Three Strange Angels

by Kalpakian, Laura;

  ‘Yet you remained dedicated to the firm, and to him,’ said Quentin, suddenly seeing the past bathed in a new light.

  ‘He and Castle Literary were my life’s work. All I shall have to show for my life’s work.’ Behind her cat’s eye glasses her eyes filled with mirth, a quality Quentin could not remember seeing in all the years he had known her. ‘In truth, I loved dear old fascinating, fornicating, Gilbert-and-Sullivan-spouting, tipsy, misadventurous, unfaithful Albert.’

  ‘I would not have guessed.’

  Some vestige of a smile tugged at her thin lips, as she rose and picked up her handbag. ‘Of course not. I am not indiscreet. That was Albert’s failing. Don’t let it be yours as well.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  LE VOLEUR DU TEMPS

  If ever, truly, there were a time-torn man, Quentin Castle was he. His time was torn, but his heart was not. He might count as a faithless husband, but he was a constant lover, even though he had meant to give Claire up, tried to give her up.

  The day after Florence’s announcement of the impending baby, guilt-racked, and miserable, he cancelled his few appointments, told Miss Marr he was going to the London Library to read, and took the train to Oxford. I mustn’t … we cannot … rang in his head and his heart on the train, on the bus to Polstead Road. I mustn’t … we cannot even when Claire flung open the door and flew into his arms, pulled him inside. I mustn’t … we cannot as she loosened his tie and pressed him against the closed door, and his hands slid over her body beneath a wrapper secured only with a silken tie. I mustn’t … we cannot … I can’t … he murmured against her soft lips, and full breasts, and after that, even though I mustn’t, we cannot, could not. Florence, they were pulling each other’s clothes off, as they stumbled backward towards the bedroom, and though Claire nodded, weeping, yes, yes, I know, I understand … even as they tumbled into bed and stayed there till they heard Mary and Catherine on the stairs coming home from school.

  Claire scurried into some trousers and a sweater, ran into the living room, gathered up Quentin’s clothes in a flash, and pitched them to him in the bathroom just as the girls tore into the flat. Mary pounded on the bathroom door. Quentin smiled as he opened the door. Mary was the image of Claire, fair hair and flashing blue eyes.

  He found Claire in the tiny kitchen, the kettle on, her hair tumbled down around her face, eyes alight, her whole being glowing. He sat at the small table by the window and opened his arms to her. She came to him and he pressed his face against her breasts while she stroked his hair and whispered endearments.

  ‘I just want to walk away from everything, from every-one, and be with you,’ he said, breathing in the earthy scent of love. ‘I don’t care about anything else.’

  ‘Of course you do. And you know you can’t walk away. You’d hate yourself.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘You would! You’re a good, a decent, a fine man, Quentin. What do you think drew me to you from the beginning? Why do you think I love you? You’re not false or cruel.’

  ‘I’m false now.’

  ‘But you’re not cruel. And you cannot leave your wife and child.’

  ‘What about us? I can’t give you up. I can’t lose you. I have been blind, deaf and dumb, and lame, ignorant and unknowing, stupidly treading the paths already marked out for me, and suddenly! Suddenly, I’m alive and awake and rejoicing!’ He stroked her back and buttocks, wishing they could just retreat to the bedroom again. ‘You are everything to me. I want to marry you.’

  ‘No. You don’t.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I don’t want to be married. I want to be loved.’

  ‘But I want both, Claire. You and always you. Only you.’

  ‘You have me. You and only you.’ She pulled a flimsy kitchen chair up close to him, and their hands entwined. She still wore her wedding ring, but her blue eyes were bright with love. ‘For the first time I know what it is to be loved for who I am, not what I can do or be or make easier for someone, but for myself. I can’t lose you either, Quentin. We can have each other. We must.’

  ‘How can we have each other if I am married to Florence?’

  ‘If you left Florence, you would one day hate yourself, and you would hate me.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘We don’t need to be married to love each other, to be true to each other, to keep what we have, our love, and let it strengthen us.’

  ‘Only I would go home to Florence, and you—’ He nodded towards her left hand, her wedding ring ‘—stay married in spirit to Frank.’

  ‘You want me to take it off?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘I do.’

  ‘All right, then.’ She removed the ring which left a pale shadow on her finger. She put it in her pocket. Quentin took his own wedding ring from his hand and went to put it in his vest pocket, but she stopped him. ‘You keep yours on, Quentin. Florence and the baby are one part of your life, the honourable part, and I am another.’

  ‘My love for you is every bit as honourable, more so, than what I feel for Florence.’

  ‘Then keep it so, and love me. I don’t need you to make an honest woman of me. I don’t want to marry anyone. Not even you, dear, and I don’t want to be the cause of anyone else’s unhappiness, but I do want to be loved.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘Then that’s all I ask of you. I need you to love me, to love me best and always. Can you do that, dear?’

  ‘I can. I do. I will. I promise.’

  ‘Then I shall love you best and always. I promise.’ Her lovely face suffused with joy. ‘As long as we love each other …’

  ‘Best and always. And forever. I promise.’

  ‘And forever,’ she repeated as the kettle began its noisy shriek. ‘We mustn’t lose each other, and we must bear whatever comes. Can you bear it, dear?’

  ‘I can bear anything for you.’

  These were, as it turned out, solemn vows. From that day forward, Claire and Quentin had borne everything, and though they had endured struggles, they had not lost each other.

  But in that first year – and however ecstatic, fulfilled he was in Claire’s arms and the light of her eyes – each time Quentin returned home to Florence, he plunged into an abyss of self-loathing. Rosamund, Albert, Margaret all greeted the prospect of the baby with undiluted joy, and Florence’s happiness in her advancing pregnancy was an agonizing reproach to him. He tried to be especially kind to Florence, and she, in return, was pleased, touched, warm, sending him into further paroxysms of guilt. Florence showed him each evening how she was learning to knit. Quentin thought the clicking of the needles would drive him mad.

  But after baby Eleanor was born (pink and roly-poly, a font of gurgles and giggles, a delight to all the family) the situation slowly, subtly changed. Florence was so besotted with the baby, she did not seem to begrudge, or even notice, his very long workdays, the days he spent in Oxford. She did not know he was in Oxford. No one did.

  For these ten years the London Library had served Quentin as the perfect fiction. (In turn he had served it as a respected trustee.) Twice a week he told Miss Marr, every-one, he was at the London Library, reading, and then he got on the train to Oxford. Claire met him at the station, and drove him home, Polstead Road, and later, to the house she bought on Linton Road, nearer the river.

  This was where Quentin Castle lived and breathed and had his being. Mornings they had in bed, and then after school, when the children came home, they would work side by side, reading, writing. The girls warmed to him swiftly, and in time came to adore him, but from the beginning Michael Carson contested Quentin’s right to Claire’s affection. When, clearly, she wasn’t going to give him up, Michael simply stayed at school on days when he knew Quentin would be there. In good weather Quentin and Claire took the girls punting on the river or walked university parks, or went to the pub at Binsey and fed the ducks and swans. In bad weather they would go to the central market, or visit the Ashmolean. With these coltish gi
rls, Mary and Catherine, Quentin was demonstrative and affectionate, as loving and indulgent a father as if they were his own.

  Claire and Quentin spiced these ordinary days with time in London when she came to confer with Bernard, editing and publishing, promoting Frank’s posthumous work. They might go to a film or the theatre together; they might have dinner with Louisa Partridge who was a willing party to their love affair and offered an excuse for Quentin any time he needed one. In London they were circumspect in others’ company, though they prickled with anticipation, knowing they had reserved a hotel room. Once, they could not wait for the hotel and made love on the carpet in front of the fireplace in his office, after hours, the building deserted save for Mrs Rackwell’s clanging broom and buckets echoing through the airy corridors of Number 11.

  It was not, however, to the office at Number 11, but rather to the London Library that Quentin went after his lunch with Enid Sherrill. The librarian at the desk nodded to him. As with The Gay Hussar, Quentin Castle was a well-known fixture here. In August, however, familiar faces were few; mostly foreign scholars peopled the tables. He saw that some unthinking foreigner had taken his favourite place. Never mind. He found a table with plenty of room, and unwrapped the parcel. Woodlands War Years. Turned the page. Yes, there it was:

  Dedicated to Michael Carson

  ami de mon coeur

  Quentin dug about in his pocket for his stomach pills and took two, gulping them down without water. Damn them, Michael and Sybil, damn Frank, damn all of them, all to hell, not only for what this bloody book would do to the future, but for plunging his immediate plans into darkness.

  Quentin and Claire were to leave tomorrow for Scotland. Ten days. A real holiday. Their first real holiday together, time untouched by any other obligations. Catherine and Mary were going with the family of school friends to Spain. Quentin’s people were at St Ives all summer. Claire and Quentin were free. He had not been to Scotland since his university days, the walking tour of the Hebrides, and Claire had never been. Her dog was kennelled, the Mini ready for the road, Claire’s new Leica fed with film, and Quentin’s new fishing rod in a handsome sheath. All in readiness. Only now, the Scottish holiday crashed and smashed like crockery breaking, glass shattering in the quiet confines of the London Library. The blue letters on the typescript seemed to blur before him: ami de mon coeur. The great Up Your Arse. And worse lay ahead in these pages. The phrase of some forgotten French poet battered at his skull like a bird trapped against a window-pane. Voleur du temps. The thief of time. ‘That’s what you are, Michael,’ he whispered, ‘the thief of time that Claire and I have together.’

  Michael – who had once so fiercely defended Claire – had done his best to pry her from Quentin, inflicting pain and anguish on his mother in any way he could. As a boy he had had rages and sworn, calling her whore and slut while everyone in the Polstead Road house kept their doors shut and their ears open. Once, when he was about twelve, he struck her. Quentin would never forgive him for that. By the time Michael was thirteen – with an uncanny instinct for that powdery rot in relationships that would characterize his adult life – he learned how to inflict abuse via another. Though he disparaged and made fun of Lady Sybil Dane behind her back, he invited her to everything associated with his school life – sports days, plays – and at these events she beamed and applauded, extolled, showered praise. She overshadowed his mother entirely. Lady Sybil invited them both (and any of Michael’s friends) to tea at the Randolph Hotel following these events. Having once accepted this invitation, Claire never went again; Michael and Sybil ganged up on her, flouted their affections. In these years Sybil Dane lavished on Michael presents, clothes, and holidays, summers on the Danes’ yacht, Christmas skiing in Switzerland, Nice at Easter. On the day her son finally moved out of her home, and into Woodlands, Claire knew she had failed in the first duty a parent has: to protect her child. She had refused to struggle for her son as she had struggled for her husband. Her guilt and sorrow were unrelenting; she mourned the loss of Michael as she had mourned the loss of Frank.

  Quentin could not forgive Michael for the pain he inflicted on his mother. For years fierce quarrels over Michael threatened to tear them apart: Claire weeping, Quentin resentful, knowing that however hot her anger, however deep the hurt, eventually she would excuse Michael’s cruelty – she always did – on account of his youth, or that he had lost his father, or that he didn’t know what he was doing. Quentin did not excuse him. Quentin, in fact, blamed him. Michael was the canker in the rose of their love. What had Enid said ten years ago? The boy detests you. A fundamental truth. The boy detests you. After Michael left his mother’s house and moved outright to Woodlands, Quentin took care not to express relief, gratitude that he was gone, took care not to disparage Michael. Quentin and the girls tried to put themselves between Claire and the pain Michael inflicted, and slowly, Quentin thought they were coming to some success.

  And now?

  He took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his thin nose. A bearded reader in an elaborate rose-coloured turban sat down across from him, nodded and opened his books. Quentin unwillingly turned to the first page of Woodlands War Years, and stared at the blurry blue carbon. He could not bear to turn to the second page. This memoir would certainly be published (though not by Selwyn and Archer. Of that, Quentin was quite certain, thank you!). But someone would bring it out. Oh yes, and everyone who ever spilled a drop of sherry at a literary cocktail party, or shared a snide confidence over lunch, would be reminded of the dismal failure of Hay Days, reminded of Frank’s tawdry death in the Garden of Allah swimming pool, reminded that Claire was An Inconvenient Wife to a man she could not give up. Claire would be asked to comment. Quentin would find himself both defending and battling the ghost of Francis Carson, the ghost he thought had finally been put to rest with the posthumous September Street. The last of Frank. Thank God. But, no, next year Sybil’s bloody book would come out. Ami de mon coeur. Voleur du temps. ‘You bastard,’ he snapped, forgetting his turbanned neighbour.

  Perhaps his own affair with Claire was somewhere in these pages. Neither Sybil nor Michael would have any reason to protect the lovers. Enid said the book would have to be edited for libel, but their affair was the truth. Well, what of it? There were days when Quentin himself longed to be done with the stupid fiction he had perpetrated for ten years, to smash Florence’s little snow-globe of a world. The profound guilt that had once so tormented him was but a bit of ash, the soot of emotions long since burnt up.

  His life with Florence seemed like a stage set where everyone knew their lines and repeated them daily, nightly, like a long-standing, dreary play, scarcely changing even when the family moved to a fine new home, five bedrooms, and a huge garden designed by Rosamund. The housekeeping was tended to by Martha (hired after Effie was caught stealing cigarettes), the garden tended by Rosamund’s gardener, the children (Bobby born in 1952) tended by a nanny. When they were older Eleanor and Bobby went to good schools, day students so they could be at home each evening. Family life. When Eleanor and Bobby required Quentin’s attention, he was attentive, and kind, though not especially demonstrative, following in Father’s footsteps there as well; Albert had never been an especially warm parent. Florence made up for any of his lapses, cooing, and gooing, as Quentin saw it, fussing to no end. But what of it? Bobby and Eleanor flourished just like the African violets on the windowsills and the aspidistras in their pots. Florence flourished. She had a new car and a new television, new kitchen appliances every few years. Her accounts at Harrods, Fortnum’s, Liberty and other establishments were paid without question. Florence and Quentin evolved a wordless pact. Each knew what was required, and lived up to it.

  In addition to his role as the proverbial Good Provider, Quentin was required to rise to certain kinds of occasions. When Florence required some physical manifestation of his affection, say once a month or so, and though they slept in twin beds, he obliged. When family occasions, like the Sunday l
unches (now held at their house), demanded his smiling presence he would be present and cordial. For gala occasions, like Rosamund’s sixtieth birthday party, he would be a genial host. Florence was granted immunity from his moods (which could be bleak) and in return on those nights when he came home late, his dinner was left in the warming oven, and his absence was never remarked upon. Occasionally he would be gone on weekends for business.

  Florence herself had no part and no interest in his business. As his star rose in his profession, her enquiries into his working life diminished, dwindled into the merely perfunctory. She considered his authors (except for Rosamund) raffish and unsuitable company, especially the colonials whose work he championed, and she was never asked to entertain or even to take them out to dinner. Her sole role in the Old Family Firm was the annual Christmas party. Then, like the lady of the manor, she dispensed little, specially chosen, brightly wrapped gifts to Miss Marr, the typists, the accountant, the new young agents, handed out the Christmas crackers, sliced the cake. In short – and save that her husband felt married to another woman – Florence’s life was fine and fulsome, and regulated as the tall clock in the front hall, a clock that tolled the hours.

  As those hours slipping into the past became days, months, years, new planets assumed new orbits, held in place by a bland but irresistible gravity that tethered Quentin in a soggy thrall to all of them, to the children, to Albert and Margaret and Fair Rosamund, to Florence, who grew more like her mother every day with her little Rosamund-like fits of pouting. Worse, Eleanor and Bobby, like precocious baby apes, repeated her awful euphemisms, emulated her voice, her peculiar whine to achieve their childish whims. It was unseemly, painful to watch his daughter and son growing into dimpled twits, but he hid his general disapproval since no one in the family seemed to care that he disapproved. Florence reigned at home, and Quentin was more or less the junior partner, disenfranchised by choice.

  Can you bear it, dear? Claire’s plaintive long-ago question rang in his heart as he stared at the blue pages before him now. He could bear it. His long-standing love for Claire permeated his heart, his very life. He sometimes smiled to think that as a young man he had not shown much promise or energy or aptitude, but in loving her, he had grown, deepened, risked much and thus become more than he could have ever imagined. He had been shaped by what he had dared to be, and whom he had dared to love. Though Quentin and Claire could not live together openly, they gave and received the plunging pleasures of satisfied lust, the nourishment of intimacy, deep emotional sustenance, unsullied trust, shared pleasures, secret places to touch, secret codes of affection, pet names; Quentin was Kanga to her Roo. Their love, which began in sexual intensity, grew into an abiding trust in one another. The marriage of true minds. When they were apart, they sustained each other with little love notes in the post, bits of juicy, lascivious teasing, or extravagant dreams and hungers, small jokes to make each other laugh. They seldom used the telephone, certainly never spoke of anything intimate on the telephone, alert always to the click if Miss Marr picked up. Can you bear it, dear?