‘What do we both know?’ he asked gently.
‘You both know that Charles is having sex with Miranda Bloomfeather. You both know that he wants a divorce. You both know that I left him last night. And you both should know that I am never, never going back!’ Alice proclaimed.
Mrs Bland put in a wonderful performance of utter mystification. ‘I think you had better explain this to me, Alice,’ she said. ‘I can assure you I know nothing of this!’
Alice hammered the arms of her chair with her fists. ‘You do! You do!’ she said, her voice rising with her frustration. ‘I don’t believe that Charles hasn’t told you. Half the university knows about him and Miranda. Even I know!’
‘Oh, I see now what is happening here,’ Mrs Bland said gently. Alice glanced at her, momentarily hopeful.
‘You have forgotten our little rule,’ she said, smiling and holding up one finger. ‘D’you remember which one I mean?’
Alice shook her head.
‘Do you know which one I mean, Professor Hartley?’ Mrs Bland asked him, smiling.
Charles smiled back, like a big child in a nursery class who is prepared to play nicely to help the little ones learn. ‘Would it be the one about not bringing gossip into our counselling sessions?’ he asked.
Mrs Bland clasped her hands together as if struggling not to applaud. ‘That’s the one!’ she said gaily. ‘And anything which needs to be said, is to be said here and now.’
She turned to Alice. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Do you want to ask Professor Hartley about his relationship with his students?’
Alice was twisting a dark lock of hair around her finger, her face black. ‘Yes,’ she said sulkily.
Mrs Bland nodded. ‘Go on then, Alice,’ she said. ‘Ask the Professor whatever it is you wish.’
Alice tugged on the lock of hair, and then looked directly at Charles. He leaned towards her, his face a picture of kindly concern.
‘Do you want to divorce me?’ she asked. ‘Are you having an affair with Miranda Bloomfeather?’
‘No, and No!’ he said triumphantly. ‘Alice, how could you even think such a thing? Miranda is one of my brighter students, but a mere girl. And you and I have been married for sixteen years! It is obvious that I am committed to the success of our marriage, Alice! Why! Just look at my commitment to the success of our marital counselling! Who was here first today? And who was late, Alice? And who was rude to Mrs Bland?’
Alice goggled at him. ‘But you said last night …’ she started.
Charles sat back in his chair and glanced at Mrs Bland. Promptly she held up one admonitory finger. ‘Stay in the Here and Now, Alice,’ she said sweetly. ‘How do you feel about what Professor Hartley has said to you now?’
‘You’re lying!’ Alice said flatly. ‘I know you are having sex with Miranda. And I know you want to end the marriage.’
Charles smiled at her pityingly and shook his head. ‘Alice, Alice, Alice,’ he said softly. ‘It makes me so sad when I see your jealousy drive you out of control like this. You have delusions, Alice. All this is the product of your jealous imagination.’
Alice glared blankly at him and then at Mrs Bland.
She nodded. ‘Your husband is right, Alice,’ she said. ‘You have to work on trusting him. I want you both to come to me for an extra session this week and we will do some exercises around trust. Would Friday morning at this time be possible, Professor?’
Charles reached for his briefcase and made a great play of checking his diary. Neither of them asked if Alice was free. Alice was always free.
‘Yes,’ he said at length. ‘And I think, Mrs Bland, that we should seriously consider whether Alice should have separate therapy sessions to help her cope with her paranoia.’
Mrs Bland nodded, looking thoughtfully at Alice.
‘Perhaps even medication,’ Charles said softly. ‘Perhaps even a period of hospitalization …’
Mrs Bland nodded, thoughtful again. Alice, her world whirling around her, listened to her husband making the first moves to have her put away, and could not find the power to protest.
Charles glanced at his watch, and snapped his briefcase shut. ‘Before we close I want to ask Alice for an agreement,’ he said in a bright, businesslike voice. ‘I want my furniture back in my house by the time I come home this evening – and not a scratch or a dent or a chip on anything.’
Alice got up slowly and walked towards the window. From where she stood she could see the blue roof of Michael’s pantechnicon. It was like a rebel flag. Her spirits suddenly soared. There lay her freedom, there was the open road away from this claustrophobic room and these two experts. Charles could plan what he wished, Alice was Born Free. With new courage Alice swung around and opened her mouth to claim her freedom, to deny Charles’s power, to shriek her defiance.
‘Time’s up,’ said Mrs Bland blandly. No one was ever allowed to prolong the session.
Mrs Bland picked up her pale grey suede music case, shot a quick look at Alice and a longer smile at Charles, and slid unstoppably from the room.
Charles stood up. His smile at Alice was triumphant. ‘See you at home tonight, darling,’ he said loudly enough for Mrs Bland to hear from the next room where she tidied her paperwork. ‘Don’t forget our agreement about the furniture.’
He went from the room without another glance at her. Alice stood by the window and watched him go. As he entered the tower block of the Psychology Department she saw Miranda Bloomfeather in a white miniskirt and high white boots lounge towards him and fall into step beside him.
Alice clutched her skirts in her hands and whirled out of the counselling room, down the stairs and across the lawns to Michael as if she were running for her life.
He was waiting for her in the cab of the van with the engine idling. Alice scuttled across the grass, gathered up her skirts, leaped up into the cab and slammed the door.
‘Drive!’ Alice yelled. ‘Drive, Michael! Let’s get outta here!’
Startled, Michael pressed the accelerator and for once did not stall. The engine roared under his inexpert handling, and he swung the wheel around. They drove noisily around the perimeter road of the campus and then turned out of the campus on to the dual carriageway and headed east along the coast.
‘All right?’ Michael asked over the noise of a driver braking sharply behind them as they wove from slow lane to fast lane and back again.
Alice wound down the window and let the wind ruffle her hair. ‘All right now,’ she said. ‘I have just had a most unpleasant forty minutes.’
Michael glanced at her, surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have thought anyone could be unpleasant to you,’ he said. ‘I would have thought you would have been a match for anyone!’
Alice smiled at him and then turned her head and watched the hedges flicker past. A car overtook on the inside, sounding its horn. The driver waved and shouted something. Alice waved pleasantly back.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s odd. I suppose it was an old bad habit.’ She paused. ‘I think I’ll give it up,’ she said.
She lay back and closed her eyes, reviewing her marriage as an old bad habit which it was time to give up. Slowly her heartbeat returned to normal. The image of Mrs Bland’s conspiracy with Professor Hartley was left behind them. Alice was driving away from the bastion of the Professor’s power: his work, the institution of the university, his authority over his students, his control over Alice. Alice could feel the bonds of a lifetime stretching and breaking. She threw back her head and started to hum in the long pulsing column of her white throat.
Michael smiled at her pleasure and changed gear from second to third, the engine screaming for release. A motorcyclist cut in front of them and then felt terror surge as the van leaped forward and chased him from lane to lane across the road as Michael glanced at Alice and swerved to the left, and then turned his attention back to the road and swerved to the right.
It was a pleasant drive in the early-morning sunshine. Grass-like stuff, which Michae
l vaguely assumed to be wheat, was growing green in the fields. White birds which were probably seagulls were circling behind a lone tractor. On the hills of the Downs the little blobs of white were sheep and the tiny blobs beside them were either very small sheep – perhaps lambs – or dumped copies of the European.
Alice wound down the window and the sweet smell of fresh-cut hay blew into the cab. Michael sneezed; Alice inhaled deeply, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her face was shining with her joy while her heart still pounded with the throb of adrenalin. Every now and then she exclaimed ‘And another thing …’ and then fell silent. Her hair crackled with static electricity as if it were charged with Alice’s newly freed energy.
They drove along the main road, and then turned right down the narrow road to Rithering village. Small birds sang loudly in the hedgerows, the uncut grass of the verges was speckled with flowers which Michael recognized unerringly as daisies of various different shapes, sizes and colours. The hawthorn buds were thick and white in the hedges, apple blossom and cherry blossom snowed petals down on to the lane. Michael thought that the eglantine was probably blowing. He tooted his horn at a particularly sharp corner and waved with the casual friendliness of country folk at the driver coming in the opposite direction who was forced to brake and swerve and run into the ditch.
‘Nearly there,’ he commented.
Alice opened her eyes and leaned forward to rummage in a large black rucksack at her feet which was lumpy with bottles of medicine and packages of herbs and seeds.
‘What have you got in there?’ Michael asked curiously.
Alice veiled her eyes with her eyelashes and smiled. ‘Nature’s cures,’ she said. ‘I have been a herbalist and a natural healer for many years. If your Aunt is not ready to leave this earthly plane it may be that I have something which might cure her. If she is wanting to make an easy transition to the next plane then I have some herbal teas which will help her on her way.’
‘Oh good,’ Michael nodded. Then he said suddenly ‘What?’ and the van swooped perilously close to the bank at the far side of the road as the meaning of her words hit him. ‘Help her on her way?’ he yelped. ‘What d’you mean?’
Alice smiled again, that special smile which denoted that she was in touch with deep elemental forces. It gave Professor Hartley the creeps, but Michael was new to it and it thrilled him down to his toes. His big right toe, less controlled than the others, gave an excited little twitch and the pantechnicon leaped forward.
‘Don’t worry,’ Alice said. And Michael could do nothing but smile back at her.
He had a bit of trouble turning the van into the narrow gateway which was marked with a lopsided sign – Rithering Manor. The furniture clanked and shifted ominously as the van bumped up the potholed gravel drive. Low hanging boughs of slowly falling trees banged on the roof of the van and roses run to briar scratched at the windows and the paint-work. The house itself was dark; it looked uninhabited, standing alone among tall trees on the outskirts of the village, the high gable ends pointing at a sky which had grown suddenly cloudy.
Michael stopped the van in front of the house and went up the shallow steps to the large double wooden doors, dusty with peeling paint. He pulled at the bell-knob. It came off in his hand with the promptness which normally only happens when these things are arranged by a good special effects department. He looked back towards the van for help from Alice.
She shouldered her rucksack and, wrapping an extra scarf or two around her head, came up the steps.
‘Try the door,’ she advised.
It yielded at once to his touch. Feeling for Alice’s hand, Michael stepped over the threshold into the darkness of the hall.
‘Who’s that?’ came a voice. A strong and hearty male voice from the front room on their left.
‘It’s Michael!’ squeaked Michael. He got a firm grip of himself and tightened his hold on Alice’s hand. ‘Michael Coulter,’ he said. This time he had gone too far in the other direction. He sounded as if he were auditioning for the bass part in Figaro. ‘I’ve come to see my Aunt,’ he said in a pitch midway between the squeak and basso profundo. ‘My Aunt, Miss Sarah Coulter.’
‘You’ve left it a bit late,’ came the reply. The door opened and a thick-set, grey-haired man stood in the doorway looking them over. ‘She’s dead. Are you the lad from the university?’
‘I am her nephew, Michael,’ said Michael, trying for a little dignity.
‘And you must be Mrs Coulter?’
Alice flushed scarlet with pleasure at being mistaken for Michael’s wife. Michael’s grip on her hand tightened. It was a tender moment for them both.
‘I didn’t know you were staying with your son or I’d have contacted you direct, Mrs Coulter,’ the man said.
Alice’s flush went redder but she abruptly lost her smile. ‘I am a friend of Michael’s,’ she said icily. ‘I came over with him today to keep him company.’
‘Oh aye,’ the man nodded. ‘Well I’m Doctor Simmonds, I sent the message to you. I’m afraid you’re too late. She’s dead.’
‘Oh,’ Michael said blankly. ‘Oh dear.’
Alice put the rucksack sulkily down on the tiled hall floor. A large green-eyed, thick-coated black cat came out of the shadows and sniffed at it.
‘I’ve just written out the death certificate,’ the doctor said cheerfully. ‘Natural causes of course. She was eighty-eight. I think it was the Beaujolais Nouveau, I warned her not to drink it after Christmas but she was always stubborn.
‘I’ll send the undertakers around later. But they won’t be able to fit her in for at least a couple of days. She’ll be all right here as long as it doesn’t get too hot.’
Michael gulped, his face went greenish in the shadowy hall.
‘You’re the only heir, you know,’ the doctor said chattily. He came out of the sitting-room with his black bag, waving the death certificate to dry the ink. ‘I see you brought your things to move in at once. Bit precipitate of you I would have thought; but young people today have very little sense of etiquette.’
Alice’s grip on Michael’s hand tightened.
‘Anyway, I’ll leave you to unload,’ he said cheerily. ‘Don’t block up the hall with anything till they’ve got the coffin out.’ He paused for a moment. ‘We’ll be neighbours,’ he said without much pleasure. ‘It’s a quiet village this; expensive. We like it like that.’ He looked hard at Michael’s young gormless face and then glanced at Alice’s flowing bright gown and coloured scarves. ‘Nothing that brings down property prices will be tolerated in this village,’ he said abruptly. ‘No hippies here thank you. G’day!’
His confident footsteps echoed on the loose tiles of the hall. Alice and Michael stood in silence, still hand-clasped. The big black cat backed up to Alice’s bag of herbal remedies and shot a spray of yellow urine directly and accurately all over it.
There was a long silence. Not even the hissing noise of the peeing cat distracted Michael and Alice from their thoughts.
‘Should we see her?’ Michael asked in a hushed tone.
Alice nodded. She went towards the uncarpeted stairs and led the way, one hand trailing along the sticky banister, the treads of the stairs creaking beneath each step. The stairs swept around a half-landing beneath a cobwebby high window and then arrived at the main landing. To left and right were doors closed on empty bedrooms, the door to the master bedroom was straight ahead. It stood open. Alice crossed the threshold and then paused.
The old lady was dressed in a perfectly white nightgown with a nightcap tied neatly around her white head. She was propped high on clean white pillows trimmed with lace. She looked like everyone’s idea of a sweetly dead old lady. She looked like Whistler’s Mother; only supine. On her bedside table were two empty bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau, and on the coverlet of her bed were price lists from wine merchants and yesterday’s Sporting Life.
Alice started to hum, a deep rhythmic buzz of sound from the back of her throat like a massiv
e, tuneful bee. She went over to the sash window and flung it up to welcome the sunshine into the shaded room. Michael, who dimly remembered seeing Alice hurling furniture from the spare bedroom window the night before, shot an anxious look at her as if she might be planning to toss Aunty Sarah out into the rose beds. But Alice was communing with the forces of Nature and freeing Aunty Sarah’s aura and essence and incorporeal body to mingle with the warm sunshine and be transported to a higher plane.
‘Hummm …’ she droned.
Michael dipped his head in an awkward little bow to the still figure in the bed and stepped softly out of the room. From his previous visit he thought he remembered that the kitchen was at the back of the house. He had not eaten since yesterday afternoon, and last night had been the most active of his life. He badly wanted a cup of coffee. He was also thinking that he should telephone his parents at once and tell them of Aunty Sarah’s death and his rich inheritance. Michael’s brain, under-fed and over-excited, spun with dreams and hopes.
The kitchen was as immaculate as Aunty Sarah’s bedroom. Michael filled the kettle and put it on to boil, noting that Aunty Sarah’s cleaner had let the rest of the house accumulate dust as long as the kitchen, Aunty Sarah’s room and the bathroom were as perfect as they had been in the roaring twenties when Aunty Sarah’s exacting standards had been set.
Just as the kettle was boiling, Alice came in.
She was wearing her dreamy look which sent a shiver of anticipation down Michael’s spine.
‘Tea, if there is any,’ she said with flute-like sweetness. ‘Coffee is a poison, you know, Michael.’
Michael nodded obediently, and looked for the canister of tea instead.
‘So you are the heir?’ she asked.
Michael nodded. ‘I always knew I would be,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t really think about it. She was one of those old ladies who look like they will live forever, you know.’
He warmed the pot and made the tea. There was fresh milk in the fridge. Alice frowned as he put the bottle on the table. Michael looked for a milk jug and poured it in, but that seemed to make it no better.
Alice Hartley‘s Happiness Page 3