Instances of the Number 3 (22 page)

Stanley dropped Bridget at Farings and she drove back to London the same night. The house was quiet when she returned, too quiet for Zahin to be in residence.

By Zahin’s standards the kitchen was unusually untidy. Some of his milk had been spilled on the floor by the fridge. Too tired for sleep Bridget, with the energy of exhaustion, looked beneath the sink for a cloth to wipe up the milk. There was a pair of Zahin’s surgical gloves there. Picking them up she saw a bulge in one of the flaccid fingers and when she shook the glove something small and hard and round fell out.

‘I didn’t know,’ Peter said. He had approached the bed but not yet sat down upon it. Perhaps he was waiting to see how she had taken the truth she had discovered? ‘Cut my throat and hope to die, I didn’t realise that she—
he
—was a boy.’

‘I’m not sure that’s such an impressive oath in the circumstances. But didn’t you when you…?’

‘No, that’s it, you see. We never did. Mostly we just
fooled about. I thought it was because I was different from her—I’m sorry, he’s still a “she” to me—other clients and that she wanted me to treat her with respect.’

Bridget, forgetting Peter’s immortal powers, thought: How naive!

‘It was, very, but then “naive” is what I am—was. That’s part of what I have to make up for here, now.’

‘What are you doing here, Peter?’

She had asked the question before; now surely she had a right to know.

‘I’m in purgatory—pure and simple—and it is very pure and very simple, when you understand it. It’s like Father Gerard used to say—you get punished by your sins, not for them.’

‘Father Gerard?’

‘A Catholic priest I used to know. He wasn’t right about everything—it’s not what you’re forgiven when you die, it’s what you forgive that counts.’

Bridget’s mind conjured Old Hamlet, the ghost of Prince Hamlet’s father, whose thorough-going unforgivingness had wrought mortal havoc on the human beings he left behind. ‘I think I could have told you that.’

‘I doubt you’ll spend long in purgatory, Bridget.’

‘I don’t know—I seem to have acquired a taste for adultery lately.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry about Stan.’

He looked mournful. Bridget, observing this, wondered if anyone looked after him now—or was that, too, part of what he had to learn.

‘Perhaps it doesn’t matter,’ she suggested. ‘Perhaps if you love somebody who or what they are, or whether they stay or go, or you stay or go, isn’t important.’ The
remark was either extremely banal or extremely wise. ‘What does purgatory consist of, these days?’ she went on hastily. ‘It can’t be like it is in Dante, can it?’

‘Dante!’ said Peter, and he gave a ghost of a laugh. ‘You were reading him when I met you. I fell in love with you just like that!’

‘It strikes me there’s been rather too much of the “just like that” sort of thing in your life.’ Bridget, who wanted to put her arms round him, played at being crisp.

‘That’s another of the consequences I have to bear now—watching the results of that “sort of thing” as you call it, looking on at the two of you.’

Bridget studied his face: it looked—what did it look? Honestly, just plain tired. ‘Not for too long, I hope,’ she said. ‘Anyway, why just the two of us? What about Zahin—Zelda?’

‘That’s different. Zelda wasn’t real, you see, so she died when I did. Only the real survives here.’

Bridget was overcome by her need to comfort him. ‘Well, Frances has her—I should say, your—baby and you know I’m always all right. So if it just depends on us you should be free, soon, to go off to wherever it is you go to after this. What is it, by the way?’ ‘Unspeakable.’

‘Oh dear!’

‘No, really, I mean it. It can’t be spoken of. Just as well considering the nonsense human beings have spoken over such matters.’

So already he saw himself as other. ‘Will you be OK?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

He was just the same as when he was alive, Bridget
thought, and yet there was a difference. ‘You mustn’t worry,’ she said.

‘I do though.’

That’s what was different. Not that he worried but that he knew he did. ‘We’ll be OK—all of us. People are. They say they won’t get over things, but they do. It’s human nature.’

‘Oh, human nature!’

‘Don’t be so snooty—just because you’re not one of us any more.’

He smiled at her, misty and congenial, and she knew he would soon be leaving.

‘Goodbye, then,’ she said, wanting to have said it first.

‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘Did you know “Goodbye” means “God be with you”?’

She wanted to cry out: You know, don’t you, that I always loved you, and love you every inch as much, even though you aren’t alive. But he knew that now; that was the other difference.

‘Know-all!’ She looked at the seahorses. ‘It’s funny—there seems always to have been three of us until now. First you, me and Frances, then me, Frances and Zahin. Now Frances has Petra and Zahin has his sandwich business it’s finally just you and me.’ And finalities, good or bad, bestow a certain relief. ‘I suppose soon even you will peter out…’

‘That’s a terrible joke, Bid! I was really on my own all the time until I came here, you know.’

This made her sad. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Don’t be sad for me. I’m here to learn.’

‘Well, I’ve been learning too since you’ve been gone.’ Though he hadn’t gone—that was the oddest thing; for
all his seeming invisibility he was here with her now more truly than he had ever been. It struck her that maybe for the first time there was a complicity between the two of them, like herself and the rooks…She remembered something. ‘I wondered, I half thought I saw you with the rooks once…?’

‘Oh yes, the rooks! It was fun flying.’

There didn’t seem much more to be said.

‘Will you give me some sign then, I mean when, you know, you go for—?’

‘I’ll give you a sign.’

‘—good—or bad?’

He nodded. ‘Good or bad. By the way, I’m sorry about the ring.’

‘What?’

‘The sapphire ring—the one I gave Frances.’

‘I got over that a long time ago.’

The death-pale face looked at her.

‘Oh, all right then, I did mind, still do a little…Remember, I’m only human!’

But this time he didn’t smile and when he spoke it was with the voice of the real. ‘I am sorry—it wasn’t that I loved you less.’

Bridget thought:
Most necessary’tis that we forget/To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.

‘That’s the first time you’ve ever told me you were sorry.’

‘I’m sorry about that too. I wish you’d taught me about Shakespeare.’

‘You know, Pete, I’ve learned more about Shakespeare from you than anyone—you and Sister Mary Eustasia. Though she was wrong about Gertrude—Gertrude didn’t
marry again because she was venal, it was because she was lonely.’

‘I’m sorry you’re lonely, Bid.’

‘Well, that’s what being human is, isn’t it? Being lonely. I suppose it’s different with you…?’

‘It’s different, yes…’

Wordless, they exchanged looks, until even in the tactful darkness she had to look away. And when she next looked up there were only the seahorses, rising and falling, giving the illusion they would go on for ever.

In the end the only way for Frances to stave off Ed Bittle, Painter insisted, was for her to pose for him. ‘You never did sit for me anyway.’

‘You didn’t want me! You were into abstracts.’

‘I never remember not wanting you!’

He worked steadily, sizing her up with his dispassionate, lop-sided gaze. ‘A life drawing is like making a baby,’ he said once. ‘There’s you, there’s me and there’s the picture. You only get the picture right if there’s a fit with the other two.’

Ed called and went away offended. He confided to Lottie, whom he had met at the hospital when they were both visiting Frances, ‘She promised she would sit for me!’

‘I’ll sit for you,’ said Lottie, who was taken with Ed’s motorbike leathers.

Frances had planned to leave the Painters after a week—but somehow the ‘week’ drifted into September. The late summer was unnaturally hot; Petra lay on the rug on the lawn without nappies, and the Ginger Nuts—the
seven tiny tortoises—took the sun alongside her. It seemed a pity to break up the nursery, Painter said.

He also insisted in paying Frances when she modelled for him. ‘But Patrick, I can’t take this—if anything I owe you for board and lodging!’

‘I suppose you think I can’t afford it,’ said Painter, choosing to take offence. ‘Sit up straight, woman, your left dug’s drooping!’

‘That means it’s time for Petra’s feed.’

Bridget visited once with an altered Zahin. He called Frances by her first name, and gave Petra a velveteen rabbit with which he tried, quite ordinarily, to make her smile.

‘She’s not old enough to smile yet, Zahin.’

Zahin told them all about his sandwich business and Mrs Painter found a recipe for soda bread. His voice had lost the bell-like tone and had become quite gruff—suitable for a young man about to make a fortune.

Before Zahin and Bridget left, Frances politely asked after Zelda. But Zelda, Bridget explained, had gone back to Iran, wasn’t it sad?—though another sister of Zahin’s might be coming over soon—and his mother had also promised to pay a visit…

‘That boy behaved unusually normally,’ said Frances, after the two had left. ‘I suppose everything’s all right there?’

‘That Bridget’d sort anyone out—she’s a tough nut!’

‘You take too much notice of appearances.’

‘What else would an artist take notice of? Sit up—you’ve collapsed into a coil.’

But with September drawing towards its end Frances
felt it was time to leave. ‘I must go, Patrick, or I’ll never get my independence back.’

‘So?’ The green eyes looked enquiringly.

‘I can’t—we can’t—live here with you for ever.’

‘Why not?’ Painter had an exhibition coming up; meticulously, he was repainting imagined defects in the tiny coloured squares.

‘You’ve got your painting…’

‘What’s that got to do with the price of eggs? What’s wrong with living with me, anyway?’

‘It would be an unusual arrangement.’

Painter turned round. ‘I’m told I’m considered “unusual”, but what’s so funny about asking a pretty woman to live with you?’

Frances felt herself colour. ‘But Patrick…’

‘You think I’m queer, don’t you?’ Painter said. He was looking at her sideways from one out-of-true eye.

Frances flushed deeper. ‘Well—’

‘Just because a man loves his mother doesn’t make him queer! I never took you for conventional.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with being homosexual.’

‘Speak for yourself!’ said Painter, rudely.

‘It wasn’t just that!’ protested Frances.

‘What then?’

‘You never had any girlfriends.’

‘There’s hardly any women I find attractive—Celia Johnson’s dead and Anne Bancroft’s spoken for. You’re one of the very few available women I fancy.’

‘Thank you,’ said Frances; she felt chastened.

‘So how about it? You can come and live here.’

Frances thought about it. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for marriage,’ she said.

‘Why not? There’s no need to marry, if you don’t want to.’

‘Living with just one person—it’s too much for me. I think that’s why I’ve been a mistress. I seem to work best in a three.’

‘In that case,’ said Painter, ‘I’m ideal. There won’t just be me—there’s Mother!’

‘But she might die,’ Frances blurted out.

‘She’ll die, but there’s Petra—and I’ll die, and then you’ll die—we’ll all die one day. Even Petra. What does it matter?’

Perhaps it doesn’t, Frances thought. Perhaps I’ve taken everything too seriously.

Something sharp attacked her toe. Frances looked down to see a tortoise nibbling at her feet. ‘Hey!’

‘It’s your red nail varnish—thinks you’re a tomato!’

‘I’ll think about what you say,’ said Frances, ‘but I must go home first.’ She was flattered by the tortoise’s nip.

‘Promise you’ll think? By the way, I’m glad you’ve stopped wearing all those dreary colours. That varnish’s a good colour on you, goes with the silver sandals—what’s it called?’

‘It’s called “Persian Nights”.’

‘You thought I fancied that pretty Persian boy, didn’t you?’ said Painter, and laughed raucously.

He helped to pack her belongings into the car and carried Petra out in her Moses basket.

‘Ginger and Fred’d like it too.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘They like you,’ Painter said.

‘You mean they like my toes, rather, for lunch!’

‘That too. But they respond to your voice. Some voices they tuck their heads in—with you they stick ’em right out, always have. It’s the best test.’

Frances didn’t ask of what. She drove off waving her hand.

Painter was still standing outside the house when, minutes later, she drove back again.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I was thinking—if it’ll please Ginger and Fred…’

There was no longer any pretence of Zahin studying. The sandwich business was up and running: there were the supplies to order for Mrs Michael, deliveries to arrange, the bank manager to be consulted and most of his spare time was spent devising fillings in Bridget’s kitchen. He seemed to have wholly forgotten the part he had once played so convincingly for her husband.

One day he came by Bridget’s shop. ‘Your computer, Bridget, I was wondering, for my cash spreadsheets…?’

Bridget had been turning things over in her mind. ‘Sure. I may be able to let you have it outright, soon.’

The new Zahin was matter-of-fact. ‘I can give you a good price.’

But Bridget was curious. Taking advantage of the offer of her computer she asked, ‘Does your family mind that you’re not going to be a chemical engineer?’

‘They will mind much more if I tell people I was a prostitute. I have decided to say I will tell, if the family don’t let me do as I like.’

So much for his sister’s reputation! Bridget thought.

Zahin was not insensitive to the unspoken: there was just a hint of defensiveness when he spoke again. ‘Mr Hansome told me to say this if there was any bother.’

‘Zahin, why, when you called to see my husband, did you come as a boy—as you are now?’

‘Shall I take the computer away with me now then, Bridget?’

The weeks passed and Bridget reached no resolution. Frances had settled in with Painter—and Claris was coming to look after Petra when Frances went back to work part-time at the gallery. Lottie, who had rented the Turnham Green flat, had agreed to fill in some of Frances’s hours. It turned out that Lottie’s mother’s sister had been at school with the sister of Lady Kathleen, this slenderest of connexions being more than enough to endear Lottie to Roy. She had become friendly with Ed Bittle, who was now full of a plan for a sculpture of her—the Virgin post-annunciation, Painter said. A coolness had arisen between Painter and Ed Bittle, but Zahin and Mickey were thick as thieves over Zandwiches Zpecial. I am a cobweb thread, Bridget thought. She saw herself a tiny attenuated wisp, flapping loose in the wind.

The year had moved into October, almost the anniversary of Peter’s death. It was nearly two months since Bridget had been to Farings when one morning, as she was on her way to the shop, the phone rang in the hall.

‘Yes?’

And at the other end of the line a pause—Stan?

‘Bridget?’

‘Stan?’ A further pause—Stan! ‘Stan, are you OK?’

‘That’s what I rang to ask you, Bridget.’

‘I’m OK.’ What point was there in saying otherwise.

‘You haven’t been at Farings.’

‘No.’

Another pause.

‘That doesn’t seem right.’

‘Oh, “right”…!’

‘Well, don’t stay away on our account.’

‘But what about your wife?’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the name.

‘Gloria’s got me. I don’t see why you shouldn’t be in your house. She’ll have to lump it.’

Well, that was a change.

‘Look,’ said Stan, ‘there’s something else. About
Antony and Cleopatra…
’

‘What about them?’

‘I was thinking—Antony kills himself because Cleopatra pretends she’s dead—she isn’t, but he never holds that against her.’

‘I see.’ She wasn’t sure she did.

Was that why the boy had turned up as he did—to blackmail Peter, and show him the ‘truth’ about who he was?

‘Perhaps I do see…’

‘Probably garbage. Anyway…’

‘You’d better go, Stan.’

‘Yes.’ A pause. ‘You’re unparalleled, Bridget.’

‘You too, Stan.’

A week later, passing the estate agents where Mickey had first met Frances, Bridget reached a lightning decision. In a matter of days the house was sold to a cash buyer, an ageing rock star who wanted it for his son—completion to be on October 31st, otherwise, Bridget declared, no sale. Zahin would move in with Mickey
where he would be safe for the time being from his family. There wasn’t room for any guest there.

Perhaps it was as well that Painter was out when Bridget called at the house in Isleworth. Claris had taken Petra down to the shops and Mrs Painter was at the chiropodist’s—so it was just Bridget and Frances. Quite like old times.

‘D’you mind if I smoke?’

‘Yes, actually.’

‘You never did before!’

‘I did, but I didn’t say. Anyway, there’s Petra to think of now.’

Bridget didn’t need to say: But she’s not here. Frances relented. ‘OK, I don’t mind that much.’

‘I’ve brought you something,’ Bridget handed Frances a small parcel wrapped in lace, ‘or Petra, really. I didn’t give her a present when she was born.’

‘Bridget, you are kind.’

‘No I’m not. I’m not kind at all as you will see when you open it. But I’d prefer you wait until I’m gone.’

‘Of course.’

‘You’re happy then?’ Bridget drank her coffee—what a relief Frances was back on coffee and no sign of those awful herb teas.

‘Very happy, as it happens.’

‘“As it happens” is the way to be.’

Frances, conscious that too much ‘happiness’ could be construed as disloyalty to Peter, said quickly, ‘Patrick so adores Petra.’

But Bridget had not only come to deliver the package. There was something she needed to say. A quelling image hovered before her as she summoned her resolution. ‘Peter
would be glad. He would want Petra to have the best.’ At least, she felt, she was now qualified to make this judgement. Frances looked at Peter’s wife. She had been—was—amazingly decent. When you thought how most other women would have behaved…

‘You’ve been a real friend, Bridget.’

‘I don’t know if I’ve been a friend—but someone—some
thing
,’ she corrected herself, ‘has shown me that what matters is to be real.’ That was what that level ghostly gaze had been meant to show.

‘Oh, you’re real all right, Bridget!’ Frances said.

The house was emptied and the removal van had driven off to take all but a few of Bridget’s portable possessions into storage. She watched as it made its way through the bollards which the neighbourhood association had erected at the end of the road. How would the rock star’s son get on with Mickey? Well, that wasn’t her business any longer—and who could tell, he might turn out to be a friend for Zahin.

‘OK, Zahin, I’m packed.’

‘I will carry your cases to the car.’

At the car she kissed him and there was a hint of bristle. ‘Goodbye for now, Zahin.’ Peter must have just missed that emery-board roughness on the soft cheek.

‘Goodbye, Bridget. You take care now!’

As the car pulled away the boy—standing outside the house she had shared with him and Peter—put out his hand to wave, and she was held, as if for the first time, by the incredible blue of his eyes. You couldn’t blame Peter—that was sheer beauty—that sheen of life: amoral, incomprehensible, and as much part of the scheme of
things as lying and faithfulness and forgetfulness and failure—which she had also shared with the pair of them.

The drive seemed to take for ever. Fog had set in making the visibility poor. Bridget, conscious of the three points on her licence, drove, with more care than she had exercised in the past, up the motorway, coming off at the familiar junction.

It was exactly a year and a day since Peter’s death: October 31st—Hallowe’en. Tomorrow would be All Saints’, the day when, according to the Catholic Church, the disembodied saints mingled democratically with the embodied sinners—but tonight it was the ghosts’ turn. Bridget’s mind turned to her own ghost, wending his way to whatever destination was to be his. She had believed she had known her husband backwards—but it was forwards you needed to know people.
We know what we are, but know not what we may be
, the mad Ophelia says in her wisdom. How would Peter fare in eternity? What would be his deserts…but how could any human measure estimate those?
Use every man after his desert, and who shall’scape whipping?

And what of her own deserts? To be sure she hardly deserved to escape whipping! Because she had been reticent about her own misery—the wrongs she had been done, as she had seen it—she had secretly thought herself better than her husband, admiring herself for her stoicism and control. But she saw now—or thought she saw—that there was no more good in this way of being than that: she was not a better person than Peter—or Frances. By now, Frances would have unwrapped the ‘gift’ Bridget had given Peter’s daughter, the ring she had found lodged in Zahin’s rubber glove the night the milk got spilled—
the sapphire that was the colour of her husband’s lover’s eyes. Well, no good crying over that! And without all the spilled milk, without Zahin’s performance and Peter’s blindness, where would they be anyway? Perhaps—no certainly—she and Peter would never have become close after all. They would have gone on, always being polite, never really knowing what they needed to know: to know each other. And Zahin would never have got his sandwich business going—and there would never have been a chance to give Peter’s daughter…well, but she could have hung on to the ring, couldn’t she? Frances, who wasn’t so bad herself, would see that.

At the end of the rutted lane light was spilling from Farings’ windows, gold on to the receding violet shadow of the garden. Could she have forgotten to turn out the lights before leaving last?

As Bridget opened the front door her heart lurched in hope.

‘Who’s there…?’

But no one unfolded themselves.

Entering the lighted sitting room Bridget saw—though for the life of her she could not remember leaving it there—a book on the sofa. And between the pages a black feather.

Bridget opened the book, Stanley Godwit’s gift, and some flakes of the frail binding fluttered, with the feather, to the floor as she read:

I doubt not of my own salvation; and in whom can I have such occasion of doubt as in my Self? When…