“Oh, Oliver, it’s not that. It’s that you have to be sensible.”
“All right, I’ll be sensible. Look, I’ve got on my most sensible expression.” Victoria refused even to smile at him. “Oh, come along. Don’t be angry. I wouldn’t have come if I’d thought it would make you angry.”
“I don’t know why you did come.”
“Because I thought of you as being exactly the right sort of person who’d help me. I thought of you, and I thought of telephoning first, but then I imagined some stranger—or worse, some stiff-necked husband—answering the call. And then what was I going to say? This is Oliver Dobbs, the well-known author and playwright, speaking. I have a baby I’d like your wife to look after. Wouldn’t that have gone down a treat?”
“What would you have done if I hadn’t been here?”
“I don’t know. I’d have thought of something. But I wouldn’t have taken Tom back to the Archers.”
“You may have to. You can’t take care of him…”
Oliver interrupted her, as though she had never started to speak. “Look, I have a plan. Like I said, the Archers haven’t got a leg to stand on, but still there’s the chance that they’ll try to make trouble. I think we should get out of London. Go away for a little. There’s this play of mine coming off in Bristol, but as far as that’s concerned I’ve done all I can do. The first night’s on Monday, and after that it’s at the mercy of the critics and the general public. So let’s go away. You and me and Tom. Let’s just take off. We’ll go to Wales or the north of Scotland, or down to Cornwall and watch the spring coming. We’ll.…”
Victoria gazed at him in total disbelief. She was shocked, outraged, indignant. Did he imagine—did he really imagine—that she had so little pride? Had he never truly known how much he had hurt her? Three years ago Oliver Dobbs had walked out of her life, shattering everything, and leaving her alone to put the pieces together as best she might. But now he decided that he needed her once more, simply to look after his child. And so here he sat, already making plans, trying to seduce her with words, believing that it was only a matter of time before he wore down her resistance.
“… no tourists, empty roads. We won’t even have to book in at hotels, they’ll all be longing for business, desperate to have us…” He went on, hatching plans, leading Victoria on to images of blue seas and fields of yellow daffodils; of carefree escape, and winding country lanes. And she listened, marveling at his selfishness. He had helped himself to his son. He wanted, for the time being, to keep his son. He needed someone to take care of his son. And so, Victoria. It was as simple as an elementary mathematical formula.
He stopped at last. His face was alight with enthusiasm, as though he could not envisage any objection to this delightful project. After a little, Victoria said, because she really wanted to know, “Out of interest, what made you think of me?”
“I suppose because you’re the sort of person that you are.”
“You mean, stupid?”
“No, not stupid.”
“Forgiving, then?”
“You could never be unforgiving. You wouldn’t know how. Besides, it was a good time we had together. It wasn’t a bad time. And you’re pleased to see me again. You have to be, otherwise you’d never have let me into your house.”
“Oliver, some bruises don’t necessarily show.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“For my sins, I loved you. You knew that.”
“But you see,” he reminded her carefully, “I didn’t love anybody. And you knew that.”
“Except yourself.”
“Perhaps. And what I was trying to do.”
“I don’t want to be hurt again. I’m not going to be hurt again.”
A smile touched his mouth. “You sound very determined.”
“I’m not coming with you.”
He did not reply, but his eyes, pale and unblinking, never left her face. Outside, the wind rattled a window pane. A car started up. A girl’s voice called some person’s name. Perhaps she was going to a party. From far off came the distant hum of London traffic.
He said, “You can’t spend the rest of your life avoiding being hurt. If you do that, then you turn your back on any sort of relationship.”
“Just say that I don’t want to be hurt by you. You’re too good at it.”
“Is that the only reason that you won’t come with us?”
“I think it’s enough of a reason, but there are other things as well. Practical considerations. For one thing, I have a job…”
“Selling clothes to idiotic females. Ring up and make some excuse. Say your grandmother’s died. Say you’ve suddenly had a baby … now that would be nearly true! Send in your resignation. I’m a rich man now. I’ll take care of you.”
“You’ve said that before. A long time ago. But you didn’t.”
“What a prodigious memory you have.”
“Some things really can’t be forgotten.” From the mantelpiece her little clock chimed. It was eleven o’clock. Victoria stood up and put her empty glass beside the clock, and as she did so, she saw his reflection, watching her through the looking glass which hung on the wall behind it.
He said, “Are you afraid? Is that what it is?”
“Yes.”
“Of me, or of yourself?”
“Both of us.” She turned from the mirror. “Let’s go and have some supper.”
It was nearly midnight by the time they finished the makeshift meal, and Victoria was suddenly so tired that she had not even the energy to collect the plates and the empty glasses and wash them up. Oliver was pouring the last of the wine into his glass and reaching for another cigarette, apparently settled for the night, but Victoria stood up, pushing back her chair, and said, “I’m going to bed.”
He looked mildly surprised. “That’s very unsocial of you.”
“I can’t help it if it’s unsocial. If I don’t go to bed I’ll fall asleep on my feet.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t want you to do anything.”
“I mean,” he spoke patiently, as though she were being immensely unreasonable, “do you want me to go back to Fulham? Do you want me to spend the night in my car? Do you want me to wake Thomas up and bear him off into the night, never to darken your door again? You only have to say.”
“You can’t take Thomas. He’s sleeping.”
“Then I’ll go back to Fulham and leave him here with you.”
“You can’t do that either. He might wake up in the middle of the night and be frightened.”
“In that case I’ll stay here.” He assumed the expression of a man prepared to be accommodating, at whatever cost to himself. “Where would you like me to sleep? On the sofa? On top of some chest of drawers? On the floor outside your bedroom door, like an old dog, or a faithful slave?”
She refused to rise to his teasing. “There’s a divan in the dressing room,” she told him. “The room’s full of suitcases and my mother’s London clothes, but the bed’s longer than the sofa. I’ll go and make it up…”
She left him, with his cigarette and his glass of wine and the chaos of unwashed dishes. In the tiny slip of a dressing room, she found blankets and a pillow. She removed dress boxes and a pile of clothes from the divan and made it up with clean sheets. The room smelled stuffy and rather mothbally (her mother’s fur coat?) so she opened the window wide, and the curtains stirred in the cold damp air which blew in from the darkness beyond.
From the kitchen now came sounds as if Oliver had decided to stack the supper plates, or possibly wash them. Victoria was surprised, because domesticity had never been his strong suit, but she was touched as well, and tired as she was, knew an impulse to go and help him. But if she went to help him, they would only start talking again. And if they started talking, then Oliver would start, all over again, trying to persuade her to go away with him and Thomas. So she left him to it, and went into her bedroom. Here, only a small lamp b
urned on the dressing table. On one side of the double bed, Thomas slumbered, one arm outflung, his mouth plugged by his thumb. She had taken off everything except his vest and pants, and folded clothes lay on a chair, his small shoes and socks on the floor beneath it. She stooped to lift him out of the bed. His weight was warm and soft in her arms. She carried him to the bathroom and somehow persuaded him to use the lavatory again. He scarcely woke: his head lolled, his thumb stayed determinedly in his mouth. She put him back into the bed, and he sighed contentedly and slept once more. She prayed that he would sleep until morning.
She straightened up, and listened. It seemed that Oliver had decided that he had had enough of the supper dishes, and he had returned to the living room, where he had started telephoning. Only Oliver would start telephoning at midnight. Victoria undressed, brushed her hair, put on her nightdress and cautiously slipped into the other side of the bed. Tom never stirred. She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling, and then closed her eyes, waiting for sleep. But sleep would not come. Her brain whirled with images of Oliver, with memories, with a sort of throbbing excitement which maddened her because it was the last thing in the world that she wanted to feel. Finally, in desperation, she opened her eyes again, and reached for a book, intending to read herself to calmness and so to unconsciousness.
From the next room, the telephoning stopped, and the television was switched on. But most of the programs had finished by now anyway, and eventually Oliver apparently decided to call it a day. She heard him moving about, switching off lights. She heard him go to the bathroom. She lay down her book. His footsteps crossed the little landing, and stopped outside her door. The handle turned. The door opened. His tall figure appeared, silhouetted against the bright light beyond.
He said, “Not asleep?”
“Not yet,” said Victoria.
They spoke softly, so as not to disturb the sleeping child. Oliver, leaving the door open, crossed the floor and came to sit on the edge of the bed.
“Just a guy. Nothing important.”
“I made up the bed for you.”
“I know. I saw.”
But he made no move to go. “What will you do tomorrow?” she asked him. “With Thomas?”
He smiled. He said, “I’ll decide tomorrow.” He touched her book. “What are you reading?”
It was a paperback. Victoria held it up for him to see the front cover. She said, “It’s one of those books that you read over and over again. About once a year, I take it out, and it’s like being with an old friend.”
Oliver read the title aloud. “The Eagle Years.”
“Have you read it?”
“Perhaps.”
“It’s by this man called Roddy Dunbeath and it’s all about being a little boy in Scotland between the wars. I mean, it’s sort of autobiography. And he and his brothers were brought up in this beautiful house called Benchoile.”
Oliver had laid his hand over her wrist. His palm was warm, his fingers strong, but the caress very gentle.
“It was in Sutherland, somewhere. With mountains all around and their own private loch. And he had a falcon that used to come and take food out of his mouth…”
His hand began to move up her bare arm, pressing the flesh beneath his touch, as though he were massaging life back into some limb which had been paralyzed for years.
“… and a pet duck and a dog called Bertie that liked eating apples.”
“I like eating apples,” said Oliver. He lifted a long strand of hair away from her neck and laid it on the pillow. She could feel the solid, throbbing beat of her own heart. Her skin, where he had touched her, felt as though it were standing on tip toe. She went on talking, desperately, trying to control these alarming physical manifestations with the sound of her own voice.
“… and there was a place with a waterfall, where they used to go for picnics. And there was a stream running across the beach, and the hills were filled with deer. He says that the waterfall was the heart of Benchoile…”
Oliver leaned down and kissed her mouth and the flow of words was mercifully stopped. She knew that he hadn’t been listening anyway. Now, he drew aside the blankets which covered her, and slid his arms beneath her back, and his lips moved away from her mouth and across her cheek and into the warm hollow of her neck.
“Oliver.” She said his name, but her voice made no sound. His going had left her frozen, but now the weight and the warmth of his body warmed her own, melting resolution, and stirring to life long-forgotten instincts. She thought, oh, no, and laid her hands against his shoulders and tried to push him away, but he was a thousand times stronger than Victoria and the puny resistance was pathetic, pointless as trying to topple some immense tree.
“Oliver. No.”
She might not have spoken aloud. He simply continued his gentle love-making, and after a little, her hands, as though of their own volition, slid away from his shoulders, under his jacket, around his back. He smelled clean, of clothes dried in the open air. She felt the thin cotton of his shirt, the rib cage, the hard muscles beneath his skin. She heard him say, “You’ve stopped pretending.”
The last shred of common sense made her say, “But Oliver, Thomas…”
She sensed his amusement, his silent laughter. He drew away from her and stood up, towering over her. “That can easily be arranged,” he told her, and he stooped and lifted her up into his arms as easily and lightly as he had carried his son. She felt weightless, dizzy, as the walls of her bedroom spun and slid away and he bore her through the open door, across the bright landing, and into the airy darkness of the little dressing room. It still smelled of camphor, and the bed on which he placed her was hard and narrow, but the curtains stirred in the soft wind, and the starched linen of the pillow lay cool beneath her neck.
She said, looking up into the shadowed blur that was his face, “I never meant this to happen.”
“I did,” said Oliver, and she knew that she should be angry, but by then it was too late. Because by then she wanted it to happen anyway.
Much later—she knew it was much later, because she had heard the clock in the sitting room strike two with its silvery chimes—Oliver hoisted himself up onto one elbow and leaned over Victoria in order to grope for his jacket and take his cigarettes and lighter from the pocket. The flame illuminated the tiny room for a second, and there came the gentle darkness again and the glow of the cigarette tip.
She lay in the curve of his arm, her head pillowed on his naked shoulder.
He said, “Do you want to make plans?”
“What sort of plans?”
“Plans for what we’re going to do. You and me and Thomas.”
“Am I coming with you?”
“Yes.”
“Have I said I’m coming with you?”
He laughed. He kissed her. “Yes,” he said.
“I don’t want to be hurt again.”
“You mustn’t be so afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just the prospect of a holiday, an escape. Lots of laughter. Lots of love.”
Victoria did not reply. There was nothing to say, and her thoughts were so confused that there was nothing much to think, either. She only knew that for the first time since he had left her, she felt safe again, and at peace. And she only knew that tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, she was going away with Oliver. Once more, she was committed. For better or for worse, but maybe it would work this time. Maybe he had changed. Things would be different. And perhaps, if he felt so strongly about Thomas, he would feel strongly about other things. Permanent things. Like loving one person and staying with her forever. But whatever happened, the die had been cast. Victoria had passed the point of no return.
She sighed deeply, but the sigh was prompted by confusion rather than unhappiness. “Where shall we go?” she asked Oliver.
“Anywhere you like. Is there an ashtray in this benighted cupboard of a room?”
Victoria reached out and groped for the one she knew lay on the bedside table, and hande
d it to him.
He went on, “What was the name of that place you were babbling about, when you were so patently anxious not to be made love to? The place in the book, The Eagle Years?”
“Benchoile.”
“Would you like to go there?”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not a hotel. We don’t know the people who live there.”
“I do, my darling innocent.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know Roddy Dunbeath. I met him about two years ago. Sat next to him at one of those dismal television award dinners. He was there on account of his last book, and I was there because I was given some piddling little statue for a television script I wrote about Seville. Anyway, there we were, surrounded by moronic starlets and shark-like agents, and thankful for each other’s company. By the end of the evening we were friends for life, and he gave me a standing invitation to visit him at Benchoile whenever the spirit moved me. So far I haven’t taken it up, but if you want to go there, there’s no reason on earth why we shouldn’t.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“Of course I do.”
“Are you certain it wasn’t just one of those things people say at the end of a good evening and then forget about, or even regret for the rest of their lives?”
“Not at all. He meant it. Even gave me his card in a rather old-fashioned way. I can find out the telephone number and ring him up.”
“Will he remember you?”
“Of course he’ll remember me. And I shall tell him that I and my wife and my child want to come and spend a few days with him.”
“It sounds like an awful lot of people. And I’m not your wife.”
“Then I shall say my mistress and my child. He’ll jump at that. He’s rather Rabelasian. You’ll love him. He’s very fat, and extremely, politely drunk. At least, he was by the end of that dinner. But Roddy Dunbeath, drunk, is ten times more charming than most men are stone cold sober.”
“It’ll take us a long time to drive to Sutherland.”
“We’ll take it in stages. Anyway, we have a long time.”
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