by Rosie Thomas
It took Helen a moment to find an answer. ‘It was important, yes. It isn’t any more.’
Graham frowned, but he was old enough to see that she wouldn’t answer any more questions. After a moment Helen ruffled his hair, as she had often done when he was a little boy, and went away. In her own room, she stared at her reflection in the small mirror and tried to see how it had changed. Graham’s only thirteen, she thought. Is it so very obvious, even to him? For the first time since she had come home, she let herself think about Oliver and the sense of loss hit her like a blow.
It was going to take a long time to forget him.
Helen slipped back into Oxford after a week away.
From the train window, just as she had done at the beginning of term, she caught the brief glimpse of the distant spires. But this time, instead of glowing with reflected light, they were curtained with grey rain. Helen tried not to read significance into it, but it seemed an apt enough symbol. Compared with today the beginning of term lay brightly in her memory, promising everything.
It had brought Oliver, and a glimpse of happiness that she had never guessed at. But the light had faded, and the rain came to shroud the Oxford pinnacles.
The greyness was appropriate, she thought sadly. Oxford was still the same, and she was grateful to be coming back to the work she loved. But losing Oliver had extinguished the brilliance of the place for her. Extinguished it, she knew, except for a spark that refused to die. Her logical self told her that she should forget him, but she went on defiantly hoping that he might come back, and set everything alight again.
Helen tried half-heartedly to find somewhere else to live, but it was impossible at mid-term. And Follies drew her back, its square red bulk holding its own fascination as well as the promise and threat of meeting Oliver.
Even now, she longed to see him again.
Helen discovered that Rose had not re-let the little room at the top of the house, and so she took it over again. Then she threw herself with deliberate intensity into her work, vowing to make up for the time she had lost. For a few days she saw no-one but Chloe, who welcomed her back with real warmth. Then one morning she met Pansy in the shadowed gallery outside her room. Impulsively Pansy came running to her, put her arms around Helen and hugged her. Helen caught the scent of summer gardens again.
‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ Pansy told her. ‘Helen …’ her face was unusually serious, ‘are we still friends?’
Helen stepped back and looked at Pansy’s glowing face and tousled hair. She was wearing a very short flared skirt and layers of bright woollens, so that she looked like an ice-skater still flushed from frosty air and exercise. It was impossible not to respond to her. Helen had thought of asking, Why should we need to be friends? but instead she said very quietly, ‘Of course.’ She stifled the impulse to ask about Oliver, anything, just to know what he was doing and perhaps whether he ever mentioned her.
Pansy hugged her again and went away humming.
In the end, she asked Chloe. ‘Have you seen him?’
Chloe frowned, concerned at Helen’s hopeless eagerness.
‘Them,’ she corrected her. ‘Don’t think about him any more, Helen. They’re always together.’
Pansy and Oliver.
Helen’s grey eyes didn’t flicker. ‘I’m not. Not in that way, anyway. But I want to see him so that I can thank him for what he did. The money. To let him know that I know, and how much it matters. But I don’t want it to be a big performance. I just need to meet him somewhere, casually.’
Chloe thought for a moment.
‘Look, why don’t you come on Sunday? There’s a preproduction lunch party for the As You Like It people at Stephen Spurring’s. You’ll be able to see Oliver, and there will be hordes of other people as well, so it’ll seem quite natural. Do come. I need some support too.’
Chloe had agreed to help backstage with Tom’s production. At first it had seemed an easy way to see more of Stephen, and then she found herself enjoying the work for its own sake. She ran about willingly as the director’s dogsbody and proved herself invaluable at handling all the tedious little tasks that no-one else wanted to take on. Part of her reward was to be caught up in the enthusiasm that Tom generated around him, the rest the chance to be near Stephen and to slip off afterwards with him for a drink, or even for a snatched hour in his rooms.
‘Please come,’ she urged Helen again, and at last Helen nodded. It would not be the first party she had been to at the hospitable Spurrings’, nor the first time she had seen one of Stephen’s girls covertly appraising his wife and home. The thought of Chloe in the role disturbed her, but she put it out of her head as far as she could. Loyally, she told herself that Chloe wouldn’t do anything damaging or dangerous.
On Sunday morning Chloe and Helen drove away from Follies together in Chloe’s smart little Renault.
They were very quiet, and not entirely at ease with each other. Helen was too preoccupied with rehearsing over and over what she wanted to say to Oliver to talk much. Chloe longed to talk about Stephen because she could think of almost nothing else. Since the first night in his rooms, he had taken possession of her. The more she glimpsed the inexorable pleasure in dominating her which lay behind the urbane exterior, the more she needed and wanted him to go on doing it. Her obsession with him grew and grew until she felt it threatening to explode inside her. As she drove out into the country she tried to find some way of talking about him that wouldn’t sound too heavy-handed. But she couldn’t think of a single one, and she sensed some of Helen’s disapproval and disinclination to be involved in her affair.
In the end she said nothing, and concentrated instead on following Stephen’s directions.
Soon they turned in through a pair of stone gateposts with stone eagles perched on them. There was a short, pot-holed drive between some oak trees and then they pulled up in front of a low, pleasant grey house. There were deep windows looking out over the lawn and the walls were laced over with the winter skeleton of a Virginia creeper. A child’s red tricycle lay overturned on the paving in front of the open door. In the line of cars beside Stephen’s mud-splashed Peugeot was the shooting brake that belonged to Tom and, at the end, the shiny nose of Oliver’s Jaguar. Helen’s eyes went to it at once and, as she walked towards the house at Chloe’s side, she had to concentrate hard on keeping her breathing even and regular.
Chloe tapped on the stained-glass panel in the front door, then they peered inside across the black and white tiled hall. Stephen was standing at the bottom of the stairs with his hand on the shiny mahogany newel-post. He was talking to the girls who were playing Celia and Audrey. Beatrice was beside him with a fair, fat child tugging at her hand.
They came across to meet their guests at once. Stephen kissed them both on the cheek. He had never greeted Helen so warmly before, and she hid a little smile at it.
Beatrice held up a big glass jug. ‘Buck’s Fizz?’ she asked.
Although there were grey streaks in her dark cap of hair and a fan of fine wrinkles around her eyes, she looked younger than her husband. She was very slim, almost like a young girl, and her movements were quick and unthinking as she poured their drinks.
‘Come and see the house. And the kids, if you like that sort of thing.’ Stephen led Chloe away, and Beatrice seemed deliberately not to watch him go. Helen wondered how much she knew about her husband and whether she was speculating about the svelte girl beside him. There was no sign in Beatrice’s calm face and the hand resting on her child’s head was quite relaxed.
‘How old’s Sebastian now?’ Helen asked, wanting to break the silence.
‘Five. Getting quite civilised, really. Oh good, here’s Tom.’ She pushed the wings of hair back behind her ears like a schoolgirl.
Tom came across the hall. He was wearing a bright blue sweater, and a pale grey flannel shirt and trousers that were worlds away from his actors’ uniform of faded denim. To Helen, he looked very elegant and assured. He smiled at Beat
rice and held out his hands for the jug of Buck’s Fizz.
‘Let me do that.’
‘Tom, will you? I’ve still got things to finish in the kitchen. No good asking Stephen.’
‘Leave it to me.’
They like each other, Helen thought at once. Odd, really, when Stephen and Tom so obviously have no time at all for one another.
When Beatrice had gone, Tom poured another measure of Buck’s Fizz into Helen’s glass and smiled quickly at her.
‘Good to see you back. Is everything okay at home?’
Helen nodded, not wanting to talk about it. It would be difficult enough to say what she had to say to Oliver.
‘Where is everyone?’ she asked conversationally, looking round the empty hall.
‘Depends who you mean by everyone.’ The underlying humorousness in Tom’s face suddenly broke through and he laughed. ‘Pansy and Oliver are outside, playing football with Stephen’s kids and their friends. Want to come?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Not yet, Helen thought. Not until after lunch, when I’ve got my courage up. Dutch courage, if necessary. ‘I’m going to see if I can help Beatrice.’
Stephen’s wife was in the sunny kitchen with a red and white striped apron wound round her waist. Helen sniffed appreciatively. There were warm, rich smells of garlic and roasting meat. Gratefully Beatrice handed over her knife and Helen sat down at the scrubbed pine table to prepare the ingredients for salade frisée. Beatrice stood over the bright red Aga, slightly flushed with its heat, stirring something in a heavy iron pan.
An organ fugue was rippling through the speakers mounted in the corners of the room and the sun was making bright squares between the rag mgs on the stone floor. How peaceful, Helen thought. There was even a ginger cat asleep in a rocking chair beside the Aga and a plain-faced clock ticking loudly on the wall. There were wellingtons beside the back door, creased Sunday newspapers piled on the battered sofa, needlework and children’s paintings and seed catalogues stacked on the oak dresser.
How beautifully peaceful, Helen thought again, to live with your husband and children in an old stone house, cooking and gardening and inviting friends for Sunday lunches. From outside she could hear the shouts and occasional shrieks of laughter from the football players. I want to live like this, she thought. Then Beatrice, coming from the larder with ajar in her hand, stopped in front of the window. A shadow fell across her face. Except for Stephen, Helen remembered. There must be a hollowness inside all this domestic comfort. What kind of peace could there be, living with a man who did what Stephen did? She thought briefly of what Chloe had told her and then suppressed the memory. It was indecent, somehow, here in Beatrice’s kitchen. She put down her knife and went to stand beside Beatrice at the window.
The kitchen faced over a wide expanse of rough lawn dotted haphazardly with fruit trees. People were running across the grass, a black and white ball bouncing between them. A yellow retriever was barking frenziedly. Oliver burst out of the crowd and raced across to shoot at the two apple trees that stood for goalposts. He was a head taller than anyone else, and he stood out like a beacon. Pansy, muffled in scarves, was dancing up and down in the goalmouth, taunting him. Oliver kicked and she dived to the ball, rolling over and over with it in the wet grass. In front of them Joe Spurring leapt up and down yelling encouragement.
Helen glanced sideways at Beatrice, and then followed her gaze.
Stephen and Chloe were standing under the bare trees at the edge of the pitch. There was a careful distance between them, and it was that little space that gave them away. They looked too aware of being watched, too intent on the progress of the haphazard game.
Beatrice suddenly looked her age. Her mouth sagged and the creases deepened around her eyes. Helen wanted to lead her away, or to pull down the blinds and block out the sight of her husband with Chloe.
Then Beatrice shook herself imperceptibly. She turned to Helen and the youthfulness came back into her face. They saw Oliver running across the grass again and Beatrice waved. ‘He’s very beautiful, isn’t he? Is he quite real?’
Helen was caught off her guard by the defencelessness of the moment which had just passed.
‘Oh yes,’ she said sadly, unthinkingly. ‘He’s real all right. Too real.’
Beatrice looked sharply at her and their eyes met with the beginning of sympathy. Gently Beatrice touched her sleeve, then they turned away from the window together.
‘Let me fill your glass,’ Beatrice said firmly, ‘and we’ll finish the bloody salads, then we can go and enjoy ourselves too.’
Helen was laying the long table in the dining room, when the footballers came bursting in. Their faces were pink from the cold air and they were laughing and pushing each other.
‘Oliver, you were a demon. You should be a soccer blue.’
‘Too proletarian. I’d have to wear an anorak and carry one of those bags with Adidas on the side.’
‘Wonderful smells. I’m starving.’
‘Mum, can I have wine?’
Helen put the last fork in its place. At last she had to look up. Her face felt hot and her chest tight with the strain.
Oliver was there, across the room.
When their eyes met, he grinned at her. Friendly, casual.
It was no good, Helen knew. Pansy was beside him, pink and silver like an exotic flower. Still Helen felt just as she had done on her first day with Oliver. She wanted to run across to him and bury her face in his warmth, feeling his arms come around her. She wanted to drag him away from everyone and keep him for herself.
How stupid, she thought bitterly. It was a mistake to have come here. Now she was trapped. She would have to sit and watch them together, listening to the grating conviviality around her. Waiting for the right moment to thank him for his generosity.
Suddenly Helen was possessed by the thought that it wasn’t generosity at all. He had bought her off, or handed out a ridiculous tip to satisfy his conscience. She remembered the suggestion of shame in his face when they had met on Folly Bridge.
How horrible. She would give the money back. Then she remembered that she couldn’t. It was all made over to her mother.
More people were crowding into the room now. Dully, Helen let herself be guided into a chair. Someone was filling her wineglass, dishes were being held out to her. Mechanically she spooned food that she didn’t want on to her plate. Beatrice was sitting at one end of the table with Oliver and Tom on either side of her. Stephen sat at the other, directing the passing out of plates.
‘Can I sit here?’ someone asked. Stephen looked up to see Pansy slipping into the empty seat beside him. Chloe stopped short on her way towards it and immediately found herself another place between two admiring young men.
‘Please do,’ Stephen said. ‘I’ve barely had a chance to talk to you yet.’
‘Just what I thought.’ Pansy’s chameleon eyes were bright with satisfaction.
Conversation welled up around the table and the wine passed round and round. Helen ate almost nothing but she let her glass be filled again. It seemed to take the edge off the unhappiness of having to sit in her place and pretend to feel at home. She listened uncomprehendingly to the talk and jokes passing to and fro around her and tried not to look across at Oliver. If she had, she might have seen him watching Pansy and Stephen down the length of the table. He was drinking faster than anyone else and his blue eyes took on an ominous dull glow.
Tom raised one eyebrow at him across the table, but Oliver scowled back belligerently.
By the time Beatrice brought in the coffee, her elder children and their friends had all wandered off elsewhere, bored with adult company. Only Sebastian stayed and he had attached himself to Pansy. He was sitting on her knee, playing with her earrings and the points of her hair. Over his fair head, Pansy smiled at Stephen and went on talking. She was telling him funny stories about her father and his entourage of wives. Stephen looked amused and faintly impressed.
‘Coffee,
Oliver?’ Beatrice asked gently.
He accepted a cup but left it untouched, reaching out instead for the brandy bottle that had appeared on the table. He looked all set to empty it himself, and his scowl deepened.
After a burst of laughter from Pansy and Stephen, he leaned forward.
‘Can’t we all share the joke? Or are you going to monopolise each other for the rest of the day?’
‘Shall we, Pansy? What do you think?’ Stephen’s voice was very smooth.
Pansy jumped up and went to Oliver, wrapping her arms around him from behind. ‘Nolly, don’t be such a bear. Are you getting pissed?’
‘If I am, it’s out of boredom.’
Tom put down his cup with a rattle of irritation. Beatrice stood up and began collecting empty plates. The silence was broken by Sebastian who ran after Pansy and pulled at her arm.
‘Pansy, Pansy, come and play in my shop. Now.’
Pansy smiled around the table. ‘He’s so lovely I can’t resist. Leave my share of the clearing up and I’ll do it later.’
The atmosphere at the table had changed perceptibly. Oliver, leaning back in his chair, swirled the brandy in his glass defiantly.
‘You leave it too, Bee,’ Stephen said. ‘You’ve done enough. Who’ll give me a hand – Chloe?’
She pushed back her chair at once and went to take the tray from Beatrice.
‘Of course. That was a wonderful lunch, Beatrice.’
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’
In a moment Tom, Helen and Oliver were alone in the dining room.
‘I can’t stand that self-satisfied Romeo,’ Oliver said irritably. ‘Who does he think he is?’
‘Your host, amongst other things.’ Tom’s voice was sharp. ‘Why don’t you knock off the bottle if it makes you so unpleasant?’
Oliver’s flush deepened. ‘Why don’t you just get lost?’
Tom jammed his hands deep into his pockets as if to stop himself hitting out and left the room without a word.
After a long pause Oliver looked across at Helen as if he was surprised to see her. Then he let out a little snort of laughter.