A Gift of Poison

by A Gift of Poison (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  When he gets home Elizabeth is reading the book.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ she says, looking up with a troubled face. ‘I think it’s the best thing you’ve done, but it’s awfully close to home.’

  ‘Not really,’ he says. ‘It’s a fantasy.’ He pours himself a drink. ‘But it’s taken a lot out of me. I feel quite empty. Drained.’

  ‘You always feel like that when you finish something,’ she says. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  * * *

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Michael says to Inge one day, ‘but we have such a waiting list here that Dr Shaw wants me to limit clients to twelve sessions each if possible. It was always meant to be an opportunity for free short-term counselling as an adjunct of the practice but we didn’t realise there’d be such a demand. Of course you’ve had more than twelve sessions already, but that’s all right. What I have to ask you is how you feel about finishing in another month?’

  ‘I don’t want to finish,’ she says at once. It takes no thought at all. ‘I was going to ask you if I could come more often. Half an hour every two weeks doesn’t seem very much.’

  ‘I can’t manage that here,’ he says, ‘but I could fit you in privately. I work from home in Hampstead but I do charge forty pounds an hour and I know you don’t have much money to spare. If I could do it for thirty, would that help? I’m saying the same to all the clients here that I’m having to hurry away. I don’t like feeling we have to rush our endings.’

  Inge considers this. ‘No,’ she says finally. ‘I think I should pay the correct amount like everyone else. If I have a month to get ready, I think I might be able to find a job.’

  * * *

  Elizabeth is surprised how quickly and easily she adjusts to her new life. Living with Felix again and still visiting David makes her feel adventurous and young. It all seems remarkably harmless: no one is jealous and no one is hurt. It is not a way of life she ever imagined could work for her, yet somehow it is working.

  The biggest surprise is that making love with Felix makes her enjoy sex with David at last. David himself seems less than thrilled about this. ‘He’s turned you on,’ he says resentfully, when she now joins in with enthusiasm, and the implication is that Felix has succeeded where he himself has failed. Felix by contrast seems excited by the thought of her with another man and always questions her closely when she gets home from seeing David as to what they have done together. ‘I can smell him on you,’ he says. ‘Tell me about him.’ Sometimes she actually has to lie, because sometimes she and David have merely sat and talked about Kate and his children and the problems with his second novel, but she doesn’t think that is what Felix wants to hear. David has become the phantom third in their bed and he won’t be very erotic if he is merely a friend. Felix keeps suggesting that she should invite David to join them and she is not entirely sure if this is a serious suggestion or just a useful fantasy. When she mentions it to David as a joke, he is disgusted.

  ‘I’m surprised Felix has lived so long,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘I’d have thought some jealous husband would have bumped him off years ago.’

  ‘I suppose some people don’t take adultery very seriously any more,’ she says. She feels a little shiver of alarm: she doesn’t like David joking about Felix being dead. After all, it nearly happened once.

  ‘I do. I’d have bumped him off if he’s been messing around with my wife. I might have got away with it, too, if I’d brought medical evidence to show I was unbalanced at the time, although killing Felix would be the sanest thing anyone could do.’ He stares at her intently, making her feel slightly uncomfortable. ‘What would you do, Elizabeth, if Felix was dead? Would you come and live with me?’

  * * *

  So it has to be Inge. With Sally gone, there is no one else he can have so fast and he won’t be at ease with Elizabeth till he’s broken the ridiculous promise she extracted from him under duress. Any man would say anything to get back into his own house, he thinks. He finds himself looking at her with positive hatred sometimes, but she doesn’t appear to notice. And the terrible sadness he feels at the way she has wrecked their marriage, she doesn’t seem to notice that either. He must be an even greater dissembler than he thought, or she must be very stupid, which is a depressing idea. And it is hard to stay buoyant and cheerful while sharing her with someone as insignificant as David Johnson.

  ‘I didn’t expect to hear from you again, Felix,’ Inge says over lunch. ‘It was a very nice surprise when you rang up.’

  ‘Well, I’ve missed you, Inge,’ he says. ‘And we didn’t exactly quarrel, did we?’

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘you dropped me when I rang up at midnight.’

  ‘Well, we all do silly things. I’ve often thought about you but I could hardly ring you while Richard was there, could I? I’ve only just heard you’ve separated.’

  ‘And now you think I need consolation?’ she says. ‘Well, perhaps I do.’

  That sounds encouraging. Inge is so straightforward; he has always valued her directness. Until she overdid it.

  ‘You look wonderful,’ he says. In fact he’s surprised how well she looks; he expected a heartbroken wreck. Instead he sees a woman blooming and blossoming. He hasn’t seen her like this since the early days of her marriage.

  ‘I’m in therapy,’ she says, with the air of someone announcing a new religion.

  ‘Oh, good,’ he says, since she clearly thinks it’s wonderful.

  ‘He’s called Michael Green and he’s taught me about growth and change,’ she says, eating heartily. Her appetite at least is unchanged. ‘Maybe you should see him, Felix. You don’t look happy.’

  He feels shaken to be so transparent. ‘I’ve had a difficult year,’ he says cautiously.

  ‘I think it’s the same for all of us. It’s part of getting older, isn’t it? We don’t bounce so easily.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He is not quite sure what she means.

  ‘I thought life was over for me when I lost my little girl,’ she says. ‘But I’m learning with Michael’s help that you can survive anything.’

  ‘What little girl, Inge?’ he says, startled.

  ‘Oh, I had a miscarriage in February,’ she says. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No, I only heard you and Richard had split up again. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, it was terrible. I thought he had given me this wonderful present of a new life, and at last we are going to be happy, and instead we have nothing but death – the baby and the marriage. I was very depressed.’

  ‘Yes, I can imagine.’ He thinks how glad he is that he wasn’t there at the time.

  ‘But now I think perhaps it was meant to be that way. We had to work things out to the very end and kill everything so we could start again separately, you know? Only Helen won’t have him back and I’m very worried about him. He looks so sad.’

  ‘According to Sally, she’s got someone else,’ he says. It’s rather fun to be gossiping with Inge after all this time.

  ‘Really? Oh, poor Richard. No wonder he looks sad. But what can I do? We had to make an ending. It’s a question of boundaries, you see, where Richard stops and I begin. He just isn’t my responsibility any more. I have to put myself first now, it’s a matter of self-esteem. Michael says that is the most important thing. To love myself before I love anyone else. Isn’t that nice? He’s wonderful, he’s helped me so much.’

  Really, Felix thinks, it’s as if she’s talking a different language, as if she’s picked up some weird psychobabble from the States, exchanging one obsession for another. But she looks very appetising indeed.

  ‘We went to see him together for a while,’ she goes on, ‘but Richard didn’t like him, I think he was jealous. It was free at the health centre but we could only have half an hour once a fortnight and I need more, so now I go every week for an hour and it costs forty pounds so I have to get a job to pay for it.’

  This is a revelation to Felix. The idea of Inge with a job quite takes his
breath away. He imagines it must be a revelation to Richard too. ‘What are you doing, Inge?’ he asks with real interest.

  ‘Well, I have two jobs. Two little part-time jobs. It’s fun, I like it. One is I teach people to speak German and another is I work in a shop. It’s near my house, so I don’t have to waste money on the bus. I sell scarves and jewellery and joss sticks and astrology things. Well, mostly I don’t sell very much because people come in and wander round and then they go out again, but I get paid anyway so I don’t care. Sometimes I sell things. It’s just so the woman who owns it doesn’t have to stay there all the time. And it smells of incense and we play funny music from Thailand. It’s nice, it reminds me of the sixties or maybe it’s the seventies, anyway, it makes me feel young again.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘you certainly are looking young.’

  ‘You should come in some time, Felix, you might like it. You could buy a present for Elizabeth.’

  ‘I’m not sure Elizabeth deserves a present. We had a separation because of Sally, and now she has a lover.’ He hadn’t meant to tell Inge so much, but there is something about her frank, confiding face and all the rubbish she has been telling him that he finds oddly endearing. And for once in his life he feels the need to confide in someone, which surprises him. So why not Inge? With Richard gone, she is probably the nearest thing he has to an old friend. It’s a strange thought.

  ‘Oh, Felix. Are you jealous?’

  ‘Not exactly. But he’s a bloody awful writer and that hurts my pride.’

  ‘Maybe just a little bit jealous,’ she says, managing to look both sympathetic and amused.

  ‘Let’s go to bed, Inge,’ he says. ‘Shall we? I really want you.’

  ‘I’d like to. It was always so good with you. But I don’t want you to drop me again so suddenly. I get used to sex and I don’t like it to stop.’

  ‘And I don’t want you to ring up at midnight.’

  ‘All right.’

  They shake hands across the table. Then they kiss.

  ‘Let’s have a wonderful summer,’ she says.

  He thinks how simple it can be with the right person.

  * * *

  After he tells her of his separation from Inge, Kate seems perceptibly friendlier. She has always been pleasant and helpful, but strictly as a colleague and his immediate superior. He liked her from his first day at the school when she said, ‘Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes.’ But she has always kept her professional distance until now. Now, through the summer term, she begins to linger in the staff room for a cup of tea and a chat at the end of the day. Just occasionally. Never often enough to create a pattern. And at first they only talk about school matters: problem children, the deficiencies of the timetable, the new exams, the foibles of the head. Then one day she says casually, ‘How’s life in your new place?’

  He is startled. It seems like a very personal question in the context of work. ‘All right. Not too bad.’

  ‘Only the kids and I were wondering if you’d like to come to us for Sunday lunch some time – maybe next week?’

  * * *

  ‘I cooked the lunch,’ says Annabel. She is a leggy thirteen-year-old who may be going to break into beauty quite soon. But at the moment her features are just loosely assembled, with the smooth skin and clear eyes of youth, waiting for their moment to arrive. The chrysalis stage, he thinks. And there is an air of being eager to please about her that he remembers from Sally, an anxiety about the way she glances from Kate to him and back again, while acting desperately casual.

  ‘You cooked it very well,’ Richard says. She has done roast chicken and sweet corn with roast potatoes and it’s really quite good. He’s impressed.

  ‘Mum’s a rotten cook,’ says Thomas. He’s a robust ten-year-old who manages somehow to be both cheerful and wary. Impossible not to think of Peter at the same age.

  ‘It’s true, I‘m afraid,’ Kate says.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Annabel says, looking at her plate. ‘It’s just that Dad used to do all the cooking so Mum didn’t get any practice.’

  Both children have dark hair and eyes and are much better-looking than Kate. In fact they hardly resemble her at all. When he looks at her kind, plain face, her straight sandy hair and eyelashes, he can hardly believe she is their mother.

  * * *

  His bedsit seems bleaker than ever after lunch with Kate and her children. The sensation of being in a real home again was deeply seductive. When he visits Inge she is pleasant and friendly, but he has no contact with Karl, and Peter is very awkward with him now. The affection is still there, he is sure of that, but the trust has gone. It is so painful to go on visiting the wreckage and trying to repair it, being reminded of his crimes. Perhaps he lost them both years ago, when he left them the first time. So much easier to turn somewhere else where as yet he has done no damage. He longs to be part of a family again; he wants to make friends with Kate’s children but he feels he has no right to, tainted as he is by desertion. He thinks he must ask Helen if she’d mind if he got in touch with Sally. He’s been wanting to do that for a long time.

  * * *

  Michael’s flat is on the ground floor of a leafy street in Hampstead. It is very different from Camden Town and it becomes the highlight of her week to go there. Everything about it is pleasurable, even if they talk about painful things when she arrives: getting ready, the journey by bus and tube, the walk, all give her joy. The flat is cool and rather dark and he sees clients in a small room next to his living-room, which is vast. Both rooms face on to the garden and he sits with his back to the window. It touches her that he gives up the view to concentrate on her.

  One day she spends the whole fifty-minute hour talking about her grief for her daughter. It is June. He says to her, ‘This must be about the time your daughter would have been born.’

  ‘Yes.’ She’s so grateful that he remembers. ‘I don’t know if you can imagine what it was like to lose her. I’m sure Richard thought I made too much fuss. You’re very understanding, but it’s such a special thing to lose a child, even before it’s born.’

  He hesitates fractionally and then says, ‘Well, I did lose my only daughter, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Oh.’ This is such a shock that she actually gasps. ‘I’m sorry. How terrible. When?’

  ‘A few years ago now.’

  ‘How old was she?’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘My God.’

  It is the second personal thing he has told her. Another glimpse into his life. She stores up these fragments to examine later. And then she feels the door has closed again: it doesn’t seem as if she can ask any more.

  They have one of their long silences. She no longer worries about these, or waits for him to break them, knowing now that he won’t; she just relaxes into the feeling of timelessness, of total acceptance, aware that she can speak or be silent, that anything she says or does will be all right, that this is her time to use as she chooses. He has taught her that. She sits there looking at the flowers and trees in his garden. Presently she starts talking about herself again. Sometimes it is too intense to look at him. It feels different to see him in his home. Slowly and imperceptibly she realises she is falling in love.

  Part Five

  ‘How am I going to manage, Felix?’ Inge says. ‘Michael is going to be away for the whole of August.’

  ‘Never mind. Think of all the money you’ll be saving. A hundred and sixty quid to splurge on yourself for a change.’

  ‘You’ll have to be extra nice to me. I’ll have to talk to you instead. You won’t charge me, will you? I’ll do special things for you in bed.’

  ‘How do these shrinks imagine their patients can cope when they piss off on holiday?’ Felix enquires. ‘One minute they’re making out they’re indispensible, the next it’s bucket-and-spade time, cheerio.’

  ‘They’re only human, Felix. They need holidays too, more so really. They have to recharge their batteries. Anyway
, he’s not a shrink. A shrink is a psychiatrist and that means a doctor first before you specialise in psychiatry. He’s a counsellor and psychotherapist. That means—’

  ‘I know, you told me all that. I think if I was getting forty pounds an hour,’ Felix says, ‘I might soldier on through August. I might just settle for a long weekend.’

  ‘Well, I was cross at first when he told me, But we worked through it. It’s useful for me to be able to express anger freely in a safe environment.’

  ‘God, there’s a lot of jargon goes with this, isn’t there? Sometimes you sound as if you’ve come straight from California. Any moment you’ll be telling me it’s a learning experience.’

  ‘Well, it is, Felix. You’re right. That’s exactly what it is.’

  ‘Maybe it sounds less pretentious in German, although I don’t see how it could. More so, probably. What’s this music, Inge? I know it so well but I can’t pin it down.’

  ‘It’s Brahms, one of the symphonies. I’m not sure which one. Shall I get the paper?’

  ‘No, don’t bother. Of course it’s Brahms, I should have known. When it sounds like Beethoven and you’re surprised how much you’re enjoying it, it always turns out to be Brahms.’

  * * *

  It’s July before Helen feels relaxed enough to invite him to the studio. She tells herself she doesn’t want him to see her new work in progress but perhaps even then it’s more because Sally’s home, and it feels somehow indecorous to have him stay over at the house or to go to his flat and leave Sally alone overnight. And perhaps she is shy of doing something that will seem so obviously like an attempt to remind him of the past. But eventually she does it and he comes and look around.