Perfect Love

by Elizabeth Buchan

  Now that he was better, Edward slept soundly for an hour or so after lunch, leaving Jamie and Violet free to make their way to their bedroom under the tiles to sleep if they wished, shutters closed against the glare, bars of hot light arranged across the floor, sheets dampening under their bodies. The air in the afternoon felt solid with heat and, more often than not, tension. Or, if both had been honest, disappointment.

  Violet’s skin had turned light gold, Jamie’s an older gold. Both began to look well and rested. Nevertheless, if her hips were satisfyingly slender, Violet’s expression was increasingly troubled.

  During the Monday afternoon siesta of the second week of the holiday, she turned to Jamie and wrapped her arms around him. He did not repulse her - exactly - but lay on his back, unmoving. She pressed herself against his chest, placed her head on his shoulder and listened to his breath, worrying that her position made her look rather ridiculous.

  ‘Jamie? Do you want to?’ Her hand followed a familiar path.

  He stirred and responded at last. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of course’ was a long way from the approach Violet was used to and had taken for granted. Jamie had always been the one to initiate and had always been gratifyingly persistent. Until recently, that is. Violet thought back over events in the bedroom and the cool nip of reason made her realize that ‘recently’ had turned into a comparative term. ‘Recently’ Jamie had not been on form - a state of affairs difficult for Violet to accept, for her mental map of sex was drawn to the specification of herself as the desired object. If the map had been redrawn without her knowledge, it left Violet without a compass.

  ‘Do you think I’ve lost weight?’ she said, stretching so that her tanned and exquisite haunch was displayed to its best advantage.

  ‘Yes,’ Jamie confirmed, but without real interest.

  He made love to his wife with his eyes firmly shut - as if, she thought indignantly, the sight of her put him off. The episode was not a success. It was too hot, and both she and Jamie were more than a little drunk from lunch. Worse, Violet felt that Jamie had been indulging her.

  She lay on her side and stared at the wooden lampstand with its gingham shade. Someone had allowed it to rest on the bulb and it had burnt on one side. A foot or so distant, a motionless Jamie lay with his arm across his eyes. It struck her that things were altering and that it was much easier to control a career than a marriage.

  After a while, Violet found herself going over the fine detail of an auction she had set up to take place the day she returned to work. The book was the latest hottest development in diets, and publishers in the States were baying for the rights. Violet totted up figures in her mind. The probable ones first and, as she grew drowsy, fantasies that ran into telephone numbers. Before she fell asleep, she decided to search out a fax machine in the village to ginger up the leading bidder . . .

  ‘Prue?’

  ‘Jamie! Where are you?’

  ‘In a cafe in Siena. I haven’t much time or change. I just wanted to see how you were.’

  Prue felt her throat constrict into an aching lump and blinked back tears. ‘I miss you terribly.’

  ‘It’s bloody hot here. The baby’s been ill.’

  And Violet? Prue wanted to ask but pride would not let her. ‘Hope Edward’s better.’

  ‘Yes. Thank God. How are you?’

  ‘Fine. Absolutely fine.’ Prue wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.

  ‘Look, I’ve got to go. Violet might come at any minute. She’s trying to send a fax to the office.’

  ‘Thanks for ringing.’

  ‘Prue. I love you.’

  Back in England, Prue sat down with a thump in a chair and wept and wept until her eyes felt like boiled potatoes.

  Jamie discovered that the evenings were the worst. Then the light lapped a landscape flushed with pink and gold; a rounded, soft, feminine light. It picked out the dark cypresses and overpainted the gold and brown of the hills over which the early merchant bankers had ridden in search of trade. (It had not escaped his notice that the twentieth-century variety were much in evidence. The biggest villa in the village, which was owned by a merchant bank, boasted security systems, stables, a pool, a personal masseuse and, even, a consecrated chapel.)

  ‘It’s so beautiful here,’ he confided to Violet, ‘that it’s almost painful to look at it.’

  Violet glanced at the volume of Larkin lying beside him. ‘You feeling all right?’ she said, and felt his forehead.

  He missed Prue, and the light and the ravishing landscape pressed on a raw spot, which he hoped was not sentimentality. It did not feel like it, for he missed her with an ache and a yearning that he had never before experienced.

  To tease and test him, Italy threw a series of ravishing views and buildings under his nose, and Jamie’s awakened sensibilities continued to suffer for them ... a hill swelling like a breast, the languor, the aromas, the seduction of the hot nights and good wine. Yes, Jamie suffered because of them.

  Quite right?

  During the velvet, slumbering nights, he compared the feelings that had once belonged to Lara, then Violet and now, after a frighteningly short time, to Prue, and asked himself what this switchback of loyalty and passion made him. The answer was not that he was facile, because he was not and he knew that. Jamie always tried to do things well, and he tried to think them through. That he had taken an unpredicted deviation forced him to the conclusion that, far from being absolute, love and desire were extremely adaptable.

  It did not, however, make them less intense.

  He hoped he was not smug, but Jamie prided himself that his life and work were conducted within the limits. He had never cheated on Lara and, in the office, he tried always to take decisions within a context. What did an investment, or the lack of it, mean to local people, the landscape, future generations?

  Nevertheless, context had not crossed Jamie’s mind when he fell in love with Prue and took her to a London hotel for the afternoon. He had not considered the context of home, wife and child when he ran his hands through her hair and moulded her body this way and that. Or when he had stroked the flare of passion into those grey, beautiful, sleepy eyes.

  And what would be the context if he left his wife and son and took another man’s?

  Took his father-in-law’s wife . . . and his own wife’s stepmother?

  Two days before they were due to return home, they were eating dinner, tomato salad, pork chops fried in olive oil with sage, on the balcony when Violet asked abruptly, ‘Do you want another baby, Jamie?’ Her manner indicated she had been brooding.

  The piece of meat balanced on the end of Jamie’s fork dropped to his plate. He must have looked astonished for she leant forward and said, ‘It’s not such a strange question.’

  ‘What’s made you decide to consider it?’

  Violet leant back in her chair and raised her hands above her head to admire how dark her tan seemed in the candlelight. ‘Maybe I was being foolish. And perhaps it is better to get it over and done with.’

  ‘What about the job?’

  ‘That’s a bit of a problem as I won’t have done my two-year stint before taking maternity leave. But I think I can wangle it.’

  Jamie had the sensation of a fish-hook being inserted into the tenderest part of his flesh and yanked. ‘But I think you were right when you said no. It would be silly to get pregnant when you’ve just got your feet under the table at work.’

  Violet thought for a moment and then proceeded to astound him. ‘I’m willing to take the risk.’

  Over the candles, she sent him one of her least aggressive looks. ‘What’s wrong, Jamie? You were always the keen one.’

  ‘Work, tiredness. Money. The recession is bad. What else do you think?’

  ‘I think . . .’ Violet got up and walked to the edge of the balcony. Below the house stretched the darkened valley and above the Italian night, laced with stars and a plump, luminous moon. When she spoke again, she sounded unhappy. �
��I wish we were back in New York. It seemed easier there. I’m not sure London suits us. If only the recession hadn’t meant that you had to come back.’

  ‘We’re OK.’

  She rounded on him. ‘Don’t patronize me.’ The heat and darkness emphasized her sense of frustration.

  Jamie pushed the bottle of wine over the table. ‘Calm down and have some more wine.’

  He heard her click her tongue impatiently against her cheek. After a silence, he dug in his shirt pocket, produced a packet of cigarettes and lit one.

  Her turn to be astonished, Violet looked up in the act of pouring. ‘Good God, Jamie. Smoking. What has got into you?’

  No decisions were taken. Nothing further discussed. On the penultimate day they made an effort to visit a couple of galleries they had missed. Here, the paintings assembled a colourful, tender theme of maternity: da Siena’s Maesta, Botticelli’s Madonna and Child Between Two Angels and Martini’s canopied Madonna and standing child.

  He felt that sandpaper was being rubbed over feelings that had been dulled by time and habit, and the, radiant Madonnas and Child threatened to overwhelm him. Violet did not say anything much except to roar at Edward when he dropped his teddy for the umpteenth time.

  Faced with packing up and driving north, they discovered better teamwork. They had learnt a few things on the journey down and Violet acquitted herself at managing Edward, who was persuaded to sleep at the right times. Keeping to practical topics, she and Jamie talked companionably over the long haul and enjoyed a picnic in the mountains.

  While Violet disappeared in search of a convenient bush, Jamie unpeeled a wrapper from a sponge finger and gave it to Edward.

  ‘Che cosa fare?’ he asked his son.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Prue waited. In her traditional English village - riddled with unemployment and weekend cottages, marked out seasonally by fetes, Church high days, the seasons marked out by whether or not its inhabitants wore tweeds underneath their waterproof jackets or sprigged cottons - she waited at Hallet’s Gate for her lover to return.

  Two weeks. Less than a lunar cycle, less than the flowering period of the Fantin-Latour rose. Measured by chronology it was less than any of these things, but measured in the long chilly time of the mind, it seemed to Prue infinity.

  Molly Greer caught her as she was backing out of the drive and held up her hand for Prue to stop. Prue applied the brakes and the gravel crunched. Molly motioned that she should wind down the window. Amused by Molly’s assumption of command, Prue obeyed. ‘Prue. I don’t see your name on the flower rota.’ Molly’s head was framed in the window.

  Prue dropped her hands into her lap and smiled. ‘I felt like a change and I’m a bit busy at the moment.’

  ‘How can you be too busy for the Church?’ Molly was sharp.

  ‘I’ve been on the rota for a long time. I think a year off would not be unjust.’

  Molly’s expression hardened but she could not quite bring herself to say what she thought. She did not have to: Prue knew what Molly was thinking.

  ‘I see,’ said the latter, in a freezing tone. ‘I do hope this book business isn’t going to take you from us.’

  Prue was too proccuppied to take offence. ‘No, I don’t think so but I need a little break,’ she said and restarted the engine.

  ‘You can’t give up on us, Prue, you know.’

  Prue shook her head. ‘I’ll see you soon, Molly.’

  She left Molly to stare after the car.

  My darling Jamie, I am in the process of retreat, she told him as she drove to Winchester. You won’t appreciate what pains I took to dovetail into the rituals of village life because I believed it should be given a chance to survive. Not quite, I know, the bold and dashing action of Joan who goes off to save France, but flower rotas and summer fetes have their place. Don’t you think?

  Here I am, Jamie, after twenty years of being good at it, and the wadding has been unexpectedly unwrapped from around my heart. I expect it is a commonplace, but to me it seems like a miracle.

  What, Prue asked herself again and again, was she going to do with an exposed heart?

  ‘Darling,’ said Max after she had collected him from the station and they were driving back to Dainton, ‘I know it’s a bit late but what about a holiday for us? If I could get the time, how about ten days in Scotland?’

  ‘No,’ said Prue, before she could stop herself. ‘No. Don’t let’s this year.’

  ‘What’s happened to the I’m-stuck-all-year-in-Dainton argument?’

  ‘I’m just at a vital bit with Joan,’ she said, meaning she could not bear to go away just as Jamie returned.

  Max hauled the irretrievably crumpled newspaper out of his briefcase and Prue frowned with annoyance. ‘Pity,’ he said.

  Prue concentrated on the traffic and drove back to Hallet’s Gate as fast as she could.

  What about their marriage, which had nourished and sustained both for so long? Surely with so much change taking place in Prue, Max must sense something. But, apart from his obstinate insistence on redecorating the house, he appeared to be behaving normally.

  True, he was a shade more bad-tempered, more prone to irritation, endlessly pottering with the compost heap, sorting his fishing flies and polishing the guns — the habits accrued from a lifetime.

  ‘How could he not know, Bella?’ Prue asked the cat who was sitting on the boiler in the kitchen. ‘I know I would.’

  Bella’s green-eyed stare suggested that Prue was fooling herself.

  ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right.’ Prue stroked Bella’s paw.

  Prue took to observing Max covertly — from the kitchen window, from under her eyelashes - and to listening for hidden messages in their conversations. At the same time, she was making comparisons and hating herself for doing so: between one pair of eyes and another, between one mouth and another. Not surprisingly, Jamie’s face took on the dazzle of the younger and fitter - with the additional allure of the absent - which made Prue want to weep for her unfairness.

  ‘How are we doing with the plan to encourage Jane’s friends?’ Max asked as they went to bed that evening.

  Prue was cleaning her face at the dressing table. ‘Lydia is coming over this weekend.’

  ‘We must make more of an effort.’

  ‘You mean I don’t?’ said Prue sharply.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  Prue reached for the tissue box. ‘I’m busy at the moment.’

  Max flung open a drawer and searched for a clean pair of pyjamas. ‘However busy, there are some things on which neither of us should compromise,’ he suggested.

  ‘No.’

  Prue patted her skin with a tissue while her heart somersaulted and dived. He knows. He knows. She folded up the tissue and threw it away. ‘No, Max, I suppose not.’

  In bed, Max reached for Prue. She submitted, taking a perverse pleasure from her submission, sickeningly aware, so tortuous and labyrinthine was her psyche, that the frisson she derived from her suspicions added an essential ingredient to the punishment. And Max, suspecting his wife and suspecting that Prue might know that he knew, exacted his dues as he wished, silently and a little desperately, and Prue paid up.

  Thus, out of the other’s complicity, a strange but mutual dependence was created.

  Max rolled away from her. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m tired.’

  Prue pulled herself upright on the pillows and gazed down at her husband. He seemed more brittle and less substantial than she had realized, and the shadow of her treachery beat its wings over the bed they had shared for so long. There was a tiny scar at the base of Max’s neck, a mole on his shoulder and a line had trammelled its way down his cheek. Anguish and the pity she dreaded stirred in her.

  ‘So am I,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve always been good at the soft-soap.’ Max swung his legs over the side of the bed and went into the bathroom. She heard the click of the medicine cabinet, the sounds of pills being shaken from a bo
ttle and teeth being cleaned.

  Prue threw back the sheets and, clutching her bunched-up nightdress against her, joined Max in the bathroom. He was inspecting his reflection in the mirror and their eyes met. With a sigh, Prue leaned against his back and slid her arms around him, hoping to gather up his tiredness and hurt. Their image merged in the mirror.

  ‘My dearest Prue,’ he said. It was only later that she realized she had missed the bitter, mocking note.

  Perhaps, she thought as she lay rolling the edge of the sheet under her nails, it was her love for Max that provided the source of her love for Jamie. Perhaps love is like an amoeba; if it existed, it divided and continued to do so. Once you had learnt to love, it multiplied, leaving the original intact.

  Darling Prue,

  [Jamie’s letter had arrived at the bookshop a couple of weeks after the Becketts had returned home] I’m sitting in this cafe and I might as well be on the 88 bus for the place is full of English. We are all in one piece. Just. It’s hot. The baby has been ill. Violet is worried about her work. You will sympathize.

  Well, no, I don’t sympathize, Prue thought, not entirely immune from a little malice.

  It is beautiful here and I would love to share it with you. I love the olive trees but I’m not up to describing on paper what I see. I’ll tell you about it instead. It’s also painfully apparent that I’ve forgotten all my Italian . . .

  Prue was conscious of a tinge of impatience at the peripheral detail.

  I miss you, Prue. More than I can write. Each night before I fall asleep, I picture you and I imagine kissing your face. This morning in Siena cathedral (which looks like a black and white ice-cream) I found myself lighting a candle and saying your name. It is not the sort of thing that I normally do but I was reminded of Winchester. Luckily, Violet was seeing to Edward. She is doing her best to cope and, I must say, being very patient, for her . . .

  Prue looked up from her letter. The sensation of nails scraping down the inside of the chest cavity was not an everyday experience and she was taken aback at how physical jealousy can be. Violet, the wronged wife, was bad enough. But Violet, the good and the patient, was unbearable. Violet, who had told Prue repeatedly that she hated her, that she was only a convenience and boring, boring, boring . . .