A Passionate Man (34 page)

Liza wound the spiral of the corkscrew down into the cork of the wine bottle and pulled.

‘I'm not interested,' she said again.

She poured the wine. It was white and cold, unsuitable for the day, appropriate to her feelings.

‘No.'

‘How could you do such a thing to me?'

‘I don't know,' Marina said. ‘I do not know.'

‘And I suppose you think you'll feel better by saying you wish you never had?'

Marina stared at her.

‘Liza, we shouldn't get started on all that.'

‘You mean, please can we evade confronting what you've done?'

‘Liza—'

‘I'm so angry,' Liza said. ‘I'm boiling with anger. It's such a relief to be angry.'

She held out a glass of wine. Marina took it by the stem.

‘Have you tried being angry with Archie?'

‘That is no business of yours.'

‘Quite right,' Marina said more briskly, sitting up, tasting her wine. ‘It is not. Archie is no business of mine in any way. I never thought to take anything that wasn't mine, never thought even to want it. Pain and grief can scramble your rational mind—'

‘Oh, I know,' Liza said. ‘I know. Don't expect sympathy from me. I'm a woman, remember? So are you. We had a bond. Did you think of that, as you climbed into bed with Archie, did you think of me?'

Marina took a swallow of wine. Liza's anger, so righteous, so justified, gave her such strength, but even in that strength she could not be expected to see where wings might briefly take you, forbidden great healing wings.

‘No,' Marina said.

‘I think you had better go back to London. I don't want you here, in my house, on my sofa.'

‘I'm going back to America. I'm going at the weekend.' She stood up and put her unfinished wine glass on the mantelpiece among Liza's jugs. ‘I'm leaving everything, the flat, my share of Andrew's money, everything. I've seen my solicitor. It's all in order. It's all yours. I've left it to you.'

‘Suppose I don't want it?'

‘You may give it to the children.'

She looked down at Liza.

‘I've left Archie something, too.'

Liza looked away.

‘I saw Maurice Crawford. They want to make the new series of
Meeting Medicine
, quite soon, this summer. They want Archie to take Andrew's place.'

Liza said woodenly, ‘I'll tell him.'

The door opened. Thomas said, delighted, ‘I turned on everything.'

‘And then off again?'

‘And on and off and on and then off—'

‘Then please go and open the gate for me, like a kind boy.'

Liza burst into tears.

‘I don't want you to go. I don't want you to go like this. Why did this awful mess have to happen?'

‘Don't ask,' Marina said, putting her arms round Liza. ‘Don't ask. I guess we'll never know.'

‘But what about me and Archie? What will happen to us? What have you done to us?'

Marina dropped her arms.

‘He loves you,' Marina said. ‘He never stopped. What happened was no part of that.'

‘Go away!' Liza cried. ‘Go away!'

Marina went slowly out into the hall and took her coat off the banisters. She stood, holding it like a limp body.

‘What you and Archie have,' she said to Liza across the space between them, ‘won't be the same, certainly. But it won't be worse, either. It may well be better. Liza?'

‘Yes—'

‘Take the money. Take the flat. It's the best possible thing I can do for you. It has more value than financial, more value to you. It will help you, it will give you strength, a position of strength. My dear Liza, it will give you just the right, the healthy amount of independence. It will make you more of a partner with Archie, believe me.'

Then she put on her coat and walked slowly across the hall and out of the house.

Archie's journey home was impeded by an earthmover. Huge and ponderous and improbably painted the colour of egg yolk, it moved up the Stoke Stratton road with an air of majesty, its great hopper peering before it like a proboscis. Behind it, traffic could only crawl until it swung, almost with an air of triumph, into the field where it would soon begin to tear at the turf and expose the poor, raw entrails of the earth. As Archie turned into his own drive, he could see Thomas by the hedge, staring at the digger. Archie sounded his horn and Thomas came running.

‘Did you see?'

‘The digger? Yes, I did.'

‘I don't want it,' Thomas said. ‘I don't want it in our field. If there keep on being little new houses, it won't be country.'

‘I know. I thought they would be a different kind of house.'

He got out of the car. Thomas looked pale and tired.

‘Marina came.'

‘Did she?'

‘Mummy cried.'

Archie looked down at him.

‘Stop her!' Thomas shouted. ‘Stop all this horrible stuff!'

‘Yes,' Archie said. He put his hand out to Thomas. ‘Will you come in with me?'

Thomas said, on the edge of tears, ‘Marina's going back to America—'

‘Yes,' Archie said. ‘She wants to. It's where she lived before Grandpa.'

‘But I can't see her in America!'

‘Why not? When you're older, you can fly to see her.'

‘I don't expect you'll let me,' Thomas said, cheated of defiance.

‘I expect we will. If Mummy agrees. Come on. Come in and find her with me.'

She was in the sitting room, sitting. Just sitting and staring. Archie went in and sat down next to her and Thomas stood in the doorway and glared at them.

‘Liza,' Archie said.

He took her hand.

‘I suppose you're waiting to hear what she looked like and what she said.'

‘She said I could play with her car,' Thomas said loudly. Archie turned to him.

‘Thomas, would you go and find Sally and the others? Just for a little while?'

‘Why?' Thomas said. ‘Why? Why? Why does it always have to be bloody secrets?'

‘It won't be. It will all stop. But I have to talk to Mummy.'

Thomas gave the sitting-room door a shattering slam and pounded down the hall. Then there was the second slam. Then there was a singing silence.

‘Liza,' Archie said. ‘I am so sorry.'

She turned to him. Her face was sore with tears.

‘Don't start. Don't start that—'

‘I want to stay married to you. I want us to go on.'

‘But,' Liza whispered, ‘you want her—'

‘You're my wife,' Archie said. He took her hand.

Liza said, ‘She's giving me the flat. And the money Andrew left her.'

‘Then I suppose you can leave me if you want to.'

‘I don't want to. But—'

‘But?'

She looked down.

‘I don't want you to stay because it's the decent thing. Or because of the children. I only want us to go on if we want to, us, you and me.'

‘I do want that.'

‘But you said you were afraid of losing a dimension you had found.'

‘I am afraid.'

Liza stood up and put her hand on the mantelpiece where Marina's glass still stood. She touched it.

‘I am afraid to live a little life,' Archie said, ‘when I might live a much greater one.'

‘That's how I feel,' Liza said. ‘That's it exactly. That's how I feel all the time, trapped in littleness.' She turned away from him and hid her face.

‘I was in an awful place,' Archie said, behind her. ‘In my mind, and my feelings. It was all tangled up with my father and with you. I can't explain it, but Marina appeared to be the answer. She unlocked all the cages, turned the lights on, let me out. How valid that was, I don't know. I don't expect I'll ever know, but it was how it seemed. She was absolutely central to everything that was obsessing me. I thought she was the answer. I believed she understood. I still think that, that she understands, but the rest I can't be sure of.'

Liza did not take her hand off Marina's glass.

‘I can't go back,' Archie said. ‘That I am sure of. I don't think you can, either. We have to go on.'

Liza said, almost dreamily, ‘Harness your dimensions to something else?'

‘Oh, Liza.'

She half-turned.

‘Marina has spoken to Maurice Crawford. They want you to take Andrew's place for the new series of
Meeting Medicine
. Could that fit your new dimension?'

‘Never in this world,' Archie said.

He stood up, too, and came close to her.

‘I'd hate it. I'd hate to try and do what he did.'

‘Burned your fingers—'

‘Don't.'

‘Well, then,' she said. ‘What are you going to do?'

He hesitated.

‘I don't know. Literally. Today Stuart Campbell asked me to look for another practice. Take your time, he said. Nothing personal, old fellow. We need to alter the balance here a bit, expand, maybe look for people with hospital attachments, sure you understand, old boy, best for you probably in the long run if you're honest, quiet country practice, maybe, try Norfolk or the Dales, marvellous country for the children—'

She put her arms round him.

‘You wouldn't think,' Archie said thickly, holding her, ‘you wouldn't think I could mess that up, too, would you? You wouldn't think, looking at me, that I was such a superlative cocker-up of everything, would you? Give it to Archie Logan, if it's worth anything, give it to Archie and watch him make a complete balls of it, fuck it right up, people, jobs, relationships, you name it, he'll wreck it for you in a flash. No-one to touch him for it.'

‘Oh,' Liza said with some spirit. ‘Oh really. How you do exaggerate.'

‘I always have—'

‘I know,' she said. ‘I know. It drives me mad.'

‘You're smiling—'

‘I'm not. I'm grimacing.'

The door opened abruptly.

‘Yuk,' said Mikey at the top of his voice. ‘Kissing.'

Chapter Eighteen

‘I assure you,' Mrs Betts said, laying a hand upon her bosom, ‘I assure you it's true. I heard it from Mrs Logan herself.'

Diana Jago declined to react. The post office was quite full, and its atmosphere had become highly attentive.

‘As true as I am standing here,' Mrs Betts said, lifting her chins so that her voice might carry, ‘Dr and Mrs Logan are being driven out by Mr Prior. His activities have made it impossible for them to continue at Beeches House. They are forced to sell it to the developer. I hope,' Mrs Betts said penetratingly, her eyes upon Trevor Vinney's girlfriend listlessly choosing sweets, ‘I hope those who didn't have the courage or the decency to put in for those houses, having whined for them, now realize the consequences.'

The girlfriend took no notice. She hadn't hoped for a house; she had given up hoping for anything much when early, unwanted motherhood had made it very plain to her that hope of any kind was not for her.

‘I think that's quite uncalled for,' Chrissie Jenkins said clearly. She held a card in a cellophane envelope with ‘In Deepest Sympathy' printed in silver across a wreath of flowers. ‘Dr and Mrs Logan are going on account of the children, for little Thomas. He has to have—' She paused. ‘He has to have a special school.'

‘Mrs Logan made no mention of that to me—'

‘I expect she doesn't want it known.'

‘So tell the whole post office—'

‘They're going,' Sharon Vinney said, taking her not-daughter-in-law's sad little handful of cash, ‘because they've come into money. That's why. They can do better than Stoke Stratton now. Don't give them nuts to the baby.'

Diana Jago changed her mind about a reel of adhesive tape and a bottle of disinfectant and put them back on the shelves. She went out, past them all, and shut the shop door with emphasis.

‘Poor Mrs Jago,' Mrs Betts said. ‘I'm sorry for her, really I am. Always supposed herself such a friend of Mrs Logan's and has Mrs Logan confided her plans to her? Not a bit. You can understand her being upset, can't you?'

Diana drove her car at tremendous speed to Beeches House. It was the first day of the spring holidays and on the front lawn an assembly of stepladders and upturned chairs and blankets proclaimed that Thomas and Mikey were making a camp, the acceptable male version of playing houses. Sally Carter was on the grass behind the house hanging up washing while Imogen sat beside her in a plastic laundry basket and clipped pegs in a toothlike fringe down the front of her duffel coat.

‘Is Mrs Logan in?'

‘No,' Sally said, going on pegging. ‘She's gone to Winchester.'

‘To get a lorry,' Imogen said.

‘A lorry?'

‘For Thcotland.'

Diana crouched down beside the laundry basket.

‘Why do you need a lorry for Scotland?'

‘To put my bed in,' Imogen said. ‘And the wheelbarrow and the thofa.'

Diana straightened up.

‘Sally. What is going on?'

‘They are going back to Scotland—'

‘Back?'

‘Dr Logan was born in Scotland.'

‘Where the hell are they going?'

‘Glasgow,' Sally said. She picked up a blue shirt of Archie's. ‘I'm going, too. I'm going to look after the children and do a secretarial course.'