The Brimstone Wedding

by Barbara Vine

  She didn't. She believed that was his reason for suppressing Charmian's letter. That was what she believed then.

  ‘I don't want to break the law,’ she said.

  He laughed. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Go on, be a devil. It's out of your hands now, anyway. I've got it. I'll put it in the archives.’

  ‘You haven't got any archives,’ she said.

  ‘I have now.’

  All that took a good deal more than five minutes in the telling. Stella's voice was hoarse and her skin had lost all its colour.

  ‘You have to take it easy,’ I said, and I took the tray from her and covered up her knees with the blanket.

  ‘That was the beginning of it,’ she said. ‘The note that Charmian sent me, that was the start of it.’

  ‘The start of what?’ I said, but I got no answer.

  When you're in my sort of love affair, unlike Stella's, you don't get much of a chance to talk to the person you're in love with. For one thing your meetings don't last long, it's all snatched moments, and for another the time is mostly taken up with making love. I tell myself that there'll be time enough to talk when I'm with Ned all the time. Every day I came a step nearer to deciding I will be with him all the time, though I'd said nothing to him then, at the end of November that is, I'd said nothing to Mike, I'd made no arrangements, it was still all in my head.

  But we'd got to following a routine at our meetings in Stella's house and there was a little space for talking in it. It had been the mildest November since records began and would have been cold only if the month was, say, September. But it was cold enough. I'd get the place warmed up as best I could before he arrived, I'd take a bottle of wine with me and have it opened and breathing, the candles lit, the bed fresh and warm. And after we'd made love, necessarily under the heavy covers – that was when I began longing for the freedom of light, of nakedness exposed and liberty of movement and hands and mouths – after that we'd lie with our arms round one another and talk a little. I never have much to tell him, only some small anecdotes of my day. After all, my life isn't exciting, or rather, he's the excitement in my life. But plenty happens to him, he's always meeting the clever and the famous, and he always has stories of what he's done and plans to do.

  The next time we met after Stella had told me of the hidden letter, he would have been happy, I think, not to talk at all. When we finish and there's that high moment, that shared wonderful thing when my mind breaks open, I cry out into his mouth that's covering mine. And he holds me for a long time after we slide apart. He holds me and strokes my hair, he kisses my shoulders, he puts my head to rest upon him. He never moves away and turns his back. Sometimes we whisper to each other for a little while and he gets up and fetches the wine for us to drink. That's the time we talk, for we often make love again and we aren't like other lovers, we haven't all night at our disposal.

  But that time it was me fetched the wine and poured some for him and some for me in Stella's crystal glasses that she and Alan Tyzark once used. And when I walked round the bed with the glass in my hand I saw that he was asleep. I love to watch him sleeping, for his face is lovely then. He looks very young and gentle. But I grudge him sleep because that's when he goes away from me. So I drank my wine and watched him and when he stirred I said his name and touched his face and kissed him. He woke very quickly, sat up and smiled at me.

  I wanted him to tell me about his work, what he'd been doing, and he began to talk, telling me about the research for a programme he's making about some old Norfolk families. It was mere chance, I suppose, that I asked him how one could find out about birth and death dates, how did you do it and was it easy. I'd never thought about it before, that there must be some central place where everyone's birth, marriage and death is recorded, I imagined it was all in church registers. But Ned said no, they were kept in some place in London and that was where he would be checking the dates of these family members.

  And then I thought I'd ask him to do something for me. Before that I'd never actually asked him for anything, I'd never said to him, would you get this for me, or would you do that? Yet it's what people do when they're together, isn't it? You could call it dependence on each other or you could call it support. It seemed to me the mark of our closeness, our absolute partnership, that I could say to him, would you do this for me?

  ‘When you're doing that, would you find out something for me, the date of someone's death?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ he said, ‘if I can.’

  He looked so happy to have the chance to do it, I wondered why I'd never asked before. ‘It's Gilda Brent,’ I said.

  ‘The actress? Didn't you tell me one of your old ladies knew her?’ He's got a good memory. ‘I'll do my best. When did she die?’

  ‘About twenty-five years ago. Isn't that near enough? It's all I know.’

  ‘Was Brent her real name?’

  I remembered the cigarette card collection. I told him it had been Brant and her married name was Tyzark and she was around fifty when she died, if that would help. Now we'd begun on it I wanted to talk some more, to tell him something of what Stella had told me, of Charmian and her love for Rex Newland. Lovers always want to talk about love, don't they? And Charmian's plight, her hopeless suffering, had struck some chord in me, though I'd never experienced anything like it and hope I never will. But it wasn't what Ned wanted.

  ‘Let's not talk any more about these old people and death and old, unhappy, far-off things,’ he said, and he took me in his arms again, saying, ‘Tell me you love me, Jenny, tell me you love me.’

  15

  On the Saturday that was Stella's birthday I was coming out of the Legion where I'd taken Mum's shopping when I saw the removal van outside Rowans. It wasn't a big one, it was about the size of a Land Rover, and they'd hired it themselves. The place was let furnished and I don't suppose they'd had much of their own stuff in it.

  It gave me a shock to see Ned. It always does when I see him unexpectedly, and the shock isn't a pleasant one when he's doing something that's so definitely with Jane and Hannah. What he was doing, carrying out a cardboard box of books and putting it in the van, seemed utterly to exclude me. The books weren't mine or half mine, I didn't even know their titles, and for a little while he didn't know I was watching him. Jane came out and said something to him and he replied and I was suddenly filled with such a longing to speak to him and have him look at me that I almost cried out. I didn't but I called hallo and they both turned round.

  He said, ‘Hallo, Jenny, how are you?’ as if I were Mum or the woman next door. He couldn't help it. What else could he do, but it stunned me and I seemed to see his face on the pillow, his eyes closed and his lips half-smiling in sleep.

  I thought it would be impossible for me to speak but I spoke. I dare say my voice sounded normal. I asked them when they were moving and Jane said this was their last day here.

  ‘We've found a place in Southwold. Hannah does so love the seaside.’

  It didn't matter to me. It made no difference to me, I'd only twice been in that house and, whatever had happened, I'd never have gone there again. And they wouldn't be in Southwold, not all three of them, not together. Jane and Hannah might be but Ned would be with me. Muttering something about having to get on, she went back into the house, and Ned turned to me such a look of naked blazing love that even I, hungry as I am, was satisfied. I whispered, ‘Phone me,’ and he nodded.

  Saturdays I was always off work but I was going in that day to see Stella. Instead of driving down the High Street I took the long way round, I didn't want to pass that emptying house again. I didn't want to see Ned again. If that sounds insane, it's explainable. When they were together, him and Jane, I always dreaded seeing some sign of love or companionship or even ordinary affection pass between them, some meeting of eyes, some intimate smile of special meaning. I never did, I never could have for it couldn't happen, I knew Ned too well for that, but still I feared it. I was afraid of an impossible sight that would
spoil my day, my week, my life.

  Love is a frightening thing. I realize that I'm frightened so much of the time, afraid of losing him, afraid of discovery, but more than that, I live in fear of not being his equal, of not matching up to what he wants, of him changing because he's disillusioned. And Stella has told me she felt fear every day, before their meetings, after their meetings, fear of Gilda and jealousy. Like me, she was afraid of seeing a hint of love between Alan and Gilda. One summer afternoon she had gone to their house and, hearing their voices, pushed open the front door and walked in without knocking. Gilda was picking out a tune on the piano and he was sitting on the stool beside her, singing words to it, they'd been trying to remember some old song. It was nothing; it shattered her. And how could it be nothing when she was alone and free but he was still with Gilda?

  She was afraid too of that painting, that nude. Sometimes she would fancy the half-smile on the face was directed against her in mockery, that the painted Gilda was saying to her, ‘Look at me, look at my beauty. Can you compete with that?’ And when they were in that room Gilda would always position herself in front of the portrait. She had a settee so placed that the picture seemed to rise up behind it and she contrived to sit on this settee and put Stella in an armchair facing it. Whenever she lifted her eyes Stella was obliged to look at the naked Gilda in her high heels, one hand fingering the pearl string between her breasts.

  She'd supposed Alan would ask Gilda for a divorce. They had no children. It wasn't a question of money, Gilda was much better off than he was. She would find another man, she was always telling Stella of all the men who were in love with her. As for the money side of it, Stella herself was well-off. The house in Bury was hers and Rex's shares in the company and his life assurance as well as investments of his. It didn't matter to her that Alan had nothing but his royalties from Figaro and Velvet and a dodgy income from selling pictures in pubs.

  ‘Didn't I tell you that, Genevieve?’ she said. ‘It was all he could do. He'd started painting landscapes and getting landlords to exhibit them for sale. Well, not only landscapes.’ She looked ashamed. ‘Pictures of dogs and cats and girls’ faces and women in crinolines. And he did drawings of Norfolk villages for Christmas cards.

  ‘I told him the money didn't matter, I had enough for both of us, but he hated the idea of me keeping him. And he said Gilda would never divorce him as the law stood. She'd have had to name me and he wouldn't have that.’

  They'd heard, or Stella had heard through Jeremy Newland, that there'd be a major change in the divorce law in the future, it was already being talked about. Irretrievable breakdown would be grounds for divorce after you'd been separated for two years and you both consented, or after five years if only one consented. And it did come in. Mum and Dad were divorced like that, there wasn't any problem about them both consenting, and Mum got her divorce from number two like that as well. It's called the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, though I should think Divorce Causes Act would be more appropriate. But for Alan Tyzark it was still a long way off in 1969. Stella said she didn't care about being married, she wanted him just to come and live with her.

  Alan wouldn't do it. He said she didn't understand how Gilda would behave. Gilda would make their life hell. St Michael's Farm was hers, entirely hers, and if he went to live with Stella Gilda would start divorce proceedings, name Stella and take from him everything he had. Already, he said, Gilda suspected him. Once or twice when he'd gone to a hotel in Ipswich with some of the paintings he'd done, she'd followed him. He went out into Crown Street at nine one evening and saw her car parked on the other side of the road. She had cast herself in the role of her own private detective.

  Richard's car was in the car park and so was Marianne's. That made me think I needn't have come, not when she'd got her own children, but I had a present for her and a card and I didn't have to stay long.

  Sharon was in the hall, fiddling about with something behind reception. She always comes in on Saturdays. She beckoned me over and whispered in a dramatic way.

  ‘Maud left Lena fifty grand, how about that?’

  I didn't know what to say.

  ‘Three times that to the cats and donkeys but fifty K's pretty brilliant if you ask me. Stella'll be next on her list, you see if I'm not right. She's in there now with the family, sucking up so's you could vomit.’

  But Lena came out of Stella's room just as I turned the corner in the passage. She was flushed, she looked a bit bemused; I suppose she'd only got the news that morning, and instead of telling me off for being too friendly with a resident, coming in on a Saturday and so on, she gave me one of her toothy smiles and actually opened Stella's door for me.

  I'd have knocked first but no one seemed to mind me just walking in. Stella had six birthday cards on her desk and two on a bedside cabinet. There was a marvellous new dressing-gown lying on the bed on top of its tissue and pink glazed paper wrappings, a quilted thing of patchwork in different sorts of gingham and rosebud patterns. But Richard had brought her a set of books, A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell. I looked at her and at those twelve books and thought, that'll be the last you'll ever read, and somehow I could tell from his expression, his smile and his sad eyes, that he was thinking the same.

  I handed over my card and the two cassettes I'd been into Diss to buy. I don't know anything about music but I'd remembered that Richard said she liked chamber music, so I'd consulted Ned about that and he'd advised me, a Dvořák Serenade for Strings and a piece by Boccherini. Stella took the presents from me, caught my face in her hands in a surprisingly strong grip, and kissed me. Her wrinkled face is as soft as silk and as powdery as an iced cake.

  My card was put on the desk with the others, the cassettes beside her player.

  ‘They want to take me out to lunch, Genevieve,’ Stella said. ‘I've told them I hardly eat anything but Marianne says we can have nouvelle cuisine.’

  Marianne put her eyebrows up at me. ‘She's strong enough to go, isn't she, Genevieve?’

  ‘If she wants to,’ I said.

  ‘You know I don't like cars, Marianne.’

  ‘You do as long as I'm not driving,’ Richard said. ‘Marianne can drive at twenty-five miles an hour and I'll sit in the back with you and put a black bag over your head.’

  They argued a bit more but I could tell, and perhaps they could too, that Stella really wanted to go. The car was the stumbling block but not such a great obstacle when Marianne assured her the restaurant they were going to was only three miles away and a new one, opened the previous spring. Stella put on her cream wool coat, picking a hair off the collar with an expression of distaste. One glove on and one off, she slipped the bare hand into the crook of Richard's arm, not so much possessively as with a kind of shy affection.

  I followed them out, driving behind them for maybe a mile and then turning off down the Tharby road. My shoelace broke as I was getting out of the car. We wear trainers for work, white ones, and the laces don't last as long as the shoes. I'd noticed my left one fraying for the past week but I'd done nothing about it, mainly because Diss is the nearest place I can buy replacements. It's bad to break a shoelace, something to do with St Mark bursting the latchets of his shoes when he was travelling to Alexandria, though why that should make it unlucky I don't know. But it left me with a sense of foreboding.

  Mike was putting the glass in the conservatory windows. He had Radio One on very loud. When he saw me he said, ‘Sorry, I'll turn it down. I won't stop for my lunch. Have to get the glazing done before the bad weather sets in.’

  Bad weather never really does set in, does it? Not in this country. It's just as likely to be as nice or as nasty in December as it is in June. We hadn't had any rain for a week, which is what I suppose he meant, and it was unnaturally mild. He's doing this conservatory for me, or that's what he says, he says it to everybody.

  ‘Come and see the conservatory I'm doing for Jenny.’

  That means I'm his reason for building it and his e
xcuse. It works with others and it works with me.

  ‘No time for that,’ he says, ‘I've got Jenny's conservatory to finish,’ or, to me, ‘I'm doing this for you, so have a bit of patience, will you?’

  I've never asked for a conservatory. In fact, I don't want one. It will only make more work and I've got enough already. I can't grow house plants, our garden is full of the buried corpses of African Violets that have died on me. I shall never set foot in the place, I shall never clean it or polish those windows. So what am I waiting for? What word has to be spoken or trigger pulled? It's as if I'm waiting for the conservatory to be finished, to replace me in Mike's life.

  It would be there but I would be gone.

  Stella had been very tired after her drive and her lunch. She was brought back at three-thirty and had fallen asleep in her chair even before Marianne and Richard had gone. Carolyn said she was still asleep when she brought her dinner and of course she hadn't wanted anything to eat. On Sunday she'd have liked to stay in bed all day but Lena doesn't encourage that.

  ‘This is a residential home, not a hospice,’ she said to me. ‘If they're bed-ridden and want nursing they're in the wrong place.’

  Coming into a fortune only sweetened her nature for a couple of days. I found Stella up but still in her nightdress with the new dressing-gown over it. The cereal and bread and butter on her tray were untouched. She was drinking China tea.

  ‘Marianne calls this a robe,’ she said. ‘I think dressing-gown may be an old-fashioned word. It's beautiful, isn't it? I'd like you to have it after I'm gone.’

  The clothes of the dead don't wear long. They fret for the person who owned them… Marianne may want it back, I thought, it must have cost a hundred pounds.

  ‘Of course I will,’ I said, ‘if that's what you want.’