by Barbara Vine
The man who wanted to be rid of mice seemed satisfied. He wandered off, presumably to spread the news of this amazing vermin repellent. I went up to the bar and asked Mum for a gin and tonic.
‘What brings you here?’ she said.
There are a lot of people's mothers you couldn't say this to but mine isn't one of them. I looked her straight in the eye.
‘Despair,’ I said.
‘It's like that, is it? Where's your ever-loving husband?’
‘Making that smashing extension to their house,’ said Janis. ‘I should be so lucky.’
Mum wouldn't say a word about Ned in front of her, but I could see she guessed. She ‘twigged’ is the way she'd put it. Len came in and she rounded on him. ‘I told you not to put them red things on the bar – what d'you call them? Poinsettias – I told you not to put red flowers about. Just because it's Christmas, so what? Everybody on this earth but you knows red flowers are an evil omen.’
Maybe it was that which made me ask for only pink and white flowers when I phoned the florist in the morning. I was ordering a sheaf for Stella's funeral and I didn't know what to put on the card so in the end I settled for ‘Love from Genevieve’. Mike was laying the floor tiles with Radio Norfolk full on playing Patsy Cline hits, ‘I Fall to Pieces’ and ‘After Midnight’, highly appropriate. I kept thinking, Ned will write to me, he'll write to me from this Interlaken, wherever it is, or he'll phone me when he can get to a phone alone. And then I thought, suppose he doesn't, suppose I have to wait till January the 3rd, I can't wait that long, I'll go mad.
By six I was back in the Legion. They'd put up the Christmas decorations a week in advance. Paper chains and the gilt chains I swear Mum wears for a necklace the rest of the year. No red flowers of course but a lot of holly, the thornless kind. It would be – if the holly that comes in at Christmas is smooth-leaved the woman of the house will be master for the year. Mum wasn't there, only Len. I asked him where she was and he said she'd be in later, which was a comfort as I'd decided to ask her advice. If I could get her alone I was going to ask her what to do.
I took my gin and tonic back to my table. Sooner or later someone was bound to come in that I knew. There were just four people in the bar besides Len and me. I didn't know whether I wanted to talk or not. What I wanted was for the drink to work and make me forget what I was going through. I wanted oblivion, then a stumbling home and a deep sleep.
It was then that she came in. The blonde woman whose car had twice passed along the Curton road when I'd been meeting Ned, who'd been in the Legion that evening when we'd all been there and Ned and Jane too. She came in alone, stopped for a moment and looked around her.
She's called Linda, but I didn't know that at first, Linda Owen. I still hadn't shed my superstitiousness, though I'd started calling it that, and I noted with a kind of dismay that under her fake-fur coat she was wearing a bright green trouser suit. A bright green and russet coloured scarf was round her head and the snowflakes glittered on it. The snow had started since I got there.
She looked at me and said, ‘Hallo,’ though we'd never really met. Len served her a glass of medium white wine and she took it to a table in the farthest corner from mine. For some reason I couldn't take my eyes off her, and with that urge to look at her came a feeling of the deepest foreboding. The green she was wearing seemed to be an act of malice against me, of course it couldn't be, it wasn't, but it felt that way. It was as bright as a traffic light or day-glo on a roadman's coat. Len turned on the telly behind the bar and I nearly cried out. The screen was filled by brightly coloured figures skiing, red and blue and orange against the white dazzling snow. Linda Owen picked her glass up off the table and walked over to me.
I watched her approach. Our eyes met. She'd taken off the scarf but hadn't combed her hair. It was untidy, a lock of it drooping over one eyebrow. She put her hand on the back of the chair opposite me and said, ‘You don't know me though we've seen each other a few times.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘My name's Linda Owen.’
‘Jenny,’ I said. ‘Jenny Warner.’
‘You may think I'm speaking out of turn but there's something I want to say to you. Can I sit down?’
I nodded.
‘Are you still seeing Ned Saraman?’
A split second before she said that I expected her to say it. I don't know why unless it's Mum's gift coming out in me. A funny way to put it, isn't it? ‘Seeing’, seeing someone. Funnier than ‘going out with’ really. It means sleeping with, making love to, loving, being in love with, adoring, but it doesn't mean ‘seeing’ at all. That's the last thing it means, if ‘seeing’ is seeing into someone's heart and knowing his thoughts.
Another funny thing was that suddenly I didn't know the answer to that question. But I nodded and said yes and why did she ask. I wasn't angry with her, I wasn't offended, I didn't feel any of that.
‘I saw you meet him,’ she said. ‘I saw you twice. And then I saw you in here with him. Look, you mustn't take this the wrong way, but I could see it in your face, how you felt about him. I should have said something to you then but I didn't have the nerve. I've only got the nerve now because – well, you're here on your own and I'm half an hour early for my date.’
‘Said something about what?’ I said. My lips were stiff.
‘You know where you met him, at Thelmarsh Cross? That's where I used to meet him.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘A woman called Rosie Ferrell was before me,’ she said, ‘and they couldn't meet in Thelmarsh because she lived up in Shering-ham and the one before her, I don't know where she was or where they met.’
‘It isn't true,’ I said. He'd never been unfaithful to Jane before me, he'd told me that again and again. ‘And if it is true –’ oh, I was pathetic! ‘– if it is true, it's me now, it'll always be me. He loves me.’
It wasn't exactly pity in the look she gave me. Sympathy perhaps. At any rate, it was a kind look and it wasn't contemptuous. ‘You'd better have another drink,’ she said. ‘Come on, I'll get us both another drink.’
Mum had just come in. She was got up in her fiercest gear, the way she is on a Saturday night, especially the Saturday before Christmas, a black miniskirt, tight as a bandage, a royal blue T-shirt, sleeveless, with The Thundering Legion printed on it in gold and under that a Gossard Wonderbra which is the last thing she needs. She gave me a look and put up her eyebrows. I don't know what was going on in her head but she served Linda and said,
‘That's on the house, love.’
‘Oh, really? Thanks a lot.’
‘She's my mother,’ I said. ‘Look, you're wrong about Ned. I shouldn't talk about it, not yet, but we're going to move in together. He's leaving his wife. After they come back from wherever they've gone. It's private till then, but since you asked…’
‘Jenny,’ she said, ‘he isn't going to leave Jane, he'll never leave her. He'll never leave his daughter. Oh, that asthma isn't as bad as he makes out but he won't leave her. He doesn't want to leave them. Jane suits him.’
I was tired of saying she was wrong. I said, ‘I told you it was private, I shouldn't talk about it.’ I'd said that before too. I said something new. ‘I know you mean to be kind.’ She didn't say anything. ‘Ned said he'd leave Jane for me any time I said the word. I couldn't imagine I'd ever repeat that to anyone but it's the truth. I wouldn't do it, not for a long time, I thought it was wrong, but in the end – well, I gave in.’ A thought came to me that I liked – the first for quite a while. She was jealous. He'd left her for me. I couldn't quite say that. ‘It may be a bit hard for you to take,’ I said, ‘but he really loves me. It's the real thing with me. It's different.’
She didn't laugh. I think that's to her eternal credit. She's a nice woman is Linda Owen. Believe it or not, we've got to be friends and we see quite a lot of each other. After all, we've a lot in common. She didn't laugh, rather the reverse, she looked miserable.
‘Listen to me
, Jenny. He does this all the time, it's his thing. She knows and she puts up with it because she knows he'll always stay with her. They take a cottage somewhere for a year, it's usually about a year. Two years ago they took one in Breckenhall. I'm in the Post Office there, that's what I do, the Post Office counter in the village shop. Before that was when they rented a place in Weybourne, up on the coast. I don't say she likes the way he goes on but at least she always has some idea where he is.’
‘I don't see what this has to do with me,’ I said.
‘He asked me to go away with him, Jenny. He always asks the ones who won't. He knows they won't before he asks, they're the ones with a sense of duty, the ones who're set on not breaking up their marriages or upsetting their kids. I've got a daughter that my mum takes care of in the day. He knew I wouldn't uproot my daughter, take her away from Mum and her pre-school. He was safe with me till I changed my mind.’
‘What do you mean,’ I said, ‘changed your mind?’
‘My daughter got to be five. I said I'd be able to take her away now she was changing schools. I'd go with him. He'd said he'd get a flat in Dereham – mind you, he'd said that a good while before. Just as a matter of interest, when did he last ask you to go away with him?’
I couldn't remember. It was a long time and that was what made me suddenly turn cold. I drank some of my gin, but it tasted like disinfectant. When had Ned last asked me? Months ago, just about the time we first met in Stella's house. I hadn't noticed, I was so in love I hadn't noticed.
Instead of answering, ‘He asked you that too?’ I said.
‘I'm sorry, Jenny. I'm over it now but it's going to take you a while, I can see that.’
There was a wildness starting up in me, in my head. It was like when you say you don't believe something you know you do believe. It was something that couldn't be happening, an outrage. Later, a lot later, I looked up ‘outrage’ in the dictionary and it said: ‘a gross or violent injury; an act of wanton mischief’. It said a lot of other things too but those will do to be going on with. A gross and violent injury was inside my head, pushing to get out and scream aloud.
‘But he asked me,’ I said. I sounded like a child. ‘He asked me. Suppose I'd said yes?’
‘You did,’ she said. ‘You did in the end.’
And look what happened.
She didn't say that. I did, to myself, in my head, while I was staring at her, trying to hate her but not able to. I thought then of something I hadn't faced at the time, that phone conversation last week when I told him I'd do as he asked, that we'd be together. He hadn't answered. Not really answered. He'd sighed and I'd taken it for a sigh of relief. I'd said meet and talk about it at Stella's house. And he hadn't come. He hadn't phoned, he hadn't come to Stella's house, he'd put his answerphone on and gone away skiing with his wife and child. Because that was what he always did, or something like it, when ‘they’ agreed to leave and be with him.
She spoke gently. ‘To do him justice, if that's the word, he's like some women who can only do it if they think they're loved. And if they think they're in love. He can't get it up unless he' saying, I love you, I love you. It's sick. He's sick, poor thing. He's a pervert with a fetish and his fetish is love. But that doesn't make you care any the less, does it?
‘He picks the sort he thinks won't make scenes. And if they do, Jane can handle it. She's had plenty of practice. I went to Norwich and told her about him and me and much good that did me. She knew already. If you come to think of it, a man's got a big advantage if his wife knows and loves him enough to put up with it. What can he lose?’
I jumped up then.
‘I don't believe it,’ I said. ‘It's not true.’
‘It's true.’
It still wasn't credible. Not a real thing like the conservatory was or Stella dying or Richard giving me that tape player. It was the dream of the kind you don't know is a dream and when you wake up it takes a while to realize it didn't happen.
Saying ‘He loved me’ was stupid and humiliating. I still said it, over and over. Pride's the last thing to go but it goes. ‘He kept asking me to say I loved him,’ I said, and I knew I was describing the kind of man she'd described.
‘Did he find a place for you to meet?’ she said. ‘I mean, a hotel or anything? Or was it all done under a hedge? I'm sorry, but it was the same for me.’
‘I borrowed someone's house,’ I said.
‘You did, yes. Sure. It has a familiar ring. Did he ever take you out for a meal? Did he ever buy you a present? I bet he offered to take you abroad with him, that's easy, all done on expenses, and he'd have a double room anyway. But did he bring you any duty-frees?’
I stood up. I wanted to overturn the table the way they do in films. Mum was reading my mind. She lifted up the flap at the end of the bar counter and took a step through. I felt my head drop forward and a gagging in my throat.
‘I'll get you a drink,’ Linda said. ‘I didn't really get the last one.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It doesn't help.’
‘Oh, yes, it does.’
My knees felt weak and I sat down again. ‘I don't want a drink.’
‘I didn't think you'd take it so hard,’ she said.
She turned round and waved to the man who'd just come in. He was just a man, youngish, fair and heavy-set, her date, the kind who goes straight up to the bar wherever he is.
‘I don't want to leave you,’ she said. ‘Will you be all right? I can tell him it's off for this evening. I'm not that keen on him. I could take you home.’
‘It's all right,’ I said. ‘I'd quite like to be alone. I have to be alone to take it all in.’
‘I'm sorry, Jenny,’ she said. ‘I'm very sorry.’
21
If I'd cast myself in roles like Gilda did I'd have been the village maiden betrayed by a seducer. But roles take no account of true misery, of living humanity. I was dazed and numb. I was silent. Pain made me clumsy, I dropped a cup and broke it, I tripped over a rug. When I picked myself up a grazed shin made me start crying and break the silence.
Mike didn't notice. He was still doing the tiles. I cooked the lunch because I've always made a roast on Sundays and we ate it, facing each other across the table. Or he ate it. I picked at the food and pushed it about but he didn't notice. He wasn't even reading the paper or reading the instructions on the tile pack, he was silent and preoccupied with his conservatory, his head full of it. To him it was a thing of dreams, a crystal palace, and if he'd been able to talk to me about it in those terms, as of a vision and a creation, perhaps it wouldn't even then have been too late.
Before he went back there he did speak. My face was wet with tears and he asked me if I'd got a cold. When it got to three-thirty I went round to Philippa's.
People talk about the country as if it's always beautiful. The ones who don't live in it, that is. There's something awful about an East Anglian village on a Sunday afternoon in winter, something grim. The surrounding land is grey and shrouded in mist. The village street is long and straight, the houses are low and the trees are low while the sky is a huge lid, dull and dimpled like pewter. At four-ish the lights will come on but that's not for half an hour and meanwhile the low houses are dark and all sealed up, the windows dull and blind except for the eye of a TV screen glowing behind them in a corner. There's never anyone about but all the cars are there. They line both sides of the street nose-to-tail, some shiny and new but most the other kind. You can't live in Tharby without a car but that's not to say you can afford anything better than an old beat-up banger.
When a person speaks of car world you think of somewhere like Los Angeles, of tangled freeways and spaghetti junctions and gleaming limos slipping over suspension bridges. But this is the real car world, the English countryside, where you can't move without a car, where the bus runs once a week and the trains have disappeared. My dad knew what he was doing when he collected cars and lost his soul to the internal-combustion engine. Not long ago I read a letter to a newspa
per from someone who said we all ought to give up cars. To save the world, the environment, the ozone layer. But he lived in the middle of a city and could walk to work or take a bus, it was easy for him to talk. In Tharby you're a prisoner without a car, it's the first thing you think of when you're seventeen, learning to drive and somehow acquiring a car.
There was a Christmas tree in Philippa's front window but its lights weren't on. She came to the window when I rang the bell and I think one look at my face told her. The telly had been on, she'd been watching a video of It Happened One Night, but she turned it off without asking. We never kiss and we didn't then but she put out her arms and I went into them and we held each other. We hugged each other for a long time, just quite still and close, and she didn't pat my back like people mostly do when they hug someone.
Katie and Nicola came in and stared at me. I told Philippa all about Ned and how I loved him and what he'd done, though I could still only half believe it. Or I couldn't face it. Confronting it hurt so much I couldn't attempt it without crying aloud. But I told her the best I could bear to. Seeing my tears, Nicola started to cry, and for some reason that made me think of Janis and me when we were small.
Philippa put an arm round her and an arm round me. It was then that she said that about it being just as well I'd never said anything to Mike because now I could go on as if nothing had happened. She didn't understand. How could she? You mustn't expect people to understand, I know that now. If they listen and they're kind that's the best you'll get and that's a lot.
‘I'm going back now to tell him,’ I said.
‘But where will you go?’ she said. ‘Why do it now?’
‘Because I want to be free to cry in the night,’ I said, ‘and I can't do that with him beside me.’
As soon as I'd said it I thought it was funny and I started to laugh. Philippa looked shattered. She didn't know what to make of me and who can blame her? I didn't know what to make of myself. By this time it was pitch dark outside and lights were on. The Legion was a fine sight, the old fir tree outside hung with fairy lights and a big holly wreath on the front door. Luckily Mum's red phobia doesn't extend to lights and she had ‘A Merry Christmas to All Our Patrons’ up in scarlet neon on the half-timbering.