Falling (41 page)

The car park winked and glittered and stank of exhaust fumes. Dogs who had been left in cars leaned their heads out of the open windows panting. Daisy got worried about them, but I hurried her
on – just looking at the dogs made me thirsty.

There was a queue at the greengrocer’s and a traffic warden waiting to pounce so I had to drive twice round the elaborate one-way system. When I finally stopped Daisy was waiting, laden
with carrier-bags and an armful of delphiniums.

‘Sorry to be so long,’ she said, as she loaded the back of the car. ‘I got one or two other things as well as I was there. I’ve completely run out of money, but we
don’t need any so that doesn’t matter.’

‘What about the pub?’

‘Are we going to the pub?’

‘Not if we’ve got no money. I’m afraid I didn’t bring any.’

‘Let’s go home and have a drink there. It will be much nicer. I don’t want to leave all the salad things and the flowers in the car.’

I started the car without saying anything.

‘Oh dear. You wanted to go. I could cash some at a bank if I’ve got my card.’

But she hadn’t got it, which, for some reason, made me crosser. I knew it was a mistake at this point to make any kind of scene, so I laughed. ‘I’m just parched, dehydrated
– you know how it is. I expect they’d cash a cheque at the pub: they know us well enough by now.’

‘All right.’ She sounded resigned.

We had the drink, but I didn’t enjoy it because I sensed that she was itching to get back. Nothing was said by either of us, but I felt that she knew I couldn’t enjoy the drink so
the feeling of faint tension prevailed. These gestures, or the motions of them, are the devil and how they characterize married life! I determined, with some grimness, that ours was not going to be
a marriage like that.

Worse was to come. When we finally got back to the cottage and had unloaded the chairs and the shopping from the car and she was putting the delphiniums into a tall jug, she suggested that I
should take the chairs outside to join the other two by the table. While I was doing this, she came to the open front door and called, ‘And, Henry, you’ll
have
to mow the lawn
before they come. It looks so ragged.’

‘Darling, I can’t. The mower’s bust.’

‘Oh, I forgot. If only you’d thought of it, we could have taken it in to be mended.’

‘Even if we had, it wouldn’t have been done in time.’

‘They might lend us one.’

When I was back in the kitchen, she said, ‘We should have taken it two weeks ago when it broke.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

‘You couldn’t scythe it? If you can scythe, I mean.’

‘Yes, I can scythe all right.’ Backbreaking memories of scything in the orchard at Rackham under my father’s merciless discipline came and went. ‘But the lawn’s too
short for scything.’

‘Well, then, we’ll just have to ring up Hunter’s and rent a mower. You could do it this afternoon.’

It was the first time for weeks, months even, that I felt she was behaving like an employer. The thought of lugging that bloody machine into the car and driving it the ten miles all the way back
where we’d spent the morning, and then trying to coax a machine out of Hunter’s, and all in the midday to afternoon heat made me feel really mutinous. And
then,
ten to one,
they’d want their machine back at least by the following morning. As I could see no way out of it, I resolved to make her pay one way or another. Without a word, I stumped out of the back
door. I knew she would come after me, or at least call out, and she did.

‘Henry! Don’t you want to have some lunch first?’

‘No, thanks. I don’t feel like lunch.’

‘At least it would be better to call Hunter’s before you go. To make sure they can lend you a machine.’ She had reached me as I got to the car.

‘What good would that do? If I can’t get one there, I’ll have to get one somewhere else. I promise you, I won’t come back without one.’

I had opened the door and was wheeling the machine towards it.

‘Do you want me to help you?’

‘No. Just leave me to get on with it.’

She turned and left me then, and I felt some satisfaction to know that she knew I was angry.

I didn’t go to the town. What I did was to get the garage in the village to agree to take it in for me when next they went there. Then I went to Mrs Patel’s little supermarket where
I had been a good customer for months before I’d begun living with Daisy, and coaxed/bribed her into lending me the little hand mower that her husband used for their back garden. I promised
to return it the following morning; then I cashed a cheque with her and gave her five pounds. Then I went to the pub, which was nearly closing so I bought a half-bottle of vodka and a large bottle
of lemonade and a packet of fags and then I drove off past the cottage over the canal bridge and past the wood that joined the one beside the cottage garden, and continued for about half a mile
where there was a cart-track on the right at its edge. Here I parked, and slipped into the shade among the bluebell leaves and clumps of bracken until I found a suitable tree to lean against. I
drank as much as I pleased, smoked two or three cigarettes and then fell asleep.

When I awoke it was nearly five: I would have been gone nearly four hours. I buried the empty vodka bottle deep in the leaf mould, washed my mouth out with a swig of the lemonade – now
unpleasantly warm – and drove back to the cottage, stopping at a bit of verge where grew some large clumps of ox-eye daisies which I picked.

I knew that Daisy would be anxious about my long absence, and I also guessed that, with her nature, anxiety would take the form of guilt rather than anger. In this I was entirely right. She came
running out of the cottage as I parked the car.

‘Oh, darling, I’m sorry! You must have had an awful afternoon. It’s all my fault fussing about the lawn. I did so want everything to be perfect for the weekend.’

‘I know you did.’ I picked up the bunch of daisies as I got out of the car. ‘This is just to show you that I love every single daisy I meet. Partly why we’ve got them all
over the lawn.’ I gave her the bunch and she flung her other arm round me.

‘I was afraid something awful had happened to you.’

When I said nothing, she glanced at me and said, so quietly I could hardly hear her, ‘Then I was afraid you were angry with me.’

‘Oh, darling! I would never be angry with you – never!’

I told her that I had been all over the place trying to borrow a mower, and then, when I had despaired of finding anywhere in the town, had thought of Mrs Patel, whose mower we now had.
‘It’s not a motor mower, but better than nothing.’

‘It was good of you to take so much trouble.’ I could see that she had reverted to feeling shy. We went into the house for supper. The kitchen still smelt of the seething fruits for
the summer pudding, which sat in the larder with the doorstop wrapped in tinfoil on a plate weighing it down in its basin. She showed it to me. ‘Jess used to make them,’ she said.
‘I’ve never done one before.’

I admired it. All evening I was very gentle with her, and watched the way she regained her confidence: she was becoming like an instrument on which I could play any tune I pleased. But I wanted
this to be a memorable evening (and night) for her to cement our relationship and protect it from any outside threat.

‘Do you always take so much trouble over guests?’ I asked at one point.

‘I’ve never really had any before. One doesn’t – much – in London. The occasional person for the night, but I didn’t go in for that. So, yes, I am excited.
But they are both such friends . . .’

‘I hope they’ll like me.’

‘Of course they will. Of course.’

We went outside before going to bed – to smell the tobacco and stocks, to look at the moon, a deep rich golden harvest moon rising majestically in a sky pricked with stars. Moths blundered
into us, with the lightest of papery thuds, the light from the open doorway attracting and dazzling them. The daisies on the lawn were all shut for the night and the dew had begun. It was a night
for romance, for lovers – a night made for us, I told her, and saw her face, pale in the dark dusk, her eyes glittering with tears as she came into my arms.

‘Henry, I love you so much. So
much,’
she repeated. I kissed her and wondered then what she felt, felt like.

She knew that he was nervous about the weekend: he did not say so but she could feel it. Or perhaps it was simply that
she
felt nervous and attributed it to him. What
would it matter, after all, if Anthony did not like him? (She did not say this to him; she was afraid of hurting his feelings.) But she thought it more than once, and the last time she realized
that it was far more important to her that Anna should like him. She had done one thing that she didn’t want him ever to know; she had sent Anna some of his letters – not many of them,
but the ones describing his life. He wrote so well about it, she thought, that if Anna read them she would understand him better. In some ways she felt treacherous at showing anyone else what he
had written privately to her, but if it resulted in Anna seeing more clearly her reasons for loving him, then it would have been worth it. He need never know. She had asked Anna to bring the
letters back when she came.

Yesterday, when he was away for hours, she had begun to be afraid that he was staying away on purpose because he was angry with her. But when he did come back with his account of how difficult
it had been to find a mower, he had been so sweet, so gentle to her, and he’d brought daisies that he had picked and that had touched her very much.

In the morning he had gone off to fetch the salmon and she got the bedrooms ready. He had cleared all his stuff out of the small room where he’d put it when Katya came, and they had had to
put most of it into a suitcase as there was no room in her bedroom for any more clothes.

When she was making mayonnaise for the fish, she suddenly thought, What about
Henry
liking
them
? It was odd that she had only just thought of it that way round.

In the afternoon, Henry mowed and clipped the edges of the lawn and she cooked; the sun disappeared but the heat was almost suffocating. There would be a storm, he said, and she was divided
between longing for the refreshment it would bring, and wanting good weather for her friends. There was lightning, and very distant thunder, and no birds were to be heard or seen.

They arrived at six, came staggering up the front path with quantities of things that she knew would be Anthony’s – Anna always travelled light.

He had brought her six bottles of champagne, a side of smoked salmon, a bottle of Fracas – her favourite scent – and a pot in which a delicate white orchid was flowering. He also had
two suitcases – things he might want to wear, he said. His coppery hair was cut
en brosse,
and he wore trousers with enormous checks and an iris-coloured shirt.

‘I do so love giving presents. I like them to be overwhelming. Are they, darling?’

‘Utterly.’

He hugged her and Anna stood, smiling at them. ‘I’ll just go and fetch the rest of my stuff.’

‘What sort of rest?’ she asked Anna.

‘Mostly games, I think.’ She’d put her small bag down and they embraced.

‘Henry’s having a shower. I had the first one so as to be ready for you.’

Anthony reappeared with a canvas holdall that seemed to be full of boxes.

‘These are not presents. They are indoor ploys to while away the rural hours. Shall I just pop two bottles into the fridge? You
have
a fridge, I suppose? Or do you just have a
marble shelf with fly-papers and bowls of antique food?’

‘I have both, of course.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Anna said. ‘I know where things are.’

‘I suppose there’s a distinct danger of my getting lost in a place like this.
Good
colours in your sitting room, darling Daisy. And you look lovely. More like a Hilliard than
ever.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and she met his penetrating pale blue stare. ‘Sweet, happy Daisy.’ He gave her shoulders a small shake.

‘There’s something different about you.’

‘There is. Guess what?’

‘You look different,’ she began slowly. ‘Oh – it’s your nose!’

‘I had a nose job last year.’ He’d always had a rather large nose, but it certainly didn’t look either smaller or a different shape.

‘No, I had it made
larger.
I know some women like to have their breasts enhanced to be more sexy. Well, large noses denote character, and I decided I wanted more of that.’

As she was laughing, Henry appeared on the stairs. He came almost bustling down: he was smiling, in a sort of general, undirected way.

She introduced him.

‘Hello, Henry. I ought to say Hooray Henry, ought I?’

Anna reappeared, greeted Henry, and said could she take her things up and have a shower?

‘Of course. I’ll come up with you.’

When they were upstairs, Anna said, ‘I think it would be easier if Anthony had the larger room.’

‘Because of his nose?’

‘Because of his nose,’ Anna said solemnly. ‘He’s mad, isn’t he? But I always forget what marvellous company he is. He’s brought so much stuff, and I
don’t mind in the least; you know I don’t.’

‘Have you told him about Henry?’

‘A bit. Barest outline. I won’t be long. Join you in the garden.’

So they sat, in the chairs near the big tree, with glasses of champagne.

‘Madly green,’ Anthony said, looking round the small, bosky place. ‘Wonderfully hot, though. It’s like abroad. Do you like heat?’ he asked Henry.

‘Within reason.’

‘You don’t like it.’

‘I don’t love it,’ Henry said firmly.

‘What do you love?’

Henry looked at Daisy and continued as he answered. ‘Books, writing, writers . . .’ He fell silent.

She knew that he wanted to say that he loved her, but did not quite dare.

Anna said, ‘What about the second bottle?’ and Henry at once said he’d fetch it.

‘Potty about you.’