Perfect Happiness (26 page)

And now there was the time at the end of this day, when he found all of a sudden that in fact the nervous rehearsed scenarios dissolved, were inappropriate and unnecessary and in fact what should be said and done arrived quite naturally, without thought or consideration. He came to her room and he put his arms round her and they took their clothes off and went to bed and made love. In the middle of it all he looked down at her and said, ‘You're not just doing this to be polite, are you?’ And she had smiled. Smiled and said nothing in reply but simply lain there beneath him and around him; this pleasure, he saw and he felt, was shared.

It was much later, in the cold small hours, that Morris woke and realized, almost dispassionately, that Frances did not love him and perhaps never would.

Frances and Zoe, ushered to the front row of the lecture hall, found themselves flanked by the Director and various academic household names. Patricia Geering, in what Frances now knew to be her best dress, stood in the aisle, discreetly allocating seats. She and Frances exchanged private smiles. Zoe, periodically, turned round and stared backwards into the hall, reporting loudly on the size of the audience and faces she recognized. The Director eyed her nervously, as though she were some unstable substance. Zoe, observing this, whispered to Frances, ‘I'm the sort of woman who scares the pants off that sort of man. They wait to be set upon.’ ‘Hush,’ said Frances. ‘I work here.’ ‘All right, all right.’

The lecturer arrived and took his place at the lectern. He stood for a few moments sorting out his papers, an elderly pear-shaped man with silver-rimmed spectacles that were, throughout the lecture, to shunt slowly down his nose and be swept up again in the nick of time by his adroit left forefinger. He began to speak – of his appreciation at being invited to deliver this lecture, of Steven. He paid tribute to Steven's work. Frances wondered if Steven had known him; the man's name was unfamiliar to her. He was considerably older than Steven; his presence, and Steven's absence, seemed an affront. She gazed at him, trying to suppress this feeling, trying to pay attention to his lecture, which was about German rearmament after the First World War. It was a depressing theme; the burden of the argument was that intensive accumulation of military hardware had always culminated in war and would always do so. The lecture over, she said to Zoe, ‘Gloomy stuff.’

‘That's not the only kind of history. The prophetic past. There are more optimistic approaches.’

The Director, now, was leading the lecturer down from the platform and towards them. ‘Mrs Brooklyn. Miss Brooklyn. Professor Harrington.’ They stood for a moment; the professor believed that he and Frances had briefly met once some years ago in, um, Manchester. He had appreciated Zoe's article on the American gun laws. The Director suggested they should move through to the Common Room. ‘I could certainly use a drink,’ said Zoe, in an insufficiently muted voice. The back of the Director's neck, ahead of them, seemed to curdle slightly.

The room filled up. Frances, engaged by Harrington, stood listening to an account of a recent visit to China. It should have been interesting but wasn't. Zoe, more adroit at escape, had already slid away; Frances could see her head bobbing between people's shoulders as she cruised in search of someone more enlivening to talk to. Just, she thought, what Steven would have done. But here am I, too polite or too inert to do anything but stand here nodding occasionally. With a pleasant flood of warmth Morris's voice came to her: ‘You're not just doing this to be polite, are you?’ Needing to know. And no, she thought, I wasn't, I most certainly wasn't.

Over the professor's shoulder she could see faces framed by backs and other shoulders. This was a good deal more interesting than the professor's discourse since, she gradually perceived, many of these faces were known faces and formed a curious kaleidoscope of reminder. Over there was a college friend of Steven's who had been at their wedding; his grey hair startled her for a moment, as though there were something wrong with him. And there was the man who had once so ineptly told her in Stockholm that she would have to wait her turn, now, for Steven's attention; a differently emotive presence. There was the woman who had been Steven's personal assistant at the College for the last two years and there were other colleagues and ex-colleagues and friends and foes: a patchwork of associations, each face prompting a series of quickly vanishing slides: the time when she had been at this place, done such-and-such, when this or that had been said. She gazed, intrigued, quite deaf now to Harrington, who was in Peking shrewdly analysing the significance of an infant school; she did not particularly want to go and talk to any of these people, indeed the prospect was disheartening, but the sight of them, thus gathered together in this one room, was oddly compelling. As though some private photograph album had been brought to life.

A momentary parting of bodies revealed Zoe, in animated conversation with an unidentifiable back. She raised a hand, waved, beckoned.

‘Excuse me,’ said Frances. ‘My sister-in-law… I think she wants… I'm sure I'll see you again before we go.’ She smiled placatingly, and began to edge across the room, Zoe now engulfed again by the crowd.

She was halted, almost at once, by the man from the Stockholm conference, keen to recall what, in his terms, appeared to be some quite different occasion. She endured this with mounting resentment, trapped again. She couldn't be bothered to dispute his version. When he offered to get her a drink she accepted and then, guiltily, moved onwards, only to find herself blocked by a group which at once absorbed her. ‘Ah,’ said the Director, ‘Frances… I want you to meet, um…’ And this man, it emerged, had been associated with Steven at some point, somewhere, and after initial token reticence was keen to describe a trip they had taken to Washington together in, er… ‘Nineteen seventy,’ said Frances. ‘Of course. The occasion being the Senate's invitation to…’ Yes, thought Frances, I know too, he was gone over three weeks and I missed him like hell and was so pleased when he got back that I started snapping at him in the taxi from Heathrow. She felt dragged down by all this and wished she hadn't come. Zoe seemed to have disappeared completely. I should have said no, she thought, or at least said no to this junket, just gone to the lecture. But that would have been taken for inability to face up to things, cowardice of some kind, which in a way is exactly what it would have been. Except that renewed grief is not what this is bringing on, but something else entirely.

I must not, she thought with sudden clarity, be forever hitched to what has been. Only to such of it as I choose, to such of it that will sustain me.

The man stopped remembering Washington. Someone else broke in with a remark. Frances, discovering a new opportunism, moved away.

A voice said, ‘You're Frances Brooklyn, aren't you?’

She was a tall woman with dark hair, middle-aged. Her tone stated a fact rather than invited confirmation; it lacked, also, warmth.

Frances said, ‘Yes.’

‘My name's Sarah Hennings. I knew Steven rather well a very long time ago.’

There was a silence. ‘Yes,’ said Frances. ‘I know.’

‘I daresay he talked about me. We were engaged for a bit.’

Frances could think only: how did she get here? Sarah Hennings, uncannily, smiled, ‘So I thought I'd come along. Out of a kind of sentiment. It's a public lecture, after all. And then when I saw everyone coming in here I thought one extra wouldn't be noticed. And I wanted to meet you.’

‘Yes,’ said Frances again. ‘I see. Well…’ She couldn't think of anything to say. Sarah Hennings had large, slightly protuberant eyes which were in the process of examining her, with detachment and, she felt, not a great deal of charity.

‘Of course my name isn't still Hennings strictly speaking, though I do use it at work. It's Creighton really. My husband's a senior lecturer at Brunel. He's never risen to Steven's dizzy heights professionally.’ She contemplated Frances. ‘I suppose you've had to get out of that gorgeous house. I drove past it once – someone told me you lived there.’

Frances gazed in amazement. ‘Yes, I'm living somewhere else now. Out of choice.’

‘Really?’ said Sarah Hennings. ‘Didn't you go for all those official trappings? I've often thought what fun it must be. I enjoy entertaining, personally. Not that Brunel offers much scope. I suppose you went all over the place with Steven?’

‘Not often. I'm not all that addicted to travel. And there were the children.’

‘I would have done. I remember reading in the paper once that he was off to Russia on some international whatsit and I thought some people have all the luck.’

‘Actually,’ said Frances, ‘he didn't want to go that much He was very busy at the time.’

‘I was thinking of you, not him. Getting a free ride to Moscow.’

Frances silenced, could only stare. This is insane, she thought, this woman I never heard of until a month ago has been watching me for years.

‘He'd have got a K, I suppose, in a year or two.’

‘A what?’ said Frances.

‘A K. A knighthood. Sir Steven. And Lady.’

‘I've no idea,’ said Frances, enraged.

‘I always watched when he was on the box. Interesting. I s'pose you went to TV parties and met all those glamorous people.’

‘No.’

Sarah Hennings glanced over Frances's shoulder. ‘You must know everyone here.’

‘Some of them.’

‘I work in PR. For a publisher. Which slightly mitigates Brunel. Well, it's all a long time ago now, but I must say I've always stayed interested, in a funny way.’

‘What's a long time ago?’ inquired Frances.

‘When I knew Steven. It didn't work out, of course. Otherwise…’ Sarah Hennings laughed. ‘Otherwise I s'pose it would have been me larking off to Washington and places, and living it up in super houses. No – we were awfully fond of each other for a bit but we kind of mutually agreed that it wouldn't work out. You've got two children, haven't you?’

Frances took a deep breath. Somewhere in the depths of this person, she thought, there lurks the remnant of a girl who was sufficiently different for her once to have been someone Steven liked. Loved, for a while, I suppose. And she does not matter to me in the least, not in the very least, so I must stay calm and not say or do or feel any of the things I…

‘So have we. Deep into adolescence now. Yours are adopted, aren't they? I remember somebody saying once. You must miss him dreadfully. It must seem awfully kind of empty, I imagine. If you ever feel like an evening in Uxbridge give us a ring. Didn't Steven's parents used to live somewhere that way?’

Frances looked round wildly. Zoe was nowhere to be seen. The room had thinned out a little; people were beginning to leave. Her head ached and she had a sense of creeping disorientation. All she could think was: I knew I shouldn't have come.

‘Actually,’ said Sarah Hennings. ‘You look rather done in. I imagine this sort of thing is a bit of a strain.’ She glanced sideways, ‘That's Lord Briggs, isn't it. I suppose you know him?’

Frances said, ‘I have to have a word with the Director before I go.’ I cannot, she thought, say even the anodyne and meaningless things. I am not so glad to have met you.

Sarah Hennings shifted the strap of her handbag further on to her shoulder. ‘I'm off too. Well, I'm glad I've seen you. Actually I did once years ago, at a distance. You and Steven were at some theatre. You had a blue and green Liberty silk dress. I remember thinking nice and pricey. Anyway… 'Bye.’

‘Goodbye,’ said Frances.

And now, too late, here was Zoe advancing across the room, appearing from nowhere, beaming, saying, ‘Hi…
There
you are. Hey, guess who I've been talking to.’ She glanced at Sarah Hennings' departing back. ‘Who was that?’

‘Just someone Steven knew,’ said Frances. ‘Inevitably. I want to go home.’

*

She should have talked to Zoe, but she could not. She sat silent in the taxi and Zoe chattered on and, at the corner of Frances's street they kissed and Zoe was borne away into the night. She felt for her keys and unlocked the door and went into the black and empty house. She switched on the hall light and then the sitting room one and it was bright but continuously empty. She took off her coat and sat down on the sofa and there was nothing to be heard but the tick of the hall clock and the whisper of a passing car. She experienced, all at once, each of the miseries of the past year: grief and loneliness and, above all, that fracturing of the mind she had known in Venice. It was like the sudden onset of the old familiar pain in an invalid who has been groping towards health. She thought, I must not be alone. And then, almost immediately, I need not be alone. She sat looking at the telephone. She could pick it up and dial the number and she could speak to Morris. He would be there, in all likelihood, at this time of the evening. They could talk and she would not be alone any more. Probably – certainly – he would come if she wished. The house would no longer be continuously empty.

And she knew, even as she thought all this, that she would not do it. I will not take advantage, she thought, of a man who I'm afraid feels more for me than I think I will ever feel for him. I dearly wish it were otherwise, but that is how it is and for that reason I cannot and will not pick up that telephone and make use of him. I shall go through this on my own, as I have all along.