‘Good for him,’ said Donovan. ‘I love spending money.’
I glanced at the decaying interior of the truck and thought that could hardly be the case. As usual the lay-by on the dual carriageway was strewn with trash, and not just windblown litter either. Old tyres, prams, plastic sheeting, pipes, planks, a mattress – at least a skip’s worth of refuse had been dumped up against the hedges. For some reason I felt obliged to apologise for its presence.
‘How’s your mum, anyway?’ I asked. We were nearly home now and I would soon have to start giving directions.
‘Living quietly in sheltered accommodation in Bournemouth. Secretary of the bowls club. Pillar of the church choir—’
‘Are you serious?’
‘No, of course not. I had you going for a minute, though. No, she actually lives in Totnes with a potter called Peter. She’s involved in a long-running feud with her neighbour, which seems to take up most of her time.’
‘That sounds more like Aunty Barbara. What’s it about?’
‘It was a boundary dispute over a tree, originally. Unfortunately it’s escalated in Mum’s capable hands. She fires off about six letters a day to her MP and the local paper. Between that and flying back and forth to the States visiting her old lags on death row, she’s kept pretty busy.’
‘She’s still doing that, then?’
‘Very much so. She must have been to more executions than Madame Defarge.’
‘Did she actually marry that bloke – Kapper? I noticed she’d taken his name.’
‘Oh yes, she married him all right. I think it was political rather than romantic. She did it to get publicity for the cause.’
‘Did it work?’ I asked, directing Donovan to turn left at the lights.
‘Yes. Too late for him though. But her name is in the cuttings file now, and every time there’s a death row story in the news someone from the Daily Mail rings her up for a quote.’
‘And she’s happy with this potter? Or is that political too?’
‘No, no. Romantic, as far as I know. He’s ten years younger than her.’ This made him about the same age as Geoff. ‘And he’s very good to her,’ Donovan went on. ‘He does all the practical things Mum can’t cope with, and when she’s in one of her rampaging moods he shuts himself in his studio and works on his pots until it’s safe to come out. He won’t give her the satisfaction of a blazing row. I like him.’
I was still considering the unsettling fact that Aunty Barbara and I were attached to men the same age, and wondering if this could be right and proper, when we reached our turning and I had to jump out and open the gate.
There were lights left on all over the house, but no sign of Christian.
‘I don’t know where he’s gone, or how long he’ll be,’ I said, as Penny drew up in my car. ‘He might be back in half an hour, if you can be bothered to wait.’
Donovan looked to Penny for a ruling. It was eight o’clock; they had at least another hour’s journey back to Weybridge before Cassie could go to bed. It occurred to me that no one had eaten since lunchtime. ‘Stay for supper,’ I said, praying that there would be something in the fridge. Tomorrow was shopping day, so it was by no means guaranteed.
‘Just a quick bite then,’ said Penny, which pleased Cassie, who could see her bedtime receding still further.
‘Warm in here,’ said Donovan, following me into the kitchen, shedding garments. Newcomers to the house are always overpowered by our underfloor heating, which is on full all year round. Growing up in the glacial surroundings of the Old Schoolhouse has left Christian and me with a morbid fear of the cold. Besides, he prefers not to be burdened with too many layers, and especially dislikes wearing shoes and socks.
‘Everything’s so modern and clean,’ Penny said, looking around in admiration. Perhaps she still expected to find us living in cobwebbed squalor. ‘There’s something Swiss about it.’
‘Christian designed it,’ I said. ‘He wanted it to be as plain and uncluttered as possible, with white walls and polished floors and everything accessible at his level. Have a look around.’
While they went on a tour I hunted for food. Luckily there was the remains of one of Elaine’s asparagus quiches in the fridge, and a lettuce that was quite acceptable once I’d snapped off the frozen outer leaves. No one wanted alcohol so we had bottled water and ruby grapefruit juice (Elaine’s again – I would have to apologise and restock tomorrow).
Once the food was eaten and Christian still hadn’t put in an appearance, Penny said, ‘We really should be going,’ and within seconds, as if in one movement, everyone was on the doorstep saying goodbyes and thank yous, the door was shut and I was alone again. From the hallway I watched Donovan walk down the drive to the truck; there was something heartless, it seemed to me, in that brisk, confident stride. He had asked to be remembered to Christian, nothing more. Penny had promised to call, without taking my number. Only Cassie turned and waved at the blank face of the house before getting into the truck beside her mother.
I sank down on the couch, suddenly overtaken by exhaustion with the unaccustomed effort of socialising. So much talking! Such a torrent of words! The paracetamol had worn off: my hand and shoulder ached, and somewhere inside was a rawness that wouldn’t be named or soothed.
After half an hour of stewing, I dragged myself into the kitchen to clear away the supper things and found that Donovan had left his jumper on the back of the chair. It was a black, zip-neck thing, which had obviously seen active service: it was ripped up one side, bristled with embedded sawdust and smelled strongly of creosote. Aha, I thought, a hostage. And felt instantly better.
Then I knew what was bothering me. It was the aftertaste of that conversation we’d had about Geoff. I’d made such a poor job of explaining or defending myself, and Donovan was out there somewhere disapproving of me, despising me, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I thought of Penny, lying on the floor and howling like a beast, and felt another pang. Suppose even now they were discussing me: perhaps Donovan had already told Penny I was the sort of woman who had wrecked her marriage and his mother’s marriage and lured his father away from their happy home, and who was somehow to blame for the ocean of tears wept by deceived wives and deserted children everywhere.
These melancholy thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Christian and Elaine, home from their latest spree. They had been shopping and to the cinema, and appeared to be on a high from overspending. Happiness streamed out of them, and it was impossible not to envy the cocoon of mutual adoration they’d spun themselves. Elaine waved aside my apologies about the absence of quiche, and went to run a bath, her musky perfume haunting the room after she’d left it.
Christian fixed himself a bowl of Frosties – his regular after-supper snack – and only then stopped to consider the implications of my being there. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’ he said, mid-mouthful. ‘What’s happened to your clothes?’
‘You’ll never guess who I met today,’ I said, ignoring his question. ‘You’ll never, never guess.’
‘Correct,’ said Christian. ‘So tell me.’
I took a deep breath. I wanted to see his immediate, authentic reaction. ‘Penny. And Donovan.’
His eyebrows went up, betraying surprise and moderate, rather than ravenous, interest. ‘Really? How come?’
I explained the encounter with Cassie that had led me to Penny, and Donovan’s role in my dishevelled appearance.
‘Well well. How is old Donovan? What’s he up to?’
‘Gardening mostly. He’s divorced, no kids.’
‘Gardening? We should get him round to sort us out some decking.’
‘Penny’s divorced too. From Wart.’
‘Wart.’ Christian coaxed out another avalanche of Frosties. ‘She married him then? God. Wart. I bet he’s as bald as a badger now. He was losing it back then.’ He shook his head over this memory. ‘Funny how things turn out.’
‘They both sent their regards. They were hopin
g you’d be in when they brought me home. They hung around a bit, but . . .’
‘Oh well. Looks like I had a lucky escape. You know I think I’d rather just hear what people are up to, second hand, rather than have to make conversation myself.’
His lack of curiosity was truly humbling. He hadn’t asked a thing about Penny. It dawned on me that he had something else on his mind. Elaine appeared in the doorway bringing a gust of tropical air from the bathroom. She was barely decent, in a flesh-coloured, short, satin robe and matching slippers. ‘It’s ready,’ she said.
The self-conscious way she was standing, with her left hand on her hip, fingers splayed, drew my attention to a lozenge-sized ruby on her third finger. The direction of my gaze must have been unmistakable, as Elaine said, ‘Oh,’ and blushed as red as the ruby.
I didn’t get to sleep until gone three. the celebratory champagne I’d drunk to toast Christian and Elaine’s engagement was still racing round my bloodstream trying to trick me into feeling happy. As I sat in bed, staring through the unread pages of my book, replaying the events of the day, I wondered how I could possibly have thought I knew what was best for Christian, when I didn’t even know what was good for me. My stupid, ill-considered attempt to revisit the past hadn’t deflected him in the slightest from his chosen path, but it had left me thoroughly destabilised. It struck me that I had about as much insight into the complexities of adult relationships as Cassie – less in fact, since she was already a pessimist, whereas I had fondly imagined that the world would kindly arrange itself according to my wishful thinking.
41
‘I THINK WE should stop seeing each other.’
‘I see. Can I ask why?’
‘Because you’re married, and it’s wrong.’
‘It’s taken you four years to work that out?’
‘No. But I let myself believe my circumstances made it excusable. I thought that because I would never leave Christian and wouldn’t be a threat to your marriage, it made us a special case. I was wrong. We’re not special: we’re just ordinary, selfish and bad.’
We were sitting in Geoff’s car in a passing place on the Woldingham road, overlooking the golf course. I had taken the highly unusual step of waylaying him after Saturday morning surgery so that we could talk: this couldn’t wait another week and a half until our next assignation at the George and Dragon.
I had spent a wretched night, pacing my studio, agonising about what to do, trying to plan some course of action that wouldn’t cause anyone unnecessary suffering. To carry on as we were would be wrong, but to end the relationship would be difficult and painful, and wouldn’t undo the wrong, which was indelibly there, for all time. I asked myself whether the example of Penny’s misery alone would have been enough to prompt this crisis, and had to admit, to my further discredit, that it might not. It was Donovan’s disapproval that was driving me to take action, and Donovan’s good opinion that I was trying to secure, and I knew, without needing to analyse my feelings further, that it wasn’t just because he was right.
To strengthen my resolve I forced myself to do something I had always held to be utterly prohibited. For the first time ever, I drove to Warlingham and staked out Geoff’s house. It was one of the big, detached houses on the green. There was a silver Ford Focus parked outside, and window boxes planted with bright pink winter cyclamens, and interesting-shaped clumps of box and ornamental cabbage. The woodwork had been recently painted: it had that glossy, sharp-edged look that doesn’t last.
After twenty minutes or so the front door opened and she emerged: the woman whose trusting nature had made our treachery so effortless. Mary. Between her teeth were some envelopes, which she transferred to the pocket of her coat once the door was locked. She had short, whitish-blonde hair, flicked up at the sides, and was wearing a Burberry trenchcoat and navy court shoes. In one hand she held a navy purse, and in the other was a retractable dog lead like a giant yo-yo, on the end of which was a cocker spaniel puppy, turning frantic circles and springing from side to side with unspent energy.
I watched their faltering progress down the street. Every few yards the dog would tear forwards and then come flying back as if on elastic, and the lead would end up in an ankle-binding snarl from which Mary would patiently extricate herself. She was so real, with her belted mac and her letters for the post, and her funny, lawless dog! What a shadow I was compared to her. I got out of the car and started to follow her. She had stopped to talk to an old man who had bent down to make a fuss of the dog. It took her some time to disentangle him, and they parted, laughing. I smiled acknowledgement as he went by, but he walked straight past me without a glance, as if I was indeed invisible.
‘None of this occurred to you at the start?’ Geoff asked. A light drizzle had started to fall. A few fanatics were still out on the golf course, wheeling their trolleys, heads down.
‘No, not properly. I was depressed at the time I met you. You came to my rescue: naturally I was going to fall for you and call it love.’
‘You’re saying I took advantage of you when you were ill?’ said Geoff, staring straight ahead. The windscreen grew mottled with drops, obliterating the view, closing us in.
‘No, not at all. I take full responsibility for my actions. I’m not blaming you.’
‘As soon as you told me about Christian I knew everything would fall apart. I said so last week.’
‘This is nothing to do with Christian,’ I protested.
‘It is. I said you’d realise this wasn’t enough for you. You’d start wanting more.’
‘I don’t want more: I want less! I want nothing, in fact.’
‘Look,’ said Geoff, seizing my hand and crushing it in his. ‘I can’t give you up. You’re the only reason I get out of bed in the morning. I know I don’t make enough time for you and you’ve never complained. But I can do something about that. I’ll make time.’
‘It’s not a proper relationship. Talk and sex. Sex and talk. I’ve never so much as cooked you a meal.’
‘So cook me a meal! Next week. I’ll arrange it somehow. I’ll eat two dinners if I have to.’
‘No, no, you don’t understand. I don’t want to – I’m just pointing out how insubstantial it all is. It’s not real: we’ll never get to know each other any better than we do now.’
Geoff hit a switch and the wipers carved out two semicircles of deserted fairway. He turned to me: his face was grey and drawn and there were bruise-coloured hollows under his eyes. ‘Listen. Darling Esther. Tell me truthfully: do you want a baby?’
‘What?’
‘Is this what it’s about?’
‘No!’
‘If you want a baby then I can give you a baby.’
‘Geoff, I don’t want a baby. And you’re not free to give me one.’
‘You’ve just had enough of me, full stop.’
‘No. I don’t want to split up because I want to. I just think we should. We must. That’s all.’
Geoff glanced at his watch. The interview was over. Like all our meetings it was ruled by that stern time-keeper, duty. With smooth, symmetrical movements we plugged in our seatbelts and the drive home passed in what I took to be the silence of resignation and acceptance.
42
ON SUNDAY I stayed in bed all morning feeling sorry for myself. Even when I did get up a pall of lethargy seemed to have settled over me and it took all my strength to haul my carcass to the bathroom. Once in there I noticed some little touches of Elaine around the place: a new, brilliant-white bath mat, a row of chubby gold candles on the window ledge, a light-pull in the shape of a sea-horse. More and more of these badges of occupation were appearing every day. In my bedroom I stood in front of the open wardrobe gazing at my selection of clothes in a state of mystification. There was Donovan’s unclaimed sweater. I put in on, with a pair of jeans. It felt amazingly warm and comforting, in the way that vastly oversized garments do, and still gave off a blokeish smell of wood and creosote and work.
I went in
to the studio and pulled the blinds to let in the milky afternoon light. It was a beautiful room, with windows on two sides, and a long bench with wide wooden drawers where I stored all my paper and completed work. There was a draughtsman’s adjustable drawing-board, which I used instead of an easel, and a chest with lift-out sections where I kept my pencils, paints, Rotring pens, brushes and inks, all in meticulous order, so I could put my hand on anything I needed without any scrabbling around. On the wall was a pinboard covered in source material for the book in progress: photos, magazine cuttings, sketches, postcards, samples of other illustrators’ work that I only needed to glance at to feel inspired. Mervyn Peake, Kit Williams, Helen Oxenbury, Janet Ahlberg. Soon I would have to start packing up and moving out.
Perversely, thoughts of my imminent eviction fired me up to get to work on a fresh painting. I only had three left to do to complete my current job, Jack’s Journey, a treasure-hunt book about a lost glove. I had already planned what needed to go in each picture: it was just a question of committing myself to its execution. Starting is always the hardest bit. Sometimes I could sit poised over a piece of virgin cartridge paper for a whole day and never make a mark, but today I could feel that rare and exciting urgency to begin.
I’d just assembled my materials, and located my original sketches and the section of text I was supposed to be illustrating, when the doorbell rang. I left it for Christian, frowning with the effort of maintaining concentration. It rang again, and I remembered that Christian and Elaine had gone to the garden centre to help Dad choose a tree to replace the sumac that had come down in the most recent hurricane. I slammed down my pencil. If it was someone flogging replacement windows or trying to get me to change my energy-supplier they were going to get a gobful. I snatched the door open, primed for a row.
In a Good Light Page 37