Voices sounded from the pool terrace; it was Jane, angry, and her fat friend, alarmed. He followed the sound, projecting himself into the role of the work-weary but still caring partner as he went.
To shelter the pool from wind, Tamara Aylesham had decreed that it should be situated downhill from the house, with the natural arms of limestone rock on each side artificially extended by boulders so that the water appeared half-encircled in a natural basin. As he followed the shallow steps down towards the water, Michael saw that Emma had scrambled out on to one of these man-made cliffs and was threatening to hurl herself twenty feet down into the pool.
‘Emma, you must get down!’ Jane called helplessly.
‘Don’t be stupid, Em, that’s the shallow end.’ Debbie was occupied with the toddler.
‘I’m coming down, I’m going to dive. Watch me, everybody!’ Emma had scared herself, her eyes were huge and her thin limbs shaking, but she swayed determinedly back and forth over the water.
‘No!’ Jane nearly screamed. ‘It’s too shallow there, you’ll hurt yourself.’
‘Jump, don’t dive!’ called Louisa.
‘Don’t be stupid, Em, come down. Quit showing off.’
‘Daddy! Daddy! Watch me dive, Daddy! Watch me!’ At the sight of her father, the child became almost incoherent with excitement.
‘Emma! Emma! Get down from there this …’
It was too late. Skinny limbs flailing, Emma hurled herself off the rock and fell into the water, hitting it with a smack. Jane screamed. The impact sent splashes over the entire terrace and a wave of water washed up the pool and hit the far end. In the midst of this tumult, Emma rose to the surface, red-faced and spluttering, demanding, ‘Did you see me? Did you see my dive? Daddy, did you see me?’
Debbie pulled the child from the water and tried to wrap her in a towel, but she was too bent on capturing Michael’s attention and refused to be held. As Michael approached she ran and jumped at him like a monkey, leaving wet marks all over his grey suit. Laughing, he caught her by the arms and swung her around him until he could safely redeliver her to the nanny’s arms.
‘Wasn’t it brilliant, Daddy?’ she demanded, finally accepting the towel. The front of her body was red from the impact of the water.
‘Thrilling, darling.’ He caught Jane’s sulphurous eye. ‘Too thrilling. Don’t let me ever see you doing that again, it’s extremely dangerous. Next time you want to show me a dive I’d like to see a proper racing dive from the side and hold your breath until you touch the far end.’
‘Oh, pooh. That’s boring.’ Emma kicked his leg in annoyance and sulked away to the far end of the pool. Michael kissed Jane, kissed Louisa and shook hands with Antony. All three now in pale summer linens, they made an attractive group under the white sun umbrella. He accepted a glass of cold, aromatic Tursan wine before taking the seat left for him. Xanthe trailed hesitantly forward and he pulled her on to his lap; for all Jane had sprung this last one on him, she was a child to be proud of, at least, a little Joshua Reynolds cherub.
Louisa was observing Michael intensely, no doubt hoping to find the stigmata of infidelity as they had been described to her. Jane saw it and smiled to herself, telling over the signs, the guilty edge of excess in his laughter, the dimension of conscientious application in the way he allowed the girls to climb on him and make his clothes wet. Most infuriating to her was the element of display in the way he was sitting among them creating the impression that this affectionate scene was a normal daily occurrence. Normal it might be, but it occurred perhaps twice a year, and there was nothing authentic about it.
And one more thing, which Louisa would never detect because Jane felt it inside herself: her loneliness. She had felt alone for years, but mostly at a level she could tolerate; this black, howling desolation was an instinctive reaction which only came over her when Michael’s body was there and his heart was with another woman.
‘Many happy returns for tomorrow.’ Louisa raised her glass to him, cocking her head on one side.
‘Oh, please – at my time of life birthdays are best forgotten.’
‘Don’t say that when we’ve been cooking all day.’ She pouted. ‘I thought you had a party every year.’
‘We do.’ ‘We always do.’ Embarrassingly, Jane and Michael spoke together.
Antony had a good instinct for social lubrication. ‘Such a generous thing to do, marvellous for all your friends around here.’
‘That’s kind, Antony. I just did it once and it seemed to work.’ Jane was looking out across the golden fields, an expression of tranquil irony on her face.
‘It was a plot to get me out of the office.’ Nobody could head off criticism at the pass quicker than Michael. Knowing he spoke the truth, he reached for Jane’s hand.
‘So I did it again and then we found that people had come to expect it.’
‘Shall I take Xanthe in for her tea, Jane?’ Debbie had been moving unobtrusively around, collecting scattered toys and clothes.
‘I think all the children can have tea …’
‘No!’ Emma shrieked. She had pointed incisors and for an instant looked as if she really intended to bite the nanny’s hand. ‘I want to eat with Daddy!’
‘Darling, you’re very tired …’
‘I’m not!’
Jane was too weary to argue. ‘All right, but put some clothes on because you know the eczema gets worse if you catch a chill.’ The child slunk after her sister, scowling. ‘I’m sorry, she gets so hyper when Michael arrives …’
The other three had continued their conversation almost unchecked. Michael was saying, ‘I should explain, we don’t entertain at home very much.’
‘You don’t entertain. I do.’ Jane folded her soft lips over the rim of her glass and sipped, still declining to look at her husband.
‘But that’s your professional commitment, isn’t it?’
‘Is it? I do like to see my friends, you know.’ She drank again, enjoying the fact that the topic was difficult for him, that he was inept at faking the affectionate banter of a genuine couple. He had jestingly spoken the truth; as far as she was concerned, the success of that first birthday party was that it had obliged him to attend. She had conceived it in desperation hoping only to secure his attention for a day – by then she had lost all hope of what she really wanted from him, which was anything she could recognize as an expression of love.
The birthday party was the only victory she could claim in the entire marriage, the only occasion – apart from Christmas, and even Christmas had occasionally been in danger – for which he could not find any excuse to be away.
‘I’m no good to a hostess.’ Shamelessly, he was trying to entertain her friends with the fact. ‘No man in the media can be. You have to respond to stories as they’re breaking…’
‘But of course, as your guests, we’d expect that.’ Antony was reaching for the bottle to refill glasses. At this, he was proficient and effective. ‘Just as if you go to dinner with a surgeon, you expect him to be on call to his patients.’
‘One year I’m sure we’ll have to carry on without Michael.’ Jane allowed Antony to refill her glass, now aware that Louisa was watching her with reproach. ‘Media men aren’t much use to wives and mothers either, are they?’
‘For the same reason, I suppose? Louisa – a splash more?’
Marvellous the way men supported each other, even men who were strangers and had nothing in common but their balls. Jane kept her tone light and asked, ‘Where were you when the children were born, darling – Sam was Eritrea, wasn’t he? And for Xanthe it was New York.’
‘I made it for Emma, though.’ The child returned in shorts and a sweatshirt, and leaned against his knee, fidgeting as she started to itch. Awkwardly, he patted her thigh. Emma stood up straight, picked a biscuit from the bowl of snacks and ran away towards the house.
‘You did not. You were still in the edit suite when she was born.’
‘But they hadn’t cut the cord
by the time I got there.’
‘Only because they’d run out of clamps.’ Jane’s expression was now sour and the softness was running out of her voice. Antony, feeling awkward, brushed imaginary cigarette ash from his linen slacks.
Satisfied that she had screwed the emotional pitch of the evening a little higher, Louisa tossed her rusty curls and changed the subject. ‘So you’re expecting fifty people tomorrow?’
‘It’s not a big thing.’ Almost falling over his own words, so grateful was Michael for the escape. ‘I’m fortunate that some of my old friends have got places not too far away … my finance director, Stewart Molfetto, quite a young man, and his wife, a lawyer in her own right…’
‘And Graham Moynihan, who was Michael’s partner when they started NewsConnect.’ Jane knew that Michael now tolerated the Moynihans principally to prove his own loyalty to old friends. ‘His children are about the same age as Imogen. They have a house about two miles away.’ She thought of Andrea, Graham’s wife, three hundred pounds if she was an ounce. Such blatant contentment they had in each other, but Graham was not like Michael, none of the charismatic carnivore about him, bearded, rotund, contemplative, serving the unfashionable god of film documentary. He had quietly peeled away to academia.
‘Morris Donaldson, another old friend …’ Antony knew him and said so; a keen viewer of political television, Antony. Louisa knew Morris, but said nothing; some years ago, during the infancy of his younger child, they had shared a few eventful beds. ‘And then Alan Stern. They’ve got a huge place up at Villeneuve.’ Stern last, named with respect in his voice; respect for the wealth, scrupulously purged of all traces of envy.
‘Alan Stern of Altmark? The man who’s taking you over?’ A keen collector of millionaires, Louisa – even tacky technocrats like Stern.
‘That’s the one.’ Her eyebrows remained raised in enquiry. ‘The group has a telecommunications research company, I’m one of the directors. It’s not a hostile takeover. We need each other. For some time our two operations have had quite a relationship. Their research is taking Altmark towards three new satellites by the end of the decade, and I want NewsConnect’s name on one of them.’ He was holding back. Stern had the ability to drain his confidence. He was obviously a bigger man but Michael feared he might also be a better man. With his Calvinist corporate philosophy and ruthless control, he had built Altmark from nothing. Twenty years ago, all Stern had was a handful of chemical companies and a bankrupt African television studio.
‘Uh-huh.’ Louisa fluffed her curls to indicate thought. ‘I’d have thought they were more the Riviera type.’
‘They are. Actually Berenice is the Saint-Paul-de-Vence type. They have a villa there too.’ Jane could see Berenice Stern now, stalking over the grass in high-heeled sandals and gold-buckled cruisewear, lolling back with her desiccated bosoms squeezed half out of a bustier, saying, ‘Alan can’t afford to divorce me, I know where too many bodies are buried.’
‘And then Jane always likes to have houseguests,’ Michael concluded, as if this was something which evened their score. Then he got up and walked behind Jane’s chair and stroked her shoulders and down her arms where they were bare outside her sleeveless shirt. She had a preference for boyish clothes which irritated him.
‘What a party; I’m so looking forward to it.’ Louisa stretched luxuriously, thrusting her breasts skywards. ‘And a heavenly evening.’
Michael pulled Jane’s hair aside and kissed the back of her neck. Her guts shrivelled at the touch. Please God don’t make him feel he has to fuck me tonight. She muttered something about dinner and got up to head for the kitchen. There was a splash as she reached the house. Louisa had pulled off her white linen dress and dived into the pool. She was absolutely naked. Antony poured more wine for Michael.
Drinking was another arena in which Michael was an amateur, but he was hurting in more and more places. His guilt was brewing hard, relaxation was irritating, the slights of the journey would not be forgotten. Antony held no interest for him, but was treacherously adept at filling his glass. Under cover of taking his bag upstairs he telephoned Serena again and got no answer.
He identified another source of unease. Jane was behaving strangely. Her mood was impossible to read. Sometimes she approached him with open affection; when she was suspicious or hurt she sank into a resentful docility, Tonight her manner was oddly elated, and above all evasive. She must be feeling that she had something on him. Michael was not very much concerned. His wife had so little leverage in his life that the idea of her trying to wield any advantage was faintly ridiculous. Nevertheless, instinct told him that Jane was keeping a secret.
‘Come out for a walk.’
‘What for?’ Imogen was flinging herself back and forth across the room like a caged tiger, picking things up and putting them down, abusing her father, half-smoking cigarettes, glaring out of the window, throwing off Stephen’s hand if he tried to touch her.
‘It’ll be dark soon. I know you live here, but I don’t. We can walk along the river.’
‘I don’t want to walk along the fucking river.’
It was not beyond her to disappear if he went alone. ‘Up to the corner then. You’re out of milk and we can get bread or something.’
‘Yeah, Keith, we can, that’s right.’ She stood still to light a cigarette. It was her last. ‘OK. But I’m not going to that poxy place on the corner. I found this new Italian deli the other side of Saint Germain.’
As he hoped, the walk calmed her. She mistook the route and muddled through the narrow streets until the Seine embankment appeared inevitably ahead. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘who’s really being manipulative here? Who’s the one who always gets his way?’
The bustling crowds had vanished; the traffic was heavy with Saturday shoppers heading home, but they had the narrow pavement to themselves. Grey mist blotted out the sky and an unseasonably cold wind funnelled down the river flapped the wares of the few print-sellers who were still closing up. Rain was not impossible. It was later than they had imagined but when they did at last arrive at their destination, a cobbled arcade of smartly painted shopfronts, the Italian grocer was still open, manned by a whole family who burrowed among shelves stacked to the ceiling, dispensing home-made pasta and sauces, marinated salads and almond cakes.
The rain began as they left, great lashing sheets of it gusting across the river and splashing on the pavements. She had her mad moments with rain, times when she insisted they get wet to the skin for the hell of it, but this was not one of them. They took shelter in a café. ‘This isn’t really rain, though, is it?’ She watched the drops falling from the awning. ‘We know all about rain after last summer, don’t we? We know a lot of things, really, considering we’re not very old yet.’
The window quickly misted with condensation. Last summer they had travelled together, thousands of miles from Argentina to the Canadian border. It had not been his original purpose to take Imogen to find her mother; one event after another had drawn them towards her, then compelled them to the point where the meeting became inevitable.
‘I know you set that up, you know.’ She was mixing in the creamy scum on her black coffee, making spiral patterns. ‘Trekking off to find my mother.’
‘You’re wrong,’ he told her. ‘It just happened.’
‘Yeah. Like we just happened to be passing within a thousand miles or so, so we dropped in.’
‘Isn’t that how it was?’
‘I suppose. I reckon you planned it, all the same. You always liked her pictures.’
The first manifestation of her mother had been the drawings which arrived at school, sometimes several a week, sometimes none for ten days, spidery lines on flimsy paper, vivacious and funny, pictograms of imagined events in Imi’s life. ‘Here you are in chemistry class – phew! Hydrogen sulphide stinks!’ Imi was drawn as a cherubic figure with pigtails, most unlike the sullen, etiolated adolescent she was. All she said, to Stephen was: ‘My father says she’s probably
mad. She did a lot of drugs when they were married.
I send her Christmas cards and things. I mean, I don’t remember her. She ran away when I was a baby.’
Throughout the time of putting away childish things, she taped every one of these drawings on the wall above her bed and at the end of term, when the wall was covered to the ceiling and custom required dormitories to be cleared of all personal possessions, she would not take them down. ‘I can’t keep them, my father doesn’t like it.’ The way she said this made it clear that the logic of her father’s preference overrode all other considerations.
Later, Michael took Stephen aside. ‘I think I ought to explain what happened when Imogen was a baby. I expect you know that her mother left us. She was what you might call unstable, mentally. During our marriage she was using drugs as well. I located her in Washington – State, the west coast. We keep in touch now but I don’t encourage any contact with her – I was advised that was the best thing, to let her bond with Jane without any interference. But I’ve always been honest with Imogen about her mother. Everyone has the right to know their origins, don’t you agree?’
In awe of Imi’s famous father as he was, Stephen smelled deceit. The drawings were naïve but not bizarre; they were asking, in very simple terms, for love, and there was a tender intelligence in them. They did not arrive at the Knights’home. His own mother never said goodbye to him without emotion, although she rigidly suppressed it, and he was home every weekend. He was certain that in some respects all parents were the same, even in the exalted world of the Knight family.
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