Learning by Heart (24 page)

Sometimes when she made this journey she would stop where the fruit cages used to be; the bushes inside them had long ago grown too woody to be productive, and the area had been turned over to lawn. She didn’t know what she had imagined when she accepted Richard that night: something safe, something good? She was not quite sure. She had received safety, kindness and sweetness.

And yet there were the pauses: the pause by the empty lawn, or by the rose-beds, or in the house when she looked out from cleaning the bedrooms on to the view of her and Richard’s house, and the new vista of the market garden, so cleanly laid out in its rows. Then she would think that she was exactly as she had once feared: her mother, married to an older man, keeping his house. Keeping Richard’s house and her father’s house. She was in her mother’s role and her own. Her father was seventy-three that year, Richard was fifty-four, and she was thirty-three. In the pauses, she would feel stranded in another generation, a generation that had been young in the 1940s. She was still young, she would think, and she would open the newspaper and see the 1960s passing. She felt she had lost her twenties and thirties; she felt herself to be Richard’s age.

A few years ago, on her twenty-fifth birthday, she had gone up to London. She had found herself longing to see the city and Jenny again. Richard had not wanted to come: he was busy, and happy for her to arrange a day out for herself in town.

‘You can talk about old times,’ he had joked, as he saw her off at the station. She’d smiled back. She had never told him about David Menzies. She never would.

Jenny had met her at the station: she looked much older in the face but was dressed as if she were sixteen. Cora had taken in the sight of Jenny’s dumpy legs, revealed by the mini-dress, and the eyes almost obscured by black liner. Her friend had grown her hair and darkened it; she bore little resemblance to the curly-haired girl Cora had known at school.

They got into a taxi. Jenny sat back and appraised her. ‘So,’ she said, ‘how is life down on the farm?’

‘Fine,’ Cora replied. ‘How’s Terry?’

Jenny had shrugged. ‘I don’t see much of him.’ Her husband, she told Cora, was travelling. He had spent three months of the previous year in India and was now importing Indian goods.

‘The house is full of bloody incense-burners,’ Jenny told her. ‘Don’t be afraid to kick a few out of the way.’

When they got to the Georgian terrace in Kensington, Cora was astonished by it. It was huge, a shrine in itself. The hallway was hung with silk flags of every imaginable shade; there were mosaic mirrors on the floor. Joss sticks burned in a sitting room that was almost dark, and had no furniture except vast floor cushions.

‘We’ve gone native,’ Jenny explained, as they walked through it. ‘We have to. Business.’

When they got to the kitchen, Cora saw something of the old Jenny. The table and the chairs round it were just like those in Cora’s father’s house, hard-polished mahogany that seemed plaintively out of place among the Che Guevara posters.

‘He keeps saying he’ll throw everything of mine out,’ Jenny said derisively.

‘And will he? Will you let him?’

‘No,’ Jenny retorted. ‘Anyway, he’s never home long enough.’

Cora admired the paintings. There were all sorts of prints and posters, and a few originals. She stood in front of a largely white canvas and read the signature at the bottom: Mark Tobey. ‘Did you buy this?’ she asked Jenny.

‘I don’t buy any of it,’ her friend replied tersely. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t like it. Do you?’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Cora told her. ‘I think it’s lovely.’

Jenny began to laugh. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘You’re not allowed to say, “It’s lovely”, darling. You have to stand about in galleries at first nights saying things like “The forms are so meditative.”’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘Neither do I,’ Jenny said. ‘Between you and me, Cora, it’s all crap, Terry’s world.’

Cora frowned to herself as Jenny took cups from a cupboard. She looked around for something else to comment on, and saw the photograph of Jenny and Terry’s two sons propped on the dresser. Both, she knew, were away at boarding-school. Jenny had told her some time ago that that had been against her better judgement. The last time Cora had seen her was at the youngest’s christening. She picked up the photograph. ‘They’ve grown so handsome,’ she said.

Jenny’s gaze rested on it. ‘They became other people when that school got its hands on them.’

The two women regarded each other across the table, and two cups of strong coffee.

‘Let’s have cake,’ Jenny said. ‘Diet be buggered.’

They ate silently for a while. Jenny pressed her fingertips to the plate then licked the crumbs off them. ‘I never get the chance to do this,’ she said. ‘Nobody eats in London. They just do acid.’

‘Do you still work at the shop?’ Cora asked.

‘Now and then.’ Jenny grabbed Cora’s arm. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘let’s go and look at it. Let’s go and look at the whole scene.’

The shop had moved to swinging London’s epicentre. It was in a side-street a hundred yards from the King’s Road; lanterns hung outside, and above it a picture of an Indian woman, her arms outstretched. When they walked into the gloom, Cora could just make out the salesgirl curled on a rug, lighting a cigarette. She got up when she saw them. She was dressed the same as Jenny: a tiny skirt, with black-and-white patent Courrèges-style boots that ended just under the knee.

‘Vinny about?’ Jenny asked.

‘In the back,’ the girl said.

They went through to the office. A man was sitting with his feet up on the desk, sorting through a pile of invoices in his lap. He was a tall, rangy Jamaican.

‘Vinny,’ Jenny said. ‘This is Cora.’

The man looked Cora up and down, and grinned as he got up. ‘You two girls ready for lunch?’ he asked.

‘Take us somewhere,’ Jenny told him.

They walked down Elystan Place and out on to the King’s Road. Cora glanced across to Radnor Walk.

‘Didn’t that guy Menzies live down here?’ Jenny asked. She had taken Vinny’s hand as they waited for a gap in the traffic.

‘Yes,’ Cora replied.

‘Hear anything of him?’

‘No.’ Cora tried to hide her disgust. ‘Have you?’

‘He married some Swedish woman,’ Vinny said. ‘Moved there.’

‘You knew him?’ Cora asked.

Vinny laughed. ‘Everybody knew David,’ he said.

‘What was wrong with him?’ Jenny asked, as they started to cross. ‘He seemed all right to me.’

‘He seemed all right to most women,’ Vinny told her.

‘He was vile,’ Cora murmured, and ignored Jenny’s astonishment.

They stopped at a bar. It was packed. Over the heads of the customers, Vinny ordered sandwiches. They moved to a cramped table in a corner.

Jenny patted Cora’s knee. ‘How’s Richard?’ she asked.

‘Fine,’ Cora said, watching Vinny light a cigarette and pass it to her friend. He offered one to her; she shook her head.

‘What’re you doing down there?’

‘The market garden,’ Cora said. ‘I wrote to you about it.’

Jenny smiled at Vinny, and cocked her head in her friend’s direction. ‘Cora is Mother Earth.’

‘We cultivate fruit trees,’ Cora explained.

‘Hard work?’ Vinny asked.

‘Yes, quite hard. Busy.’

‘Got kids?’

‘No,’ Cora replied. ‘Have you?’

‘Five,’ he said. And he laughed. ‘I cultivate them.’ He drew out the word lovingly, with a grin.

Jenny gripped Cora’s arm. ‘I know what we’ll do with you this afternoon,’ she said. ‘We’ll buy you some clothes.’

‘I don’t need any,’ Cora said.

‘Yes, you do,’ Jenny replied. ‘Look at you.’

Cora glanced down at herself. ‘What’s wrong with me?’

‘You look like a farmer’s wife.’

‘But that’s what I am.’

‘Jesus, Cora,’ Jenny said. ‘You’re not forty.’

The crowd was pressing in to them so they got up and went out on to the street. When Vinny walked ahead, Cora held Jenny back. ‘What are you doing?’ she said. ‘Who is this man?’

Jenny regarded her with surprise. ‘He’s the office manager. Didn’t you see?’

‘You’re having an affair with him.’

‘Darling,’ Jenny said, ‘everybody does it. What do you think Terry’s up to?’

Cora stopped dead.

‘Not everyone lives in Cloud Cuckoo Land,’ Jenny went on, ‘with their hands in the soil and their hearts entwined like the briar, tra-la.’

‘You’re making fun of me,’ Cora said. ‘You always did.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Jenny said. ‘I envy you. You’re happy. But, then, I’m having the wildest time.’

‘You should be careful.’

‘Haven’t you heard of the Pill?’

‘Of course.’

‘But you haven’t any children.’ She saw Cora’s expression. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

Cora felt irritated. Not only by Jenny, but by the city around her. It was a cryptic, stifling sensation: half of her envied Jenny’s freedom, the other half disapproved. She felt out of place and stupid. She particularly resented the casual mention of families: she wanted children, and so did Richard. They had talked about moving house when she became pregnant. But she never had. Richard’s attitude was to let nature take its course, for good or bad. He would not let her see a doctor. And the idea of himself being examined was never discussed. At first he was especially kind to her each month, as if sympathizing because it was her fault. Then, gradually, the subject slipped away. They had only ever argued twice, heatedly, in their marriage, and it had been about that: Richard’s acceptance of the unbearable.

It was all part of it, part of the feeling that life was slipping away from her, passing her. She loved Richard; she could not resent him. But sometimes, in the garden alone, or working silently alongside him, watching his absorption in their work, she would feel a helpless sweeping away of herself. Recently it had become worse. She had felt that the garden was full of little ghosts, the children they had not had. It was surreal and strange, and she worried that she might be slipping back to the wasteland she had inhabited after her mother’s death. So she had tried to stop herself thinking about children.

Jenny made a visible effort now to lighten the mood. She linked Cora’s arm. ‘Has he taken you anywhere exotic lately?’ she asked. ‘France? Further?’

‘We’ve been to Cornwall,’ Cora said. ‘We like it there.’

‘I met Vinny in Lindos,’ Jenny said. ‘I’m going back this summer.’

‘Where’s Lindos?’

‘Rhodes. Oh, you must go, Cora,’ she said. ‘Take off your shoes. Take off your clothes. Swim naked in the warm sea.’ And she raised her eyebrows, grinned, and nodded in Vinny’s direction. ‘You’ll never look back.’

‘We swim in Cornwall,’ Cora said.

‘In an English summer!’ Jenny hooted derision. ‘You’ll turn permanently blue.’

They had reached the main shops. For the next hour, Cora was hauled into one and then another; eventually she gave in to the silliness, and found herself on the train home with several carrier-bags of skirts and hats, and a pair of white boots. On the station, Jenny had hugged her with just a little too much force.

‘Come down and see us,’ Cora said. ‘Please. Come and stay. Bring the boys.’

Jenny had rolled her eyes. ‘I will,’ she promised.

But Cora didn’t believe her.

When she got home, she showed Richard what she had bought. She put on the skirt and boots and walked up and down.

He sat in the armchair and smiled. ‘Very nice,’ he had said. ‘Very short.’

‘I might wear it into town,’ she told him.

‘Not if I catch you first,’ he said.

She had considered him, smiling. ‘Everybody wears things like this in London, you know.’

‘London is not here,’ he replied.

She had put the clothes away in a drawer.

Sometimes she looked at them. But not very often.

Eight years had passed since that day in London. Now, at midday, she heard a car coming into the drive. She was in the greenhouses, potting out pelargonium cuttings. She liked the work: it was slow, fastidious, productive. She liked to stand back and see that she had done two hundred, three hundred, that a morning had turned into afternoon, that the light had changed and the sun had moved to produce a different patch of light, a different patch of shade.

She wiped her hands on a cloth and walked out to see who the customer was.

A man she knew well was standing by a green Ford Zephyr, looking up the garden at the rows of bushes and trees. He glanced round as he heard her footsteps. ‘I suppose they all have names, and you know them,’ he said. ‘In Latin, probably.’

She smiled broadly. ‘I do, actually.’

‘And you never forget them, with your inhuman encyclopedic brain.’

She began to run, and threw herself into his arms.

He held her tightly. ‘“In the green grass she loves to lie,”’ he murmured, laughing. ‘“And there with her fair aspect tames the wilder flowers …”’

‘“And gives them names.”’ She stepped back from him. ‘Brian,’ she said, ‘what on earth are you doing here?’

‘I came to look at Flora, the goddess, in her field of delight.’

She waved her hand at the garden. ‘This is it.’

He took her hand as it fell to her side. ‘I was on my way to see an author in Bristol,’ he said, ‘and it struck me that I was only forty miles from you on the motorway so I turned off. And here you are, looking wonderful,’ he said.

They stood apart from each other.

‘Six years,’ she said. ‘You look well.’

‘Dear child, I am preserved in alcohol.’

‘You met us at Wisley. That was the last time we saw you.’

‘That I did. Months it took me to get over the excess of oxygen in that bloody great garden. Months!’

Bisley was older, but looked better than she remembered. ‘The high life suits you,’ she commented, ‘all your success.’

‘Better late than never,’ he commented wryly. ‘And I’ve been doing outrageous things you won’t believe.’

‘Such as what?’

‘Playing tennis.’

She laughed. ‘You? Where?’

‘You’d hardly recognize me,’ he said. ‘I’ve bought a house in Spain. It has a pool, too. I hold court there, like an ancient guru.’ And he laughed at himself. ‘So very wise,’ he told her, rolling his eyes. ‘So
very
astute. So decrepit!’