The pause at the end of the phone managed to convey accusation and condemnation - and Prue suddenly had a flash of complete understanding of Joan’s condition. Even if the Church acquitted her of heresy, it would make sure it handed her over to the English to be tried as a traitor. The defendant was guilty whatever the semantics. ‘Yes. I’m afraid Jane is not coping with her food very well’
‘Have you spoken to her?’
‘I felt we should speak to you first.’
‘I shall come right over after I’ve finished work.’
. Prue rang Gerald to warn him she would have to leave early. She also rang Kate and cancelled tea, and Molly to excuse herself from the parish council meeting.
‘I see,’ said Molly.
No, you don’t, Prue wanted to say. You don’t see anything. ‘I’m so sorry, Molly, but I think I must go.’
‘Yes, well . . .’ Molly implied that Prue’s dereliction of duty ranked on a par with selling her grandmother to pay a debt.
Autumn was beginning to run tongues of brown and gold over the trees and into the folds of landscape and shorn fields, and the light held the season’s milky, tender quality. Ready to move off south, birds were gathering on the telephone wires or wheeled in untidy circles.
Hunched at the steering wheel, Prue, for once, took no notice.
Full realization of her culpability did not come suddenly. Rather, it seeped into Prue’s consciousness, drip by drip, gathering in depth and volume – until she made a connection. She was having an affair. Jane was having problems.
Then, the implications of her neglect of Jane came home to roost and she understood that she had not been listening to her daughter. She had not perceived that Jane’s quietness was, perhaps, a mask placed over turbulence.
She clenched her fingers around the wheel. ‘I’ve gone wrong.’
Two minutes later, Prue had convinced herself that she was being ridiculous, that Mrs Harriman had made a mistake, and that Jane was only taking her time to settle down after a long holiday.
Well, no, Mrs Harriman contradicted Prue as they sat in her austerely appointed room. What they - ‘they’ again - had noticed in Jane was not naughtiness. Anyone with experience of children could recognize the difference between disobedience and a child who was angry and withdrawn. She knew that and - so went the implication - Prue should have known. Further, Jane had been caught at least twice stuffing her food into a paper bag on her lap.
‘What do you think it could be?’ she asked, directing a please-don’t-trouble-to-pull-the-wool-over-my-eyes look at Prue. ‘Is there a problem at home?’
Her tone suggested that Prue would probably mislead her. Clearly, Mrs Harriman’s experience as a housemistress had been sufficient to teach her that many parents lied, or at least fudged the truth.
Unsettled, furious at being judged, guilty, Prue felt sick but forced herself to remember that Jane’s welfare came first and to acknowledge that Mrs Harriman had experience in this area. Furthermore, losing one’s temper was usually a stupid thing to do.
‘No, there are no problems, Mrs Harriman,’ she said, and imagined a blush spreading in a great, surging red stain over her body. She imagined, too, what that blush would convey to Mrs Harriman.
Oh, Joan, she thought, how clever you were not to have anything to do with the flesh.
Peremptorily, she asked to see Jane.
When she saw her mother, Jane gave a visible start and her bottom lip quivered. Prue held out her arms, but Jane held back and avoided the contact.
‘Everything all right with Dad?’ she asked anxiously. ‘He’s not ill?’ Her fingers left smudged prints on the highly polished brass door handle.
‘Yes. Absolutely fine.’ Prue swallowed. ‘Can you come here, darling? Mrs Harriman is a little worried about you and I thought we could talk about it.’
Jane ducked her head with a gesture that told Prue nothing -and too much.
‘I’m fine, Mum,’ she said angrily. ‘I wish everyone would stop fussing. I’m just not hungry.’
Prue had not mentioned food.
‘Darling—’
‘Please don’t, Mum.’ It was no longer a little girl who spoke, but an uneasy hybrid see-sawing between the baby-skinned, silk-haired image embedded in Prue’s mind, and the pale, cross, hungry adolescent into which it had metamorphosed.
Sooner or later innocence is taken away, usually by an adult — that is unavoidable. But if I have been responsible for taking away Jane’s innocence too early, I shall never forgive myself. Prue’s threatened anger had disappeared.
‘Darling—’
‘Really, Mum,’ repeated Jane.
‘But—’
‘Don’t fuss,’ said the new Jane, tight and unforgiving, and, for the first time in their lives, a door was shut in Prue’s face. The blow it dealt, and the grief that flowered like blood after the bullet, shocked Prue into making an audible gasp. Jane’s gaze drilled into her mother and Prue imagined that she detected a gleam which was both manipulative - and desperate.
‘Darling . . .’ She dropped on to one knee. ‘Don’t be like that.’ She captured Jane’s hand, the penitent in the painting, and kissed it: the hand off which she had scrubbed dirt and paint, had cradled in her lap after a bath to cut its nails and folded kisses into the damp shell of its palm.
Jane tugged it away. ‘I’ll go and get my bag.’
Shorn of her maternal power or, rather, feeling she had forgone it, Prue was left looking stupid on the floor. Children sensed things, did they not? Every act had a consequence, she knew that. Added to which Jane was growing up and quitting the foothills guarded so carefully by her parents.
It was as if, she explained later to Jamie and, then, to Max… it was as if Jane had cut a ribbon and retied it behind her blocking off those on the other side. Jamie said he could not possibly comment. Nor should he.
Max said even less.
After saying goodbye to Mrs Harriman, Prue waited for Jane in the car. A trickle, then a flood of girls emerged through various doorways, the smaller ones still drowned and innocent in their uniforms, the older ones looking more knowing and world savvy.
She waited a long time for Jane. Lydia and Fee, another refugee from the bully Alicia’s camp, said, ‘Hallo, Mrs Valour,’ and disappeared. Still no Jane. Prue fiddled with the knobs of the radio, stuffed rogue sweet papers into the ashtray then changed her mind and put them into her pocket. A draught played on her cheek from the open window and she shut it with unnecessary vigour.
Eventually, Jane emerged from the side door and walked, a little unsteadily, towards the car, her knees smooth bone hub-caps under which ran spoke-like legs, a changeling whose thinness had turned from the acceptable into the frightening. She put out a hand to steady herself before she opened the passenger door. Prue gripped the wheel,
‘Thought you were never coming, darling.’ Scrambled eggs, she decided, mixed with a little cream. Spinach puréed with cream? No Jane might guess. Pasta? Wholemeal bread?
She started the engine. Jane settled herself.
There was silence. No questions. No ‘Thanks for waiting.’ No ‘What are we doing this weekend?’ Just silence. Prue concentrated on driving.
‘I’ve got a nice supper for you,’ she said, wrongfooting it by mentioning food. ‘And maybe we could go for a walk.’
‘I don’t want any supper.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Prue in a mumsy voice and then wished she had kept quiet. ‘Of course you want supper.’
At home Prue made hot buttered toast and tea. Jane took a mouthful and sawed at the contents in her mouth, which both terrified and irritated Prue. Don’t waste good food, she wanted to say. People are starving elsewhere. But she didn’t. Jane piled the toast under her knife. Smudges of exhaustion underlined her eyes.
‘How about that walk?’ suggested her mother.
The leaves had lost their full-bellied summer note and made a drier, thinner noise, which anticipated their autumn death. Pr
ue listened to the message, and she walked beside Jane down the main street towards the bridlepath that led to the fields. Each day the sun was lodging further down in the sky, sometimes startling red-orange, sometimes diluted by cloud into milky pinks and mauves. A chill threatened.
They passed the village shop and Molly emerged, wearing a navy blue beret and her tweed skirt.
‘Any second thoughts about letting us down over the Christmas concert?’ she asked abruptly and without preliminaries. She bent over Jane. ‘It’s not like your mother to back off.’
Prue shoved her hands into her pockets and grimaced as she encountered layers of fluff.
‘I didn’t feel up to it this year, Molly. Besides, others should be allowed to have a go.’
‘Not if they’re no good at it. That’s doing no favours to anyone. It won’t do, Prue.’
It won’t do. Some women knew what was what and bullied those who did not. Molly was one and, thus, the world behaved itself. Thank God for them, thought Prue.
Jane loitered behind on the bridlepath and Prue waited for her to catch up.
‘All right, my sweetie?’
For a moment, it was like old times for Jane slid her fingers into the crook of Prue’s arm, with a touch so bony and insubstantial that no impression was made.
‘Fine.’
Prue placed her own hand over Jane’s and some of her worst imaginings fragmented. The drag, so slight, at her elbow reminded her that this was where she should be, and had been only a few months back. Connected to her village, to her home, to her family. There for her daughter.
But instead of satisfaction and rightness, impatience and frustration beat at the bars confining Prue’s existence. Their intense, ruthless quality shocked her.
That evening they lit the fire, the first of the season. Prue had forgotten to have the chimney swept and fretted at the army of birds’ nests she was convinced lurked up there waiting to conflagrate. ‘It’s unlike you to forget,’ remarked Max, who was on his knees in front of the fireplace trying to work up the flames.
He hunkered back on his heels with an expression that made her flesh prickle, for Prue recognized it. It was a calculating one. She had seen it sometimes when Max talked of Helen.
‘I’ll see about the sweep,’ he said.
She busied herself clearing up the debris from the grate. The dust brushed obediently into a pile and Prue wished it was as easy to tidy up the untidy rag-and-bone shop of her heart. Max brushed ash from his corduroys.
‘Nice to have a fire.’
‘Ridiculous, really, so early in the year,’ said Prue.
The fire struggled at first and then settled down into a respectable heat. Jane and Max plonked themselves on to the sofa and began to read. Uncertain, Prue hovered, trying to interpret any message conveyed by the back view of her husband and daughter and then told herself she was developing paranoia.
She was making the pasta sauce for the Friday supper-on-the-knees, which had become a tradition, when Max came into the kitchen. He uncorked a bottle of wine and poured some into a glass. ‘She is too thin,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to do something. She must have been losing weight all through the summer and I hadn’t noticed.’
‘She’s growing fast.’
Max swung round and stared out of the window. ‘Well, what’s the best thing?’ His back remained turned.
Prue addressed it. ‘I think we should watch her for a little longer before we do anything.’
At this, Max turned and stared at his wife with eyes that had turned hostile. ‘Aren’t you concerned that it might be something serious?’
‘Of course I am,’ she snapped.
Max took another mouthful of wine. ‘Whatever the situation here,’ he said, so softly that Prue was not sure that he said it at all, ‘it is not permissible to take risks with Jane.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Eating disorders are usually a sign of anger,’ said Max, ‘often reflecting unhappiness in the family.’
Impatiently, Prue cut him off. ‘Jane is growing fast. She’s had trouble at school and she’s never liked the food there. That’s all.’
Prue reached for a glass - Max had not offered her one – poured out a generous quantity and drank some in silence. It was almost as if Max was waiting for something, but the trouble with playing games was that you required rules. She offered the olive branch.
‘You’re right, of course.’
‘We’ll discuss it later.’
Max quitted the kitchen and left a chill behind. Prue picked up the timer and set it for the pasta. At one of Kate’s dinner parties, some years back, she had talked to a doctor. He had told her that epidemics followed a pattern, a pathology. The irony was intriguing — a disaster that was so far-reaching, possibly final for many caught up in it, could be reduced to a predictable curve on graph paper.
First there was the upward progression of the disease, the passage of a microbe digging into its chosen territory and causing mayhem. Then, at the point when it was at its height all around were dying and sickening it begins to lose its potency and to retreat. Could she see the same pattern to her affair – only with guilt runnelling dark veins into the infection of love, madness and greed?
When would it die away? Would it die away?
Then what?
Prue did not know.
‘I don’t want it,’ said Jane, balancing the tin tray painted with pink roses on her knee. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Have a little.’
‘Oh, Mum. Stop going on at me.’
Max’s large hand descended on to Jane’s skinny arm. ‘Your mother is right. You should eat.’
Jane flashed a look at her mother, sighed and poked at the pasta with her fork. ‘You can’t make me eat.’
Again, she flashed a look at Prue. Help me, it said. Help me express my helplessness.
‘Come on,’ said Max. ‘Not-so-plain Jane.’ Using the baby nickname obviously touched Jane for she lifted her face, now infinitely weary and bewildered, towards her father. He slid his arm along the sofa and pulled her gently towards him. With the other hand, he picked up the fork with a mouthful of pasta.
‘Open up,’ he said. ‘Storm troopers.’
Jane grinned at the reference to her latest computer game. ‘Stupid, Dad.’
All the same, she opened her mouth.
‘Chew,’ he ordered gently. ‘Go on. Bandits nine o’clock.’
Above her full mouth, Jane’s eyes locked on to Max’s and filled with tears. Prue found herself holding her breath in an agonizing lungful. Jane’s jaw began to move. Prue’s breath released in a sigh. She watched as Max, murmuring to his daughter, gently smudged away the moisture on her cheeks with his thumb, held her to his large body and fed her, forkful by forkful, until the plate was empty.
Then, cradled by her father, Jane went to sleep in front of the fire.
Max spent most Saturdays in the garden. In fact, he spent more and more time there, and the garden was beginning to acquire an obsessively manicured look.
Currently, his obsession was relocating the compost heap.
That morning, he stood under the plum tree at the end of the garden, which was delineated by a stone wall between it and the road. It was going to be a warm day, but the warmth had not got going yet and the early mist was still in the process of being shredded by the sun. Plums in various stages of decay lay in the grass, jewels exuding a sweet slime above which hummed cones of flies. Amid the richness and plenty of autumn, he seemed a curiously lonely figure.
Or that was how he struck Emmy as she walked up the road.
‘Hallo, Mr Valour.’
Down from London for the weekend, she had been walking up by the airfield and could not resist returning via Hallet’s Gate, for the family’s doings were, she informed Anna, beginning to really intrigue her. (Anna demanded a full-scale report and she wasn’t to spare the dirt, and wasn’t Emmy getting a bit toffee-nosed herself as she hadn’t been in contact for ages?)
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Sharp Anna. It was true, Emmy was changing, which was akin to being dragged into a room she had not planned on entering or being given glasses that widened the vision. Still, it was unlikely she would wake up as Cindy Crawford.
Max looked up. ‘Hallo, Emmy. I was deciding where to put my compost heap. The old one isn’t doing so well.’
This was a red rag to Emmy. She leant over the wall and squinted in the direction of his pointed finger. ‘Are you planning to build one or two?’
‘Build?’ Max’s shadow looked huge on the grass. ‘I was just going to reposition the heap.’
Emmy got into her stride. ‘It would be much better if you built a wooden one. That way the air won’t get in and you can keep two on the go.’
‘Why don’t you come and advise me?’
Emmy didn’t require asking twice. At once Max pinpointed the change in Emmy, who was looking much, much better — the jeans and Guernsey sweater moving her from one category to another, as did the short hair, liberated finally from its perm by Mr Twist of Clapham.
‘Look . . .’ Emmy hauled a piece of paper and a biro out of her pocket, ‘you can build one like this. You need four three-by-one corner posts. Four one-by-one, thirty-inch and twenty-seven inch floorboards. They’re cheaper from a demolition contractor.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Max squinted at the paper.
Emmy shrugged and swiped at the flies. ‘I like this sort of thing.’
She appraised the garden and Max suspected that she did not approve of the precise herbaceous border and circular bed in the lawn. It also amused him that he minded.
‘I’ve been trying to get my mum to buy a wormery.’ Emmy’s face shone with inner conviction. ‘But she won’t have it.’
‘Have you? Tell me.’
Emmy obliged and they settled to a conversation in which figured liquid manure, worm casts, air circulation, bacteria and slime.
Max borrowed Emmy’s paper and was noting various things on it. ‘You dig it twice?’ He stooped over the paper and the sun struck his face, opening it to Emmy’s inspection. He’s upset, she thought in a rush of compassion and decided that she liked him far better than the more obviously attractive Jamie. Particularly if what she suspected — only suspected, mind - was true.
Perfect Love Page 27