ‘It isn’t a disguise, unless wanting to look practical and efficient, when I’m nothing of the sort, is a disguise.’

  ‘Why did you put them on in the first place?’

  ‘I told you, I was on duty.’

  ‘I didn’t mean today.’ He poured more wine. ‘I meant why did you start doing this so-called duty?’

  ‘I told you that too. To be helpful. There are so many poor and suffering people in the world and I find it fulfilling. It keeps me busy and stops me from feeling sorry for myself.’

  ‘So you do sometimes feel sorry for yourself?’

  She hadn’t meant to admit that and began to squirm uncomfortably. He was determined to delve deeply, more deeply than she had ever done herself. ‘Who doesn’t?’ she said lightly.

  ‘Tell me about those times too. Tell me about the times when you’re bored out of your mind, when you’d like to scream because everyone expects too much of you, when no one seems to understand how you feel.’

  She looked at him sharply, surprised that he could have put it so succinctly. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, my dearest love, you need to get it off your chest, and I will never tell a soul.’

  The endearment slipped so naturally from his tongue she hardly noticed it, or if she did, it was with a kind of gratitude. ‘Are you inviting me to find fault with my life, with George?’

  ‘If it makes you feel better. It might, you know. You’ll go home a new woman.’

  She laughed suddenly. ‘Simon, this is the strangest conversation I’ve ever had.’

  ‘OK, let’s forget that, let’s take it as read. I love you, always have.’ He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it, passing his tongue over her knuckles and making her shiver. The desire was there, she felt it in every quivering fibre of her. ‘I need you as much as you need me. I want to scream sometimes too. I want to roll back the years, to remember when you were a student and I was… Well, let’s forget what I was.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I was a mess. I didn’t know what I wanted. I was afraid to be serious, afraid to love, afraid my good fortune would run out on me. And in a way it did, because I lost you.’

  He reached over and kissed her on the mouth, a feather-light touch, almost tentative, waiting for her reaction. She did nothing because she could not. Her body was stirring in such a warm, pleasurable way she was savouring it, concentrating on the trickles of sensation which were running through her belly and down her thighs, knowing he had loved her then, still loved her. And she? She was too confused to know what she felt, didn’t want to analyse it.

  ‘I could show you what you missed,’ he went on. ‘What we have both missed.’ He took her face in his hands and kissed her properly. She lost her head, her body was doing her thinking, making her let go of her last vestige of self-control.

  She clung to him while he undressed her, kissed him as furiously as he kissed her, murmuring endearments between each kiss, each flick of his tongue. He stripped himself off and pulled her down onto the rug, beginning the kissing all over again. She watched the top of his head as his lips roamed down her naked body to her pubic hair and felt a huge, undeniable desire which made her open her thighs and arch her back. She cried out and pulled savagely at his golden hair, demanding he enter her. Now. At once.

  ‘Patience, my love,’ he said, settling himself over her, making no move to get inside her, though she could feel him, hard and erect, on her groin. ‘We must make it last.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  He slipped into her and kissed her on the mouth. ‘Darling, Barbara,’ he said, thrusting into her, making her cry out, gripping him, wanting him. ‘How I love you.’ And then he stopped talking, until the very end when he cried out once just before he collapsed onto her.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ he said when his breath returned. ‘I unleashed a whirlwind, didn’t I?’

  She smiled dreamily. She felt as if she had hurled herself into that tempestuous sea, not knowing whether she would live or die and by some miracle had been washed up on the shore, exhausted but alive. Alive. ‘Wasn’t that what you intended all along, with this talk of finding the real me?’

  ‘Something like that.’ He rolled off her and lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling. ‘But not entirely. I was sad knowing you weren’t happy. You weren’t, were you?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘And now? Do you feel better?’

  ‘Yes, I think I do.’ She sat up, her naked body glistening with sweat. ‘Do you think I could have a bath?’

  ‘Of course. We’ll have one together. Our last act of silliness, and then I think I had better take you to the station, before I disgrace myself all over again.’

  ‘No regrets?’ he asked, as he handed her into the train. He was once more the suave businessman and she was the practical Barbara Kennett, wife and mother ready to settle down again, to go on doing the things she had been doing for years, to smother her dreams.

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Most decidedly not. Whatever you do, my love, don’t feel guilty.’ He took her hands as she stood at the carriage door, leaning over the open window. ‘No one has been hurt, no one at all. The truth is, you needed it. Do you know, that look has gone from your eyes?’

  ‘What look?’

  ‘Like the painting, sad and wistful. Your eyes are as bright as stars. I did that for you. Remember that. And if you ever need me, you know how to find me. You have only to shout and I’ll hear you from the other end of the world.’

  ‘Oh, Simon.’ She was torn between a reluctance to leave him and the urgent need to see her children. She felt strange, as if what she had just done might change them, might make them love her the less even though they could know nothing about it.

  ‘Goodbye, my love,’ he called, as the train drew away. ‘One day…’ His last words were lost as the train took her from him.

  She went into the carriage and found herself a seat. Now she had to go back, wanted to go back, wanted to cuddle her children and be reconciled with her husband. Simon was right, no one had been hurt by what they had done; it did no good to feel guilty. If anything, she felt better able to cope, knowing that she was still attractive, still able
to generate passion in someone like Simon, who could have the pick of goodness knows how many glamorous girls, and who had a lovely wife.

  What about his wife, she wondered? Were they happy together? She hadn’t asked and he hadn’t volunteered the information, though she didn’t think he was keen on her being away so much, just as she didn’t like George never being at home. Two people with a niggling grievance, that’s what they’d been, two people looking for solace.

  She arrived home in a cheerful frame of mind, explained that she was late because she had stayed in London to see Penny. And life went on.

  Honest George, he called himself, when electioneering to be returned to the town council, but all that meant was that he was extra careful, so careful he hadn’t seen Virginia for months, except in the distance, flitting down the corridor of the county council offices or going into the café on the market for a cup of coffee, or, worst of all, working in her garden when he went past on his way to or from the golf club on a Saturday.

  There had been days, early on, when he had been tempted to call, especially as she telephoned him at work and left messages for him to get in touch, messages that became more and more urgent, more pleading, as the days and weeks passed. But to give in would be fatal. He would never be strong enough to put her from him a second time, to harden his heart to her tears all over again. He had told her it was only until the gossip died down and he had got in with Bulliman, then they could get together again. It was cowardly, he knew, but he hoped she might realise for herself that it couldn’t, mustn’t, happen. He and Barbara had established a kind of equilibrium, a contentment which had nothing of the passion and abandonment of a love affair, but was easy to live with. Let Barbara do her good works: it all helped with the image he wanted to create. He was even prepared to put himself out, to get the children’s tea or baby sit so that she could go to one of her charity committee meetings. He decided to give her a car for her birthday, it might make up for the fact that he had an evening engagement and would not be able to take her out.

  Barbara celebrated her twenty-seventh birthday quietly at home with the children while the second-hand Austin Seven sat in the garage. The gift pleased her because it meant she could take the children out when George was too busy to accompany them. The new George was very little different from the old one: he was still out nearly every evening and, she suspected, still oiling wheels, but thank goodness he was not still seeing Virginia and for that she was grateful. Had he, like her, needed something to ease the tension? The memory of her meeting with Simon filled her with a mixture of pleasure and guilt, which she tried not to dwell on. ‘Don’t feel guilty,’ he had said. ‘No one’s been hurt.’

  After she had put the children to bed, she went to work on a new painting. It was a beach scene with two children in the foreground building a sandcastle – her children – Alison with her smooth, dark hair tied in a ponytail, Nick with his corn-blonde curls. She put all her love into those two and it showed in the brightness of their faces, the roundness of their golden limbs, the way they laughed. There was a Punch and Judy nearby and lots of smiling faces and people sitting on deckchairs. The sea was blue and calm, just rippling towards the shore, and the sky was almost cloudless. Cloudless skies were boring, she decided, putting in a few soft puffs of white and a small biplane trailing a message. She hadn’t decided what that message should be before she discovered she was pregnant and the euphoria vanished.

  How was she going to tell George? They had not planned another child and he had always used a sheath. Now she had to convince him that there must have been something wrong with one of them. It was not a decision she reached without a great deal of heart-searching, but the alternative was too terrible to contemplate. George might expect to be forgiven for being unfaithful but she knew, as surely as she knew her husband’s many moods, that she would never be granted the same leniency.

  She told him one morning while he was eating his breakfast toast. It was early and the children were still in bed. It had to be then because she had to run from the table to be sick and he asked her what was wrong.

  ‘Pregnant?’ he echoed. ‘But you can’t be.’

  ‘There must have been a flaw in one of the sheaths. They aren’t guaranteed one hundred per cent, are they? That’s what you said when I fell with Alison.’

  He didn’t comment on how that had come about. ‘Are you sure? You’re not just late?’

  ‘I’m sure.’ She poured herself a cup of tea and sat looking at it, knowing she would be sick again if she drank it.

  He studied her for a long time, watching her face, reading her apprehension in her expression. For one heart-stopping moment she wondered if he would deny it had anything to do with him, accuse her of going with someone else, but it never entered his head. And now the guilt she was supposed not to feel weighed her down. It could still be George’s child: the sheath could have been faulty, but that argument didn’t make her feel any better. She had no business feeling hard done by over George and Virginia when her sin was just as great. She had forfeited her right to feel aggrieved.

  ‘When’s it due?’

  ‘End of February.’ She was doing her best to keep her voice light but her heart was hammering. How was she going to bear it? But telling him, without knowing for sure the child was not his, would be flinging away their very last chance of happiness. And it wasn’t as if it had been a proper affair, something strong enough for her to want to destroy a marriage and split up a family. She stood up and went behind his chair to put her arms round his neck and kiss his cheek, smooth and smelling of aftershave. ‘George, I do love you, you know.’

  ‘I know, my dear. And I love you too. And the new little one will round off our family nicely. I wonder what the other two will think of it.’

  It was the first time for ages that he had said he loved her. Why now? Why say it now, when she had this horrible cloud of guilt hanging over her? Was that how he felt about Virginia, overwhelmed by guilt and unable to speak of it? What a pair they were! ‘They’ll love it,’ she said.

  He stood up and picked up his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘I must be off. There’s a finance committee meeting tonight, so I’ll grab a bite in The Crown after work.’

  He pecked her cheek and left by the front door, picking up his briefcase on the way. She watched him go, then went back to the kitchen to sit with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, staring into space. The boot was well and truly on the other foot now.

  Ought she to tell Simon? What good would it do if she did? Would he even want to know? Would it make her feel any less guilty? Would it make George a different kind of person? But if he found out… Supposing the baby looked like Simon? Supposing some time in the future it all came out? But supposing it was George’s, after all? It could be. She must keep her secret.

  Rita carried the tray over to where George sat in a corner of the bar and set the plate of mixed grill in front of him. ‘Anything else, Mr Kennett?’

  ‘No, thank you. I’ll have another beer, though.’

  She picked up his empty glass and went to pull him another pint. When she took it over to him, he was no longer alone. Virginia Bosgrove was sitting beside him. She was picking chips from his plate and eating them while he talked, his head lowered towards her. Oh, there was no doubt about what was going on. Did Mrs Kennett know her husband was such a bastard? She suddenly remembered the day she had met Barbara standing outside Virginia Bosgrove’s house, transfixed with shock by something the woman next door had said. Poor Mrs Kennett!

  After he came out of prison, Colin had told her about the arson, hinted at other things George Kennett would not like made public, but she had thought he was exaggerating or making things up to make himself look big. Big he certainly was, but he wasn’t a philanderer. He might give her a thump now and again, but he hadn’t gone with another woman, not in Melsham, not on his own doorstep. She put the beer on the table in front of George but he barely glanced at her.

&n
bsp; ‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ George said. After all the trouble he had taken to avoid her, not answering her letters and phone calls, trying to put her from his mind, she had to track him down, today of all days. ‘Don’t you care that we’ll be seen together?’

  ‘Not anymore. You said give it a few months, time for Barbara to get used to the idea, give you time to get in with Bulliman, then we could be together. It’s been over four months.’

  ‘Do you think I haven’t noticed?’ he hissed at her. ‘Do you think I don’t count the days since I last saw you? To speak to and hold, I mean, not in the distance going about your work: that doesn’t count.’

  ‘Then why is it taking so long? Surely Barbara can’t still want you…?’

  ‘Funnily enough, she does.’

  ‘You did tell her?’ She stopped picking at his food and leant towards him so that her long hair fell over her face. She scooped it out of the way with her hand. Idly he wondered why she had started wearing it loose. He didn’t like it like that. He preferred it in a chignon which made her look cool and sophisticated, highlighting the contrast between the public Virginia and the unfettered Virginia in bed, which was a Virginia he liked to keep to himself. ‘George, you did tell her?’

  ‘Of course I did. I told you I would, didn’t I?’

  ‘Then why won’t she release you?’

  ‘It’s difficult, especially now.’ He paused. ‘She’s pregnant.’

  ‘Oh, my God! And you said… How could you, George?’

  ‘I couldn’t live with her and not…’

  ‘Why not? If she knows about us, knows you would rather be with me, then she’s perverted to go on wanting you.’ She paused to look him in the eye, but he avoided it. ‘You didn’t tell her, did you? You haven’t said a word to her.’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Not plainly enough, evidently. Look here, George, either you want to be with me and nothing else matters, or you want to stay married to Barbara and be bored to death for the rest of your life. Which is it?’