South of the Lights

by Angela Huth

  Henry returned at eleven. He hadn’t stayed out so late for years. Rosie quickly controlled the worry on her face, gave him a welcoming smile and suggested the tomato soup. But he wanted none of it. He seemed not to notice her, he seemed quite preoccupied. And then she understood. He had been drinking. Not just his normal two or three pints, mind. But real drinking. Whisky. She could smell it on his breath, see it in the liquid red-brown of his eyes. She did not manage quite to conceal a gasp, and then she saw, mounting the stairs, he was very unsteady. She had given him an arm, said there, there, you’re all right, my love, Rosie’s here – and helped him to bed.

  He’d been asleep a couple of hours now. Snoring. Rosie sighed. Her plan had so nearly been entirely satisfactory. A pity . . . But still, you couldn’t hope for everything. Not all at once. There was plenty of time.

  Under the sheets Rosie rubbed her hands together, feeling the skin still greasy with tonight’s helping of hand lotion. Oh, he would be amazed, Henry, when the time came.

  He would not believe it, would he? She didn’t mind waiting, really, of course. She was so sure all would be well at last. At the feel of her soft bare hand on his shoulder he would turn over, wouldn’t he? Aroused, wanting. . . And all the old passion – no more than a memory for so long – would be upon them both again. Rosie Evans, she said to herself, squeezing her greasy fingers, you should have thrown away those mittens years ago. So much wasted time to be made up for: we must begin tomorrow night.

  She heard the church clock strike three.

  Part II

  Summer expanded: hot, dry. Last year, Augusta remembered, was altogether more temperate. There had been a spate of light showers, sudden from a clear sky, catching them unawares. On several occasions they had had to run from tea in the garden – in those days Augusta still occupied herself with cucumber sandwiches of brown bread, honeycombs, and iced coffee swirling with whipped cream – anything, anything to delight Hugh, to deter his thoughts of leaving. With their guests they had had to pick up plates and glasses, run across the warm grass, the warm gravel, and into the sudden dimness of the hall whose flagstones, too, were warm beneath bare feet. Augusta recalled, in the present silence, the laughter of their friends: the released movements of people cooled by shadow when they have come in from the sun, cobwebs of rain on their hair, the high, irresponsible feeling they all shared of there being nothing to do but to please themselves till dinner. In fact the frail showers were a kind of bonus, making the view of lawn and trees a temporarily new place, a landscape of spun glass: then the sun would return to melt the sparkling, and on the barely dampened grass they would take up croquet mallets and continue their game. It was the laziest summer ever Augusta could remember, but, beneath the idleness, chimed reverberations of implacable fear.

  To protect themselves from each other Augusta and Hugh surrounded themselves almost constantly with friends. Every weekend the house was full and it was not difficult to put discord aside. Hugh was wonderfully benign, proud of his house and exhilarated by the delight it gave other people. Augusta shared his feelings and, together among their friends, they were at their best. Funny, gay, they sparked off in each other ever more absurd plans which would never materialise, but the thought of them was nonetheless enjoyable. There was no time for dispute. In the pleasure of those armoured days there was no occasion for the deadening discussions of their own problems. High spirits would be the order of the weekend: not till Sunday afternoon did Augusta begin to feel the chill of an ebbing tide. It was the time of week she most dreaded: that peculiar sadness of an English Sunday afternoon, that long chilly slope that begins with the apple tart and cream and dwindles into the bleakness of cold meat for Sunday supper when everyone has left. This abhorrence, Augusta supposed, was inherited from her days at boarding school: the sickening feeling of imminent return to real life which no amount of jollity can disguise.

  In happier days at Wroughton, Sunday afternoons had been less bad: while teasing her for neurosis Hugh had at the same time skilfully worked upon releasing her from it. Augusta, in retrospect, was unable to analyse just how he had done this: she simply recalled that, for several years, weeks of Sundays would go by with only an occasional lapse into familiar melancholy. But, their last summer, Hugh’s magic worked no longer. The disintegration of Sunday symbolised the disintegration of their lives: the lamentable bells of evensong were a horrible cry. They would wander about their warm garden, soothed by the smell of tobacco plants quivering with their own scent, reluctant to face real issues and yet unable to avoid them. The problem of money increased daily, but they were united in their madness of overspending. Monday morning there would be more bills: Sunday evenings, discussions about how to pay them had an air of hopelessness. While butterflies flurried about the lavender, the reality of a vast overdraft seemed not quite to touch them with its deepest implications. But for all its moments of dread and fear, Augusta remembered last summer as gravid with idyllic days. It was a time not wasted, not regretted: for all its blemishes, it shone with that particular light that distinguishes a few seasons in a lifetime, and it would remain thus for ever in her mind.

  This year it was harsher, starker. Lack of rain caused the leaves to dry prematurely. Their crisp shapes, against blaring near-white skies, made eyes to ache with their brilliant green. Shade was anaemic: patches of lawn were burned yellow, birds were too parched to sing.

  But the office men, impervious to heat, gleaming necks in nylon collars, returned with increasing frequency to survey the house and grounds. They became cockily familiar with the place, pouncing over and over again upon the same cracks, shouting possessively about the ‘grand views’ from the windows. Augusta came to recognise them as individuals: the strutting chairman; the managing director with his weird smile which looked as if his mouth, in reality very small, was permanently distorted by magnification; the fat spinster secretary whose plastic stilletos caused her to stumble uneasily across the lawns. She was unused to such spaces of grass, as she kept informing everyone in her Wimbledon voice, and was given to much panting when the chairman made her take notes while he traversed the garden in his puffed-up manner.

  The seriousness of their intent was in no doubt, and they began to take dreadful liberties. One day they brought cans of beer and executive sandwiches – inappropriate Gentlemen’s Relish – to eat in the shade of the elm tree for lunch: they did not bother to ask Augusta’s permission until halfway through, and seemed insensitive to her disapproval. They merely tightened the laces of their suede shoes, as city office men find it necessary to do after a few hours in the country, and stubbed out their mini cigars among the daisies. They spoke of the possibility of the back drive becoming a car park, and enquired if domestic and secretarial help was readily available – they actually used the phrase readily available – in the village. Augusta assured them no one was in search of a job.

  But she knew surrender would soon be forced upon her the day they brought the architect. A pale Mr Droby, of suburban inclinations, was the architect – a friend of the estate agent through whom the Brownes had originally found the house. Having accomplished his minor function of linking drains to new bathrooms, he had boldly suggested to Augusta and Hugh that he should then go on to improve the general architecture of the William and Mary building. His idea had been to embellish the place with archways, and alcoves of shelves lit with concealed bulbs. In his view it was advisable to flatten out the undulating walls, double glaze the windows and hide the beautiful pine stairs under a thick protection of Wilton carpet. Furthermore, he suggested, his wife could be very helpful when it came to interior design, as he grandly called it, should Augusta find herself with no ideas. He brought along snippets of man-made silk in Various shades’ to ‘tone in’ with unsubtle paints straight from a chart. He was sent away rebuffed, and disapproving of Augusta’s plans. But he waited. Time would come for his revenge, and with the arrival of the office men, it did.

  He was called upon for his valuable opin
ions and most vociferously he gave them. Augusta, in the background, overheard his frightful suggestions with increasing horror. She understood that Droby realised here was a renewed chance to ruin something on a grand scale, and this time he was not going to let that chance elude him. With a sense of complete helplessness Augusta listened to him describing the mock Georgian porch with which he would ‘make a feature of’ the façade: in his hands, she realised, there would be no end to the ruination of the house. It was imperative the office men should be deterred. But, by now, nothing could stop them. A week after Droby’s visit, inspired by his optimistic views of how the place could be much improved under his guidance, they made an offer. The price was disappointing, but it was the only offer in six months. The money was guaranteed: Hugh, with surprising sadness on the telephone to Augusta, explained they could not refuse it. ‘Because once the house has gone, we can’t really mind what happens to it,’ he said. ‘Oh, but we can, we will,’ retorted August. ‘We must save it.’ ‘No good being sentimental,’ said Hugh, ‘I’ve agreed they shall take possession in January.’

  January. Four months.

  The positive news blasted Augusta with what turned out to be a new series of acute sensations. The nature of uncertainty, in which she had been living for the last year, is some protection. Stripped of that, and faced with an inescapable ending, it is a strong mind and body that can survive intact. Augusta knew that she must be calm: frenzy would waste the days. All she could do was to make the most of the last weeks, living each day, in the biblical sense, as if it was her last: praying for slowness of the hours. Self-pity she had always abhorred and never indulged in: her new problem was how to deal with the physical symptoms of incredulity. As they crushed her, that first evening she heard the news, she found herself little equipped to resist them. With no heart to go into the garden, she stood in the brown light of her study, head resting against the warm glass of the window pane, and allowed herself to weep outrageously. Tears were a strange sensation, she was unused to crying. Their release did nothing to ameliorate the anguish, but the sound of her own moaning in the silence provoked a detached curiosity about herself. She was spurred by self impatience. What was the good, what was the good? Glutting sorrow upon roses, Keats’s facile suggestion, was no help outside poetry. No: she must return to the normal habits of an evening, continue as naturally as possible. But what were those habits? Since Hugh’s departure the rhythm of things had been upset. Most days she floundered, restless, unable to concentrate, only intent on constantly re-establishing by actual touch the existence of her territory. It occurred to her – she smiled to herself – that if anyone in the past few months had observed her pacing about touching flowers, walls, pictures, they would have thought her quite mad. She must pull herself together.

  Augusta blew her nose, thinking how ugly she must look. She had a long, cool bath, watching the elms dissolve into cumbersome shapes as the sky faded. And, later, she did in fact achieve some kind of exhausted calm, although a strange pain began to drill her jaw. She was determined there should be no more private outbursts: they did nothing but enfeeble. The uselessness of tears was disillusioning. She did not cry again.

  Rosie Evans was inclined to see omens in small things that might escape the notice of less observant people. The afternoon the Red Admiral flew through the kitchen door – trying to escape the ruddy heat, poor thing – she knew at once her luck had changed. Although almost two months had gone by since she had burned her mittens, she had not yet approached Henry. Why, she could not exactly explain to herself, but some instinct warned her to remain patient for a little while longer. The fact that Henry had made no comment on her hands, naked now every night, seemed to her a good sign. They cannot have repulsed him, or he would have broken his silence. Maybe he thought they had improved, and when the night to touch him finally came he might not be surprised. He might even be pleased.

  But the Red Admiral signalled the end of all such hopes. Rosie watched it fluttering against the window pane, seeking escape. She put up her hands to catch it and return it to the door. It was then she noticed, in the fierce midday light, their sorry state. Overnight, it seemed, the soft greasiness of her skin, achieved by two months of rubbing in hand lotion, had vanished. Her fingers were wintry again, dark and swollen, scored with rough cracks. She uttered a low moan. Tears came to her eyes. It could only be some confounded allergy – but to what? The doctors had no idea: she had been asking them for years. Dear God, it was unfair. She had no spirit to sew herself more mittens and tonight, if he noticed her hands, Henry would turn away his head, barely hiding his disgust. He would heave himself away from her to the far corners of the bed.

  Rosie caught the butterfly. She felt its wings flickering in the black cage of her palms, vile palms rough as sawdust, which Henry could never forgive. She kept it trapped for a moment longer than was necessary, its fear a wicked comfort. Then she let it go, dropping her hands heavily to her sides. It flew up towards the elms, dazzling as illusion, and disappeared. Rosie licked the corners of her mouth. She tasted salt. She looked at the dry earth, the dusty lane, the unbroken blue of the sky, and struggled to control a sob. The luxury of weakness, she contemplated, would suit her now. She would like to slip into the cemetry, unobserved, go to her mother’s grave in its shady place under the hedge, lean her head against the rough stone cross and roar out loud against the unfairness of her inherited hands, till all her grief was exorcised. As it was, she saw Henry in the road. Even from this distance she could tell he was unsteady on his feet. Rosie returned to the kitchen: in all the upset she was late laying the table for his dinner. But would he eat it? For several weeks, now, he had done no more than pick at his food, complaining of the heat. Every afternoon he had slept in his chair, no pretence of looking at his paper, waking just in time to return to the Star when it opened at six. Through the tangle of her own preoccupations Rosie was aware that all was not well with Henry. She put it down to the sun – every blinking day, there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky for two weeks – and the monotony of retirement. He wasn’t a man to take to rest easily, not after a life of vigorous work. Rosie worried about him. Perhaps, she thought, they didn’t go out enough. The Morris Minor sat under its plastic cover, untouched, for months on end. Silly waste, really. Rosie herself had no taste for pottering along lanes in a stuffy car, whose brakes she could not credit, but she knew it gave Henry pleasure. Perhaps she should suggest . . . a cinema, one evening. They hadn’t seen a film in years. That would make a break, surely. Something to talk about for a week or so – something to take Henry’s mind off his wretched bricks.

  Rosie brightened at her idea. Going out, evening, there would be nothing unnatural about wearing her nice lace gloves, which would give her confidence. She needn’t always be hiding her hands. Perhaps, if she was feeling very bold, she might even try brushing Henry’s knee, in the safety of the dark, as she reached to get a toffee from the bag she would insist he bought on the way in. Ah, hope! There was remedy for all things in hope, Rosie knew, and she wasn’t one to be dashed by a spell of bad luck. Besides, there was so much to be thankful for. A happy home, a faithful husband who needed her at this time. She began to slice the luncheon meat, and to arrange her smile of welcome.

  ‘Henry, my love,’ she said, hearing him outside. She looked up. He stood swaying in the door, averting his eyes from her face. With a great effort of will, Rosie continued to smile.

  ‘And this,’ said Evans, with a sweep of his arm, ‘will be the lounge.’

  He stood on one of its walls, three bricks high, surveying the foundations of their future house: his and Brenda’s. Heat and pleasure had caused damp patches under the arms of his shirt, and he imagined the bathroom, where next summer he would wash every day. He fancied tiles, some pale colour chosen by Brenda, and a mirror high enough for him to shave into without having to stoop. He also had in mind an especial front door, one that would be a cut above the other front doors on the estate, with a brass knocker in
the shape of a cockerel’s head. He hadn’t managed to find such a thing as yet, but if the worst came to the worst he would have one made. A silly extravagance, his mother would say, but it would please Brenda no end, and when it came to the house she would take a bit of pleasing.

  He knew that in her heart she longed for it to be ready as much as he did: to be married, settled, chicken-breeding, decorating – to be safely cocooned by the gentle monotony of their own lives. But something perverse in Brenda – and after all it was her spirit he loved her for – caused her to complain. Not only to complain, but to be downright insulting about the whole place, the whole idea. Her lack of enthusiasm might have daunted a feebler man. To Evans, it merely spurred his determination to enchant her with visions of their future.

  ‘And that, there, where you’re standing, Lark, will be the front path. A nice fine gravel I’ll get from a mate up the road.’

  ‘Bet the regulations won’t let us,’ said Brenda.

  ‘Bugger the regulations.’ Evans jumped down from the lounge wall. At the back of his mind lurked something far more worrying than the regulations – the money. The house would be finished by Christmas. Evans had persuaded his friend in the agency selling the houses, for the price of a few drinks, to secure this particular house – the best site, on a corner, a patch of trees not far away. But for the moment he was still short of £200 on the deposit money. How he would find it in time was a problem that kept him awake at nights, Brenda asleep in his arms, exhausted by his love-making. (Worry, he’d noticed lately, was a strange aphrodisiac.) She never asked him about money – such things as deposits and mortgages were beyond her understanding and interest. Evans considered it wise to keep the problem to himself, disguising it with cheerful optimism. He tilted his head to the sky.