Aunt Margaret's Lover

by Mavis Cheek

  But the telephone is not autonomous and it is suddenly wrenched from a soothing, long sleep by one of its companions up in Hampstead. Damn fool time to ring, ten o'clock at night, it thinks, but it has to oblige. If it doesn't, there will be gynaecological explorations the next day and British Telecom is renowned for employing engineers with hands like shovels, fingers like Cumberland sausages. It is rumoured that they do this on purpose to keep the equipment on its toes. So it beeps for the upstairs and rings for the downstairs and Verity, who is on the point of giving the gin bottle another thrill, puts it down in wonder. Margaret, she thinks, Auntie Margaret, she hiccoughs, Auntie Margaret back early from Paris.

  Verity is muddled but clear on one point. Her friend is a very brave woman, a very brave and wronged woman. For Mr Perfect, Mr Simon Oxford Bloody Perfect is abandoning her brave, wronged friend and leaving her. Leaving her for ever. Oh, they may be in Paris now having a last fling, but Margaret must be weeping inside, weeping. Verity hiccoughs again and weeps herself. The question she wants answered is, if Mr SOBP can do such a thing when he seemed so nice, then what the fuck is Verity doing resisting Mark? He may have been an oppressive wally, he may have messed about from time to time, he may have been a bit cruel here and there, but he never went off to Nicaragua suddenly, did he? Tenerife once, using her money and not telling her - but Nicaragua? It was a bit bloody final. Cruel? Cruel? Mark was only on the baby slopes compared to that. In fact - Verity begins the long, slow crawl up the hallway - in fact, compared with all that, Mark is a gem. Which is why she sent him that funny recipe she once wrote.

  Verity finds nothing strange about approaching the hall telephone on her knees. She quite often goes about the house like this at night, and early in the morning too. During the day she can become homo sapiens, can do her work sitting up even if the screen is a bit fuzzy, but at these other times it just feels better and safer to behave like most other mammals.

  She answers the phone brightly, aware that cunning is required when you have been consorting with the spirit of the bottle. It is a man's voice, a familiar man's voice, a very familiar man's voice.

  'Verity,' it says, 'I need you.'

  'Good,' she says, 'come back. All is forgiven,' and she puts down the receiver with the slow care it prefers. That is the answer, then.

  She is thinking now, thinking fast, but not on her feet -she is thinking on her knees as she ascends the stairs. A slow process, but with something positive to be gained now, unlike sometimes when she gets up to the top and forgets why she attempted the climb in the first place. Leaning over the side of the unwelcoming bath, she turns on the taps and pours in shampoo which produces peaks of white pearliness that make her sit back in wonder for a moment. Where did it all come from? She negotiates a more upright position and reaches for the bath oil, which she rubs into her head under the gushing water. Something is not quite right, for the foam is below her nose, instead of above it, but she works on at herself, bubbling inside with happiness. Old times, she says into the echoing tub, just like old times, as she rinses, and rinses, and rinses her hair. She gropes for a towel, is about to wrap it around her head when she smells it. Not a good smell. Not at all a good smell. Crawling along the passageway, dripping wet, laughing to herself, pulling the smelly old item behind her, she arrives in the bedroom. Made it, she thinks, and she hurls the towel at the linen basket, where it drapes itself grimly over the wickerwork. Not my fault, it says to the mirror and the brush. Too bloody right, they agree. All watch with concern as their owner teeters around, pulling open drawers for fresh underwear, rifling through the wardrobe for something exotic to put over the top of her unsteady body. She makes a game attempt at walking down towards the bathroom, but seems to be going backwards. She turns around and takes it backwards, which sort of works - although there are a few unexpected encounters with walls and bannisters on the way. Once in the bath she feels on top of the world. Water, she thinks, I must drink plenty of water. Bloody old Aunt Margaret keeps urging her to do this, so she will, she giggles, but she won't tell her that she is right - oh no. Smuggins with her bloke - well, now Verity has hers back . .. Ha, ha. Ha bloody ha .. . She slips her head under the water and guzzles. As she rises, grimacing and amused at the nasty taste, she thinks she is very obedient and that is why something good has happened to her at last. 'Good girl, Verity,' she says, staring at her toes, which wiggle of their own pleasurable volition.

  Her legs! She stares at them as, by some strange Lazaran miracle, they rise up, one after the other, out of the sudsy water. They look like a gorilla's. Depilate. She tries the word out - finds it is jolly difficult - and reaches for the razor. Mark's beloved razor, left behind when he went, something she was not able to throw out. She begins the slow and careful task of removing unwanted hair - a sharp razor, this, very sharp, and her hands, although she tries to hold the razor down with both of them, are not very adept. The water begins to go red. Verity wonders why. More water, she thinks, and turns on the tap, guzzling again as it slooshes out. She leans back, warm and contented. Just for a moment she will rest - and then onward with the task of making herself beau tiful for him again.

  The bath will never recover from the trauma. If a bath can have a Nightmare on Elm Street, this is it.

  Half an hour later, Mark discovers what he takes to be his ex-lover's suicide. When his ring at the door went unanswered, he took the key from the flower pot and let himself in. He had lost his job and felt desperate. He needed looking after. He hunted her down, to find her here in a bright pool of gore. If the bath feels in need of therapy, it is nothing to what Mark feels he will need. Fucking women, he thinks, as he hauls her out. She comes to as he gives her mouth to mouth, and she responds in the only way a woman being made love to can. She closes her eyes as she kisses him back, for Mark's expression, in her opinion, is not all that it should be under the circumstances.

  Jill props the letter next to the card from Paris on the mantelpiece. Both are from Margaret. The card says, 'Our consolation prize for missing skiing - this is much better.' She touches it, then the letter. No, she does not find the tale of Verity very funny, despite Margaret thinking she would. It comes too close to moments she has experienced herself recently. April nearly here and she's the fool. Amanda is still not speaking to her properly, observing only the niceties, imparting information dutifully but full of reproach. Giles will be home for good soon, but although last year she looked forward to his return desperately, now it means nothing to her, as the days mean nothing, for there seems to be no happiness left in her world. She crosses to the window seat. This is where she has taken to sitting most days, half hidden in the curtains, knees drawn up, chin in hands, watching the gradual changes taking place outside, unable to participate on any but the most detached level. Every part of her feels bruised, the taking in of breath too real, too painful, asking too much of her. As she asked too much.

  Why she did not just burn the card, she does not know. Perhaps there is some kind spirit somewhere who knows that its continuing existence has a purpose - that one day she will be able to look at the boulevard with its cafes and couples, see the little red arrow Margaret drew to denote their hotel room, and not feel bruised any more. So it stays, a reminder only of the darkest moment in her life. She is sure of that -there was never anything darker before and she would plead with any god that there should never be such a darkness again. She has not been in the room since. No doubt the red silk is still twisted and crumpled, hanging down from the bed in its coil of mockery. That was where it all began, and where it all ended. They should have gone to a hotel. Then at least she would have been left with a room that had blessed two real and open lovers, and not her and her ersatz attempt. Not attempt. Failure. Margaret and her man were the last real lovers in that room. She knows that now. She should never have tried to compete. Never.

  Why she did not listen on that first occasion, she will never know. She was not quite hooked then: she could have rejected the prognosis, said 'Jolly
good sex' and all that, and gone on her way. But no. She heard but did not listen. She did not listen because she did not want to hear.

  'This is an affair,' he said. Why then did he stroke her cheek, caress her breast, as he said the words? 'This is a delightful, delicious bonus in our little humdrum lives, just for a time. You are married. I am married. And we will both stay that way. We understand that. Do we?'

  She had let him kiss her as she nodded and replied that she did, of course. Two grown-up people, just a bit of fun and excitement among these here hills . . . But it had never been that for her and she thought she had managed to hide it quite well - the pain, the dreams, the terrible, terrible loneliness that being apart from him gave her. This is Love, she knows, and she must bear it alone. But everything is diminished in its light.

  David, her dear, loyal, unsuspecting husband, became no more than a nuisance, something to be got round, but a compliant cuckold. His long trip to Japan made the meetings wonderfully often, completely abandoned, once or twice lasting for whole nights so that she could imagine what living with him would be like. Even when he said there had been others before her, she paid no attention. For was she not real, there, now, determined to stay? So there would be no room for future women. She was Future Woman. She would never give him up.

  Giles and Amanda slipped into near meaninglessness. Amanda). Poor, poor daughter of hers. Poor, poor grandchildren, having a grandmother who was demented and sick with grief when her lover did not see or speak to her for a day. They came into the kitchen, the children, on New Year's Eve. She had made an excuse. She had cheesecakes that had to be delivered - she had forgotten. She must do it, but she would be back for dinner. The shop was open late that night - a lie, but no one would check, everyone trusted her, and how that made the hurting twice as bad. The cheesecakes were on the bench, four of them, and she asked the children to help her carry them to the car. They were eight and ten - eight and ten. When the littlest stumbled in the yard, dropping his burden, she had screamed and screamed and screamed with rage - all the rage pent up for so long -hitting him across the head with her free hand, until Amanda ran out into the cold, only half dressed because she had been changing. She stood there shivering, with protective arms around her children, protecting them against their own grandmother who had saliva on her mouth and raw rage in her throat. But she had not abandoned the exercise. No, not she. She had still gone because the drug was too strong. In the car she had settled herself back, smoothed her hair, dabbed at her mouth and reapplied her lipstick. She arrived at his house looking as if she had not a care in the world, and had been let in by his surprised but always friendly wife.

  'We are going away tomorrow,' she lied, 'and I forgot to bring you these. I am sorry to intrude on your - '

  Then she noticed. They were not having a family party as he had said. There were no others there. He was sitting on the floor by the fire playing a card game. Plates and cutlery and the detritus of a meal were pushed to one side on a trolley. A meal for two. Early dinner. Brandy glasses by the cards. He was wearing little maroon leather slippers with his initials woven on the fronts in gold. Horrible things. She wanted to kiss them.

  His nice wife suggested that she have a drink. She declined. His nice wife asked where they were off to tomorrow. She said Morocco - the first thing that came into her head, because of the leather slippers probably.

  'Ah,' said the nice wife. 'While the children are away, it is very nice to play.' She gave a coy littie smile with her plump and healthy cheeks. 'We, too,' she continued, gesturing at the cards and his smile - no one could possibly know, he did it so well, the smile of a polite new friend. 'This is our first New Year's Eve without them. We thought we'd just be the two of us and enjoy it.' And the smile went on. She was wearing some kind of kaftan - in silky black and red. Seductive gear. She'd get a poke tonight. Poke, poke, poke.

  Poor Amanda. 'You need a doctor,' she had said. Her daughter was already packing up the camper van when she got back. She was setting off for home, a long drive, late at night, but she would not hear of waiting until the morning. How much she wanted to fall into her daughter's arms and tell all, seek forgiveness, understanding. But she could not. She blamed her for this inability and was less abject than she might have been. To be angry with the world is an infection - you want everyone else around you to be angry with it, too. Amanda left angry, very angry. It would take a long time, if ever, for Jill to make amends, a long time for the children, already tucked up and asleep in their mobile bunks, to come near her again. Only David, who had not witnessed the scene, but knew it was bad, could put his arm around her as the lights of the van drew distant. She put her head on his shoulder as they walked back into the house and she let him run her a bath, give her a brandy and tuck her up in bed. The next day, when the doctor came, she asked for Hormone Replacement Therapy. Which seemed to satisfy everybody.

  Giles is coming home soon, but she scarcely cares. And the little market garden which she had loved so much is gradually sliding away from her. These are critical growing times, but she has no Sidney (he had even taken him away, market forces he had said - she had let him even do that) and now she had no heart for it. Spring cabbage, that is all she is now, spring cabbage.

  The last bit of her heart had deserted her for that room upstairs when she had knelt, naked, weeping, clutching his knees, pushing the bones of them into her breasts. Why could they not go to Paris? Her friend was there. Look, look - see the card. She had flown down the stairs, brought it back to him.

  'I think we are getting in too deep,' he said, dressing. 'I think this should finish.'

  'Just a few days? A couple of nights in a lovely, wicked French hotel? Why not?' She knew if he would do that, she could capture him. Even, maybe, cause it to be discovered, so that he would have to abandon that pudding wife with her bucolic smile, and come to her for ever.

  He shook his head, kissed her lightly on the forehead as she crouched on the bed, clutching the red silk to her for comfort, and left.

  No, Verity's story was not funny. Not funny at all. Margaret, secure in her cocoon of love, her legitimate happiness, could get things very wrong.

  Chapter Seven

  We got a bit drunk on our last night. Well, I suppose we would, wouldn't we? We sat in my kitchen, across the table from each other, and shared a bottle of champagne. He had already gone, really, and the talk was almost all about the journey: what he would find when he arrived, whether he would ever be able to get letters back to England, how our meal this evening would probably be his last decent food for days, if he knew anything about inflight catering. We had already said most of the important things over the last few weeks - that it had to be, that we always knew it had to be. The panicky question 'What have we done?' was calmly answered by our reminding ourselves that what we had done was what we had set out to do. We had enjoyed so much in that very brief time, but it was a tiny piece of make-believe -and now the lights would come on again. It had been a little bit of theatre, jointly directed, our audience kept in the dark.

  There was a sentimental flurry across the champagne glasses when he pushed the book of Inigo Jones's sketches towards me and asked me to write something. For a moment I couldn't think what. Absurdities such as 'Have a nice trip' or 'Best wishes' were hardly appropriate. Nor lines from Ovid's Cures for Love - too bitter. I stared around the kitchen looking for inspiration among the bits of paper stuck here and there. Perhaps a recipe for wood restoring? Or an article on why yoga is bad for you? Or a clipping on rose blight (why did I keep that?). And then I saw the much yellowed, slightly grease-spattered, years-old Baltimore Desiderata which Saskia brought back from a trip to Canterbury. Better than rose blight, anyway. Privately I thought that if you followed all its advice, you would never do anything except sit indoors with a blissed-out smile on your face, much less 'go placidly amid the noise and haste . . but there were some appropriate lines.

  The world is full of trickery

  But let this no
t blind you to what virtue there is -

  Many persons strive for high ideals and everywhere life is full of

  heroism. Be Yourself.

  'I know this,' he said. 'I used to have a copy of it in my office at home.'

  'Most people have a copy at some point in their lives. They stick it up, sigh over it, and then do the opposite of all it recommends.'

  'That's rather cynical,' he said. 'Not like you to be so withering about the spiritual struggle.'

  'No? Perhaps you never really knew me.'

  'No,' he agreed, touching my hand. 'I don't suppose I did. Not the inner you. Nor you me. Certainly not the darker side.'

  'I don't believe you've got one.'

  'And I don't believe you've got one.'

  'Perhaps we should leave the illusion that way?'

  The truth was that I was feeling jumbled up and uneasy, which was less to do with his imminent departure than with facing up to Saskia's imminent arrival. Raw. I was very definitely feeling raw, an emotion which champagne and a farewell to someone I knew I could trust only encouraged.

  Verity hadn't helped earlier in the day. 'I told you he would go away if you bought him a travelling bag,' she said triumphantly, before switching into her condescending mode. With Verity it always helps to remember Elizabeth's favourite maxim, quoted by her every time her ministers told her to wallop France or pile into Scotland: 'It is folly to punish your neighbour by fire when you live next door . .So I kept my peace.