‘Fine, but I do. Come and keep me company.’
She strode alongside me to Roots, and waited at a table, eyes staring, hands thrust into her hair, as I collected coffee and three rounds of bean salad on brown – I was properly sceptical of her pronouncement about food. On the same basis I got the extra large coffee: I knew if I got her a cup of her own she’d push it disdainfully aside, but if I had a large one in front of me she’d help herself quite freely in the belief that this somehow didn’t count.
She said nothing till I’d got my teeth into the first large, well-earned chunk, and then announced, staring at my plate: ‘Well, he’s gone.’
I chewed frantically, eyes watering, trying to clear my mouth enough to respond, but she was too glum to need me.
‘Yesterday afternoon. He had a go at a speech. He said he wasn’t good enough for me, which struck me as quite sweet until round about three this morning when I realised he meant the opposite.’
I swallowed at last. ‘He may have meant the opposite,’ I said stoutly, ‘but he spoke the plain truth.’
‘Hm.’ She picked up a sandwich and took a huge, absent-minded bite.
‘I am so sorry, Helen. It’s hellish for you. But at least you were expecting it.’
‘Oh I was, I was … I’m very fortunate really.…’
There was no escaping the sarcasm, or the fact that she had a point. ‘So what else did he say?’
She steepled her hands, musing. ‘Umm … He said he couldn’t go on using me like this. He couldn’t leave his wife and children – not that I ever asked him to – and that I deserved better. Then we had sex. Then came the not-good-enough-for-me bit.’
I was shocked. ‘You went to bed with him?’
‘Why not? It won’t be happening again.’
‘It just seems so – I don’t know …’ She continued to dispose of the sandwich without signs of relish. ‘He got what he wanted even then.’
‘Mm – I wanted it too.’
‘You must be devastated.’
She dusted her palms. ‘I feel numb.’
‘You’ll probably hit an awful downer. Do you want to come and stay?’ I heard myself extend this invitation with a sort of horrified detachment. What was I saying? But in her case I was completely safe.
‘Out of the question. I make an apalling guest at the best of times, of which this is not one.’
I gave the plate a nudge and she took another sandwich. ‘Will you be all right?’
‘I doubt it, but neither shall I be sticking my head in the oven.’
She ate, and I drank some coffee. ‘Do you know what I honestly dread the most?’
‘What?’
‘The boredom. I’ve had ecstasy – what the devil do I do now?’ As she polished off my lunch, I realised I had no answer. The jet ring had a big job to do.
That night I slept the sleep of the utterly shattered. There were no messages, no calls, and no storms. When I woke up it was to soggy, still weather. A passenger ship in the bay was like a painted ship upon a painted ocean. All the roses were finally dead and I had to collect them up in swathes of newspaper and take them down to the outside bin. I decided that tomorrow, rather than stay at Ian’s, I’d book into a hotel. This would at least give me the opportunity of calling Charles again, maybe even of seeing him. I warned the people at work that I might be late in on Thursday and tried not to catch Jo’s quizzical eye.
During the day I had to go and visit a nice young couple who wanted to flog some hideous inherited Jacobean furniture. They obviously felt rather guilty about it, and I tried to reassure them.
‘It seems awful I know,’ the girl said when I’d presented them with the preliminary quote, ‘ but we desperately need the cash.’
‘That’s not awful,’ I told her. ‘After all you didn’t go out and choose these pieces, they just came your way. Whoever buys them will buy them because they’re exactly to their taste.’ This analysis ignored the probability of the pieces being acquired by a dealer, but it seemed to cheer them up.
My meeting with them brought Mrs Rymer to mind and after work I drove out to Whitegates to see her. At only six-fifteen the residents were still having supper, but I waited in something called the music room, and at six-thirty a nurse accompanied her in and asked if we’d like coffee.
‘My friend from the real world would probably prefer a drink,’ said Mrs Rymer. ‘What would you like? They have most things.’
I asked for white wine and the nurse brought something sweetish, but well chilled, along with a small cafetière and two cups.
‘I hope you don’t mind my turning up like this,’ I said, ‘without letting you know.’
She closed her eyes. ‘My dear, you have no idea … Anything, but anything, unscheduled is like manna from heaven to we inmates. Is that all right?’
‘It’s fine. Hitting the spot.’
‘Have you come straight from your work? You know I was astonished at the size of the cheque.’
‘Good. Yes, all your things did very well.’
‘And did they go to good homes, do you know?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t.’ I recalled my conversation with the young couple, but I knew she wouldn’t be so easily fobbed off. ‘Some of them will have been bought by dealers.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘To make their way in the world. And how are you?’ I must have hesitated fractionally, for she added: ‘Did you resolve your dilemma?’
This simple question, which had so dominated our last meeting, made me realise how much had happened in a short time. I had to collect my thoughts before answering, and she prompted me again: ‘Your gentleman friend?’
‘Yes – he’s fine. I got in touch with him and we’ve seen each other a couple of times since then.’
Mrs Rymer’s eyes were on my face. ‘And would it be indelicate to ask if the friendship is likely to blossom as the rose?’
Her choice of words must have been completely fortuitous, but it was uncanny how in tune she was – she had all her buttons on and no mistake.
‘I think it might. It’s hard to say.’
‘But you would like it to.’
‘Yes.’ I admitted. ‘Yes, I would.’
‘Well, cheers!’ She raised her coffee cup and held it towards my glass. ‘ Good luck to you. You don’t know how I envy you.’
We clinked. A little wary of opening myself up further, I asked how her family were.
‘They’re avoiding me,’ she replied.
‘Oh – surely not.’
‘Don’t misunderstand me. They come here, separately and severally, they take me out, they ring me up, they’re models of devotion, I cannot fault them. But—’ She took a sip of her coffee, making me wait, trouper that she was, for the punchline. ‘ But they don’t want to hear what I might have to say.’
I didn’t prompt her, because it was clear she was in the mood for bean-spilling.
‘They’re having a rocky time – my son and daughter-in-law,’ she said, ‘they think I don’t know because I’m in here out of harm’s way. What they fail to take into account is that when a person is cooped up they learn to extract every ounce of value from visits. And because I’m in the same place all the time I see them under laboratory conditions – I’ve always been observant, and now I notice every little shade and nuance, every alteration no matter how minute – and in the case of my son and daughter-in-law the changes are glaringly obvious.’
I said cautiously: ‘Long-term marriage is a hard row to hoe these days.’
She shot me a bright, caustic look. ‘Any marriage to my son would be.’
‘Oh, really?’ Not for the first time I was taken aback by her alarming candour. ‘So, what, he …?’
‘He has other women. It’s nothing new, he’s an old-fashioned philanderer. Or a newfangled one if you prefer. He’s been at it since a few months after they married.’
‘How do you know?’
She put her cup down slowly and deliberately. ‘I k
now. One does. His father was exactly the same.’
‘That must have been very hard for you.’
‘Not really. But it is hard for my daughter-in-law. She doesn’t have the temperament for it.’
‘I wonder who does?’
‘A woman in that position has three choices, I think,’ she said.
‘She can leave. She can stay and do likewise. Or she can turn a blind eye.’
‘And which do you recommend?’
‘Any one, so long as she can hang on to her amour propre – that really is the main thing, don’t you agree, to be able to hold one’s head up and enjoy one’s life. What else is there after all? I’m of no fixed religion, but I simply can’t believe there’s a place in heaven for martyrs to marriage. It would be like an eternal dentist’s waiting room, the most soulless and depressing place imaginable.’
I wanted to laugh, but there was a spectre at the feast. ‘ What about your daughter-in-law? What’s she chosen?’
‘I suppose you’d say she’s turning a blind eye, but it’s nearly killing her. All she ever wanted was to preside over hearth and home and enjoy the security that went with it. Now she’s effectively being left on her own and she’s finding more and more things to do. I worry that she’ll go into a flat spin and disappear altogether, poor Jane.’
She couldn’t keep the note of impatience out of her voice. I felt a pang of empathy with her – nothing was less comfortable than divided loyalties.
‘It must be very awkward for you.’
She shrugged. ‘Not really. It’s they who have to live with it. But that doesn’t mean I have to. I don’t intend to drop off the perch this year, or even next, but even the most optimistic prognosis wouldn’t give me more than another five. And the great thing about being on the home straight is that there’s no possible advantage in remaining silent. Any day now I shall give him what for, and I shall tell her to pull herself together.’ She suddenly smiled broadly. ‘And they’ll both take offence – who knows? It may bind them together in adversity.’
I stayed another twenty minutes or so, during which we talked about books we were reading and programmes we’d watched on television – she was a sports fanatic and Whitegates had Sky, so she was able to bring me up to date on the more far-flung tennis and golf tournaments.
When I got up to go, there was still something I was dying to know.
‘I hope you don’t mind my asking – but what did you do?’
‘About the philandering? We parted company.’
I frowned. ‘But I thought you said that you and your husband—’
‘No, no …’ She struggled to her feet, chuckling, and took my arm. ‘No, no, my husband wasn’t Julian’s father. Gerhardt was.’
Chapter Seventeen
I was still turning over these contradictory impressions in my mind as I travelled up to London on the train the following evening. There was something both invigorating and daunting about Mrs Rymer’s pragmatism, with the emphasis placed so firmly on individual responsibility. In spite of her age, hers was a surprisingly contemporary creed, which set less store by doing the right thing than by doing oneself justice. And yet I sensed in her a strong, idiosyncratic morality, and didn’t envy the hapless Julian when she decided to say her piece.
I arrived at Ian’s flat at seven-thirty, and Ben answered the door. He looked dreadfully thin and his hair, so often the barometer not just of fashion but of his state of mind, was cut penitentially short.
‘Mum.’
My fierce, high-minded speech died in my throat. ‘Hello darling.’
We kissed warily. From some point off, Ian called: ‘ Come on in and grab a drink, I’m at a ticklish stage!’
‘What can he be doing?’ I asked.
‘Cooking supper. What would you like?’
‘White wine would be lovely.’
The bottle stood ready opened on the table, along with Evian water, two cans of Pils and assorted glasses. Chrysanths were in a glass vase, piano music sounded softly from the CD player. The whole thing reeked of careful stage management, but I couldn’t blame them for that. On the contrary, they – or more particularly Ian – had been at pains to create an environment in which it would seem churlish to behave badly.
Ben handed me my drink and poured himself an orange juice with water. I didn’t comment on this abstemiousness. Ian came in from the kitchen. He was wearing a dark blue shirt similar to the one from Bath – maybe they’d bought them both at the same time.
‘I hope you’re hungry,’ he said, kissing my cheek, ‘because I’ve done fish pie.’
‘It smells good.’
‘Your recipe, Mum,’ said Ben. ‘Well, it’s fairly bombproof.’
Ian poured himself a drink. ‘It may well be, but I’ve got veg to synchronise so I’ll leave you to it for a few minutes.’
He withdrew tactfully. Ben sat down. I studied a painting on the wall. The trouble was that deprived of my righteous anger I had nowhere to go.
‘How are you?’ I asked.
‘Pretty shattered. I don’t seem to be able to sleep. I go out like a light when I get into bed and then two hours later I’m staring at the ceiling.’
‘That’s awful. The best thing is not to fight it. Force yourself to stay up late. If you do wake up turn the light on and read, or watch TV.…’
‘Yes, I know.’ He’d obviously been told this a hundred times. ‘I’ll give it a go.’
I bit the bullet. ‘You went to stay with Sophie?’
‘For a couple of days. We were never anything but mates, you know, although no one would believe it.’
He lit a cigarette. I twiddled my glass. We were skirting round the big one.
‘How much does she know?’
‘All of it.’
‘God …’ I put my hand to my eyes. The bad feelings stirred inside me. I could almost taste them in my mouth. ‘ What must she think?’
He didn’t reply. When I looked at him he was gazing at the carpet between his knees, but one heel was jiggling restlessly.
‘What does she say about it?’
‘She realises it’s a bugger.’ He rubbed his face impatiently. ‘ Look, can we not discuss this in terms of bringing shame and disgrace on the family name and what the neighbours will say?’
‘I wasn’t doing that!’
‘You may not have said it but it’s there, Mum, in your whole attitude.’
I smarted in silence. Ian came to the door. ‘Not long now, everyone OK?’ Neither of us replied so he had the good sense to retire.
Ben said: ‘If I actually tell you what happened, will you listen?’
‘Yes.’
‘And will you believe me?’
‘Of course!’
‘You’ll let me finish, yeah? And not keep telling me how it looks to you, or how it’s going to look to everyone else?’
‘All right.’
He began to crumble the blackened dead matches in the ashtray. ‘You do realise you’ve never once asked me to tell you about it.’
‘I thought I did little else! You walked out on me, remember?’
‘No you didn’t!’ His face got whiter the more heated he became. ‘I walked out because all you wanted me to do was eat shit.’
‘Ben—!’
‘It’s true. You just stood there sounding off about how it was the end of the world and the worst thing that had ever happened – you were so bloody sorry for yourself!’
The fact that this was true didn’t help. I was incensed.
‘And you weren’t prepared even for a single second to admit you’d done anything wrong. And you’re still not!’
Ian entered, carrying the fish pie.
‘Someone fetch the beans …?’ he said.
Supper was awful. Not the food – as Ian pointed out, he was perfectly capable of following a recipe, and the rest was common sense – but the atmosphere. Bizarrely, we steered clear of the most pressing topic while we ate. Ian, sitting behind the fish pie, tried t
o keep the ball of conversation in the air. Almost single-handed he covered the final Test (he’d found a taker for Ben’s ticket), news from Mel, what we might do at Christmas and whether global warming would turn Littelsea into San Tropez. It took a lot to put me off my food but tonight I couldn’t do much more than push it around. Ben did a little better, but as one who was used to watching him eat I could tell it might as well have been gall and wormwood.
Thank goodness Ian had been to no further trouble. It was cheese and biscuits and fruit for afters. I declined, he said he’d have some in a minute and Ben went to fetch another cigarette and sat on the edge of the sofa with his head hanging.
Ian avoided my eye. Neutrality, it seemed, was to be his watchword. Which was fine, commendable even, so why did it get on my nerves so badly? I decided that it was because he seemed to have placed himself in the position of arbiter and referee instead of full participant.
Chiefly because I couldn’t stand the thought of him bringing his chairpersonly skills to bear on our exchanges I opened the batting with Ben before his father returned from the kitchen.
‘All right, I’m asking you now. I’m listening. Please tell me the whole story.’
‘It’s not that long. Couple of months? Nothing happened till after that party when I met Sofe. We just got on so well, and she’s so bright – I can’t think of a girl I ever liked that much. We liked being with each other. And suddenly her parents – well, Martin, and Sabine, seemed like regular people. You know I always had him down for a fat cat and her for an airhead, but with Sophie there they seemed all right. They were funny, their door was always open, they really seemed pleased that we were friends.’
At this point, the minutes would have shown, Ian joined us with the coffee.
‘I didn’t always know when Sofe would be back, so I was quite often there with Sabine. We talked. And she’s no airhead – well, you know that. She’s really sharp and witty. Plus, she’s beautiful. What can I say? She looks great, she smells wicked … she has that walk. I began to fancy her so much it hurt. I used to get a stiffy just walking up to the house.’
Here Ian gave a small cough as he handed me my cup.
That Was Then Page 28