Instances of the Number 3 (18 page)

Bridget was glad, on the whole, that she had stuck to her routine of visiting Farings fortnightly; she needed the weekend in London to reflect on what had taken place between her and Stanley Godwit. Not being a person who based her own morality on how others behaved, she had not for a second contemplated being unfaithful while Peter was alive.

This view of things amused her when she realised she had been bothering about whether she was being ‘unfaithful’ now. By all ordinary accounts, Peter was dead. She hardly took notice of ‘ordinary’ accounts—was ‘dead’ strictly what you could call it, anyway? The figure who had appeared at her bedside—was that Peter, or some version of him? The live Peter would certainly have minded her sleeping with another man—this Peter, she sensed, she couldn’t say how, had quite a different approach.

Then there was the question of Mrs Godwit. Stanley hardly mentioned his wife; but this, Bridget felt, came more from something more complicated than a dearth of emotion. Having been in the position herself she wasn’t
sure if she minded more or less about sleeping with another woman’s husband.

The following weekend Stanley Godwit arrived at Farings with something wrapped in a brown bag.

‘You probably have this…’

The Sermons of John Donne
, bound in leather.

‘No,’ said Bridget, ‘I don’t, as it happens.’ Taken off guard she sounded brusquer than usual.

‘I have two—this one’s spare.’

Bridget looked at the distinguished, ancient binding. ‘The other copy must be pretty exceptional!’ Seeing she was going to get nowhere that way, she went on, ‘Tea first or…?’

They had the tea second, looking out over the hills. Bridget thought: I can’t have been so lucky—this won’t last, nothing does—and said aloud, because if there was anything disagreeable she liked to get it over with, ‘Does your wife know you are here?’

‘I couldn’t say.’

‘Sorry to be nosy—but in case there’s anything I should watch out for…’

Stanley got out of bed and she looked admiringly at the muscles of his back, which showed the signs of hard physical work. The back was as different from Peter’s as—well, comparisons are odious, wasn’t that what Sister Mary Eustasia had used to say? ‘Odorous’ they had turned it in the playground. Stanley smelled good too—the surest test of physical compatibility.

He came back to the bedroom with the volume of Donne. ‘Look.’

She read, screwing up her eyes to make out the tiny, elderly print.

I doubt not of my own salvation; and in whom can I have such occasion of doubt as in my Self? When I come to heaven, shall I be able to say to any there, Lord! how got you hither? Was any man less likely to come hither than I?

‘I like that,’ said Stanley Godwit. ‘If Dean Donne could say that of himself maybe there’s hope for me.’

‘I have been thinking marriage is a decision,’ said Bridget, carefully. She was aware that there was something larger she was being told, and that, quite possibly, she was putting herself in the way of heartbreak—some unhappiness certainly. ‘I’m sure you’re never unkind to your wife.’

‘It’s not safe to be too sure about anything,’ said Stanley Godwit, ‘least of all our own behaviour.’

Bridget, who agreed with this, was visited by a perverse need to restore some of her usual defences. ‘I’m afraid I’m not much interested in self-help philosophy.’

There was a pause, then Stanley Godwit got out of bed and began to dress.

‘Time I got going,’ he remarked, with perfect good humour.

Bridget sat and watched him, deliberately not covering her naked body with the sheet. When he was at the door she said, ‘Don’t go. Please. I’m sorry.’

‘The thing is I can’t give you much.’

His back was to her, which was a mercy in the circumstances. ‘I know that.’ She’d got hold of her voice now. ‘But stay anyway, while you can.’

‘All right,’ said Stanley Godwit, turning back. ‘Does “staying” mean me getting undressed again?’

‘Confession does not always have to be verbal,’ Father Gerard had said, but Peter had not found a way of ‘confessing’ Zelda, because, at heart, he did not regard her as a ‘sin’ at all—something with which the Catholic—or any—Church would hardly agree.

Yet who can know the mind of God? Peter, for one, would never have claimed to; and it seems likely that the unsure, the unopinionated, the disowned, the puzzled, even the downright errant, come closest to what we are told of that particular mystery. Before inviting those who were without sin to stone the adulterous woman to death, the man from Nazareth bent down and wordlessly wrote in the sand ‘as though he heard them not’.

It was Frances who told Peter the preface to the famous words. They were at the National Gallery where, a little archly, she pointed out the painting by Rembrandt of the woman taken in adultery.

‘Look, that’s what would have happened to me!’

‘“Let him first cast a stone…”’

‘It’s the bit before I like,’ Frances said, ‘when Christ draws in the dust.’

Painter had referred to this event when she had first seen the Rembrandt with him. ‘The best bloody draughtsman of all time!’ Painter had exclaimed. ‘No one to match him. He knew what the boy meant by drawing in the sand.’

‘What did he mean?’

‘In those parts a drawing in sand wouldn’t last five minutes. It was the boy’s way of showing what he thought their opinions were worth. Look how Rembrandt’s got their eager little faces, all agog with self-righteousness!’

Self-righteousness was not one of Bridget’s stumbling
blocks, which was maybe why, she decided, she didn’t feel too badly about Stanley Godwit’s wife. Nevertheless, she tried to steer clear of Cordelia when, the following day, she saw the Godwits’ daughter coming towards her. But in the way of such occasions Cordelia spotted Bridget and made a beeline.

‘Hi there, Cordelia, I’m here to buy sausages.’

‘You won’t get any.’

It was true that Bridget had never successfully made a single sausage purchase at the pork butcher’s.

‘Why is that? I never seem to be able to get any when I ask?’

‘They sell out.’

‘Why don’t they order more if they’re so popular?’

There seemed to be nothing more to be said on the subject of sausages. Cordelia walked along beside Bridget in moody silence and Bridget, feeling that recent events dictated a special politeness to Stanley Godwit’s daughter, was stuck for a more fertile topic of conversation.

‘My mother asked if you’d like to visit.’

This was a blow. Bridget played for time. ‘I wouldn’t want to put her out—an invalid.’

‘It’s no trouble—she’s in remission at present.’

Hell and damnation, Bridget thought. ‘Are you up here every weekend?’ she enquired. She couldn’t help feeling there was a touch of the policewoman about Cordelia.

‘I try to come when I can.’

Bridget promised to telephone the Godwits—Yes, she had the number—and call by for a drink. Roland was coming up to fetch his wife and the children that evening.

‘Isn’t it rather a long journey to do there and back all
in one day?’ Bridget found herself asking. It appeared impossible not to say somewhat the wrong thing to Stanley Godwit’s daughter.

Zahin was pleased with the way his sandwich business was shaping. He had compiled a business plan with expected Profit and Loss, which he had run past one of his cousins—the accountant—in St John’s Wood, the one he had kept dark from Bridget. It wasn’t wise to mix different portions of your life. The cousin had suggested some market research—with the local offices, where Zahin was hoping to get the sandwich business off the ground. A questionnaire had been devised, requesting people tick their preferences: white bread or brown, rye, granary, mixed grain, baguette, rolls, pitta, bagels, etc., as well as a choice of fillings. Cheeses of various kinds, with pickle or tomato, predictably, came out on top. But there were surprises too: salmon—also salt beef, which he would not, himself, have thought of; mayo with almost everything seemed popular.

With Bridget away in the country he had been able really to get on with things—so much so that these days he hardly had time for Zelda.

More and more, Zelda was getting to be someone he
saw when he was bored. It was true Mr Hansome had liked her—but with Mr Hansome dead there didn’t seem so much point in dressing Zelda up in her sexy clothes, painting her face and her nails and so on. Not that Zahin believed girls shouldn’t take care of their appearance at all times. He disapproved of so many of the modern, scruffy girls he saw around in London—hardly wearing make-up—if at all—not bothering to make themselves look pretty, or sexy.

Though he sometimes missed Mr Hansome he preferred the company of Mrs Hansome and Mrs Michael. Mrs Michael had a big collection of videos; it was soothing to lie on her sofa and watch Clint Eastwood, while Mrs Michael made cups of tea and chatted to him. She knew a lot about the latest cleaning products, which she saw on the telly—one good one, she’d told him, for washing wood which didn’t take off all the shine—guaranteed ‘natural’, with orange peel, Mrs Michael said, among its ingredients. Neither Mrs Hansome nor Mrs Michael made demands—he was tired of having to try to be how other people wanted. Miss Slater he didn’t like so much—she didn’t like him either, he could tell. Mr Hansome had told Zelda that Miss Slater was his sweetheart; Miss Slater dressed nicely and he supposed that was what Mr Hansome had seen in her, though she wasn’t a patch on Zelda when he’d got her properly dressed up. Personally, he, Zahin, preferred Mrs Hansome’s big, blonde looks to Miss Slater’s. If only Mrs Hansome would let him, he could dress her and make her up too—some definition in her lipstick and eyeshadow, and some nice lowlights in her hair, and you wouldn’t know her…

‘“When you are old and grey and full of sleep…”’ Stanley Godwit had quoted before the discreet audience of distant hills, running his fingers through Bridget’s fine, silver-riddled hair. ‘I’m glad you don’t dye it.’

Bridget remembering this as she stood waiting for the bell to be answered in the porch of the Godwits’ house, adjusted her skirt and wished she had chosen another one. She had hovered between vanity and prudence and prudence had won out—the skirt she was wearing was eminently sensible.

It was Cordelia who came to the door. ‘Oh, hi!’

‘Hi there!’ said Bridget. For some reason—no, she knew the reason—she found herself adopting a hearty, guide-mistress tone with Cordelia.

Cordelia showed Bridget into a room with French windows looking out onto a neatly kept garden. French marigolds and salvia, quite unlike the rambling garden at Farings. She looked to see if there were bean poles—yes, a wigwam of them, twined about with the little scarlet flowers haunted by bees.

Mrs Godwit, in trousers and trainers, was sitting on the sofa. Thankfully, no wheelchair was in sight. ‘I’m Gloria. I’m so sorry I missed your party.’

‘Bridget Hansome.’ Her own voice sounded gruff. Stanley’s wife was more socially adept than Bridget had imagined. She felt accountably shy.

‘Do sit down, no, not that one, that one’s Stanley’s, but the chair beside it is quite comfortable. I couldn’t get a word out of Stanley about you, so I thought I’d better ask you over to see for myself.’

They drank sherry out of tulip-shaped glasses, which looked like the remnants of wedding presents from long
ago. Cordelia’s children, a boy and a girl, rather dull, drank Pepsi. Bridget refused nuts and crisps but asked if she might smoke.

‘Certainly, I’m sure we have an ashtray somewhere, Corrie…?’

But Bridget said not to bother and accepted an olive instead from Corrie’s boy.

Stanley drifted in and out of the room. ‘Do sit down, Stanley, or go and clear out your garage and leave us in peace,’ said his wife. ‘Really, he’s driving me mad at the moment!’ At any moment she might utter the word ‘Men!’ and look heavenwards, where Bridget felt her own husband might more likely be found.

Cordelia, coming back from a fruitless ashtray search said, ‘Perhaps it’s the male menopause?’

‘Is there such a thing? My husband was always restless.’ Bridget felt it the moment to introduce one.

‘Oh, how tactless of me! I had forgotten about your husband. Stanley told me. Of course, I’m very lucky to have Stanley.’

Yes, you are lucky, Bridget thought later, walking, with the sunset before her, back down the lane, over the stile and along the footpath to Farings. She wondered if Stan had really intended to give his wife the book of poetry he had bought in Ludlow. She hardly seemed the sort to enjoy poetry. There was something too knowing about the eyes. The kind, grey-blue eyes of Stanley Godwit opened in her mind; she did hope that at her age she wasn’t going to fall in love…

And yet which of us can resist falling in love? Of all the manifold temptations open to humankind it must be the
most captivating. Peter had not even tried to resist it when, as he frankly told Zelda, he found himself falling in love with her.

Zelda had not thought to discuss Mr Hansome’s declarations with her brother; she and Zahin liked such different things. Zelda had her work with her clients, where financially she was well-rewarded for her efforts. She understood that her duties were to make them happy—and if it made them happy to believe they were in love with her, it was not her job to contradict them. In fact, quite the contrary: contradiction, she was aware, being bad for business. And it was useful too, that Mr Hansome should be a bit soppy about her because it meant he didn’t enquire too much about why she wouldn’t do certain things with him. Not that this troubled her with other clients who liked it—wasn’t it why they came to her in the first place! But Mr Hansome came to see her for a different reason—because she reminded him of someone he had been in love with long ago. She didn’t mind that—though she herself didn’t have much time for love. This was not something she needed to discuss with Zahin, who only wanted the money she was able to get for them. Zahin was hardly the kind to fall in love either…

Peter, reflecting, in the place of windy darkness, on the mysteries now revealed to him, remembered how Frances had told him of the inscription drawn in sand, and suddenly understood the meaning of that gesture.