Keeping the World Away

by Margaret Forster

  The change came while she was working. At first, she hardly noticed it. Her mind wandered a little and she found herself staring at the woman whose portrait she was painting as though she could not see her clearly. She was thinking about Paul, his arms round her that morning, the pleasure of his embrace. It was over in a moment, the distraction. She collected herself, and frowned, and carefully concentrated on painting. But it alarmed her, this interference: it must not happen again. When it did, and more seriously, when images of Paul, echoes of Paul, drifted in front of her work she resented them. Her work suffered. Twice she had to abandon a commission, dissatisfied with what she had turned out. This made her angry, first with herself and then with Paul. She felt she wanted to retreat from him before he took over her mind entirely and stopped her working. But, on the other hand, was he worth it? Worth sacrificing her work for? And was she perhaps mistaken, in blaming her involvement with Paul for a falling-off in her painting which might have happened anyway? The questions were endless and tormented her.

  Some of this torment she revealed to Paul – it would have been impossible to hide when they had become so close. He said he was flattered to have such an influence. She told him he didn’t understand the panic she experienced each time she found she could not work properly. He asked if painting mattered more to her than he did, and the way in which he asked this, smiling, happy, made it clear what he expected the answer to be. She didn’t reply, but he was so confident he mistook her silence for agreement. ‘You know I love you,’ he said, ‘you know we’re in love, meant for each other. Don’t fight it.’ She wanted to tell him that he had missed the point: it was not love that was in doubt (though she still had some doubt) but what love did to her. She was no longer herself, she could no longer immerse herself in painting, and she did not like the result. She was lost, adrift, and he did not anchor her as painting did.

  Then he went away, on business, for a month. He bombarded her with phone calls and letters but in spite of all this communication he receded as a force in her life. She worked well again and the relief was enormous. When he returned, everything had altered. His power had gone, and once it had gone it never came back. She was her own person once more, and intended to remain so. If he noticed the difference, he said nothing. He carried on as though nothing had changed.

  *

  Once she had made her mind up, she thought carefully about what to give Paul as a farewell present. She wanted him to have some token of her regard for him, something that might have a significance when he had got over the hurt. He had made her happy over the months they had been together, or as happy as it was ever in her power to be.

  She said, on what she intended to be their last day together, ‘Do you remember, you wondered if I was sad? When I was doing your portrait?’

  ‘Yes. You said you weren’t.’

  ‘You didn’t believe me.’

  ‘I didn’t know you. I do now, as much as you’ll let me. You’re not sad. You weren’t sad then, just self-contained.’

  ‘I was sad, actually. And I expect I’ll be again. It’s part of me, this melancholy. It suits me. I work better.’

  ‘Are you telling me something?’

  ‘Yes. I want to go back to being on my own, Paul. I’m sorry.’

  They were walking along the canal. She’d deliberately chosen to tell him while they were outside on the move. But now he stopped abruptly and pulled her, quite roughly, to face him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You do not want to be alone. We’re part of each other now, you know we are, it’s stupid to deny it. What are you trying to make out this is, some tawdry fling?’

  ‘No. It was good. I told you, you stopped me being sad for a while.’ There was a man on a bike trying to get past and Paul had to release her to make way for him. She began walking again, briskly, eyeing the steps a few yards ahead where she could get up onto the road. It had suddenly crossed her mind that he could become violent.

  He caught up with her easily, but didn’t grab her arm again. He seemed to be breathless and she shot a quick look at him. His face was very red and she could see a thin smear of sweat on his forehead. ‘Paul,’ she said, touching his hand lightly. ‘I want to give you something. Look, it’s in my bag. I want you to look at it, and try to understand. Please. Take it.’ He took the package but didn’t open it. Together they went up the steps. There was a taxi coming down the street and she flagged it and was inside in a great hurry, dreading that he would follow. But he didn’t. He stood, clutching the package, looking stunned and incapable now of any action. She knew he would be determined not to let her go. He would phone and write, he would turn up and lay siege to her. There would be no escape. The only thing to do was for her to escape, flee from him, give up her flat and go somewhere else. Sam was back in the country. He had tired of travel, and had returned to Cornwall. She could go there, to begin with. It would all have to be done quickly, without hesitation. She would have to act in a fashion quite foreign to her nature.

  But she felt equal to the task.

  AILSA

  THE JOURNEY WAS enough to put off all but the most determined, which is what she had intended. Ailsa didn’t want to be checked up on, by those few people who would worry about her, nor did she wish to be found and lectured on how selfish she was being or how much better she would feel if she accepted invitations to be looked after. What she wanted was to see if she could live by herself, entirely self-sufficient. The very possibility of managing without other people excited her, but she could not expect this to be understood. To those who knew her she was a grieving widow, devastated by the death of her husband: she must need support and comfort till she could begin to ‘get over’ the tragedy. The truth – that Paul’s death had not been a tragedy for her – was impossible to confess.

  She had dressed with care for the funeral, dreading that those gathered together would detect her relief and deduce that she was not, after all, distraught. Of course, in view of the nature of Paul’s death, a certain amount of relief was permissible. The cliché ‘all for the best’ had been much used and, by the more tactful, the opinion that Paul would have wanted his suffering brought to an end as quickly as possible both for his own and her sake. They were wrong, but they didn’t need to know that. Paul had wanted every last minute of life, whatever his suffering (and he said the pain was not so very great). He had known that she wanted to be free, and that she had not forgiven him for his betrayal all those years ago. It had soured their marriage even though it had not broken it, and living with the pretence of happiness had been a terrible strain. Divorce, however, had been out of the question. It had not even been suggested, by either of them.

  So she had garbed herself in black, and had worn a hat with a veil, but she had not overdone the weeping. Her head had remained bowed during the Mass, and her hands clasped, penitent fashion, in front of her. Her sons, either side of her, had adopted a similar posture, and one of them, Cameron of course, had squeezed out a few tears, quickly wiped away. She had been quite glad of those tears, they had made the family group authentic somehow, and had helped her remain controlled even when face to face with Lucasta Jenkinson, who, she was sure, had not intended a confrontation in the church – their encounter was accidental, a matter of arriving at the door at the same time – and when it happened the woman had behaved well, inclining her head respectfully and then quickly departing. She had looked old and tired, but Ailsa had taken little pleasure in this. It was all a long time ago, Paul’s infatuation, but at the time Lucasta Jenkinson’s appearance had puzzled her (though she had only ever had a glimpse of her, when she delivered the portrait). It had made her distress worse that Lucasta was not the sort of woman Paul could normally be expected to be tempted by – not beautiful in any accepted sense; whereas Ailsa, not given to false modesty, knew that she herself was thought to be.

  Once she was told of the affair, she had burned the portrait. The humiliation of realising that she herself had brought Paul and this woman togethe
r was too painful to bear. She was trembling when she carried the portrait into the garden, right to the far corner beside the brick wall, and poured petrol over it before retreating and hurling a lighted taper at it. The flash that followed, and the blaze of the fire, were immensely satisfying. She watched Paul’s face disappear and with it Lucasta Jenkinson’s power over him, or so she hoped. The portrait had hung in the house for six months before she had discovered what had been going on and she had felt shamed by her ignorance. The affair went on for another six months after she knew of it, and had burned the painting, but she did not suffer as much – once acknowledged, terms were agreed upon (odd though these were) and she managed to keep her dignity. She hadn’t wanted to know when Lucasta Jenkinson left London to return to Cornwall and it was all over, but Paul had made it his business to inform her. His expression gave nothing away. He was matter-of-fact, cold, dismissive of his now absent mistress. Ailsa was not fooled. Rejection was not something her husband could tolerate easily, and she had seen all the small signs of his fury and then distress and finally his depression. She had even felt sorry for him, though not sorry enough to show any compassion. It was shocking to discover how all the love she had for Paul, over so many years, seemed to have disappeared. She could not understand where it had all gone, and was frightened by the bitterness that had so suddenly taken its place. Their marriage had never flourished again though outwardly remaining intact. If, after Lucasta Jenkinson rejected him, Paul had other affairs, she no longer cared. The ‘terms’ for continuing as they were remained the same.

  And then his illness began. He was fifty-two by then, working harder still now that he was running the company. There were medical investigations of one sort and another – though it had taken him a fatally long time to go to a doctor at all – and then he had several operations and drug treatments. He told her the prognosis before the second operation but she had guessed even after the first. ‘Four, five years, if I’m lucky,’ he said. In the event, he had seven, though the last eighteen months were of a desperately poor quality. All that time, he remained at home. She nursed him herself, with plenty of help, it was true, but nevertheless she was his prime carer and he did not have to end his days either in a hospice or a hospital. His gratitude was profound and he expressed it often, but her devotion bewildered him. She saw that he cherished the hope that she might still love him, in spite of the Lucasta Jenkinson affair, and she let him think so. It seemed too cruel to tell him that it was pity that motivated her now. Keeping him at home, keeping herself in front of him, made her feel good. She knew this was a dreadful admission but then it was not one which she had to make to anyone but herself.

  She had wondered, at one point, whether he would ask her to contact Lucasta Jenkinson and tell her he was dying, and she rehearsed in her head what she would do and say; but he never did, and she was thankful. Once, and once only, during the last six months, they came close to discussing what had happened in a way they never could have done before. He was heavily drugged with morphine and scarcely aware of what he was saying, but he suddenly frowned and motioned her to come near him. ‘Do you remember the painting?’ he said. She naturally thought he meant the portrait. ‘You know I burned it,’ she said. ‘No, no, the little painting,’ he said. She had no idea what he was talking about. ‘The little painting,’ he repeated, ‘the little picture.’ She kept silent, letting him ramble. ‘Looked at it often,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t know what she meant by giving it to me.’ Then he sighed. ‘The heartache in it maybe.’ There were tears then in his eyes. ‘So difficult,’ he whispered, ‘love, so difficult, isn’t it, all the trying, striving, hoping. Empty. Like the room.’ Then he slept, and she thought he might be dead, so still did he lie, so imperceptible was his breathing, but she felt his pulse and, though it was faint, he was alive.

  Next morning, after a good night, he was temporarily drug-free, and she asked him what he had meant about the ‘little picture’. He shook his head, said he must have been rambling. But after he died, she soon discovered the picture. It was in a drawer, in his bedside cabinet, very carefully wrapped up in a piece of cloth. She stared at it, turned it over, and immediately connected it with Lucasta Jenkinson though without any evidence. Lucasta must have painted it and given it to him. Why else would he have hidden it? Rage that he’d thought about it while he was dying and had dared to tell her so made her want to burn it too, but the anger faded quickly and, left holding the painting, she began to study it, looking for what Paul had seen there. His comment made no sense to her. What had the corner of an empty room to do with love? Paul never talked about love. He had never said, in so many words, that he loved her, not even at the beginning. He had said, ‘You are lovely,’ he had said, ‘I adore your eyes,’ he had said, ‘Your skin, it is so beautiful, it drives me mad to touch it.’ Extravagant compliments, which had pleased her at the time. She had believed that they meant that he loved her. But he had never directly said so. Whether he had done so to Lucasta Jenkinson or any other woman she had no means of knowing; but she doubted it. It was not in his character to declare himself so completely. And yet, dying, he had spoken of love, of the difficulty of loving, the striving it involved, and the emptiness at its heart.

  She showed the painting to no one. Partly, she was afraid someone would recognise it and tell her that Lucasta Jenkinson was indeed the artist. Though it did not seem likely to her that Paul’s mistress had painted this: it was not like what she knew of her work – surely she was a portrait painter? – and she preferred to think it was the work of some other woman (though why a woman, not a man?). At any rate, she wanted no other eye to behold it and tell her more than she wished to know, and so she hid it and when the time came to leave, on impulse she took it with her. It was small, it was light, it fitted easily into the flap of a case.

  *

  The sea was rough when they crossed, but she found it exhilarating. The ferryboat chugged very slowly through the waves, the noise of its engine tremendous, drowning the great slapping of the sea itself. Ailsa remained on deck, with the spray hurtling over her, until the pier vanished, and then went inside. The boatman did not speak to her – she would have been unable to make out a word anyway – but stared ahead, holding the wheel tight. There were no other passengers. Lots of cargo, but no other people. After half an hour, Ailsa felt the boat slow down, the harsh throb of its engine changing to a steadier rhythm. They were coming into the east of the island, where the harbour lay, sheltered from the fierce winds. The boatman pointed through the glass partition as land came into view, and she nodded and went back on deck for the last few minutes.

  The view was almost obliterated by the rain and the thick, black banks of cloud lying sullenly over the whole island. She could barely see the hills which she knew were there, and not a building was visible except for the outline of the old fishing station, where the herring had once been cured. There was a truck parked near the jetty, and as the boat’s engine cut out, leaving only the noise of the wind, a man got out and walked to meet them. He and the boatman exchanged words, both of them turning to stare in Ailsa’s direction as she struggled to put her rucksack on and pick up her bags. Neither of them said a word to her as she stepped unsteadily onto the jetty, but the man held out his hand to take her luggage and she gave it to him, afraid that she would slip on the wet surface if she tried to carry too much. ‘MacPhail,’ the man said, and put her things into his truck. ‘Tha droch shìde ann,’ she said, to astonish him, but he appeared not to understand her Gaelic, or, if he did, to think it was a statement of the obvious: of course the weather was bad, it needed no reply.

  *

  The weather continued bad, raining ceaselessly, all the first month. It was June, but the rain fell as though it were the middle of winter, great sheets pelting from a leaden sky. Twice a day she went out, twice a day she was soaked in spite of her supposedly waterproof clothing. In the mornings, she walked east, to the furthest extremity of the island in that direction, in the after
noons to the west. There was little to see. Visibility remained so poor that the hills were still hidden and it was only when she reached the sea that there was any change in colour. The sea, for all the dim light, looked silver, a dull metallic sheen, and the white horses crashing on the shingle beach gave the waves a certain grandeur. She liked to stand there, staring at nothing; only the noise stopped the scene from being eerie. Each time she turned and left the sea, the silence closed once more round her and she was aware of her footsteps slicing through the thick wet grass. Then, she did shiver, though not with fright. This is what it meant to be alone, cut off, forced in on oneself. It was not what she had imagined.

  The croft offered few comforts. It had been modernised in a minimal way – it had running water, sewage went into a septic tank, and there was a small oil tank in the garden which provided fuel for heating, luxurious by island standards. But the floors were stone and uncarpeted, and the furniture sparse and uncomfortable. There was a bed (single) in the one bedroom; and in the downstairs room, which was both kitchen and living room, a cheap Formica table, with two stools under it. Two battered armchairs stood in front of the fire, and there was no other furniture. No refrigerator, none being thought necessary since there was a larder. There was no colour in the place at all. The walls were stone and remained unpainted – they were not even rendered or plastered. The chairs were leather, the dark brown worn black with age. The table’s surface was slate grey. Hardly any light came in through the small window, which had heavy wooden shutters to close over it, but no curtains. The ‘garden’ had neither flowers nor shrubs, and the lawn was more heather than turf. A fence ran round the half-acre, broken in places, and where a gate had once been there was a gap.