A Passionate Man (17 page)

‘Could you all listen? For just one moment?'

He rose to his feet, holding the glass.

‘Will you all join me in wishing Marina and my father a long, happy, healthy life together.'

There was a cheer. Tables round theirs took up the cheer. Everybody stood up, holding their glasses high. Imogen jumped and squealed. All round the table, people turned to each other to hug and kiss. Archie kissed Miriam Bliss and then moved round her to put his arms about his father. Sir Andrew's eyes were full of tears.

‘God bless,' Archie said, kissing his cheek. ‘All blessings. Really. Truly.'

He let his father go. Marina was stooping over Thomas, saying, ‘I'm so glad you like it. It's so sophisticated to like champagne.' Archie put a hand on her shoulder. She straightened and turned to him.

‘Archie. Dear Archie—'

He took her in his arms.

‘Marina.'

‘I'll do everything in my power to make him happy. I don't want to change any of the good things—'

Archie felt tears rising. He said, ‘Marina,' again and then he bent his head and kissed her on the mouth.

It was a soft night, for December. Archie put Nelson on to his lead, pulled on Wellingtons, and went off into the damp sweet air that still smelled of autumn over winter.

‘There you are,' Liza had said to him when they got home. ‘You've lived through it. Haven't you? And really, it wasn't such a big deal, was it? It was just a lovely wedding.'

Archie had smiled. Liza had taken off her suit and was standing there in just her petticoat, rounded and sweet. She came over and kissed him, such a kind little kiss with just the smallest, faintest edge of condescension.

‘Silly Archie.'

‘When I have feelings,' Archie said, taking her wrists for one last try, ‘they are very real to me. And strong. The fact that they look trivial from the outside doesn't alter that, nor does any effort I might make to hide them.'

She sighed. She said, ‘I know all that.'

He let go.

‘No, my darling. You hear me and you dismiss it.'

‘Don't quarrel,' she said pleadingly. ‘Not after such a lovely day. You were sweet today. You were lovely to Marina.'

He said, ‘I want to make love to you.'

She started laughing.

‘Oh-ho. All this romance is so catching—'

‘Come here.'

She skipped sideways.

‘Let me just see if Thomas is asleep—'

When she came back, he was naked. She let him undress her, which they both liked, and then she waited to be kissed, as she usually was, all over. But tonight Archie was perfunctory in his kissing. Not only that, he was rough. ‘Ow,' Liza said once or twice, sounding like Imogen. ‘Don't. You're hurting.' He came very fast, not waiting for her. And when he had come, he did not say in her ear as he usually did, More, more, more. He simply lay with his face buried in the pillow beside her neck for a few moments, and then he levered himself up, and out of her and said, ‘I'm sorry. That wasn't exactly a masterpiece of finesse.'

‘It's a bit much,' Liza said, ‘to take your anger out on me.'

‘Yes. I'm really sorry. I did want you. I do.'

Liza rolled sideways off the bed.

‘I'm going to have a bath.'

Archie stood up.

‘I'll take Nelson out. It's my Sunday on tomorrow.'

‘It's dark. He's been out—'

‘I want to,' Archie said, struggling into clothes. Liza gave him a quick glance and pulled on her dressing gown.

‘How awkward you can make our lives when you try,' she said.

For a split second, he thought he might hit her. He held his breath. She gave him a tiny, fleeting look of triumph, as if she had guessed, and went off to the bathroom. Archie went downstairs and took a courteously astonished Nelson out into the dark.

He crossed the lawn and went through a gap in the hedge to the field where Richard Prior planned to build his houses. The darkness gradually resolved itself into greater and lesser densities, trees and bushes, and through them the lights of far houses, and the bungalow next door where the Pinkneys crouched in terror of being involved. Nelson strained at the lead, the night being loud with the scent of rabbits.

‘Sorry, old boy,' Archie said. ‘If I let you go, you'll be gone for hours.'

A pheasant rose whirring out of the darkness ahead.

‘Painted foreign hen,' Archie said to Nelson. ‘Take no notice.'

They crossed the space where the big house might stand, Archie stumbling in the rough grass. It irritated Liza that he would never take a torch, but he said he preferred to stumble; a torch spoiled the darkness. Nelson made little hopeful darts here and there, stirring up the scents of earth and leaf. The dark air lay softly on Archie's grateful face. Above him, a blurred moon hung among pale stars and from all around came the faint settling-down cluckings and twitchings of hedgerow life. He lifted his face, eyes closed.

I must go back, he thought. I must go back and apologize properly. For behaving like a brute. Why did I? Why did I want to be violent? I did want to. I felt fierce and hungry. Liza seemed too small, too sweet for what I wanted. What happened? Why should I be like that? It's over, today is over; I was dreading it but it seemed to pass me at a distance and now it's over. I should have taken Liza to bed, laughing; I should have been full of relief. God, Archie thought, opening his eyes, my God, how I detest people who take themselves so seriously. Am I having a severe sense of humour failure? Am I going mad?

‘Am I going mad?' he said to Nelson.

He turned towards home. A light shone in the kitchen and above it another from their bedroom, and beside that the landing. While he watched, Liza came to the bedroom window and drew the curtains across. Typical, she would be thinking, typical of us to draw them only after we have made love. That kind of abandonment always used to make her laugh; she loved to be lured into carelessness. ‘Let go,' he would say to her. ‘Go on. Trust me. Let go.' Perhaps she hadn't really liked it, only the idea of it. Perhaps it was in her nature to keep something back, not to chuck herself off cliffs with him as he wanted her to do, as he could do himself. Perhaps, Archie thought, moving unevenly towards his house, perhaps taking life in great gulps as he had always done was wrong because it tore roughly at the edges of other people's more delicate lives. Maybe he was paying for past greed with present misery.

‘Do you suppose,' he said to the spaniel as they pushed through the hedge, ‘that this is a kind of growing up?'

Liza was rummaging in a kitchen drawer. She had a fistful of jampot covers in one hand. She did not look up as Archie and Nelson came in.

‘Do you really want to make jam now?'

‘No,' Liza said calmly. ‘I'm looking for a letter. A letter from a friend.'

Archie said, ‘I am genuinely sorry I behaved like a rugger scrum just now.'

She turned. Her face was clean of make-up and her hair was pinned on top of her head with a plastic clip.

‘Oh, Archie—'

‘I mean it.'

‘I know. Please don't start all over again. I know. It doesn't matter.'

She put the jampot covers back in the drawer and pushed it shut.

‘I just wish you wouldn't make such a meal of everything. It all has to be a big issue with you, doesn't it? Everything has to be a big deal.'

‘Some weeks ago,' Archie said, ‘you complained that I didn't make a big enough deal of you. That I belittled you. What is it that you really mean?'

Liza put her hands over her ears.

‘No more—'

‘Talk to me,' Archie shouted. ‘Talk to me. Please.'

Nelson crept to his basket. Liza took her hands away and put them in her dressing-gown pocket. The letter met her fingers.

‘No, darling,' she said. ‘No more talking. Not now.'

And then she smiled at him again, and went up to bed.

Chapter Nine

The Stoke Stratton Preservation Society had its first meeting the week before Christmas. It took place in the village hall, decorated since late November with tired paper streamers, an unenthusiastic Christmas tree and drawings, done by the Sunday School, of Baby Jesus, mostly coloured bright pink with yellow hair.

Simon Jago was chairman, Mrs Betts secretary and prime mover. Mrs Betts had stationed Sharon Vinney – seasonally out of work from the local watercress beds – in the shop-end of the post office to give herself time for Society paperwork. The night before the meeting she had arranged chairs in rows in the village hall, each one bearing a fact sheet on the development and, on a table for the committee, in front of them, a scarlet poinsettia in a pot, a carafe of water and several glasses. Behind the table stood a blackboard with a map of the field pinned to it.

Now, dressed in a knitted frock of lilac wool with a scalloped hem and a tie-neck, Mrs Betts stood inside the village hall door, and welcomed people in. She wore pearl and diamante ear-rings and was very gracious.

‘I can't stand,' Diana Jago whispered to Liza as they came in together, ‘being in the same boat as her.'

‘She's loving it,' Liza said.

Mrs Betts shook their hands warmly.

‘So good to know people are really prepared to stand up and be counted!' She turned to Archie. ‘Well, Dr Logan, I never expected to see you here.'

Archie smiled at her.

‘I am a man of infinite surprises, Mrs Betts.'

He went past her to the back row of seats, and chose one. Diana and Liza, with Diana making mock-furious faces at him, went past him, up to the front, and sat in a prominent place. After a while, Richard and Susan Prior came in, and went to sit either side of Archie.

‘Mrs Logan,' Mrs Betts said, bustling up. ‘Mrs Logan. I really must protest. This is not a public inquiry. This is a private meeting for like-minded people. I really cannot have Dr Logan and Mr Prior making difficulties.'

‘Oh, I don't think they will. I'm sure they are just here as observers—'

‘Would you be so good as to make sure of it? I really haven't gone to all this trouble to have my efforts undermined.'

Liza went pink.

‘Mrs Betts, I can't possibly—'

‘Have a word,' Mrs Betts said. ‘Just a little word. Please, dear.'

Diana stood up.

‘I'll come with you.'

They walked to the back of the hall.

Diana said easily to Archie, ‘Old Ma Betts is worried about barracking from the back row.'

‘I'm here to listen,' Richard Prior said.

‘That's what we said.'

‘Do you think,' Susan Prior said to Liza, ‘that it's a good idea to run errands for that woman?'

‘I wasn't. I simply—'

‘It's all of a piece, of course,' Susan went on, across her. ‘All of a piece with you worrying about the class of neighbour you might get.'

Liza gave a little gasp. She looked at Archie. He should defend her! But he merely said, ‘Trading insults won't help anyone.'

‘Archie!' Liza said.

‘I can't sit with you,' Archie said helplessly, ‘because you are the opposition.'

Liza was close to tears.

‘But she—'

‘Is a rude cow,' Richard Prior said. ‘Always has been.' He looked up at Diana. ‘I came to hear you, actually, Mrs J. Are you as good on your feet as you are in the saddle?'

‘One squeak out of you,' Diana said, ‘and I'll ask for you to be ejected. All three of you. Come on, Liza. Back to the front with me.'

Liza was glaring at Archie. His face registered nothing.

‘See you later,' he said to her.

‘He should have stuck up for me,' she cried to Diana, following her back up the hall. ‘Why did he let Susan snub me?'

‘She didn't snub you.'

‘She did! She said I was suburban.'

Diana turned and looked at Liza.

‘No. No, she didn't.'

‘She implied it—'

‘Liza,' Diana said, pushing her down into her chair. ‘Liza, look. You and Archie don't agree over this. You can't expect him to rush to your defence when you say things he believes are wrong. You
do
mind about your neighbours. So would I in your position. Well, out with it, then. Say yes, Susan, I do care who lives next to me and it's all very well for you to sneer, living half a mile from anyone. Fight back—'

Mrs Betts stepped forward from the table, ear-rings sending forth whiskers of rainbow light, and cleared her throat.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I must first say how thrilled I am—' She glanced behind her. ‘We are, to see so many of you this evening. I think I may safely say that such a number indicates the strength of feeling that this proposal has aroused. Mr Jago will outline the development plans for us, and then what I – we – would like is to hear points from the floor.'

How could he, Liza thought, how could he let her be so rude to me? And in front of Diana. My view is just as valid as his. I know it is. In fact, it's more so because he isn't thinking of me and the children and our quality of life, and I am. He's just following out some impersonal social principle. And he's doing his usual things. Liza's a darling, she imitated Archie to herself, but she has no brain. He doesn't look at me, Liza wailed silently, he doesn't see me, and yet he demands that I look at him, that I corkscrew myself into understanding his adolescent self-absorption, his unreasonableness . . .

‘What I want to know is,' Cyril Vinney said, heaving himself and his beer gut roughly upright, ‘what these houses are going to cost?'