A Sweet Obscurity

by Patrick Gale

  He had read her silence as placid, neutral and could not help hearing a certain sexual promise in her suggestion that they return to the hotel. But they were no sooner alone than she shook him off, prickly as a wet cat, and he realised her silence had been only a gathering storm.

  ‘That’s the only reason we’ve come here, isn’t it? That was the only reason you came to Trenellion with me. You dressed it up as a romantic getaway but all you were thinking about was how to get away to check on Eliza! Well go. Just take the car and go over to see her. I can’t stand seeing you pretending it’s not the only thing you’re thinking about.’

  ‘Is that how it seems?’ he said, wounded, despite his guilt.

  ‘It’s how it is, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not entirely.’

  ‘Huh! That’s even worse. Killing two birds with one stone – a romantic getaway AND a spot of marital maintenance…’

  ‘It’s not marital.’

  ‘She’s still your wife. Trust me. It’s marital.’

  ‘What’s going on here? I thought everything was fine. What’s up? This is so unlike you.’

  ‘Please. Don’t be nice to me.’

  He had approached her again and laid a hand on the small of her back, the spot that usually calmed her to melting point.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked, flattening his palm on her hot skin and amazed that he could be so turned on by her when she was furious enough to stab him. He saw fat tears squeezing out of her eyes. ‘Hey!’ he said, lifting the hair off her face. ‘Don’t cry. What’s up? I don’t need to check on Eliza or Dido or anyone. What’s up, Babe?’

  She clung to him now and began to cry so hard and so jaggedly that it took him a second or two to interpret the words she gasped into his shoulder.

  36

  ‘You heard,’ she said.

  Giles held her away from him. He looked shocked. He did not look happy. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘I never kid,’ she reminded him. ‘I have no sense of humour.’

  This was not what she had intended. When she realized why he had steered them down to Penzance, she had quietly accepted that Villiers was right. If she had any chance of winning him for good from Eliza, it was not as a mother. She had not meant to lose her temper and she certainly had not meant to cry and blurt out what she could never take back. Bloody hormones. As in the bathroom with Dido, it was as though the baby could read her mind and take desperate measures to guarantee its survival; throw open a gland, like a valve on a steam engine, and release another dose to course through her system and scupper her mood.

  ‘I’ve got you pregnant,’ he said, still holding her, still not looking happy.

  ‘Yes. I guess we’re one of those one-in-whatever couples the Pill lets down. But don’t worry. I made the appointment as soon as I heard and it’ll be sorted as soon as we get back. I wasn’t going to tell you.’

  ‘You’d have got rid of my baby without telling me?’

  ‘It’s not your baby, it’s ours and it’s not a baby yet, it’s just a…a…’

  Another blast on the steam valve. She tried to pull away, took the spotted handkerchief he offered and brought her mood to heel with a nose-blow.

  ‘I know it’s yours. I mean it’s your body and your life and…Are you sure?’

  ‘Villiers was so right.’ She pulled away from him and sat on the bed’s edge, reassembling herself from damp and sliding parts.

  ‘What’s he got to do with this?’

  ‘He said you preferred me unencumbered, neat and tidy and unElizaish. Not a mother.’

  ‘Fuck Villiers.’ He knelt on the carpet, actually knelt before her, forcing himself into her downcast view. ‘He’s only right in that I’d never thought of you as a mother. You never seemed the, I dunno, the type. That sounds so stupid. Be honest. Look at me. Do you really not want it?’

  ‘I hate it. I feel sick and when I’m not feeling sick I want to cry. It’s making me soft in the head and then it’ll make me gross. Then think of the chaos it’s going to cause.’

  ‘But Dido…’

  ‘Dido’s different. She’s a grown-up in a kid’s body half the time. And we give her back. This is…’ Julia slapped her stomach wearily. ‘This’ll be full time. No excuses. No calling in sick. No Eliza would you mind awfully.’

  ‘So you don’t want it.’

  ‘No. Really not.’

  He sighed, stood up. ‘Fine. Okay. Your body, your decision.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Villiers was right, wasn’t he?’

  ‘No. He…I…No. That’s not fair. I’ll take the day off if need be. Take you to the clinic.’

  ‘You can’t. It’s on Friday. You’ve got the dress that afternoon. I’m a big girl. I can deal with it myself.’

  ‘Have you done this before?’

  She thought a moment, decided he had a right to the truth.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Since meeting me?’

  ‘Just once. Yes.’

  ‘When?’ He sounded stunned.

  ‘I don’t know, Giles. Ages ago. I’d barely met you. I wasn’t on the Pill when we met.’ She remembered his relief and excitement when she let him stop using condoms. Condoms that had already failed them.

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘What? I thought you just said it was my body.’

  ‘It is. But I wish you’d told me.’

  ‘Why? So you could beat your breast and wave your liberal credentials?’

  ‘So I could have asked you to keep it.’

  ‘But I thought you…’

  He held her knees. ‘Just because I never thought of you as, well, in that way, doesn’t mean I don’t want to be a father.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘I would love to be a father. I would love nothing more.’

  ‘So you want me to keep it.’

  ‘That’s not fair. I can’t make you.’

  ‘No. But if I didn’t go to the clinic, you’d be happy.’

  Now he was getting teary. ‘More than you’d ever know.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Don’t cry or you’ll set me off again.’ She kissed his upturned face, kissed his wet eyes. ‘You really want me to keep it? You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Sod your rights. I forbid you to do anything but keep it.’

  ‘But what about work? We’ve got used to two incomes and children cost thousands a year.’

  ‘We’ll manage. Everyone else does. I’ll just have to work harder, get Selina to work harder.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘It’ll be so beautiful.’

  ‘Will it?’

  ‘Of course.’ He kissed her. ‘And clever and musical and much loved. Fuck.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to be a father.’ He laughed. ‘A proper father!’

  She grinned, allowing herself to relax at last. ‘Looks like it.’

  He climbed up on the bed, pushed her backwards and undid the waistband on her linen trousers. ‘Does it show yet?’ He kissed her belly, tickling her. ‘Can you feel it?’

  ‘Only when I’m sick. It’s still a tadpole.’

  ‘Are you allowed to drink?’

  ‘Now that I’m keeping it, not really. One glass won’t hurt, I don’t suppose. Oh God. Now I’ll have to read up on it and everything. Go to fucking antenatal classes.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Must you? It’s not very sexy.’

  ‘Oh, I dunno.’ He kissed her belly again, tried to bite it. ‘I want you to be huge.’ He bit her hip. ‘Immensely gravid.’

  She ran her fingers into his curls and pressed so that his nose sank deep in her flesh. She let him make love to her in the slow, rather terrifyingly worshipful way he liked best, with her a kind of prone, inactive sacrifice.

  He fetched them each a single glass of champagne. They spent the interval until dinner lolling on the bed alternately making playful plans or indulging in sweet, rare nostalgia about how they had met, how she had caught his attention, holidays they h
ad taken, hotels they had stayed in, strange places where they’d had sex. As the languid afternoon folded into a woozy evening it was as though Villiers had never planted the doubts in her mind.

  Giles reacted quite enchantingly in every way. He was supportive, sensuous, excited. They had gorged themselves on crab, creamy local cheese and strawberry shortbread and were finishing coffee beside the fire, bashful because of other guests, when it dawned on her that he had still not said he loved her, or mentioned the possibility of marriage.

  37

  The train pulled into Penzance at about eight in the morning. Her first impulse was to ring Pearce to ask for a lift but she checked herself. Not only had she just spent a night on a train in yesterday’s clothes but she cherished dim hopes of not emphasizing the needy impression she must already have made on him. Instead she bought herself a hot chocolate at a greasy spoon then boarded the next St Just bus.

  The bus was almost empty, but a smiling, confidential woman sat across the aisle from her and soon murmured that she was on her way to St Just to take up a new job in a butcher’s there. Then she began to interrogate Eliza.

  Perhaps because she was shattered, perhaps because the woman made her nostalgic for Kitty, she found herself opening up to her, not bridling as she would usually have done. She confessed she was married but separated, childless but a mother to her dead sister’s girl, jobless, rootless but originally from Camborne.

  ‘Ah, there! You see?’ the woman said, brightening as though all were suddenly clear to her. ‘That’s it, then. You’re too rackety by half! Chopping yourself into bits, a parcel of you here, a parcel over there. Not really a wife, not really a mother, not really anything at all. You need to settle down or you’ll wear yourself out. Spread yourself less thin, my lover, and do it in one place. You’re home now. That’s the main thing. Find yourself a nice local man. They’re stickers round here, if you choose carefully.’

  ‘I’m not sure a man’s the answer,’ Eliza murmured.

  ‘Well they’re never the answer, true enough, but they’re a step in the right direction.’

  They were passing the quarry. Eliza wondered if she could persuade the driver to let her out early to save her the walk back up Bosavern.

  ‘When I was a girl,’ her companion went on, ‘the best place to find the right man was St Just churchyard wall. Sit there of a morning, girls’d say, and see what you can see.’

  St Just was coming into view. Eliza could already make out the defaced sign with City Limits painted under St Just-in-Penwith. She began to rise hesitantly.

  ‘Robert, stop here. Young lady wants to get down.’

  The bus squeaked to a halt and the doors opened.

  ‘It’s you that’s in Kitty’s caravan, isn’t it?’ the woman said.

  Eliza nodded.

  ‘Thought so. Bye then.’

  Walking down the lane to the caravan, Eliza had an intense desire to curl up in sleep. She tossed her things on the table, took a bracing shower, then collapsed onto her bed still wrapped in a towel and fell into deep slumber.

  She woke hearing Molly call her name.

  ‘Thank God you’re here!’ Molly said, quite unabashed at Eliza’s nakedness.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Cold panic seized her. ‘Where’s Dido?’

  Molly smiled. ‘Don’t fret. She’s fine. It’s just that she and Lucy can’t plant broccoli all day – it’d wear them out – and we just had someone drop out. I was hoping you…’

  ‘I’ll get dressed. What time is it?’ She found her watch and was amazed that the morning had melted away. ‘Hang on.’

  ‘Brilliant. Put on something old, ’cause you’ll get covered in dust and spattered with rabbit repellent.’ Molly sat at the little table glancing around her while Eliza tugged clothes from the mess spilling out of her holdall.

  ‘Aren’t you working in the library today?’

  ‘Using up some of my leave,’ said Molly wryly. ‘That girl of yours is amazing. She’s got Lucy keen to help out for once. Lucy never helps out. Mind you, Pearce is paying them something, so maybe that’s it. How was your trip?’

  ‘Tiring. It’s good to be back.’

  ‘Find out what you needed?’

  Eliza shook her head. ‘It was silly of me really. I wanted to be able to come home and tell you and Pearce that Country Goodness was definitely by Trevescan and that you could sell it for thousands of pounds to buy a new combine or something.’

  ‘But it isn’t?’ Molly’s face fell a little.

  ‘Well. No. It can’t be. It looks like his writing and sounds like his style but it was written after he died.’

  ‘Ah well.’ Molly shrugged as they got into her ancient Saab. ‘It’s still a nice piece.’

  She drove like a fury over the brow of Bosavern and down to Cot Valley and up the lane to Pearce’s farm. Only the potholes seemed to slow her.

  ‘In case you’re wondering,’ she said, pulling sharply into a field, ‘the Neanderthal driving the tractor is my husband. Morris. How’s that? Perfect timing.’

  The tractor had pulled up to a laden trailer while the planters reloaded the device behind it with blue plastic trays of sturdy seedlings.

  ‘Hiya.’ Dido was so muddy she was barely recognisable. Like Lucy’s, her hair stuck up stiff with powdered earth. Her grin was startlingly white amidst the grime. ‘How’d it go?’

  ‘Thank God,’ said Lucy. ‘Come on. Let’s go get lunch.’

  ‘Now stick around at Pearce’s, you two,’ Molly said.

  ‘We will.’

  ‘Find something to eat and clean yourselves up. But no messing around on the silo or whatever.’

  ‘Okay. See you later.’

  The girls sauntered off back towards the farmhouse. Eliza felt a slight ache at seeing them go and feeling herself excluded.

  ‘When you’re ready.’

  She turned back to find Pearce, Molly and another man no one thought to introduce sitting on the contraption waiting for her. There was a fourth seat left spare between brother and sister. She sat.

  Pearce smiled kindly and gave her some bundled-up sacking to soften the metal seat. ‘Thanks for helping us out,’ he said. ‘It’s quite easy. You just take a handful of plants in your left hand. Don’t worry. They don’t break that easily. Then you click them, one at a time, into that wheel between your knees. Every other clicker. Roots uppermost. You’ll soon get the hang of it. Ready?’

  Comically nervous, Eliza grabbed a handful of seedlings from the tray before her. ‘Ready,’ she said.

  ‘Okay, Morris!’

  There were four metal seats fixed above four devices which simultaneously opened a shallow furrow, seized a seedling in a grip and tucked it into a furrow before pulling earth back around it. All the four humans had to do was keep the devices regularly fed and make sure the seedlings, which were some four or five inches tall, were seized at the right point on their stems to see them planted at the optimum depth.

  It seemed impossibly hard to Eliza to click the seedlings into place fast enough while keeping her left hand supplied with fresh plants and without snapping their stems. The seedlings were still moist with a white spraying of rabbit repellent, which splashed occasionally and soon began to make her lips feel hot and mustardy. Occasionally her planter’s arms would click shut too soon and Pearce would halt the tractor, jump off, plant the one she had missed, then start them up again. It amazed her he had the time to keep an eye on her progress as well as his own.

  The work became easier with surprising speed, however. She relaxed into its steady rhythm and began to enjoy the regular click-clicking of the four planting wheels. The sense of reaching, grasping and stooping in harmony with the others appealed to her, as did the simple pleasure of travelling with no effort across a sunny field while sitting on a bouncy seat with her feet hovering inches off the soil. She relaxed sufficiently to glance up now and then to enjoy the view of the nearby ocean. The repetitiveness of the task was more soothingly hypnotic
than mind-numbing, and she realised she could think deeply of other things while doing it.

  She felt strangely protected, with Molly on one side of her and Pearce on the other, each so much stronger and bigger boned than she was. They made her feel like a pale emissary from a less thriving tribe. Once it was established that she could cope, Morris gradually speeded up. They passed across the long field and back, pausing now and then to allow fresh trays of plants to be brought out from the storage rack or other ingenious stowing places around the tractor. The nameless man passed occasional boiled sweets and toffees and Molly offered up short bursts of gossip, or commentary on the state of someone’s health or the behaviour of their children.

  Pearce seemed entirely absorbed in the minutiae of the business at hand – whether Morris was keeping the lines quite straight, whether they had enough trays on board to see them back to the trailer or whether some new variety of broccoli they were planting was as sturdy as last year’s equivalent. If anything, his silence made her more aware of his close presence than if he had been bantering with Molly and the pick’n’mix man. She noted his deep breathing and occasional unguarded sighs, the battered, antique watch he wore and the unfair advantage his wide grip gave him in enabling him to carry so many seedlings at once.

  She thought about her sudden trip back to London and what it represented. Had the madrigal turned out to be penned in the rear pages of an edition that matched Trevescan’s dates, she would have been unable to resist calling up Dr Goldhammer with the news. She would have come back fired up to complete her thesis and restart her life with a small spasm of labour and creativity. In her heart she knew, guiltily, that the unattributed madrigal was still exciting and entirely worthy of research – the brief, unsettling encounter with Villiers Yates had shown her that. But she was left seeing the trip to London as a last few sporadic steps up a blind alley, a last attempt to revive a life that no longer fitted her. The fact that she had reached the point where the madrigal only fired her interest if it could be made to fit in with the work she had already done on Trevescan was a measure of how poorly academic life now suited her. All the time she was with Giles (and indeed, for much of her insanely misjudged time with Paul) the thesis, neglected or no, had represented a kind of security pass, a voucher she had only to fill out to be readmitted to a world whose rules she understood and where she knew she could acquire a measure of public standing.