Perfect Love

by Elizabeth Buchan

  Hundreds of years ago — 1000 BC? - an Iron Age people had singled out this outcrop in a valley basin. Actually, Prue explained in her best local-historian manner, it may be as old as 2000 BC, the height of the outcrop allowing the settlers to dominate the valley -unlike the village situated in the dip - and giving security from enemies.

  The fort itself revealed considerable administrative, engineering and military sophistication. For instance — by now Prue had warmed thoroughly to her theme - the east entrance is cleverly placed at the intersection of several trackways.

  ‘Rather like Sainsbury’s,’ said Jamie. ‘Bagging the intersections outside towns.’

  ‘It was well organized.’ Max indicated the central area where sheep were grazing. ‘That bit contains hundreds of storage pits, one for each family, which were jealously guarded. You could probably steal your neighbour’s wife but woe betide you if you pinched their grain.’

  There was an awkward silence.

  Max slid down the slope and landed, neatly for such a large man, in the ditch below.

  ‘Catch me, Dad,’ Jane yelled, and windmilled down the bank, which was knotted with treacherous roots.

  ‘Catch her, Max.’ Prue’s heart was in her mouth.

  Jane teetered and wobbled, failed to grasp at a branch, gathered speed and shot down like a bullet.

  ‘My God!’ Without a moment’s hesitation, Prue launched herself after Jane.

  But it was all right. Max assessed the angle of Jane’s descent, moved into position and when his daughter tumbled towards him, caught her. He did not wait for Prue who was having difficulty making the descent but assisted Jane to climb up the inner earth-works. Thus, Prue finished in a heap at the bottom and, as she went over, she felt her ankle wrench, not badly, but it made her gasp all the same.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Jamie shouted from the outer earthwork.

  She got to her feet and tested her ankle. ‘Fine.’

  Jane and Max had reached the top and were walking in a clockwise direction. Prue took a few experimental paces. Apart from a twinge, the ankle was fine. She looked up at Jamie, silhouetted against the sky.

  ‘I’m going to find an easier way up,’ she told him.

  None of the party looked back at Prue, and she was left alone. She began to fight her way along the ditch, slashing through the undergrowth and densely packed grass. Once she glanced up, and there were Max and Jane walking in single file to her left, Max with his characteristic lope, Jane pattering behind him. Jamie had vanished.

  Prue was alone with the muttering trees and a chorus of sheep cries. Above her was a sky with whipped-cream clouds and hot sun, around her, the slippery, treacherous sides of the fortified camp.

  Wait for me, she wanted to call out to her husband and daughter, but felt, where once she had unquestionably possessed it, she no longer had the right. Solitude is supposed to give strength — if it is chosen. If it is imposed, then it is a burden. A bramble whipped at Prue’s ankle, which sprouted a spray of needle pricks, and she cursed herself for not wearing trousers. She stooped to rub at the scratches. Suddenly she understood why God was in demand as a companion, and why Joan had needed Himn above all else — more than the a king’s friendship (not to be relied on), more than the embroidered huques, the pure-bred stallions and personalized banners sewn with fleur-de-lis. More, even, than the badge of blood, the martyrdom, that, unconsciously, Joan had sought and found at Rouen.

  ‘Still there?’ Jamie stood above her.

  She gazed up at her lover, so close and yet so removed, and never loved him so well.

  ‘The others are coming.’

  She turned to watch Max and Jane as they approached.

  ‘This is cool fun,’ Jane called out.

  Across the divide separating Prue from the others, Max and Jane regarded each other and Prue, who could not bear to watch, bent her head and turned away. Max muttered something under his breath, slipped his arm around Jane and held her tight.

  ‘Aren’t you coming up?’

  Prue swivelled towards her husband. He was looking down at her, eyes wrinkled in the sun, mouth compressed with his knowing look.

  What do I want? she cried silently.

  ‘It’s much easier to walk up here,’ said Jamie.

  Irresolute, confused, she looked from one to the other. She knew that this moment was significant, that the old Prue was gone, replaced by a woman who acknowledged her own deceit and willingness to grab what she wanted and accepted that these things were true of others.

  Gradually, her fists uncurled in her jacket pockets. Superimposed over the sun, the chain on a gate flapped in the autumn wind, and a flurry of sharp air blew over the stubble which made it rustle. Black on gold, crows rose in an aimless cloud. Prue stood motionless. For the first time, she understood what she had done by annexing her stepdaughter’s husband, the measure of the transgression she had dealt Max in violating his family.

  ‘I’ll stay down here,’ she said.

  But a hundred or so yards further on, Jamie called down, ‘I’m coming to get you,’ which he did, pulling Prue up by the hand to the outer path where they walked in silence, in the opposite direction to her husband and daughter.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  From the first-floor landing window in Austen Road, Emmy watched a couple of redwings and a fieldfare feast on the red traffic-light berries of the Viburnum opulus in the next-door garden. Not natural democrats, the birds made a great deal of fuss although there were plenty to go round.

  Emmy moved one of Violet’s statements-in-bronze out of her way and propped her chin on her hands.

  ‘Did you know that birds are attracted to red?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Angus, slipping his hand under Emmy’s red jumper.

  ‘Yes.’ Emmy’s flesh crawled with pleasure. ‘If there’s a choice between red and white berries, they always choose red.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Angus, and continued.

  Emmy bit her lip. ‘They prefer that end of the colour spectrum.’

  ‘So do I.’

  She turned her head over her shoulder. ‘What about Sal, then? She wears black.’

  ‘So she does.’ Angus edged closer. ‘Can we go upstairs and explore other spectrums?’

  Emmy’s mouth twitched. ‘No, you devil. I’ve got the baby to look after.’

  Angus cocked his head to one side and listened. ‘Sounds as if he’s asleep. I can tell.’

  Downstairs in the kitchen, the washing machine and the dishwasher were banging out a cacophony. The drawing room had been cleaned, Edward’s things ironed and Emmy had been on the point of tackling her own room. She had not been expecting the doorbell to ring, or Angus to step into the hall, kick off his boots as he always did and say: ‘I was passing.’

  Somehow, despite the faithful teachings of Cosmopolitan, sex at ten o’clock on Monday morning did not seem right. Emmy swivelled her body towards Angus so that her meagre breasts were pressed against his chest.

  ‘Why were you passing?’ she asked, curious to know.

  ‘Just was.’ He grinned. ‘I hadn’t seen you since last week.’

  Four days, actually.

  ‘Been with Sal, then?’ Emmy kept her gaze fixed on the birds. ‘Over the weekend, I mean?’

  ‘Always knew you could read my lips. How did you know?’ Angus shifted so that he could trace interesting pathways over her breasts.

  ‘I can smell her.’

  Indeed, traces of that ghastly musky perfume Sal poured over herself lingered on him. Emmy turned her head. Angus made a dive for her trousers and she squeezed her legs shut.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go away, Angus. Go back to Sal.’

  His fingers arrested at the junction of her thighs. ‘Do you really want me to? Shall I?’ He was tracing small circles of desire which fanned out through Emmy’s concupiscent body. ‘I don’t know why I bother with you, Em, but I do.’

  ‘Don’t bother, then. I can get along
fine.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’ Angus went further. ‘Aha.’

  ‘Will you stop it?’

  Angus feinted, grabbed for and captured Emmy’s arm, and pulled her into the nearest doorway, which happened to be the main bedroom —Jamie and Violet’s bedroom. She struggled and protested but by this time his hand had found the target it sought.

  Sex at ten o’clock on a Monday morning was fine, she thought afterwards. Absolutely fine. But after such abandon, how did you face the rest of the day? The rest of the week?

  Angus rolled over on Violet’s lace-edged (and staggeringly expensive) pillow-cases from Macy’s in New York and kissed Emmy’s naked shoulder. She closed her eyes, the better to savour the gesture. Then she stiffened, and shot upright.

  ‘What if they find out?’

  Angus pulled her down and made himself more comfortable. ‘Stop fussing.’

  She tugged at the hair trailing over his shoulder. ‘Stop being a nag.’

  ‘Nag, nag.’

  An hour later, Emmy’s eyes flapped open like a submarine hatch. Oh, my God, she thought, sleep vanishing. The baby. She raised her head and listened, but the house was quiet - even the machines were silent. Breathing quietly, Angus lay beside her, muscles and skin slackened by sleep.

  For a few precious seconds, Emmy bent over him and allowed herself the luxury of a private view.

  There was the slope of his haunch, and the line between the tanned chest and the loins which were paper white. The sinew running down his forearm, the angle made by ankle meeting foot . . . He was a map on to which she routed her desire but not her hope.

  ‘Nice, aren’t I?’ Angus sounded slow and sleepy. ‘An oil painting.’

  ‘Yes, oh yes,’ she found herself murmuring in that unguarded, private moment.

  Slowly, he reached up and touched the slight mound of her breast. ‘So are you.’

  Emmy jumped out of bed and pulled on her underclothes. ‘I must check on the baby.’

  ‘Sure.’

  In the doorway, she turned to look at him sprawled shamelessly over the bed. He returned her look and said something that took him as much by surprise as it drove the breath from Emmy’s body.

  ‘I want us to get hitched,’ he said. ‘How about it?’

  Over a mug of Violet’s decaffeinated coffee and with Edward on her lap, Emmy explained the reasons why she had no intention of getting married at the moment.

  She was too young.

  ‘Twenty,’ said Angus. ‘Hardly a chicken.’

  She wanted a career and to travel.

  ‘You could have fooled me,’ said Angus. ‘Have a career looking after me.’

  She was not sure if she agreed with marriage.

  ‘Shack up with me, then,’ said Angus.

  He leant forward over the table and sent his pony-tail up and over his shoulder, and asked her why she was making excuses. Did she not love him? He asked so sweetly and with such tenderness that Emmy felt faint, and promptly succumbed to a tidal wash of fear that Angus was playing the worst of tricks, and could not, for the life of her, understand why.

  Neither did it escape Emmy that he had not mentioned loving her, a prerequisite she rather thought was necessary in a marriage proposal.

  Did she not love him?

  ‘I’m not sure I do. Love you, I mean,’ she lied, and had the doubtful satisfaction of watching his expression darken. She shifted Edward, who was playing dangerous games with the empty mug at the edge of the table.

  ‘Yes, you do. I know you do.’

  He leant back in the chair and folded his hands behind his head. It took a lot to crack Angus’s confidence.

  ‘Not enough to marry you.’ Emmy’s lips shook as she forced out the words. ‘I want someone I can trust.’

  Angus listened in silence and then got to his feet. ‘You’re out of date, Em.’ He picked up his jacket. ‘I’ll be off, then.’

  ‘Angus . . .’

  He padded out of the kitchen into the hall and reappeared, boots in hand. ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He stuffed his feet into the boots and bent down to lace them. ‘Don’t bother to see me out.’

  Too late, she realized she had hurt him, and badly.

  The front door clicked shut and Emmy was left holding a wriggling baby and contemplating the empty coffee cups on the table. Edward made noises that indicated he wanted a drink and Emmy put him into his chair while she fetched one. He drank thirstily and Emmy interpreted the squall that followed as a demand for a refill. After he had finished, she carried him upstairs and peeled off his sopping nappy. Delighted with the attention, Edward kicked his bare legs into the air and made cooing sounds. Emmy cleaned him up and smothered his bottom with cream. At that, he laughed.

  A clean bottom, a dry nappy, a drink ... if only life was that simple.

  Downstairs the kitchen seemed so quiet and empty that Emmy switched on the radio and cradled in her hands the mug that Angus had drunk from which still retained a residual warmth. The vision she had once nurtured of the house, with cork matting and potted plants, seemed dim and inappropriate.

  The mug was empty, Angus was gone, and Edward was due his morning walk.

  Jamie first noticed the change in Emmy.

  ‘She’s gone very quiet,’ he said to Violet.

  Nowadays his and Violet’s conversations tended to domestic topics - a tacit acknowledgement, perhaps, that for the moment it was best to keep to safe ground. Violet searched in her briefcase for the minutes of a meeting she meant to go over.

  ‘She looks fine to me.’

  ‘She seems different.’

  ‘Rubbish. There’s no difference at all. There’s still a layer of dust in the spare room which I’ve told her to clean several times.’

  ‘Her heart doesn’t seem to be in the job.’ On several occasions, Jamie had caught Emmy staring out of the window in what struck him as a despairing fashion. Her misery sounded an echo with him, an empathy rooted in his own confusion — and who was to say if that empathy was less acceptable because it had been born out of deceit rather than honesty?

  Whatever. Jamie now perceived how little he had understood, how life had flowed around him and how he had not taken the trouble to take note. This shamed him. (Don’t be ashamed, said Prue, when he confided this. How can we understand everything all at once?)

  ‘Her heart not in the job?’ Struck by the implications of Jamie’s statement, Violet slumped back on to the sofa. ‘Jamie, are you serious? Do you think Emmy wants to leave? Had I better talk to her?’

  ‘It might be an idea.’

  Violet ran through her schedule. ‘I’ve got Frankfurt in a couple of days, then the States in November. She can’t leave.’ She seized on a solution, the easy one. ‘Maybe we should give her a pay rise.’

  Jamie shrugged. ‘We can’t make her stay if she isn’t happy.’

  ‘Yes, we can. I’ll make her stay.’ Violet stuffed the minutes back into her briefcase. ‘She owes it to me.’

  Jamie’s expression was not kind. ‘You have funny ideas sometimes, Violet. Emmy doesn’t owe you a thing.’

  Violet began totting up figures on a smart black leather notepad. ‘I’m sure it’s the money. They always want more.’

  Jamie sighed. Alerted at last, Violet’s head jerked around. ‘Don’t go all snooty because I mention money. You work with it all day, so don’t pretend you’re above such vulgar preoccupations.’

  Until this moment, Emmy had not registered the exact honey colour of the kitchen floor: yellow, dashed with transparent wax, its mirror brightness now washed with the slight cloudiness of cream cleanser. As Violet talked, she stared at it. These days, most things had an unpredictable quality. Her feelings. The workings of her body. The patches of wakefulness during the night when she woke and stared into black and nothingness. The sudden pitchfork into exhausted sleep. Surprise at what she herself said and did.

  Above all, Emmy was conscious of astonishment as to how hi
dden her feelings were, had been, from herself, the person who obligingly provided the receptacle in which they sloshed. Question: what were the chances of comprehending others if the chances of understanding yourself were pretty low?

  ‘I mean, is there anything that’s worrying you, Emmy?’ Violet was saying. ‘You seem so quiet. So unhappy. Do you need anything?’ Far too shrewd to mention money in the opening moves of a negotiation, Violet was banking on the I’m-terribly-concerned-about-your-welfare-approach, which worked a treat on the staff at work.

  Emmy swallowed. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

  The kettle boiled and Violet poured water over mint teabags and fished them out with a spoon. Then she placed a mug in front of Emmy and sat down opposite with hers.

  ‘You would tell me,’ she said, opening her eyes wide - yet another tactic that conveyed the appearance of absolute sincerity -’if you needed help.’

  Oh, yes, I do, I do, thought Emmy desperately.

  ‘I mean, Jamie . . .’ Violet still hesitated a little over the Christian names, ‘Jamie and I would hate to lose you. We feel you’re almost family.’

  This gave Emmy the opportunity to reflect on the number of times she had been requested to take her supper upstairs on a tray, to fetch and carry shopping, forbidden to socialize during her work hours and had her movements scrutinized. The funny-peculiar aspect of it was: compared to the silence and isolation of her own home, it had been more like belonging to a family.

  Across the table, Violet’s lips moved and her glossy hair undulated and flicked obediently into its expensive cut. From a distance, Emmy watched her. Then Violet turned, glanced out of the kitchen window, and Emmy was hit by a clap of recognition. For Violet’s expression revealed a fleeting uncertainty and, even more unexpected, loss.

  She, too, thought Emmy. How extraordinary that, after all, she and Violet shared the same skin.

  The moment passed as quickly as it arrived. Violet sipped the mint tea, argued the toss with herself and plunged in. ‘You’re not thinking of leaving us, Emmy, I hope? We would be very sad.’

  Emmy grimaced and stared into her mug.

  ‘Would you prefer camomile?’ Violet asked.