A Good Woman

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘I’ll let Anita know when I can.’ I underlined that I had understood.

  Grant chortled. ‘And you’ll give her the young man’s name. Unless there are reasons for keeping it private, of course.’

  ‘There are no reasons.’

  ‘So you’re to be an honest woman, at last?’ Grant needled me.

  ‘Have I ever been anything less? To Mr. Grant Rutherford, at least?’

  I opened the car door and as I did so he took my hand and kissed it with mock courtesy.

  ‘Never,’ he said seriously. ‘And I trust it will stay that way.’

  ‘My boss wants to take us out for dinner,’ I said to Robinson that weekend.

  ‘Oh? Is that a good thing?’

  I giggled, ‘I’m not sure. But I guess we have to accept.’

  Grant took us to The Four Seasons, as if he were pointing out to me the distance we had travelled since we had first dined there. Or perhaps it was an uncustomary nod towards sentimentality. I don’t think Robinson had any notion that he was anything other than my boss, though unusually for him, he did drape his arm loosely over my shoulder as we made our way towards Grant.

  There was a tense, guarded courtesy about the two men which I half-managed to dissipate by talking too much and drinking too much too quickly. Then they locked antlers. Grant suddenly displayed a hidden and tortuous knowledge of genetic research and the perils of genetic engineering, whereas Robinson, who was looking exceptionally handsome in a dark suit I had never seen him wear before, waxed lyrical over the rise of Saatchi and Saatchi, only then to attack the nefarious grip advertising had on politics, the dangerous reliance on image and sound-bite.

  ‘I’m with you there,’ Grant surprised us both by saying. ‘But if that’s what the electorate want,’ he held up his arms in a helpless gesture and chuckled.

  ‘To know what you want, you have to have choice, real choice, not competing slogans devised by the same kinds of manipulative minds.’

  ‘Do you mean politicians or advertisers?’

  Grant was all veiled innocence, while I wracked my brain for an anecdote which would deflect the growing hostility. Then Robinson suddenly excused himself and vanished into the men’s room. Grant looked at me in silence and with a glimmering impatience. After what felt like a long time, he took my hand in something of a paternal gesture.

  ‘He’s a handsome young brute. But you’re far too clever to be a romantic.’

  I didn’t have time to weigh the sense of this or answer, for Robinson chose this moment to reappear and I had to extricate my hand as innocuously as possible from Grant’s.

  We left soon after.

  Robinson’s only comment about the evening was to say that Grant seemed to know his business well and he was obviously a good boss if he wined and dined his staff and their mates in such grand fashion. I don’t think there was any irony in the statement, but Robinson didn’t stay at my place that night as he had for so many previous ones. Nor did he make any sign until about a week later. Needless to say, I was distraught. I also didn’t understand his silence.

  When he finally rang me again, he behaved as if nothing untoward had happened. Explanations, reasons, were never in Robinson’s line. Instead, we fell into bed together, and despite work and all the other commitments, it felt like months before we re-emerged. The magic of our mingled bodies engulfed us, cocooning us in our passion. Somewhere in those months, I was offered a job with another firm. I took it, happy to leave Grant and his prickling little asides, his queries about the imminence of wedding bells. Once he even said he wished I would hurry up over it, so that we could get together again. I scowled at his cynicism, though part of me thought it might be true.

  It was late spring when Robinson himself mentioned the prospect of marriage. We were in the Adirondaks on a week’s holiday. A friend had lent us his house, a cabin really, on the slope of a densely wooded hill with a stream rushing over rock somewhere in the distance. Everything was scented with pine and woodsmoke, even our love-making. We were like children again, traipsing amidst the trees, dipping our feet into the freezing water of the stream and running wildly to warm ourselves. We took to making love outdoors. In the daytime too. Robinson would spread his anorak on the rough forest floor and we would lie there looking up at the streaking sunlight, listening to the birds’ call as we had listened to the mooing cows, until we found ourselves in each other’s arms, our limbs entwined, the act gradually mysteriously, enveloping us, dictating its own rhythms, its own postures.

  On the evening before we were due to leave, we were sitting at the little card table we had set up in front of the cabin and munching cheese and apples, catching the fading pink of the sky, when Robinson suddenly said to me, a propos of nothing, ‘You know, by the end of September, I have to be back in England. You’ll come with me, won’t you? We’ll get married. I love you.’

  He was looking at me, but his words visibly embarrassed him, and I started to kiss him, as much to rid him of his embarrassment as anything else. And then he carried me indoors onto that camp bed with its rough grey blanket and thinnest of pillows and our senses took over, obliterating any need for a verbal reply. That night I remember thinking that if I had been an artist, I would have been able to draw Robinson by blind touch alone, the hollow of his foot, the taut arch of his calf, the slight bristle of his thighs, all the way up to the tendons of his neck, the precise curve of his jaw and lips, the thick grain of his hair. And myself, too, from the pressure of his fingers.

  But the next day when I woke from the cradle of his arms, there was a niggling difference about everything. It was as if with the word marriage, time had entered into our togetherness, a future time which had nothing to do with the vibrant present tense of our passion. I recognized that if I had ever been in love, I was in love with Robinson. Though what the words meant when I examined them, was none too clear. They seemed to imply a ‘forever’, but this forever ought really to have been a timeless extension of the present, whereas when Robinson spoke of the future, he talked about a great many concrete things.

  He had moved in with me now, and whenever the opportunity arose, he made plans for us. He talked of a house we could rent in the countryside outside Cambridge, just where a single hill dipped. There was a pond and with luck a pair of swans might appear. He talked of a dog we would get who resembled Small in every detail. He talked of the manifold courses the university offered which I might wish to engage on. He even talked of children.

  At first, I tried to imagine myself in this idyll, but I was uncomfortable. Something in me baulked. It came to me that for all his lip-service to my separate being, Robinson could see no reason why I might choose to be who I was; why I might want to stay in New York and pursue what to him was meaningless work with only money as a reward. Over that summer other things about him began to irritate me: the fact that he would often position his chair so that he could look into the middle distance and not at me; the fact that he never noticed what I was wearing, so that I began to feel I had no identity for him but that nakedness of the nighttime act; the fact that whenever we had even a minor disagreement, he wouldn’t argue, simply withdraw into himself, and punish me by refusing his body. His silent presence was nonetheless there and gradually, too, I grew resentful of the unceasing regularity of that presence.

  I wasn’t aware of this all at once. September came round and Robinson simply assumed that by the end of the month I would travel with him to England, or join him soon after. It was towards the middle of the month I think that Grant rang me and invited me to lunch. He wanted to discuss a work problem. I hadn’t seen him for some time and it was over that lunch, filled with humour and compliments and unspoken questions, that it came to me that really I preferred being the other woman. The woman whose time was in her own control.

  Robinson taught me that. He also made me reflect on what it was that made passion with him so addictive for me, so particularly potent. I realized that with him, I lost myself utterly and I li
ke to lose myself. There is an exhilaration to it, a wild irresponsible freedom, like the pounding of waves against a rocky cliff. And a risk. Not knowing where limbs and boundaries end and others begin, whose lips have uttered which moan, whose heart had taken up that hammering. Who is me and who is the other. The act is poised on the precipice of disintegration. Yet one wakes from the journey to find features swimming into focus again, a leg, a hand, a voice, that moves to one’s command.

  And that is the contradiction. The sexual act apart, I value my control. And I want it. I have no desire to prolong the merging, to find myself halved in couplehood.

  I tried to explain some of this to Robinson, when I said I wouldn’t come with him, but I don’t think he understood. Perhaps I wasn’t very clear. Perhaps we were both just too young, on either side of our mid-twenties. He was hurt. His face stony, he told me I thought too much, as if that were somehow an impure activity. Then he left in a silent huff and I cried, mourning the absence I had thought I wanted. He wrote to me not too long after to tell me he was getting married and I sent him a note of what were almost honest congratulations. Then some two years later, he wrote again to tell me the marriage was all but over and he was coming to New York on a brief visit. We met, both a little wary, a little older too, and wiser. Robinson could sometimes look me in the eyes when he took my hand.

  We became friends and the friendship has lasted. Sometimes when the conditions are right, we even go to bed together. When bed is good with Robinson, it is like with no one else. That may just be the legacy of lying in the heat of the barn together, so long ago. The legacy of innocence. Perhaps, too, it’s that as you grow older, its nicer to lose yourself with someone whose features you trust as they come into focus again.

  The bath water has grown cold around me. All its heat has gathered inside me into a shaft of pure longing for Robinson. I would like to lie with him. I would like to lose myself. What else have these last months been but the attempt utterly to lose the self I had become. The longing is stronger than the fear of confrontation and before it can evaporate, I wrap myself in the huge hotel towel and make for the phone. Fate will determine the rest.

  Robinson is there. His voice has the familiar hesitancy masked by formality. I am about to identify myself as Maria d’Esté when I realise that Robinson only knows me as Regnier and this slippage makes me stammer a mere, ‘It’s Maria.’

  There is a pause, then Robinson swears at me. ‘Maria. Where the hell have you been? I’ve heard nothing from you in ages.’

  ‘I’ve been in Paris.’ I elude explanations. ‘I’m in London now, for a few days. It would be nice to meet.’

  ‘I wish you’d let me know ahead of time.’ There is a querulous quality in Robinson’s voice that I don’t recognize and for a moment I panic. Robinson has given me up.

  ‘Don’t worry if you can’t manage it, Robinson. Are you well?’ I pull the towel more tightly round me. I am cold.

  ‘Perhaps Thursday evening. Where are you staying?’

  ‘At the Savoy. I’ll book a table in the Grill Room, just in case. At eight.’

  Robinson whistles. ‘I’ll leave a message at the desk.’

  Then he adds, ‘Or perhaps you’d rather come up here. On Saturday?’

  ‘Let’s play it by ear,’ I say. I have never wanted to see the Cambridge Robinson would have settled me in. Even less so, now. ‘I’ll look out for your message. Under my mother’s name, please. Maria d’Esté.’

  I ring off quickly with a sense of depression, console myself with the thought that Robinson and I have never managed to speak adequately on the phone. Like children and lovers, we exist for each other best in proximity.

  -18-

  Even on a bright day, the Thames Embankment does nothing to welcome strollers. The murky waters of the river are too wide, the pavements barren, but for the swoop of a scavenging gull or pigeon. All of life seems to be enclosed in the ranked, jostling cars and distant towers. The northern side of the street, with its flower strewn garden and leafy alcoves, is better. London is a city of parks, as if the only purpose of brick and stone and concrete were to breed green and golden dreams of country.

  I pass under a fringe of plane trees and find the gateway to the Temple. There is a sudden hush in the air, as if I have crossed into a different city, a separate time zone. Rich lawns slope away from meandering lanes closely banked by rows of old brick. Old gas lamps mark the way - doorways painted with names, a library, the warm stone of a church, and fountains, their jets of frail water catching the sunlight. Even the brisk tread of the dark-suited advocates does nothing to rupture the cloistered tranquillity. The law is its own sanctified precinct.

  I wander and lose myself, then hurry along, remembering that I am here for work - work I am once again supremely grateful for since it has allowed me to find this place I had no idea existed.

  My appointment is for 10.30 and I find the elaborate doorway with the chambers name just in time. Inside, it is slightly dank and gloomy. A narrow, precipitous stairway leads me up to the second floor and a warren of doors. Jennifer Walters is ready for me. She is a woman of my own age with eyes as bright and shiny as wet pebbles and a humorous lilt to her lips. Her suit is requisition black, but it is well cut and the collar of her white blouse has a lacy frill to it which matches her thick waving hair. As she rises to shake my hand, I see that she is surprisingly small and all energy. Her voice, when it comes has a warm garrulousness to it. I like her instantly.

  ‘So you’ve made your way across the hundreds of years and watery miles which separate us to get a little look-in on the strange workings of British justice? She laughs engagingly. ‘Tough going, I imagine.’

  ‘Just as tough for me on the other side.’

  ‘Ah, but we’ve no code books here with thousands of nicely numbered entries. Only thousands of lovely, dusty precedents.’ She gestures dramatically at the thick tomes on the walls.

  ‘Amongst which you’ll point me to the relevant ones?’

  ‘Here it is. All ready and waiting.’ She hands me two sheets of paper filled with neat jottings. ‘According to the express orders of the master, or should I say ‘Maître’ - she rolls her r’s along with her eyes. ‘Nice bloke, the Maître. Though his English leaves something to be desired.’

  ‘Which is why I’m here.’

  ‘You mightn’t find any of this crystalline, nonetheless,’ she gives me an appraising glance. ‘Legal rulings are not known for their transparency.’

  ‘In this instance, I’m only a translator with a computer at the ready.’

  ‘And as for the rest?’

  I tell her more about Paul’s women who kill than she can have garnered from his letter and she listens intently. Then it is her turn. With a succinctness which in no way diminishes her fervour, she explains to me that the current battle in Britain is to have a plea of self-defence accepted in cases where battered women have murdered their husbands as a result of cumulative and daily provocation, but waited to do so until the man is asleep or prostrate in an alcoholic stupor. Judges are too ready to say that such a change would institute a licence to kill, but the experience of other countries shows otherwise.

  ‘I don’t know about France, but here judges seem more easily to grant that a wife’s nagging can act as provocation to murder, than the continual and brutal treatment of a drunken husband.’ She grins, ‘Guess they’ve had more experience of the former.’

  She names cases and dates and I quickly jot down the ones I know nothing of. Then she gives me some necessary background to the trial which is opening tomorrow and for which she is Counsel for the Defence. She says she can let me see the notes when it is all over.

  My hour is up. As I rise, she smiles at me wryly.

  ‘And don’t forget, if you get stopped by a British bobby, we have Habeas Corpus here.’

  I don’t know what she is talking about and while I painfully try to translate from the Latin, she goes on.

  ‘Yes, here our bodies are
our own. When we can get access to them, that is.’ There is a distinct twinkle in her eye as she adds, ‘Give my best to Maître Arnault.’

  It is only when I am sitting in the Law Library that something I am reading illuminates her parting words. In France, there is no Habeas Corpus; the body of the citizen belongs to the State and can thus be held captive before any official hearing. In Britain, the body is the subject’s alone.

  But it comes to me that Jennifer Walters was doing more than pointing out cross channel differences. There was some kind of implication about Paul, a suggestion that my body belonged to him perhaps, whereas hers didn’t, but might have done.

  My palms grow oddly moist at this sequence of thoughts. I have deliberately averted any notions of Paul as a sexual being over these last weeks. And they have been weeks of growing comradeship, our Friday afternoon sessions extending into long evenings of heated debate, so heated that if I were still the woman I once used to be, there would be only one resolution for the friction of these arguments. Two or three times I have caught the question in his eyes, but I have turned away, despite the temptation. All that is behind me. There will be no more adventures. I conjure up Beatrice, as I would clutch at a talisman. Nonetheless, the passing weeks have made me take note of the temptation: its presence confirms that I have rejoined the living after a year in the barrenness of the desert.

  On the Friday before I came to London, Paul and I ended up at Le Dôme for dinner. The wine-red plush and languid curves of the belle époque interior provided an incongruous setting for that day’s subject. We were discussing infanticide, that crime in which a new born is killed moments after its first breath. There were three cases at issue. In the first a jobless middle aged woman, already mother of two and on the poverty line had taken the child she had just given birth to alone in her ramshackle apartment and deposited it unceremoniously in a street bin. In the second a seventeen-year-old with a strict father and pregnant stepmother, had flushed her own infant and placenta into the family toilet and proceeded to faint in the very bathroom in which the birth had taken place. In the last a provincial bourgeoise managed to kill her new born, product of a hidden rape, while her husband carried on working across the hall.