Blind Date (11 page)

“Kettle's
on,” said Mrs. Smythe, placidly, before launching into words. “Now dear, I know it takes a bit of courage to come to a place like this, but in case you were wondering, it might just be the best thing you've ever done. It's a jungle out there, isn't it? Beautiful girl like you must have a queue of men waiting in the wings, but that isn't the point, is it? It's finding the right kind of man to complement all the things you are. Emancipation hasn't done us all the favours we might have wished, don't I know it! I'm willing to bet that the sort of men you meet are either frightened of you or see you as a strong rock to which they can cling like limpets.”

It was an accurate enough analysis, although Patsy was confused by the speed of delivery. She thought of Ben the impoverished, David the liar and John who had been decent and dull.

“Normally, you see, you'll meet a small range of men, all at a different stage in their lives to the one you've reached,” Mrs. Smythe continued. “Either they're partnered, married, or still sowing wild oats. It takes them such a long time to realize the importance of stability, poor darlings, and it goes against the grain with any of them to admit it. Not manly, you see. They like saying they're islands, capable of standing alone. But the men who come to this agency are not like that. They've realized they've got stuck in the wrong groove. Playing the field has lost its allure. And they're all solvent, dear, as well as interesting. I wouldn't have them otherwise. I don't suppose you take sugar, do you?”

Patsy was so mesmerized she had not noticed the swift mechanics of tea making until a delicate cup and saucer appeared on the desk in front of her. The aroma of Earl Grey cut across the scent of the flowers. She could have been in the presence of Gypsy Rose Lee. Mrs. Smythe's smooth recitative could have been speaking her own mind. She felt rather emotional.

“There's a
large form to fill out, dear,” Mrs. Smythe was murmuring. “Because I need to know everything about you so that I can do my best, my very best. I hope you won't find it intrusive. Would you like me to leave you alone to do it by yourself, sorry the light isn't so good in here, or shall I help you?”

“Help me,” said Patsy and meant it, looking at the form which had appeared as miraculously as the tea. It was a room which seemed to be in a constant state of evening, dim without being cheerless, womb-like, comforting without being cloying and, the woman on the other side of the desk, with her soft hypnotic voice, was like a fond but strict mother of the kind she had never had. All Patsy's ideas of how to behave went in flux: she was used to control and now she was prepared to relinquish it entirely. She had come prepared to fend off personal questions, be economical with truth in the interest of image: now she was desperate to confide. Together they went through the form. Name, date and place of birth was the most innocuous information she was going to provide. It was what she said in between, the bits she forgot, later which took the time.

How did she decorate her flat? Did she like antiques? Not quite right, modern furniture was more her style now, along with designer clothes. How had she got on with her parents? Badly, a fact bitterly regretted since both were dead. No point of reference, you know? She found herself on the verge of tears. And why did she think she found it difficult to allow a man to get close? Did she react to criticism? What colour did she like best? How does one cope with loneliness? What were her worst fears?
How did you make people love you
? And that, in between what it was she wanted from a man.

Faith, hope,
loyalty, love, friendship. “Is that all?” the woman laughed. Patsy, by nature deeply suspicious, laughed too. She came out of the agency feeling exhausted and inspired; a person who had confessed inside a cosy confessional and been granted not only forgiveness but the promise of a new life. Two hours had passed. The shadows had moved from one side of the street to the other. Hazel was waiting, the sun in her eyes.

“So what's she like?” she demanded. “This Mrs. Smythe, what's she like?”

Patsy felt dazed. Her hesitation was infuriating.

“She's nice,” she said lamely. “Nice.”

Hazel with the droopy hem and the jaunty step crossed the road and went up the steps. Patsy sat where she was, nursing a coffee, wondering without any self-criticism, how it was she had come to say so much, and drink, with such enjoyment, a kind of tea she had never liked.

When Hazel descended much later, far less aggressively than she had embarked, she met a man at the outer door. He stepped back with a slight bow and a smile to let her pass. She blinked at him and the outside world, stepped in front of him with murmured thanks and a wider smile, turned back to look as he bounded up the stairs. Not quite her taste, she conceded, as his immaculate brogues and the cuffs of his cords disappeared from sight: not tall enough and far too conventional, but if that were an example of the calibre of male who paid their money and took their chance at this agency, things were looking up. She wondered if Mrs. Smythe could drag as much information out of a man as she could from any woman. She did not doubt it for more than a minute.

H
e took the penultimate flight of steps two at a time and then on the last flight, slowed down and proceeded quietly, so that when he arrived at the open door, she had not heard him. Mrs. Smythe was wrapping up the flowers from the outer desk: there was a loud crinkling of stiff polythene and she was struggling to fasten an elastic band round the awkward stems, the better to carry them home. Her business for the day was done and she did not approve of waste. The task was absorbing; she was swearing under her breath as the slippy stalks evaded her grasp. Around her head, there was a halo of smoke from her cigarette which hung precariously from the corner of her pale mouth, giving her the look of an old-fashioned barmaid. To his eyes, the hair complimented that image. A dark golden crop today, as if she designed herself to match the flowers. He pulled at the cord which secured the spectacles hanging across her bosom: she dropped the flowers and let out a shriek. He picked up the flowers for her and began to rearrange them.

“Don't
do that, darling. You creep everywhere, creep, creep, creep. You're nothing but a big creep.”

He looked cross and crestfallen: he pouted. She could never look at him without a flush of pride which was more than maternal. It was a kind of wonder that she could ever, in her last, late flowering, have produced a creature who was quite so perfect. When Mrs. Smythe had visited the Adriatic, she had stared at depictions of Adonis with scorn: they were nothing like this. A picture of a Madonna and child in Italy had her making comparisons and finding the baby depicted such a poor specimen alongside hers. Photos of blithe young military heros with perfect hair and teeth provoked a similar reaction: so did portraits of divine aristocrats in the National Portrait Gallery. How could anyone parade their child as perfect when her son existed? He only ever pulled a face to annoy her: it worked every time.

“Don't
do that, darling. Ruins your looks. I can't tell you, sweetheart, what a morning I've had. Late again, hid the computer, one must, of course,” she pointed at the laptop standing by the door. “And then, the girls … Well I shall have some fun with them. Two friends, couldn't be more different from one another. Life's rich pattern, eh?” He pouted again: she wished he would stop it. He was managing to nod and pout at the same time, like a child doing a party trick.

“They're all so fucking pretty,” Mrs. Smythe stormed. “So sodding perfect, so well paid, so absolutely pathetic in their little ambitions. Darling, thanks for that little man with specs, but where are the others? I need fifteen. I thought speccy four-eyes was so dull I could put him with last week's blonde, just to kick her off. With a bit of luck they'd bore one another to death inside an hour. Besides, he was the only man in the right age group. I know he was one of yours. Why can't I ever get enough men?”

“You could advertise, like before.”

“Oh yes. Such a lot of trouble. Needs must. How are you, darling? So nice to see you unexpectedly. Even if you do creep. Oh my God, what's the matter?”

He was taller than she. In order to hug her and bury his head in her chest, he had sat on the outer office chair, embracing her round the waist. She could feel the dampness of his tears against her blouse. Her bosom was ample: she felt sticky in the hollow between her breasts; the place where he had so often rested his head. He was born with the most marvellous head of hair, and while most baby hair of that quality gave way to something worse, his improved. Thick hair, well styled: she cut it herself and knew, as her fingers touched it, how it felt almost as if it could be carved. She pressed his head into her breast, and then, with a savage yank, pulled it away, with her fingers twisted into the roots of his dark locks, staring into his eyes.

“Mummy,”
he said. “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy—”

“Has Mickey been a bad boy?” she cooed, releasing his hair. She rescued the cigarette end, plucked it out of her mouth, wincing as it stuck to her lip. She dunked the end into the turquoise flower vase and listened to the faint hiss which she wanted to emulate, only louder. She clasped him and resumed her stroking, unhinged and infuriated as she always was by his crying. The sound of his weeping, screaming, yelling for the few seconds when she had ever left him in his babyhood, would haunt her for the rest of her life. If he cried now, it meant that yet again, she had failed him, or, that he, yet again, had failed her.

“What is it, petlamb, sshhh, what is it?” He sobbed. If she detected something a little too forced about his grief, as though this display of emotion was as much for effect as genuine sorrow, she threw the thought aside as disloyal. Her roving eye caught the laptop standing ready for removal.

“You haven't been inside my machine again, have you?”

He nodded, insofar as he could. “Mummy,” he repeated. The voice was muffled. “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.”

“And what did you find?”

“Nothing.”

She yanked back his head again, extending his neck. Such an edible thing, a baby's neck. She noticed faint scratches on his face. Pressed his head back into her bosom rather than take a second look.

“Oh God,” she said, reaching for another cigarette. “Oh bloody God.”

The only time
she had ever seen anything as perfect as her son had been the face of Christ on a crucifix in church. That too, would always haunt her. His face, wearing a crown of thorns. Wearily, she pulled off her wig. Let him see her own crown. The pink, shiny, bald patch down one side. Remind him of what he owed her. “What have you done,” she wailed. “What have you done this time?”

D
iana Kennedy was
sitting on the sea shore, watching the sun descend, exhausted by her own efforts to play with her grandson. Please leave me alone, he had said: you can watch if you want. She was ashamed because she was only making the attempt in the hope he would tell her secrets. If he would only love her in a proper childish manner, sharing his dreams with her, instead of in this dutiful, more or less obedient but distant way, she might be able to love him back. Let her hair down and become a shrieking, playful granny.

The only time he talked openly was when they swam and immediately afterwards. He could swim well, but he was afraid of the water and liked someone to go with him. Then he would shriek at the waves and say silly things.

The Persians,
he told her, think that the world stands on a whopping great big sapphire, and that's what makes the sky blue, see? Like a mirror! The Persians cannot have lived here in winter, she had said, but this was a day in which Diana could believe in any myth, if only nature had allowed her to be a believer. She looked at the boy. He needed someone to make something of his rough stone; a kind of lapidary, perhaps. She was echoing the analogies of her dead husband. He had never stopped making these kind of allusions, spoken with reference to Elisabeth. They irritated her and yet stuck in her mind. He would have said that Matthew needed someone to study him, find the direction of the grain, examine the flaws, mark the place, cut and create the facets which would show the quality. As it was, he was more moonshine than moonstone.

Matthew lived between two houses; the small one owned by his father up the hill, and Diana's, where he spent his days when the weather was fine and his father at work, flitting in and out of the kitchen for meals and more or less obeying the stricture not to go too far away. When he was not on the beach or the garden he was in Audrey and Donald Compton's bric-a-brac shop, a venue of which Diana did not entirely approve, but at least he was safe and they swore he was not a nuisance. He collected stones and polished them in a tumbler in the bedroom he often used overnight, washing them with a greater enthusiasm than he ever had for washing himself and always in a way which filthied the bathroom. He seemed self-sufficient in his entertainments, or at least absorbed, although Diana had overheard his long conversations with imaginary companions. She had also heard the rumour that he was backward, and could not bear the thought that anyone would say anything derogatory about him. She yawned. He had the same colouring as his mother, but try as she might, Diana could not see him as compensation or a substitute for Emma, because he did not need her, and if he asked one more time when Elisabeth was coming back, Diana would … She did not know what she would do; speak to him sharply, perhaps.

No, he was
not a gem stone suitable for a brilliant cut. He was a stone more suitable for carving. Jade, turqouise, lapus lazuli, like the colour the sky would become over the cliffs in an hour. Throw him amongst other children and he landed like a pebble.

It is our fault, she told herself. We make our children what they are, without the faintest idea of what we are doing.