A Bouquet of Barbed Wire, page 14
Manson entered the room reluctantly. He looked at the woman in the bed, ugly and pathetic with illness, and was too much reminded of his own mother dying and himself, aged seventeen, desperate, because the magic, unspeakable words ‘I love you’ had never been said. He had shouted them over and over again, in a frenzy, till his father, out of very private grief, said curtly, ‘It’s no good, she can’t hear you,’ and that seemed like the judgment of God. He had wasted seventeen years of opportunity. He should have made the occasion, forced it if necessary, dragged the impossible words past his lips and made her hear them. She could not have been that busy. Useless, afterwards, to be told by well-meaning relatives that she knew, all the time, that she would understand. He had missed all his chances. He had let her die without being told.
His mother had died with a face like white marble. Perfectly white and beautiful, and so smoothed out that it could not be skin. He would never forget it. She was already one of the statues they placed over graves. It was like her to die so elegantly; it was in keeping with her life.
The old man came back and stood regarding his wife. ‘She looks peaceful, doesn’t she?’ he said, as if she were already dead.
Manson shivered. ‘Yes, very.’ He made an effort. ‘Now you mustn’t worry too much. You heard what the doctor said—he’s most optimistic’
‘Yes, yes.’ The old man resumed his seat and picked up the paper. Manson wondered if he even heard the words of comfort, or needed them. Perhaps he too, like the twins, was caught up in the drama of life, and death, the uncertainty, the long vigil. ‘You run along, you’ll want to talk to Cass. She’s a good girl. It’s been wonderful to have her here. Providential.’
Manson went downstairs. Cassie was waiting for him, her feet up, on the sofa. She said, ‘I poured you a drink.’
‘Thanks.’ He sat down beside her and drank it: lovely healing fire trickled to every limb. ‘This is just what I needed.’
‘Are you hungry? I could cook …’
‘No. I ate on the way, in a pub.’
Already the journey seemed remote, to say nothing of the life he had left behind. He held her hand without knowing whether the compassion he felt was for Cassie his wife, whom he loved, or another human being, anyone who happened to be in distress.
‘How do you think she looks?’
‘Well … a bit strange. But she’s bound to—’
‘Yes. Dad’s been marvellous.’ A long sigh. ‘Did you settle the boys down?’
‘More or less. All the drama’s gone to their heads a bit.’ He wondered if he should say it; hesitated; said it. ‘They wanted to know if Grandad would come to live with us if Granny died.’
‘Oh God.’ Cassie closed her eyes. ‘You’d hate that, wouldn’t you?’
‘We can talk about it.’ He tried to sound easy-going and relaxed. ‘But I don’t think the situation will arise. I think she’ll get better.’
‘Do you? Really?’
‘Yes, really. Don’t you?’
‘Maybe. This time.’
‘Well, of course, eventually …’
‘Yes.’
22
‘WELL,’ SAID her mother, opening the door, ‘long time no see.’
Sarah winced. The greeting never varied, perhaps because her visits were always infrequent. But this time it was a refuge, it was somewhere to go, however unlikely, where she was safe—and officially safe—from Simon and Geoff, and where she could think against a social background, just as some people might choose to study in a reference library rather than alone in a room.
‘How are you?’ she said, ignoring the greeting and kissing the presented cheek. It was heavily scented and satiny with cosmetics. Her mother wore a white linen dress with white embroidered flowers on it, and lots of gold jewellery on her very brown skin. She had actually overdone the sun-tan, Sarah thought. The skin on her arms and neck was beginning to look tough and dried up.
‘Oh, I’m very well. We had a marvellous holiday. Well, come in, sit down; you’re staying, aren’t vou?’ She moved edgily around the stiffly furnished room.
Sarah said, ‘Is he out?’
Her mother paused in the act of pouring herself a drink: gold bracelets dangling from the hand that held the bottle, ice clinking in the glass. ‘I wish you’d find some other way of referring to Bob than that; you make him sound like some kind of ogre and he’s been kindness itself to you.’
Sarah sat down. ‘All right. Is Bob out? Is my step-father out? Is your husband out? Take your pick. Now it sounds like three different men.’
‘There’s no need to be offensive. I don’t know why you come if you’re in this kind of mood.’ But bickering was so much second nature that she let it pass. ‘Do you want a drink?’
‘No, thanks.’ Sarah could not explain how frugal—even puritanical—her mother’s ménage made her feel. In it she always ate and drank sparingly, feeling she might choke, refused presents, looked with disapproval at the trappings of wealth and thought of the deserving poor as if she had a social conscience.
‘Hm. Up to you. But you look as if you could do with one—you’re looking a bit peaky. Been seeing your father?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Oh, he generally makes you look peaky when he’s around. I’ve noticed it before.’
‘He was round the other evening—just called in. That’s all. I haven’t seen him since.’
‘Hm. On the scrounge, was he?’
Sarah didn’t answer.
‘He’ll never change,’ said her mother with satisfaction. ‘He’s got no initiative. He doesn’t even want to better himself. I suppose he got at least a quid out of you.’
Sarah didn’t answer but smiled faintly.
‘Aren’t you ever going to learn? He goes straight in the boozer with it, you know. If you think you’re putting a hot dinner inside him by throwing your money about you’re very much mistaken. The only way you’ll ever do that is to cook it yourself and watch him eat it. You’re soft. I don’t mind betting Barbara never lets him have a quid.’
‘John wouldn’t let her.’
‘Oh, John, John. That’s a lovely way out. Barbara wouldn’t give you a quid if you were dying. And good luck to her, why should she? That comes of having a hard life. She’s learnt her lesson. Now you’ve had it too easy. Why can’t you learn from her mistakes? Get yourself a rich husband.’ She lit a cigarette, diamonds flashing, Sarah thought, almost self-consciously. Shivering in the light.
‘Like you,’ she said.
‘Well, why not? I haven’t done so badly, have I, and I’m no chicken. You’ve got youth on your side, you can take your pick, but you don’t want to work in an office all your life, do you, and you’ve seen what happened to Barbara. Now there’s no need for it. It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one, if you’re set on falling in love.’
‘So you said,’ Sarah replied. Often. Her mother was the sort of woman who would recommend any discovery—a rich husband, a new deodorant, a cure for piles—as enthusiastically as though her life depended upon it, or she were a major shareholder in the company.
‘Well, it’s true. I’d be dishonest if I pretended otherwise.’
Oh, Peter Eliot Manson, Sarah thought suddenly, conjuring his name to herself like an incantation, where are you? Walk in and rescue me, no, better still ride in, arrive on a white charger like the chap in that advertisement, all tossing mane and shining armour, and trample her beige Wilton under your hooves. Carry me off to marsh-mallow land where I needn’t be tough any more. What rubbish, she thought bitterly.
A key turned. A door slammed. Her mother’s face froze in the alert position and switched on a welcoming smile.
‘Well, well, well.’ Footsteps. It was the giant, it was Fee-Fo-Fum, and the child’s reaction was to hide. ‘Both my beautiful girls.’
Her mother got up as he came in the room. She made various small sounds, like purring and cooing, and exchanged kisses. Sarah sat stiff where she was. He came over and patted her on the head. ‘Hullo.’ She said hullo back. He was careful these days and did not try to kiss her, not since the time when, alone with her, he had stuck his tongue in her ear and she had kicked him smartly on the shin. His bad leg too. Good. And Barbara swore he had once put his hand up her skirt but that could just be Barbara. One thing was certain, though, she thought, he wouldn’t have bothered with Mum if he could have got either of us. And at night he takes his teeth out and puts them in a glass in the bathroom. I saw them once. My mother sleeps with a man who does that.
She suddenly felt, if not actually light-hearted, a little drunk with contempt. At least my teeth are my own and I haven’t fried my skin into leather, and nobody buys me, I do what I like when I like, and I’m young. If I make a mistake, the odds are I can put it right (I made a mistake on Friday, not going to work); there’ll be another time. But they’re on their last chance and lucky to get it, I suppose.
Her stepfather sat down beside her; she felt the thud of his weight in the springs of the sofa beneath her and thought, Christ, when he takes his clothes off it must be obscene. She glanced at him furtively, with horrid fascination, as at something diseased or rotting, and observed the vast overhang of his stomach as it strained against his leather belt. He had hair sticking out of his nose and ears. She felt sick but there was a kind of satisfaction in feeling sick, and it led on to pride in Manson and all his lovely elegance. The two men were not even far apart in years. She thought, I am lucky, I am lucky, oh God, if only I haven’t ruined everything. I was silly to mind. It just gave me a funny feeling, using her flat. But I shouldn’t have minded.
She had let her stare become fixed and her stepfather caught her staring. He winked. ‘And how are all the boy friends then?’ Her mother put a glass in his hand, fussing round him as if he were a child or an invalid—in other words behaving, Sarah supposed, like a good wife.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Just fine.’ She knew the way to avoid cross-examination would be to produce a monologue of her own, but she could not manage it.
He leered at her; at least she could not see the look on his face as anything other than a leer. ‘How many are there of them now?’
Sarah shrugged. ‘Oh, I’ve lost count.’
He appeared delighted; he did not seem to know she was being rude, telling him to shut up, leave her alone, stop asking her stupid questions. ‘Make them jealous and keep them guessing, is that it?’
‘Something like that,’ said Sarah, nauseated. Her mother in the chair opposite was gazing at him with a rapt expression, as at the fountain of wisdom and wit.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Like mother, like daughter.’
Her mother fell about on her chair, giggled, protested, became kittenish. She forgot to keep her knees together and Sarah glimpsed the bulging flesh above. The rest of her had been rigorously health-farmed but her thighs, always a weak point, had either resisted treatment or reverted promptly to type. Now I am being catty, she thought without shame, as a fact. Time to go. Not that it was ever really time to come. Not here.
She stood up, saying resolutely, ‘I must be going.’
They both protested, but her mother only mildly. She knows he fancies me, Sarah thought; she’ll never leave us alone again if she can avoid it. Well, that suits me. But why does he think it necessary to make all this bright chat, to be so silly with me, when he must be a clever man in business to have made so much money? She tried to be fair, to think how it could have gone. Hullo, Sarah, how are you? Yes, fine. You look well (or not.) How’s your new job going? Good. And the new flat? What about the other girls? Oh, there was masses of stuff, especially at the moment. But instead he had to be coy, leaving her nothing to say. And to make it worse, he probably thought he was being clever.
I am intolerant, she thought. I am intolerant and I don’t care; that’s how intolerant I am. When she got out of the house she ran and ran, along street after street of smug, silent white houses in the full gloss of paint, till she was past the boundaries of Belgravia (where she was sure his neighbours must despise him) and into Knightsbridge where she caught a Nineteen to the embankment. She enjoyed moving out of salubrity, watching each row of houses, each line of shops grow less exclusive and select, enjoyed seeing the litter and the dirt increase, and the people grow shabby. I’m sure there’s a way to be rich and real, she thought, but those two haven’t found it, and it’s all the worse because they started with nothing; it ought to be such fun to have made it that they’d be realler than anyone.
Down by the embankment she wished she had told them she was coming here instead of pretending to have a date. At the time it had been easier but now she wished she had stood up and said, ‘I have to go and walk by the river and look at water and ships and houseboats and swans and mud.’
Lorry drivers and men in cars and boys on bicycles whistled at her as they passed, and she smiled. She knew she looked good. Good, and tidy. Some girls could look good and messy but she had never learned how. She even admired the messy look on others, but it was not for her. Everything attractive about her—and she had studied herself like a textbook, for on herself depended everything—was based on neatness. Daily bath, twice weekly shampoo, teeth cleaned after every meal. Nails immaculate and make-up meticulous. What began as effort became simple routine and attention to detail. It was the same with her clothes: whether cheap or expensive they were always clean and pressed. Everything she had looked new because she kept it in mint condition. She set aside evenings for buttons and zips and recalcitrant hooks and eyes; her hems were always level and adjusted to her version of the fashionable length. She had learned what suited her; she knew which magazines to read for guidance, which colours to wear and which to avoid, how to make her own clothes, adapting the more freakish fashions to flatter her; when to pay a lot (and what for) and when to economise, how to get an expensive effect from something cheap. She had learned because she had to, but she had also wanted to. Now, though neither clever nor beautiful, she could make herself appear both. She had to make the best of herself because she had nothing else to offer.
The same attitude applied to her job. She hated to make a mistake but aimed at speed and accuracy because she also could not bear to be slow; she was punctual because it was part of her image and gave her satisfaction (not least because it didn’t come easily). All in all, it was a text-book image, an impossible ideal, viewed from outside, maddening to others who were tempted to retaliate by hinting that anyone so methodical must be a born spinster. But since no one could look at her and do that, she had won. Except that she had few friends. She drove them all mad, and alienated most, with her competence. But it was not done just to impress. Sometimes she thought she only did it to hide the mess inside. At other times she thought it was simply a compulsion. And sometimes it made her cry.
23
HE SAID, ‘So there it is. My wife is staying on for at least a fortnight and the boys are staying with her. There’s no point in disrupting their holiday, after all, and there’s no one to look after them here all day.’
‘No.’ She put her hand over his and felt the strange thrill of contact that comes from touching someone on whom you have projected the love image. ‘I’m sorry. You’ve had a rotten time.’
‘It was a rough weekend certainly. But it’s worse for Cassie. She’s stuck with it. Still, the old lady seems to be rallying.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Oh …’ Manson had to think. ‘About seventy-five, I suppose. Something like that.’
Sarah said, ‘I missed you.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes. Are you glad?’
‘I suppose I am. Yes, I am.’
‘Are you still angry with me?’
‘Angry? No. Do you want another drink?’
‘No. I was lying on Friday. I didn’t have a sore throat. I just wanted time to think.’
‘I knew that.’
‘Do you want to dock my pay? You’re perfectly entitled.’
‘After what I did? You were right, it was a shabby trick.’
‘No, no, I was wrong about that. I don’t know what I felt. I was upset. It seemed such a risky thing to do and so …’
He said carefully, ‘Unnatural?’
‘No, no.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Oh, but it does.’ She looked and sounded desperate. He gazed at her, so neat and elegant in the burnt orange suit of linen and the flowered shirt, crossing and uncrossing her shiny black shoes, opening and closing her shiny black handbag, her huge dark eyes staring at him out of a pale, pale face. She looked as if she hadn’t slept and yet somehow made it suit her. The young, he thought, have such resilience, such capacity for drama. They can feel so intensely, and stay up all night, and still have huge appetites and not look run down. They thrive on emotion. Whereas I just feel tired. And look it.
She said, ‘Please don’t write me off. I’ll be so good from now on if you’ll let me.’
It was ridiculous. To be offered a second chance and begged for one in return. He knew what he ought to do, of course, and he had no intention of doing it.
He said, ‘Sarah, you’re beautiful but all I want to do right now is sleep.’
She said urgently, ‘Can I be there?’
* * *
He woke about six, in the unfamiliar hotel room, and expended a few seconds wondering where he was. Then his brain cleared. He felt wonderfully refreshed. They had dined early; he must have been asleep by nine. He felt a twinge of guilt about that: he had really taken her at her word. He looked down at her, marvelling at how neatly and quietly she—perhaps all the young—slept. He remembered watching Prue sometimes as a child or an adolescent and she had scarcely moved. He had even had difficulty in hearing her breathe. Whereas he knew that both he and Cassie had developed, over the years, a habit of threshing about in bed, of snoring or grinding their teeth. (The first one to fall asleep was the lucky one.) He hoped to God he had not done any of that with Sarah.
