The Skull Beneath the Skin (6 page)

The books, she now saw, were a poor lot. She had bid for them and bought them cheaply at a country-house sale. Now
the first real inspection revealed that it hadn’t been cheap enough. The best had been on the top. The rest were a motley collection of Victorian sermons, reminiscences of retired generals, biographies of minor politicians as undistinguished in death as they had been in life, novels which provoked no interest except a wonder that anyone should have chosen to publish them.

Her knees were numb against the tiles, her nostrils choked with the smell of dust, of mouldering cardboard and rotting paper. In her imagination it was to have been so different; Colin kneeling beside her, the happy rummaging, the exclamations of pleasure as each treasure came to light, the laughter, the planning, the fun. She remembered their last day at Pottergate Comprehensive, the farewell party with its cheap sherry, and inevitable crisps and cheese savouries; the barely concealed envy of their colleagues that she and Colin were getting out, setting up business together, saying goodbye to timetables, mark sheets, examinations, the daily dispiriting struggle to impose order on a class of forty in an inner-city comprehensive where teaching had always to be subordinated to the struggle to maintain some semblance of discipline.

And that was only nine months ago! Nine months in which everything they had bought, everything they needed had become more expensive, in which the shop had been as dead as if boarded up and bankrupt. Nine months of overwork and dwindling returns, of fading hope and half-acknowledged panic. Nine months—could it be?—of the slow death of desire. She almost cried out in protest, shoving her strong hands against the box as if the thought and its pain could be physically pushed from her mind. And then she heard his step on the stairs. She turned her face to his, making herself smile. He had hardly spoken over luncheon. But that was three
hours ago. Sometimes his moods didn’t last. His first words destroyed hope.

“My God, this place stinks.”

“It won’t, once we get it cleaned up.”

“And how long will that take? It needs an army of cleaners and decorators. And even then, it’ll still look what it is, a basement slum.”

He slumped down on an unopened box of books and began turning over the pile she had unpacked, letting them drop with careful disdain in an untidy heap. In the dim light his handsome, petulant face looked lined with weariness. Why? she wondered. It was she who had been doing the work. She held out her hand and after a moment he took it in a limp grasp.

She thought: “Oh God, I love you! We love each other. Don’t take that away from me.”

He slid his hand from hers almost furtively and began to pretend an interest in one of the books. As he opened it, a small sheet of thick and faded paper fluttered out.

She said: “What’s that?”

“Some kind of old woodcut by the look of it. I shouldn’t think it has any value.”

“We could ask Ambrose Gorringe when we get to Courcy Island. He knows about these things even if they aren’t his period.”

They peered at it together. It was certainly old, early seventeenth-century she guessed from the antiquated spelling, and it was in remarkably good condition. The paper was headed with a crude woodcut of a skeleton holding in its right hand an arrow and in its left an hourglass. Beneath was the title, “The Gt Meffenger of Mortality,” followed by the verse. She read the first four lines aloud:

The undated subscription gave the printer’s name as John Evans of Long Lane, London.

Roma said: “It reminds me of Clarissa.”

“Of Clarissa? Why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why.”

He pressed her, sounding irritably insistent, as if it mattered, as if she had intended something.

“It’s just something I said, something that came into my mind. It didn’t mean anything. Put the paper by the sink, on the draining board. We’ll show it to Ambrose Gorringe.” He did so and returned moodily to his box. He said: “It was a mistake, buying this junk. We should have stuck to the new stock. London seems to have a surfeit of bookshops. And God knows why I let you talk me into buying all that left-wing stuff upstairs. No one wants it. The left wing already have enough cosy haunts in this neighbourhood and it only repels the other buyers. Those pamphlets are just gathering dust. I must have been mad.” She knew that he wasn’t referring only to the left-wing literature. The injustice stung her into anger. She knew even as she spoke that it was folly. He needed to be cajoled, humoured, comforted. The quarrels which he seemed increasingly to provoke only left him sulky and resentful and herself exhausted. But she had had enough.

“Look, you didn’t take on this place to oblige me. You were just as keen to get out of Pottergate. You loathed teaching. Remember? I was fed up with it, I admit, but I wouldn’t have resigned if you hadn’t made the first move.”

“You mean, it’s all my fault.”

“All! What all? It isn’t anyone’s fault. We both did what we wanted.”

“Then what are you complaining about?”

“It’s just that I’m tired of being made to feel as if I’m some kind of encumbrance, worse than a wife, as if you’re only keeping on the shop because of me.”

“I’m keeping it—we’re keeping it on—because there’s no alternative. Pottergate wouldn’t take us back even if we applied.”

And where else could they apply? He didn’t need her to tell him about the unemployment in the teaching profession, the expenditure cuts, the desperate search for jobs even by the best qualified. She said, knowing even as she spoke that argument was folly, that it would only fuel his irritation: “If you do chuck it, it’ll please Stella. I suppose that’s what she’s been waiting for. She can say ‘I told you so’ and hand you over, neatly trussed, a sacrificial victim to dear Daddy and the family business. My God, she must be praying for our bankruptcy! It’s a wonder she doesn’t lurk outside counting the customers.”

His protest was sulky rather than vehement. It was, after all, an argument they had had before. “She knows I’m worried, obviously. She’s worried herself. She has a right to be. Half of the money I put in here was hers.”

As if that needed saying. As if she didn’t know exactly how much cash from Daddy’s generous allowance Stella had graciously handed over. And that was generous of her, generous or stupid or cunning. Or all three. Because she must have known that Colin was going into partnership with his mistress, she wasn’t that blind. Oh, she’d known all right! She couldn’t understand what he saw in Roma—she wasn’t unique in that—but she’d known the score. And had this been her revenge, the money to set up a partnership which
was bound to fail, given their inexperience, their small capital, their self-delusions; a failure that would draw him back, suitably chastened, to the place where he belonged, the place, come to think of it, that he’d never really left? And then what would there be for him but Daddy’s business, the store in Kilburn which sold cheap plywood furniture on hire purchase to customers too ignorant to know when they were being cheated or too proud in their poverty to rummage round the street markets and buy good solid oak, second-hand. The stuff he dazzled them with, cocktail cabinets, room dividers, ornate suites, would fall or be kicked to pieces long before they’d finished paying for it. Was that what Colin wanted to do with his life? Had he left teaching for that? And had Stella thought all this out for herself or had Daddy a hand in it? The money she had lent them, hadn’t it been carefully calculated, enough to make the enterprise possible but not enough to enable them to succeed? She was sharp enough. She had a shrewd little mind to go with those sharp painted nails, those white, childlike teeth. And she had other weapons, Justin and Joanna. Possessiveness and acquisitiveness had been sanctified by maternity. She had the twins. And, by God, she knew how to use them! With every childhood infection, every school speech-day, every dental appointment, every family holiday, every Christmas demanding his presence at home, it was as if she were saying: “He may sleep with you, play at keeping shop with you, imagine that he’s in love with you, confide in you. But he’ll never give you children. And he’ll never divorce me to marry you.” Appalled at her thoughts, at what was happening to them, she cried: “Look, darling, don’t let’s quarrel. We’re tired, we’re hot and it’s a bloody day. On Friday we shut the door on the whole scene and take off for Courcy Island. Three days of peace, sunshine, good wines, first-class food and the
sea. The island’s only three miles by two-and-a-half, so Clarissa says, but there are marvellous walks. We can get away from the rest of the party. Clarissa will be busy with the play. I don’t suppose Ambrose Gorringe will care a damn what we do. No creditors, no people, just peace. And, my God, don’t I need it.”

She was going to add, “And I need you, my darling. More and more. Always.” But then she looked up and saw his face.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar look, that mixture of shame, irritation, embarrassment. She had seen it before. This, after all, had been the pattern of their lives, the plans so confidently, so happily made, the last-minute cancellations. But never before had it mattered so desperately. Tears scalded her eyes. She told herself that she had to stay calm, that she mustn’t break down, but when she could speak the note of angry recrimination was unmistakable even to her own ears and she saw the look of shame harden into defiance.

“You can’t do this to me! You can’t! You promised! And I’ve told Clarissa I’m bringing my partner. It’s all arranged.”

“I know and I’m sorry. But Stella’s father telephoned at breakfast to say that he’s coming for the weekend. I’ve got to be there. I’ve told you what he’s like. He was pretty fed up about my leaving teaching. We’ve never got on. He thinks I don’t appreciate her enough; you know how it is with an only child. He’s not going to be pleased if he finds I’m away for a long weekend leaving her to cope with the kids. And he won’t believe the story about attending a book sale. I don’t think even Stella does.”

So that was it, Daddy was arriving, Daddy who paid the twins’ school fees, provided the car, the annual holiday, the luxuries which had become necessities. Daddy who had his own ideas about his son-in-law’s future.

She said in a voice that was almost a wail: “What is Clarissa going to think?”

“Well, isn’t it rather what she’d think if I did come? She knows I’m married. I mean, you must have let that drop. Wouldn’t it look rather odd, the two of us arriving together? And it’s not as if we could have shared a room or anything like that.”

“By anything like that I suppose you mean that we couldn’t have slept together. Why not? Clarissa isn’t exactly a model of purity and I don’t suppose Ambrose Gorringe creeps down his corridors at night checking that his guests are in their own rooms.”

He muttered: “It’s not that. I explained. It’s Stella’s father.”

“But this weekend might have freed you from him and her. I thought we could have spoken to Clarissa, told her about the shop, asked if she couldn’t help. That’s why I wangled the invitation. After all, a third of her money comes to me if she dies without a child. It’s all in Uncle’s will. It wouldn’t harm her to part with some when it’s most needed. We’d only be asking for a loan.”

She tried not to see the hope brightening in his face. Then it faded. He said sulkily: “I couldn’t ask a woman for money.”

“You wouldn’t have to. I’d do the asking. What I thought was that she’d meet you, like you. She’d be seeing you under the best possible conditions. Then I could speak to her when the time seemed right. It’s worth a try, darling. Even twenty thousand would mean all the difference.”

“What would you get if she died?”

“I’m not sure. About eighty thousand I think. It could be more.”

He turned away. “And that’s about what we’d need if I were to leave Stella, get a divorce. But Clarissa isn’t going to die just to convenience us. Twenty thousand might just save the shop. But that’s about all it would do. And why should she part with
it? Anyone with an ounce of financial sense would see that it would be throwing good money after bad. It’s no use. I can’t come this weekend.”

Above them the floor creaked. Someone had come into the shop. He said quickly, gratefully: “Sounds like a customer. Look, I’ll close promptly at five if there’s nothing doing and give you a hand down here. We’ll get this room together somehow.”

When he had gone she went over and stared out of the window, standing rigidly, grasping the edges of the sink so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her eyes were unfocused, staring beyond the railings, the crumbling stucco on the basement wall, to where the brightly patterned reds, greens and yellows of the fruit stall on the opposite pavement fused and shivered. From time to time feet passed, voices called, the narrow street broke momentarily into life. And still that silent figure at the window stood unmoving. Then she gave a little sigh. The taut shoulders relaxed, the fingers loosened their grip. She took up the woodcut from the draining board and studied it as if she hadn’t seen it before. Then she opened her shoulder bag and folded it carefully away.

Simon Lessing stood at the open window of his study at Melhurst and gazed out over the wide lawns to where the river cut its slow stream between the horse chestnuts and the limes. In his hand he held Clarissa’s still unopened letter. It had arrived by the morning post, but there had been an excuse for not opening it then. He had had an early practice period. And that had been followed by the sixth-form seminar. He had told himself that he would wait until break. But the morning had passed and now it was the lunch hour. In less than five minutes the bell would sound. He couldn’t delay indefinitely. It was ridiculous and humiliating to be so afraid, to stand like a first-former holding a dreaded school report, knowing that, however long and cunningly deferred, the moment of truth must come at last.

He would wait until the bell actually sounded, and then he would read it, quickly, uncaring and with his mind on luncheon. And at least he could do so in peace. From the middle school upwards, every boy at Melhurst had his own study. The importance of a daily period of silence and privacy was one of the
more enlightened precepts of the school’s pious seventeenth-century founder and, largely because it had been incorporated into the almost monastic architecture, had endured through three hundred years of changing educational fashion. It was one of the things about Melhurst which Simon most valued, one of the privileges which Clarissa’s patronage, Clarissa’s money, had procured for him. Neither she nor Sir George had ever considered another choice of school, and Melhurst had made no difficulty about finding a place for the stepson of one of its more distinguished alumni. Its motto, in Greek rather than the more usual Latin, extolled the virtues of moderation, and for three hundred years, in obedience to Theognis’s dictum, the school had been moderately famous, moderately expensive and moderately successful.