Fearful Symmetry

by Morag Joss

  Alternatively she could summon her inner adult, who ceded that, all right, she was indeed tired and felt unloved and confused. Did that make her a victim? Would four croissants leave her feeling any more in control, or better able to withstand this unfamiliar feeling of not getting precisely what she wanted with either of these two men who, in different ways but equally irritatingly, exerted such power over her well-being? All right, four miles that she did not feel quite up to might not either, but she put on her running clothes and set off from the front door of Medlar Cottage before her Poor Me voice could raise a protest.

  For the first few moments’ trotting along the lane which ran below Medlar Cottage and through the valley Sara’s body yelled for its bathrobe and croissants. She ignored it. She could just see across the top of the hedgerow towards the farms and meadows on the far side. There was a dank ground mist on the lower reaches of the valley this morning, all but hiding the straggly line of willows which bordered the stream at the bottom. Higher up, the six lime trees stood out like giant golden bushes, the black trunks masked in mist. In the fields around, other trees, a stone barn and a little copse where cattle had gathered, appeared through the mist like smudges done in faint pencil on foggy, soft paper, floating worlds as if from a Japanese drawing of a damp English morning. As she ran, Phil came to mind although he was, she knew, not Japanese but Chinese. Yet talking with Phil, she imagined, would be halting and difficult, in its own way like one of those drawings: tottering from tiny floating world to floating world of speech, crossing the deep mists of silence in between by means of increasingly frail and desperate bridges of conversation. It was easier to establish a little duet of smiles and nods and venture no further. She supposed it was lazy but she didn’t care.

  Her body warming in the steady rhythm of her running, Sara’s mind slipped into an easeful unthinking of the kind usually felt just before sleep. Past Radford Farm, Ivan’s gun-dog kennels and Upper Northend Farm and still she was conscious only of the regular footfall of running, her plodding like the therapeutic push of kneading dough or the drubbing of clothes against a washboard. After half a mile she took the right-hand fork down to Oakford Farm and across to Marshfield on the other side of the valley, where the lane fell steeply past Wessex Water’s high-fenced brick building, like a dolls’ penitentiary, on the left. At the bottom of the hill, on the stone bridge over the stream, she stopped, flapping her arms and running on the spot. Not pausing to observe how rapidly the clear brown water spilled under the bridge after nearly two weeks of rain, she set off again, feeling now her body and mind wake up together with an exhilarating burst of energy as if an unexpected wave of laughter from somewhere inside her was gathering into a huge, tidal roll.

  The energy surge liberated not just euphoria but also her not exactly righteous anger. How had she got into this state? Where was her independence? Where was her mind? While it had been somehow sidetracked or duped, first by Herve’s wondrous reputation and then by Andrew’s wondrous body, she had almost, almost allowed herself to be quite grossly imposed upon. How had she been so blind and weak as not to recognise at once Herve’s music for the facile, pretentious stuff it was, and say so? And just when had she allowed herself to become so weak and needful that she had almost overlooked the fact that Andrew was a married police officer?

  She jogged on for another mile, and then turned back for home. By the time Medlar Cottage came into sight she felt restored to herself, the purity of her indignation substituting admirably for the clarity that was still absent from her mind. She would see this bloody horrible music through to its première in December, because she had to, but after that she would never play it again. She bloody well would not record it next year, as Robin and Herve were intending. And as for Andrew, well, she would not be lured into taking an interest in him or in his horrible cases, because that tedious dead spinster in Camden Crescent was not her responsibility. She did not care about the animal rights lunatic who had killed her. She didn’t need anyone. Bloody Imogen Bevan. Bloody Herve. Bloody Robin. Bloody Andrew. Bloody men.

  There was a message from Herve on the machine and she played it with a sneer. In his very personal brand of imperious wheedling, Herve asked her to ring him back without delay. He had to speak to her with ‘very urgency’ about last night’s performance. There was so much that had not been right, so very, very much on which she had to be corrected, and with all speed.

  She looked at her watch. It was nearly half past nine. He would be waiting for her to ring him back, unable to settle to work. She sighed happily and went upstairs to take a long, long bath, and to dress very, very slowly. Then, after some coffee which she most certainly would not rush, she might call him.

  But after her coffee Sara decided that painting her toenails should take priority over returning Herve’s call. As she was stretching out on the sofa in the music room with one leg raised straight in front of her to assess the effect of Prussian blue on the toes of one long tanned foot, the telephone rang again. Turning the foot this way and that, wondering about a second coat, she listened as Herve began to record his second agonised message. Abandoning her resolve to let him suffer, she sighed and lifted the receiver. Power was making her magnanimous, perhaps also just a little devious. As Herve embarked on a detailed analysis of last night’s shortcomings, she crooked the receiver under her chin, lay back, bent her other leg balletically to rest the foot on the other thigh and began, with the delicacy of a miniaturist, to paint her toenails. Smiling cruelly, she pretended she was taking notes.

  ‘Hmm, that’s a good point, Herve, hold on, I’m just getting that down . . .’ she lied, stroking the brush over a toenail. ‘Yes, yes. Just a minute.’

  She had applied two coats to each foot and let them dry by the time he had finished. Just as she had concluded the last round of goodbyes and pressed the Off button on the phone, she was startled by a deep laugh behind her. She turned round to see Andrew grinning in the doorway, his arms folded.

  ‘My God, how long have you been there?’ she gasped. ‘You could have knocked.’

  ‘You are a perfidious, unprincipled so-and-so,’ Andrew said pleasantly, walking into the room. ‘I did knock,’ he said, still smiling, and flopping into an armchair. ‘Very softly. Then I thought you might turn me away from the doorstep, and I wasn’t having that. So I just came in. I could hear you were on the phone. Couldn’t help overhearing. You’ve almost made me feel sorry for the man. As I was saying, you are a perfidious, unprin—’

  ‘I know,’ Sara said languidly, turning onto her side to look at him. ‘But one uses what weapons one must.’

  He stared back at her, appreciative of the long curve of her body that she was offering to him.

  ‘I’m delighted to see you, but I wasn’t expecting you. Why are you here?’

  Andrew’s face grew serious and he sighed, not sure how to begin. Instead of speaking, he stood up, crossed the room and crouched down beside her. He took hold of her face in both of his hands.

  ‘Not to play the cello, for one thing. Or to apologise. I’m sick of apologising to you. You can tell me to go if you want. Only don’t.’ Sara opened her mouth to speak but he stopped her. ‘I couldn’t stand seeing you like that last night. So separate. Separate from me. I’m here because I can’t stand it any longer.’ His hands left her face and travelled down her shoulders, across her breasts and under her arms. Sara knew there was no need now for her to say anything at all. She was allowing him to raise her from the sofa. She did not take her eyes from his face.

  ‘I just walked out of the office. I’m here because I’m sick of apologising when all we need to do to make things better is to make love,’ he said. ‘I need to. So do you, don’t you? Now.’ Sara’s only answer was to lean forward, slide her arms round his neck and plant her mouth over his. She pushed her tongue between his lips, not gently.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ Andrew breathed, pulling away. His hand travelled down and started fumbling in the region of his groin. Sara, not unders
tanding, reached to help him. He groaned. ‘No, wait, don’t. We can’t. It’s my phone. The fucking mobile.’ He eased himself onto his feet, pulled out the phone, took a deep, laboured breath and answered. Sara had never seen him look so angry. ‘Yes, what? That you, Bridger? What the hell do you want?’

  She sighed, got up and walked over to the French window, opened it and stepped out barefoot onto the grass. She hesitated and turned. Andrew was still snapping impatiently at Bridger. ‘Yes? So? So why aren’t you just getting on with it? Yes, of course just get on and interview them, man! What?’

  This was what it would always be like with Andrew. A ringing telephone would mean not just a sudden interruption, bad enough in itself, but also, from the second it rang, that she would no longer be the centre of his attention. She was no longer even important, while suddenly a corpse, a PM report, a new piece of evidence, would be. Two minutes later and she might have been lying naked. How would she have felt if he had got up and left her then? To be so abandoned, and then truly abandoned, would be intolerable. She wondered how often it had happened like that to Valerie. The ground was cold and, looking down, she saw that she would be unable to walk anywhere without getting her feet very wet and probably stepping on worm casts. Still, it seemed a more appetising option than returning to the house and listening understandingly to Andrew’s excuses for having to leave. Sighing, she made off across the grass.

  PART 2

  ROSE LEAVES, WHEN THE ROSE IS DEAD,

  ARE HEAP’D FOR THE BELOVED’S BED

  CHAPTER 13

  THE NEXT DAY, Valerie rang.

  ‘Yes, this Saturday. Could you possibly? It’s short notice, I know,’ she said. ‘But we’ve got a bit of a crisis. Andrew’s hurt his back. But we can’t possibly hold everything up just for him, you see?’

  ‘How? What’s happened?’ Sara did her best to keep any hint of fear for him out of her voice. ‘What’s he done?’

  Valerie responded in the tone of one woman talking to another when both know how ridiculous men are. ‘Oh, you know, just being ridiculous. He came back yesterday in the most appalling temper. You know how they get. Goes storming out to play squash. He hasn’t played for months so he was asking for it. Wrenched something and broke the racquet. He can hardly move now, let alone play the cello. So we’re in a complete crisis situation. That’s why I’m getting a few people round. Herve’s coming.’

  Sara was entirely at sea. What crisis? And why should it suddenly precipitate a little dinner party? But she felt that to venture further in pursuit of an explanation might be dangerous. It would be dangerous even to express too much interest.

  ‘Right, well, er, yes, I think I can come. If Herve’s going, then I suppose I don’t need to keep Saturday evening free to rehearse. So thank you, I’d love to come.’

  Difficult. What to wear to supper as the guest of your incapacitated almost-lover and his unsuspecting (please God), highly organising, highly strung, high-heeled wife, not forgetting the presence of the most self-obsessed charlatan in the music business for whom you have developed a distaste that amounts almost to an allergy? How to look sexy, unthreatening and unreachable all at once?

  To Sara’s initial relief, when she arrived in Valerie’s ‘lounge’ on Saturday evening in a loose trouser suit of maroon silk and a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes more like weapons than footwear, she saw that the toxic concentration of the evening was diluted by the presence of other guests. Poppy, Helene and Jim, along with nibbles and white wine, were introduced by Valerie, who was exercising hostessy control from the vantage point of three-inch heels. Sara’s were three and a half. Andrew watched in hideous, wine-dulled pain from a very straight-backed chair as the two women stepped and counter-stepped the offering and accepting of introductions, glasses, pretzels and a place to sit, in a carpeted but unmistakable flamenco of mutual disdain.

  ‘And no Cosmo, alas. He’s working. And no Herve, after all,’ Valerie cooed through bared teeth. ‘Not even when he knew you were coming. He’s had to cry off with a headache.’

  ‘What a shame,’ Sara said smoothly, addressing the room. ‘How very disappointing.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it? I do hope it’s no more than a headache,’ Helene said from the depths of the sofa. ‘He is obviously a brilliant, sensitive man. I could see that at once when I met him at Iford. We just clicked, he and I. You are so lucky to be working with him. What a privilege.’

  Jim, sitting beside her, opened his mouth and then closed it, looking glum.

  Perhaps because their feet were hidden, it got better at the table. Sara, such was her praise to Valerie, seemed genuinely ignorant of the Marks & Spencer provenance of most of the dolled-up food. Valerie lightened up in the glow of her success in pulling the wool over the cosmopolitan sophisticate’s eyes with little more than a sprinkling of ready-washed coriander leaves. But it was Jim who led on the food eulogies, paying soft-voiced compliments to Valerie and Helene (because Helene was a wonderful hostess, too) in which they both basked. It was, if deliberate, very skilful, Sara thought. Although Jim was not a large man he gave an impression of ageless solidity which, together with the sort of kind brown eyes which so often go with beards, exuded a quiet, approving warmth a bit like a human Aga. He even managed to include Poppy, who grew smiley and pink in his attention and chattered in reply to his compliments.

  ‘Now, tell me, what would one call this marvellous colour you’re wearing?’

  ‘This? This top? Oh, I suppose it’s, well, magenta or something. I made it, actually, just out of a remnant.’

  ‘How skilled you are! Clever with your needle and a stage manager and practically a nurse. Why, we have Renaissance Woman here. What’s your secret, dear lady?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not! I’ve just always been more practical than brainy. I take after my mother for dressmaking and my dad for the technical things. I used to help him and he taught me a lot. I pick things up quickly, that’s all. And I’ve got very good hands.’

  ‘And what sort of line is your father in?’ Coming from Jim, this was probably not an attempt to place her socially, but Poppy stalled. Sara saw one panicked blink of her eyes. ‘He’s a . . . a heating engineer.’ Evidently she had spent too long with Cosmo, the progeny of a musicologist and a maths teacher, to admit that Dad was a plumber.

  ‘Another engineer! I was an engineer myself. Naval engineering was my line. Left the navy over ten years ago, they booted all us old fellas out early, you know.’

  Bless him, thought Sara, smiling at Andrew. Andrew was silently blessing Jim too, because his skilful warming of the other women round the table left Andrew free to look at Sara almost as much as he wanted to.

  ‘Yes, do tell us how you manage to do it all, Poppy,’ Valerie said, lining up the reply she wanted (‘Oh, well, because I haven’t got three children!’) so that Andrew should be reminded of how much Valerie managed practically single-handed.

  ‘Oh, well, because I get a lot done on my working nights,’ Poppy offered instead. ‘It’s usually quite quiet once we’ve turned the residents. In fact, I get all our washing and ironing done because Jean lets me slip off and use the machines, and then I let her off later for a little sleep. That saves me hours in the daytime.’ Valerie’s face had grown glassy. Poppy, without quite knowing how she had disappointed, quickly added, ‘Gosh, this is a lovely pud. I could never make lemon mousse. It’s so . . . lemony.’

  When the topic of what they were eating had been exhausted, and after Helene had sighed that Herve would have so loved the occasion and proposed a toast to absent friends, a little social panic began to shimmer over the polyester-clad table. Someone said something nice about Valerie’s tight little arrangement of coordinating dried flowers in its centre. What next? Helene looked at Poppy, then Valerie. All three nodded.

  ‘Now, I think, don’t you?’

  Valerie nodded again and glanced defiantly at Andrew. Then she turned to Sara.

  ‘Sara, we hope you won’t mind us asking you a little favou
r. Something you—only you—could do for us.’

  ‘Little favour? I can’t allow this. I said it was out of the question. Valerie, don’t do this.’ Andrew’s voice was barely raised, but his fury was obvious.

  Valerie raised both hands. ‘No, I will be heard. She can always say no, can’t she?’

  As she turned her head away, Andrew settled on Sara a look of enraged powerlessness more than tinged with lust. It was rather how he had looked when Bridger’s call had come. She smiled.

  ‘Of course I can,’ she replied, trying to answer his look without seeming to. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t mind. What is it, then?’

  Helene was to be the chief petitioner. She pursed up her lips and clasped her hands in a gesture of supplication.

  ‘Only you can do it.’

  Sara looked at her in amusement.

  ‘And it’d be just tremendous if you would,’ put in Poppy.

  ‘Only you,’ Helene went on. ‘Valerie’s quite right. She agrees with me, and so does Poppy, and Jim sees it that way, too, don’t you, dear? And Herve would too, if he were here. You see, with poor, dear Andrew laid up, and we don’t know how long for, the whole project’s in jeopardy.’

  Helene, Poppy and Valerie all leaned seriously across the table, a War Cabinet of three. Jim waited benignly in the hope of being included again, while Andrew, whose eyes were on the ceiling, was wishing he were elsewhere. Anywhere, as long as it was with Sara.

  ‘Because it’s such a key role. Andrew’s cello part. It’s just crucial in every scene. We can’t rehearse any of the singers without it.’