Perfect Happiness (24 page)

‘Well,’ she said. ‘To our muttons, I suppose. Here come the boys. See you around, I don't doubt.’

And, sitting down, opening her notepad, observing that the politician on display had put on weight and wore a deplorable tie, she thought: There, that wasn't too bad, was it? We are through that and out the other side and whatever I am feeling is endurable. I have had my mind wonderfully concentrated, this last couple of weeks. I know for what we should give thanks. To be sitting here, in good health and reasonably good spirits listening to this fellow who is still wet behind the ears explain how he will restore this country to wealth, prosperity and international prestige.

Each morning when Morris woke he knew before conscious thought arrived that there was something enormously beneficial in progress, some matter for exultation. That to be entering the day was good. Pleasure loitered somewhere just out of sight. And then as he woke up properly he remembered.

If there was no arrangement to see her, then he could always anticipate telephoning her. He could think: this afternoon I shall hear her voice, tomorrow, the next day… On the other hand if there was an arrangement on the horizon he could savour it: on Friday we shall go to the concert together, at the weekend I am to go to the house, the day after tomorrow I shall see her. Expectation was almost as sweet as reality; it lasted longer, for one thing.

When he passed young couples in the street walking hand in hand he felt conspiratorial sympathy; he wanted to pat them on the shoulder and say, you may not believe this, looking at me, middle-aged and all that, but I know how you feel. Me too. He could hardly believe his luck. Unless you were some kind of emotional profligate, he supposed, the chances of running up against the appropriate person three times in one's life were slim. You met, after all, hundreds of people; nearly all were the wrong age, the wrong sex, wrongly disposed towards you or simply not to your taste. He had now fallen in love three times. The first time had been with a girl at college and had been an education of the senses in every way, but impermanent. The second had been with his ex-wife and while that too had proved ultimately impermanent and indeed the basis of much misery, the distant flavour of those early months lingered yet. And now there was this, out of which goodness knows what would come. He dared not dwell on that. For one thing, he was still deeply uncertain how she felt about him; she seemed to enjoy herself when they were together; she looked at him, he thought, with affection. But he was not sure.

He was filled with what he felt to be prurient curiosity about Steven. Despising himself, he went to a library and looked up his books; the man had apparently been inordinately clever. And good-looking too: from a back flap stared (assessing, perceiving…) one of those spectacled and undubitably intellectual but also virile faces: an academic Arthur Miller. Morris, with a mixture of respect and resentment, stared back. He told himself that there was nothing so irrational or indeed downright tasteless as to feel jealous of a man who was dead, but jealous was what he felt. Steven's inaccessible presence filled up the whole of Frances's past; everything to which she referred implied him, in some way or another. I am going to have to come to terms with him, thought Morris, if we are to get anywhere at all. He bought a paperback edition of Steven's book on disarmament and read it carefully, several times disagreeing with an argument which gave him a perverse satisfaction.

Frances, for her part, tended to waken into a state of perplexity. She would perform the ritual examination of her condition and find, day by day, that it was not too bad. She would think of Steven, testing herself. Sometimes that was endurable and at others it was not. She would think about what she was planning to do that day. And then, probably she would think of Morris and a certain confusion would ensue. She liked him; she was uncomfortably aware of what he felt about her; her own response was bewilderingly complex.

When as on that occasion in the park, he touched her, she shrank with alarm; a part of her rejoiced and responded, another part retreated in horror. And at the same time she saw the look in his eyes, and was filled with distress.

The third occasion on which Morris came to see her at the house was the anniversary of Steven's death. She had confronted this with resolution, treating it as any other day, making no special plans, but when Morris rang, unexpectedly, to ask if he might drop in for an hour or two on his way to a concert, she had been inordinately relieved, though she did not tell him so. She realized that she had dreaded being alone all day.

It was a fine warm evening. They sat on the newly arranged terrace, amid the tubs planted with bulbs and the young climbing plants. The puppy sat at their feet, chewing a rubber bone that Harry had bought for it. Behind them, the french windows were open to the house. Frances thought: A year ago none of this was known to me: this place, this man, this version of myself. She felt suddenly disoriented and looked away. Morris was talking about Aldeburgh. He broke off: ‘I'm sorry. I mustn't forever go on about music.’

Frances smiled. ‘You don't. It comes up most discreetly. And I inflict shop on you. I talk about the office.’

‘How is this new machinery you have to use?’

She gazed blankly. ‘Machinery?’

‘This computer or whatever.’

‘Oh – that. A bit daunting, but I think I have the upper hand.’

Morris said solicitously, ‘Are you all right?’

‘I'm fine. Sorry. I'm being a bit vague tonight, I'm afraid.’

‘Vague is all right. I was just afraid there might be something wrong.’

‘Nothing wrong at all.’

They viewed each other across Frances's new slatted wooden garden table. Morris, hesitating on the brink of several crucial openings, was silent. Frances, taking herself in hand, thought: this is where I am now, this is where I live, this is the person that I am and it is not all bad, not bad at all. Everything else is over and gone, with all that that means. The puppy got up and went into the house.

She said, ‘Are we warm enough out here?’

‘I'm quite warm enough.’

‘Then so am I.’ And indeed, the sunlight on her arm was like a hand laid on the skin.

‘For me,’ said Morris, ‘autumn always feels like the beginning of the year. Things starting up. An urban attitude, I know. Concerts, theatres.’

‘Steven used to say that too. For him of course it was being hitched to the academic cycle.’

‘Of course,’ said Morris, in a rather flat tone and Frances thought, why did I say that? Why even when I am most determined not to am I looking over my shoulder for Steven?

A small wind had got up. Somewhere inside the house a door banged. Frances said, ‘Maybe we will go in. Anyway, I want to show you my reorganizations. I have made myself a study. The first I have ever had.’

‘And what,’ said Morris cheerfully, ‘will you study?’ He followed her into the sitting room.

A few minutes later, when they had toured the house to inspect the changes, Frances realized that the puppy was missing. ‘It must have got out. I must have left the front door open – that was what that bang was. Bother. Morris, I'm sorry – I shall have to go and look for him.’

They walked down the street together, searching. ‘Does he know where he lives?’ asked Morris. Frances said, ‘I've no idea. Animals are supposed to have a homing instinct, aren't they? He's my first dog, remember. And last, too, if this kind of thing is going to go on.’

When they saw him he was nosing at a dustbin. Frances called; he caught sight of them at the same moment and came bounding up the street. The car that hit him came out of a side turning and could not have avoided him. It flung him up into the air with a curious slow motion effect so that for weeks afterwards both Morris and Frances carried in their heads the sight of that limp brown body turning over and over to flop down on the pavement like a sack.

It was Morris who examined him. He said, ‘I'm afraid he's dead.’ The driver of the car, a middle-aged West Indian, was making noises of regret and apology. Frances said, ‘You're not to blame. You couldn't help it. Please don't bother to stay. We'll have to take him back to the house,’ she went on, to Morris, ‘I'd better…’ The West Indian dived into the back of his car and emerged with a Woolworths plastic carrier bag. He held it out to Morris who hesitated and then took it. ‘Thank you.’ He put the body of the dog into the carrier bag and turned to Frances. She had gone quite white, he saw. He took her arm and they walked thus back to the house, the plastic bag bumping awkwardly against Morris's leg.

When they were in the hall Frances said, ‘The stupid thing was to call him. It was my fault.’

‘It wasn't anyone's fault. It simply happened.’ Morris carried the bag through on to the terrace and put it down beside the window. Frances went into the sitting room and sat down. After five minutes he joined her. ‘I've rung the local council. They'll send a van along to take him away.’

Frances said, ‘I'd never have thought of that. I wouldn't have known what to do.’

‘A friend of mine had a business with a cat once.’ He sat down beside her on the sofa.

‘Damn,’ said Frances. ‘I'm afraid I'm weeping.’ She got out a kleenex and blew her nose. Tears, Morris saw, were coursing down her cheeks. It occurred to him that he had not seen anyone cry for years. Very many years. Not since the end of his marriage and his wife had not in fact been a woman who often wept. He felt not in the least embarrassed but almost unendurably tender. He said, ‘I'll get you another dog.’

‘I don't want another. I didn't really want this one. But thank you, Morris. It's not to do with the dog at all. Though I did like him.’

‘I know it's not to do with the dog.’

‘Small things tend to unnerve me. It's tiresome.’

‘It wasn't all that small a thing.’

‘No. Poor Hector. I don't think he knew much about it.’

Morris got up. ‘I think it might be a good thing if we both had a drink, don't you? Let me get them.’

When he returned Frances had restored herself. Her face was dry and her hair combed. She took the drink. ‘Thank you. I'm lucky you were here. It would have been much worse otherwise.’

‘If I hadn't been here it probably wouldn't have happened. You opened the front door for me and then, apparently, left it open.’

‘Now who's appropriating blame?’

‘No,’ said Morris. ‘I'm just saying that there are innumerable alternative pasts. Everything might always not have happened. But it did. So what happens next remorselessly ensues. Once Susanna has revealed the Count's intentions to Figaro the rest of the Marriage must unfold as it does.’

Frances sat up abruptly. ‘Morris… your concert. Surely you should have gone ages ago?’

‘I'm not going to get to the concert,’ said Morris. ‘And I don't particularly care I'm afraid.’

And when, a few minutes later, he kissed her, it occurred to him, even in the middle of that delightful and unbelievable process that when he got up that morning this had been lying in wait for him at the end of the day, undreamed-of but inevitable.

He said, ‘Oh, Frances, I do so very much want you.’

And Frances, shaking slightly, looked at him and could think only how strange it was that behind this face, seen now more intensely than before, there lay no other. The faces of Tabitha, Zoe, Harry, of friends, were palimpsests: behind them lurked others, their younger selves, they were continuous, as she was herself. Morris was as he was and could not be otherwise: his neat triangular beard slightly flecked with grey, his sharp brown eyes, the little pouches beneath them.

He drew away from her. He finished his drink and said, ‘I don't mean now this minute. It would be all wrong tonight, when you've been upset. But sometime, I do so hope. And now I think we should go out and have a meal somewhere, don't you?’

‘I have this pompous card,’ said Zoe, ‘with gilt crawling all over it, inviting me to the first Steven Brooklyn Memorial Lecture. We go, I suppose.’

Frances said, ‘I suppose.’

Zoe looked at her intently. ‘You don't absolutely have to.’

‘Of course I shall go.’

Zoe prowled the room. ‘I must say, this place is a treat now. Much better than that mausoleum.’ She pounced at the mantelpiece. ‘I haven't seen that before.’

‘Morris Corfield gave it to me,’ said Frances, over-casually. ‘When the puppy was killed. As a sort of joke, I think.’

Zoe peered. ‘Nice expensive joke, early Victorian stuff like that. It looks like Herring or someone. I like the schmaltzy dog. He's a real nice guy, Morris, isn't he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ho, hum,’ said Zoe. ‘Ah well. Nuff said, I daresay. Tab rang, by the way. Since we came clean – since I came clean – she seems to feel she ought to keep an eye on me. Quite frankly, it makes me feel all soppy. I'm getting vulnerable in my old age. Does she check up on you too?’

‘Quite a lot.’

‘Bless her.’ Gazing out of the window, Zoe went on, ‘Eric, incidentally, married his girl. A few weeks ago. They're living happily ever after in Barnes. Don't gnash your teeth for me. Oddly enough, it's not quite as bad as I thought it would be. I've had a rather different slant on life lately which seems to have tempered the outlook.’