‘Look, I’m sorry, honestly. I never would have asked if …’
‘Hell!’ he griped. ‘I need a cigarette, and I’ve left the bloody things downstairs.’ He slouched towards the door, shambled down the staircase, still buttoning up his shirt. She slipped on her own top again, heard a match strike angrily from somewhere far below. She understood his feelings. He had made himself look small, and that was unforgivable for a man of modest stature, who was immodest in ambition. She prayed that he would come back up, so they could sit and talk, confide. He had told her his own secret, so she could match it with her own, prevent Isobel forestalling her, maybe telling it all wrong. Up till now, she had deliberately concealed the fact of her adoption, the details of her life, fobbed him off with fictions or evasions; had somehow always feared his scorn or pity; even suspected he might play the heavy-handed father, and insist she went back home. But things felt different now. He had permitted her to see that he was vulnerable, and she could do the same. She stood leaning over the balcony, willing him to catch her eye, resume their conversation, sound less curt and fractious. He was collecting up his jacket, turning off the lamp, stood a moment in the gloom, jingling his car keys, whistling some harsh tune.
‘Rose,’ he called, at last, looking up and frowning when he realised she was watching him. ‘I think I’ll push off home. I’m feeling really knackered.’ He didn’t even wait for her reply, mumbled a goodnight as he scorched towards the door. She heard it slam, listened to the car coughing like its owner, then fading to a drone.
She stooped down to the floor. He had left his tie behind, his deep plum velvet tie with its chic Parisian label. She stood stroking its soft plush, remembering his own hands lapping down her breasts. She suddenly yanked her top off, touched the breasts herself, copying his movements, the way his thumbs had chafed, disturbing yet exciting her. Why had it gone wrong? She felt guilty and embarrassed, yet furious as well – guilty for allowing him to touch her in the first place, embarrassed that she’d stopped him, made him look a fool; angry at his obstinacy, his sheer pig-headed pride. Yet she was also still aroused, couldn’t settle, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think of anything but Christopher’s bare body; the feel of him on top of her – that strange and frightening part of him which seemed alive in its own right, thrusting out between his legs, like a bully and a rebel, not under his control. She had also glimpsed his pubic hair as he’d eased down his tight cords, and was still obsessively preoccupied with that flash of almost-black – completely different from the grey hair on his head – springier and younger, yet somehow also threatening.
She took off her skirt and tights, removed her flimsy pants, stood looking in the mirror. She suddenly wanted him to see her – all of her, and naked – her own curly pubic thatch, her deep and secret navel which she’d used for storing beads in, when she was a kid of six or so; even the scar on her left thigh where she had fallen off her bike.
She sprawled back on the bed, both hands on her body, as if Christopher were with her still, stroking and admiring. She tried to kick the anger out, the embarrassment, the guilt; obliterate the last bit of the evening, keep only the quiet careful part, when he had treated her like glass; erase his curt admission that he was sterile and infertile. She hated those two words – words connected with her parents now, with failure and deception. He was nothing like her parents; could never be described as barren, not when his creations enlivened the whole studio. She remembered Uncle Peter’s scorn for his brother’s ‘lack of balls’ – a phrase she’d found quite loathsome, and which had made her see her father as inferior, castrated. She had somehow blamed her parents for failing to conceive, so, if she was consistent, then she should also blame the artist.
She rubbed her eyes, exhausted; couldn’t sort her feelings out. They were too confused, too complex, and she was aching now for sleep. She crawled beneath the duvet, switched off the bedside lamp. She was still a child, in one sense, still a retarded gauche eighteen-year-old who didn’t know what sex was – not the practical reality. She should have brought her rag-doll, stuffed it in her duffel-bag the night she fled from Shrepton, so she could sleep with that, instead. She tried to make herself a child – a genuine small kid, happy in its innocence, rather than ashamed and muddled up. She imagined herself as six again, sleeping in the tree-house she’d never actually had. She could feel it rocking gently in the branches of an elm, hear the sparrows twittering just outside its windows, and then a louder noise – the thrum of a car-engine suddenly fading into nothing, the slamming of a door.
‘Rose?’ a voice called nervously – the artist’s voice, which rarely sounded anything but confident, cocksure. ‘Are you still awake?’
Chapter Eleven
‘‘‘Awake thou that sleepest’’,’ Isobel recited. ‘It’s got quite a ring, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Jane, uncertainly, peering over her shoulder at the ancient yellowed Bible, open on the table at St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
‘I wanted the whole verse, but Christopher objected – said there wasn’t room.’ Isobel stood up, rolling out the words as she darted to the stove to save her grapefruit marmalade from burning. ‘‘‘Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.’’ I thought that last bit would be really rather apt – have a literal meaning, as well as a symbolic one, in the sense of light flooding through the glass – but Christopher said no, complained it was too obvious, and that something short and snappy would be more effective anyway.’ Isobel stirred the saucepan vigorously, slopping molten marmalade over the already crusted hob. ‘Actually, I suspect it’s more a personal thing and he’s just not keen on doing long inscriptions. Lettering’s a tedious job, and not all that creative, so it’s probably not his forte. I didn’t argue, Rose. What’s the point? You never win with Christopher.’
No, thought Jane, you don’t. She sat chopping up more grapefruit for the second batch of marmalade, trying to stop her mind from returning to last night. ‘Isobel,’ she said, at last, putting down her knife, so that she could concentrate on a rather different question she hoped would not offend. ‘Do you really believe that Tom will – you know – wake?’
‘You mean rise from the dead? Well, yes, of course I do. What’s the point of a Resurrection window if you don’t believe in resurrection – not just Christ’s, but everyone’s?’
‘I wish I could believe it,’ Jane remarked, reflecting on her own mother, who might have died herself, so that she’d never get to meet her or find out who she was. If she believed in resurrection, they could all three be reunited – herself, her absent mother, her lost departed father.
‘You can,’ said Isobel.
‘Not without a faith.’ Jane resumed her chopping, hacking through the tough and knobbly skins.
‘Faith’s extremely simple,’ Isobel affirmed. ‘What you believe is actually the truth – becomes true, if you like. It’s as if the universe fulfils your expectations, gives you what you want.’
‘But surely that’s just cheating – avoiding all the evidence and swallowing fairy tales.’
‘What ‘‘evidence’’?’ asked Isobel. ‘Nothing’s really proved, you know. Even in science, there’s no final certain proof. So-called facts are always changing. I mean, it was a highly respected fact, once, that the world was flat, or the sun went round the earth.’ She tried a taste of marmalade, blowing on the spoon first, to try to cool it down. ‘Hadley’s reading physics at Southampton University, and he says that ‘‘real’’ reality is nothing like our picture of it. We see everything so partially and dimly that our facts are just distortions. And even the top physicists are divided among themselves. Some are militant atheists, while a few regard the laws of physics as expressions of the will of God.’
‘So how can you be sure, then – I mean, even if top scientists don’t know?’
‘I go about it in a completely different way, Rose, regard meaning and imagination as every bit as valid as scientific proof. If
you insist on proving everything, you lose all mystery, the whole world of the spirit. You can’t see ghosts or angels.’
‘So you believe in ghosts, as well?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Isobel made them sound as tangible as cats – the ginger tom and slinky tabby female now rubbing against her legs. ‘Those lines from the inscription – ‘‘Awake thou that sleepest’’ – don’t just apply to death, but to our whole half-baked dozy state of being only half-alive, unaware of higher things, or of the fact that time is circular, so nothing’s ever really lost, and no one ever ‘‘dies’’ in any ultimate sense.’
Jane removed a shower of pips from one over-fertile grapefruit. Would she ever sort such mysteries out herself? The adults in her life to date had never made things quite so strange or complex. Facts were facts at school, especially in the sciences, and her parents seemed to view the world as rational, simple, solid – rather like their simple solid home. ‘But you can’t believe to order,’ she objected, now quoting Adrian, since she was getting lost herself.
‘’Course you can,’ said Isobel. ‘Except ‘‘order’’’s the wrong word. You have to just let go, surrender your control, trust that God will meet your faith, and that the universe will give you what you need.’
Jane said nothing. The words ‘let go’ had set up nervous ripples, returned her thoughts to Christopher, and sex. And the whole idea of trusting seemed more hazardous, since her parents had deceived her. Even now, she felt some deep suspicion of what Isobel was saying. It all seemed far too rosy, too simplistic.
‘You’re free to choose, you see, my love. You can choose to think you die and rot, or you can choose to know eternity. So why not choose the better one? Faith’s good for you, like vitamins.’ Isobel strolled back to the table, one cat beneath her arm, the tabby mewing anxiously behind her. ‘Do you know what William Tyndale said – the man who wrote this version of the Bible – ‘‘Faith maketh a man glad, lusty, and cheerful, and true-hearted unto God and to all creatures.’’ I always like that ‘‘lusty’’. I think it just means healthy, but it sounds slightly naughty, doesn’t it?’ She plumped down on her chair again, both cats on her lap. ‘As far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as misplaced faith – or false hope, for that matter. Either you’re hopeful or you’re not. The very definition of hope is that it’s hopeful. And hope’s like faith, in that they both have good results. I mean, they’ve shown you can cure cancer now by hoping and believing you’ll get better – whereas if you think you’re going to die, you die.’
‘Sometimes you die anyway,’ said Jane.
‘Good gracious, Rose, you are a gloomy girl today. What’s wrong?’
‘I’m tired.’
‘Still tired? I told you last time you were working far too hard.’
She blushed. ‘It’s not work, not at all. I was just out late, at a party.’ She tried to change the subject, made an observation about the tabby’s ragged ear; didn’t want a flood of awkward questions about where the party was, or who had asked her. It had been bad enough this morning, when Isobel had come to fetch her, found her still in bed at noon – though fortunately alone. She had invented some excuse about a disturbed and restless night; hadn’t breathed a word about going out with Christopher; was still extremely cautious about admitting her involvement with the artist, especially as it had developed since last night. She’d just been thoroughly relieved that Christopher had left at dawn, and wasn’t lying there beside her; had totally forgotten her standing invitation to spend every Sunday at Windy Hollow House. She had jumped at the idea when Isobel first mentioned it, since weekends could be lonely, and she always felt relaxed in the Mackenzies’ friendly home, but she was now beginning to realise there could be complications, if Christopher decided to break his weekend purdah.
Isobel leaned forward, eased the knife and grapefruit from her hand. ‘That’s enough, Rose, honestly. If you go on chopping fruit at such a rate, we’ll finish up with twenty tons of marmalade. Let’s just flop today. It’s so rare to have a Sunday with no one dropping in – no meals to cook, no family – so we ought to make the most of it. We’ll have cheese on toast on trays for tea, take things really easy. In fact, why not pop up to my bedroom and have a little zizz.’
‘Oh, no.’ Jane knew what might well happen if she climbed into that double bed – more playbacks of last night, more taunting naked pictures, more longings, shame, resentment. ‘It’s not that kind of tiredness. More a sort of hangover.’ Not from wine, she brooded – though she had drunk more than usual – but a hangover from Christopher; her head still thick with him, her breasts still flushed and tingling, her mind dizzy, woozy, fuddled, and in turmoil.
‘Well, how about a walk, then, to blow away the cobwebs? Byron would like that.’
‘Okay,’ said Jane, getting up to fetch the boxer’s lead. They had never had a dog at home, only three small goldfish, and, once, a peevish rabbit. She was already fond of Byron – a sloppy, dribbling madcap, who had been purchased as a guard-dog, but who worshipped all mankind, including muggers, rapists, burglars, gunmen, thugs.
Isobel dug her out some wellingtons, pulling woollen khaki knee-socks over her own purple patterned tights. Her clothes always looked confused, as if she had started off by dressing up for some formal fancy occasion, then changed her mind and dragged on something casual, and lastly added one more layer, as if to harmonise the two. Today she wore a ruffled chiffon blouse over a baggy tweedy skirt, and a long-line knitted cardigan in a bossy shade of scarlet, which shouted at the purple, but matched her strawberry earrings. Jane’s wardrobe was now equally capricious, since Isobel had given her a whole plethora of clothes – throw-outs from the Bits Box, cast-offs from her family (male as well as female), and also brand-new outfits which she claimed she’d bought dirt-cheap.
Isobel stirred the saucepan one last time, turned the gas to simmer, locked the garden doors, then fought off Byron’s kisses as she tried to fix the lead. ‘Right, beach or woods?’ she asked.
‘Woods,’ said Jane. She felt too fragile to face the pounding waves, the wide-awake sea-wind, which would bluster and oppress. The woods would offer quiet and shade, especially on this wan November Sunday, which seemed to mark the change from glossy golden autumn to grey and gloomy winter; the trees half-bare and shivering, the sky leaden, overcast. She walked in silence for a while, letting Isobel divert her with a long and complicated tale about their next-door neighbour’s eldest brother’s wife. She tried to stop her thoughts from doubling back to Christopher, though she knew she had to ask a vital question; kept rehearsing it, rephrasing it; finally jumped in when the talk had turned to babies. ‘Has Christopher got children?’ she asked, nonchalantly and casually, as if the thought had just occurred to her.
‘Christopher? Oh no.’
‘What, from none of his three wives?’
‘Well, his second wife had three – all girls – but they were by her first husband.’
‘Did they ever live with him?’
Isobel shook her head. ‘They were more or less grown up by then, and I don’t think darling Christopher’s all that keen on teenagers – or on toddlers either, for that matter.’
‘Is that why he didn’t have them – I mean, he decided from the start he didn’t want a family?’
‘I’ve no idea. I’ve never liked to ask, to tell the truth. Mind you, a lot of creative artists aren’t that keen on kids. They’re kids themselves, in one way, and need a lot of nannying. I suppose they see their creations as their children.’
Jane stooped down to find a stick for Byron. So she knew something Isobel did not – something private, intimate, which the artist had confided to her, and her alone. But was it really true? Part of her still didn’t quite believe him. Or perhaps she didn’t want to. It was important he was fertile, not just in his work, but fertile in all ways. She had seen him fathering children in her stupid secret fantasies – children with his strengths, his skills, her features, her long hair. She flung the stick wi
th all her force, started running after it herself, Byron overtaking her in a tangle of six legs.
‘You’ve revived!’ smiled Isobel, panting to catch up, breasts and bracelets shaking, hair tumbling from its pins.
‘Hey, Isobel?’ said Jane, out of breath herself as she ran another circle, then doubled back with Byron at her heels.
‘What now?’
‘Is it common to be … barren?’ She wished there was some other word. ‘Childless’ wouldn’t do. You could choose to be childless, deliberately avoid conceiving, as the artist might have done. ‘I mean, like my parents were?’
‘Pretty common, yes. One in ten, I think they say, and that’s men as well as women. I remember the first time I got pregnant, the man assured me I was safe; told me he’d had cancer as a child, which had left him hors de combat, as it were. Less than five weeks later, I was sicking up my breakfast every morning.’
Jane stopped dead in her tracks, swung round to face Isobel, forcing her to stop as well. ‘What do you mean, the first time you got pregnant?’
‘I had a child at seventeen,’ said Isobel. Her voice was soft, impassive.
‘So where was Tom?’ Jane plunged on down the path, tried to make her own voice sound less sharp and angry. She had heard the touching story of Isobel’s young life – but a completely different version, which contradicted this one. Rowan had reported that her parents had been childhood sweethearts who’d lived in the same village and been destined for each other almost from the kindergarten. So why had Isobel betrayed her almost-husband?
‘Oh, Tom was there all right.’ Isobel struggled to keep up. ‘All of twenty-one, and already terribly committed to his medicine. My father was a doctor – so was his – and we’d been paired off since our childhood, in a sense; all the aunties clucking ‘‘Wouldn’t it be nice if …’’, and ‘‘They’ve always been so close, those two, got so much in common’’, and ‘‘How lovely for both families’’, and all that sort of stuff. I was very fond of Tom, in fact, and we did have lots in common, but I was only just a kid, Rose, and dying to sail round the world, or cross the Gobi desert on a camel, not just settle down and be a wife.’ Isobel ducked to avoid an overhanging branch, snapping off a beech twig as she passed, breaking it in pieces, as if to punctuate her story. ‘I suppose the other guy was lying when he claimed that we’d be safe, but I realise now I probably wanted to get pregnant, so I wouldn’t have to marry. It was a sort of mad rebellion against my devout and happy family, who saw no other option for their dear devoted daughter than a nice conventional wedding, with an engagement notice in The Times and half a dozen bridesmaids in pink satin.’
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