White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  Nevertheless, the whole accumulation of their goods was the pile of armaments for their personal war. Even their children were acts of aggression. Bianca’s unintentional first offensive had been Benedict, and seeing how disturbed Lovat had been by his unplanned conception, and how much acclaim and attention every birth attracted, and how she could buy time out of the family’s obsession with achievement, she had conceived babies at points of crisis in their marriage. For Orlando she had made a ritual of throwing her daily contraceptive pill down the waste disposal unit in the kitchen every morning as soon as Lovat left for work. Three years later she had taken to flicking it into the compost heap on her morning tour of the garden – she had conceived as readily as ever, but miscarried at seventeen weeks. For the baby she was expecting now she had popped the pills down the ancient well in the stable yard. The only person who knew that the babies had not been accidents was her sister.

  ‘Hasn’t he ever suspected about you being pregnant again?’ Hermione asked as soon as Charlotte left them to make some telephone calls and they were alone in the low-beamed kitchen, with its decorative baskets, oak carpentry, stainless-steel batterie de cuisine and hand-painted modern ceramics. ‘I mean, four accidents? You aren’t thick, or anything.’

  ‘He may have, but what can he do? He can’t make me get rid of them.’ Bianca smiled at the quince she was peeling for her quince jelly, the most sought-after preserve in the county. ‘Although he certainly tried this time. We had a hell of a row.’

  Hermione picked up a knife, selected one of the speckled yellow fruit and gazed at it thoughtfully. ‘He’s full of anger, Lovat. You can see it in his face. Do you notice he’s always covering his heart chakra, always walling up his emotions? Too much pitta, he ought to eat whole grains and vegetables, cool out, balance all that ambition. There’s a lot of negative energies in there.’

  ‘Well he let them out last night, sure enough. We were arguing on the phone for hours. Do you know what really pisses me off?’ She quartered the fruit and threw the pieces into a pan of water. ‘What really annoys me is he talks like it’s all to do with me, as if I’m spontaneously conceiving all these children by myself. He’s never once asked me what I’m doing about contraception, not once in eleven years. If he doesn’t want any more children there is something he could do about it, but I know he won’t. Men are so weak, aren’t they? The minute they get into bed they just want to fuck.’

  ‘Every time?’

  ‘Well, now we live down here only at the weekends, thank God. But no question of laying off just because I happen to be superfertile and he doesn’t want any more kids.’

  ‘Well, at least you know he isn’t fucking around in London while little wifey keeps the home fires burning in the country. That’s the usual set-up, isn’t it?’

  Bianca paused, wearily pressing her free hand into the small of her back although she was not nearly pregnant enough for it to be aching. ‘He might be. I don’t know what he does. Maybe he’s just screwing me in case I suspect something if he stops. You haven’t heard anything, have you?’

  ‘I don’t gossip, it’s just circulating negativity. Anyway, what would I hear down on the farm?’ Hermione was about to steer the conversation towards her own concerns when she caught a cast of genuine anxiety in her sister’s face. ‘Look, I’m sure he isn’t screwing around, he’s always with Hugh and Olivia. Whenever I call them he’s there.’

  ‘Sometimes I think he’s turned into the son our father never had.’ Bianca looked reassured. ‘Isn’t it odd my husband should get on far better with my parents than I do? I suppose you’re right, they wouldn’t tolerate him playing around, I’m sure. Maybe he ought to have an affair. He couldn’t get away with just sticking it into some other woman the way he does with me. Twice a day, the same thing every time. Change would be as good as a rest.’

  ‘Twice a day! Still? Tell you what, let’s do a life-swap. You’d love Seumas, he only wants it once a month.’

  ‘Once a month? Is he OK? I mean …’ To her sister, Hermione was a mass of shimmering sensuality. Her opulent body was always in motion, buttocks rolling, breasts oscillating, thighs like pillows inviting repose. She could not imagine a man not desiring Hermione.

  ‘He says his energy is like really low. I’ve got him eating Ayurvedic, so that’ll help. He’s trying to meditate to raise some zap. He calls it stroking the python. Pumping up the life force from the earth into the spinal chord through chakras. You have to see your body as a channel, open it and get it like lined up to receive …’

  ‘I’d try stroking something else if I were you.’

  Hermione sensed that her sister’s tolerance for mysticism was minimal at this moment. ‘So why doesn’t Lovat want any more kids? You love them. You can afford them.’

  Bianca paused, wiping her hands on her plain white chef’s apron. It wrapped around her in a tight sheaf. After three pregnancies her body had a rangy, emptied look, its bones prominent and the hollows below them deep. Without clothes, she reminded herself of Picasso’s goats. Running around after the boys kept her thin, and she had no real interest in clothes. Her jeans were always loose at the waist, worn with plain shirts or T-shirts designed by old friends.

  ‘I do love them, and Lovat loves them in a way. He loves them because they belong to him, that’s all. But he doesn’t love them as children, and all this …’ She waved her arm around the kitchen, indicating the plastic cups, the fruit juice and the hamburger buns, the basket of toys, all the detritus of family living. ‘He loves his sons but he hates the way of life they impose on us. Actually I think it disgusts him. He always was too bloody immaculate to change a nappy, my husband.’

  ‘And you’re really into it, aren’t you?’ Hermione hitched up her flowing Indian-print skirt and sat on the table top. ‘You really dig being identified with the infant level of consciousness. You are Demeter, the nurturer of new life, finding fulfilment in seeing the fruits of your womb grow to adulthood, Demeter whose sacred functions are so demeaned in modem life.’ Goddess mythology was the discipline for which Hermione was currently radiating enthusiasm.

  Hermione fell for theories the way other women fell for heartbreakers, never believing that they would let her down, each new attraction painlessly erasing the memory of the last. She believed completely that her latest inspiration would unlock every mystery of life and reward her faith by giving her whatever satisfaction she currently craved. After astrology, she had given her allegiance to transcendental meditation, EST, Celtic paganism, rolfing and Native American spiritualism. With every theory there was a diet. To date, all these various creeds had reneged on the deal, bringing insolvency to the wholefood restaurant she had opened off Portobello Road, blights and epidemics to the organic farm she now owned in Somerset, crippling depression to her significant other, Seumas, and malignant bureaucracy to the Social Security office which supported them both.

  ‘Oh give it a rest, Herm.’ Bianca smiled wearily at her sister. ‘I can’t stand all that goddess stuff before lunch.’

  ‘You’re resisting!’ She stabbed the air with a forefinger, her unrestrained breasts quivering under her rust-coloured T-shirt. Resisting was the worst sin which Hermione recognized. ‘You must let go, Bea. Just go with what you are, be who you are. What you resist persists, it’ll keep coming up in your life. You are a wellspring of the life force, the fullness of the moon, the ripeness of autumn, what you should do is just be that, not chase after ego-rewards …’ Contemptuously she dropped the one fruit which she had prepared into the pan already filled by her sister.

  ‘The boys are all I chase after.’

  ‘No, no, don’t you see, I mean all this, the house, the garden, the other houses. Possessions aren’t for you, Bianca. Possessions are a trap, a drain on your psychic energy … just think of all the time you spend worrying about them, arranging them, getting them cleaned, mended, serviced …’

  With strength developed in nine years of hauling children around, Bianca carried
the heavy pan of quinces to the scarlet double Aga. She pulled the tray of warmed sugar from its slowest oven and tipped the crystals into the pan, reached for a comically large wooden spoon and stirred the mixture. The thought was in her mind that although her sister talked crap most of the time, it was sometimes very accurate crap.

  After lunch she crossed the stable yard and went into the converted barn which housed her studio. Fat female forms cavorted everywhere, their comical round eyes depicted in glass beads. She had some new blue ones for the picture that lay on the worktable, waiting only for its eyes to be completed.

  The glue had hardened in the end of its tube and she found a pin to clear the blockage. At the first attempt her hand slipped and she stabbed herself. Ignoring the pain and the tiny drop of blood oozing from her arm, she picked up her tweezers and began to glue the beads to the collage. When the eye was complete she sat back, accidentally smearing blood across the figure’s breasts. She wanted to cry. She drew a deep breath and leaned forward again to begin the second eye.

  It occurred to her that she should try to remove the bloodstain, before it set, but before she could do anything the entire field of her vision blurred and she found that tears were pouring from her eyes. A grimace distorted her mouth painfully. She was weeping, silently at first and then with great gasping sobs which echoed back from the roof beams. She threw down the tweezers in anger, chipping the figure’s arm. The picture was ruined. She threw it across the room then sat down on the floor and howled, all the time wondering, with a part of her mind, what in the world she was doing.

  ‘What in the world are you doing?’ It was her husband, in one of his dark blue business suits, standing in the studio doorway. Even in her distress she noticed that his latest affectation was a gold Georgian fob chain running from his lapel buttonhole to his top pocket. ‘Bianca, are you all right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The question seemed impossible. She could not be all right, because she was crying and screaming. Lovat expected an explanation. He always expected things.

  ‘You must know. What is it, tell me?’ He picked his way across the litter of offcuts on the floor and knelt beside her. ‘Has someone upset you? Tell me.’

  ‘No one’s upset me. Why must I know, I don’t have to know.’

  ‘Of course you don’t, it’s OK, everything’s OK.’ He put his hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off at once.

  ‘You’re talking to me like a child.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.’

  ‘Yes, you did. You always mean everything. Why don’t you go and talk to your own children for a change?’

  Now he waited by her side in silence and after five minutes or so she felt calmer and was able to stand up and accept his handkerchief to dry her face.

  ‘You’re tired,’ he announced as if it was evidence he had just discovered which conclusively proved a theory he had been advancing for some time. ‘Early to bed tonight.’

  ‘We can’t, we’ve got guests, remember? Why are you so early anyway?’

  Normally, Lovat did not appear on Friday evening until around 6 p.m., in time to wash and change before receiving his weekend guests. The habit of entertaining Berrisford’s clients was something which Bianca had resisted with every argument she could command, but as in everything else Lovat’s logic seemed invincible.

  It had been an escalation typical of their style of conflict. In the early days of their marriage she had tried to avoid going out to restaurants with business associates, saying that with Tom and Benedict both of pre-kindergarten age she was too tired. Lovat had considerately suggested that they entertain at home instead. This in turn had necessitated a larger house, and grander furniture, and more elaborate meals, and a larger salary to be earned by Lovat, meaning longer hours and yet more entertaining if he was ever to be at home at all. Bianca had pleaded that with the addition of the ever-wakeful Orlando the dinner parties were too much strain, and that with three active boys she would prefer to live in the country. Lovat’s counter-move was the weekend houseparty, without which, he most reasonably said, he would need to remain in London and never see his family from one month’s end to the next.

  Now invitations to Kintboume Manor were boasted of in all the art capitals of the world. Lovat Whitburn was becoming celebrated for the skill with which he picked guests who would be impressed by his standard of hospitality, and by each other, and by the seeming intimacy of being invited into the heart of his family. He was also famous for the cunning with which he would choose a moment after a game of tennis, or during a match between visitors and the village cricket team, or while walking through the orchard at midnight before departing to bed, to plant ideas in his guests’ minds. Two or three times a year he hosted sumptuous parties; they began with the village brass band – the whole rural community was slowly being sucked into his field of influence – and ended with fireworks. There would be son et lumière, recitals by renowned artists or a discotheque in a marquee on the lower lawn, according to the composition of the guests. Bianca found herself acclaimed as the hostess at these glorious fetes, but she resented the annexation of the home, her territory, to the business, which was Lovat’s.

  He had become precociously mature; a tall man when they married, he was now big in proportion, his face fuller and becoming grooved deeply with lines. His eyes were always serious and the droop of his eyelids, which she had once thought sexy, now gave his face a supercilious cast. His dark hair was short and disciplined and even when he resumed jeans or wore tennis clothes at the weekend his dress had a formal air and was always pristine, laundered by the housekeepers under Bianca’s command. He was a fine-looking, rather glamorous man, and Bianca knew other women found him attractive, but for some years now she had been immune to his appeal.

  ‘You’re home early,’ she accused him again.

  ‘Yes. I wanted to talk to you before everyone got here.’

  The barn had a new concrete floor and a gallery over half its area, with an industrial steel staircase leading up to it. Bianca sat on the third step, her arms folded across her stomach.

  ‘What do you want to talk to me about, Lovat?’

  ‘Well, it’s like this, love. We had a bit of a row last night about this new baby, didn’t we?’

  She nodded, giving him no help. ‘You said I should get rid of it, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it; I was angry. But I’ve been thinking about us and – our life and everything. Are you happy?’

  ‘I ought to be happy, shouldn’t I? I’ve got everything a woman could possibly want.’

  ‘No, but are you?’

  The feeling of being backed into a corner, of a trap closing around her sentence by sentence, point by point, began to take hold. She felt that she had given herself away by weeping.

  ‘I can’t be happy if I’m sitting on the floor crying, can I? Maybe it’s just my hormones or something.’

  He was walking slowly around the studio, looking at her collages without seeing them, his arms swinging awkwardly away from his sides. ‘I was wondering if maybe we could go and see somebody.’

  ‘We see people all the time. And who would have us to stay with three boys?’

  ‘No, I mean a counsellor or something.’ Now he was standing still, grinding one fist into the palm of the other hand and speaking brusquely because he was annoyed to have to operate in this messy emotional area where it seemed impossible ever to get a straight answer. He had known before Bianca herself that something in her had changed. For the past five years he had felt terrible loneliness in his own home – whichever one he was occupying it made no difference, because he defined his home as the place where his wife was. Bianca, the person he wanted to rely upon to hear his anxiety, see his weakness, to heal his wounds and restore him simply by her attention, had become inaccessible to him. It was as if she had stepped behind a glass wall, where she looked the same but he could not touch her.

  ‘What do you mean, a counsellor?
A marriage guidance counsellor?’

  ‘Not necessarily marriage guidance, I think there are other kinds of counsellor. Or a therapist maybe …’

  ‘You mean you think I’m mad and you want me to see a psychiatrist?’ She could conceive of only one motive for this suggestion and it burst out immediately. ‘What you mean is you want me to see someone who’ll talk me into having an abortion, isn’t that it?’

  ‘No, no, that isn’t it, you’re misunderstanding me.’ He felt helpless. It was impossible to win an argument with someone who at once pushed your words to the limit of their logical meaning and used them as an accusation against you. Lovat’s mother had believed that it was a wife’s duty to agree with her husband. Lovat thought he believed that it was a wife’s duty to retain the capacity for independent thought, but he had never expected Bianca to disagree with him. ‘I just thought you weren’t happy and …’

  ‘You mean I’m not making you happy? What does it take to make you happy, Lovat? I bring up our family, I run our homes, I do my pictures and even get people to buy them. I do everything I’m supposed to do and everything you ask …’ She stood up, hitched her jeans over her hipbones and shook back her hair, which was long and held off her face with combs. For something to occupy her hands, she pulled one comb out and repositioned it. ‘I don’t know what more I can do. Except have an abortion, which I’m not going to do and neither you nor anyone else is going to bully me into it. How can you even think of it when you look at our kids? Think of killing one of the boys and chopping him into bits and throwing the bits down a drain – maybe you’ll understand how I feel.’