A Sight for Sore Eyes (20 page)

and the warm probing of a tongue. She knew very well what there should be and it wasn't this limp shrinking of the flesh, the yielding of his body into apathy. Her own warm wetness -unexpected this, no one had told her of this - dried and cooled. He muttered something. She thought he had said, 'I can't.' 'It doesn't matter.' Only it did, rather a lot. She found herself supplying excuses for him, not knowing that these were the kind woman's reassurances uttered since time immemorial. 'You're tired, it's been a strain. I know it has for me too. All this hiding and tension, and having to be secret. It will be different next time.' Richard and Julia cancelled their lunch engagement. They had planned to drive down with Francine into Surrey to visit Roger and Amy Taylor. Roger Taylor, Richard and Jennifer had all been at university together, but Roger had married much later than his friends, not until after Jennifer's death, and Jennifer had never known his wife. She, however, had joined the number of Julia's women friends. Julia had been looking forward to seeing Amy, though she hadn't, in her own words, 'much time' for Roger, but even the prospect of half a day with her friend couldn't be contemplated when it was a question of Francine's safety. 'We shall be back here before she is,' Richard said. 'She has a key. You know what they're like at that age, she'll only come in and go straight up to her room. She may as well do that on her own, she doesn't need us there.' But Julia put forward all sorts of arguments against this. Suppose 'something happened' to Francine, her friends or the police or the hospital wouldn't know where to find her parents. Then there was the danger of this boy. Julia had told her husband all about this boy, how she had seen him several times waiting for Francine in the bus shelter, and how she had found his car with his name and address on an envelope on the dashboard shelf. 'Why was he waiting for a bus if he has a car?' said Richard. 'I've told you. He wasn't waiting for a bus. He was waiting for Francine.' 'You actually saw him meet Francine? You saw her get in his car? Is that what you're saying?' Julia shook her head in exasperation. 'I am afraid I think it quite possible Francine may bring him here while we are out.' 'What are you suggesting, Julia?' 'She's human, isn't she? She's young. 'Not Francine,' said Richard. 'She wouldn't do anything like that.' But he phoned Amy Taylor and cancelled their visit, wincing when she was abrupt with him and when she asked why he couldn't have let her know sooner. 'You don't really believe Francine would - well, have relations with this boy, do you? Anyway, I thought she had gone out for the day with Isabel What'shername. Hasn't she?' 'I don't know,' Julia said tightly. 'Why ask me? She never speaks to me. 'Julia, Francine couldn't handle anything like that. She may be old in some ways, but in others she's very young for her age. You don't really think she would let him.. 'Fuck her?' It was an expression Julia had never in her life used before. She had barely heard it used except on the television. But she uttered it in a vicious snap and saw her husband gasp. 'Why not?' she said. 'She's unstable, we've always known that. People like her, traumatised people, they've no moral sense and they're oversexed, it's a well-known fact. Of course she'd let him.. 'For God's sake, don't use that word again!' They spent a miserable day. There was very little food in the fridge, Julia had eaten it all, so since she refused to leave the house, Richard had to go shopping. He came back and attempted to watch Rugby Union on television, but Julia came in and switched off the set, saying that he was heartless to amuse himself like this when she was beside herself with anxiety. Pacing had become habitual with her, but he had never before seen her pace. It taught him that this nervous habit is one of the most irritating and upsetting one human being can contemplate in another. He shut himself in their bedroom and lay on the bed to get away from it and he longed for Tuesday when he was due to get on a mid-morning flight to Frankfurt. It wasn't late when Francine came home. She was probably the only girl from her class at school who arrived home by ten that Saturday night. She hadn't wanted to come. She hadn't wanted to leave Teddy and would have loved above all things to have stayed the night with him. He wanted that too. In both their minds was the same thought. If she stayed it would be all right, she would be receptive again, he x~~ould make love to her. But the difference was that he couldn't understand that she had to go and tried physically to hold her back. 'I have to,' she said. 'I know you don't understand and I don't know how to make you. It's just a fact. I have to go home.' 'I'll come all the way with you. I'll bring the mirror.' Then she had to explain that she couldn't take the mirror. Not even if she had a taxi all the way. The mirror was something she couldn't explain to Julia and her father. Julia was capable of breaking it. He understood that, she saw a kind of shadow cross his face at the prospect. 'You keep it for me. I'll see it when I come to see you. She phoned for a taxi. It amazed him that she had that kind of money. While they waited for it he ironed her white dress for her, for he said he couldn't bear to see her in anything creased. On the front-garden path, watched from an upstairs window by the neighbours he called vuppies, he kissed her so long and so intensely that the cab driver shouted at them to give over as he hadn't got all night. Francine sat shivering in the back of the cab. So much had happened that she felt almost as Julia constantly forecast she must feel, that life could swiftly overpower her. Almost, but not quite. And when she was home and had paid the driver, she found herself walking quite calmly up to the front door and letting herself into the house as serenely as if she had really made love and had triumphed and been gloriously satisfied. It was Julia who disturbed her equilibrium by rushing out into the hall and throwing her arms round her, burying a tear-drenched face in Francine's shoulder. 'Oh God, oh God, you're home! Thank God you're home.' For a moment Francine was afraid. Some chord from the pas1~ had been struck. 'It's not Dad, is it? Something hasn't happened to Dad?' A voice that was both weary and cheerful - perhaps a forced cheerfulness - greeted her from the living-room. 'I'm in here, darling. I'm fine.' Had he ever called her darling before? She couldn't remember. But when she looked into Julia's wet, crumpled face she didn't like what she saw there. Many times before in her thoughts, and once or twice to Holly and Miranda, she had lightly called Julia mad. Now she knew that in saying it she hadn't known, until this moment, what madness was.

Chapter 23

In his dream the mirror ceased to be a mirror and became a framed portrait. By some curious chemical or magical process, because Francine had looked into it so many times, her image was imprinted and fixed inside the glass, it was now a picture of her. His own face wasn't reflected back at him. He looked at hers and worshipped. But that was the good dream. In the bad dream she laid her small white hand on the boot lid of the Edsel and the substance of which it was made, the gleaming lemon-coloured metal surface, melted and dissolved like soft butter. Her hand passed through and reached down, down, into grey decay and wet vile putrefaction... Teddy awoke, shouting so loudly that when, later, he went outside to the dustbin, Megsie put her head over the fence and asked him what was going on. She and Nige had heard this awful scream in the night, they'd thought someone was being murdered. 'Not this time,' said Teddy. 'Don't you make a habit of it, will you? It was touch and go Nige and me didn't call nine nine nine.' Francine had been to the house four times and every time he thought of what was in that boot and of her proximity to it, of her beauty and perfection, and of that horror. The time had come to do something. She wasn't coming over until the afternoon. At ten in the morning he went up to Orcadia Place. The house looked different. For a moment he couldn't decide in what respect. Then he understood that autumn had come. The leaves that canopied the house, back and front, were changing colour, from green to a gingery gold or to a reddish purple. The creeping tendrils were the soft, delicate pink of a rose. Without knowing anything about gardens or gardening or plants, he realised that there had been frosts and he saw that Harriet Oxenholme (or her gardener) had cut down the flowers or uprooted them, that the earth in the tubs was fresh and the earth in the borders turned and newly planted. A lover of order and neatness, he almost preferred this spruce look to the wild abundance of blossom. He rang the bell. The first thing he noticed when she opened the door was the two suitcases standing in the hall, a blue one and a black one, each with an airline's label attached to its handle. She frowned at him. 'I thought you were someone else. What do you want?' 'My drawings,' he said. 'I left them here.' She was dressed, in his grandmother's phrase, 'up to the nines'. The long silvery grey skirt and fine silver knitted top would have looked good on Francine. It had been designed for someone under twenty-five and the low boat-shaped neckline, which would have shown off the tops of Francine's smooth white breasts, showed her brown, scrawny, freckled chest. Her fingernails were painted silver and there was some kind of sparkling greasy substance on her mouth. Teddy looked a little away and repeated what he had said. 'I left my drawings here. Can I come in?' 'What drawings?' she said. 'The designs for the cupboard you said you wanted.' 'My God, you don't suppose I kept them?' He said hoarsely, 'You burnt my drawings?' 'Of course I didn't burn them. What century are you living in? I put them out for recycling.' He had counted on getting into the house and on doing what he had done before, departing by the back way and leaving the back gate unbolted. That was impossible now. And she had destroyed his drawings! He would have liked to kill her. But his eye fell once more on the two suitcases. She was going away. And soon, by the look of it. He said no more, but turned away, refusing to look back even though he could tell she was still there, she hadn't closed the door. A van had drawn up outside. On the side of it was lettered: G. Short, Water Softener Maintenance. A man of about Teddy's age, tall, dark-skinned, got out of the driver's cab. Teddy ignored him. He made his way round to the mews at the back and tried the gate. Of course it was bolted on the inside. But she was going away. If not today, tomorrow. If not tomorrow, soon. Rooting among Keith's papers, he found on a brochure the name, address and phone number of a dealer in Balham from whom Keith had bought the Edsel. The company was called Miracle Motors. It was probably too much to hope that they would buy it back for the same sort of money. But would they buy it at all? He phoned them. Rather to his surprise they said that they would like to see the car and when could he bring it. Not today, he thought, and not tomorrow. How about Friday? They said Friday would be fine and he managed to tell them the Edsel was in excellent condition just as they rang off. Before he drove it to Miracle Motors he ought to clean it, wash, wax and polish it, and buff up the chrome. He walked out into the garden and examined the Edsel for possible scars and scratches, but there was none. It was in as perfect condition, its bodywork as glossy and unmarked, as on that day in 1957 when it had come off the Ford assembly line, a ton and a half of pristine metal and glas~ that, though forty years old, seemed to have been endowed with the secret of eternal youth. He thought it strange that something so sleek and cared-for, so carefully designed and lovingly made, should also be so ugly. Bending over the boot, his hands resting on those gull's-wing tail-lights, he tried to detect if there was any smell. And when he brought his face close to the rim of the boot lid where it met the bodywork a slight whiff of something distantly horrible came to his nostrils. He thought 'distantly' because it seemed far away, no more than a hint of horror, yet it wasn't distant, it was only inches from him. He snirfed again and there was nothing, he had imagined it. The idea of Francine in the car's vicinity disgusted him. He had even suggested they meet somewhere near where she lived, go to a park, go to the cinema, have a meal. But she had wanted to come to him, be alone with him. And as for him, he could hardly bear the prospect of being with her yet unable to touch her. She must come and this time he must succeed in making love to her, this time there must be no ignominious failure. It was the presence of the Edsel that enfeebled his flesh, he was sure of it, for nothing else could account for failure when desire was so great. All he could do was keep her out of his room where the Edsel's rear end filled the lower half of the windows. It reminded him of something he had once seen on television, in a wildlife programme: a huge ape turning its back on an enemy and rearing up its rump in a gesture of derisive contempt. Sometimes he felt that about the Edsel, that because of its size and its colour, and its dreadful contents, it was mocking him. Even Megsie, looking at it one day from the bottom of her garden, had commented with a giggle, 'That Elgin's got a sort of face, hasn't it?' 'Edsel,' said Teddy. A pursed mouth, wide-set eyes, sideburns... He shut his own eyes and turned his back on the car before opening them again. She probably wondered why he didn't use the Edsel, come to Neasden tube station in it to meet her for instance, instead of going down there on foot. There was no explanation he could think of. She would have to wonder, very likely she wouldn't ask. The Edsel would soon be gone, out of the way, forgotten, and maybe he'd get enough money to buy a small modern car, something with elegant lines in a quiet, dark colour... He saw her before she saw him. She came out of the station rather tentatively, almost shyly, looking for him. Jeans today and a blue shirt. He was disappointed. Not deeply disappointed, but simply taken aback because he thought of her always in dresses, totally feminine, delicate, a princess. Concealed in a doorway, he watched her. She stopped still and waited for him. His eves took in the exquisite modelling of her head, its shape enhanced rather than hidden by water-straight fine black hair that lay on it like a veil, the slight angularity of her shoulders, the narrow span of her waist, the slender length of her legs and the arch of her insteps. The idea came to him that he would like to keep her with him always to look at, never let her out of his sight, touch her but not speak to her, undress her and dress her again in fine linen or a Fortuny dress that was not red like Harriet Oxenholme's but pure white. She had been looking, with a touch of bewilderment, in his direction. When she turned aside he came out from his hiding-place and called her name. 'Francine!' Her smile and the flush that came to her cheeks transformed her face. Briefly, he thought that he liked her better snow-pale and grave. He put his arms round her and kissed her mouth, the kiss beginning lightly but becoming intense, deep, searching. She broke away first, but unwillingly and only to say, 'Can we go to your house?' 'Where else?' 'It was just that you said something about the cinema or having a meal.' 'I've got food in,' he said, 'and I've got wine for you. Let's go.' Dilip Rao stayed so long at Orcadia Cottage that Harriet became apprehensive. Franklin had signified his intention to come home early. He had a few last-minute tasks to perform before driving himself to the airport. Dilip was virile and ardent and only twenty, and seemed to see no reason why he and Harriet shouldn't remain in the four-poster till the following morning. He didn't listen while she explained and eventually she had to get up, pull the covers off him and dump his clothes on his naked body. He left at twenty-past four and Franklin came home at half-past. While he made those phone calls that were apparently essential before he could leave the country, hurling cushions on to the floor before perching on the sofa arm, Harriet sat in the kitchen. She brought herself round from a sex and alcohol daze with a strong cup of tea. Dozing earlier, she had fallen into a premonitory dream, not rare with her but still upsetting. These omens were nearly always fruitless, the events they forecast, death, disaster, loss of income, crippling or fatal disease, seldom if ever came to pass, but still they left behind them a feeling of disquiet. She couldn't get out of her head the whispering voice that had uttered 'Last time, last time', though whether it had referred to some previous occasion or to a final instance she couldn't tell. But it left her wondering if it could have meant she had entertained a young lover for the last time or had sex for the last time or would shortly be seeing - saying goodbye to - Franklin for the last time. There was always the possibility of his not coming back from one of these holidays of his, of his remaining with the woman who had been his companion. If there was a woman - how was she to know? She was suddenly stricken with a sense of loneliness. Once Franklin came back she would be taking her own holiday, her second of the year, they always took two holidays each, but still the fortnight ahead stretched very emptily. Dilip would come back, of course, would probably not even wait to be invited, but Harriet was not at all sure she wanted to see Dilip again. Franklin came into the kitchen to ask her if she had seen the going of his luggage strap. 'It's in your wardrobe. On the top shelf. Frankie, why don't I come with you?' 'Because we take separate holidays,' he said. 'Always have, always will.' 'You mean you don't want me.' 'Go up and get that luggage strap for me, will you?' Harriet went. After he had brought the car round, put his suitcases into the boot and driven away, she picked up the cushions and started phoning people, acquaintances, the few they called their friends. For a long time now she had noticed that in a marriage or a partnership, when the woman goes away offers flood in to entertain the man and have him to dinner. Things are very different when the one left behind is the woman. No one invites her anywhere and she is lucky not to be ignored completely. Although she had long ago lost touch with Storm and Anther and Zither, she knew where to find them. They had reverted to their true names, become respectable and set up a company doing market research. Storm had married Zither and Anther had the top flat in their house in Brondesbury. Fourteen Manvantaras and one Krita make one Kalpa, Harriet thought to herself as she listened to the dialling tone. Then Zither's voice came on, saying they had all gone to Hanoi, which Harriet guessed was their idea of a joke, meaning merely that they were down at the pub or possibly in Bournemouth. Simon Alpheton came into her head. She had looked up and her eye alighted on his painting, the still life which that little bugger Teddy Brex had admired. The oranges and the cheese, and the white mouse looking at it so longingly. Simon lived in Fulham and probably alone. Harriet had read about his divorce in the papers. It was an 0181 number she had for him in her book. If you lived in London you had to have an 0171 number, Harriet had long decided, anything else meant you lived in the sticks, an 0181 number was as bad as not having a W in your postcode. But Simon was different, Simon was the exception. A certain amount of courage had to be plucked up before she phoned him. I am his Jewish Bride, she told herself, his red-headed lady in Orcadia Place, rich and loved. 'Maybe I'll buy it,' she had said while he was painting, and Marc had said, 'What with?' She took a deep breath and dialled the number. Simon Aipheton sounded genuinely pleased to hear from her. She reminded herself that he was something she hadn't often come across in her life, a nice guy. He asked her to have dinner with him on the following night. 'I've got something for you,' Teddy said. 'You've already given me something,' said Francine. 'You've given me the mirror. 'You sit there and look in the mirror and I'll go and fetch it and put it on you. It was several weeks since he had looked at the ring. Now he saw that it was even more beautiful than he remembered. It was beautiful enough for her. He held it in his left hand, in his fist, and went downstairs to her. It was past dusk and he had the lights on, but only a single lamp in the front room. She wasn't facing the mirror, as he had instructed her, but had her back to it. He felt a little spark of irritation, a feeling similar to what he had had when he saw those jeans and that shirt. At least she wasn't wearing them now but was wrapped, as he had wrapped her, in the dozen metres of stone-coloured silk he had bought to make curtains out of. 'Turn round,' he said. She obeyed him, but smiling. He didn't want her to smile. 'Gaze at yourself,' he said. 'There isn't anything in the world better worth looking at. No, don't smile!' He stood behind her, put his arms over her shoulders, took her hand and set the ring on it. Her third finger was too little for its circumference. She would have to wear it on the middle finger. 'It's beautiful,' she said. 'I can't take it.' 'Yes, you can. You must. I've been saving it for you. I've been saving it for years.' 'But