A Gift of Poison

by A Gift of Poison (retail) (epub)

‘You won’t.’

  ‘I really think I might, and I can’t bear it.’

  ‘When does she get back from Greece?’

  ‘Next month some time. Pretty late on, I think. About a week before term starts.’

  ‘Well then, you’ve got some time to plan it.’

  ‘I don’t see how any amount of planning will make any difference.’ He’s not helping her, but perhaps he can’t. Perhaps no one can.

  ‘Just remember,’ he says, still very much on his own track, ‘it could be our last chance to be a family together.’

  ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘Think about it,’ he says.

  Part Six

  In September a postcard of the Grand Canyon arrives from Jordan. It feels strange to be carrying his child, such an intimate connection, and to be receiving a postcard from him, that most casual of greetings. His handwriting, which she has so far only seen as his famous scrawled signature on a canvas, is barely legible: the beginnings and ends of words are there, the middles to be guessed. But after several readings she thinks it says, ‘Nice to be bumming [buzzing?] around with my children [cauldron?] but this isn’t home [here?] any more. Time I was getting back to work. See you soon. Love Jordan.’ It means nothing, of course; it is just the sort of thing people put on postcards. But she reads it many times, lingering over the words see you soon, which she has often heard from him but which never mean what they say, and the word love, which he has never used. She noticed that there is no comma between the word love and the name Jordan, making it seem like a command. ‘And I do,’ she says to herself. ‘I really do.’

  * * *

  In the six weeks they’ve both been away she’s had three postcards from Sally as against one from Jordan. Each from a different island. The first one says, ‘Can’t think why I didn’t find out about Greece before. Everyone else seems to have done.’ Helen takes this to mean it’s crowded. The second, from a smaller island, says, ‘This is the only way to get through a reading list, on the beach with a jug of Retsina and no tourists except me.’ And the third: ‘Am working in a taverna now to make ends meet. Maybe I won’t come home at all.’ They all end. ‘Much love, Sally,’ in her large, clear writing. The third one is from the island where Helen and Carey spent their honeymoon. She closes her eyes for a moment and lets herself drift back, remembering sun and beach and wine and white buildings and making love in a shuttered room. How young she was then, and how grown up she thought she was. She treasures the postcards, thinking that Sally will never write her such natural, joyful messages again, that the child will cast a shadow between them for ever, and in a way it might be better if Sally did stay in Greece so she would never have to be told the truth. She fantasises pleasantly about endless letters and phone calls with never a cross word, while Sally lives an idyllic life in the sun and she herself brings up a child that Sally won’t know exists. Either way it seems she will have to lose one child to keep the other. She wonders if Sally is happy, if she is perhaps in love. She only said she was travelling with friends but that could mean anything. How little she knows of Sally’s life these days.

  * * *

  She tries to use the time alone to enjoy her pregnancy before she has to face Sally’s rage. She feels like two people mentally as well as physically. One of these people is rapturously happy, the other deeply depressed. They co-exist snugly inside her, like the child, and she attends to both of them. She finds herself painting curved shapes for the first time in years and the crude symbolism makes her smile. Richard doesn’t phone: perhaps he has had all he can take. Or perhaps he is leaving her alone to come to her senses. She daydreams about the baby. She fantasises that Sally will forgive her. She considers the serious possibility that if Jordan won’t help her financially she will have to fill the house with lodgers or share it with another single parent. She can’t survive without her job at college and she can’t afford a child-minder. She wonders why she isn’t more worried about all this. She’ll be going right back to the mess she was in when Sally was three. Is she confident of Jordan’s generosity or is she already becoming bovine and stupid? No amount of focusing on all the known horrors, poverty, hard work and Sally’s wrath, the total disruption of her life, can make any difference. She’s regressing seventeen years to take the other fork at the crossroads. She’s in the grip of some vast hormonal force beyond her control.

  * * *

  Jordan rings about a week after his postcard, catching her at breakfast. ‘Hullo, I’m at the airport,’ he says without preamble. ‘Are you busy?’

  ‘No, come on over,’ she says. She’s so happy. For a moment nothing else matters. She’s going to see him, touch him again.

  ‘See you soon,’ he says, and for once it is true. She has an hour to bathe and wash her hair, change the sheets, consider what to wear. She’s in a fever of impatience and yet she would like to prolong the waiting time, a time of perfect happiness when nothing can go wrong. If he’s not pleased with her news she’s going to be terribly disappointed in him. Then he’s outside her door getting out of a taxi with his luggage.

  ‘Hullo,’ she says, smiling absurdly. ‘Did you have a good holiday?’

  ‘Not bad,’ he says. He looks brown and fit and wonderful.

  ‘Well, come in,’ she says. She closes the door behind him and they hug, kissing desperately, trying to touch each other everywhere. She’s remembered his smell correctly. They go straight to bed and he’s inside her at once. It’s such a relief. They lie there for a moment, not moving, not speaking, just looking at each other.

  ‘Good to be home,’ he says.

  ‘Nice to have you.’ She thinks of the crazy accumulation of contents: the coil, the child and its father, all safely tucked up together. She doesn’t care if she comes or not, so she probably will; she just wants to hold them all there. She thinks: I won’t tell him just yet. Maybe next time. A little more happiness first.

  * * *

  He takes her out to lunch and talks about the trip. ‘Really, my children are a feckless bunch,’ he says, sounding impressed.

  ‘Really?’ she says. ‘I wonder who they get it from.’

  ‘Jake’s dropped out of UCLA. He was meant to be doing his Masters but he was last seen selling souvenirs to tourists around Big Sur. Really creative stuff, huh? Susie’s staying on with him till October, maybe she can talk some sense into him, they’ve always been very close.’

  ‘Won’t he listen to you?’ She likes the family conversation; it makes her feel doubly linked. But she also thinks bitterly how easy it is to love large numbers of children if you don’t have to bring them up yourself. Ruth and Laura have done all the hard work for him and he is enjoying the results.

  ‘I was so relieved he’s not doing cocaine any more I didn’t say very much. I just hope he doesn’t inspire her to drop out of Oxford, we had enough trouble getting her in, she’s bone idle. A taste of lotus-eating may be too much for her. She was knocked out by the Grand Canyon, which of course I hadn’t seen in fifteen years, and how she really fancies spending a couple of years driving around the States like someone in a movie. She’s already got the dark glasses, now all she needs is the car.’

  ‘How’s Mara?’ she asks. She has an idea that Mara is his favourite.

  ‘She’s sort of okay but she’s not doing much work, she’s in love and that always destroys her. He’s a sculptor too, twice her age, married – what can I say? I don’t like his work and I think he’s more interested in sharing her studio than her bed, but there you are.’

  Pride shines through the complaints. She’s never heard him talk so much about anything. But after lunch he drops her back at the house and tells the cab to wait. ‘Well, I must go home and crash out,’ he says, picking up his luggage. ‘I’m knackered.’ Just at the last minute he adds, ‘It was strange seeing my in-laws again.’

  They kiss goodbye; he looks at her thoughtfully for a moment and strokes her face. ‘Take care,’ he says, not see you soon, for a change. She waits a
few days, to be undemanding, then rings him and gets the machine. She leaves a message but he doesn’t ring back. Back to square one, she thinks.

  * * *

  Sally comes back in late September, very brown and full of enthusiasm for Greece, chattering happily about her trip before breaking off suddenly to say, ‘Mum, are you all right? You don’t look well.’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ Helen’s heart lurches. ‘Just a bit tired.’

  ‘You should have had a holiday.’

  ‘Yes, I should.’

  ‘Is your painter back?’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘Maybe you can go somewhere with him.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You’re got letting him mess you about, are you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  Sally’s brought her interesting shells and pebbles; she’s also taken some rather good photographs. She seems so relaxed that Helen thinks, Not yet, I can’t tell her yet. I can’t spoil all this. Suddenly there is so much goodwill around.

  ‘Well, I’m going to disappear upstairs for a bit,’ Sally says. ‘I’ve done all the reading on the beach, now all I’ve got to do is write three essays in a week.’

  ‘Easy,’ Helen says.

  * * *

  She spends the week composing a letter to Sally in case she never has the courage to speak. It was bad enough telling Richard: she doesn’t think she can get those words out again. This time is going to be so much worse. Each day when she goes to the studio, instead of painting she works on the letter and when she goes home she leaves it unfinished, lurking in a drawer like dynamite.

  Darling Sally,

  Please read this to the end. I haven’t the courage to say it to you and I don’t think you’d let me get past the first sentence anyway. But I’m here to listen to whatever you have to say.

  I’m going to have Jordan’s child. Please don’t stop reading. I’m so afraid you’ll be hurt and angry and never forgive me. I know how unfair it must seem that I’m giving myself the choice I took away from you. I still think that was the right decision but you may not agree. I’ve got no excuses for what I’m doing now. It was an accident but I want to go through with it. I know it’s unfair that no one can stop me. I haven’t told him yet. I wanted to tell you first. Or rather I don’t want to tell you at all but I’ve got to. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.

  I’m giving you this just before you go back to college because I’m a coward and because I’m sure you’ll want to get away from me for a bit. Not too long, I hope. I love you so much. Please don’t hate me. Mum.

  ‘I don’t remember much about my childhood,’ Inge says to Michael. ‘Just odd disconnected things. Like a lot of noise and being very hungry and cold. I was born just after the war and I never knew my father, he’d been killed a few months before. I remember my mother crying a lot and then being very bright and putting on make-up and men coming to see her. I remember being sent away to my grandparents a lot. They lived in the country, so it was very different. Then my mother got married again and suddenly I had a new father, only to me it was like a first father, of course.’

  ‘How did you get on with him?’

  ‘I’m not sure. All right, I think. I was very careful to be nice to him. I remember that was very important. I remember my mother saying we mustn’t be alone again.’

  * * *

  On the very last morning, after a sleepless night, after breakfast, with Sally all packed and ready go, in fact on the very verge of kissing her goodbye, when she can’t put it off for another minute, when if she doesn’t do it now she really will have to post the letter instead, Helen feeling sick with fear finally manages to say, ‘Sally, I wrote you this letter but I ought to have the guts to tell you the way you told me – would you ever forgive me if I had a child with Jordan?’

  Her heart is beating very fast and she sees Sally’s face change as she listens, from anxiety to horror. She steps back, away from Helen, as if the letter in Helen’s hand can do her actual damage and says sharply, ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Now the full horror strikes her as the meaning sinks in. ‘God, you’re not going to, are you? You can’t be.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No. You can’t do this to me. You can’t.’

  ‘I know it’s not fair.’

  Sally looks at her with absolute hatred. ‘When?’

  ‘April.’ Helen can hardly get the word out.

  There is a moment’s silence. ‘I must go,’ Sally says. ‘I’ll miss my train.’

  * * *

  Richard rings that evening. ‘Did you tell her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did she take it? You sound terrible.’

  ‘It was bad. We didn’t discuss it at all – well, how could we? She was so angry, she just rushed off to catch her train, couldn’t wait to get away from me. I knew it would be like that.’

  ‘Give her time. She’ll get over it.’

  She can’t speak.

  ‘Helen? Would you like me to come over?’

  ‘No. I’m going to bed. But thanks. I wrote her a letter, in case I couldn’t tell her. In case she wouldn’t listen. But in the end I told her. I didn’t do it very well.’

  ‘Nobody could. Why not post the letter anyway, if you think it’s better? She might read it when she’s cooled down.’

  ‘I did wonder about that.’

  ‘It might make you feel better.’

  So next day she posts the letter, adding a few more words of love and sorrow.

  * * *

  Jordan rings the next day. ‘D’you want to come over tonight?’

  ‘Yes. I’m not feeling very sexy though.’

  ‘Neither am I. But I thought you might be feeling a bit flat after Sally went back.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ She’s grateful, impressed. ‘Your timing’s spot on.’

  ‘Well, Susie was passing through yesterday, on her way back to Oxford, so I thought about you.’

  ‘She’s not touring America then?’

  ‘No, thank God. Jake’s shacked up with somebody and she decided to come home.’

  She goes in the evening, conscious of looking her worst, driving through streets progressively more empty as she nears Dockland. She feels she is driving to the end of the world. Why would anyone want to live in such a godforsaken spot? And yet apparently it is the new trendy place to be. Her first glimpse of the river reminds her why.

  Jordan greets her at the door in the oldest of old clothes, smelling of turps, and enfolds her in a hug. She can feel energy refilling her with his touch. He draws back and studies her for a moment. ‘You look wonderfully wrecked.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’ It’s a big effort to be flippant, all she can do not to say, Yes, I am, and tell him why. Maybe she should.

  ‘No, I like it. On you it looks good, as my in-laws used to say.’

  She feels surprised and comforted by his mentioning Hannah’s parents, as if he is drawing her into the fold. She goes in to the huge space of his living-room to be cosseted with lasagne, Chianti, Chopin on the stereo and blazing logs in the grate.

  ‘A real fire,’ she says, ‘how lovely.’

  ‘Yes. It’s probably against some bye-law, but who cares? You’re tired, aren’t you?’

  ‘Just a little.’

  ‘Let’s have an early night.’

  Lying in bed beside him she thinks, Now is the time to tell him, when he’s being so nice. But it feels like blackmail, and besides, she hasn’t the energy. She didn’t think anyone could comfort her for Sally, but apparently he can. Later, just as she’s drifting off to sleep, he says, ‘I may have got you here under false pretences. I may have to make love to you after all. If I’m overcome by lust in the middle of the night, just ignore me. I’ll start without you and you can always join in later.’

  * * *

  Felix lets his publisher give a party for the book. He thinks publication should be marked by some event, like a cake or conjuring tr
icks for a child’s birthday, although in this case he himself is the conjuror and his rabbit has been hard to pull from the hat. There were many days when it kicked and struggled or lay around limply, with its ears flat to its head, refusing to come out, making him look foolish. Seeing copies of the book around him now, and his smiling photograph, he feels some miracle has been performed, some sleight of hand that he has already forgotten how to do and so can never repeat.

  But he feels sad when asked whom he would like to invite. All the people he most wants to be there are angry with him or on the forbidden list: Richard, Helen, Sally, Inge. He has lost his extended family. And yet they had all been at Helen’s ghastly show eighteen months ago, where he was not the centre of attention. He thinks this is very ironic.

  He tries to relax and make the best of the party, though he is too tense to enjoy it much, as he knows that a lot of the media people present do not wish him well. Some of the other writers will be wondering how his book will compare with their own latest efforts in terms of advances, reviews, publicity and sales; and some of the journalists now eating and drinking as much as possible are already planning savage column inches being witty at his expense. There are also a dozen or so ex-lovers and deceived husbands he must charm. But mostly he is distracted by the bad reviews he is composing in his head, so that whatever the others say, he will have already said something worse, and any praise will be a nice surprise. He always does this: it’s his way of taking out insurance. Elizabeth, knowing this, comes up to him and says in a low voice, ‘Damn it, Thurber, stop writing,’ before drifting back into the crowd. She makes him laugh; she is at her best on occasions like this. And Natasha, like a good agent, has saved up the news that she has nearly sold the film rights, so that she will have a little present to give him on his big day.