Rich Deceiver

by Gillian White

  ‘I expect only nice people are allowed to come and live here?’

  ‘Well, for the money you have to pay for one of these apartments you’d hardly get your riff-raff. This is one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the city.’

  ‘A long way from Nelson Street, Malc.’

  And he nodded thoughtfully as he brought his wife her drink.

  Ellie had tried very hard to look presentable this evening. She had gone to Maria Williams’ boutique for the first time ever… ‘Glamour Puss’… in the centre of town.

  ‘Anything special?’ asked Maria in a bright brittle voice. She must have known something was wrong because Ellie’s face was still puffy and Malc’s jeep hadn’t been parked outside the bungalow for two nights. Ellie could have told Maria that Malc was away, that wasn’t so unusual, except for the fact that he kept popping back during the day to see her.

  Ellie was terribly tired and way beyond playing games. ‘No, nothing special. It is just important to me that I look nice.’

  ‘Well, about how much do you want to spend?’

  ‘I don’t care what I spend,’ said Ellie impatiently. ‘As long as I get the right look.’

  ‘Well then, let me recommend…’ and Maria began to pull dresses out, brightly hanging each on the changing-room rail before launching into a fanciful description of every one.

  With her dulled senses Ellie was confused. What sort of image did she want to create, what sort of impression did she want to make on this scheming termagant who had taken her husband—and more than that, did it honestly matter? She thought that it probably did, and it was that which kept her inside the shop and prevented her from running out into the street in tears, flapping Maria off her as you’d flap at a persistent wasp.

  Ellie knew that whatever she bought she was not going to look good. You couldn’t look good when you felt like she did inside, dreary and frightened, abandoned and ugly. But she would do her best, and it was important that she choose something comfortable. She pushed away Maria’s bows and sequins, she turned her back on the balls of netting and the petalled skirts, and in the end she chose quite a simple blouse and skirt in wishy-washy blues all run together, made out of silk. It was the rubbery texture of the silk and the smooth coolness of it that attracted her. She might not be able to appear smooth and cool, she might not be able to ripple elegantly over the bulging difficulties of life, but her outfit did.

  ‘I think you have made a very sensible choice,’ said Maria, eyeing the price-tag with pleasure. ‘That’ll take you anywhere.’

  What on earth did that expression mean?

  She’d already decided to wear the pearl earrings which Malc had bought for their anniversary, and the silver bracelet he had chosen with love last Christmas.

  And then she popped into the hairdresser’s before going home and just had a simple cut. Her hair was very depressed, the hairdresser, Simon, said. She could have told him that.

  Malc had been as good as his word and it was only the next day he phoned to ask if Friday would be all right. ‘Friday night,’ he said, ‘and Gabby says how about a meal?’

  And if Ellie was taken aback by the nerve of the woman, she didn’t show it. She responded with pluck. ‘That sounds nice, but where?’

  ‘Here at the apartment. Well, it’ll give us a little more privacy, we thought…’

  ‘Yes, lovely,’ said Ellie, astonished, gripping the phone with a shaking hand.

  ‘Nothing formal,’ said Malc.

  ‘Well no,’ said Ellie.

  ‘No fuss, I mean,’ said Malc. ‘It’s not necessary. I’ll pick you up about eight.’

  Like a date, really.

  ‘You still want to go through with this?’ he finished tentatively.

  ‘I have to meet her,’ said Ellie staunchly.

  ‘Well, that’s that then. That’s organised.’

  She felt he expected her to say something else but she didn’t know what there was left to say, so she just said goodbye. She always tried to say goodbye first on the phone; she always tried to get up first in order to end their meetings. She was desperate not to be left hanging on, clinging and unable to let him go—like that first time—when she’d tried to hang on to his coat. And he couldn’t know that the minute the phone went down she slithered to the floor, weeping copiously into the receiver.

  A pale blue light shaped like a Canterbury bell came down on the end of a long cord and dangled over the table, which was laid on the raised platform beside the vast picture windows that overlooked the river. There were various salads set out in chunky white bowls looking healthy and clean. Wine was cooling in a silver bucket. Outside, on summer nights, Ellie imagined they’d have dinner on the balcony. There were urns out there, and plant pots, and white iron chairs, and what looked like a very complicated barbecue. If you looked down to your right you could just see the angular patterns of the gallery roof, like a complex design of wooden pyramids leading off round the corner. You could smell Gabriella’s bathwater, heat and body, hot hair and essence of roses. You could also smell the food, something spicy and dark, something well under control, simmering sensibly, coming from the kitchen.

  Gabriella entered straight from the bedroom. She was wearing a kind of karate suit, the trousers and jacket fluttered several feet behind her and it was the smooth way she walked that made Ellie think of the adverts for sanitary towels they’d started to put on the telly. She was also wearing a turban and Ellie, on first sight, thought she had washed her hair and forgotten to take the towel off, but this was not so.

  She walked straight up to Ellie, opened her arms and tried to kiss her.

  Ellie sat very still and allowed Gabriella de Courtney to waft round her. Malc got up from his chair—did he always get up when she entered a room?—kissed her and caught her hand. They had eyes only for each other.

  They were in love!

  And this was the only sort of woman with whom Ellie could not deal. She wanted to curl up like a child. She wanted to suck her thumb. She wanted to call out, I don’t want to be your enemy, I want to be you, to be yours, I want for you to be my mummy.

  ‘I am so glad you came,’ said Gabriella, terribly directly.

  ‘I felt that I ought to meet you,’ Ellie replied.

  ‘I liked you the minute I heard that,’ said Gabriella, coming to sit down beside Ellie so that the white leather sank with a little puff. ‘And I know that in spite of all this we can be friends.’

  Ellie’s heart was banging in her face, shooting colours there, and terrible, uncontrollable pulses. Malc fetched Gabriella a drink and while she sat there waiting for it she held out a hand pointed like a snake’s head and stared at Ellie with interest. She said, ‘Put the veggies on darling, they’re all ready in the kitchen,’ and Malc almost bowed to her before drifting across the carpet and out. Dark and lean and suave in his chocolate-coloured jacket, his roll-neck sweater and his perfectly creased trousers.

  Gabriella leaned forward and the leather puffed again. ‘And now we have a chance to talk.’ Her breath smelled of toothpaste. ‘You must be feeling very lonely and confused just now. It was brave of you to come here. You’re a strong woman, Ellie, aren’t you?’

  Ellie sat back. Her stomach bulged silkily; she should have worn the shirt outside, she should not have worn a belt and tried for a waist.

  ‘Darling, how rude of me.’ Gabriella leapt up. ‘You must be gasping.’ And she came back with a carved wooden box full of expensive cigarettes.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Ellie, waving her lifeline away. And then she said, ‘I have come to tell you that I’m not giving him up. I have come here to tell you that, whatever the cost, I am determined that Malc will come back to me.’

  Gabriella looked flabbergasted. ‘You can’t mean… whatever the cost?’

  Ellie sat forward and the leather groaned. ‘I do mean it. I mean exactly that.’

  ‘But I thought we could make this a pleasant evening… getting to know each other. It is i
mportant that we do that, you know, Ellie.’

  Not only was Ellie having to fight the enemy, sitting here so silver and white, so beautifully poised beside her, she was having to find the courage to attack the fears and insecurities of a whole lifetime. All the Plunket-Kirbys of the world were ranged against her in this luxurious room, all the Miss Bacons, all the women that she would have loved to have been but could not understand, let alone defeat. Di, Margot… even Mrs Gogh, any of those she could fight and win with a fist or a sharp nail or a shrill, screaming, hair-pulling scuffle. She wanted smooth, clever words, and disdain. She wanted a silvery laugh, a dismissive smile. She wanted half-closed eyes and a silky haircut like all the women on telly, like all the women in magazines with their perfect, plastic faces. She forced herself to repeat the words she’d rehearsed fifty times. ‘We may well have a pleasant evening, once you understand my position quite clearly, but it is important that you get this fact into your extraordinarily well-wrapped up head. Malc and I have been married for over twenty years. We have two children who mean a great deal to both of us. You don’t want him… you have your pick of men, you are clever, pretty and vivacious. I am getting older, I am set in my ways. I do not have a career or an absorbing interest. I am not particularly talented in any way. But I am half of Malc and Malc is half of me, we have grown together like two old roses in a garden and our roots are intertwined. I love him as he is, no matter what he does or what happens to him or what mistakes he might make. I love him…’ and then Ellie ran out of words and sat back, gasping, tempted to beg for forgiveness.

  Gabriella’s slightly pointed face came towards her with its mouth just a little parted. She said: ‘How terribly interesting! You are all the same—you people, you are all the same! The minute you see something you consider yours by right slipping away from you, you rise up and fight, never considering if it’s something you really want, or something you wouldn’t be better off without! Look at yourself! There is nothing there to attract a man like Malcolm. Habit—security—some false ideas about safety and growing old alone, lonely! That’s why you want him… and to save face. You never wanted him before he left you—admit it! Why can’t we both be honest and both come out of this victorious. You don’t want him and I do. And perhaps the most important factor of all is that he doesn’t want you!’

  Ellie did not reach out and rip off Gabriella’s turban, she did not grab for a handful of hair. She resisted and said, ‘He has been hypnotised by you and everything he thinks you stand for, that’s all. Once the novelty has worn off—and it will, oh yes it will—he will move on. He is not like you, Gabriella, he doesn’t come from the same kind of background as you…’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right darling, bring up that old chestnut. Malcolm has told me how important you consider background and breeding. Honestly, it’s people like you that keep the class thing going, forever harping on about it as if it’s static, as if it’s something that hasn’t been changing! Open your eyes, Ellie, for God’s sake, look around you! While you were stuck in your rut down Nelson Street the world was turning. You were left behind, dragging your old ideas along with you, huddled up behind your net curtains, looking out at the world you could never have, and cursing it for leaving you out! I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that you actually resented Malc’s getting out and getting on. I wouldn’t be surprised at all.’

  ‘You are wrong, Gabriella.’ And Ellie swallowed a hiccup of fear.

  ‘Everything that Malcolm says about you is true!’

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘That it was you who always kept him down. That you allowed yourself to get pregnant in order to trap him. That he was forced to give up night-school because of you and your feeble moanings, and that you have no ambition, none whatsoever. He says he has to drag you along to places and that you don’t know how to change… Now, are you sure you still want him, at any cost?’

  ‘You think so little of me and yet you expected me to accept this situation, to come here tonight and make friends?’

  ‘I couldn’t believe what Malcolm was saying. I thought we could solve this in a sensible, forward-looking way. And I had to meet you, Ellie, for all sorts of most important reasons I had to meet you and judge how much you really cared.’

  ‘Malc is finding his feet in a new world. The things he says are defensive, he is trying to justify his years of failure to you and to himself at the same time, can’t you see that? Anyone can look back and find excuses; there are always people to blame for not being who we would like to have been. And there is truth in it all, yes—anyone can bend the truth to their own advantage when it’s convenient to do so. It’s so easy to do that. I wasn’t innocent, Gabriella, and I admit that, but neither was Malc. Who is?’ And she thought that the Stanley knife blade would have made a nice, neat scarlet cut in the fluttery hollow at the base of Gabriella’s very white throat—

  When Malc returned they both sat back and answered his tentative smile. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Fine, darling,’ said Gabriella, claiming him quickly. ‘We’ve had a little chat, haven’t we, Ellie? We’ve got quite a few issues sorted out.’

  ‘I have said what I came to say,’ said Ellie stiffly, reeling from the pain of discovering what he’d been saying about her, and yet proud of herself for not breaking down, for not reverting to type.

  ‘Put some music on, angel.’ Gabriella was uneasy with the silence; it sat on the room greenly and steamily along with the smell of broccoli boiling. So they talked about this and that, and then they eventually moved to the table. Ellie couldn’t remember what they ate… something with kidney beans in and lots of tomato puree.

  ‘Do we want to continue the discussion you were having before dinner?’ asked Malc, when they’d finished.

  ‘No, not really. I would like to be taken home now,’ said Ellie.

  ‘That’s silly,’ said Gabriella. ‘You disappoint me, Ellie. We can’t back away from it now.’

  ‘I am not backing away,’ said Ellie. ‘I want to take it home and think it over.’

  ‘That sounds fair enough to me,’ said Malc quickly, and Gabriella gave him a little frown.

  ‘I still feel we can come together if we work at this hard enough, darling,’ she said. ‘There must be common ground somewhere.’

  ‘I want to go home now,’ said Ellie. ‘I don’t want to talk any more.’ But in the car she said to Malc, ‘I wish you hadn’t said those things about me.’

  And he told her, ‘It was unfair of Gabriella to repeat them.’

  ‘I haven’t got anyone to tell my side to,’ she said.

  ‘No, I do see that,’ said Malc.

  ‘You really consider that I held you back, don’t you?’

  ‘You always seemed quite happy with life as it was.’

  ‘Well, you weren’t making any alternative suggestions, Malc. What else was there to do but just keep going and make the best of it?’

  ‘You were able to put a brave face on it. Sometimes, I used to come home and feel I was dead, Elle.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know.’

  ‘Well, if you knew, it’s just a great shame neither of us were able to say anything about it. Day after day after day,’ said Malc, tightening his lips and turning into the cul-de-sac with his indicator ticking.

  ‘But I just don’t see how it was all my fault.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t, Ellie. We both know that—but it doesn’t matter now. That’s behind us, and we’ve got to look forward to the future now. Somehow you must find a future for yourself with some brightness in it, like I have.’

  ‘With somebody else?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Malc. ‘It’s not so terrible to be alone.’

  Oh, isn’t it, Malc, she asked into the darkness, soundlessly.

  And that was that. She had confronted the monster: and what on earth had Gabriella got out of it? Surely she had not derived that much pleasure from showing off her gracious apartment?
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br />   So Ellie goes to bed and she stays there, sleeping for forty-eight hours, and pigging it for the rest of the time, raiding the fridge for the last of its contents, heating up odds and sods from the freezer, going over her situation again and again, working it all out.

  Sometimes calmly, sometimes in a frenzy. But she doesn’t drink and she doesn’t smoke. Drink just makes her feel ill, but giving up smoking is something quite different. By depriving herself of her nicotine habit she feels she is controlling the pain. If she can conquer that, she can conquer anything. It is one, pathetic little strength a non-smoker would not understand.

  And then, after seven days are up, Ellie Freeman comes to a decision. She rises from her bed and makes two telephone calls.

  26

  THE FIRST TELEPHONE CALL Ellie makes is to Gabriella. She apologises for her intransigence and tells her she wants to be friends. Surprisingly the conceited Gabriella is not surprised. And oh yes, deep in her heart Ellie would so like a friendship to be possible.

  ‘I think you are right, Gabriella, there is some common ground and it is essential that we find it.’ Icy shivers run down her spine as she speaks, and yet she does not hate Gabriella. She cannot. She is not able to hate her.

  ‘Malcolm has been terribly worried about you, darling. He’s been trying to call you up every day, he’s been on to the neighbours, he was going to give it until the end of today and then he was going to contact the police! But I knew you would get in touch, I even expected to hear from you earlier. What on earth have you been doing with yourself all this time?’

  ‘Just getting my head together, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I’m so glad you called me. And now, how about lunch?’

  The second phone call Ellie makes is to the bank, and when Robert Beasely comes on the line she does not beat about the bush. She tells him she’s going to move her accounts.

  ‘This is silly, Ellie,’ is his immediate response. ‘You shouldn’t make any serious moves while you are so emotionally charged. We’ve got to talk about this. I realise now that I over-reacted when you came round last week. Bella is still going on at me about it, but I was taken aback at the time and I possibly wasn’t very helpful. We must talk, Ellie.’