Jordan comes back dressed and says, ‘Well, the best-laid plans and all that. Robbie Burns knew a thing or two.’ He kisses her goodbye. ‘See you soon.’
‘A likely story,’ Helen says. She sees him to the door.
‘She’s a credit to you,’ he says, departing.
* * *
Presently Sally comes back downstairs and into the kitchen. ‘Sure you don’t want coffee?’ Helen says. ‘I’ve made some fresh.’
‘Oh, all right. It’ll take away the taste of British Rail. Mum, why ever didn’t you tell me? I felt such a fool.’
‘Well, how d’you think I felt? You were due back tomorrow.’
‘Today. Don’t start that again. It’s not my fault if you got it wrong. Why didn’t you tell me about him before, I mean? He hasn’t just turned up, has he? Or has he?’
‘No, of course not.’ She pours the coffee. ‘I met him again last October. He’d just got back from the States and he had a retrospective. Magdalen took me. I’ve been seeing him since New Year.’
‘Seeing him,’ Sally says. ‘Don’t be so coy.’
‘All right, sleeping with him,’ Helen says, angry. ‘It’s not really your business, is it?’
‘It is if I walk in and he’s in Richard’s dressing-gown. I felt so stupid. You could have warned me. You could have told me you’d got someone.’
‘Well, I haven’t really,’ Helen says. She feels naked, horribly exposed. She doesn’t want to share her uncertainty with Sally but she can’t claim more than she has. ‘We just meet now and then. He’s getting over a bereavement actually, his wife died of cancer fifteen months ago.’
‘God, how awful.’
‘So he’s a bit erratic. He’s got a daughter your age, and one a bit younger. She’s at Oxford.’
‘God, how awful to have your mother die of cancer.’
Helen is touched by this reaction. ‘Well, it wasn’t her mother. He’s been married before.’
Sally drinks her coffee. ‘I should’ve known. God, I’m stupid. Tell me the worst. How many times? How many children?’
‘Twice before. Five children, all grown up. None with the dead wife.’
‘Oh, Mum.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re in love with him, aren’t you? He’s another one like my father and you’re in love with him.’
‘Is it that obvious?’ Helen says.
‘It is to me. Just the way you look at him. He probably doesn’t know you as well as I do.’
* * *
That night she comes into Helen’s room around midnight and sits on the end of her bed.
‘Look, I won’t be around much this vac. I’m going to see my father for Easter and I’m going to Amsterdam for a week with some friends.’
‘Hardly worth unpacking,’ Helen says.
‘I mean I won’t be here to cramp your style.’
‘That’s all right. I don’t have much style to cramp.’
‘He’s okay. I don’t mind him. Just don’t let him hurt you, that’s all.’
Helen finds she suddenly wants to cry.
‘I think I’m a bit jealous,’ Sally says, ‘if you really want to know. You’re having more fun than I am.’ She kisses Helen briefly and stands up. ‘Nice to be home, all the same.’
‘Nice to have you home,’ Helen says.
* * *
Richard uses the Easter holidays to find somewhere to live. It has to be done and it’s a good excuse to spend time away from Inge. She is being so generous that he finds it hard to look at her. She has even offered to help him search for a place, but he finds that too saintly to endure. Perhaps she only means that she is in a hurry to have him gone, now the decision has been made. He certainly wants to spend as much time as he can away from the house. He can’t bear the expression in Peter’s eyes. Although Inge helped him break the news, as she had promised she would, he could tell that both boys blamed him entirely; he plays the scene over and over again in his mind as he looks at one dingy furnished room after another. They didn’t even let him get to the end of his prepared speech about him and Inge having talked it over and agreed it was better to separate. How he wouldn’t be far away and they could visit whenever they liked and he hoped very much that they would, both of them. How sorry he was. How he had never meant this to happen, any of it. He had lain awake most of the night working out what to say and they didn’t let him say half of it. ‘But Dad, you promised,’ Peter said, a terrible look of betrayal on his face that cut Richard to the heart.
‘It’s not your father’s fault this time,’ Inge said. ‘I asked him to go. I don’t want to live with him any more.’
‘Don’t blame you, Mum,’ said Karl. ‘Neither do I. He can piss off right now if he likes. Pity he ever came back. I knew he’d do something like this.’ His voice was full of the grim pleasure of being right.
‘But you can’t leave Mum when she’s been ill,’ Peter said, blinking rapidly.
‘It’s all right, Peter,’ Inge said. ‘I’m better now and I don’t want him to stay. We haven’t had a row or anything. It’s just better this way. We made a mistake, you see, and we’re going to put it right. We shouldn’t have got back together.’
‘Well, I’m off out now,’ Karl said. ‘I’ll see you later, Mum.’ Then he turned to Richard, facing him very directly. ‘Proud of yourself, are you?’
‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ Richard kept repeating. But Karl was already gone, out of the room and out of the house, the front door slamming behind him, the motorbike revving up in the street. And Peter, chin quivering, was running upstairs to his room, where he bolted the door and played loud music. Later on in the evening Richard managed to talk to him and make it a little better, but Karl rang up and told Inge he was going to stay with his girlfriend until Richard moved out. ‘Maybe it’s all for the best,’ Inge said wearily. She looked grey with fatigue and Richard put his arm round her. ‘Oh Richard,’ she said, ‘what a mess. I’m so tired.’
* * *
He finds a bedsit not too far from school. It’s all he can afford: he knows it’s impossible to stretch to even a one-room flat. The landlady is a large Irish woman who reminds him of one of the Proles in 1984 as she toils up and downstairs with him behind her, but she is pleasant enough and the room is clean. It has two burners and a grill, a washbasin and a fridge. There is a shared kitchen and bathroom. He doesn’t bother to sit on the bed: it can’t be more uncomfortable than the sofa at home that he is sleeping on now.
He goes home and tells Inge he has found somewhere.
‘That’s good,’ she says. ‘Is it nice?’
‘It’s all right.’
They look at each other in silence and look away.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘what do we do now?’
‘I don’t want to say goodbye to you, Richard. It’s too difficult.’
‘Yes, it is.’ He feels the prickling of tears: he hadn’t thought he would find the parting so painful. She is being so reasonable.
‘Next week Peter is going on that school trip, you remember?’ she says, fiddling with the cutlery on the table. ‘I’m going to tell him you won’t be here when he gets back. And I’m going to go out every day for three hours in the afternoon. I’ll go to the library or the pictures. I don’t want to know what day you’re going. I just want to come back one afternoon and you’re not …’ She bites her lip.
‘All right,’ he says, ‘if that’s what you want, we’ll do it like that. And we’ll keep in touch, won’t we?’ Suddenly after all this delay it seems to be happening very fast.
‘Yes, of course. But not yet. Give me some time. I don’t want to see you for a while, I don’t know how long. And then when I do it will all be different.’
‘All right,’ he says. ‘I’ll leave you my address and phone number and I’ll wait to hear from you.’
‘Shall we have a lot to drink tonight?’ she says, with an attempt at a smile.
‘That’s a good idea,’ he says. ‘Let�
��s do that.’
After a moment’s silence she says in a small voice, ‘Will you go back to her, d’you think?’
He hesitates, then decides there is no reason at this stage to lie. ‘If she’ll have me.’
* * *
‘If you’re going to continue in therapy without your husband,’ Michael says to her one day, ‘would you like us to speak German together?’
She is very surprised and pleased. She answers, ‘Ja, das würde ich sehr gerne tun.’
He says, ‘Dann lass en sie uns das machen. Ich dachte, es wäre entspannender fur Sie. Es war meine Muttersprache aber ich benutze sie heutzutage nicht sehr oft. Ich würde mich über die Gelegenheit freuen.’
It is the first personal thing he has told her. After that they always speak German together. She is amazed at the difference it makes. Now at last she can say exactly what she means. She feels as if she has come home.
* * *
The loneliness of his room appals him. He feels like a displaced person or a middle-aged student, rootless, feckless, dispossessed, cramming his few belongings, his books and clothes and records, into a confined space. The walls are thin, the sound-proofing minimal. The communal telephone rings constantly, the bathroom is always occupied. Other people’s cooking smells waft along the corridor, other people’s noise and music from above and below and next door keep him awake as they shout, squabble, laugh, entertain, make love, slam doors, give parties, snore. A mixture of pills and exhaustion makes him finally sleep. He is grateful to have a demanding job that wears him out. He doesn’t want time to think. Contemplating the wreckage of his life is more than he can bear. But it creeps in. Into the loneliness of the room. Into the space in his head. It is lying in wait to ambush him when he wakes up in the morning; it is crouching by his pillow last thing at night. All the damage he has done, to his children, to Inge, to Helen, to himself, and all with the best of intentions. Even now he can hardly believe it. How did it happen? How can he put it right?
* * *
He rings Helen. She sounds surprised to hear from him, as if they were distant friends or former neighbours who had moved apart, as if she had never expected to hear from him again. ‘Oh, Richard, hullo,’ she says. She doesn’t sound pleased either. ‘How are you?’ she says, very formal and polite.
‘I’d really like to see you.’ The sound of her voice can still make his heart turn over, but he doesn’t want to seem like a suppliant; he knows that will not make him more attractive, if indeed he is still attractive at all. He wants her to take pity on him if necessary, if pity is all he can have, but it would be wonderful if she had actually been missing him after all this time. He hopes desperately that perhaps she has. Does the coldness in her voice mean she is still angry?
‘Well, I’m awfully busy,’ she says.
‘Could we meet just for a drink?’
She sighs. ‘I’m teaching today.’
‘Maybe I could call in about six.’
A long moment’s silence. ‘No, don’t come to the house. I’ll meet you in the pub near college – I can’t remember its name, but you know the one. The one on the corner. Say – about twelve thirty. And I’ve only got half an hour.’
‘I’ve left Inge,’ he says quickly, so she can have time to think about it before they meet.
He hears a sharp intake of breath.
‘I’ll see you later, Richard.’
And she hangs up.
* * *
She walks into the pub at quarter to one, when he has already been waiting twenty minutes because he couldn’t resist arriving early. It is so long since he’s seen her that she is even more beautiful than he remembers and he feels a physical ache of loss all over again. She is wearing jeans and no make-up and a huge old shabby jersey that was always a favourite. She is looking very well, very rested, younger, with a sort of bloom to her skin.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she says. ‘People kept catching me just as I was leaving.’
‘What can I get you?’ He longs to touch her but he knows he mustn’t.
‘I’ll just have tomato juice.’
He goes to the bar, waits, returns with her drink. All the time he is thinking of her and how much he wants her back. If he can have her back he will never ask for anything else for the rest of his life.
She says in a tone of polite curiosity, ‘Well, so you’ve moved out. How did you manage that?’
‘It’s not how it looks. Inge lost the baby. She had a miscarriage back in February and we did a lot of talking and thinking about it and she actually suggested I should go. She’s being very reasonable. She’s really accepted it’s final this time.’
Helen considers this, sipping her drink. He feels she is playing for time and it gives him hope.
‘Must have been tough for the boys,’ she finally says.
‘Yes. Yes, it was. It is. They took it badly. I feel terrible about them.’
‘Well,’ she says, as if she doesn’t quite believe how terrible he feels, ‘I suppose apart from that it must be a great relief. Now you can really get on with your life.’
The expression disturbs him, although he’s often heard it used and in fact had used it himself to clients on probation, and they had used it to him. Then it seemed to be quite a handy phrase to describe being active and positive and forward-looking, all desirable qualities. Now it suddenly has no meaning for him. In fact it sounds grotesque. He has no life to get on with if she won’t have him back.
He says inadequately, ‘I miss you very much.’
Her eyes close for a second. ‘Please don’t start that again.’
‘I know you were still very angry with me last time I saw you and maybe I had no right trying to get you back then while I was still with Inge, but it’s different now, can’t you see that? I’m free. And I’m so sorry. I was wrong about you and Sally. You had a right to do what you thought was best, she’s your child. If you felt you couldn’t talk to me about it, that must have been my fault, maybe I was too—’
‘Oh Richard, please,’ she says, cutting in sharply, ‘it’s ancient history.’
‘I should never have left you, anyway,’ he says, which is all that seems to matter now.
‘Well, you did,’ she says. ‘You left me a year ago.’
‘And I’ve regretted it every single day.’
She finishes her drink. ‘Well, I’m sorry, but there we are.’
He is terrified she’s going to leave and there is so much more he wants to say but he can’t find the words. Her beauty and his terror seem to have paralysed his brain. No wonder she doesn’t want me, he thinks; I can’t say the right things so she doesn’t understand how I feel. He has a dreadful sensation of panic, as in a dream when struggling to run and only succeeding in standing still.
‘Please can we try again?’ he says. ‘I love you so much. I miss you terribly. I’ve made the worst mistake of my life leaving you.’
‘Please don’t, Richard,’ she says. ‘This is so embarrassing.’
There is a silence between them then and the pub noises suddenly flood in as if he hadn’t heard them before.
He says, ‘Is there someone else? Is that it?’ remembering how he felt there might be when he saw her in January and how he pushed the thought away because it was too painful. Now he is already in so much pain it hardly seems to matter.
She says, ‘I don’t think you’ve got any right to ask me that, but yes, there is.’
He swallows hard. ‘Do I know him?’ He still thinks it might be Carey.
‘No, you don’t. But even if he wasn’t around I wouldn’t want to try again. You’ve got to accept that, Richard. I’m sorry, but it’s hopeless, I don’t think we ever saw each other the way we really are. You wanted me to be so perfect to make up to you for leaving home and I couldn’t manage it. And I was so determined to fall in love with someone who wasn’t like Carey and there you were. I think we both had to compromise far too much.’
‘But that’s marriage,’ he says, aghast
.
‘I know, up to a point, but I don’t think you even like the person I really am. Oh, I’m not explaining very well but I’ve thought about it a lot and I know it’s no good. Felix and Sally and the abortion were just the last straw. I don’t think things were right with us for a very long time.’
‘I can’t believe you mean that,’ he says. ‘I thought it was wonderful right up to the end.’
‘Well, this isn’t doing any good,’ she says, standing up. ‘We’re only going to hurt each other more. Let’s leave it, Richard, maybe I’m wrong about the past, I don’t know, but it feels dead now, I do know that.’
‘Please don’t say that,’ he says. ‘Please please don’t.’
‘I’m going to go now,’ she says. ‘I really can’t stand this any more. I do wish you well and all that.’
* * *
Felix embarks on a programme of celebration with Elizabeth, taking her to theatres, concerts, films, reworking all their familiar territory like an animal spraying trees with its scent. Social infidelity, he thinks, is largely an unexplored area but he feels it keenly. All the places she has gone with David, as if they were a couple. Being seen in public together. He has never flaunted his own affairs like that. It must mean she always intended to tell him, making secrecy unnecessary. More than a fling, then. Something deliberately planned, to bring him to heel.
After one extraordinary juxtaposition of Tchaikovsky and Mahler he says to her on their way out, ‘They do make you wait for your climax, these Germans. Whereas good old multiple-orgasm Tchaikovsky is in there straight away, like a rat up a drainpipe.’
She laughs. Encouraged, he goes on: ‘Remember how we always used to say Tchaikovsky rated a lower second? Now I’m not so sure.’
A Gift of Poison Page 17