by Carol Smith
“The Sound of Music’s on at ten to three. Can we watch it?”
“What, again? You must have seen it thirteen times already.”
“Oh, go on, Mum, you know you love it. Christopher Plummer with those eyes and the moment they get together in the garden . . .”
Beth smiled and returned to her paper. It certainly beat video nasties, that was for sure, and those interminable cartoons. And Imogen was right, she did fancy those stern, high-principled types rather than the sexually ambivalent morons so popular these days, with their earrings and shoulder-length hair and no hint of real cojones between the lot of them.
I may be old-fashioned, she reflected, but give me Clark Gable or Gary Cooper any day.
The main thing was, it was a holiday and they should spend it together.
The doorbell rang as Beth was upstairs, dressing.
“Get it,” she shouted. “It’ll be Sally.”
But it was Georgy, back unexpectedly early from New York, wearing a new suede jacket and clutching an armful of presents.
“What a surprise,” said Beth, kissing her and whisking the honey suede to safety beyond the hazards of the kitchen. Georgy placed a camellia in full flower, a bottle of Moët & Chandon, and a mammoth box of Belgian chocolates on the kitchen table and sank into a chair. That was typical of her New York largesse; she always overdid it, but Beth couldn’t stop her. She gave a sideways glance at the three place settings which Beth caught as she came back into the room.
“He’s not coming today,” she volunteered, pouring Marks & Spencer plonk into two glasses. “He’s gone to some antiques do in the West Country and won’t be back till Sunday. Why don’t you join us? It’s just us and Sally. The more the merrier.”
A truly wonderful aroma was issuing from the Aga; Georgy needed no further encouragement.
“What is it, Mum?” asked Imogen idly, chair tilted back against the stove, still flicking through the listings magazine.
“Lapin à la moutarde,” said Beth after a pause, knowing her daughter’s sensibility. “Rabbit to you.”
“Yuk!” said Imogen on cue, pulling a face, but Beth just laughed and plonked herself down next to Georgy.
“You can’t expect to live in the adult world,” she said, “without getting over your childish squeamishness. Rabbit is every bit as nice as chicken and you wouldn’t know the difference if I didn’t tell you. Now let’s hear about New York. How was the wedding?”
Georgy looked even thinner and her hair had been properly trimmed, which suited her. On one slender wrist she wore a new watch, gold with a chain bracelet lightly dusted with diamonds. She caught Beth looking at it.
“My father gave me this,” she said defensively, “as a sort of consolation prize, I suppose.”
She tried to make a joke of it but it didn’t work. Beth saw the pain etched into her eyes and longed to give her a hug, but all she did was simply refill their glasses. No point in treating Georgy like a child; she was twenty-six and deep down as tough as old boots.
“The wedding,” said Georgy as if she had forgotten. “Ah yes, The Wedding.”
An image arose before her of Myra, looking not a day over thirty-nine in a short, puff-skirted dress in primrose silk with pearls and an eye-length veil, and most nauseating of all, that awful old lech, Aaron Gottlieb from the temple, supporting her elbow with his liver-spotted hand and dancing attendance like a starstruck suitor. And Risa, sleek and serene now with her husband, her Henri Bendel suit, and the telltale thickening about her waist that kept her one up on her baby sister.
And Lois, the bride, still not much more than a kid, translucent in loose cream shantung with color-coordinated rosebuds woven into her long, dark hair. They were off to live in Israel once the groom had completed his internship. The cup of the Kirsch family was certainly running over in the happiness stakes.
Dad was there too, shadowed by Sylvia, snatching time from his endless jetting between capitals to give away another daughter; playing the genial host and father of the bride with a word and a shoulder squeeze for everyone, yet finding time for scarcely more than a few private words with his firstborn. The one he’d always called his Little Princess, who needed him most but could not find the words to tell him.
“It was okay. What can I tell you? I came back early because there wasn’t a lot to do once it was over and I’m really getting to hate that city. Yes, I am. It’s noisy and dirty and you can’t walk on the street anymore for fear of being knifed. This is where I belong now. This is my spiritual home.”
Her glance embraced the warm, untidy kitchen with its battered sofa and patchwork cushions and a ridiculous old stuffed rabbit of Imogen’s propped defiantly in the wickerwork log basket next to the stove. Beth watched her and understood. It was not this house specifically, it was London. From this kitchen there was a clear view through the rain-battered willows of the church across the road, from which worshipers were now pouring. The white wicket gate, immortalized by Richard Brooke, hung skewwhiff, a victim of the storm, but it was real and somehow solid and comforting. I’ll have to get that fixed, thought Beth idly, next time Gus or one of the others comes by.
It was odd how fate had seen fit to throw them randomly together—Georgy and Beth, Beth and Vivienne—apparent strangers yet with lives that already touched. Spooky, as Imogen would say, a case of synchronicity if ever there was one. Arthur Koestler would have been fascinated. She hadn’t particularly warmed to Georgy at first but she did recognize pain and need when she saw them and had enough love in her own life to be able to spread it around. Friends told her she was a soft touch, but where was the harm in that? All she had she’d achieved herself—home and career and her marvelous friendships—and what went around came around. That surely was what life was about.
“Also,” continued Georgy, lighting another fag, “I have this yoga spread to do for Living and I really need to get down to it.”
Yeah, yeah, thought Beth as the doorbell rang again. This time it really was Sally.
The last gust of hail had caught her, and her hair was bedraggled and her nose bright red, but she looked, as always, quite delicious, a ray of sunshine in a wet and windy world. She beamed as she unwound her long woolen scarf and unloaded into Beth’s arms a mass of daffodils and tulips, beaded with damp and looking slightly the worse for wear.
“I walked across the park,” she explained, removing her soggy felt beret and lobbing it into the log basket. “This was all I could get you. Happy Easter!”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“You mean . . . ?”
“I would have got you cherry blossom,” she went on serenely, “only I couldn’t quite reach it. The Household Cavalry were exercising there and I asked one of them if I could climb up on his horse but the sergeant was watching so he couldn’t oblige.”
Sally pulled off her dreadful boots, revealing mismatched socks with holes in them, and settled down comfortably to warm her toes at the stove. She chuckled and accepted a glass of wine from Beth.
“You stole them!” Georgy didn’t approve of Sally. A workaholic herself, she couldn’t abide skivers, and the irritating thing about Sally was that she appeared to waltz through life with the minimum of effort yet always landed on her feet. But Sally had Georgy’s number, had right from the first encounter.
“No,” she said. “I picked them for Beth. As an Easter present, to make her happy. Do you have a problem with that?”
“They’re there for everyone to enjoy. Not to be vandalized.”
“Well, no one’s in the park today apart from the Household Cavalry, and we’re enjoying them now, so where’s the harm? And by tomorrow they’ll probably be dead.”
“Won’t we all!”
Beth grinned. Sally was priceless and she loved her for it. After all these weeks Georgy still hadn’t learned not to tangle with her. It was a pity really. Georgy was too much up her own arse ever to appreciate Sally’s warmth and generosity of spirit. Sometimes she caught
Georgy watching her with bitterness and envy, yet Georgy had been given so much right from the start while Sally had nothing.
Beth topped up their glasses, then lifted the lid of the steaming casserole. “Imogen wants to watch that dreadful Julie Andrews film,” she said.
• • •
They lazed around all afternoon, drinking wine, swapping stories, generally hanging out together. The film was over, the dishes stacked, and Imogen had withdrawn upstairs to play with her Gameboy. They ought really to go for a walk but outside it was still pelting down, so they talked about the hospital which had brought them together, and enjoyed renewing the camaraderie of their shared ten days’ incarceration. One of the great things about any sort of institutionalization, thought Beth, is that it brings people down to the same level.
Which brought them naturally to Vivienne, but not in any detail since none of them really knew her and Beth was not about to spill the beans about her own extraordinary secret connection with the uptight woman. Sally found her posh and Georgy thought her snobbish. That just about summed her up, thought Beth.
“Do you ever see old Whojamaflip?” asked Sally.
“Who dat?” asked Beth.
“You know, the pale one, the one who works for the vet. She looked a bit like death warmed up even when she left. I wonder what happened to her.”
“Don’t know,” said Beth. “She’s not really my type but I agree she looked fairly grim. What was she in for, anyway?”
Sally thought.
“Something gynecological,” she ventured. “Something Down There.”
They all laughed, even Georgy.
“Twit, that was true of all of us.”
“Yeah, but we seem to have come out of it better than her. That’s all I meant. She looked pretty sick.”
“She lives with her mother,” announced Georgy meaningfully, “and, believe me, that’s often all it takes.”
“Maybe we should have a reunion.”
“You mean of the old lags?”
“Would we recognize each other with our clothes on?”
“And without our urine bags?”
“Should we include Polly?”
“And Mr. Harvey maybe? He of the grim mouth and come-to-bed eyes.”
“Sally!” they chorused. “You mean you fancied him?”
“Yeah, well, why not? He’s only human, isn’t he? And the things he must have seen in his job . . .”
They all screeched with laughter.
“Talk about coals to Newcastle!”
“Did you hear the one about the gynecologist looking in the petshop window . . .”
The telephone rang somewhere offstage. Beth took it in the bedroom. It was Oliver.
“Sweetie! What are you doing home? On Good Friday too?”
“I got back early, managed to get a cancellation. Any chance of dinner? Why don’t I pick you up at six-thirty and we’ll grab an early meal at Bibendum.”
Beth hesitated, hearing the laughter from below.
“Better not, I’ve got people here. Why don’t I meet you there at seven. But what are you going to say to your wife?”
“No problem. She thinks I’m still in Strasbourg. And what the heart doesn’t know . . .”
• • •
Later, lying in a steaming bath, Beth thought about Oliver and tried not to linger on the sad-eyed wife as she got herself ready for an evening of sin. Vivienne Nugent was not her problem; any cracks in the marriage had been there long before Oliver’s path crossed Beth’s. Beth was a stalwart believer in sisterhood and fiercely opposed to hurting another woman if it could be avoided, but this case was different and absolutely none of her business. She felt she was doing her bit for mankind by bringing some happiness into Oliver’s sterile life.
She giggled to herself and sank under the suds. Well, that was her story and she was sticking to it.
Chapter Sixteen
At least there was no visible scar, for that much she could be thankful. Vivienne lay on her back on the pine slats of the sauna and squinted along her flat stomach toward her neat, pedicured feet with their vermilion-tipped toes. Not that Oliver ever looked at her these days, certainly not without clothes on. They were like two strangers sharing a hotel suite, obliged to acknowledge the other’s presence only when they happened to pass in a doorway. So much for Happy Ever Afters and the fairy-tale marriage. Even today, Good Friday, he was off somewhere in Europe, mindless of the long weekend and the fact that this was supposed to be a family occasion. Perhaps if they’d had a family, things would be different, but somehow she doubted it, and that was a train of thought she no longer cared to follow.
The sweat was running down her well-toned body, so Vivienne gave it another couple of minutes then ducked under a freezing shower and rubbed herself down. Considering all she had been through in the past few months, she did look good, she had to admit it. Small, neat breasts, narrow hips, trim legs, and smooth ivory skin—Vivienne did not believe in fake tans, found them aging. She toweled off her hair in front of the full-length mirror and took careful stock of herself. As good now, in some ways, as she had been the day she married. Greater poise, better carriage, a flatter stomach, and sleeker thighs. She had Mr. Armenian’s friend with the magic scalpel to thank for that. Yet where had it all gotten her? she might well ask.
Home alone at Easter, with only the cats for company and a frozen dinner waiting in the fridge ready to be popped into the microwave. Even Dorabella had more social life than she did, plus a noisy, overpowering set of relatives who ran through Vivienne’s kitchen quarters like a creeping weed, threatening her composure with their life and laughter.
She slipped into leggings and a T-shirt and did her daily stint on the exercise bike, grunting with exertion yet determined to complete the full fifteen minutes before she quit. Andy, her trainer, would be back on Tuesday, and she’d hate him to think she had been slacking and was not following to the letter the rigorous exercise program he had created for her. Vivienne was not a quitter, it was simply not part of her nature.
Though where on earth it was all leading, she really didn’t know. Andy had firm brown skin and thighs like a footballer’s under the sleek Lycra of his exercise suit. Lying in the sauna thinking about him always made her randy, though she knew it was ridiculous. He must be all of twenty-four yet Vivienne was ashamed to admit she lusted after him, even found his image invading her dreams. What wouldn’t she give at this moment to have him here, to smell his sweat and feel those firm thighs clamped about her own, pounding and hurting, giving her what she so much missed? A shiver of anticipation ran right through her and she felt the familiar ache in the pit of her stomach. Well, that proved one thing, blessing or not; she had certainly not lost her libido. All she needed, to be back on the tracks again, was the love of a good man. The sad irony was that she had married the only man she had ever really wanted, and where had it gotten her?
Back in the bedroom Vivienne wandered around disconsolately, fiddling with things on her dressing table, watching the unseasonal hail drive past the casement windows. The master bedroom of this opulent house came equipped with twin dressing rooms and separate bathrooms, so Vivienne had plenty of room to play. Her own dressing room was fitted with wall-to-wall walk-in closets packed with clothes and fashion accessories, while the bathroom cabinets held enough cosmetics to last her a lifetime and make redundant her basic compulsion to shop. The bedroom held a television, a video, and a Bang & Olufsen sound system, as well as a small fridge next to the bed stocked with chocolate pecan ice cream, one of Vivienne’s occasional cravings, and Evian in case either of them felt thirsty in the night. Vivienne and Oliver had every conceivable luxury in this fun palace they had created. It lacked only the one thing she most craved: intimacy.
She wandered into Oliver’s dressing room and riffled through his ranks of Savile Row suits. Oliver was tidy by nature and this private domain would have made any army batman proud. Color-coordinated shirts and ties were neatly filed
alongside the suits, and his handmade shoes were lined up beneath them, each on a pair of shoe trees to keep them in shape. What a dandy he was, this husband of hers, as fastidious and vain in his private way as she was in hers. They had so much in common, so much they could have shared, yet these days she felt she hardly knew him at all.
What was he doing, for instance, in Strasbourg on bank business when he should have been home with his wife on a day both Church and State had long decreed a holiday? Were his colleagues as conscientious? she wondered. What about the ones with children, surely they were not expected to put bank business first? Why was it always Oliver who volunteered to carry the company flag as if he had nothing of his own worth staying home for? Well, maybe that was it.
They hadn’t planned not to have children, it had simply happened that way. When they first got married they were so much in love that all they wanted was to be together—alone. Their first home was a sweet little mews house in Chelsea, all bottle-glass windows and hanging flower baskets and scarcely room for anything but the two of them. Which suited them just fine since they were tired of the social scene and wanted to play at house without having to include the world as spectators. They ate in restaurants, they partied a little, they did the social things like Ascot and Glyndebourne, but mainly they stayed at home in bed and made love as though it were going out of fashion.
Oliver was ten years older than Vivienne and had been around quite a bit, but he had never loved anyone as much as he loved her, and he couldn’t get enough of her. Each morning he tore himself from her side to drive to his office in the City, then raced back as soon as he could to leap back into her bed. He was totally besotted and a baby would have been an intruder. Besides, there was heaps of time. Starting a family meant settling down, and the Nugents were still far too frivolous for that.