Deciding that some cheering up was in order, Libby spent several minutes toying with how this might best be achieved, inwardly lamenting that providing support to someone in Frances’s position got no easier with time. ‘What about a girls’ only trip to the West End this Saturday,’ she burst out eventually. ‘Most of the big London stores are still running amazing discounts. After the kind of Christmas the retail trade has suffered, God knows they need to,’ she added feelingly. ‘Alistair could man the fort for a day – he’s been offering to for weeks. What do you say?’
‘It sounds a great idea,’ faltered Frances, thinking both that there was nothing particular she wished to buy and that Daniel was already brimming with plans for the approaching weekend. In London too, as it happened. He wanted to take her to Somerset House, where the Courtauld Gallery had apparently opened an exhibition of Renaissance paintings. Her heart twisted at the memory of his enthusiasm, not to mention the delightful prospect of an entire forty-eight hours in each other’s company. She glanced across the shop at Libby, who had turned her back and was busy rummaging for something under the till. ‘The only thing is…’
‘Yup?’ Libby’s voice was muffled. After a few moments she straightened, looking crimson-faced and faintly irritated. ‘Have you any idea where those new rolls of till-paper have got to? I swear there was a whole box of the bloody things right here yesterday.’
‘I might have put them in the store room. I’ll have a look.’ Though Frances knew precisely where the box was, she took her time, rehearsing ways of saying what she had to say and cursing her cowardice. A string of shoppers delayed the process still further. Then at last Libby herself presented the opportunity by producing two mugs of tea and readdressing the subject of shopping.
‘I might treat myself to a new coat. I’ve had my sheepskin so long it looks positively diseased.’
‘Libby…I…there could be a problem with Saturday.’
‘Oh dear, why?’
Frances cleared her throat and gripped the handle of her mug. ‘Do you remember saying that you would be happy if I met someone else? Well I have…at least I think I have.’
Libby put down her tea and flung both arms round Frances’s shoulders. ‘My dear I’m thrilled – that’s just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Don’t tell me, you’re meeting him on Saturday and can’t think of anything more abhorrent than shopping – I quite understand.’ She sat back and slapped both thighs with her palms. ‘I knew you would – meet someone, I just knew it. I mean, Christ, look at you, pretty as a teenager and about as kind and honest as it is possible to be. Is he widowed too?’
The question reminded Frances that there was more to be said. ‘No, he’s not. In fact, there is just one small potential problem.’
Libby looked grave. ‘Don’t tell me, he’s married.’
Frances shook her head.
‘Well what other problem can there be?’ exclaimed Libby, the wind back in her sails once more. ‘Is he a recovering alcoholic? Does he practise voodoo in his spare time? Come on woman, out with it.’
‘He’s twenty-eight,’ said Frances quietly.
‘Bloody hell. Bloody hell, Frances, that is…well, a little…amazing.’ Libby’s tone was not so much appalled as impressed. ‘I said you looked like a teenager, didn’t I?’ She laughed uncertainly, aware of Frances watching while her mind groped for appropriate responses. ‘Well, good for you, that’s what I say. And why not? Have a fling. Quite right too.’
‘It…it doesn’t feel like a fling.’
‘Ah.’ She looked nonplussed. ‘Well…of course that’s all right too. It’s your life Frances, you must lead it how you please,’ she continued, the hesitation in her voice belying the other, more truthful and less generous reactions passing through her mind. ‘And of course you and…’
‘Daniel.’
‘…and Daniel have plans for Saturday.’
‘Yes, we do. In London, actually. We’re going to Somerset House. The Courtauld Gallery has just opened a new exhibition of paintings there apparently. Lots of Renaissance stuff that’s never been shown over here before – that’s Daniel’s field – he’s a lecturer at Sussex. History of art. He’s on sabbatical working on a paper on Luca Signorelli.’
‘How interesting,’ murmured Libby, unable to suppress the observation that Frances was speaking in the racy breathless manner of an infatuated schoolgirl. ‘And how – if you don’t mind my asking – did you two meet?’
Frances giggled. ‘Don’t laugh, please. But he’s the cyclist I ran into on the night I was supposed to meet James Harcourt.’
Libby’s eyes widened. ‘Good Lord, that’s remarkable.’
‘We sort of kept in touch.’
‘Evidently.’
‘Look, I know you think I’m mad,’ Frances rushed on, ‘I think I’m mad too. The whole thing is just absurd, so utterly foolish that when I think of it I can’t believe it’s real. But when we’re together…’
Libby watched her curiously, wondering whether the duty of a friend in such circumstances was to offer support or to attempt to tug the afflicted party back into the realms of the real world. Opting for the former, safer of the two strategies, she found herself issuing an invitation. ‘I’d love to meet him,’ she declared, genuine curiosity flaring at the prospect, ‘and I know Alistair would too. If he means this much to you it is surely important that you introduce him to your friends.’
‘That’s extremely kind,’ replied Frances carefully, trying and failing to picture the four of them round the large kitchen table where she and Paul had spent so many relaxed and enjoyable evenings in the past.
‘Of course you must consult Daniel,’ went on Libby hastily. ‘Why not one evening this weekend? A dinner on Sunday is always a good idea I find, takes one’s mind off the horrors of the week ahead. Ask Daniel. Let me know.’ She left the counter to attend to a customer, inwardly complimenting herself on having handled a potentially explosive situation with exemplary maturity and tact.
Filled with eagerness to break the news to Alistair, the rest of Libby’s working day passed slowly. He would be as scandalised as her, of that she was certain. A twenty-eight-year-old was barely an adult. She pictured a rather fey, bookish creature with spectacles, unsure but sincere. Slightly dumpy, maybe. A little boy lost, looking for a mothering bosom in which to bury his woes. Tempted though she was to seek illumination on the subject from Frances, Libby refrained, aware that it might destroy the impression of broad-minded nonchalance which had taken some effort to achieve. Elation came before a fall, Libby reminded herself. And when the crash arrived it would be a lot easier to tend to Frances’s wounds if she had given no hint of her own cynicism during these crucial early stages. Frances had to be allowed to make her own way, to make her own mistakes, in order to be able to admit to them afterwards.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The rest of the week passed quickly, the latter half illuminated by a premature burst of mild temperatures and sunshine. March would wreak its revenge, Frances told herself, trying to inject some sombreness to her mood when she awoke on Friday morning, but managing only to feel wildly happy. At her insistence, she had not seen Daniel since Tuesday, a bid for a spell of solitude which had been somewhat thwarted by the number of hours they had spent conversing on the telephone. After the longest exchanges, Frances would look at her watch in astonishment at how much time had slipped by, already struggling to recall what they had found to say.
Pulling on her dressing gown, she made a cup of tea which she took back upstairs to enjoy in the comfort of the small Queen Anne armchair parked next to her bedroom window. Outside, a bossy jay was shooing several smaller birds from the upper branches of a tree, until scared away itself by two squirrels in the throes of an energetic game of tag. Frances sipped her drink slowly, savouring both its warmth and the prospect of the approaching weekend excursion with Daniel. It was only when her imagination advanced as far as Sunday evening that her heart sank. Libby’s sustained displ
ay of mild interest throughout that week had not fooled her for a second. Underneath this careful disguise Frances sensed a bubbling blend of disapproval and curiosity, which she had no idea how to combat and which only fuelled all her own insecurities about the new course her life was taking.
She remained equally unsure of Daniel’s display of nonchalance at the notion of an intimate dinner with her oldest friends. Familiarising themselves with each other’s social worlds was a necessary prerequisite to achieving anything lasting and worthwhile, he said, so many times and with such studied carelessness that Frances longed to let him off the hook by cancelling the whole thing. For the first time in their brief, intense acquaintance, she was vividly aware of the real extent of the youthful uncertainty which lurked inside, his terror of appearing unwise or un-composed of justifying all the reservations which she was so adept at expressing out loud.
Leaving her empty mug on the window sill, Frances retreated to the bathroom where a confrontation with her image in the basin mirror continued to chisel away at her high spirits. Before Daniel she had never bothered much about the weathering effects of time, in recent months because it had seemed a matter of supreme insignificance and before that because having Paul suffering similar humiliations alongside – usually well in advance of her – rather took the edge off them. Yet now, even performing the simple act of cleaning her teeth, she found it impossible not to keep pausing for critical scrutinies of her profile. The shape of her face was still good, thanks to a natural roundness in her cheeks, overlaying the formidable bone structure still in evidence in the features of her mother. Her eyes were all right too, framed with fine radial lines, but wide and bright enough to offer distraction from such mortifications for several years to come. Of her teeth she was less sure, she decided, spitting away the last of the toothpaste and stretching her lips to facilitate a closer inspection. Warning herself that anything could look ugly if stared at for long enough did not prevent Frances from continuing to peer at her reflection with mounting dismay, licking her tongue round the tips of her front teeth, where the off-white seemed suddenly to look almost translucent. Yet more gloominess was induced by the detection of a series of small, faint vertical arrows pointing into the upper edge of her lip, like punishing imprints from a lifetime of being pursed in disapproval. And bracket lines were emerging on either side of her mouth too, she observed despairingly, etched into being by the equally destructive act of smiling.
While knowing it to be unwise, she could not resist transferring these attentions to the full length mirror in the bedroom. The more she stared, the more her self-confidence ebbed away. Her neck suddenly looked weathered and scrawny, her breasts not full so much as pendulous, her stomach and thighs crawling with silvery stretch marks which she had once, laughably, imagined to be barely visible at all.
By the time Daniel called she had retreated back to bed, curling herself round both pillows for comfort.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked at once.
‘I’m an old witch compared to you.’
He laughed out loud. ‘There could be something in the witch theory, since I am, most definitely, spellbound—’
‘I’m serious. I’m physically repellent. And it’s going to get worse.’
‘Is it? Are you sure?’ he teased, pretending to sound horrified.
‘Yes. It’s called the Ageing Process. No known cure.’
He sighed. ‘Frances, I thought we’d been through this one. When I look at you, I see an entity. I see what you are, inside and out. Which isn’t to say I don’t want to rip your clothes off – I do – all the time,’ he confessed ruefully. ‘And if you’re going back to your old hobby horse of what about in ten years’ time – as I’ve told you, I refuse to worry about anything further than a week into my future. I’ve been through the kick of trying to map out my life in advance – it brought nothing but disappointment. I mean, Christ, you could dump me for being too immature, couldn’t you?’
‘I could, but I don’t want to.’
‘Well, thank God for that.’
‘And what about babies?’
‘Babies? Jesus, Frances—’
‘In a few years I’ll be menopausal. Hot flushes, intensive hormone replacement. It’s supposed to be a real picnic.’
‘I don’t want babies,’ he put in, sounding exasperated.
‘You might.’
‘Nothing is impossible, I suppose, either in my head – or the realms of science, for that matter. Older women are procreating all over the place. But, I assure you,’ he continued hastily, ‘my oafish nephews and nieces have put me off the subject big time. Now can we talk about something a little more relevant, like when we can meet up?’
‘Sorry,’ murmured Frances, feeling mollified and a little contrite. She punched the pillows out of the way and pushed the duvet back off her legs. ‘You’re coming over here tonight, aren’t you?’
‘If the invitation still stands.’
‘I think it probably does,’ she teased, wanting to erase the trace of hurt from his tone.
‘I was thinking maybe lunch in a pub. Scampi in a basket, that sort of thing.’
‘I thought we’d agreed that today you were writing and I was drawing?’
‘There’s all morning for that.’
‘And I’ve got to wash my hair – I assume it won’t bother you to know I’ll be rinsing colour into it soon, to help disguise the grey.’
‘You could turn your hair a shade of violent rhubarb for all I care. The first girl I was ever mad about had this stripy look, green and yellow, in plaits all over her head. Many intimate moments were ruined by one of them swiping me in the eye. Shall we say twelve thirty? I’ll pick you up.’
Frances laughed, reassured, as she always was after actually talking to Daniel instead of worrying about him. She reentered the bathroom with fresh conviction, washing her hair with barely a glance in the mirror and then unashamedly opting for a new, shortish skirt that flattered her trim waist and the shapely curves of her legs.
‘Now make yourselves scarce, the lot of you,’ barked Libby, batting Sally’s fingers out of a bowl of freshly made fruit salad and trying to herd all four of her children from the kitchen. ‘I don’t want you ogling the poor man like he’s some unique species at a zoo.’
‘Why not? That’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it?’ quipped her youngest daughter, managing to seize several wedges of banana before scampering upstairs after her siblings.
‘I most certainly am not,’ Libby shrieked indignantly, while inwardly acknowledging that she probably was. Although a handful of acquaintances had split up or had affairs with unsuitable partners, nothing in the kaleidoscope of her social experience could quite match what was happening to Frances. Every time she thought of it she felt appalled and intrigued in equal measure. A hint of schadenfreude also laced these reactions, the awful but wickedly thrilling sensation of watching someone hurl themselves at disaster. Whether it was her duty to stand by or to try and prevent the disaster happening was something of which she still felt deeply uncertain. Trying to discuss the matter with Alistair and being stonewalled by his obstinate lack of enthusiasm reminded her of the dark days immediately after Paul’s death. That afternoon he had even accused her of treating Frances Copeland’s life like a soap opera, an allegation which had hurt all the more deeply for containing what Libby feared might be a grain of truth.
After two decades of marriage, hurting each other was as easy as being kind had once been, Libby reflected glumly, slicing lengthways down several leeks to check for specks of dirt between the layers. To make matters worse, seeing Frances all dreamy-eyed had triggered memories of distant days when the unnatural generosity of spirit which accompanies new love had prompted her to feign a fascination for football and Alistair to pretend he liked Mozart. Admitting to boredom with a loved one’s favourite hobbies took time, she mused wryly, peeling off several outer layers of the leeks and tossing them into a nearby sieve. She was busy holding
the sieve under a tap when Alistair came in. Wanting to show she was still aggrieved, she kept her head down, focusing on positioning the worst patches of grit under the jet of water. Alistair picked out a grape from the fruit salad and then a segment of apple, chewing each slowly.
‘Look, what I said – the soap opera thing – I’m sorry. It was mean and untrue.’ He came and stood behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders, kneading his thumbs into the tense sensitive bands of muscle sloping down from her neck. ‘You have helped Frances immeasurably over the last few months. And as for this young man, I think we should breathe a sigh of relief that she’s managed to find someone else to mother so soon. As you know, I believe Frances to be one of those poor female souls quite unsuited to the rigours of surviving alone. Mind you,’ he paused chuckling to himself, ‘Jack might be a bit disappointed.’ He watched for the response, knowing the comment would ensnare his wife’s interest in an instant.
‘Jack? Why?’
‘He’s always liked Frances a lot – told me so at Christmas. One of few females with the capacity to tempt him out of bachelorhood, he said.’ Alistair shook his head, amused at the memory.
Libby laughed too, entertained by the idea. ‘Jack and Frances? I can’t see it somehow.’
‘Other people never can,’ he remarked dryly. ‘Which is precisely why we must make this creature to whom Frances has attached herself feel as welcome as we can, no matter how misguided the enterprise appears.’
‘I know,’ Libby tipped her head to one side, briefly pressing her cheek against one of his hands to show that peace had been restored, but unable to resist adding, ‘that’s why I asked them.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘You might as well know I’m scared shitless,’ Daniel remarked cheerfully, as they set out on the short drive from Frances’s house to the Taverners’ on Sunday evening. He took a hand from the steering wheel and placed it in her lap.
The Lover Page 16