Perfect Happiness (14 page)

During the early days and weeks of her solitude Frances had come to realize that grief like illness is unstable; it ebbs and flows in tides, it steals away to a distance and then comes roaring back, it torments by deception. It plays games with time and with reality. On some mornings she would wake and Steven's presence was so distant and yet so reassuring that she thought herself purged; he seemed both absent and present, she felt close to him and at the same time freed, she thought that at last she was walking alone. And then, within hours she would be back once more in that dark trough: incredulous, raging, ground into her misery. Time, that should be linear, had become formless; mercurial and unreliable, it took her away from the moment of Steven's death and then flung her back beside it.

Now, in the days after the Landons' party, she entered yet again one of those phases. She was glad to be alone and unwitnessed. There was this time none of that disorientation she had known in Venice; she had simply to endure once more the onset of raw pain. She wanted Steven's physical presence until the wanting was beyond endurance; she sat clenched in a chair with a book in her lap and fought her way through the hours, sustained only by the acquired wisdom that the pain would recede, that it would get better, that it might get better.

It was during one of these sessions, late one evening, that Marsha Landon rang the doorbell.

‘I brought your glasses back.’ If she observed Frances's stress she gave no indication. She put the box of glasses down on the hall table and stood; her pale shabby presence required attention, as though to ignore her were to reject a needy child. She wore faded jeans and an airy sweater against which poked small pointed breasts; her hair needed washing. Frances, beyond caring if she stayed or not, said, ‘Have some coffee.’

‘I'd rather have a drink, if that's O.K.’

In the sitting room, she flung herself into a chair and stared round. ‘You've got nice things. Not the tat most people in the street have.’ The puppy, lumbering from a deep sleep, had come over to nose her leg; Marsha eyed it. ‘I've always had cats, if anything. Aren't dogs an awful bother?’

‘It's my first,’ said Frances. ‘My son gave it to me before he went away. As a sort of consolation present I think.’

‘We never had children. Philip decided it wouldn't be a good idea. He had a daughter by Marguerite and…’ Marsha shrugged ‘… anyway children are an expense and a distraction, or that's the story. Books it was to be, instead of children, though as you'll note, the productivity level in that area hasn't been stunningly high either. How many have you got?’

‘Two.’

Marsha had folded her legs beneath her. She looked very thin, washed up on the corner of the sofa. ‘I used to paint, but that's gone out of the window since we came back from Spain. Philip needs the attic room for a study. Anyway, it's not the same here – dreary old London. God – I wish we were back there.’

Frances had poured them each a glass of wine. The effort of doing this – of finding bottle and glasses, drawing the cork – and the demands of Marsha's presence had dulled, for the moment, her wretchedness. She looked across the room at Marsha, hardly hearing what she said.

Marsha said, ‘Do you think Philip's attractive?’

Frances blinked. ‘I hadn't thought about it.’

‘Women usually do.’ Marsha paused, momentarily alert as though listening for something, and then slumped back. ‘He's got that old-fashioned thing called sex appeal, apparently. As well as a lot of other things we won't go into.’ She gave a harsh little laugh. ‘Of course your husband was a writer too, wasn't he? So you know all about the artistic temperament.’ She glanced at her watch, and Frances realized for the first time that she was in a state of high agitation. ‘Sorry – walking in like this… am I interrupting anything?’

‘No. I'm alone. I was just going to bed.’

‘I simply had to get out for a bit. That damn typewriter clattering away upstairs, and the bloody rain outside. God, the English summer.’

Frances said, ‘It's only today it's rained.’

‘Is it? It feels like for the last month. No wonder people here look like they do – that drab hunted look. In Spain everybody laughs.’

‘Did you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Were you happy? Both of you?’

Marsha looked away. ‘Oh, God, I don't know… It was different, that's all.’

You've never been happy, Frances thought, you poor discontented creature. And you don't love your husband, perhaps you don't love anyone, perhaps you never have. What does that feel like? It is a condition as mysterious as death. She said, ‘Have you got a job?’

‘I help a friend who's got a sort of junk-shop one or two mornings a week.’

‘That's not a job. That's filling in the time.’ I sound like Zoe, Frances thought.

Marsha looked offended. ‘What do you do?’ she countered.

Frances smiled. ‘At the moment, I'm still busy sorting out Steven's papers, then when I've done that I'm going to see what there is going for a not very well qualified forty-nine year old.’ Am I? Yes, of course I am.

‘If you like,’ said Marsha off-handedly, ‘I could help you with this sorting-out you're doing.’

Oh God, thought Frances, now what do I do?

The doorbell went. Marsha looked up expectantly. ‘There's someone ringing your bell.’

It was Philip. He looked beyond Frances into the hall and said, ‘Is Marsha here?’ He followed Frances into the sitting room where he stood with his hands thrust into his pockets. ‘I saw your note.’

‘Did you?’ Marsha stared back, sullen.

‘You'd better come home and leave Frances in peace.’

‘Frances and I were having a nice chat. Till now.’

‘I suppose you realize you left the cooker on.’

‘Oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

Frances broke in. ‘Look, I'm going to bed myself in a minute anyway. Philip, do you want a glass of wine?’

‘No, thanks. Sorry about this, Frances…’ He shot her a look, a furtive pleading look that sat oddly on his gaunt face. ‘We'll push off. Come on, Marsha.’

‘Oh, for God's sake,’ said Marsha. ‘Leave me alone. I only wanted a change of scene for ten minutes.’ But she got up. ‘I'll look in again soon, Frances. His trouble is that he can't stand being alone in the house. One of his troubles.’ She walked past her husband and into the hall.

Philip hesitated for a moment. He shrugged; hopeless rather than dismissive. ‘We'd had a tiff. Sorry you got drawn in.’

Frances said nothing.

‘I'll be off. Goodnight.’

After she had let them out she looked out of the window and saw them going down the street, walking a little apart. That girl meant him to follow her round here, she thought. And then – she's not a girl, she's a woman, why does one call her that? What a sad pair.

She locked the back door, returned to the sitting room, sat down at Steven's desk. Those two unnerve me, she thought, I catch despondency from them like some kind of disease.

She laid her hands on the cool leather top of the desk and was filled with yearning. She gave in to it, capitulated, let it engulf her. Let me be anywhere but here, and now, she thought; let me be safely then again. In a different house. In the old house. In the Pulborough house, where it seems always to have been summer.

A summer afternoon, with sunshine falling on to the lawn through the branches of the apple tree to lie like gold pennies among the daisies. Idyllic, unreachable summer afternoon. Except that it is not idyllic because it is filled with black anger, anger invisibly fuming around the flowers and the bright grass and the butterflies sunning themselves on the terrace. Steven sits in a deck-chair at the far end of the lawn and she, Frances, on a rug at the other, and they have not spoken now for two and a half hours. Steven has his briefcase beside him and a stack of papers on his knee; Frances is reading, ostensibly, in fact allowing her eyes to travel from line to line and her hands occasionally to turn a page. The children come and go. Words glitter in her head, like pieces of broken glass: what she has said and what he said and what she did not say but thinks. And all of a sudden she cannot stand it any longer, that the glowing day should be thus infected, that time should be so wasted, that it should go on. She gets up and crosses, slowly, with resentment, the lawn, and when she is half way across Steven looks up from his papers and watches her. She says (sullenly), ‘I'm sorry’, and he says, ‘I'm sorry too’, and she says ‘I always say it first’, and Steven opens his mouth… and closes it quickly. And holds out his arms instead.

What is then said has been said before and will be said again. The quarrel, Frances's quarrel, is not with him but with all those people and events that take him away, that scuttle plans, that leave the children (she has histrionically declared) fatherless. The fatherless children gather round, scenting a brightening of the atmosphere that promises indulgences, attentions, and indeed yes the afternoon swivels suddenly into celebration. For Zoe arrives, unpredictable as ever, sweeping in with laughter and parcels and traveller's tales. The afternoon softens to evening, but it will never end, they will all be there for ever on the lavish grass in the sunshine. Tabitha darts to and fro, her six-year-old boot button eyes bright with excitement. ‘She's showing off,’ says Zoe. ‘It's a good thing we're all feeling so benign. And for Christ's sake get her to drop this auntie stuff.’

Zoe and Steven argue: she with verve and passion, he with relentless logic. Tabitha sits listening, or rather watching, her head swinging one way and then the other like a spectator at a tennis-match. She whispers to Frances, ‘Did Daddy win or did Auntie Zoe?’ ‘Not auntie,’ says Frances, ‘Just Zoe. Neither of them did. It's not a thing you win.’ ‘Oh yes it is,’ says Steven. ‘I did.’ ‘You damn well did not,’ snaps Zoe. And… ‘Ooo…’ says Tabitha piously, ‘Naughty words, you'll have to wash your mouth out with soap.’ Zoe glares: ‘What's with little Miss Prim here?’ ‘Education,’ says Steven. ‘You are hearing the voice of Miss someone at Pulborough Church of England primary school.’ ‘Miss
Sanderson
,’ cries Tabitha indignantly. And suddenly she loses interest and is gone, vanishing into the orchard in search of Harry, of apples, of heaven knows what. Zoe laughs: ‘I am going to have to mind my p's and q's, I can see.’ She looks at Frances: ‘Isn't she gorgeous, though?’

The children come rushing past; they are aeroplanes, or birds, or batmen. Frances nods. She says, softly, ‘It's amazing, but it works. We had no right, but it works.’ She feels convalescent, scoured by the anger that has gone, clean, happy; she looks across at Steven and sees that he feels the same. In the end, she thinks, it is always all right. What she feels and what she thinks are welded to the afternoon, to the lawn dabbed with sunlight, to these four people she loves above all.

Then and now. Then, which is gone but inescapable, and now, which has to be endured. She got up from the desk, drew the curtains, locked the doors, went to bed. Dry-eyed, she proudly noted.

‘Do you love that thing yet?’ asked Zoe, looking at the puppy.

‘No, not really.’

‘Bless him, though – Harry. The young bring tears to the eyes, don't they? Come here – guilt offering.’ She rolled the puppy on its back. ‘This thing is a he, Frances, he's got a prick an inch long already. You're in for trouble with the neighbouring ladies. Are you fraternizing locally, incidentally?’

‘Up to a point. There's an odd bleak couple called Landon down the road. He was at school with Steven, unfortunately.’

‘Unfortunately?’

‘Well – he's a bit creepy really.’

‘Any news of Harry?’

‘A couple of cards. You look tired. Are you all right?’

Zoe stood at the window, in a scarlet raincoat, looking into the wet street. ‘Oh, I'm all right. The weather's foul and I've got
angst
or some other kind of iron in the soul. And I'm getting old. And I'm not going to start complaining to you, of all people.’

She turned, and her hair was glittering with drops of rain, diamond drops that snapped in the light from the standard lamp. ‘You're staring at me as though I was an apparition, my love. Am I such a sight?’

‘You're a very welcome sight.’

Just as, once, in another red coat, she comes swimming into the clear patch rubbed in the condensation on a teashop window, that place in Gloucester Road: Zoe, darting between two taxis, the red coat hugged to her chin. It is snowing; feeble London snow that dies in black splodges on the pavement.

‘Bread and butter,’ she says. ‘No cakes. Above all, no cakes.’

The doorbell keeps pinging as people come in from the street. ‘I am in the most bloody awful fix,’ she says. ‘Oh, Frances, Frances, I need you, I really do. I want your nice warm shoulder to howl on.’

A woman in a green woolly hat sits at the next table, her backview eavesdropping.

‘Sick,’ says Zoe. ‘All the time. It's foul. I never realized.’

Numb at first; then a rush of feelings. Love for her; pity; and something else. Something creeping and hateful: envy. Oh, envy, envy.

‘Seven weeks,’ says Zoe, ‘or thereabouts. Oh, Christ, Frances, what lousy wretched luck…’

‘Dan?’