Bethany (17 page)

It was true, and the damage could not be calculated.

In the same week, Charles telephoned from Sussex. Charles was an ex-public school bachelor, a director of a small firm which manufactured expensive sports cars for the export market. He was the stereotype of the xenophobic, Philistine Englishman from his greying sandy hair to his carefully casual
suede shoes, and it was his great misfortune that he had been in love with Alex for the past ten years.

It was a relationship that mystified everyone, for she combined all the qualities that exasperated him, and she gave him not the slightest encouragement. In fact there were times when I thought she treated him very badly. She resented him: she resented his tenaciousness, his proprietorial attitude, his emotional demands. She put up with these things because she saw the desperation behind them and because over the years she had become irritably fond of him. And because he was charming, witty and rather rich.

It was difficult to make the mental separation between Charles and his money because he used it in his relationships. He bought people, even those he had known for years, cementing their obligation with small gifts, dinners in the best restaurants, trips abroad. It was Charles who had taken Alex to the south of France for a week when Jacques and his family were at Bethany. Alex found this ceaseless bribery difficult to cope with and eventually succumbed, as did everyone. There seemed no reason not to: after all, the only return he asked was her company. And yet it was not as simple as that: he was also asking that she share and approve his way of life, and every time Alex saw him she knew that once again she had accepted the bargain, and hated him for it.

She discharged her unease in small acts of social cruelty. He took her to lunch in a chic restaurant which had just opened in north London: Alex refused an aperitif and demanded beer, which they did not have, and then rolled herself a cigarette, scattering Golden Virginia all over the pink check tablecloth. It ruined the treat. Knowing that he wanted to take her somewhere special for the evening, she would suggest a preliminary drink in the local pub and there engage in conversation with the most truculent drunk she could find, until she wearied of paining him or until so much of the evening had elapsed that his plan was no longer feasible.

I had witnessed many such incidents, for Charles always
treated me with scrupulous courtesy and would take us out to dinner together. Sometimes I ventured to reproach Alex afterwards for her behaviour. Her reaction was violent: she would accuse me of taking Charles's side against her, of betraying her. After a few explosions of this nature I kept my thoughts to myself. She reacted in the same way when I did not completely agree with her view of Philip. Her almost hysterical anger on these occasions seemed to be the expression of a paranoia implanted in childhood, when – so she told me – she had always been the odd one out in every situation, and the thing she had come to dread most was betrayal by the few people she trusted. Anything, I decided, was preferable to awakening that paranoia.

Alex justified her treatment of Charles by saying he was a manipulator. This was true: he did attempt to manipulate people through his money. However, it seemed clear to me that he used money because he thought he had nothing else to give. He was all surface and
savoir faire
; his assured manner masked a deep nervousness, his dry wit a terror of having to think about something serious, his presents an inability to love. There was no doubt that he thought he loved Alex, but I did not see how he could love someone whom he did not understand in the slightest and with whose deepest needs he had no sympathy.

Alex said it was not love but an obsession; and indeed what but an obsession could make a man cling for ten years to a woman he desired and would never attain, a woman with whom he played a sophisticated, self-mocking parody of the disappointed lover? Only once had I seen him drop that mask. He used sometimes to come and stay with us at Bethany, and during one of these visits Simon turned up. After a few vain attempts to attract Alex's attention, Charles had retired to bed, feigning a sudden chill, and stayed there for two days. He knew nothing about Simon but he had intuited that here, at last, was the man who could take her away from him, and he had not been able to cope with his jealousy.

Charles telephoned from Sussex, wanting to speak to Alex, one afternoon when Alex was in the middle of a Session. Sessions were never interrupted for any reason. It happened to be a day when I was at work. Coral answered the phone and asked him to ring back at another time, not between four and six o'clock. Two days later he rang again, at five-fifteen. Coral again answered the phone and, apologetic, said she could not fetch Alex but would ask her to ring him.

I could imagine Charles's reaction to being told that Alex was on the premises but could not speak to him. ‘You'd better ring him,' I said to her, ‘or he'll be down here.' I could not imagine anything more disastrous. Alex didn't. Alex had a rooted objection to making phone calls which, combined with her rooted objection to doing what was expected of her, ensured that she almost never rang anybody back. I waited for the inevitable third, angry call. It came the following Monday, to my office.

He was very near hysteria, the clipped voice sharp and jerky. ‘I'm sorry to trouble you at work, Kay, but it seems the only way I can get hold of anyone. I'm extremely worried about Alex. Is she all right?'

I felt immediately his antagonism to whatever was happening at Bethany and the unspoken demand that I share it. I was determined not to compromise.

‘Worried?' I repeated. ‘I don't know why you should be worried. Alex is very well.'

‘I've telephoned twice and been unable to speak to her.'

‘Well yes, she … couldn't come to the phone, that's all. She was doing something.'

‘Something so important that she couldn't leave it to come and speak to me?'

‘Yes.' How, in a busy newspaper office, could I tell him about Sessions?

‘I don't believe it,' he said. ‘I may tell you I've been round to see Harry, and he's told me a number of things I don't like the sound of.'

Harry was the friend in whose house Alex stayed when she went to London.

‘Oh?' I said.

‘He says that when he last saw Alex, a few weeks ago, she was behaving very strangely and saying things that were quite out of character. As if she was repeating someone else's words.'

‘Oh really!' I said.

‘He was extremely disturbed by it. It appears you've got some sort of commune staying with you …'

‘We're sharing the house with some friends,' I said. ‘It's a sort of experiment in group living.'

‘Well what am I supposed to think, when some strange woman answers the phone and tells me that Alex is not allowed to speak to me?'

‘I'm sorry, Charles, but you have yourself to blame,' I said. ‘If you'd rung back at the time you were asked to, instead of at the time you were asked not to –'

‘I've got a company to run,' he snapped. ‘I ring Alex when I can. I don't expect to be told that unless I ring at a certain time she'll be forbidden to come to the phone.'

‘Oh, don't be ridiculous.'

‘It's not at all ridiculous. I tell you, Kay, after seeing Harry it has seriously occurred to me to wonder whether Alex is being kept a prisoner in her own house, and whether her friends ought to rescue her.'

I was suddenly flooded with anger. I said coldly that he was suffering from delusions and should take a grip on himself. There was a moment's profound silence. Nobody spoke to Charles like that.

‘You assure me that Alex is all right?' he said at last.

‘Perfectly all right,' I said. ‘She's never been happier.'

‘Then I suppose I have to accept it,' he said. ‘Thank you. Goodbye.'

I was shaking a little as I put the receiver down. I felt bruised by his desperation and fear. However, I was pleased with the firm way in which I had handled the conversation.
The world was full of Charles and his kind, I reflected, and although deserving of pity they did a great deal of harm. They devoted themselves unceasingly to seeing that no one ever got out of the trap in which they were caught themselves.

I reported the conversation verbatim to Alex, who to my amazement accused me of rudeness. The idea that she had caused the situation by not telephoning Charles herself did not seem to have occurred to her.

I did not think very much about my relationship with Alex, beyond registering the fact that it had changed. It had lost a certain quality of humorous complicity, which I sometimes regretted while recognising that the regret was sentimental – I was regretting the loss of an intimacy which had been based on lack of respect.

Viewing our past relationship with unclouded eyes, I saw just how mutually disrespectful it had been. How we had used each other, hidden behind each other, lied to and, in our different ways, bullied each other for years! And in spite of this we had been proud of our relationship, proud of what we called its honesty, proud that it had endured when all around us the relationships, marital and non-marital, of our friends were breaking up in storms we had weathered. The stability we had been so smug about had been founded on apathy and fear. In such a relationship there was no room for love.

Now that I was free to love this person with whom I had been living for seven years, I found her changed. She had abandoned old habits, interests and friendships with apparently no trouble at all, and the wildly fluctuating needle that had registered her life-direction had come to rest, pointing confidently away from the past. The volatile, difficult, whimsical Alex had gone, and there was a new Alex, serene, controlled and smiling. I was ashamed to find that I did not like this new Alex as much as I should have done, that I sometimes hankered after the old Alex I had fallen in love with, the Alex who had been so exciting and so unhappy. But I was not even consistent,
for on the occasions when Alex did relapse briefly into something like her old self I became acutely disturbed.

I was puzzled by this perverse ambivalence, but dimly recognised the same mechanism at work when Simon pointed out to me that Alex and I were never happy at the same time: when one of us was happy the other would be having a difficult day. His interpretation was that we did not want each other to be happy. I rejected this, but could not find another explanation. I sometimes felt that Simon was over-harshly critical of our relationship. Alex indeed had once told me that she thought he disapproved of it, but I regarded that idea as nonsense. Simon, I thought, could not conceivably subscribe to contemporary prejudices about homosexuality: his concern was with the content of a relationship, not its form. In any case, if a homosexual relationship is defined by sex, ours wasn't one. We had stopped making love six months ago, out of boredom. Not, of course, that Simon knew that. Alex wanted to tell him so, but I indignantly forbade her. It was no one else's business, I said. I was secretly a little upset by her attitude, which amounted to a rejection of the sexual side of our relationship. I was content to let it lapse, but not content to see it condemned. Alex had always been a latent Puritan: now she declared herself. We went on sleeping in the same bed, out of habit, and because we liked it, but there was no denying that much of the intimacy had died between us.

It was inevitable, it was perhaps desirable, and in any case it didn't matter. Our relationship now flowed as a current within the stream of the group, and what mattered above all was that it should flow harmoniously, so that the progress of the group was not impeded. I was made very conscious of the disruptive effect a lack of harmony could have by the periodic tensions that occurred between Coral and Pete. Little was said on these occasions, but a chill descended on the house and the group was fragmented until the breach between these two individuals was healed. I saw that such tensions resulted from
the disrespect of familiarity, and thought it was a good thing that there should be a little space between Alex and myself.

So, at least, my reason thought. My subconscious apparently did not, and took action in its own way.

It happened the day the dustbins were emptied. I usually took them down to the road in the back of the car on my way to work. On this occasion the large dustbin had been filled with bits of scrap iron, broken tiles and all sorts of rubbish, and was too heavy for me to lift. I asked Pete to help me get it into the car, and as I set off down the drive I wondered how I was going to get it out at the other end. By sliding it and wriggling it I almost managed, but there was a moment when I had to take its weight, and at that moment I knew I had done something very stupid. My back began to stiffen, and by the end of the day it was as much as I could do to get up from my desk.

I hoped I had merely strained it, but when two days later it was no better I accepted the obvious and made an appointment with the osteopath. That left me with another five days to get through. I was trying to carry out my usual duties, but cleaning the stairs was very difficult, and just getting up in the morning took about ten minutes. I mentioned at supper the first day that I had hurt my back, but I had clearly been too casual about it because the very next day Dao asked me to take the big iron casserole out of the oven for her and seemed surprised when I apologised and said I couldn't. After that I didn't like to mention it again.

Alex of course knew I was in pain and offered to massage the area for me, but I refused because I didn't think I would be able to bear it. One afternoon I was so tired that I went up to the bedroom and lay down for half an hour, risking Simon's displeasure. He disapproved, quite rightly, of people retiring to bed feeling sorry for themselves, and in spite of the shaft of pain that shot through me as I sat on the edge of the bed trying to take off my shoes, I could not quite rid myself of the suspicion that that was just what I was doing.