A Gift of Poison

by A Gift of Poison (retail) (epub)

  But mostly she thinks of Felix. Only a month now till they meet again. Till she can see him, talk to him, touch him.

  * * *

  ‘But I’m your greatest fan,’ says the girl on the beach. ‘Honestly. I’ve read all your books. Gosh, fancy meeting you here. Wait till I tell my friend. She’ll be ever so excited.’ She does tell her friend and she is as excited as anyone could wish. They both look so sweet and young and inviting in their bikinis. They remind him of oysters in ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’.

  ‘I do wish you hadn’t killed him off, your detective,’ the friend says. ‘Poor old Tony Blythe. I really liked him.’

  ‘Well, I suppose there’s always a faint chance he might recover from that terrible blow on the head. But I think you’ll like the man in my new book even better. He has a wonderful love affair with a beautiful young girl.’

  They look at each other and giggle. By the end of the week he has had a very good time with both of them and he is ready to move on. Fortunately they are not staying in his hotel.

  * * *

  She settles into a pattern with David, meeting twice a week for dinner or lunch, a concert or a theatre. Afterwards they go to bed and he massages her neck and shoulders, back and arms and legs, until she is relaxed and he is excited. By tacit consent they seem to have abandoned any other sort of stimulation, which she finds a great relief. Massage becomes their standard form of foreplay. Then he enters her. She does not know how else to think of it. It is not mutual enough for love-making, not active enough for fucking. It is a curious hybrid activity, a formal acknowledgement that they are having an affair. There is a lot of hugging and kissing. David always comes and she never does. There are no reproaches or complaints or apologies. They don’t talk about their arrangement. There is something peaceful and novel about her extreme passivity. It is like being comforted. She thinks that all she has to do is lie back and enjoy it, as the saying goes. She lets her mind drift away. It is rather like being on a sunbed: a lot of drowsy warmth in a confined space but no actual sensation. Nothing is expected of her but acquiescence.

  And sometimes not even that. Sometimes they just sit and talk, about books, music, marriage. She thinks she likes those evenings best of all. She even begins to wonder if David is perhaps not very keen on sex and has merely been going through the motions to be polite. Or has she put him off by being so clearly in love with Felix? She wonders but she doesn’t ask. It is a relief to have all this calm dating, proving beyond question over and over again that technically she is capable of infidelity and emotionally she is not. She is having her cake and eating it. They never quarrel. She watches the time pass. Every moment brings her closer to Felix.

  * * *

  ‘Well, the flat looks just the same,’ says Linda. ‘Time you got a new bed though, this one gives me backache. What a nice surprise, Felix. Why didn’t you ring me before?’

  Why indeed? She is looking splendid: younger and blonder and thinner than she used to be, and so cheerful. He does like cheerful women. ‘You dropped me, don’t you remember? You said you were in love. I was leaving a decent interval, you know how tactful I am. What happened?’

  ‘Oh well, it all ended in tears as usual. Still, at least my husband didn’t find out, thank God. How’s Elizabeth?’

  ‘Fine. We’re just back from Tenerife.’

  ‘Yes, I thought you looked very brown. Oh Felix, it is nice to see you again after all this time. We always had such fun, didn’t we, and you never caused me any grief.’

  * * *

  ‘Lizzie?’

  It is nearly the end of March and she had been wondering who would contact the other first. David has helped her pass the long dark cold winter pleasantly enough, but there has never been a more delicious spring. Every new shoot she notices seems to symbolise a fresh start, a second chance of happiness. There was never a better time for reconciliation, she thinks. All her pain and suffering seem to belong to last year, a lifetime away.

  His voice is so magical to her that she can hardly speak: her lips are totally occupied by her smile.

  ‘Hullo,’ she says eventually. It is all she can do not to add, my darling, my love.

  ‘Well,’ he says, and she can hear him smiling too, ‘so how are you?’

  ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’m fine. How are you?’

  ‘All right, I suppose,’ he says. ‘Surviving, just about. I’ve missed you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I’ve missed you too.’

  The hugeness of the understatement quite takes away her breath.

  ‘Well,’ he says again, ‘am I allowed to come home now?’

  She detects anger in his voice, coated with charm, like the pill in the spoonful of jam her mother used to give her when she was a child. She wants to say, ‘Oh yes, please come, come now, this minute,’ but she knows she must be cool, must negotiate, or the three months she has endured will be all for nothing.

  ‘Why don’t we meet and talk about it?’ she says, shocked by her own daring.

  There is a pause.

  ‘All right,’ he says. ‘Let’s have dinner at our favourite place. Eight o’clock next Wednesday suit you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘That’s fine.’ She wishes it were sooner.

  ‘It’s April the first,’ he says. ‘That seems appropriate, don’t you think?’

  * * *

  Now she has to break it to David. What does she want to do about David? She doesn’t know. What will he want to do about her?

  ‘I’m going to see Felix next week,’ she says when they meet again.

  ‘Yes, I thought it was about time,’ he says. ‘So you’re taking him back.’ He sounds calm but angry.

  ‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ she says, ‘but the three months are up so we’re going to have dinner, talk things over. That was always the arrangement.’

  ‘And then you’ll take him back.’

  She hesitates. ‘Well, anything’s possible. He may not want to come. Or when I see him I may not want him back.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ he says, laughing nastily, ‘you’ve been planning to have him back since before you sent him away. You just haven’t had enough pain, have you?’

  ‘But it may not be painful. He may have changed. We may both have changed.’

  ‘People like him never change,’ he says bitterly.

  His sarcastic tone annoys her, but she feels she must be careful not to upset him. She may still need him and she is not used to dealing with mood swings. Felix has never been moody so she has not had much practice.

  She says, ‘Well, I don’t know yet, but whatever happens I hope we can still be friends.’

  He turns to her with the dark intense look that always frightens her just a little. ‘Friends or lovers,’ he says. ‘We can be anything you like. I don’t give up easily.’ He strokes the inside of her wrist. ‘Just think of me as a get-out-of-jail-free card. It might be useful to have me up your sleeve when you start bargaining. You are going to bargain, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.’ But it sounds like a lie. She can already feel the touch of Felix’s body.

  ‘If you don’t bargain you’ll go right back to square one,’ he says. ‘Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds.’

  ‘You’re being very understanding,’ she says, feeling awkward.

  ‘We all use each other,’ he says, ‘but that’s all right. I don’t mind. That’s what people do. I don’t want to let you go. I love you, Elizabeth. Perhaps if I’m patient you’ll realise I can make you happier than Felix can.’

  * * *

  ‘He’s being so nice to me,’ Inge says to Michael. ‘So kind. He does everything in the house. He waits on me. He cooks all my favourite things. Nothing is too much trouble. He even puts his arm round me at night.’

  Then she starts to cry and sits weeping in her chair for several minutes, feeling the tears and the marriage flowing from her like another miscarried child.
/>   ‘What’s that about?’ he says gently when she has nearly finished.

  ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘He really wants to leave. There’s no way I can keep him now.’

  ‘D’you want to keep him?’

  She is so surprised. She looks at him in amazement, quite shaken out of her tears. It’s such a shock to hear it spoken, but it matches with a feeling inside her, like something clicking almost silently into place.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve always thought… it’s been twenty years, Michael.’

  ‘I know. It’s a long time. How d’you feel about him right now?’

  She thinks about it, testing her sore places. The part of her that always leapt up bright and strong for Richard no matter what he had done or failed to do doesn’t respond. It’s like stirring a dead fire or an empty pot, phoning an uninhabited house.

  ‘I don’t know. I think… I feel different. I think he’s killed something. I never thought I could feel anything different. But I do. He really wanted my little girl to die. And now I’m waiting for him to leave me. I’m sitting in the ruins waiting for him to drop the bomb on me.’

  ‘It must have been rather like that in Hamburg when you were a baby. Only of course you won’t remember.’

  ‘I feel so helpless,’ she says.

  ‘What could you do to feel less helpless?’

  * * *

  In March Jordan invites her to his new place for the first time. It’s a flat in a converted warehouse and the wall that overlooks the river is entirely glass. The bedroom, bathroom and kitchen are quite small but the living-room is vast and so is the studio. She’s very impressed, even envious.

  ‘Bit flash, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘I always wanted a place like this, even in the old days, back in Penarth. I was never very subtle. Well, my work isn’t very subtle, is it?’

  ‘I stand on the Fifth Amendment,’ she says, and they both laugh.

  ‘Next time my lot come to stay,’ he says, pouring her a drink in the living-room while she admires the view, ‘they’ll have to doss down in here. No more renting houses with bedrooms. None of that pampered rubbish. They’ll have to bring sleeping bags and pretend it’s fun.’

  ‘Well, there’s plenty of room for five in here,’ she says. ‘And you’ve got three sofas. You could have girls on the sofas and boys on the floor. Or am I being sexist?’

  ‘Ah, but they bring all their hangers on,’ he says. ‘Ben’s living with another doctor, so he brings her, and Tilly brings her husband and two kids.’

  ‘My God,’ she says, ‘you’re a grandfather.’

  ‘Don’t I look it? Mara and Susie come alone but Jake usually brings a girlfriend, a different one each time.’

  ‘So he’s a chip off the old block,’ she can’t resist saying. ‘How is Mara these days?’ She never met any of them but she always felt a special interest in Mara because she was the same age as Sally.

  ‘Making wonderful sculptures of glass and wire. I think she’s really original but nobody’s buying her work. She won’t let me help her with money so I bequeathed her my studio when I left.’

  ‘That’s quite a bequest,’ she says.

  ‘Well, she deserves it. And what else am I going to do with it? God knows what she lives on. She’ll probably have to get a job.’

  ‘Maybe she can teach,’ Helen says. ‘I don’t mind teaching.’

  ‘God, I hated it. I was useless. I seemed to spend all my time getting drunk with the students. And Mara’s very like me, she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing until she does it.’

  They go into the studio and she is amazed at the degree of chaos he has managed to achieve in a few weeks’ occupation. It’s particularly remarkable compared to the stark orderliness of the flat. Or perhaps she’s just forgotten how untidy he is.

  ‘Not very homely yet, is it?’ he says. ‘It’s too new. It’ll be better when I’ve spilt a bit more paint on the floor.’

  ‘It’s quite a space,’ she says covetously.

  ‘Yes, that was the idea. I want to do more large-scale stuff. Be ironic, won’t it, if I can’t work here after all? Maybe it’s too much of a challenge and I’ll end up renting a place in Battersea again.’

  ‘Well, that would be convenient,’ she says boldly. ‘It’s a long drive out here.’ She thinks the work in progress shows the same signs of strain Magdalen noted in the last paintings at his retrospective. She doesn’t say anything. What could she say? And he may already know, or she may be wrong. Either way, it wouldn’t help. The space is dominated by the series of portraits of Hannah: they are small and intimate, like the one at the show, but there are dozens of them. Standing in the studio is to be surrounded by charcoal drawings of someone in all the final stages of painful slow emaciating death.

  ‘I’ve been told all this is pretty morbid,’ he says, and she wonders by whom.

  ‘Why not be morbid?’ she says. ‘Maybe you feel morbid.’

  ‘Anyway, I find it comforting.’

  He doesn’t invite her to stay that night. Maybe it’s too soon or maybe it’s the talk of Hannah. He cooks spaghetti for her and after supper he says, ‘I think I’d rather be alone tonight. I might even work. D’you mind?’

  She minds desperately but she understands. ‘Of course not,’ she says. ‘Just give me a hug and I’ll go.’

  ‘Oh, not yet,’ he says. ‘Later. But I’ll hug you now anyway.’

  ‘Oh good,’ she says, ‘an extra hug.’

  ‘One more for luck,’ he says.

  * * *

  The weeks pass. Richard goes on being nice to her. She goes on talking to Michael. She doesn’t do anything as deliberate as planning it, but she can feel herself inching towards a decision by some devious route, as if snaking round to surprise herself. Or she feels she is in training, like an athlete building up her muscles for a great event. For the first time in her life she is going to have some control over what happens. It’s a big change and it feels very odd.

  One evening like any other when she is washing up and Richard is drying and they are alone in the house, she suddenly says to him, ‘Richard, I don’t want to wait any more, I think we should separate now.’

  She doesn’t even feel brave when she hears her own words; she seems to have gone beyond mere bravery and she is very calm and clear. She can’t look at him, though, so she stares at the plate in her hands while she sees out of the corner of her eye that the tea-towel has stopped moving. She thinks she will always see the pattern on the plate differently after this.

  He says, ‘What d’you mean?’ and his voice sounds tight in his throat.

  ‘Maybe you were going to say it tomorrow or next week, I don’t know, but it’s better for me to say it first. I need to do that, I think. It’s dead, Richard, isn’t it? Our marriage is just as dead as my little girl. It’s really finished this time.’

  Then she does manage to turn and look at him and she sees relief in his face as well as guilt. Infinite relief. It’s the face of a man who has been reprieved and she thinks, At last I’ve been able to give him something he wants.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘I really am. I did try my best but it wasn’t good enough.’

  ‘If you have to try as hard as that,’ she says, ‘maybe you shouldn’t be trying at all. I’ve tried my best too but it doesn’t work. We shouldn’t have to try so hard, it’s all wrong. I don’t want to live on crumbs any more.’

  As she talks she is surprised to feel not only pain but a curious sensation of lightness and freedom creeping over her, as if she is shedding a heavy load.

  ‘I used to think anything was better than not having you, but I don’t any more. You don’t want me, you want to go back to her. Well, go, please go. You’re going to go anyway, I’d rather send you, I don’t want to wait. I’ve been offering you so much more than you want and you let me do it. But you couldn’t give me enough in return, could you? It’s not worth it any more, Richard, let’s stop it now, please, before we hate each ot
her, before we do the boys any more harm.’

  * * *

  ‘All those years,’ she says to Michael. ‘Ten years together and ten years apart. All that time. Two children. Two miscarriages. All that love and waiting and hoping and deception and therapy and hard work. I can’t believe it’s all over but it is. It’s gone.’

  ‘How do you feel about it now?’

  ‘Sad. Empty. Very tired. Sort of… disbelieving, more than anything, I think. It’s half my life and it’s all gone. It’s such a big thing. I don’t know what it’s like.’ She stops to think. ‘It’s like a landslide. It’s like having an earthquake in the back garden.’ She shakes her head in disbelief.

  ‘When you’ve taken all the time you need for grieving, you might like to think how much energy you’ll have released for other things. Work, friends, lovers. Or just for yourself. You can have a whole new life if you want to. All the energy you put into the marriage could be just for you.’

  ‘I’m exhausted,’ she says. ‘I can’t think about that now.’

  ‘Then don’t. But you could put it on your list for later on.’

  ‘We tried so hard,’ she says. ‘And we couldn’t make it work.’

  ‘Maybe you couldn’t do it,’ he says, ‘because it was impossible.’

  Part Four

  On the morning of her reunion with Felix a bouquet of spring flowers arrives and she thinks, How wonderful, how typical of him, and tears open the envelope to read his message. But she finds another typed poem:

  ‘Sea-weed sways and sways and swirls

  as if swaying were its form of stillness;

  and if it flushes against fierce rock

  it slips over it as shadows do, without hurting itself.’