Such Visitors (5 page)

It might have been Gerald's imagination, due to the lateness of the hour, but he detected the slightest falter in this explanation of her silence. Lola now lowered her eyes.

‘She told me you were potentially marvellous in bed, if a bit out of practice, and wonderfully considerate in most other ways.'

‘Did she indeed?' Pride mixed with fury rose within Gerald. Was there no such thing as a discreet woman? A woman who had some respect for private moments?

Struggling for control, he murmured, ‘I'm forced to believe that events can only be confirmed in a woman's mind by reporting them. A man has faith in his own private reflections, memories. They can be real to him alone. That seems to me the essential difference between the sexes.'

‘Are you cross?' Lola looked at him. Such innocence.

‘Cross? Not cross at all. Flattered, perhaps, I should have been the subject of your talk.'

He bent forward, stretched a hand to the back of Lola's neck. Had she not been Rose's friend he would have ravished her on the spot. As it was, her quiet presence filled him with a nameless longing that the past days and nights with Rose had done nothing to dispel.

‘Rose,' said Lola, apparently unaware of his hand, ‘is the most remarkable girl I know.'

‘That's just what she said about you.'

‘Oh, we're very loyal.' Lola gently removed his hand. ‘Poor Rose. Her mother's been a burden one way and another all her life.'

‘Will she be long dying?'

‘She might be.' Lola lowered her eyelids again.

‘In that case …'

‘For heaven's sake, don't make some crappy suggestion about consoling each other while she's away.'

‘Of course not.' The sharpness of Lola's tone suggested to Gerald it was time he became master. Against all instinct he stood up. ‘I think you'd better go,' he said. ‘I've a hard day tomorrow.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Lola. For a split second she screwed up her eyes, disguising an almost discernible look of pain. She rose to her feet. ‘I won't keep you. You must be exhausted.'

Gerald followed her to the front door, head bowed. His attempted brusqueness, meant to conceal his own temptation, had misfired. He had hurt, inadvertently, where he had meant merely to warn: to indicate he was a man of high principle where friends were concerned.

‘I'll ring you,' he said gloomily.

‘Oh, if you feel like it.'

Lola ran down the path into yet more spinning snow. Back in his room, Gerald had two more drinks to induce sleep, and to clear his mind. Eventually, dawn paling the snowy windows, he fell asleep, a confused man. The images of two girls raced behind his eyes – sharply, at first, figures from memory. Gradually, they dissolved into the stuff of dreams: interchanged, beckoned, laughed, teased, and faded when he touched them.

Days went by. A card came from Yorkshire.

This business may take some weeks,
wrote Rose.
Please don't quite forget me.

Gerald wondered if her echoing of Katharine Mansfield's dying words had been intentional.

I won't,
he wrote back.
Memory of your presence lives uncomfortably in my flat.

He was unsure whether that was the whole truth, the explanation for his restlessness. But he posted the card and rang Lola. Her silence was frustrating. Her evident pleasure, on hearing him, was cheering.

He drove her to Hungerford, on Sunday, for lunch at The Bear. She, like Rose, had a fur coat: older, softer. She refused to take it off till halfway through lunch.

‘But I thought you never felt the cold,' said Gerald.

‘I did today.' She sounded sad, struggled reluctantly out of its arms. Beneath it she wore an apricot silk shirt. Gathers from a deep yoke swelled over her breasts. Gerald swore he could see one of them moving, thumped by her heart. He wanted to touch it. Instead he dug into his treacle tart, eyes down, not daring to look further.

‘Rose misses you
dreadfully,'
Lola was saying. ‘She rings me up most evenings to ask how you are. I keep telling her I don't know, I don't see you. She keeps saying,
Do
see him, and let me have some news. That's why I came today, so that I can report back.'

‘Oh.'

Gerald allowed himself the merest glance at Lola's hazel eyes, the long thick lashes cast down to indicate her seriousness.

‘I suppose I shouldn't be telling you all this.'

‘Probably not.'

‘Do you love her?'

‘Love her?' Gerald was thinking about the middle-aged couple at the next table. What had induced the woman, dressing that morning, to choose a pink velour hat, manacled by brown feathers, for a December lunch in Hungerford? ‘Love her?' he repeated. ‘Well, I like to think the onset of real love, when it comes, is quite clear. For the moment, I'm confused by Rose, so that can't mean love.'

‘But I suppose that means some
hope,'
said Lola. ‘I suppose that means some reason for optimism on Rose's part.' She smiled enchantingly. ‘I mean, confusion could always
broaden out
into absolute clarity, couldn't it?'

‘I suppose it could,' said Gerald, not wanting to disappoint
her. Then he suggested large brandies against the cold of the afternoon.

They walked on the Downs making tracks through the snow. Each kept their hands deep in their pockets. The sky, thick with more approaching snow, was broken on the horizon by zests of yellow cloud. Gerald, surprising himself, flung his greatcoat on to the ground. It made a strange patch of colour on all the white.

‘God couldn't find any matching material,' giggled Lola, voicing succinctly the vaguely similar thoughts he had been having himself. He watched as Lola lowered herself on to the coat, gathering her long legs under her arms. She was protected by a hedge of snow a few inches high. She looked up at him, concerned. ‘Aren't you cold?'

The wintry chill seeped through Gerald's tweed coat, a strange pleasure.

‘Not at all.' He sat down beside her.

‘As a matter of fact, there's nothing more elusive than clarity,' she was saying.

Again, Gerald's own thoughts: though he felt it would be feeble to agree out loud. He moved his eyes from the valley beneath them, the black-boned trees softened by the distance, to Lola's flushed face. He felt his way beneath her fur coat, beneath the warm silk of her shirt. The sky crushed down low over their heads. Gerald was surprised to find his hand suddenly on a bare thigh, pinned there by flakes of snow. He felt them melting, the water trickling between his fingers. Lola gave a shriek as it reached her flesh. There was a small thread of sound from a distant train. The bellow from an invisible cow, startling.

‘This isn't right,' said Lola. But she lay back, eyes shut, snow covering her so quickly Gerald was forced to move himself on top of her to protect her from the thickening flakes.

They returned to The Bear for tea. Lola was ravenously hungry. The lady with the feathered hat sat drowsily by the fire, cup of tea in pink hand, exhausted by the indolence of her afternoon. Her companion, a small grey-flannel man, pecked at a pipe, staring at some private distance. At the sight of Gerald and Lola he looked for a moment quite shocked, as if something about them caused painful nostalgia. He tapped
his pipe so savagely on the hearth that the fat lady murmured, ‘Whatever is it, dear?'

When he made no reply she patted her hat for comfort so that the feathers stirred broodily and the bald patches of pink velour showed beneath.

‘You must think very carefully about Rose,' said Lola, spreading honey thickly on to warm toast.

‘I will, but not now.'

‘You must realise she's very good at loving. She could make you extremely happy, believe me.'

Gerald put his hand on Lola's knee. She removed it at once. Exactly an hour ago she had encouraged it so hard Gerald had felt clear madness. Now there was confusing sanity. He sighed.

‘What's the matter?' Lola was quite impatient, interested only in her food.

‘Don't let's talk about Rose any more today. I'll think about her when you've gone.'

‘Good. You'll have a bit of time. I've got to be in Paris for a week.' A perverse thrill shot through Gerald.

‘Then I might even go and see her.'

‘That would be best of all. You might realise.' Lola swallowed a long draught of tea, sounded practical. ‘But please don't do it in the snow.'

“Course not. Idiot. What do you think I am?'

‘An unintentional menace,' she said, ‘trying to please us all.'

Gerald was not quite able to keep his word. In Yorkshire the following weekend, her dying mother in a bedroom upstairs, Rose reacted with such exuberant pleasure he wondered how he had survived the last couple of weeks without her. She managed to disguise the strains caused upon the household by illness. He admired her for that. All she asked, in deference to her mother, was that he should keep to his own room at night. To this Gerald unwillingly concurred, increasingly desirous of the warm, slightly plumper Rose, so strong in her concealment of melancholy.

On the Saturday afternoon they went for a walk on the moors near Haworth. The earth was scarred with the last
remnants of snow: there was rain in the wind. They clung to each other, faces stinging in the cold. Scarcely speaking, they tramped for several miles, then took shelter from a heavy shower under trees. Gerald laid his coat on the hard dry earth: the familiarity of the gesture reminded him of his promise, and of the recent coupling on the wintry Downs. He hesitated only for a moment. Rose was kissing his hair, scrabbling at his shirt, muttering words of love. Succumbing to her, he heard only the rain on the leaves: no thought of Lola.

Later, wiping rain from Rose's cheeks with his handkerchief, came a moment of revelation. Rose was the girl for him: nothing had ever been so clear in his life. Desire quite sated, he felt love for her, though he said nothing for fear of her overbrimming with pleasure. She had mud on her mackintosh and tears in her eyes: had never looked more vulnerable and trusting. He wondered if he should make an instant proposal of marriage, while the inspiration was upon him. Then Rose sneezed, smothered her face in a damp handkerchief, and the moment had gone.

‘I expect you and Lola …' she said, and paused. ‘Have you?'

Gerald said nothing, made an attempt to twist his cold face into an expression of surprise.

Rose took his hand. ‘Not that I mind,' she went on, mouth turned down. ‘Don't ever think that. Lola's my friend. All I'd ever ask is the truth, that's all. I can't bear the idea of deception.'

‘Quite,' said Gerald, and the clarity he had felt only minutes before disappeared.

He watched a black cloud roll across a nearby ridge of land, obscuring it, and was suddenly depressed by the sound of rain. It occurred to him that the post he had been offered in Rio might be the solution. If he went abroad for a couple of years he would forget them, they would forget him. He'd come back to find them both married, be willing godfather to their children.

‘Lola likes you very much indeed,' Rose was saying. ‘You must know that, don't you? Really, she'd be much better for you than me. She'd keep you guessing for years, never wholly committing herself. That's what men like, isn't it? Seems to me
the last thing in the world they want is the whole of someone: only selected parts. That's where Lola's so skilful. She'd never burden you with the whole of herself. Afraid I could never be like that. Loving someone, I can't resist offering them the entire package, keeping nothing back. I suppose that's awfully boring but I can't help it.' She laughed a little. ‘So, really, there should be no confusion in your mind.'

Gerald remained silent for a few moments, struggling to do up the knot of his tie. Then he said, ‘It's a little overwhelming, after two years with no one in my life, suddenly to find two new friends who seem so kind and caring.'

‘Two new friends,' repeated Rose. ‘But you met Lola first. You liked Lola first.'

‘I made love to you first.' He tried to be honest. ‘I feel closer to you.'

‘Really?' Rose pressed herself against him, soft with relief. He wished she would get up, change the conversation.

‘Don't see why there should be any complications,' he said, finally. ‘Shouldn't we be getting back? We're both frozen.'

Rose had the good sense to agree at once. They spoke no more of Lola, spent a peaceful Sunday by the fire, both aware of a new bond of understanding.

Gerald returned to London with reluctance. He missed Rose as soon as the train drew out of the station. But, back in the silence of his flat, his thoughts turned to Lola. It was her he wanted, most urgently, beside him in the room. He rang her flat but there was no reply. So instead he rang Rose. Her surprise and pleasure cheered him, though the confusion remained. Wearily, he went early to bed and dreamed of the freedom of Rio.

Rose returned to London as soon as she could after her mother's death. She arranged an immediate meeting with Lola. They sat in opposite corners of a battered sofa that had come from Lola's nursery, and for years had been their favourite place for serious talk. Each noted the other's pale face. They equipped themselves with large drinks, which was not their normal custom.

‘I only got back from Paris last night,' said Lola, ‘so I haven't heard from Gerald how it all was.'

‘Harrassing. She seemed to go mad, the last week. Insulted me hour after hour but wouldn't let me leave her bedside. Gerald came up for a few days. He was …' She paused, wanting to say loving. ‘Noble,' she said.

‘I can imagine. It must have been difficult for you, the house so gloomy and quiet.'

Rose was near to smiling. ‘We slipped off,' she said, ‘for the occasional reviving walk. Over the moors.'