‘It isn’t. Believe me, it isn’t. It’s just that I feel control is slipping from me.’
‘Look,’ Frances said, ‘what are we doing eating duck and pineapple if things are so bad? Did you buy them specially for us?’
Lizzie winced at the ‘us’.
‘Of course I did—’
Frances threw the knife down.
‘Oh Lizzie. Why? Why go on as if nothing’s changed when everything has?’
‘Because I hate some of the changes. I hate them so much—’
‘Is your job really terrible?’
‘No,’ Lizzie said, pouring stock into the roasting tin for the gravy. ‘No, of course it isn’t terrible, it’s just dull and wearing and a bad anti-climax after what I’m used to. You think, don’t you, that shock is a sudden thing, a horrible fright, but once it’s over, it’s over and you slowly recover. But the trouble about our kind of shock is that there is wave after wave of it, each blow seems to be followed by another because anything to do with money seems to have such an appalling capacity for building up, when you aren’t looking. I’m sorry, I’m not being at all clear and I know I seem terribly ungrateful but I feel absolutely trapped, Frances, as if I can’t affect anything in our lives any more, and I can’t bear that because I always have affected things. I expect people who are made redundant feel like this, suddenly powerless, as if they’d become victims of some remorseless machine. It’s just awfully hard, somehow, to accept kindness, even from you. I don’t want kindness, you see, I just want to punish somebody.’
Frances dug out the horny little eyes from the remains of the pineapple skin with the point of her knife.
‘But mightn’t a holiday restore your sense of proportion, of perspective?’
‘Of course. I just feel – I just feel that if I went away I could hardly bear to come back. I feel so guilty, you see, guilty about the children, as well as being worried and angry. I couldn’t go off to Spain and leave them, not at the moment.’
‘But they aren’t worried, are they? I don’t expect they’ve even noticed.’
‘I don’t want them to notice. Mum says it’s about time they knew a bit of hardship and I just can’t stand her saying things like that. Actually, I don’t think I can stand this topic any longer. Can we talk about something else?’
‘I could talk to you about Luis,’ Frances said simply.
Lizzie turned round. Frances was sitting there at the table, slicing pineapple, her hands and face pale-golden against her gleaming shirt. Nobody, Lizzie thought, had ever considered the twins beautiful, for the very simple reason that they weren’t, couldn’t be, because they lacked that necessary classical purity of line and feature, but by God, at that moment Frances came close. Lizzie went across and put an arm around Frances’s shoulder.
‘I’m sorry to be such a killjoy and a prize cross-patch, because I really, really am pleased.’
Frances regarded her.
‘Do you like him?’
‘So far, so very good.’
Frances leaned a little and kissed Lizzie.
‘That’s all right then,’ she said contentedly. ‘He’s changed everything for me.’
‘Everything?’
‘Even the business,’ Frances said. ‘He’s finding me guides for the Spanish holidays next year. You know what headaches I’ve had with the guides for Italy, how difficult it is to find somebody good and responsible enough, who doesn’t then want so much money that the cost of the holidays goes rocketing? Well, it won’t be like that in Spain. If you want to get anything done in Spain, you have to know someone, and Luis knows everybody.’
‘Oh Frances,’ Lizzie said, laughing. ‘You have got it badly.’
‘I know. Really badly. And I don’t in the least care if I get it even worse. We’re going to see Mum and Dad after this—’
‘Heavens—’
‘Why “heavens”?’
‘Well,’ Lizzie said, abruptly losing her nerve for what she really wanted to say, which was that anyone would think Luis was a prospective son-in-law, for goodness sake, ‘it just seems a bit of an ordeal for him.’
‘He wants to meet them.’
‘Does he?’
‘Yes,’ Frances said with decision.
The outer kitchen door opened from the garden and Robert and Luis came in.
Luis said at once, ‘You have a beautiful shop.’
‘I know,’ Lizzie said, smiling at him, ‘I just wish it was a more profitable one just now.’
‘I smell something wonderful—’
‘Duck.’
‘Magnificent! I adore duck! Querida, what are you doing with that dangerous knife?’
‘Querida’ now. Heavens, what a language!’ Lizzie said quickly, ‘Rob, do find Davy, would you? I’m worried about Luis’s watch—’
‘Luis, however, is not at all worried about his watch,’ Luis said.
‘All the same,’ Robert said, opening the door to the hall, ‘we’d feel awful if anything happened to it.’
‘Frances, on the other hand, would be pleased.’
‘Yes,’ Frances said, composedly, ‘she would. There now. Shall I add these grapes?’
From the hall, Robert could be heard shouting for Davy. There was a long silence, then a door opened, letting out a blast of television, then it banged shut and slow feet came across the hall.
‘Sam was far too frightened to touch this watch,’ they heard Davy say.
‘I’m pleased to hear it.’
‘Alistair told him that if he even touched it with his baby finger he’d be landed the big one by Frances’s man—’
‘Davy,’ Rob said, ‘our guest is called Mr Moreno.’
He reappeared in the doorway with Davy in his arms. Luis was laughing.
‘Frances’s man!’
Davy went pink. He turned a little in Rob’s arms and hid his face against his father’s neck. Lizzie went over to them, putting her hand up to Davy.
‘It’s all right, darling, you couldn’t know, look, Mr Moreno doesn’t mind a bit—’
‘No, he certainly doesn’t,’ Luis said.
‘Darling,’ Lizzie said coaxingly, her hand on Davy’s ruffled hair. He turned his head and looked down at her gravely, and at that moment Frances glanced up and saw the three of them there, Rob holding his son, Lizzie reaching up to him, their three faces tender and united. A pang shot through her, a nameless, powerful pang. She opened her mouth to say. You look like a painting of the Holy Family, and shut it again. It suddenly seemed too absolutely true to be uttered.
Luis was by her side at once, pulling out another kitchen chair from the table and sitting down.
‘Come,’ he said to Davy, ‘come and let me show you how the watch will tell you what time it is in Australia.’
Robert set Davy gently on the floor. Davy hesitated, pressed against Robert’s thigh.
‘Come,’ Luis said. ‘We are friends, Davy?’
With infinite slowness, Davy sidled round the table and stopped, three feet away.
‘But I cannot see the watch from there. I am so old now, Davy, that I have to have things close to my face to see them at all. You must help.’
Gradually, Davy inched forward.
‘Which arm did we put the watch on?’
Stiffly, like a soldier, Davy thrust out his right arm. Luis took his hand.
‘Come a bit closer.’
Davy came.
‘Closer still. This dial is so small. Look now. I press this and we look in this tiny window and we see the places in the world. Are you a good reader, Davy?’
‘Quite,’ Davy muttered, torn between ambition and honesty.
‘Can you see that A there?’
‘Alistair has A—’
‘So does Australia.’
Davy bent close to the watch, and, as he did so, Luis put an arm around him.
‘Now press this.’
Davy pressed.
‘Look what you have done, you have made numbers! Can y
ou read numbers?’
Davy looked up at him. Their faces were inches apart.
‘I can do up to five,’ Davy said confidently.
‘You are a clever boy, then.’
Davy watched him for a few seconds, then bent again over the watch.
‘A clever, charming boy,’ Luis said, and over Davy’s head, he looked across at Frances. She was looking back at him, he thought, as if she had seen a vision.
13
‘IT’S PREPOSTEROUS,’ BARBARA said.
‘You said that’, William reminded her, ‘when you were told you were pregnant with twins. You also said—’
‘The whole thing is absurd,’ Barbara said. She was wiping the table with a damp cloth and William wasn’t even half-way through breakfast. She often did this now, picking up bowls and jars and wiping pointlessly underneath them in the middle of meals. It was a maddening habit. William seized the marmalade and held it against his chest possessively.
‘But you liked him.’
‘Oh,’ Barbara said crossly. ‘Of course I liked him, he was a perfectly nice, civil man. That isn’t the point. Put the marmalade down or your jersey will get sticky.’
‘No it won’t,’ William said. ‘The marmalade is inside the jar. You said you had never seen Frances look better and that Luis was a nice man.’
‘But he’s foreign.’
‘Everybody’, William said patiently, ‘is foreign to anybody else who isn’t of the same nationality. Please leave the toast, I want some more.’
‘Mixed marriages—’
‘Barbara!’ William shouted.
‘Don’t shout.’
‘They aren’t getting married!’ William shouted, taking no notice. ‘Luis is married! They are having a love affair!’
‘And you, of course, would know about such things,’ Barbara said, taking the butter away in revenge.
‘Frances has had several love affairs,’ William said, ignoring her and spreading marmalade thickly on his toast to compensate for the lack of butter. ‘They’ve none of them been very serious and I think this is the most serious one so far. That’s all.’
Barbara put the butter in the fridge and slammed the door shut so hard that all the bottles inside clattered nervously together. Then she stood there, with her back to William.
‘Barbara?’
She didn’t say anything. She simply stood there, visibly tense, staring at the wall above the fridge where a regrettably soppy calendar hung, the well-intentioned Christmas calendar sent by their local garage. William waited for half a minute, politely, then he bit into his toast.
‘It’s not that,’ Barbara burst out.
‘It’s not what?’ William said, crunching.
She turned round. She was fighting to look normal. All her life, she had striven to prevent any emotion – except temper, William often thought – appearing on her face.
‘It’s not that I disapprove of Frances having a love affair. And I don’t really mind about his being foreign—’
‘Oh good.’
‘But she’s in love this time.’
William stared.
‘What?’
‘She’s really in love. Properly. Deeply.’
‘So?’
‘He’s married,’ Barbara said.
‘Yes, I know—’
‘So she’ll be hurt,’ Barbara said.
William put his toast down.
‘I don’t see—’
‘No, of course you don’t see, you never see, you are the original Mr Have-his-cake-and-eat-it, so I wouldn’t even cherish the faintest hope that you might see. But Frances is in love with a married Catholic foreigner so it is bound, absolutely bound, to end in tears, most of which will be shed by Frances.’
William picked up his toast again. His hand shook a little and a blob of marmalade fell on to the gentle front curve of his jersey.
‘Why can’t you let her be happy in peace? Even if there may be problems ahead, there aren’t problems now. Why can’t you just rejoice for her instead of cawing round her like some malevolent old rook of a Cassandra?’
‘You have marmalade on your jersey,’ Barbara said. ‘I knew you would.’
‘Shut up!’ William yelled. He hurled his toast across the kitchen and watched it land face down in a basket of ironing.
‘Men,’ Barbara said, witheringly. ‘Hopeless romantics, useless realists. What is the point of rejoicing idiotically over something that is doomed to disaster? Luckily, I don’t share your taste for romantic sentimentality.’
William bent his head. He reflected, and not for the first time, that it was a great pity he suffered from a middle-class male reluctance to thump his wife.
‘Don’t think I don’t love Frances,’ Barbara said. ‘And don’t think I don’t understand her either. It’s because I love and understand her that I’m not going to join in this ridiculous game of pretending she’s found a solid emotional future when that’s the last thing she’s done. Now I am going to make our bed and I shall leave you to sort out the childish mess you have made in the ironing.’
She went out, closing the door in what William’s mother would have called a marked manner, and William heard her feet going heavily and steadily up the stairs. They crossed the landing and entered the main bedroom and were then drowned by the incomprehensible quacking of the distant radio which Barbara switched on, as she always did, at anti-social volume.
William got up and went to the sink and scrubbed at his jersey with a damp cloth. He looked out of the window. It gave on to exactly the same view as it had given on to nearly forty years before when Barbara told him she was going to have twins, the same pleasant, unremarkable fields, the same hedgerows, even the same row of black poplars with their scarred sturdy trunks and their magnificent crimson catkins in spring. The only thing that had changed was that the farm beyond the fields had put up a hideous silage silo and even uglier Dutch barn, painted bright, hard, unnatural green and now blotched with huge brilliant patches of rust.
William held the edge of the sink. Perhaps he was romantic, perhaps he did feel that whatever happened in the future would be worth it because of how Frances felt now, looked now. Perhaps he did feel, with an instinct that had nothing to do with reason – and he had never, after all, had much respect for reason as a creed for living by – that nothing lovely was ever, somehow, wasted, even if it came to an end. Yet of course Barbara, however bloody, was in some ways right to feel chill apprehensions even in the midst of current joy. She was also, however strangely she often expressed it, the twins’ mother and therefore bound to feel a kind of protectiveness, even if it did emerge in a weird and strangulated form. It was a wonder, really, that Barbara was taking Frances’s present happiness at all seriously, and wasn’t simply snorting with contempt that anyone, anywhere, in their right minds, could find the mere notion of romantic love anything other than utterly ridiculous.
William gave an enormous sigh and turned away from the window. Poor twins, poor little twins, both now in their various ways so beleaguered, Lizzie by present problems, Frances by the looming threat of future ones, even if she didn’t yet perceive them. He remembered how he once used to think, during the twins’ turbulent babyhood, that nobody would embark on parenthood if they knew the relentless exhaustion it was going to involve. What a naive view, he now thought, what inexperience! Looking back, those early years were actually the golden years of parenthood, for the simple reason, William told himself, that it had still then lain within his power to make his children happy.
He crossed the kitchen and looked into the ironing basket. The toast lay on a pair of his chainstore pyjamas, pale-blue cotton piped in darker blue, neatly ironed. He decided, after staring at it for a few minutes, simply to leave it there.
The new bank manager in Langworth was youngish, with a narrow face, short hair and the kind of ubiquitous sober suit that everybody seemed to be wearing for work nowadays if they weren’t looking after either cows or cars.
&nbs
p; He said to Robert, ‘I am glad, Mr Middleton, to have this opportunity of meeting with you.’
Why the ‘with’, Robert wondered. Did it signify something different from just meeting someone? Anyway, it wasn’t a meeting, it was a summons.
‘You asked me to call.’
‘Indeed I did. I believe my letter was addressed to both you and Mrs Middleton. I rather expected—’
‘Mrs Middleton, as I told your secretary, is working during the weekdays of termtime at Westondale School in Bath.’
The bank manager raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips.
‘Was I informed of this?’
‘Why should you have been?’
‘In your present position,’ said the bank manager, in a tone that implied that Robert’s indebtedness was some kind of criminal offence, ‘it is necessary to inform us of everything.’
Robert opened his mouth to say, Do not speak to me like that! and shut it again. What would be gained, after all, but a brief, delicious surge of adrenalin followed by the necessity of having to apologize, thereby giving the enemy the upper hand. Robert looked at the manager’s reddish hair and pale, almost lashless eyes, and skin that still bore the scars of adolescent acne. He not only looked like the enemy; he looked as if he liked looking like the enemy.
‘Please sit down, Mr Middleton.’
Robert obeyed, reluctantly, and chose a chair upholstered in charcoal-grey tweed. The bank manager sat down behind his own desk and folded his hands on a fat file that presumably contained the Middletons’ records.
‘I am afraid, Mr Middleton, that I cannot tolerate this situation any longer.’
‘How dare you use the word “tolerate”?’ Robert shouted, forgetting his resolve. ‘How dare you? You banks are a service, let me remind you, a bloody expensive service, not some kind of moral committee sitting in judgement on erring customers!’
The bank manager looked down at his clasped hands in pained silence as if waiting for an unpleasant smell in the air to evaporate.
‘My loans committee, Mr Middleton, my loans committee at the regional head office in Bath, have made it a requirement that you put in hand immediate measures to repay the bulk of the present outstanding loan. It was granted, if you remember, on the understanding that a substantial reduction would be made within a period of nine months. Those nine months are up, and the loan has not been reduced by any significant degree. The bank is anxious, Mr Middleton, that the loan may harden.’
A Spanish Lover Page 19