A Gift of Poison

by Andrea Newman

  ‘No, I was a derelict in the old days, wasn’t I?’ he says in a self-satisfied tone.

  She is immensely pleased that he calls their shared time the old days. It sounds precious and cherished. Already their conversation is flowing more easily than on the phone. They seem able to pick up signals from the sight of each other. He opens the champagne, saying, ‘Let’s have this now, shall we? After all, we might drop dead before midnight,’ and she watches his hand, very strong as it twists the cork out of the bottle. She thinks of the other things she has seen it do. Then they chink their glasses together. ‘Well, happy New Year,’ he says again.

  She would like him to say something romantic or most of all to touch her, but instead he wanders around looking at the few early paintings of hers that she still has hanging in her living-room. There is the usual silence in which they looked at each other’s work in the past. They had learnt early on that constructive criticism often led to ill-feeling, although if they were in a jokey mood they could get away with awarding marks out of ten.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he says presently. ‘I remember some of these. Some of my favourites from way back. How nice to see them again.’

  ‘We were both derelicts in the old days,’ Helen says. ‘Only I still am.’ She isn’t sure if she means badly dressed or poor or both.

  ‘You haven’t compromised,’ he says.

  ‘Neither have you. But I haven’t got lucky either.’ She wonders if she sounds nervous. Perhaps she really is envious. She is shocked: how dreadful to envy Jordan his success. He deserves it. Only she deserves it too. She hopes she is not going to turn out to be mean-spirited, especially with a man she desires.

  ‘I like your house,’ he says. ‘Now I can stop thinking of you living in your studio. It’s nice to have a new space to think of you in.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ she says. ‘You’ve never seen the house.’ She hates thinking she has existed in his memory as this impoverished person camping with her child in a draughty work place surrounded by paraffin heaters. But at least he will have remembered her as young. And she likes the way he talks, as if he is thinking of her often. She is pleasantly surprised.

  ‘Did you buy it with your husband?’ he asks. It’s the first time he’s mentioned Richard, as if he wasn’t sure he existed.

  ‘No, I bought it for me and Sally. Richard joined us later. Wasn’t he lucky? I sweated blood to get this house.’ She thinks she sounds bitter and it is not attractive. She remembers afternoons with Jordan when after working all morning she would go to his studio and they would make love on the floor or if it was cold between far-from-clean blankets on a very hard single bed. On the other afternoons he would visit her studio. She remembers them as being scrupulous about alternating their visits, as if equality was very important. Perhaps it is the loss of that painstaking equality that is troubling her now, rather than a lack of generosity about his success. They are equal no longer. Or is it simple nostalgia for past happiness? How idyllic it seems in memory: to work all morning, make love in the afternoon, then collect Sally from school. To have her three roles as painter, lover and mother so clearly defined, each filling their allotted space. She wonders if they were in order of priority too, but that is not a question she wants to answer. What a well-ordered life she led then, it now appears, but at the time she remembers thinking of it as chaotic because Jordan was married and in the evening she would see him passing her studio to go home to his wife. Sometimes he would call in with a present for Sally, a toy he had made or a piece of fruit left over from his lunch, and Helen would ache with longing for him, his presence starting a reminiscent echo like a pulse beating in her vagina. The more she got of him, the more she wanted, but she did not like to think of herself as a mistress, an other woman, a committer of adultery. It seemed to make nonsense of her parting from Carey. She kept thinking of Jordan’s wife in the same position that she herself had occupied so recently, the humiliating position of the one deceived. And for that, a mere matter of principle, she had painfully let Jordan go. Whatever her purpose, she had not achieved it, and her clear conscience had not comforted her much. She had deprived herself of pleasure and she had not saved the marriage with her sacrifice. Jordan had left her as instructed, but he had left his wife too, and gone to New York, where he met and married Hannah. That could have been me, she had thought, until she met Richard. By then loneliness had eroded her high-minded resolve and she had let him leave his wife for her. And the result was the same: she had ended up alone. Now, looking at Jordan, she is thinking again, It could have been me in New York with you. How different our lives might have been, Sally’s and mine. No Richard, no Inge, no Felix. Just work and sex and the end of poverty. She had not thought of Jordan in a romantic light at the time: she only knew that they fitted. They could separate to work and meet to make love, and they gave each other space.

  ‘Roast lamb,’ she says. ‘I hope that’s all right.’

  * * *

  They pass a miserable evening. He can’t understand her decision, now that he has admitted his fault and begged her forgiveness. He doesn’t see why the decision can’t be reversed. ‘It’s like a sentence of death,’ he says. ‘What are you trying to do, kill me? D’you want me to die, Lizzie?’ She hopes it is not something as banal as trying to teach him a lesson; the level of pain she feels seems way beyond that and mere spite will not soothe it. She says, ‘I feel something has to change. We’ve never separated before but I’ve put up with all your affairs, whether I knew or not, for sixteen years, and this is the worst one ever. They were our friends, almost our family, and you can do this to them, to me. An abortion’s a terrible thing for a young girl. And you’ve wrecked a marriage. And we’ve never talked about any of it, we’ve just carried on as if nothing happened, and now you’ve gone back for more as if you know I’ll put up with anything because I always have. Surely you can see, Felix, something has got to change. I’ve got to do something to make you understand how I feel. I can’t live like this any more, with you not caring how much you hurt me. I can’t absorb all this pain indefinitely. There has to be some cut-off point, like limitation of damage, something you won’t do because it hurts me, some sacrifice you can make, so I don’t do all the giving and you all the taking. Can’t you see that?’ Somewhere during this long speech she sees the hands of the clock moving through midnight and suddenly it is another year.

  * * *

  Jordan looks comfortably at home in her kitchen. He eats a lot. He praises her cooking. They discuss work, the art world, London and New York, Magdalen, gossip about old friends, compare notes on their children. They don’t talk about Richard or Hannah. In fact they don’t say anything of importance but as time goes on Helen thinks it matters less what they do or don’t say. They are relaxing with each other, perhaps because they are old friends, perhaps because they have finished his bottle of champagne and are starting on her bottle of claret. He says, ‘This is so much better than going to a party.’

  ‘Well, I think so.’ Helen smiles. She is beginning to feel euphoric. The luxury of having Jordan for New Year’s Eve is really getting to her. ‘I’m hopeless at them, I’ve given up. I can’t stand the noise and what passes for conversation. People hate me anyway, I’m so antisocial.’

  ‘So am I. But I’ve been pretending lately. Since Hannah died.’ He says the word defiantly, as if to prove he can. ‘Getting out and about. Being high-profile. All that rubbish. Singing for my supper.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to do that here.’

  ‘Don’t I?’ He looks at her very directly. ‘Are you sure you’re not expecting more than I can deliver?’

  ‘I don’t know – am I?’ She feels embarrassed yet relieved at the directness.

  ‘I’m no good to man or beast at the moment,’ he says. ‘Just so long as you know that.’

  ‘Well, I’m not either of those. I’m just glad you’re here. I’d be having a gruesome evening otherwise.’ She feels disappointment tug at her; she feels apprehe
nsive. There is something ominous about being warned off. It’s as if she has suddenly stubbed her toe on something solid and sharp. Simple grief, perhaps. It hurts and it pulls her up short.

  ‘Me too,’ he says.

  They still haven’t touched. No handshake, no kiss on the cheek. They never went in for social touching. It is as if they are still circling round each other, sniffing.

  ‘Is your husband around?’ he asks suddenly.

  ‘You mean, is he going to burst in? No, we separated last spring.’ She glances at the clock. ‘Last year, I’ll be able to say in a couple of hours. It sounds tidy, put like that. But it was very messy.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Or maybe not? Should I be sorry?’

  ‘No, it’s all for the best. I’m just beginning to realise that. He’s gone back to his first wife actually. I really have a magic touch with men, don’t I?’

  Jordan laughs and after a moment she joins in. ‘Well,’ she says, getting up to clear away the plates, ‘chocolate mousse be all right?’

  ‘My God,’ he says, ‘for a woman who hates cooking, you’ve really pulled out all the stops.’

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘Flattering, isn’t it?’

  As she passes him he suddenly gets up and puts his arms round her. She hugs him so tightly she quite frightens herself. They stand there in silence holding each other for some time. It is such a relief. They don’t kiss. She can feel their hearts beating. She breathes in his smell and goes back fifteen years.

  ‘You’ve had a bad time,’ he says, not a question.

  ‘So have you.’

  More time passes. She says, ‘Will you stay?’

  ‘I may not be any good to you.’

  ‘You don’t have to be good,’ she says. ‘You just have to be here.’

  They go upstairs with their arms still round each other and into her bedroom where they undress and get into bed without drawing the curtains or putting on the light. There is moonlight and a streetlamp. His body is heavier than she remembers. They hold each other naked in bed and she starts to cry. She cries for a long time and he goes on holding her. Eventually she stops crying and gets some tissues from the bedside table to blow her nose. She says, ‘Oh. I didn’t know I was going to do that.’ She feels exhausted, drained but peaceful.

  ‘It’s good for you,’ he says calmly.

  They lie there in silence for a while. Then there are a few sounds of cheerful, drunken people shouting in the street, cars passing, bottles breaking. Then silence again. She feels safe and realises she hasn’t felt safe for many years.

  He says, ‘D’you mind if we don’t see in the new year? I’d rather not know the time,’ and she turns the bedside clock to face the wall.

  He says, ‘I haven’t made love to anyone for a year. I don’t know if I can make love to you although I’d like to.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says, meaning it.

  He says after a pause, ‘I had an affair while Hannah was dying. I’d never been unfaithful to her all the time we were married, never wanted to be, but I needed someone then. Hannah took eighteen months to die. She had three operations and chemotherapy and all her hair fell out. She shrank before my eyes. She got so light, she was like a dead bird at the end. And I had this affair. I used to have this woman every day at the studio and then I’d go back to Hannah, back to the hospital or back home, wherever she was, and do what I could, just be with her. And I did the series of drawings I told you about. People thought it was weird but she liked me drawing her right up to the end. I’m not sure if she knew I was having an affair. And then she died and I immediately broke off the affair and never saw the woman again. And I’m not sure who I treated worse, Hannah or the woman.’

  Helen says, ‘What was her name?’

  ‘She didn’t have a name.’

  He is shaking. Helen says, ‘It’s all right, Jordan, really it is.’

  He says, ‘It doesn’t feel all right.’

  ‘You had to get through it somehow. When was it? Last Christmas?’

  He says, ‘It was tonight. A year ago tonight. It’s now. We’re right up against it now and I don’t want to know the time.’

  She says, ‘It’s all right, we won’t look.’ She cuddles him like a child, holding him protectively in her arms and stroking his head. Presently, they sleep.

  * * *

  Towards dawn they wake and kiss for the first time. She feels his cock pressing against her leg, not very hard but hard enough. He strokes her breast and slides his hand between her legs in a tentative way as if checking to see if she wants to be aroused. She shakes her head slightly and helps him ease his cock inside her. He sighs and they move gently, tenderly together in a sort of trance, half awake, half asleep, until he comes with what sounds like a cry of relief. It is not the fantasy sex she has imagined or remembered, but it is what they both need. She is not thinking of pleasure, more of coming home after a long journey, of filling an empty place.

  * * *

  Felix says humbly, ‘I’ll do whatever you say. But you don’t have to make me leave. Don’t send me away, Lizzie. I won’t be able to manage. You really are my life. I thought you knew that.’

  She says, ‘But I don’t like the way you show it.’

  He says, ‘I know I’m a selfish person, maybe even a bad person, but I love you. I really do love you. As much as I can love anyone.’

  ‘Felix, that’s just a word. It doesn’t mean anything. It just oils the wheels. That’s how you get your own way with everyone.’ She hadn’t realised how hard she could be.

  He says, astonished, ‘You sound as if you hate me.’

  ‘I’m very tired.’

  They lie tensely side by side in the darkness in their big bed. They hold hands.

  He says, ‘Lizzie? Can I stay? Tell me I can stay.’

  ‘No.’ She is even beginning to feel sorry for him instead of herself. ‘We have to have a break.’

  ‘But why? I’ve learnt my lesson. God knows, you’ve frightened me to death, if that’s what you wanted.’

  She says, ‘I just can’t live like this any more. I want something to change. We’ve got to have time apart, time to think.’

  He hears the finality in her voice. After a while he says, ‘How long?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She notices they are both assuming it can’t be for ever and she wonders if they are right.

  He says hopefully, ‘A week?’

  She says, ‘No. At least three months,’ and hears him gasp as if in pain. ‘Let’s try to sleep now,’ she says. A clock strikes three.

  * * *

  They wake early after a wretched night. Felix feels as if he has not slept at all, though he presumes he must have done at some point, however briefly. He knows Elizabeth has because he heard her snoring occasionally, something she rarely does, unless of course he has usually fallen asleep first and so seldom noticed. It seemed like especially heartless behaviour: he was shocked that she could actually sleep after causing him such pain. He didn’t even like to give her the vicious dig in the ribs he felt she deserved, in case she woke up and said more dreadful things to him, or banished him to the spare room, or left him alone in the big bed. It is a new sensation to be afraid of her.

  Through the night in a haze of exhaustion he told himself that in the morning he would get her to change her mind, but now it is morning and she is still implacable. The night has been like a bad dream that is still going on even now it is daylight. He has sometimes dreamed he was dreaming before, a dream within a dream, so that when he woke with relief from one nightmare the other was still going on and he was not yet awake. It was like running down an endless corridor where one room opened into another for evermore, and it always left him weak and shaken, which is how he feels now.

  They sit in the kitchen in their dressing-gowns drinking coffee. Elizabeth looks terrible, much older than her age, her skin papery, her eyes puffy and deeply shadowed. She looks wrecked. He feels as if he has never loved her more.


  He says, ‘Lizzie? Can’t you forgive me now? Don’t send me away. I really have learnt my lesson.’

  She shakes her head with a curious calmness, almost automatic, as if matters were quite beyond her control. ‘I’m sorry, Felix, but something has to change.’

  ‘But it will,’ he says. ‘It has already.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t think so. If I let you stay now, it will all go on just the same, the way it did before.’

  His eyes feel gritty and swollen with lack of sleep. He remembers crying in her arms the night before and how even that didn’t move her. He feels the ground is opening beneath his feet.

  He says, ‘You really want to punish me, don’t you?’

  She repeats, ‘I want something to change, that’s all.’

  After a pause he says, ‘But where am I meant to go?’

  She shrugs. ‘I don’t know. You’ve got the flat.’

  ‘And if I don’t move out?’ he says, playing his last card.

  ‘Then I will.’

  He obviously can’t let that happen. That wouldn’t prove his love for her at all.

  * * *

  They sit in the kitchen again, Jordan looking ridiculously large in a dressing-gown so ancient that Richard didn’t bother to take it with him. Helen makes coffee. Jordan eats the chocolate mousse from last night.

  ‘Just the thing for breakfast,’ he says.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ Helen says seriously.

  They take aspirin with their coffee. They don’t quite have hangovers but they don’t quite feel all right either. It’s like being students again, Helen thinks, although of course they never were students together: a sort of ramshackle feeling about the day.

  Jordan says, ‘What happened with Richard?’

  ‘Oh.’ She wonders if he’s really interested or just being polite, if she owes him the whole miserable tale because of the things he told her last night, to balance up their confidence, to make them equal. ‘Long story,’ she says. ‘I probably never should have married him in the first place.’ She’s surprised to hear herself say that but it suddenly feels right; it seems to be the conclusion she has reached and nothing to do with Felix or Sally at all. It’s quite a shock. I thought I was a different sort of person and it turns out I wasn’t.’