A Gift of Poison

by A Gift of Poison (retail) (epub)

  Then he sees her. She must have only just arrived or he would have noticed her before. She is not exactly across a crowded room but in a corner adjacent to him so he must have actually had his back to her when Natasha came up to him. People are crowding round her and they are all men but they are not standing very close, rather gazing from an official distance, as if admiring a work of art. He can see why: such beauty is daunting. A sinuous body in a short black dress, long thick hair fashionably tangled and various shades of golden brown, and perfect legs that he immediately longs to have wrapped round his neck. But the face. He actually hears himself gasp when he sees the face. The sculptured wanton aristocratic beauty of the face makes him stare at her in awestruck silence, as if at a newly discovered masterpiece by Michelangelo. He has always been deeply affected by beauty.

  ‘My God,’ he says to Natasha, ‘I think I’ve fallen in love,’ in much the same stricken tone that he might have told a complete stranger in the street that he had left his wallet in a taxi.

  Natasha laughs. She assumes he is joking.

  ‘Oh, that,’ she says. ‘Quite something, isn’t she? That’s Raffaella Lucci, she’s a photo-journalist. She wants to do a piece on you for a rather crappy magazine called Ciao! She’s not very good, but as you can see, she doesn’t have to be. Shall I introduce you?’

  ‘In a moment,’ Felix says. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been struck by lightning. I need a little while to recover.’

  * * *

  ‘And now look at me,’ Raffaella instructs, ‘and don’t smile, but think about something that make you very very ’appy.’

  Felix obeys. It is almost impossible not to smile. Her English is rapid and fluent but her accent is strong and she drops all her aitches, so it is like listening to an Italian who suddenly lapses into Cockney, a disconcerting effect. She takes a lot of photographs very quickly. It is a surprise every time she reloads, as if he did not really believe she has film in her camera.

  ‘And now look just over my shoulder, towards the window and think about something sad. And now say something to me, I want you to move your mouth.’

  ‘How do you like London?’ Felix says. He feels quite weak with longing. All his best lines in chat have deserted him. She is wearing a warm, spicy scent that seems to fill the room and have a hypnotic effect, something like cloves that calms and excites him at the same time.

  ‘I like it. Talk some more. If you talk your mouth is very soft.’

  ‘You don’t look very Italian.’

  ‘I come from Milan.’ Her green eyes challenge him from behind the camera. It’s like being undressed by her. ‘In Milan we all look like this.’

  ‘Then I must move to Milan immediately,’ Felix says faintly.

  ‘Why bother, when I live ’ere now?’

  * * *

  Over lunch she puts her tape recorder on the table.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you? Now, in your book, who loves the greatest, do you think, the man or the girl?’

  ‘The man,’ says Felix promptly. ‘After all, he kills himself when his wife won’t have him back.’

  ‘But that don’t mean ’e loves the girl or the wife, it mean ’e don’t like to live alone.’ Her eyes look at him speculatively, as if they know a lot about him; they are old eyes, but her mouth is childish. He tries to guess her age: twenty-seven, twenty-eight perhaps. She will be in perfect condition for at least the next ten years: old enough to be interesting and young enough to be flawless. Glossy and streamlined and pampered like a prize-winning racehorse. He feels a constriction in his throat when he looks at her, making it hard for him to swallow his lunch. Every angle of her face has a poetic beauty; every movement she makes has a fresh aspect of grace.

  ‘When I read your book I say to my ’usband, if I leave you, do you kill yourself, but ’e say, no, I kill you and then I find a new wife.’ She laughs.

  ‘It’s not always that easy,’ Felix says.

  ‘So I think I don’t leave ’im. I love ’im very much and ’e is very rich. Those are two good reasons. I think marriage is for ever, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Felix says. ‘I’ve always thought so.’

  ‘So when it’s for ever, you ’ave to make it very easy, don’t you think? I like your book because it’s all about sex and love, but in real life the man don’t leave ’is wife for the young girl, and if ’e do ’is wife probably take ’im back when the young girl leave him, and if she don’t ’e find another young girl or another wife.’

  ‘Or both,’ Felix says. He has never talked less in an interview but it doesn’t matter. He is used to listening to women, and looking at Raffaella’s face seems to use all the energy he has, with little left over for speech.

  ‘Yes. Both is better.’ She laughs. ‘So you write a good book but you don’t write the truth. What do you say to that? Is that why they call it fiction?’

  ‘People do kill themselves for love,’ Felix says. ‘You read it in the papers every day.’

  ‘But not people like us,’ Raffaella says.

  He wonders where she has picked up that particularly English phrase. ‘Perhaps not,’ he says.

  ‘For people like us, love is a game.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Felix says, ‘it’s the only game in town.’

  ‘I like that. Are you a gambler then?’

  ‘Not with money. An emotional gambler perhaps. But my hero is meant to be the new man, in touch with his feelings, and his feelings destroy him, the way women’s feelings have traditionally destroyed them.’ He thinks he must get that much on record.

  ‘I don’t believe in the new man,’ Raffaella says. ‘I think ’e is just the old man dress up like the wolf when ’e pretend to be Red Riding ’ood’s grandmother. The old man is like American Express. He will do nicely. Don’t you think?’

  ‘I certainly hope so,’ Felix says.

  * * *

  Later in October a letter arrives from Sally. Helen opens it nervously. A lot depends on this.

  Dear Mum,

  I read your letter. I can’t answer it. The whole thing is so horrible for me. I can’t bear to see you while you’re like this so I’ll go to my father for Christmas. I don’t think I can see you till the whole thing is over and I don’t ever want to see it when it arrives. I know you’ve got your reasons and maybe I’ll feel better later, but right now I feel awful. Please don’t write back. I’ve had enough. Love, Sally.

  Helen reads the letter several times and puts it away in a drawer. It is a very high price to pay for Jordan’s child. If he has really killed her relationship with Sally, will she ever be able to forgive him? He has given her something precious, but destroyed something even more precious. Then she thinks she is wrong to blame him. This is something she has done herself for her own complicated reasons and she must bear the consequences, in every sense of the word.

  She is still brooding over the letter when he rings, quite late at night. ‘You sound a bit low,’ he says when she answers.

  Again she is tempted to tell him the truth, but she doesn’t, because now she would be telling him in bitterness and the child deserves a better introduction than that. Anyway, it can’t be done on the telephone. ‘Sally’s not coming home for Christmas,’ she says, sufficient reason to sound low, she thinks.

  There is a slight pause. ‘Oh,’ he says casually. ‘Shall we go away somewhere then? Would you like that? I would.’

  She is so surprised she hardly knows what to say. ‘But what about your famous moods?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be in a Christmas mood by then. And it’s only three days.’

  How simple he makes everything sound. Perhaps he only ever does what he wants to do. Perhaps that is his secret. And perhaps she is already learning to be like him.

  ‘What about all your children?’ she asks, thinking, I’ll have to tell him soon, this is crazy, making plans for Christmas, the new one will be obvious by then, how weird, he’ll be spending Christmas with the new one. Unless he changes his mind, of
course.

  ‘What about them? I’ll just tell them I’ll be away. They can come for New Year instead. It’s Laura’s turn to have her three for Christmas anyway.’

  ‘Are you friendly with Laura?’ she asks. She has noticed that he seldom mentions her name.

  ‘Not exactly. When Hannah died she sent me a card saying, “Now you know how I felt when you left me.”’

  ‘God.’ Helen thinks this sounds like the kind of thing Inge might do.

  ‘I’m friendly with Ruth though. As soon as I left Laura, Ruth and I got ever so friendly. She even came to New York for the wedding when Hannah and I got married. Wanted to make quite sure I’d really done it, I suppose. It helps that she’s remarried, of course. I go back to Wales and stay with them sometimes. He’s a nice man she’s married. Suits her better than I ever did.’

  How carelessly he mentions their names, these women spanning the last three decades of his life. All those days and nights together, all the rows and routine, happiness and boredom and pain, all gone, leaving only memories and children. How much feeling is there left underneath that she doesn’t know about? Does she sound the same when she talks about Carey and Richard and the last twenty years? How strange to be having a child by this man she finds at once familiar and unknown. There is something comforting about the late-night chat all the same, something inconsequential but soothing, like verbal aspirin, taking her mind off Sally for a little, easing the pain. She doesn’t want him to hang up yet.

  ‘D’you think you’ll ever go back to New York? To live, I mean.’

  ‘No. I’ve had the best of it. I was there at the right time. It was nice to be taken seriously for a change when abstraction was still a bit of a joke in England. You should have come, you might have liked it.’

  Oh Jordan, she thinks, what a thing to say to me now. ‘But it’s getting more ruthless. I don’t know, it’s all mixed up with Hannah and me, anyway. Once she died, New York was over for me.’

  ‘I wish I’d known her,’ Helen suddenly says, meaning it, not something she had ever thought before.

  ‘Yes, you’d have liked her, she was a sweetheart.’ Suddenly a great urge to be with him, to touch him, to comfort and be comforted, to tell him the truth. And yet somehow impossible to ask him to come over. The need to be alone is stronger.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘d’you think you’ll sleep now?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘I expect I shall.’

  * * *

  By the end of the month they have accumulated the usual clutch of contradictory reviews, which they assemble one Sunday afternoon, reading them aloud to each other or passing them across the table.

  ‘Here’s one you might like,’ Felix says. ‘“The narrator, while superficially charming, soon reveals himself to be devious, immature and, when the crunch comes, fatally dependent on his wife.”’

  Elizabeth smiles and says nothing.

  ‘“But the young girl, Lisa, fails to convince as a human being, and more properly belongs in a masturbation fantasy.’” Felix checks the by-line. ‘Well, he should know.’

  ‘“Anatomy of a Love Affair is a moving analysis of man’s inhumanity to woman,”’ Elizabeth reads out. He thinks she sounds a little smug.

  ‘How about this?’ he says. ‘“Cramer is better known as a thriller writer, but his style has an incisive lyricism that lays bare the human heart.” That should do nicely on the paperback.’

  ‘Don’t get too cocky. “The man’s character is well observed in all its human frailty but the girl is a fantasy figure straight out of a wet dream.”’

  ‘Another well-known wanker. But here’s a man with good taste. “The young girl – innocent, louche, streetwise – is a memorable creation.”’

  ‘“The character of the wife is well-observed”’ – Elizabeth responds - ‘“a woman of steely compassion who reaches her final breaking point.” How did they know?’

  ‘But “Cramer’s flabby, pedestrian style does nothing to redeem a predictably melodramatic story that belongs in the tabloid press.” Ouch. Eek. Yaroo.’ He smiles, but he hasn’t enjoyed the ritual as much as usual: this time it seems too laden with personal innuendo to be fun. ‘Well, we’ve got three or four good ones,’ he says. ‘That’ll be enough. You can bin the rest. Flabby, indeed.’ He wants to make her laugh. ‘Why does a novelist get middle-age spread? Because he’s got too many novels under his belt.’

  But she stays with the resolute smile of a woman who has a lot to forgive.

  * * *

  It is to Inge that he turns for advice, tantalised by Raffaella almost beyond endurance. ‘It’s a joke,’ he says bravely. ‘I ring her and I get the machine. I leave a message and she doesn’t ring back. Then she sets up a meeting. Then she cancels. Then we finally meet and she makes me tell her in detail what we’d do to each other in bed. Then she gropes me under the restaurant table. Then she goes home. And I haven’t even kissed her yet.’

  Inge laughs sympathetically. ‘Poor Felix,’ she says. ‘I don’t understand women who tease. I could never behave like that, it’s such a waste of time. What happens if you pretend you’re not interested?’

  ‘I can’t. I have to see that face. I have to be close to her. She’s got the most extraordinary smell – I don’t know if it’s scent or soap or shampoo or just her skin, but I can’t get enough of it. It’s a joke, isn’t it?’ he says again.

  Inge shakes her head. ‘You’re obsessed – like the man in your book. Felix, I think you should be very careful what you write next. When you wrote about Tony Blythe getting hit on the head, Richard knocked you down. When you wrote about the man and the wife and the young girl, Elizabeth sent you away. Now you’re doing what you promised her you wouldn’t. How much trouble do you want?’

  ‘She’s not even particularly interesting. She’s vulgar and selfish and aggressive, and if she wasn’t so beautiful she might be quite boring, I think. The piece about me never appeared in the magazine either.’

  ‘Well, maybe it’s a good thing. It’s a terrible magazine, I saw it once. They had nice pictures of clothes but the articles were very silly.’

  ‘She says it’s been postponed till the book comes out in Italy.’

  ‘Perhaps it was only an excuse to meet you. Then you could be flattered.’

  ‘D’you think it might be that? Do you really?’

  ‘Oh, Felix, you sound so eager. Shall I ask Michael what you should do? I’m sure he could help. I think he’d tell you to set a time limit so you don’t feel so helpless. Or maybe you should just relax and enjoy it. Maybe you need a little obsession. Maybe it’s too long since you used that part of yourself.’

  He doesn’t like the jargon. ‘And she’s going to Barbados with her husband for Christmas, so if I don’t go too I won’t see her for a whole month. But if I do go, Elizabeth may catch us together.’

  ‘Oh, Felix,’ she says tenderly, ‘You’re not even listening.’

  And she had wanted to talk about Michael.

  * * *

  When the last day comes she is still undecided what to do. Will it spoil everything if she tells him now? Will it be unethical? She has tried so hard to behave correctly. She couldn’t bear him to think she is just one of those silly women who throw themselves at their therapist. Will he think less of her if she tells him? Will it cancel out all she has achieved? Or is it dishonest not to tell him? She has been wrestling with all these questions for months, but always calming herself with the thought that there was still time to decide. Now suddenly there isn’t. It’s her last appointment.

  Today she watches him with special concentration in case she never sees him again. That favourite gesture, when he takes off his heavy horn-rimmed glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. He always does that at least once in the fifty-minute hour and she waits for it with excitement because it makes him look so different that it’s like being with two people for the price of one, or so she thought the first time he did it. Today she just thinks sadly that she may nev
er see it again. His face without glasses is naked and vulnerable like hers without makeup. He looks tired and she wants to put her arms round him and kiss him better, like one of her children when they were small. Then she wants to take all his clothes off and make wonderful love to him, two adults on equal terms.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to you today,’ she says, as the time ticks away. ‘I’ve always had so much to say and today all I can think of is it’s the last time.’

  ‘Well, we could try rejoicing at all we’ve achieved.’

  ‘We could. But I just keep thinking it’s goodbye and I don’t know how to say it.’

  ‘Goodbyes are always difficult, aren’t they?’

  ‘I know we’ve planned it like this but now it comes to the point…’

  ‘There’s always the telephone,’ he says mildly. ‘If you have an emergency. But I think you and I both know we’ve done all the work we can usefully do for the moment.’

  ‘I think I’m having an emergency right now,’ she says suddenly. ‘I can’t say goodbye. I can’t go away. I love you, Michael.’ What a relief it is to have the words out. So much tension has passed out of her that she feels almost calm.

  ‘My dear Inge,’ he says. ‘My very dear Inge. That’s so much more than I deserve.’

  ‘Is that why you’re sending me away?’

  ‘Is that really how it feels?’

  ‘No… Was I trying to cheat again? I know we agreed to do it like this. We’ve done the work we set out to do and I’ve made a lot of progress and it’s time for me to manage without you. That’s what you said, isn’t it, more or less?’

  ‘I think it’s a little more than managing, don’t you?’ he says. ‘The truth is you don’t actually need me any more. That means we’ve succeeded.’

  ‘But I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? If I come over to you now and put my arms round you…’