I believe that our meetings were damaging to both of us, for if they lacerated me they left Julia unappeased. She wanted scandal, and if possible defeat; she wanted me to provide her with an enthralling serial story in which I would appear in my worst light. ‘What’s his name?’ she asked me repeatedly. When I could no longer withhold it I felt vanquished. ‘Oh, Alan Carter. Yes, I remember. His wife ran off. Must be something wrong with him. Actually, I could do with another doctor—old Bannister’s hopeless. You might ask him to call round.’ I noted that she did not ask me to bring him round. The worst realization was that Julia would have amused Alan enormously. They would have got on like a house on fire. ‘I’ll mention it,’ I said, as carefully as possible. ‘But I believe he’s very busy.’ ‘Then you’ll just have to use your influence, won’t you?’ Her smile as she said this was the smile on the face of the tiger.
Thus frightened and humiliated I took no pleasure in the beautiful days, which became quieter when the schools broke up and families began to depart on holiday. My street took on a suburban calm, and I longed to preserve it, to enjoy it at leisure, in innocence, when my mood should change, if it ever did. ‘Will you go away?’ I asked Alan Carter timidly. ‘I’ve got a house on the Isle of Wight,’ he replied. ‘We might run down there for a few days.’ This was so major a development that all fear temporarily left me. So great was my shock of pleasure that I almost wished to be left alone to savour it. He was drinking a glass of white wine in my sitting-room at the time, on his way to a dinner somewhere. He liked to start the evening in this way, liked both my eager welcome and the safety of his early departure. I think he feared the complicity that the late hours bring. He was superstitious enough to believe that the later he stayed the more deeply committed he would become. Maybe this was true. Maybe he even regretted his invitation to me as soon as he had offered it. To me it hardly mattered at the time. My reaction of joy was of course excessive, for I knew him too well to suppose that he intended any meaning to be read into what would at most be one of his fraternal interludes. But to me it meant a treat, an excuse to dress in pretty summer clothes, to be accompanied, to have a definite answer when people asked me whether I were going away; to me the invitation was a promise of the normality for which I longed. ‘When shall we go?’ I asked. He said he thought the beginning of September would do well enough. There was a faint grumpiness in his tone as if my sudden radiance were displeasing to him. This did not escape me, but it could not entirely dim my pleasure. I poured him another glass of wine, and said, casually, ‘You must leave all the housekeeping to me. Why don’t you come to dinner next week? We can get it all settled then. Nothing more to discuss—we can just get in the car and go.’ Even this was too much, but I no longer cared. Suddenly I could not go on as I was, eking out my careful existence, pretending that all was well, looking after the flat I did not much like, stepping out in the mornings with a smile on my face. I wanted my life back again, or as much of it as was left to me; I was tired of moderation and good manners. Even the promise of a few days in the company of a man almost too recalcitrant to be tolerated fired me up and the face I turned to him must have been different, for he bent and kissed it, then hurriedly, and without looking back in my direction, took his leave. We arranged that he should come to dinner on the following Thursday.
The intervening week was indescribably pleasant to me. We were not too busy in the office as so many people were away, and there was time to drink a cup of tea with Mrs Harding and to leave a little early. I surveyed the food in the shops with the eye of a connoisseur, planning our dinner, which I wanted to be light and simple, and at the same time turning an indulgent eye on my domestic fantasies. I had reached an age at which the fantasies alone were almost enough sustenance, yet here I was, in my early sixties, making arrangements for an intimate dinner with an attractive man of my own age, as I had not done for many years. A vegetable terrine, I thought, followed by a dish of baked chicken and rice, with a fruit salad to follow. My step was light, my energy renewed. Mrs Harding told me how well I looked.
Julia was ostensibly forgotten, although the slight febrility of my behavior may have had something to do with the fact that while I had put her out of my mind she refused to be entirely absent. In unguarded moments her sceptical smile would materialize in the air in front of me, and I could feel her waiting, biding her time. I told myself that I should see her as soon as the dinner party was behind me; in fact, I told Julia this, gabbling my assurances in my desire not to have to talk to her at all, making otiose promises in exchange for my temporary freedom. I was just putting the finishing touches to the terrine on the Thursday morning when the telephone rang. ‘Now look here,’ said Julia, her voice low and cold, less the voice of an old woman than of an old man. ‘Mrs Wheeler hasn’t turned up. Says she’s not well, not that I believe her. Swore she’s coming in tomorrow. But I need someone today. There’s no food in the house—not that I eat anything—and I haven’t had my bath.’ For one of Mrs Wheeler’s indispensable functions was to be present when Julia took her bath, for with her weak hands and feet she was in danger of falling. I contemplated my own hands, which were sticky with aspic, and said, ‘I’m sorry, Julia, I can’t manage today. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’ ‘I had a bad night,’ the voice went on. ‘I feel so stale and uncomfortable. If you could just come round for an hour this afternoon I think I might have a bath and go straight to bed. I couldn’t eat much. Perhaps you could bring some fruit or something.’
I put the telephone down very quietly, washed my hands with excessive care, refrigerated the terrine. I sliced the fruit for the fruit salad and put some in a plastic tub for Julia. I put two fresh rolls in a napkin and cut a wedge from the fine Stilton I had bought for Alan Carter. I was quite calm, but some of my early sadness had returned; my effervescent mood had disappeared, and had given way to a certain heaviness. I could still manage it, I thought. If I dressed first, asked Mrs Harding if I might leave early, went round to Onslow Square and then came home and completed my preparations I could still manage. I should have time in hand. And if we had to eat at half-past eight or nine there was nothing unusual in that. I dressed slowly in a blue silk blouse and a blue and black print skirt, noted that the sky was clouding over, looked at my puzzled face in the mirror. Then, taking my basket, I left the house almost eagerly, anxious now to get the whole day over so that I could be alone again with no one, man or woman, to torment me.
It was very close, sunless, with a promise of a storm. ‘Why, Fay, how nice you look,’ said Mrs Harding. ‘I hope Doggie is not going to spoil that pretty skirt.’ I smiled sadly, my party mood gone. I got through the afternoon as though I had nothing better to do, as indeed was the case; my only desire was to help the people on the other end of the telephone, who were so much easier to help simply because they were so safely distant. A little before four-thirty I locked up, took my basket, and left. I calculated that if I got to Onslow Square just after five, or as soon after five as I could make it, I could leave by six or six-thirty at the latest and my evening would not suffer. Alan was coming at seven-thirty. Nothing need be lost.
I found Julia sitting in the drawing-room. She was dressed, and yet she looked dishevelled. ‘You’re very festive,’ she said. ‘What’s it all for?’ I went through to the kitchen to unload my basket and to make her a cup of tea. ‘Alan Carter is coming to dinner,’ I said. ‘Which is why I can’t stay. As soon as this tea is made I’m going to run your bath.’ I vanished into the bedroom, where I was obliged to make the bed. I had the beginning of a slight headache; the oppressive weather, no doubt, and the anxiety, an anxiety I had no desire to prolong. I ran the bath, and took two aspirin tablets from a bottle on Julia’s night table. A sort of hopelessness came over me. I contemplated racing back to the flat to cook the chicken. And the rice, always a delicate matter. And I had not yet laid the table. ‘Come on, Julia,’ I called. ‘It’s all ready for you.’ ‘Coming to dinner, is he?’ she said, making her way slowly into
the bedroom. She undressed equally slowly, revealing the lingerie of a cocotte on limbs which were beginning to look wasted. The whiteness of her body shocked me: I did not think I should be witnessing it. I lowered her into the sweet-smelling water of the bath, and turned my back. By this time I was trembling, although I did not quite know why. ‘This man,’ said Julia, behind me. ‘Are you going to marry him?’ ‘Of course not,’ I said, as lightly as possible. ‘Come on, Julia, let me help you out.’ ‘But you’re having an affair with him, aren’t you?’ She stood up unsteadily, and water slopped against the side of the bath, splashing a little onto the floor and onto my skirt. ‘I am not having an affair with him,’ I said with loathing. ‘But you will, won’t you?’ ‘There’s no question of that. We might go away for a few days, that’s all.’
I think that those few words were my greatest mistake. Julia laid a heavy wet arm round my neck, disarranging my hair in the process. ‘Going away?’ she said. ‘Well done.’ She pretended to fall, or maybe she did fall, I no longer know, and in her effort to hold on to me tore the stitches from the shoulder of my blouse. I could feel the slow uncoiling of my hair as it fell down my back. Her body, a dead weight, supported itself on my shoulders as I staggered back; she had renounced all responsibility for her movements, either that or she was more incapacitated than I knew. Horrified, I managed to get her into the bedroom. She drifted slowly to her dressing-table, contemplated her face, turning it this way and that. Her eye, when it met mine in the mirror, was ancient and amused. I suppose I did look amusing, with my hair flopping down my back and my wet ruined blouse. My one thought was to get home and repair the damage. Rain spattered like bullets against the window. Julia rubbed cream into her face, with a caressing gesture. ‘Charlie loved to see me do this,’ she said. ‘He adored me. “You are the woman of my life,” he said. “There will be no other.” Has anyone ever said that to you?’ Without looking back I ran out of the flat.
Rain was falling quite heavily, heavily enough to banish all taxis from sight and to jam up the rest of the traffic. I ran, as well as I could, all the way to Drayton Gardens. I must have looked insane. Inside the flat I found my hands trembling so much that I struck match after match without being able to light the oven. Miraculously, I managed to get the rice, the herbs and the stock into a baking dish. While the chicken was simmering in the rest of the stock I laid the table, then ran back into the kitchen to put the dish in the oven. Once everything was assembled I might just have time for a bath. I took out the wine, unmoulded the terrine, filled a jug with mineral water, and then the bell rang. I actually hesitated before opening the door, half hoping that anyone there would go away, even if it were Alan Carter himself. I was aware of my ripped blouse drying unevenly on me. ‘Good evening, Madam,’ said the two pale young people on my doorstep. ‘Are you interested in learning more about the Bible?’ At that moment the telephone rang. Shutting the door on the two young people I ran to the sitting-room to answer it. ‘Hello, Fay,’ said Pearl Chesney. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you?’ Through the window I could see Alan Carter coming along at a steady jogger’s pace. I promised to ring Pearl Chesney later, ran to the kitchen to turn down the oven. Turning, my skirt caught the corner of the terrine which I had put too near the edge of the kitchen table. The dish fell and smashed on the floor, sending a spray of carrot mousse over my shoes.
‘What on earth is the matter with you?’ asked Alan Carter, following me into the kitchen. He sounded annoyed rather than concerned. He was one of those men who hated to have his evenings ruined, one of the characteristics of an unmarried man, I suppose, or perhaps he saw too many distraught women all day to have any patience with them after working hours. For himself, he liked regularity, order, distance.
‘Everything’s gone wrong,’ I said helplessly, beginning to weep.
‘I can see that,’ he replied, with a note of distaste. ‘If you’ll change your clothes I’ll take you out to dinner.’
‘I don’t think I can,’ I said, sitting down and wiping my eyes on a tea towel.
He poured himself a glass of wine. ‘I didn’t realize you were so moody,’ he said.
‘Of course you didn’t,’ I burst out. ‘Oh, it’s not your fault. You like an orderly life. So do I. I am a very orderly person. But things go wrong, even in an orderly life. You never seemed to realize that. You never asked me what I liked, what I wanted.’
‘Why should I?’ he said, annoyed. ‘It’s not up to me to put your affairs in order.’
‘Why not?’ I said slowly. ‘Why not? Why shouldn’t you ask me what I wanted? Because you don’t want me to want anything?’
‘There’s no need to be hysterical,’ he said. ‘As for what you want that’s neither here nor there. You invited me to dinner. I offered to take you out, as the dinner seems to be on the floor.’
‘I have a rather bad headache,’ I said. ‘If you don’t mind I’d rather go to bed.’
‘That seems to me the best idea,’ he said. ‘Goodnight. Ring me in the morning and tell me how you are. We might be able to get together another time.’
Slowly, with the sound of an abruptly closing door echoing in my ears, I cleared up, threw the food away, took off my ruined clothes and put them in the linen basket. I should never wear them again. I lay in bed with burning eyes until the light faded and finally died. It was all quite trivial, I told myself. A ruined dish, a ruined evening. At my age one should dismiss such things as unimportant. But it had been important, crucial, in fact. I had shown Alan Carter an unpleasant side of myself, a hapless deranged side; he had seen me with my hair lying on my shoulders and my blouse ripped and my eyes red: we should not recover from this. I had probably lost him, that fastidious and so-successful unmarried man, in the way that women lose to men when they are not very vigilant. I had asked, in the worst possible way, for his succour, for his support, for his indulgence. Really, I had been asking for his love, and he knew it. This was a terrible problem for him, for he was not prepared to give it. Whatever his desires or his intentions they did not include a madwoman with a disorderly appearance. In his mind I was to remain stately and pleasant, a possibility, no more than that. Whatever I brooded upon was to be my own responsibility, not his. I was a widow and he was a divorcee; there was to be no question of marriage. I saw that now, too late.
I saw also that it was not entirely his fault. One does not give men sufficient credit for their hurt feelings. I had disappointed him. A more skilful woman would have avoided this. But I had always been impatient, susceptible. I wanted happiness. I wanted a full life. This one is not always able to procure for oneself. I wanted his co-operation, and this I seemed to have forfeited. I would have given anything to turn back the clock, to shut the door on the ruined kitchen, and to present myself, smiling, and saying, ‘Sit down. I shan’t be a minute. I’m just going to change. It’s only an omelette, I’m afraid. We’ve been busy today. Why don’t you pour yourself a glass of wine and relax until I call you?’ All this should have been possible. But I had not been able to manage it.
Behind my own ruin lay Julia. I knew this, had known it even before the fiasco had enacted itself. It was as if she had willed it. Ridiculous though this may sound I knew it to be true. Whether out of past resentment or present frustration she had brought about my defeat. It was important to me to believe that she had brought it about because of my chance—so slender!—of happiness. This was not revenge. Julia’s revenge would have been more terrible, more immediate. She could have tormented me so much more successfully had she intended to, could have deployed her remarkable resources to humiliate and ostracize me. She was not a good judge of character, that was all. She could only see herself. Had she been a subtler woman I really think she would have seen to it that I came to grief, in a way I dared not even imagine.
These were the thoughts of the middle of the night. In the morning, still with an aching head, I realized that it was all exaggerated. Probably all that she had ever known, ever seen, was a speculative
glance from Charlie in my direction. That was enough for her. And maybe this had all taken place a long time ago, before I was ever aware of it. Maybe it all went back as far as that holiday in Nice, when Charlie and I had sat in a café, waiting for Julia to finish her interminable toilette, harmlessly reading the papers. What stimulated that ancient grudge was the prospect of my going away with Alan Carter, with whom she thought I might be happy, as indeed I had. I should never see her again, although I might now supply her with what she wanted to hear, an amusing story of how I had spoilt my last chance. I was not able to do this. Therefore I must abandon her, as I had always wanted to do. Strangely, I found this idea very difficult.
The weather was cool, grey, a disappointment after the radiant days that had gone before. I remembered standing in the rain outside the house in Gertrude Street after the burning days that had preceded Owen’s death. This was dead reckoning. I sat in the flat with my hands in my lap, knowing that I should not be going on holiday that summer. My holiday was over. I rang the surgery and got through to Alan straight away. ‘I’m so sorry about last night,’ I said lightly, for lightness was all. ‘I get these awful headaches from time to time. Will you let me give you dinner again, next week, perhaps?’ ‘I’m rather busy,’ was his reply. ‘I’m glad you’re better.’ (But I had not said so.) ‘I’ll give you a ring.’ I put the telephone down very carefully, knowing that I should have to wait a long time before I heard from him again.
After this I was very calm. At the end of the morning, as I was about to go to the office, I remembered Pearl Chesney and called her back. She seemed delighted to hear my voice. It appeared that she was coming to town the following day. ‘It’s very nice here, of course, and lovely to be so near Colin and the boys, but I do miss my London!’ I invited her to come and have coffee with me. ‘And you’ll be seeing Julia, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Oh, yes, dear. I do miss her. Funny isn’t it? Here I am, with a life of my own at last, and yet I think of her all the time.’
Brief Lives Page 21