by Angela Huth
Half-an-hour later, she sat in the open-plan sitting room in Mrs Robbins’s semi-detached Georgian-type house in Iffley. Mrs Robbins had urged her to be seated on the Dralon sofa placed at an angle beside the French windows so that she would have a full view of the bald ‘garden area’, as she called it, which Ursula was to transform with slabs of mock York stone.
‘I was thinking about plants,’ Mrs Robbins was saying, pecking at her third Craven A in ten minutes. ‘You know I’m not much up on plants, as I explained, and, as I told you, you can be at liberty to do what you like.’ She inhaled, exhaled. ‘But I do have one or two little preferences. Perhaps they could be accommodated in your general plan?’
‘Of course.’ Ursula wrote Preferences in her notebook.
‘I love red, and I love a mauvey blue. So? You can guess.’ Ursula nodded, expressionless. ‘Salvia and aubretia. I know that’s not very original, but it’s what you like that counts, don’t you think? Put in whatever else you like, Ursula, but make sure you include plenty of salvia and aubretia, or I’ll be a disappointed woman.’
‘Right.’
Ursula picked up her briefcase to dissipate a new fury that was rising within her. Her entire plan would be ruined by salvia and aubretia. On the other hand, the plan was so grim in the first place, to satisfy Mrs Robbins’s wishes, that perhaps two more nasty additions would not matter.
‘Would you like to see my drawings?’ she asked.
‘Can’t wait,’ said Mrs Robbins, her tone of voice in direct opposition to her words.
She pushed away a tray that stood on the low table between them. The tray held a bottle of medium sweet sherry which was surrounded by six matching glasses rimmed with gold. On their sides was stamped a matching gold cathedral and the word ‘Durham’ in Gothic print. Mrs Robbins, unable to resist drawing these new acquisitions to Ursula’s attention, picked one up and ran her little finger round the rim. (Salvia-red nail.)
‘Just look at these! Such detailing. I got them up in Durham only last week in a gift shop. I thought they were a lovely find.’
‘Lovely.’
Ursula unrolled her sheets of paper, spread them out. Mrs Robbins fiddled with the silk bow of her blouse, embroidered with machine-stitched forget-me-nots – another masterpiece of detailing.
‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, lighting her fourth cigarette but not looking at the drawings, ‘I think detailing is the secret of my life. I’m a real one for detail, as you may have gathered from our first meeting. It makes all the difference, don’t you think?’
‘Quite,’ said Ursula. She tapped at the paper with a pen. ‘Now, this is possibility number one. . . .’
Mrs Robbins raised the pencilled arcs of her eyebrows: they shot up into her hair like miniature skipping ropes. She glanced at the drawing for a scant moment.
‘Very nice,’ she said. ‘Would there be room for my little suggestions?’
‘Of course.’
‘Where?’
‘Well, anywhere.’
‘That’s a relief. I was quite nervous of getting in a landscape gardener, you know. I thought I might be pushed into having one of those bleached-out gardens that aren’t me at all. All silver and white: that kind of thing gives me the shivers.’
‘My job’s to do what the customer wants.’
Ursula forced a smile and placed possibility number two on top of the first drawing. Her client seemed in no hurry to study it. She was staring out of the window, cigarette twitching at the corner of her mouth.
‘You know something, Ursula? I’ve never admitted this to anyone before, but I suppose my tastes are what might be called municipal. I love bright colours. I love those bright orange flowers the Council men put in year after year at the Pear Tree roundabout. I love pansies and marigolds – and salvia, of course. Splashes of colour, nothing subtle. I don’t know why we should be made to feel so guilty these days if we’re not supporters of subtlety, if our tastes don’t happen to coincide with those hoity-toity people who write about gardening in the press. I like . . . brightness. . . .’ Her glutinous blue eyes were staring at some colourless point out of the window.
Ursula rustled the papers. ‘Would you like to see drawing number two?’ she asked.
‘Oh yes. Though I don’t see how it can improve on your first idea, really.’ The eyes moved, jelly-like, to Ursula’s sketch, but plainly did not focus.
‘It’s probably all because I grew up in – well, a poor northern city, and the only beautiful place I saw as a child was the park. It had a huge flower clock, I remember, that changed colours with the seasons. I used to stand for hours and hours looking at that clock.’ She smiled, squashed the tiny stub of her cigarette into a brass ashtray, braced herself to concentrate on Ursula’s second drawing.
‘Very nice, again,’ she said. ‘Could we have the clump of aubretia there? And perhaps my dear old salvia there? What do you think?’
I think that somewhere under a tangled bush a bloody-breasted pigeon lies dying. Or perhaps it’s dead, already cold, chewed: feather and flesh and bone, that once clapped through the sky, now a tangled mess on the earth.
I think that by the time I tell Martin about having to include Mrs Robbins’s little preferences, even in this unsatisfactory plan, the pain will be over.
‘I think that’s a pretty good idea,’ she said. ‘Let’s try.’
Ursula took a red pen from her case and, to the delight of her client, drew a line of small red flowers each side of a path which, contrary to Mrs Robbins’s instructions, she had made to curve. The fact that Mrs Robbins, high on the thought of her salvia, did not notice the curve, was, for Ursula, the small single triumph of a bad morning.
* * *
That evening, to Rachel’s surprise, Thomas arrived home at six. She had not been expecting him till the following day: his plan had been to spend the night away.
Her immediate reaction was one of annoyance. Her own idea had been to watch a play on television and go to bed at half-pastnine. Now, suddenly, she would have to think of food, laying the table, something to talk about. But Thomas was in such unusually good humour that her irritation evaporated within moments. He even suggested they went out. Out, Thomas? What can be the matter? Rachel, it was decided, should book a restaurant while he had a bath and changed.
She duly telephoned eleven restaurants, all of which had no tables, and eventually settled for an expensive place in the Fulham Road. In the end, there was no time for her to change. Instead she hurriedly brushed her hair and fastened an elaborate suede belt – Thomas’s last birthday present – round her waist. The novelty of the unexpected events of the evening put her in high spirits. She found herself laughing as Thomas opened the door of the car, took her arm in the restaurant, and showed extraordinary concern that she should choose exactly the right things to eat. She had always appreciated his good manners.
Over smoked salmon and farafalle, Thomas admitted to Rachel the most significant event of his day: the tracking down of R. Cotterman. He told her of his plan to visit the artist to buy more pictures.
‘Where does she live, this Cotterman lady?’ asked Rachel.
‘Norfolk. On the coast. I’ll go very early Wednesday morning, be back in time for dinner in Oxford.’
‘You do dash about so.’ She said it admiringly. ‘Why don’t you wait till the weekend?’
‘Can’t wait.’
‘I haven’t seen you in such a state of excitement for years.’
‘No.’ He paused. ‘I’m a silly old fool, sometimes.’
Rachel shook her head. They both smiled.
‘And what sort of generation do you suppose your artist is?’
‘Her daughter must be somewhere in her late twenties, so I suppose she’s quite old.’
‘My age, roughly?’
‘Older, I expect. Now I know Cotterman’s not a man – and I’m still not used to the idea – I imagine she’s an old lady. All I care about is snapping up a lot of her pictures. . . .’
Thomas pressed his wife to a zabaglione, and made her laugh with the latest stories of his managing director’s attempts to speak French. Incredulous at such treatment, enjoying herself, Rachel became a little drunk. Back in the car, she found herself putting her hand on Thomas’s thigh, and thanking him for such an unexpected dinner. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She wondered if . . . possibly. He removed her hand to put the car in gear, and they drove home in amiable silence.
Thomas helped himself to a large glass of whisky. On the way upstairs, arm round his wife’s shoulder, he said he would go up to the studio for a few moments, then come to bed. He was pretty tired, he added. Outside the bedroom door, they stopped, leaned spontaneously towards one another. Rachel, head spinning a little, laid her head against his shoulder. Thomas patted it awkwardly with his whisky-free hand.
‘I’m a rotten old husband,’ he said.
‘Rubbish.’
‘Still, sometimes a man finds himself at a crossroads.’
He disengaged himself from Rachel without further explanation and went slowly up to his studio. There, he switched on a single light, sat on a high stool and contemplated the Cotterman seascape. He felt slightly drunk, very calm, and warm with good intentions. After the disastrous beginning of the long day, he had been surprised to discover how quickly he had recovered from so disagreeable a rebuff. The disintegration of a fantasy can be less painful than that of a reality, he concluded. And on the way down the motorway, he had had a long think.
It had occurred to him that the time had come to stop gadding about after unlikely young girls, making a fool of himself, and to pay more attention to his wife. After all, they had acquired a useful kind of compatibility over the years, and that was no mean quality. She didn’t grumble, much, and, although she had let herself go, she could still rise to an occasion and look pretty good when she made the effort. This evening, in the dim light of the restaurant, she had looked quite handsome, and her pleasure in the whole thing had been touching. Perhaps he ought thus to treat her more often. Be generally nicer to her, show more concern, more interest in her life and thoughts. Well, it wasn’t too late. He’d start tomorrow. Make some extraordinary gesture like taking her a cup of coffee in bed, to show he was serious about the crossroads. Better still, he would start tonight. Carry on where they had left off.
Thomas stood up, finished his drink. Trouble was, after his lack of sleep last night, the driving, the emotional turmoil caused by the vile Miss Amber Hair, more driving, and then the effort needed at dinner to launch his new plan, he was so bloody tired. He yawned. Also, he was not exactly overwhelmed with desire. That was the problem with good intentions. You could successfully apply them in most areas, but not all. The one thing that could not be resuscitated at will was physical desire. In the last five years, between girlfriends, Thomas had dutifully made love to his wife for a single, nefarious reason: that she should not wonder at his total abstention. As Rachel never questioned him, even those perfunctory occasions had become almost non-existent.... It must be almost a year, come to think of it. Perhaps, then, tonight, he really should make an effort. Treat the whole thing as a symbolic act.
Rachel was sitting up in bed, reading. She always managed to make any bed look comfortable, even the impersonal beds of hotel rooms. She had a way of enticing pillows to curl round her, cloud-like.
When Thomas returned from the bathroom Rachel had taken off her glasses, put aside her book. He saw she was wearing a lacy jacket, the sort of thing his mother, as an old lady, wore for breakfast in bed every morning. Beneath it, he couldn’t help noticing, Rachel was naked. A nipple protruded through one of the lacy holes. Very unusual. It signified, he realised through the fuzziness of his head, something he was unable to imagine very sharply.
Rachel smiled. Thomas began to undress. He was a clumsy undresser, and didn’t like to be watched. Tonight, Rachel’s eyes never left him. Most disconcerting. But he refrained from asking her to look away for fear she should ask why. He hung up his suit, put his shirt and tie neatly over a chair, drawing out the process in the hope that Rachel would get bored of looking. No such luck. He pulled off his socks, before his pants, as she had trained him to do many years ago. In their rapturous youth, when they would say anything, anything to one another and understand, she had told him the one way for a man to kill all desire in a woman was to approach her naked but for his socks. Thomas had never forgotten this. In all his escapades, he had remained faithful to his wife’s rule, thereby astounding many a young lady, less discerning than her, and in a hurry. Now, still playing for time, he rolled his blue and green Argyll wool socks into a ball, tossed it up to the ceiling and caught it. Rachel laughed. Plainly there was going to be no way of deflecting her intentions. But it was worth one last try. Thomas finally stood up in his underpants. He patted his large stomach. That might put her off. She had not had much chance to notice, of late, how much weight he had gained.
‘Why don’t you not put your pyjamas on?’ she asked.
A multitude of answers came to Thomas’s mind, but none of them from his lips. He gave a mock shiver, but could hardly pretend to feel cold in the almost tangible heat of the room. He stood for a while, speechless still, then slid off his underpants. This seemed to be a cue for Rachel. She rose from her cloudy pillows and took off her jacket. Her heavy breasts lay on the sheet. Thomas found himself staring at them in some fascination. He hadn’t seen them for a very long time.
‘Come on,’ she said.
Thomas padded to the bed, stifled a yawn. He clambered in, switched out the light on the table beside him. Before there was a moment to plan his next move, Rachel had sidled up beside him. Their naked shoulders met. She put her hand under the bedclothes, touched him. Even as she did so, Thomas pictured the hand as he so often saw it, emerging bubbly from a sink of washing-up water, or laying knives and forks on the table. Her grasp was more peaceful than erotic. A wave of sleepiness crept through his veins like warm treacle, and he knew that just to keep awake would be an almighty struggle.
But his good manners, coupled with his good intentions, combined to make one last effort. He shunted himself into Rachel’s arms, kissed her gently. Their legs intertwined. He could feel hers stiffen. He could feel her hope. He stroked her breast. It filled his hand. She squirmed. He ran the hand on down to her ribs, well-covered in flesh – so strange after Gillian’s brittle bones. Altogether a larger landscape, his wife, with whom he would have to reacquaint himself. . . . Close to her, like this, he was reminded of curling up on the nursery sofa as a child. There was the same sense of peace, lack of urgency. . . . His hand, he realised, had come to a stop on Rachel’s stomach. All the good intentions in the world, then, could not inspire him to go farther. Drowsiness warmed him like fur. He felt Rachel’s lips on his closed eyelids, urging him not to worry, to sleep, to sleep. How kind she was.
He did not hear her put out the light, or move away from him, or wipe away the silent tears that poured down her cheeks in the dark.
At breakfast next morning, from behind his paper, Thomas said, ‘Sorry about that, old thing,’ and returned to his usual silence. He left early, kissing Rachel on both cheeks rather than the customary one – perhaps an indication that there would be another attempt at the crossroads.
Rachel, back in bed, smiled inwardly to herself. Eventual sleep had quelled frustration. In fact, this morning she felt not the slightest desire for Thomas – should he return at this moment and attempt to seduce her, his vitality restored, she would beg him to refrain. Instead, she was conscious of a weary old affection, a comfortable feeling of ease, security: far preferable to the bleakness, the tension, the irritation which were her normal companions. Thomas, she thought, whatever happened in the future, would never leave her. He was a man of some honour and deep habit, and in the end the practicalities of staying with his wife would seem preferable to the palaver of settling elsewhere.
So, in a way, it was a happy morning.
In a way. But. But, what?
Rachel struggled to decipher the thin mist of amorphous thought that came to her. Something to do with restlessness, a vague idea of compensation that was very different from secret, solitary sleep. All very unclear, and perhaps dangerous to grapple with. In no mood to clarify her faintly disturbing thoughts, she put aside her unread newspaper and returned to sleep.
She awoke two hours later, irritated at the thought that she would now have to hurry to prepare lunch for her sister.
Her sister, Anne, was younger than Rachel, an efficient feminist, wife and mother, and director of an employment agency. Rachel found her wearisome. They had little in common, but out of some sort of sibling convention met a few times a year for lunch, sent presents at Christmas.
‘You’re so pale, Rachel,’ Anne observed, immediately annoying, as she swept into the kitchen. Her blowlamp eyes scorched round the comfortable muddle of the kitchen so unlike her own arrangements at home.
‘I’m perfectly all right,’ said Rachel.
‘I didn’t mean anything was wrong.’
‘Well, there isn’t anything wrong. Everything’s fine.’