And underneath in David’s writing: ‘Don’t let him hurt you again. Be like the sea-weed. Love, David.’
She resents the message but loves the poem, although by now she rather feels she is being pelted with D. H. Lawrence. And yet how touching, how thoughtful, she tells herself. She takes the flowers out of their cellophane and starts arranging them in water in her best vase. But the disappointment that they are not from Felix makes it hard to enjoy them. Perhaps they will at least make him jealous. It is not the sort of card she can leave on display, so she hopes he won’t think she has bought them herself.
* * *
He sees her walking across the restaurant towards him in a black dress that flows with her movements, a Jean Muir that he bought her three years ago, and her anniversary pearls. Any other woman would have bought something new for the occasion, but she has chosen an old favourite. His heart lifts: he finds it very lovable of her. He is sure it means she wants to reassure him that all will be as it ever was; she wants to look familiar and comforting. But he thinks the shoes are new: the heels are a little higher than usual and she is walking carefully in them. That too is touching, that she wants to appear taller and thinner and show off her legs; he is very moved by the sight of her. And he is tremendously angry that she has punished him with three months’ separation. It is as if he has held his anger in check, put it on ice, so that what was grief at first has been coldly suspended, biding its time; but now at the precious vision of her, looking so lovely and known, at the certainty that all will be well, it is safe to let it boil up into hot rage.
He stands up and smiles at her as the waiter leads her to his table; he says, ‘Hullo, darling,’ and they kiss on the cheek, as if they had only been parted for a day, very much a public kiss, but enough to make him desire her again as he smells the warmth of her skin and Mitsouko, another old favourite. It’s going to be a really nostalgic evening, he thinks, the only way to start a new life.
‘You’re quite brown,’ she says.
‘Yes, I had a few days in Tenerife. I thought I might as well be miserable in the sun.’
‘Lucky you,’ she says. ‘I’ve been working very hard.’
‘Well, once I’d done the final edit I thought I deserved a holiday. I’ll have proofs soon. D’you realise, this is the first book you won’t have read in typescript?’
‘Yes, I’ve really neglected my duty this time, haven’t I?’ she says lightly.
‘Oh darling, don’t tease me. I’ve served my sentence.’
‘Let’s eat first and talk about it later,’ she says, with a social smile, as if it were a business meeting. He’s reminded of lunching with film producers to discuss scripts for movies that would never happen.
There’s an awkwardness between them, which he supposes is only to be expected, but he can see from her eyes that she still desires him, that she is tremendously excited to be with him again. The sooner he can get her back home and into bed, he thinks, the sooner life can return to normal. She must be desperate for it by now. He wonders what she can read in his eyes; he doesn’t think she is picking up the anger or she would be looking rather more anxious. Instead she is smiling and flirting with him. She never has been very good at reading faces, he thinks, while he is particularly adept at disguising what he feels, practised at presenting emotions that will be profitable and filtering out the rest. So they order their food and wine; they make polite conversation while they eat and drink, almost as if they are pretending to be on a first date. He resents having to woo her again; it seems ridiculous with his own wife. But he tells himself it’s amusing, just a game, and he puts on his best behaviour: charming and sexy, penitent yet forceful. There must be no more grovelling. He did quite enough of that on the night she sent him away and to no avail: he will never forgive her for that.
Over the coffee and brandy she finally says, ‘Well, Felix, what are we going to do?’
‘Get back together, I hope.’ He uses his most beguiling smile. ‘Surely you’ve punished me enough. You know I love you. Haven’t you missed me at all?’
‘Yes, very much.’
‘Well, then. Why aren’t we celebrating?’
She sighs and says, ‘If only it could be that simple.’
He feels a chill of fear, as if he were facing his bank manager for a loan or an overdraft that was about to be refused. He feels a corresponding surge of anger too.
She says, ‘I’ve thought about this a lot, and of course I still love you or I wouldn’t be here. I love you very much. But we’ve got to have a new deal or it won’t work.’
He’s shocked that she’s actually daring to bargain with him. ‘Of course,’ he says, smiling. ‘Name your price.’
‘Well, the old deal was you having affairs and me putting up with it. I don’t expect you to be faithful, I know that’s too much to ask, but I am asking you not to have anyone I know. That was the worst part. I don’t think you can imagine how bad that feels.’
He keeps his voice level and pleasant. ‘D’you mean if I was having an affair and you met her by chance, you’d expect me to break it off? Or is it just people you already know who are out of bounds? I want to be quite clear about this.’ Really, it’s ridiculous, he thinks, it’s comic. How is he to know which women it’s safe to let her meet? He can’t always tell immediately the ones he’s likely to screw; if he can’t get those he wants most, he sometimes has to make do with a few borderline cases, especially in a lean year, and sooner or later she’s bound to meet some of them, either before or after the event. For an intelligent woman she’s really come up with a totally impractical idea, and he’d like to make her see the funny side of it: it would lighten the whole evening.
She says, ‘I haven’t thought it through like that. Both, I suppose. I just want to make sure I never meet anyone you’re sleeping with, before or after. I want you to do that much for me. It’s painful enough without knowing them.’
‘Darling, I’ve never meant to cause you pain, but you knew what I was like when you married me. What you’re saying now is that you have the right to break up any affair I have simply by meeting the woman.’
‘Just keep them away from me, all right?’ Her voice is low and edgy, surprisingly close to tears. He puts his hand over hers on the table and she hangs on to it tightly. ‘Whoever they are. I can’t stand it on my doorstep. Having to see them. People knowing before I do and pitying me.’
‘We move in the same circles though,’ he says, bemused by her logic. ‘It might be simpler if I just try to be faithful. We’ve never tried that, have we?’ He doesn’t mean it but he thinks it might cheer her up and stop her pursuing a bargain that sounds like an absurd game of hide and seek.
‘No, because it wouldn’t work and I don’t believe you mean it. This way we have a chance. Just keep your two lives very far apart.’
‘Well, all right, darling,’ he says. ‘Whatever you say. I’ve never understood why you mind so much when you know I love you and nobody else has ever been important.’
‘I want a solemn promise, Felix.’
‘All right,’ he says easily, keeping his face serious. He remembers when he was a little boy crossing his fingers when he lied. He has a sudden urge to do it now, under the table. But he is so angry at the way she is trying to control his behaviour that he thinks she deserves to be lied to anyway. Even the little boy would think the lie didn’t count.
‘If you break it,’ she says, ‘that’s the end of us, you know. I mean it, Felix. I can’t go through something like this again.’
‘Neither can I. Don’t threaten me, darling, I’ve promised. I don’t like it when you threaten me. Now can we go home? I want to take you to bed and make love to you. I want to undress you very slowly and put —’
‘There’s another thing I’ve got to tell you,’ she says, ‘and you may not like it. I’ve been having an affair.’
He’s very shocked. Well, surprised more than shocked, but so much so that he says flippantly, ‘You’ve got such
a lot to tell me, we should have started earlier.’
She doesn’t smile. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Yes. I don’t think you’d lie to me.’
‘Well, you always said I could have as much freedom as you, only I didn’t want to before. Now I do. I’m having an affair and I want to go on with it.’
He’s interested in his own reactions: after the surprise comes a jealous pain that’s quite severe, like a physical thing, but closely mixed with it is a terrific excitement. She has finally done something he has often fantasised about. Her body won’t ever be quite the same to him again. He starts picturing the things this other man must have done to her, the things she must have done to him. Their bodies move on the flickering screen in his head. He doesn’t speak.
She says, ‘D’you want to know who it is?’
‘Why not? I’m not making any conditions, am I?’
‘David Johnson.’
That really is a body blow. ‘Christ, not the one who wrote that godawful book?’
‘I think it’s quite good.’
‘You can’t. We laughed about it, don’t you remember? How he got the plot from Shakespeare and the title from D. H. Lawrence and those were the only two good things in it. How he must have got that prize for finally learning to read, it certainly wasn’t for writing.’
‘You’re really jealous, aren’t you?’ she says thoughtfully.
‘I’m disgusted you couldn’t do better than that. “I shall blossom like a dark pansy.” I bet he will too.’
‘You actually know the poem,’ she says, sounding surprised.
‘Of course I know the poem, I’m not fucking illiterate, am I? “Gladness of Death”, isn’t it? “Unfolding in the dark sunshine” and all that. He can’t even come up with his own title.’
‘You wear your scholarship so lightly,’ she says.
‘Jesus, I don’t care how many lovers you have, but d’you have to choose such a bloody awful writer? There must be dozens of people who’d like to screw you and you choose someone like him to make me look an absolute laughing stock.’
‘Ah,’ she says, ‘so that’s it. Now you know how I feel.’
‘I don’t think anyone laughed about me and Sally. They all just thought I was a lucky shit and she was a victim and you were a saint. Wasn’t that enough for you?’
‘And what about Inge?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. Two that you know in sixteen years.’
‘Two in a year that I know and found out. Who knows about the rest? There has to be some balance in this marriage, Felix,’ she says, ‘or it can’t go on.’
‘So that’s why you did it? It wasn’t good clean lust, oh no, it couldn’t be that, could it, that’s much too simple, it has to be some revolting power game. I’ve never treated you like that, Lizzie.’
At the sound of her name her face crumples up and tears spill out. ‘You didn’t have to,’ she says, sobbing, ‘you’ve always had all the power.’
‘Darling, oh darling, come on now, let’s go home, mm?’ He’s suddenly aware of the silence, that the restaurant has emptied around them, and the lounging waiters are looking at their watches. ‘It’s after midnight, they’re wanting to close. Let’s not stay till they put the chairs on the tables and turn out the lights, eh?’
She smiles weakly and he pays the bill while she fixes her face. They stagger out into the street, exhausted with emotion, and fall at once into a close embrace, kissing desperately like teenagers with nowhere to go. She says with her arms round him, ‘Oh Felix, I love you so much.’
‘Well, I don’t think we can use that restaurant again for a while,’ he says, and she manages to laugh. ‘Let’s go home,’ he says.
* * *
He takes her home and makes love to her, violently and tenderly, for much of the night. She feels he is purging her of David Johnson. Everything works naturally, effortlessly, without thought. Everything about him feels right. It is such a relief to be in bed with the right person, the right shape, the right touch, the right smell. She cries a little while they are making love. At one point he says lovingly, ‘I’d like to fuck you to death for sending me away,’ and she says, ‘Oh, please try, what a lovely punishment.’
She had gone much further than she meant to in the restaurant, but he had looked so cocky it enraged her, so sure that she was desperate to have him back, as indeed she was. She hadn’t meant to bargain; she would have had him back on any terms at all. But she had released what she thought was just a little resentment, and years of accumulated rage had gushed out.
* * *
Felix wakes in the night while Elizabeth is sleeping and gets up to make friends with his house again. He understands now why animals want to spray their territory. He is glad to have it all to himself, moonlit and quiet. He pours himself a glass of water and stands at the window looking at the river. He finds it incredible that he was debarred from all this simply for screwing Sally. The dark, silent house comforts him and welcomes him home. Eventually he goes back to Elizabeth and gets into bed, warm with her smell. She wakes and embraces him. He feels sad. He knows he can’t ever trust her again and it’s a terrible feeling, like a death in the family.
* * *
Next day, while Felix is fetching things from the flat, Elizabeth goes to church. She feels an urgent need to give thanks, as if she has a hotline to God. She is so grateful to have Felix back, to know that he has gone out only to return in a few hours, and she can have all the luxury of looking forward to normal life again, day after day. She feels very blessed and it makes her wish she was religious. She walks down the road to the church, goes in and lights a candle. She’s forgotten how to pray so she just says in a whisper, ‘If you’re there, thank you. And even if you’re not.’
* * *
‘I think we should do it casually,’ Jordan says. ‘Don’t make a big deal of it. I’ll just drop in one day and you introduce me. I’m an old friend back from New York. Well, that’s true, isn’t it? She may even remember me, she must have been about four when I was around.’
‘Maybe.’ Helen is disappointed; she wants to make a big deal of it, trumpet her love to the sky. She doesn’t like Jordan describing himself as a friend: she thinks a friend is someone you can ring at any time. And it’s conceited of him to imagine Sally may remember him.
‘Maybe she’ll remember or maybe we should do it casually?’
‘Well, both. I don’t think she will remember, actually, but of course I want to be casual, you can’t imagine I’m going to sit her down and announce I’ve got a new lover and she must meet him.’
They are having a late breakfast at the kitchen table. She loves the domestic image of Jordan, cramped in Richard’s old shabby bathrobe, looking as if he belongs in her home. She will miss these mornings if she can’t have them while Sally is home. Not that there have been so many of them.
‘You’ll probably want some time on your own with her first,’ Jordan says, yawning, ‘so let me know when to drop in.’
‘If you stick to your natural rhythm,’ Helen says, with horror that she can’t stop the words escaping from her mouth, ‘you could easily miss her altogether. She only gets a month for Easter.’
‘If that’s what you’d prefer,’ he says instantly, very steely and controlled.
‘No, of course it isn’t, I’m sorry, I’m just nervous and we’ve only got a day to decide.’
And then the footsteps and the key in the front door.
‘Or less,’ Jordan says, very calm.
‘Mum,’ Sally calls from the hall. ‘I got the early train.’
They hear the sound of luggage falling to the floor. Helen looks anxiously at Jordan, who looks amused.
‘In here,’ she calls back. Sally comes into the doorway of the kitchen and stops at the sight of Jordan, who says hullo, as if this kind of thing happens to him all the time.
‘I’ve got a friend for you to meet,’ Helen says to Sally, feeling embarrassed and foolish.
&
nbsp; ‘So I see. Hullo.’ Her face is quite expressionless.
‘Jordan Griffiths. We’ve met before,’ Jordan says easily, ‘but you may not remember. I used to call in your mother’s studio when you were about four.’
To Helen’s surprise some flicker of recognition crosses Sally’s face. ‘Oh, you were the fruit man. I don’t remember you actually, I mean if I passed you in the street, but I remember somebody tall bending down and giving me fruit.’ And she smiles, just a little.
‘I thought you weren’t due back till tomorrow,’ Helen says.
‘Obviously,’ says Sally, and she and Jordan both laugh, making Helen feel like an intruder in her own home. ‘No, it was always today. I just didn’t know which train. You must have got muddled up.’
Helen is appalled, not at the meeting, which seems to be going quite well and has at least got the whole thing over and done with, but at her own incompetence. She never gets dates wrong. She is sure it was meant to be tomorrow. Surely she didn’t actually want it to happen this way? Did she?
‘Are you enjoying Sussex?’ Jordan asks.
‘It’s okay. Quite hard work actually.’
‘D’you want some coffee?’ Helen says.
‘No, I had some on the train.’
‘Well,’ Jordan says, standing up, ‘nice to see you again, but I should be going.’
‘Not on my account,’ Sally says, very formal. ‘I’m going to unpack.’
‘On my own account,’ Jordan says. ‘I’ve got work to do.’
‘Oh, of course,’ Sally says, ‘you’re another painter, aren’t you?’
Jordan smiles, rather sadly, Helen thinks. ‘Well, I used to be.’
* * *
He goes upstairs to dress. Sally goes upstairs to unpack. They go up one after the other, almost like a couple, which is disconcerting. Helen, left alone in the kitchen, makes fresh coffee for herself and feels shaken up, as if she were the child and Sally the parent, as if Sally had actually caught her in bed with Jordan. Worse, perhaps: there seems something rather more intimate about breakfast in your dressing-gown. It suggests a degree of friendliness that doesn’t always go with sex.
A Gift of Poison Page 16