A Stairway to Paradise (8 page)
Andrew: Andrew Flynn. Oh, don’t you see? Can’t you guess: don’t you
know
? It’s no good; it could not possibly be any good: can’t you see? Does it have to be said? And yet, how? Oh dear.
‘Well, I’m not quite—it’s a bit difficult: I may be tied up until a bit late, tomorrow.’ Another pause. ‘There’s a dinner party I have to do for someone.’
Complete confusion. ‘Oh.’
Poor sod. He doesn’t understand. Well, how could he. ‘Look, why don’t you—I mean, if you like—why don’t you come round at eightish and then we’ll see. Give me your number and I’ll telephone you if I have to put you off. But it should be all right.’ It’s a bit of a mess but now that we’ve got this far I can see that the best thing to do is to sort it out asap. ‘I mean, if you like. Or we could leave it till next week. As you like.’
What’s she trying to tell me?
What is she saying?
Only one way to find out. ‘Yes, well, if you’re sure—I mean, if you think—’ because I can’t now endure the idea of waiting until next week; I really must
know
: ‘I’ll come round at eightish then, and we’ll see what you’re in the mood for—will that be all right? Are you quite sure?’
‘Yes, Andrew. I’m
quite
sure. As long as you don’t mind—sorry I can’t be more definite.’
‘No, that’s quite all right. Well, till tomorrow night, then.’
‘Yes. Goodbye.’
She hung up as soon as he’d had time to stutter his own valedictions, which might have been protracted.
She stared out through the french windows at the trellis and the tree-top beyond it, waving in the evening wind. I could go to the cinema, she thought; there might be something at the Everyman I want to see: where did I put that program? It’s probably in my bag, along with pretty well everything else. I’ll go and look. But she didn’t; she went on sitting, staring, staring, and thinking, until long after the film at the Everyman had started.
Claire and the children were coming back on Saturday, so if he, Alex Maclise, were really going to do the unthinkable, really going to go and see Barbara, there was only tonight, and it was getting too late to drop in on a woman you’d yearned after, lost for ever, seen by chance, been teased by—coldly, heartlessly—by whose memory you were now even more maddened than once you had been: now that she was so evidently no longer yours: might never have been: too late.
Or there was tomorrow night.
And that would be it.
And it was unthinkable; preposterous; it was a delusion of his maddened imagination that it was even theoretically feasible. As long as he could live through the next twenty-four-odd hours then he was safe; he would come out on the other side, the same dull stony place he’d inhabited before last Saturday night, safe: safe from his present madness.
The thing to do was to get on with one’s work. The book still lacked a really satisfactory title: there: all a person
really
needs is an almost intractable problem to chew over. Alex began to chew.
There was a moment on Friday night, a crucial, wavering moment when Fate, her expression impassive, stood stonily in front of him waiting, daring him, implying (so one might have fancied) that either decision would be equally disastrous: a moment, crucial, wavering, almost sickening, when he might have left the club and gone straight to Belsize Park, have taken his chance, have exposed himself to whatever horror of rejection, ridicule, scorn might be implied in her behaviour at the party and afterwards: when he might have at any rate declared, with whatever result, his terribly reawakened passion. The moment—Fate watching, waiting, almost (but derisively) smiling—passed; he was safe. It was only much later, when the danger was entirely behind him, that he asked himself whether the ignominy which he had settled for was not, after all, the greater: but the question was now academic; one could therefore dare, now, to ask it.
The question did not, as it happened, remain academic. There was another message from Claire on the answerphone when he got home that night. It seemed there was some problem or other with the car; she and the children would not be returning, after all, until Sunday.
He had been given an apple, iridescently crimson without, which might or might not be poisoned; he sat, and began to contemplate it.
‘These are for you.’
‘Oh, Andrew.’ Oh, Andrew, what
have
you done—no: what have
I
done? God forgive me.
It was a very big bunch of roses: it was actually three bunches all wrapped up together. They weren’t (thank God for that at least) red, but they were an awfully dark shade of pink. Like lipstick. A faintly bluish, faintly decadent pink. They were beautiful. She just stood, looking at them, drinking them in. Well, they deserved it. Then she looked up at him. ‘Come in,’ she said, and they went inside.
She left him in the large room and vanished, returning with a vase and a half-full bottle of white wine which she put on the table. ‘Do sit down,’ she said. She vanished again and reappeared holding two glasses. ‘Perhaps you could pour us a drink,’ she said, ‘while I put these in water.’ She did it properly, removing the leaves at the base of each stem and splitting it.
Andrew sat quite silent, on a wicker armchair, watching her. She was sitting at the table; when she’d finished the flowers she moved the vase to one side so that her view of him was unobstructed, and then she slightly raised her glass to him and drank.
‘How are you,’ she said. ‘It’s been an age—what—two days, I think—since we last met: do tell me all your news.’
He laughed. ‘Oh, I’ve nothing much to tell, I’ve had my head stuck inside a couple of learned journals most of the time—I’ve got rather a lot of work to do before the start of term.’
‘Where are you, exactly?’
‘King’s.’
‘Ah.’
‘Handy for the river, you know, if it all gets too much.’
‘That’s true. Can’t you swim?’
‘Of course. But I’ve always understood that the water’s so polluted that even if you don’t drown you’re bound to die of some kind of poisoning.’
‘Now, that shows how long you’ve been away: didn’t you know? It’s been cleaned up!’
‘Gosh, really?’
‘No trout yet, but that may come.’
‘Blow me down.’
‘Why did you come back?’
He started slightly, unsure of her meaning; she saw his confusion. ‘I mean,’ she amended, ‘to England? I mean, if you hadn’t even known the Thames’d been cleaned up, then—the place has such a bad reputation these days, after all. I wondered why you’d come back.’
‘Ah.’ He ought to have understood. ‘Yes. Well, there was this job. I’d always meant to come back if the right thing came up, and it did. So—’
‘That was lucky.’
‘Yes, it was. At least, I thought so. But then—well, then, when I’d got it, Janet—my wife—came along and told me she wouldn’t be coming with me. So then I didn’t feel quite so lucky. Especially when I realised that, of course, Mimi—that’s my daughter—silly name, it’s a nickname really—would be staying behind too. Sorry, I’m sounding awfully pathetic, aren’t I. Shall we go out and have some dinner? And talk about something entirely different?’
‘No, yes, all in good time. You see, you don’t sound at all pathetic. It’s just very very sad.’
‘Yes, it has been. It was.’ He paused for a moment, as if deliberating, and shifted slightly in the wicker chair. ‘But actually— after I met you—it’s the strangest thing, but suddenly it seems like something which happened long, long ago. I—I think—well, I—’
‘Andrew.’
‘Yes?’
‘Andrew, I must tell you something. That is, I must say something.’
He looked at her doubtfully. ‘Must you really?’
He looked so sweet saying that; she almost wished she could say, no. ‘Yes, truly. You see—about the other night—’
He was looking down at the floor: it was dreadful to be saying what she was now saying, but it had to be done.
‘You see—I’ve been just a little loopy this past week.’
‘Loopy?’
‘Yes, loopy. Something happened, it’s quite unimportant, but I haven’t been quite myself. I’m not usually so—well, what’s the word. Let’s just say that what I did was an
acte gratuit
.’
‘Yes, all right. But actually I don’t believe there’s any such thing.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No, it’s a behavioural impossibility.’
‘Yes, well, I think that’s just my point, really. I mean, having performed one, I think I can agree with you, it’s a behavioural impossibility. Which I can have no intention of repeating.’
‘I see. Well—I—you wouldn’t rather I went, would you?’
She had begun to realise, dimly, and now saw more clearly that he was a treasure.
‘No, I wouldn’t. I mean, if you can bear to be with me—if you can bear with me—please forgive me.’
‘
Forgive
you?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘All right: for the sake of the argument, I forgive you.’
‘That aside—if you’d like to stay, and talk, or have some dinner, or both—there is some food here if you don’t feel like going out, if you’re hungry—I don’t know what you feel like doing—’
‘We’ll go out, don’t you think? I like being seen in a restaurant with a beautiful woman, it makes me feel rich and successful.’
He’d never seen her really smile before—not that smile, that very wide, enchanted smile, which made his description of her unexceptionably exact.
She looked at him, the smile fading; there was a faint note of melancholy in her voice. ‘You’re awfully nice, Andrew,’ she said. ‘Really you are.’
‘Yes, that’s true,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you noticed. But I was sure you would, sooner or later—I knew you weren’t completely stupid.’
‘I’m just going to have a shower and change,’ she said. ‘I’m rather sticky, I only got back here just before you came. I won’t be a moment. Then we can go. Have another drink if you like.’ And she left the room.
When she came back, all dressed up and smelling nice, he was looking at a framed photograph on the wall. ‘Who is this?’ he said.
She went and stood beside him. Andrew had masses of self-control.
‘That’s my mother at the age of five,’ she said, ‘with her ayah.’
‘Not really!’ he exclaimed. ‘
Snap!
’
She smiled at him. ‘Not you too?’ she said, wonderingly.
‘Yes, me too,’ he replied.
They both laughed with astonishment.
‘Were both your parents—’ he said.
‘Yes, both. What about yours?’
‘Only my father’s lot. My mother was merely Anglo–English. And still is, come to that.’
‘So—of course
you
couldn’t have been born there, could you?’
‘No, not even I, old as I am!’
‘But the memory lingers on,’ she said. ‘Or the melody, or whatever it is.’
They were both looking rather grave now.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘How it does.’
‘Shall we go?’ she said. ‘We might compare notes over a plate of—er—curry, or something.’
He laughed. ‘Something French, I thought,’ he said. ‘Someone told me about a place up in Hampstead—shall we see if we can get a table there? We might be lucky—it’s fairly late now. I mean, you do like French food, do you? Or would you rather somewhere else? Do say.’
‘Yes, I like French,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it funny how we all like French?’
‘No, it’s not funny,’ he said. ‘It’s only natural. After all, we’re English.’
She laughed.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m ravenous.’ He took her by the hand, but it felt perfectly natural, as if they were companions, and led her out to the car.
They were eating duckling and drinking white burgundy, and somewhere a tape machine was playing a just-audible stream of the animadversions of George Shearing.
‘Who are these people you work for?’
‘Two lawyers, name of Hopetoun. And their two sons, aged thirteen. Twins, they are. Identical twins.’
‘Are they nice, these Hopetouns?’
‘Yes, very.’
‘That’s all right, then. What exactly do you do for them?’
‘I get their dinner ready every night, from Monday to Thursday, inclusive. And I do a bit of cleaning—nothing much; not the heavy stuff. Someone else comes in to do that. And in return I get the flat, plus fuel.’
‘No actual money, then?’
‘I earn some outside: I do dinner parties at the weekends for people, and the odd lunch, and things like that. You see…’ and so she gave him an account of her career to date.
Barbara’s widowed mother had become ill with cancer some months before Barbara’s finals, after sitting which she had gone home to look after her: her rather older sister, who was married to a Yorkshire GP, was fully occupied with their three children, plus assorted animals. After her mother’s death, which had occurred some eighteen months later, Barbara had gone to stay with this sister for a month or two. ‘I was feeling pretty useless, you see,’ she told him. ‘Quite helpless, actually. Couldn’t get going on that career thing.’ She paused, and then shrugged. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘we were into another recession by then. So I just felt I’d altogether missed the boat.’ She paused again. ‘I suppose I didn’t even want to have caught it,’ she added.
‘Yes,’ said Andrew. ‘I see.’
‘So then,’ she sat up, smiling brightly, ‘I saw this ad in the
Lady
for a mother’s helper, in Kensington.’
‘Ah, the
Lady
.’
‘Yes, absolutely. And so I came to London.’
‘And?’
‘Oh, one thing led to another; you know. I just sort of faffed around—I just did odd jobs; and sometimes in between I signed on. And then, well—then fate brought me together with Fergus Carrington. Via Claire Maclise, as a matter of fact.’
‘Ah.’
‘You may well say so.’
She sat back and looked pensive. She had finished eating; she minutely adjusted the knife and fork on her plate. ‘That was one of the things I taught Fergus,’ she said, half to herself.
‘Oh?’
‘Table manners. I was very strict, you know.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Yes. I mean, he knew what to do; it was just that I was the first person who’d had the time and the energy to insist absolutely on his doing it.’