A Pure Clear Light (18 page)
‘All artists are introspective, aren’t they?’
‘You’d call him an artist, then, would you?’
‘Isn’t a director an artist?’
‘Er, I’m not sure.’
‘Of course he is.’
‘I’ll bet Cecil B. de Mille wasn’t introspective.’
‘Bet he was.’
‘Busby Berkeley?’
‘Obviously. Don’t be dense.’
‘But
Simon
? Simon
Beaufort
?’
‘Him too. Anyway, what was he introspecting about?’
‘Oh, you know, life, that sort of thing.’
‘Poor Simon.’
‘Poor
what
?’
‘You know, you get that feeling—it could all go so wrong.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘You know, Simon—there’s this knife-edge feeling, with blokes like him; everything looks so cushy—well, cushy enough—but you get this feeling that, well, one false move—one moment of inattention, or one small miscalculation—and it could all go
so wrong.
’ ‘Well, surely it’s the same for all of us. Chaos theory.’
‘Yes, of course, but with Simon—with chaps like that—it’s more precarious. More of a knife edge. Really—well—no room for error. None. No give in the system. Know what I mean?’
‘I can’t think why you should feel this particularly about Simon, for God’s sake.’
‘No, I don’t either, particularly. I just do.’
‘I suppose you’re being intuitive, Sarah. You want to watch that.’
‘Oh, I do.’
‘Simon, eh. Well, just as long as he doesn’t fall off his knife edge before he finishes my thing.’
‘Oh, no. He’ll finish that no matter what.’
‘That’s all right then.’
‘I hope he’ll be okay. I like Simon. He’s a sweetie, really.’
‘Is he?’
‘I reckon so.’
‘You’re being intuitive again.’
‘What else can a woman do?’
‘She can be prime minister.’
‘Better she should stick to being intuitive.’
‘Amen!’
‘This is a surprise.’
‘Don’t you like surprises?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘This time?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘I’ll make you sure. I’ll make absolutely sure you’re sure—’ He took her in his arms; he made quite sure that she would like this surprise.
‘Are you sure now?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think so.’
‘That’s good,’ he said. He lit a cigarette. She took it from him and smoked it for a while. Long shifting columns of light slithered across the ceiling and then vanished as cars passed in the street below. It was the hour of cars passing, on their urgent way to something important. Suddenly she turned from him and switched on the bedside lamp.
‘I’ve got a photograph here of me on skis,’ she said; ‘do you want to see?’
He held the photograph and stared at it for a long time.
You
can keep it
,
if you like. Oh—could I?
No, none of that. No pictures, no keepsakes, no presents; no traces. Nothing, nothing but the dance, and the dead indifferent wall. ‘Very nice,’ he said. It was, too. Whether by accident or design, it captured the entire
esprit
of the skiing classes (English division) at play. ‘Which one is Rupert?’ he said.
‘Rupert took the picture.’
‘Useful man.’
She laughed. ‘He will soon be even usefuller,’ she said. ‘He’s decided to come to cookery classes with me.’
‘Oh?’
‘Oh yes—I don’t think I told you, did I—it all starts next week. Cookery on Tuesday nights, wine-appreciation on Thursdays. Thought we might as well whole-hog it; you get a reduction in the fees if you sign up for the two.’
‘Thinking of opening a restaurant afterwards, are you?’
‘Who knows?’ she said.
‘Tuesdays and Thursdays, eh,’ he said, not laughing.
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’
‘Just for six weeks. To start with, anyway. That’s the elementary stage. After that, we’ll see.’
‘Where does all this take place?’
‘A
comme il faut
little establishment quite nearby. A rather famous
comme il faut
little establishment, actually. Looks like a pretty cosy little earner to me. If Albie were to hear of it he’d probably try to buy a share in it.’
‘Jolly good.’
‘Yes, I can’t wait.’ She looked genuinely pleased and happy. She truly couldn’t wait. She was going to wear an apron and hold a wooden spoon. And for the next six weeks at least if he wanted to see her on a Tuesday or a Thursday he could forget it.
Do you still
love me?
‘Time I was going,’ he said, getting up.
She sat up and watched him dress, and then she reached for the pink silk kimono with the flying cranes and put it on, and got up herself. She twisted her hair up at the back and pinned it.
‘I should be getting a move on myself,’ she said. She went into the bathroom and turned on the bath taps and then came back into the bedroom. ‘So cosy here, isn’t it?’ she said happily. All the rooms were so very much smaller than those in the mansion flat; all so close together. She sat down at the dressing table and began covering her face with cold cream.
‘Are you going out somewhere?’ he asked her.
She turned around. ‘Mmmm,’ she said. ‘Meeting someone for dinner. Must hurry.’ She started wiping off the cold cream and then turned around again. ‘Could you be a sweetie and turn that bath off for me?’ she said. ‘I keep forgetting how much quicker it fills up than the old one.’ The bath was smaller, too. The bathroom was full of heavily scented steam. When he came back into the bedroom she was standing in front of the wardrobe, looking at her dresses, choosing what to wear.
‘Who’s the lucky man?’ he said.
‘Who says it’s a man?’
‘Oh.’
‘Although as a matter of fact, it is.’
‘Ah.’
‘Just a chap. Just another City type.’
‘As long as he’s worth all this effort.’
She had taken out an important-looking silk dress and was considering it carefully. ‘I’ve got to keep my hand in,’ she said.
He was on the edge of rage: he could have torn the dress from her hand and flung it out of the window, thrown her across the room, shaken her until her teeth rattled, slapped her pale, almost plain face; instead he simply said, ‘I’ll leave you to it then. Enjoy yourself.’ He even managed to put his arm briefly around her waist and kiss her cheek as he passed her on the way to the door.
She looked up and smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said, her gaze as candid as a child’s, or an animal’s. ‘Do you mind awfully seeing yourself out?’
‘Of course not,’ he assured her. ‘Goodnight. Must dash.’ He ran down the stairs and strode along the passageway. At the end of it, just by the front door, Solomon sat in a crouch. As Simon approached, he rose to his feet and then standing on his toes arched his back, and then subsided, his head lifted, his gaze on Simon, as candid as a child’s—staring, finding no fault, no merit, only the world as it was, in all its immense, impenetrable mystery.
‘So what did you think?’
‘Well, everything looked pretty good to me. Kids thriving; Flora in the pink; Simon—well, Simon was his usual quasi-seigneurial self, no more no less.’
‘No signs of evasion or duplicity?’
‘None that I could see.’
‘Perhaps everything really is all right, then.’
‘Possibly. But I should tell you that Robert thinks otherwise.’
‘
What?
’
Louisa retailed her conversation with her husband. ‘You should have been there,’ she said. ‘Then we would have known whether or not
she
was there too.’
‘Yes,’ said Lydia, ‘it’s a drag, isn’t it: but I had to visit the pater.’ The New Year visit was an annual chore, best accomplished without prevarication or alteration to the schedule. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘even if she had been there, that wouldn’t necessarily have told us anything.’
‘Her not being there might have done.’
‘But not necessarily.’
‘Actually we really don’t know anything much, do we?’
‘And we can’t, unless we catch them
in flagrante.
’
‘Which God forbid.’
‘I’ll tell you one thing I’ve remembered,’ said Lydia, ‘thinking it over.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Her clothes. They really weren’t at all what I’d call actress’s clothes.’
‘Oh. What kind were they?’
‘Seriously expensive.’
‘Nice or nasty?’
‘Nice.’
‘I
see.
’
‘Doesn’t look good, does it?’
‘There’s probably a perfectly innocent explanation, all the same,’ said Louisa. ‘There
must
be.
Pace
Robert and the old statistics.’
‘Wish we knew it. I do hate a mystery.’
‘Infuriating, isn’t it?’
‘And it could be something an awful lot worse.’
‘Let’s just hope not,’ said Louisa.
‘Absolutely,’ said Lydia.
He’d have to be careful, damned careful, now that Tuesdays and Thursdays were out, not to fall into a pattern. He’d have to watch it. He was actually having to work pretty late anyway once or twice a week, depending. So one way or another, he was very likely going to be seeing even less of Gillian than heretofore—for the next six weeks, at least. But it couldn’t really matter: it could never be allowed, or at any rate admitted, really to matter. And in fact, he assured himself, it doesn’t matter. How could it?
So here he was, on a night when he might have come home from work via Bayswater, and missed Thomas, and even Nell, and even Janey, sitting down to dinner with all three, and, of course, Flora, who did it every single night. And it was where he belonged, no doubt about that; it was where he manifestly and unquestionably belonged. That, perhaps, was the whole problem.
After the children were all in bed Flora picked up a book and started reading it.
‘What are you reading?’
‘It’s one of the novels Claire brought me.’
‘Oh yes; Claire’s review copies.’
‘It must be nice, getting all the new novels.’
‘I should think it would be a total pain in the neck; I don’t know why she doesn’t just flog the lot.’
‘She flogs some of them, she only keeps the good ones.’
‘What about that one you’re reading, then? Good, is it?’
‘We-e-ell—’
‘There you are then.’
‘I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.’
‘What is the fuss about?’
‘I can’t quite see, myself. I must be too out of touch. Or too dim. Or both.’
‘Well, you know what they say about contemporary English fiction.’
‘What do they say?’
‘It’s no good.’
Flora laughed. ‘I believe there’s another
they
,’ she said, ‘who seem to think it’s absolutely brilliant.’
‘It’s as much as their livelihoods are worth to say so,’ said Simon.
‘Maybe,’ said Flora, sadly. ‘But they could still be right, couldn’t they?’
‘No,’ said Simon. ‘That is, they could be, but they’re not. What about that one, what’s it about?’
‘Adultery,’ said Flora.
It was remarkable how, with his head swimming—as if a great red wave had suddenly engulfed it—he was able to converse as if nothing, absolutely nothing, were amiss. Once you’ve had the education, the words simply speak themselves. ‘Adultery, eh?’ said Simon, never missing a beat. ‘Hasn’t that been done before?
The
Golden Bowl
comes to mind.’
‘As does
A Handful of Dust.
’ ‘There you are then. That’s enough adultery.’
‘But as you see, it apparently isn’t.’
‘Never mind the apparent; I’m concerned solely with the actual.’
Flora put down the book; she did not even keep her place. She looked at Simon. ‘Well, actually,’ she said, ‘I would have thought that there was everything—or almost everything—still to be said about adultery. The moral landscape has changed radically since Henry James wrote his famous masterpiece. Or Evelyn Waugh his.’
‘The change in the moral landscape,’ said Simon, ‘if I understand correctly the change to which you refer—’ ‘Well, basically,’ said Flora, ‘no one, now, actually cares.’
‘Not much scope there, then, for a novel,’ said Simon. ‘Much less a masterpiece.’
‘No one, of course, writes masterpieces any more, either,’ said Flora. ‘Come to that.’
‘No, they don’t, do they?’ said Simon brightly.
‘And that’s probably a function of the moral landscape too. No one cares.’
‘I wonder.’
‘Do you?’
‘Do you?’
‘I don’t count,’ said Flora. ‘My caring is statistically insignificant.’ She noted but did not pursue Simon’s evasion of her question. Simon could not be expected to care; and she did not want to hear him affirming nevertheless that he did so, even less saying plainly that he did not: for in any case, neither assertion could justly have represented all his true response to such a question. The question itself was too bald, for Simon. He had been right, she saw, to evade it. She was not sure, really, why she had asked it. Of course, he would have cared if he had discovered her, Flora, to be having an adulterous liaison. At the thought of such an eventuality Flora smiled.
‘What are you smiling at?’ said Simon.
‘I was just wondering,’ said Flora, ‘how any normal person can ever find the time for adultery.’
‘Oh,’ said Simon. Delirium overtook him, but his tone betrayed no hint of it. ‘Needs must, when the devil drives.’
‘Ah, the devil,’ said Flora. ‘I was forgetting the devil.’
‘You, of all people,’ said Simon.
‘Yes,’ said Flora. ‘Silly, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ said Simon, stricken. ‘It does you credit.’ Oh God. Oh Flora. Pray for me.
‘It’s been ages, ages.’
‘Has it?’
‘You know it has.’
‘I really wouldn’t have thought so.’
‘Damn you then.’
‘Could you rephrase that?’
He let go of her and walked over to the fireplace. There was an engraved invitation sitting on the mantelpiece; he glanced cursorily at the copperplate. Beside it lay an unfamiliar gold cigarette lighter, which he picked up briefly. Cartier. For God’s sake. ‘Whose vulgar bauble is this?’ he said.
‘None of your business.’
‘Could you rephrase that?’