Max went back to the kitchen to replenish the pot, Helen’s news knocking around his brain like a loosened atom. Carefully, he directed a stream of boiling water into the china pot. Then he replaced the lid and listened to the pop, pop of the gas fire.
He walked back into the room. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to pay for an abortion. You are going to marry me instead.’
With a snarl of dislike, she looked up at him but Max did not mind. He knew he had Helen where he wanted her.
‘Got you,’ he said to himself.
Thus it was that Max Valour married Helen Beech at Chelsea Town Hall with Dickie Bennett as best man and witness. The bridegroom looked very cheerful in his best, and only, suit. The bride’s hair was scraped back into a pony-tail and the waistband of her cheap cotton skirt did not quite meet.
Six months later, Violet was born.
And out of that semi-rape had come adultery and death, and Max had been forced to learn detachment over matters of the flesh.
So you see, my Prue, he told her silently as he mixed paints, rolled walls and inhaled paint stripper on his journey towards his personal Calvary, my armour is heavy and, like your Joan, I risk everything. I have to be vigilant with myself. Coercion does not do. To rout the enemy, I have to give you freedom, that is my gift of . . . love.
I can do no more. Enough. Enough.
Chapter Eighteen
Violet pounded away on the StairMaster. This was the final assault before the holiday. The final push. Clenching her teeth, she switched the programme up to level nine and sweat poured down her face. One, two. Left, right. Gloria Estefan pounded in her ears and her legs followed suit. Up, down. One minute gone. Two minutes gone . . . She visualized the straining muscles, the hasty conversion of her fat into energy, the breakdown into carbon monoxide and the acid left pooling in her flesh, the blood arriving to vacuum it away.
In a gesture that was becoming habitual Violet looked over to the wall, entirely composed of mirror, for a quick check. There she was: body hunched over machine, stick legs working. If the botanist’s pin had skewered Violet through the heart, she would resemble nothing so much as a gaudy pinioned insect in the collector’s display cabinet.
She paused for breath and, without warning, her mind swarmed with other, forbidden, images, each one as lasciviously detailed and complete as a master pornographer’s fantasy. Only this morning, Violet had caught sight of the extra-extra forbidden as she had driven past the shop, but the three-second glimpse was sufficient for a starving mind to lick and garnish into luminous temptation. Brushed with whipped cream, glistening with caramelized sugar, light, airy, confident, perfect, it had been a Gâteau St Honoré to outdo all Gâteaux St Honoré.
What a bully the mind was. Violet summoned other images to help purify and rid it of its succulent devils. The Pope. Gerard Depardieu. Hello! magazine. She felt her mind bend and strain to her will, as she bent and strained on the machine, but it was useless. Violet was helpless, as hobbled and spreadeagled as Gulliver in Lilliput, when confronted with the powerful chimera of fois gras, chips and steak, and chocolate-hazelnut spread smothered on thick white bread. In desperation, she called up the final defence.
Cellulite.
Thick brown circles of fat like potato peelings that snaked and draped and clung to the hips - in pitiful contrast to Violet’s Platonic ideal — solarized into her mind. But even the spectre of cellulite failed to force Violet’s fantasies to their knees.
Knees . . . Paul Gascoigne’s knees. Jamie’s knees, rather bony ones. Edward’s knees, all pink and plump like sugar mice.
No! Not sugar mice.
Violet scrubbed at her face with the end of the colour coordinated towel hanging round her neck, adjusted her position on the machine and stepped up the pressure on her pressurized thighs.
Afterwards, she rested in the changing room and waited for her heart to return to its normal rhythm. It was the lunch-hour and the room was full of women whose flushed bottoms, thighs and shoulders were slicked with sweat and glossy with heat.
The ubiquitous mirrors witnessed, refracted, distorted and told truths, many unwelcome. Violet studied her reflection: sucked-in-stomach, sucked-in cheeks, a sweat-splodged Lycra ensemble.
Gâteau St Honoré.
No, you don’t. She swivelled to obtain a sideview of her flat stomach and lean thighs.
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who is the fairest . . .?
Certainly not Prue, and Prue would soon be old.
When Helen, still beautiful, had been dying in hospital from the car crash - and taking some weeks to do it - Violet had saved up and spent her pocket money on a doughnut to give Helen. It was a plain one, dusted with sugar, into which ersatz cream had been piped. This she had presented to her mother in a brown paper bag as she lay propped up by pillows and fed by tubes.
Helen reached out fingers that were by now skeletal, looked into the bag, retched and turned her head away.
Violet now understood why but, at the time, it had seemed that her mother had rejected her gift of love but, then, love offered in a brown paper bag is difficult to accept when you are dying painfully.
Violet had not been sure how to react to Helen’s death. Should she cry? Should she be terribly, terribly brave giving onlookers the opportunity to exclaim how extraordinary a child she was? On the other hand, the idea of screaming artistically during the funeral and casting herself down by the coffin in a flurry of smocked dress and Start-Rite sandals, an image taken from a film, rather appealed.
In fact, Violet had been banned from the ceremony because her grandmother declared that children did not go to funerals. Why death was considered only for adults was not explained. Violet beat the ban by sneaking up to the churchyard where she watched Helen’s coffin being lowered into the earth with an expression, had she but known it, of avid interest. It is impossible to deny that observing your mother being buried is a unique experience.
Later, she had escaped once again to stand alone and cry, in the pouring rain, by her mother’s grave. Just standing, alone, until she was sodden.
Violet got to her feet, peeled off the Lycra and headed for the shower, which she ran until it was ice cold. She clenched her teeth and stepped under it.
I will not think of food, she mouthed the words through numbed lips. I will not think of food.
When she emerged, she felt that her mind had been washed as clean as her body and was now, for the time being, safely under control.
‘Hallo, Dad.’
‘Hallo, darling.’ Max was surprised to be rung up in the office. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Fine. How’s Jane and Prue?’
Max hesitated a couple of seconds. ‘Fine.’
At her end, Violet raised her eyebrows. ‘Is Prue still wrapped up in Joan of Arc?’
‘To tell the truth,’ said Max, ‘I wish I’d never heard of the bloody woman. Anyway, why are you ringing me?’
‘Darling Daddy. You know you said if I ever wanted anything . . .’
Max’s laugh cut across the rest of the sentence. ‘What is it?’
‘I’ve run out of money and I need some to buy clothes for the holiday in Italy. I don’t have anything to wear.’
‘Why don’t you ask your husband?’
‘I don’t want to ask Jamie. It’s none of his business. Please, Dad. I love you very much.’
‘You are absolutely outrageous.’ Max was already reaching for his cheque-book. ‘How much do you want.’
‘A couple of hundred. Three,’ she added quickly.
Max hunched his shoulder around the telephone and wrote one thousand pounds on the cheque. ‘I’m giving this to you, my darling, on the condition that you put half of it into the account set up for Edward.’
‘How much, Dad?’
He told her, and immensely enjoyed the gasp at the other end of the phone.
‘I was thinking about your mother when you rang.’ Max stuck the phone under his chin and
signed the cheque.
‘How funny. I’ve been thinking about her too.’ If Violet was strictly truthful, Helen’s memory was like a jumper requiring a darn in the drawer - there and requiring attention, but only taken out from time to time.
Max’s next comment took Violet by surprise. ‘Your mother and I did have some good times but, unfortunately, we let each other down. Every marriage makes its accommodations, but perhaps with mine I read the wrong notice-board. I hope you’ve read yours correctly.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Violet, totally bewildered.
‘And we’ve all survived.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Violet recollected her dream landscapes and her terror as she ran across them.
‘And you, my darling daughter, are more important than anything.’ Max’s voice dropped and became soft and loving. Sometimes he feared for Violet’s bright, glossy beauty and her bright, glossy life. He added, ‘And Jane, of course.’
His tenderness reached Violet in a way that she seldom allowed anything to do. ‘Thanks, Dad,’ she said, with a catch in her voice. ‘That’s nice to know.’
Because of Jamie’s commitments at the bank, the Becketts could not take their holiday until mid-July. Typical, said Violet. How come we’re the only family with a pre-school child mug enough to pay high-season prices?
The destination was a villa in Tuscany and, not to miss a day, they planned to drive there in one all-out marathon down the motorways.
Prue told Jamie they were quite mad. ‘How will you cope with the baby?’
Jamie did not often encounter Prue’s practical side. Lovers don’t, he thought, which is part of the seduction for each. Between lovers, there is no need to consider surly teenagers, leaking roofs and the weekly shop. These are reserved for the spouse.
‘Edward will sleep in the back of the car,’ Jamie said, airily.
‘He won’t, you know.’ Prue poked Jamie with a teasing finger. ‘Haven’t you learnt yet about babies? They never sleep when you want them to.’
‘Yes, he will.’
Prue bit her lip. ‘I wish, I wish . . .’ and suddenly the mood shifted back to the one that nourished their passion so satisfyingly, and with which they were now familiar. Yearning, hunger, which was in no danger of being assuaged, spiced with an edge of the illicit, and sadness - the wine and bread of an affair.
I wish I was coming with you, she meant to say.
Jamie understood. ‘I know, Prue. So do I.’
‘Kiss me goodbye.’
He felt a shiver run through Prue’s body, and held her tight. The goal-posts were shifting and, for the first time, Jamie acknowledged that the situation was slipping out of his control.
‘I can’t bear it, Prue,’ he said, spurred by the idea of parting, ‘I can’t go on like this. When I come back we must talk about it.’
‘Kiss me, and don’t be silly.’
Several times during the nightmare journey Jamie recollected Prue’s warning which, of course, he could not repeat to Violet, Violet requiring no encouragement to dislike Prue, particularly as Edward was busy re-creating Dante’s voyage into Hell.
The ferry crossing made Edward sick. Violet spent most of the time in the passenger lounge grimly clutching him to her lap with a wad of tissues, surrounded by Rotarians from Yorkshire and schoolchildren giving in to demented urges. Under Edward’s assaults, Violet’s carefully assembled new outfit of designer shorts and a tartan jacket became stained and smelly.
At Dunkerque, the driver in the car behind them in the queue was distracted by an official mouthing an instruction in French and banged into their rear bumper. Not too much damage was done to the company BMW but, from then on, tempers deteriorated.
‘I’ve forgotten how fast the French drive,’ said Jamie, once they were on the motorway.
‘Careful.’ Violet spoke through gritted teeth.
Jamie put his foot down. ‘Just testing the speedometer.’
Violet leant back in the seat. France flashed by. It grew hotter, the tarmac shimmered and in the back, packed into his chair, Edward grizzled without ceasing. The car was not suitable for transporting a baby and the heat accentuated the smell of vomit, which Violet had tried to eradicate with duty-free Chanel No 5. Sweat poured off both of them and Violet’s thighs were glued painfully to the seat.
Violet decided she hated both her husband and her son.
‘Can’t you shut him up?’ said Jamie at last, as if it was Violet’s fault that Edward was crying.
A couple of small Peugeots shot past and, without thinking, Jamie pushed the accelerator. Violet, who had turned round to see to Edward, was jolted backwards.
‘For crying out loud,’ she shrieked and, at the sound of his mother so cross, Edward opened his mouth and screamed.
‘Stop the car, Jamie. This minute.’’
‘How can I?’ Jamie lost his temper. ‘We are on the bloody autoroute, remember. I can’t stop.’
‘Well, the next aire de whatever it is.’ Violet’s French had deserted her. Somehow she thrust herself between the two seats and crouched in the back beside Edward. ‘Shush, you little beast,’ she said, dabbing at Edward’s hot, swollen little face. ‘You’re not making things easier.’
Why didn’t I bribe Emmy? she was thinking furiously. Why did I let her go on holiday? The baby’s gaze locked on to his mother’s. Help me, it said. It’s your fault I’m so uncomfortable. Caught between guilt and fury that Edward was not behaving reasonably, Violet hauled him out from the nest of straps and padding and, crouching at a dangerous angle, held him against her swaying shoulder until Jamie swung off the autoroute and stopped the car . . .
The villa, which had promised so much in the brochure, fell short. The garden was not the formal sweep interspersed with patches of mysterious, cedary cool that had been suggested, but a dry scrub-pocked patch overlooking the road with no privacy. The rooms were unkempt and the kitchen erred on the side of the primitive. Next door, at least five families appeared to be in occupation, none of whom ever went to bed or turned off the radio.
‘What did I tell you?’ said Violet bitterly. ‘If we couldn’t afford a decent villa here we should have gone to Umbria.’
Jamie badly wanted to sit down and drink a glass of wine. He wanted Violet to see the funny side. Suddenly he turned on her. ‘Do you ever shut up?’
Violet went quiet.
The baby did not thrive in the heat. ‘Why’, Violet ground out between white lips, ‘are we landed with such a sickly baby?’ Edward was hot at night, then cold. Sweat and urine gave him nappy rash which, because Violet did not deal with it quickly enough, suppurated. Then he went off his food, developed a stomach upset and the rash turned from pink to flaming red and his eyes became huge in his shrunken face.
‘I think it’s time for the doctor. Again.’ Violet held Edward’s wailing form to her breast. It was their fourth uneasy day and she was shivering from fatigue and frustration. ‘God knows how we’ll manage the Italian.’
Jamie put down a volume of Larkin’s poetry (which Prue had bought him for the holiday) and took his son from his wife. Despite an application of her scarlet lipstick, she had lost her customary gloss, and he was reminded of how dimmed she had been by exhaustion and bewilderment after Edward had been born. Guilt at what had happened since then made his stomach twist painfully.
Experienced in anxious holiday-makers clutching ailing children, the doctor took one look at Edward, issued antibiotics, rehydrating fluids and the equivalent of Calpol. His instructions in broken English were admirably clear. He advised them not to worry, how to proceed and hinted that, in future, it would be better to wait until the baby was a little older before venturing into the heat.
‘Point taken, my son,’ Jamie told a sleeping Edward in the pushchair, signing away a good proportion of his traveller’s cheques for the medicine.
Violet’s frustration with motherhood was not diminished by this episode and she weighed it alongside her other resentments. The role of women. The rol
e of men, husbands in particular. Badly equipped villas. Nannies who required holidays. Why, she asked herself as she selected the best tomatoes for their lunch, do babies prevent you doing anything normal, like sleeping? They gobbled you up, babies, and their wailing, smelly forms went suck, suck, suck at what remained of your lifeblood that had not been shed in giving birth.
Chop, chop, went Violet’s knife.
Even your head no longer belonged only to you. Everywhere you went . . . Violet chopped on . . . babies came as well. You could not work without thinking about them, lunch without worrying if the baby was getting his, enjoy a drink with a colleague without feeling guilty. A mind split like Morton’s Fork spelt muddle, mess and inefficiency, and Violet hated those things with a passion that might have surprised Jamie had it been fully applied to him.
Her friends managed, however. They hefted their snotty beasts under one arm, took them out to diners and restaurants, went on holidays and all seemed fine. Stranger still, these women appeared to enjoy it.
‘Better?’ Jamie touched Violet on the shoulder and proffered a glass of red wine.
‘I suppose so.’ She drank the wine and shrugged. ‘I keep asking myself why having children is so difficult.’
Once, Jamie would have wrapped his arms around Violet and taken into his keeping whatever anguish was plaguing her. Instead he said, after a moment’s reflection, ‘We all have to grow up, I suppose.’ He inflected the ‘suppose’ and Violet remained uncomforted.
Still, there was the scent of thyme and hot stone, the sweep of Tuscan hillside replicated in Renaissance paintings, punctuated by the dark green exclamation marks of the cypresses and grey-green blocks of olives. The air felt heavy and scented, and the sun, delicious in the slight chill of the early morning, was a pounding ball of metal by midday. Sometimes in the early morning a chiffon mist was thrown over the valley. Sometimes, a hint of cloud spread like thin paste over the sun moving down the sky. Always, the allure of herb and resin and hot stone filtered through the lazy air, and the seductiveness of the strange.
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