Maria lacked the strength even to get up. But was that any wonder? She was old, like Felix – run to seed, moribund and ‘past it’; ‘disgusting’ creatures, both of them, even to consider sex.
Muffled shouts and laughter were rising from the swings and slides – normal mothers with normal lives supervising their carefree kids, enjoying the beneficent summer’s day. Only she could see the storm-clouds; the dark, oppressive weather threatening floods and landslides. She stared down at the grass, examining each blade, observing its specific shape and texture, its particular shade of green – all the things they were advised to do at the class.
The class! She had already missed a good half-hour. Felix would be worried; wondering where she was. Or maybe he’d assume she had been delayed at the crematorium. Did she even care what he thought?
Yes, passionately she cared. All very well for Felicia to order her to break off their affair. It was so much more than an affair: a new start; a whole new future.
Or was it? If she were just one of a string of women – Identikit women, all dark, curvaceous and arty – what future could there be, with a man useless at commitment? Even the artists’ community seemed merely a tired repeat.
She leapt up in fury – fury with Felix; fury with his daughter; fury with her stupid, gullible self. How utterly pathetic that she had let herself be duped again, despite her firm resolve not to repeat the Silas debacle, or embark on another relationship unless it seemed completely foolproof. But, for all her caution, the entire thing had blown apart.
Yet some tiny, tiny part of her still dared to hope there might be some explanation that would exonerate her lover. Maybe Felicia was seriously disturbed, even psychopathic; perhaps inventing a whole tangle of lies, to wreak revenge for past neglect. Before she damned Felix, she had to hear his side of the story, which meant going to the class, however overwrought she felt, because the minute it was over she was determined to have it out with him.
Limping across the grass, past the happy, laughing children, she suddenly stumbled to a halt as recognition dawned. If Felicia was right, this could mean the death-blow to her own rare and precious happiness.
As she rang the bell, she heard footsteps coming down the hall and Barry appeared, disgruntled, at the door.
‘Why are you so late?’ he asked, annoyed at having to let her in midway through the class. ‘I mean, we saw you outside a good half-hour ago.’
‘I, er, ran into a friend – someone I haven’t seen for years, so I couldn’t just say “hello, goodbye”.’
Fortunately, he probed no further, and they both slipped into the studio, as quietly as they could, although the others were so absorbed in their drawing they didn’t even bother to look up. Except Felix, of course, who made his way towards her.
‘Are you OK?’ he whispered, in his formal ‘tutor’s’ voice.
‘Yes,’ she muttered, tersely, finding it hard to even look at him. ‘But I need some sort of overall.’
He disappeared a moment, running up to Leo’s bedroom and returning with a voluminous man’s over-shirt.
Only once she had put it on, found a seat and sorted out her drawing materials did she focus on the model, despite the fact that the woman was strikingly, flagrantly old. Although Felix used a variety of models, to provide practice in drawing different body types, never before had he engaged one quite so ancient. Yet, even given such a challenge, Maria found it impossible to draw. Not only was her mind in turmoil, but, as she gazed at the wrinkled flesh, the dangling flaps of breasts and sparse grizzle of pubic hair, she recognized that when she had reached this age – become a pitiful, pathetic creature destined for the grave – there would certainly be no lovers paying court. Indeed, it was extremely unlikely that there would be any after Felix. And thus she was strongly tempted to turn a blind eye to his duplicity (if duplicity it were) for the sake of being wooed and desired, this one final time – yes, even if the relationship proved to be ephemeral.
‘Thirty seconds left,’ he told the class.
She glanced at his untidy hair, his sensual mouth and muscly, paint-stained hands – hands that explored every secret crevice of her body. Did she have to return to celibacy after so blazing an initiation into those supremely erotic refinements?
‘OK, Meg, could you take up a different pose now, please.’
The model moved with excruciating slowness; struggling up from the sofa and leaning on the padded arm, back turned.
‘We’ll keep this a very short pose, to save you any strain, Meg.’
Whatever else, he always showed consideration for his models and, indeed, for most people, so could he really be as selfish and unprincipled as Felicia made out? Could any man be kind and devious, caring and disloyal, passionate and unfeeling, all at once?
‘OK, everyone, keep your pencils moving, please. Some of you need to free up a bit. And try to get the whole figure in, even in the quickest sketch.’
Maria struggled to focus on the task in hand; to capture the scrawny buttocks and forlornly drooping shoulders; the misshapen, bony back. Yet, already, her mind had veered off on a different tack: it wasn’t just a matter of there being no lovers in extreme old age – what was far more crucial was that, by that stage, she would be facing imminent death; maybe even judgement and damnation, if her former faith was correct. So, the way she had lived her life would become of supreme importance. And no one could deny how gravely wrong it would be to deprive a lawful wife – a woman little older than Amy, battling a second bout of cancer – of her husband’s care and presence.
Aware that Felix was looking at her anxiously, she made an effort to sketch the pendulous folds of flesh sagging from the model’s upper arms. But, all at once, the charcoal jerked to a halt as an utterly shameful thought flashed, unbidden, into her mind: she wanted the wife to die – actually hoped the cancer would kill her – in order to free Felix from his ties.
Appalled by her callous selfishness in putting her own trivial sexual pleasure before another’s woman’s very health and life, it seemed the height of hypocrisy to rebuke Felix for his transgressions. Yet, in less than two hours’ time – after a mockingly ironic champagne celebration – that was exactly what she intended.
Chapter 31
‘WILL YOU GIVE me a straight answer, Felix – are you divorced or not?’
The pause seemed to last forever, until finally he said, ‘I’m divorced in all but name.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean? You’re being utterly devious. Hell, I remember actually telling you about those two men I met, years ago, who turned out to be married, so I had to give them up. Yet even then you didn’t have the guts to admit you were married, too.’
‘Look, I do feel really rotten about—’
‘Instead, you’ve let me think, all this time, that you haven’t any ties, yet now I find—’
‘I intended to tell you – I swear I did. But you’ve had so much on your plate – all the Silas stuff and your dilemma about the baby – so I decided to wait till things were easier.’
‘Until you’d bamboozled me, you mean, into uprooting myself completely and coming to live with you in Cornwall under false pretences. What hurts most, if you really want to know, is the way you trotted out that romantic line about me being so unique and special, it felt wrong for you to propose conventional marriage. Yet, the sordid truth is you weren’t free to marry anyway.’
‘I didn’t want to ruin things – that’s all. I mean, we were so amazingly close and—’
‘Close?’ She spat the word. ‘How the hell could we be close when you were concealing so much about yourself? I feel utterly betrayed.’ All at once, her mobile rang and, angry with it, too, she switched it off and flung it back in her bag, before some piffling call could interrupt her. ‘And, of course, now I see why you were so opposed to us living in Northumberland, instead – a bit too close to Scotland for you, wasn’t it, whereas Cornwall was as far away as you could possibly be.’
‘Maria, believe
me – I just didn’t see it like that. Cornwall is where my friends are and where I felt you’d blossom as an artist. And, anyway, I’d no idea my wife’s cancer had come back, or that Felicia was involved.’
‘Yes, Felicia – let’s talk about her. She seems to think you were hopeless as a father, not to mention a serial philanderer.’
‘Maria, listen, please. If you keep hurling accusations at me and refusing to take in a word I say, you’ll never understand.’
‘What is there to understand?’ Maria slumped into a chair. So far, they’d been standing facing one another, like two contestants in a boxing ring. ‘Frankly, I don’t see how you can defend yourself, but if you think you can….’ With a shrug, she let the sentence peter out.
He, too, sat down. The circle of students’ chairs was still in place; the remnants of the party littering the surfaces: empty champagne glasses, plates littered with crumbs and cheese-rinds. Normally, he was punctilious about clearing things away, but the minute the last student had left she had deliberately confronted him, to prevent him disarming her with what she would now regard as totally inappropriate kisses.
‘I’d better start at the beginning, and what you need to know is that I only married Alice because she was pregnant with my child. I knew the marriage was wrong – not only because of the age gap, but because we had absolutely nothing in common. But she refused to have an abortion, and I felt she was far too young and vulnerable to manage on her own.’
Maria was stunned into silence. A repeat of her own history yet, in contrast to Silas, Felix appeared to have done the decent thing.
‘The problems began even on our wedding day and became fifty times worse once the baby was born. Felicia didn’t sleep through a single night until she was almost three. The strain was horrendous, especially as Alice was never cut out to be a mother, and I was teaching full-time, as well as trying to do my own painting. What I didn’t know was that Alice had been mentally ill long before I met her – in fact, she was having treatment while she was still at school. OK, so it wasn’t her fault she couldn’t cope, but where she was to blame was in hushing it all up. Neither she nor her parents ever breathed a word about all the psychiatrists she’d seen and the drugs she’d been prescribed. I suppose I should have realized, but she was so young and pretty, I was blind to everything else. Well, I paid for my folly – and dearly. Every day was a nightmare and, even when I finally found the courage to get out, I felt tremendous guilt and worry. And what made it worse was that Alice spent the next few years deliberately turning Felicia against me. Everything was my fault: her moods and depressions, the fact she couldn’t hold down a job, even—’
‘But, Felix, why on earth didn’t you tell me all this – ages ago, I mean?’
He crossed his legs; uncrossed them; sat staring at the floor. ‘It seemed so – you know – disloyal. I just didn’t want to rubbish her and, anyway, I knew I was partly to blame. I was the one who got her pregnant, and completely failed to see that she was far too neurotic ever to cope with a child.’
Barely able to digest this whole new raft of information, Maria felt torn between compassion and suspicion. If the mother was so seriously disturbed, how had she managed on her own once her daughter had left, or coped with the stress of frequent flights to New York? Besides, wasn’t it odd that Felicia should champion so useless a mother against a father who appeared to have done his best? ‘Felix, your daughter never said a word to me about any mental illness. How do I know you’re not inventing all this, to justify yourself?’
‘Well, Alice’s medical records are big enough to fill a book, but I can hardly show you those, so you’ll have to take my word for it. And perhaps my daughter also failed to tell you that I supported them both, financially – Felicia until she left home, and my wife right up to now. I’ve always paid Alice maintenance and I don’t intend to stop. It meant I had to work all hours and take on soulless commercial jobs, on top of my teaching and painting. But the whole situation changed with my parents’ death. They left me their house – a big, old place in Sussex, which I sold at the height of the housing boom, so it made a pretty tidy sum. And then my pension matured and, after thirty years teaching at a variety of art schools, it wasn’t inconsiderable. I’ve told you, Maria, I’m not short of cash, which means I can afford to hire a carer to help Alice through this new bout of cancer.’
‘But Felicia expects you to do the caring in person.’
‘That’s out of the question! Nothing would induce me to go back.’
‘Yet you didn’t seem to mind leaving a little girl of nine with a mentally unbalanced woman, whom you admit yourself was a lousy mother.’
He had the grace to look shame-faced, although still endeavoured to defend himself. ‘Well, Alice’s sister didn’t live too far away, so she’d invite Felicia over, when she could, and even took her on holiday each year.’
A few odd visits and holidays would hardly compensate for an absent father and inadequate mother. ‘I’m sorry, Felix, but, aunt or no aunt, your daughter seems to think she was pretty much neglected as a child. She told me that, once you’d left home, you hardly ever visited.’
‘Yes, because, if I did go, there’d only be tears and tantrums. And, anyway, Felicia sees everything in black and while. She’s determined to cast me as the baddie, who can never do anything right. She even blamed me for Alice’s cancer, would you believe!’
Felix got up from his seat and crouched by Maria’s chair. ‘Listen, darling, I’m desperately, desperately sorry to have involved you in all this. I realize now it was my fault, for not telling you before. In fact, I feel a bit of a hypocrite – I mean, blaming Alice, a moment ago, for hushing up important facts, when I’ve done just the same. But I did try to broach the subject – honestly I did. I kept screwing up my courage, but somehow I’d always chicken out. That was cowardly – I admit it – but I was just so scared I’d lose you, and losing you seemed utterly unbearable.’ Springing to his feet, he took both her hands in his. ‘Let’s not ruin everything between us. We’ve both had difficult pasts – both made mistakes and suffered for them, but isn’t this our chance to start again?’
Suddenly, he was kissing her – a kiss so wild and frenzied, she tried to pull away; half-frightened by his vehemence. Yet his tempestuousness as a lover was part of this whole imbroglio. Could she really expect so passionate a man to have lived tamely and conventionally, without misjudgements, blunders, negligences? Besides, how could she take the moral high ground, when – as he’d just pointed out – there were similar errors in her own past? She had tricked Silas into becoming a father; neglected her own baby for its first two vital years, expecting her poor, widowed mother to drop everything and cope. And she, too, had concealed from Felix how profoundly disturbed she had been back then. Perhaps it was only human to suppress the more reprehensible aspects of one’s character. Nonetheless, she still burned with anger.
Clamping her lips to his again, she kissed him with the same ferocity and violence; biting his lips, even drawing blood. Still locked in the embrace, he steered her into Leo’s bedroom, flung her on the bed and began tearing off her clothes.
There were no preliminaries. She was in no mood for tender kisses; gentle, lingering foreplay. And she would take charge, for once. Struggling up from under him, she shoved him onto his back, sat astride him and responded to his thrusting with something more like rage than passion – rage with him for his deviousness, for his neglect of a wife and child, for all the casual women in his life, for his crafty disingenuousness on that moonlit Cornish beach. And rage with Silas, too, for wanting their child aborted; rage even with her father for dying before she was born; rage with the Church, for outlawing greed and pleasure, forbidding sex outside the bonds of marriage.
Only a sharp cry from Felix made her realize she was biting his shoulder almost through to the bone; not from a deliberate desire to hurt him, but from sheer intensity of passion. She seemed to have become an animal – a jungle-beast, baring its
teeth, emitting barbarous sounds and moving with such violence she might snap a tendon or twist a limb and it would hardly even register.
Releasing his shoulder, she clawed her nails across his chest, again impelled by the same animal-force. Yet any pain he might have felt appeared only to spur him on, as he thwacked against her with equal vehemence. Was he goaded by a similar rage – rage with Alice, with Felicia, with her, for finding him out?
She didn’t care; had moved beyond all guilts and worries; left normal bounds behind. All that mattered was the moment and their two plunging, pounding bodies.
They climaxed at the exact same time – suddenly, convulsively – but barely had she caught her breath when her whole mood changed entirely and, as she slumped against his chest, she was racked with shuddering sobs, like another sort of orgasm. She was weeping not just for herself, but for all the losses inflicted on her grandparents and parents, and on every Brown and Radványi who had ever striven, suffered, lost; grieving for Alice and Felicia; for all parents of all war-dead; for all broken, damaged things; for all false promises, false people.
While she sobbed, Felix lay completely still, making no effort to console her; the sheen of sweat on his body damp against her skin. She felt achingly alone, because such outrageous extremes of feeling cut her off from normal women – women like Kate, or Carole, who wouldn’t dream of turning an act of love into one of vengeful aggression. She feared she might be cracking up; all the strain of the past few weeks threatening a repeat of her unbalanced state when Silas threw her out. No one could deny that she was seriously overreacting. Women had been betrayed throughout the course of history, so why make such a fuss about a few distortions of the truth?
Raising her head, she saw the marks her nails had left, scored across Felix’s chest, as if he were branded with her dangerous lust. ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you,’ she said, her voice ragged, faltering.
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