by Barbara Vine
I'm a fool, I know, but I thought of Stella who so longed to see a swallowtail and never would now and it made me start to cry. That was when the silence of the fen began to trouble me and as I made my way home I remembered people I'd seen walking about in Bury or Diss with headsets on and a Walkman in their pocket, and I decided to try it.
So next day, and that was the day before yesterday, I bought myself a pack of batteries on the way home from work, put two in the Walkman, and for the first time since she died had a proper look at Stella's tapes. For some reason I thought she'd recorded a lot, but she hadn't. Eight out of the ten tapes are blank. The other two aren't labelled with the titles of pieces of music, but wouldn't be much use to me if they were, as the only pieces I know by name are ‘Nessun Dorma’ and the Water Music. Stella had simply printed ‘Tape 1’ and ‘Tape 2’ on their labels, otherwise giving no clue to their content.
May as well start at the beginning, I thought, putting ‘Tape 1’ in the Walkman, though by then I was wishing I'd stretched my budget and bought the Emmylou Harris Luxury Liner I'd seen in the battery shop. But Stella's music would at least break the silence as I wandered through the fen.
It was a very warm evening, utterly windless, and all about me was the staleness of late summer, seed heads instead of flowers, tired leaves hanging from unmoving branches, nettles worn out and stretched to six feet in height but still capable of stinging. I suppose I was nervous about starting the music, afraid of the sudden assault of something I might not understand or appreciate breaking on my ears. I put my thumb on the start button but I didn't press it until I was in the heart of the fen. There, in a clearing, where drought had dried up the pools but the grass was still green, cropped short by rabbits, I sat down on a fallen log and pressed the Walkman button.
There was whirring and a sound like the waves of the sea and then Stella's voice, sweet and very clear. It gave me such a shock that coldness passed right through me and broke on my skin in gooseflesh. Stella's voice said, ‘This is the first tape. The second follows. They are both labelled.’
I stopped it. I turned it off. After I'd taken a deep breath and another, counted to ten, told myself to be sensible, I started it again.
23
This is the first tape. The second follows. They are both labelled.
Dear Genevieve, I am inclined to begin this as I would begin a letter, but I am speaking, not writing. I have had plenty of practice in speaking into this device. Does that surprise you? I think I have given you a lot of surprises one way and another. Once you thought nothing had ever happened to me, I could see it in your face, but now I feel that maybe you will think too much has happened to me.
When we last talked, the very last time, you told me your wish was coming true. Of course you meant you were going to be with the man you love. You meant he was going to leave his home and join you. I'm glad for you and I hope you're very happy now. I told you that in the end Alan left Gilda to be with me. What I didn't say – among so many other things – was that he didn't tell me this until we were together at Molucca. We had come for a ten-day holiday while my children were away and Gilda was, or was supposed to be, in France. Driving us to the house, he decided. We had talked and talked of it, on and on, for months – well, for years. He decided quite spontaneously, he said. One minute, inside his head, he was going on holiday with me, the next he was committed to me for life, never to be separated.
He told me so as we closed the front door behind us.
‘This is for ever. I'm never going back. I've left her.’
I'd been going to prepare lunch for us, something light, sandwiches probably, but suddenly neither of us felt we could eat. He put the champagne in the fridge. That was the champagne you found, for we never opened it. We should have drunk it warm, as it came from the car.
We kept falling into each other's arms, we were drunk on nothing. Then he made us pink gins to celebrate while the champagne was cooling. We danced – ballroom dancing, Genevieve, do you know about that? – we danced with the glasses in our hands. We waltzed without music.
He said, ‘Just before we went into that shop, I thought, what the hell am I playing at? I'm not on holiday, I'm on life. I'm never going back. So I bought the champagne. Mean of me, wasn't it? Not to discuss it with you, not to ask, just to decide. Do you mind?’
‘You knew me,’ I said. ‘You know me. Why would I mind? It's what I've always wanted.’
So we waltzed some more. We tangoed from one end of the room to the other and Alan sang ‘When They Begin the Beguine’. He had given me another drink, a glass of wine this time, when I heard the car.
It was a rare event, a car passing. A car coming up the drive was almost unknown. By then we were sitting on the sofa with our arms round each other. I stood up to see. I saw the piranha face before I saw Gilda. It seemed to be charging me, that red body, that snarling mouth with bared teeth in a scarlet face. But it didn't charge me. It stopped precisely next to and parallel with Alan's grey Rover. We are a couple, it seemed to say to me, we belong together, we shall always be side by side. I made a little sound and put out my hand, feeling blindly behind me to touch him.
One's first thought is to hide. There is no hiding, of course. If we had thought of that, anticipated this, we would not have left the car there, opened the windows, sat in this room together for anyone passing to see. Hadn't we picked a house with a garage to conceal a car if we needed to? But we wanted to hide. I even said to him, ‘Hide!’
Alan didn't panic. I might have known he never would. He said, ‘You mean, hide you or hide the car, whichever is the easier,’ and he laughed. He actually laughed. He said later that there was nothing else to do.
Gilda got out of the car and slammed the door as hard as she could. It's strange what you notice. I noticed for the first time her unnatural thinness, that she was bones and a hank of hair. She had green trousers on and a black sleeveless blouse with a green chiffon scarf knotted round her neck, black sunglasses that hid any expression, green sandals with stacked heels. She stood there a moment, looking at the house. I don't think she could see us.
Alan said, ‘We may as well open the door. She'll only break in if we don't.’
We both went to the door, but he went first. He opened it. She walked in. She didn't say a word. She pushed past us and went upstairs. We could hear her in the bedroom overhead, checking on our cases, I suppose, looking for our night things. Alan got hold of my hand, squeezed it and dropped it again. We didn't speak.
Gilda came downstairs and walked into the living room. We followed her. She looked round her and round again, like someone who had come to buy the place. She said to me,
‘I suppose this house is yours?’
I nodded.
‘It wouldn't be his, would it? He never had two halfpennies to rub together.’
I found a voice. ‘It's my house. I bought it six years ago.’
‘You mean that poor devil your late husband did. What did you do, save the money up out of the housekeeping?’
That line came straight out of Lora Cartwright. Hearing it repeated now, word for word, made me shiver.
Alan said, ‘Why aren't you in France?’
‘Good question,’ she said. ‘I never intended to go to France.’ She looked at me. ‘I followed him here last week. I didn't know it was you. I mean, why you, for God's sake? I thought he'd at least find someone presentable. The coup de grâce was planned for today.’ She sat down, looked at our glasses. ‘Give me a drink, please.’
Alan went to the dining room and brought back gin and sherry and the white burgundy and a bottle of tonic and more glasses on a tray. She didn't say any more until she'd had a drink, quite a hefty drink. Alan gave me a stiff gin and poured one for himself.
Gilda said to me, ‘I thought you were my friend.’
That too came from The Wife's Story, but was none the less true. What could I say? Not that I was sorry, I wasn't sorry. But that statement of hers, remark, reproach, what
ever you like to call it, cut me to the bone in spite of having been written by a scriptwriter long ago. I shrugged, I shook my head. She turned to Alan.
‘Why her? Why not a young girl? She's nearly as old as me and God knows she looks more.’
It didn't require an answer. It was said to cause pain. Probably it too was from a film, but one I hadn't seen. She began to talk then. I can remember much of it, though not all, but I shan't repeat it. What would be the point? She held out her glass for more gin and Alan re-filled it and poured more for both of us. We were all drinking while we talked, drinking as I at least had never drunk before.
But, you know, the absurd thing was that there wasn't much she could say, there was very little with which to threaten us. She tried. She told Alan she would never divorce him, that would make things too easy for both of us. She would tell Marianne and Richard what I was and what we had done, and tell our friends and neighbours, Priscilla and Jeremy and other relatives. More than that, she would bring an action against me for enticement. I always wondered how she even knew such a thing was possible, or had once been possible.
‘I wish you'd take off those glasses,’ Alan said.
She took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were red, and I mean not just the eyelids, her eyes were bloodshot, the whites scarlet round those blue irises. She looked like one of those photographs where the flash has turned the subject's eyes red and staring. Alan lined up three wineglasses on the tray and filled them with the white burgundy. I couldn't have drunk any more gin but I could drink that.
And yet the worst of it was over. At first it had been a shock, stunning, appalling. Now that she was there and talking, uttering threats that seemed to me empty enough, wasn't it even for the best that she had found out? I didn't put this into words, not even in my mind, but that was the general impression I had, the way I tended to feel. I felt hope. Yes, I did. Of course it was partly due to the drink, it was euphoria, but when Gilda began to insult me, calling me stupid and naïve and ignorant, an underhand schemer like a schoolgirl who is also a sneak, when she asked Alan what on earth he saw in me, I didn't mind, I knew it would make him despise her and love me more. I had absolute faith in his loyalty and his love. And I was right to have. That wasn't misplaced.
Alan said, ‘She was a schoolgirl.’ And then, ‘She was at school with me.’
She put her hand up to her face. ‘I don't understand,’ she said and she went a dark red colour.
It came out then. She had never known and it made her angrier than anything else. The obvious things are not the worst betrayals. Perhaps that was how she saw it, his knowing me before he knew her, my knowing things about him she could never know. As her anger mounted she began to shout, finally to scream and while she screamed to grab and hurl everything within reach. She broke two glasses against the wall. She flung the empty wine bottle and it went sailing through the open window and hit the bonnet of Alan's car. Alan watched her, keeping out of the line of fire, but doing nothing to stop her. He knew her rages, that they burnt themselves out quite quickly, dissolving in tears.
A lot of our small ornaments got broken that afternoon. There's probably still a dent in the wall where Gilda threw a bowl at it. That was the last thing she threw before she started to weep and sob. I don't know what Alan felt. I felt the most terrible guilt. For the first time in my life I wanted to put my arms round Gilda and comfort her. It would have been – or have seemed – the height of cynical hypocrisy. But it didn't change my feelings towards him. I wanted him for myself, for ever, for my husband, to be a father to Richard, for everything.
I must stop now and rest before continuing. I may not be able to do any more until tomorrow.
We all remained sitting where we were. The gin bottle was empty. After a moment or two Alan got up and went to the dining room. He came back with whisky. There was no more gin. I had never told him what to do or what not to do, I had never said to him, don't do that, don't have any more to drink, and I didn't say it then. I trusted him. I thought he knew best in every situation. If he needed another drink, he needed it, he knew best. I put my hand over my own glass. He half-filled his. We had all been chain-smoking. The two ashtrays were piled high with butts.
Gilda stopped crying. It was always like that, as if she had cried all the tears she had. Alan had never said he was sorry or that he would do his best to make things easier for her and I understood that he was offering her no more to drink because she would have to drive home. I have said I felt hope and now I was feeling almost happy, I was pleased with the way things had gone. I won't say God forgive me for feeling like that because I have been punished for it, or for something, for everything. I have been punished for twenty-four years.
It was a tremendous relief that I felt when Gilda got up and said she was going. Then she said to Alan,
‘I want you to come with me, please.’
It was as if she had forgotten all those threats, the separation, the enticement. She was taking him back with her, to forget, to start afresh.
‘I shall never speak to you again,’ she said to me, ‘that goes without saying.’
I nodded, accepting.
‘I'm not coming with you, Gilda,' Alan said. ‘I've left you. I'm with Stella now. One day I'm going to marry Stella.’
She ignored that. ‘You've drunk yourself into a stupor, haven't you?’ she said. ‘Just so that you couldn't drive.’
Perhaps he had. He persuaded her to leave. After a storm such as she had been through she was usually quite meek, he could make her do what he wanted. We had eighty cigarettes when we first arrived at the house, he and I, and eight or nine were left in the second packet. He lit one for her, gave her the rest. I could tell he had drunk too much but only by the faint slurring of his speech. He said,
‘I'm not coming now, Gilda, but I will come. I'll come to you later but Stella must come with me. I will never again be separated from Stella. Do you understand that?’
She didn't answer. It sounds absurd but we both went outside with her. We were like a married couple in our own home seeing a guest off the premises. On the doorstep, where you say a mountain ash now grows, on the doorstep which was covered with broken glass and china, she turned to me, gathered saliva in her mouth and spat. Her spittle struck me on the cheek and ran down my face.
Who am I to make a fuss? Who am I to say I hadn't deserved that? At the time it horrified me. I cried out. I shrank away from her, gasping. A fool, wasn't I? I had led too sheltered a life. What had ever happened to me but finding Charmian Fry's body? Gilda had been right when she called me innocent, when she called me ‘little thing’. Alan took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped my face. He did a strange thing, he did what my own mother used to do when I was a child, licked the handkerchief and wiped my cheek. I saw it as a symbol. How many people would you do such a thing as that for?
Gilda went to her car. I stayed where I was, my face feeling as if it had been splashed with poison, Alan's kind action no antidote. He took a few steps towards her car. She got into the driver's seat, put in the ignition key. And then, oh then, it happened, the beginning of the terror, the thing that opened the way to all the next events. Or, rather, did not happen, for Gilda's car wouldn't start. She turned the key and pressed down the accelerator, over and over, too many times, and it wouldn't start.
I don't know why. The heat? The age of the car? The battery was flat, though I didn't know that then. The car had brought her to Molucca and then, while she was inside, the battery had died.
Alan tried to start the car and failed as she had failed. I stood on the doorstep, watching. It was half past four in the afternoon. All that time we had been in the house, listening to Gilda, not defending ourselves, drinking. The hours had passed and in that time the blue sky had become overcast with smoke. Beyond the fields on the other side of the road I could see a black column of smoke streaming upwards. It was hotter than ever. Alan got out of the car.
‘It's not going to start,’ he said. �
�I'll drive you home and we'll phone someone to see to your car.’ He turned to look at me. ‘Stella comes too.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Stella comes too. You can walk, if you prefer. It's only eight miles.’
‘Put her in the back,' said Gilda. ‘I'm your wife. I go in the front.’
I said that of course I would sit in the back. It made no difference to me. That wasn't true, it did make a difference, it always had when the three of us went anywhere together, Gilda beside Alan, I in the back, but I told myself it was the last time. In future I would always sit beside him.
My mouth was dry. I went out to the kitchen and I drank some water. Vanity remains, stays alive almost to the end, and I looked at my face in the mirror, patted my hair, put on more lipstick. That word she had used to me, ‘presentable’, that rankled. We would do our daughters a service if we brought them up not to care how they looked, if we broke all the mirrors, yet I brought my daughter up to be as vain as I.
We locked up the house. I got into the back of the car and Gilda into the front, into the passenger seat, the way it always was. There were no seat-belts in those days, or rather, there were, some cars had them, but their use was not compulsory. It was more than ten years later before you had to wear a seat-belt by law.
Drunk driving wasn't looked on the way it is now. I remember Jeremy going to Sweden on business and coming back with tales of people afraid to have a single glass of wine before driving, of someone he'd met whose brother-in-law had gone to prison, or a labour camp, for driving over the limit. As far as we were concerned, we thought we were safe to drink as much as we wanted so long as we didn't have an accident. John Browning boasted that he had once driven all the way to Peterborough with one eye shut because he'd drunk so much he had double vision. It didn't worry me that Alan would be driving after drinking half a bottle of gin and some whisky as well as wine, I didn't think about it.