Instances of the Number 3 (5 page)

Frances had wondered whether it was wise to wear the sapphire ring to Farings. Apart from other considerations it hardly seemed polite. But she was also apprehensive, staying in Bridget’s house, and glimpses of the blue square offered little oases of reassurance.

Peter had given Frances the sapphire the Christmas after Paris. Opening the compact leather box she had exclaimed, ‘Notre-Dame blue!’ which made Peter, who had worried, pleased he had bought it after all.

It might have surprised Bridget to learn that her husband was aware that, in matters such as this, he might be said to favour his mistress over his wife. Yet, essentially, he was not an unfair man.

No one has ever fully explained why humankind so resists a sense of requirement. Perhaps it is this very propensity which constitutes what it means to be ‘human’—certainly it seems to have been at the bottom of the debacle in the Garden of Eden, or so the story goes. In Peter Hansome’s case the tendency expressed itself towards Bridget because she was his wife: within the convention
he was reared to she came with perceived obligations. He did not allow his inability to be demonstrative when it was expected of him to trouble him much of the time; but times of celebration, especially Christmas, had the effect of exposing a moral nerve.

Peter would not normally have risked his conscience so far by making such a one-sided gesture as the gift of the sapphire ring. It was the extraordinary colour of the stone which had drawn him—that ethereal blue—the colour of Paris. Perhaps—he didn’t know—it was the colour of his soul? If he had a soul…

Neither woman knew this but Peter’s hatred of Christmas began when his father had deserted his family on Christmas Eve. His mother had made the best of things—but ‘the best of things’, even when executed with genuine selflessness, often turns out to be worse than selfish protest.

From an early age Peter had monitored his mother’s face. That Christmas, undeceived by a not-too-convincing story about ‘Daddy’s business’ calling him away, Peter had watched his mother’s expressions more closely than usual. There had been a horrible moment between the turkey and the Christmas cake—decorated that year with a superfluity of snowmen and hard little silver balls, which Peter afterwards always hated—when he had sleuthed his mother to her bedroom and, through the keyhole, had spied her lying on the bed, her face pressed into a pillow to stifle any sound.

Six-year-old Peter had been tactful enough to remove his presence from this private grief, and to hurl himself, with unusual energy, into a distractingly boisterous game with his elder brother, Marcus. He had also been
unusually conciliatory with his little sister, Clare, and had played doll’s-house tea with unwonted sweetness which had raised—unfairly in the circumstances—maternal questions later about his state of health.

There had been other, happier, Christmases when his mother’s smiles had been less forced, and, later still, his mother’s smiles had become genuine, for a time, when his stepfather, the MP, had first appeared on the scene. But the early loss had fractured for good the young Peter’s capacities for enjoying the ‘season of goodwill’. The pillow which had stifled the mother’s anguish acted as a more permanent block upon the son’s capacity to rejoice. From that time on Peter grew to think of Christmas, and its attendant duties, as dangerous, an ordeal rather than a blessing—one of many—to be ‘got through’.

Bridget woke in the bed she had once shared with Peter, left Frances sleeping and went barefoot downstairs to make herself a cup of tea. Outside the kitchen window a flock of goldfinches made a vivid zigzag across the pale wintry field. Bridget stretched and yawned noisily. There were advantages to living alone—Peter, who could be prim, would have grimaced at the sound. What was the collective noun for goldfinches?

She had dreamed of Peter—the first time since he had died. She couldn’t bring the dream back but she knew from the feeling in her limbs it was Peter all right.

Bridget filled a kettle and looked appraisingly round the kitchen where Frances had hung on nails bags of Italian pasta and some of the large copper French pans. The paint work wasn’t right—too shiny—but with the old brocade curtains she’d been waiting to find
a use for, and a lick of distemper, the place would do up fine.

She made tea in a big mug, stirring the tea bag to give the brew strength, and stuck her bare feet into boots. Outside, she surveyed the field where the striking looking finches with their gold-flashed wings and crimson foreheads had flown. The bare soil, fringed by bleached grasses, stretched in gleaming furrows where the light struck the early-morning moisture.

Frances appeared and began opening cupboard doors. ‘There’s some coffee in that cardboard box.’ From the doorway Bridget pointed. ‘Otherwise there’s tea and some rather mouldy bread in that bag. It must be damp here.’

Maybe she could grow mushrooms? Suddenly she remembered: ‘Charm’, that was it! The term for a flock of goldfinches was a charm. ‘Why do Renaissance paintings of the Virgin have goldfinches in them?’ she asked Frances.

Frances wrinkled up her forehead. In the morning light and with her pointed nose she looked quite witchy. ‘The red spot at the top of their heads, isn’t it? The goldfinch fed from the crown of thorns and Christ’s blood anointed its head; I think that’s the story.’

Frances, who had dreamed of Peter too, was also trying to remember the dream. Had he said anything to her? There was something but it was more a mood or a flavour—like the lingering scent left by an interesting visitor.

Bridget noticed Frances was not wearing the sapphire. ‘Don’t forget your ring’s upstairs,’ she threw over her shoulder, going back out into the garden.

The two women had worked hard all day.

‘That looks better,’ Frances said, looking round the parlour with satisfaction. She had polished the wooden furniture with some beeswax which she had found under the sink, left behind by the house’s former occupants.

The doorbell startled them. ‘I’ll get it,’ and Bridget opening the door saw a man with a big slack face and high colouring. Only then did she see the collar.

‘Bill Dark,’ said the man holding out a hand. ‘Rector of St Anselm’s. Called to introduce myself.’

Bridget found a bottle of sherry in one of the boxes they had not yet unpacked and Frances kindled a fire.

‘Mrs Nettles is your nearest neighbour,’ their visitor (‘Call me “Rector Bill”’) said. ‘She’s pushing eighty but spry as anything.’ He pushed his empty glass vaguely in Bridget’s direction.

‘Another?’ Bridget tried not to sound ironic—this was his fifth—sixth? She had lost count.

‘Don’t mind if I do, since you ask.’

Frances, catching the lift of Bridget’s eyebrows, and practised in shifting people from gallery dos, said, ‘My friend is staying here until the morning but I have to get off tonight. Which is the best route, would you say, to the M50?’

‘Forgive me! Time flies when you’re having fun! I’ll wend my weary way, then, ladies.’

‘God help us!’ Bridget said, ‘or me, rather, you’re safe. But thanks for that. Look, he’s as good as polished off the bottle—the old bugger!’ She indicated an inch of sherry.

‘Not a “bugger” anyway—he was looking at your bosom pretty lecherously. Look, I’m going to have to
grab a slice of bread and cheese and scoot.’ Frances was genuinely regretful. She had been looking forward to talking to Bridget in the parlour she herself had polished. Now there was no chance to enjoy her own virtue.

Bridget pointed the way down the drive with her torch. ‘Goodbye,’ she yelled. ‘And thanks again. I’ll ring you!’

‘Take care!’ Frances called back. She declutched and drove carefully down the sticky lane.

Peter monitored Frances’s departure then hurried back into the house to hover over Bridget as she finished off the sherry. This business of watching over his consorts was proving a responsibility…

Journeys offer opportunity for reflection. Driving back to London, Frances allowed the night’s events to seep into her mind. She eyed the square blue gem on the fourth finger of her right hand—the ring finger of the unattached—as it grasped the wheel. Well, there were worse things than unattachment. It had been less of an ordeal than she had expected to share a bed with Peter’s widow…‘Widow’—what a word! Bridget wouldn’t thank her for it! How funny she should have spent the night dreaming of passionate sexual congress with Peter. The dream reminded her of Paris—perhaps it was because she had been wearing the sapphire…?

Back at Farings, Bridget was also considering the insubstantial. She had found, and opened, a second bottle of sherry which she was downing, with bread and cheese, by the fire. The dream she had had in the bed with Frances was also filtering back: in this case there had been no vigorous coupling; rather, a walk—down a lane where purple flowers were growing—near Farings, she felt it was…?

Bridget was not the sort to analyse her dreams but she wondered if this one had some message for her. Perhaps it meant she should settle here? Give up the shop and the house next door to Mickey and up sticks altogether now she was, more or less, alone.

If she was alone. There was Frances, and Mickey, too, of course—and then there was the boy.

Bridget had never wanted children so she was relieved rather than disappointed when it became clear that Peter was a far from paternal man. His children—a boy and girl—by his former wife seemed to embarrass him. They came to stay at weekends during which everyone behaved with unnatural stiffness and Bridget was thankful when the time came for them to be returned to their mother’s house in Barnes: she could hardly bear the sight of Peter trying so hard—with so little aptitude—to be jolly.

Peter’s first wife had remarried—a solicitor in a City firm—and she was now buffered by demonstrable prosperity. Nevertheless, she continued to receive Peter—still more Bridget, should Bridget happen to be the one to chauffeur the children home—in the manner of a mendicant, whose impoverishment should be laid at the door of her former husband. Hopeless to try and suggest—as Bridget did—that his children’s mother’s attitude was injurious, not only to relations with their father but also to the children themselves. As Bridget came to see, Peter did not greatly care what his children felt or thought about him. She suspected they irked him; and that he was glad when the regular visits tailed off and he was released from the pressures of family obligation.

The children, now adults, had appeared at the funeral
and the girl had cried, mildly obedient to some atavistic sense of her loss—while the young man, a stockbroker in the City, in his new dark suit had hung his head sheepishly. Bridget had felt sorry for them: they had no language with which to mourn their father.

Their mother, Peter’s former wife, had sent a massy wreath of ostentatious whiteness, and a card with sentiments on it which had left Bridget particularly cold.

No, there was little enough love lost between Peter and his children which is why it was mildly surprising to discover his attachment to Zahin.

Back in London Mickey said to Jean, ‘It doesn’t seem right that boy having a girl round there like that with Bridget not at home. I don’t know if I should say anything.’

‘Perhaps she said he could?’ Jean was more phlegmatic than her friend.

‘What if she didn’t?’

‘Girlfriends aren’t any harm, are they?’ Jean didn’t think Bridget seemed the type to lay down draconian rules.

‘She looked a forward little thing if you ask me. All tarted up in them platform heels, with what you could see of her BTM—which wasn’t much of one anyway—stuck out. And plastered all over in make-up. A young girl does better showing off her own skin, in my view.’

‘It’s the way with modern girls…’ Jean’s more charitable nature suggested.

‘Better say nothing this time,’ Mickey decided. ‘But if
it’s going to keep on happening, I’ll have to. My conscience wouldn’t let me off otherwise,’ she concluded with stark satisfaction.

Bridget had not started back to London as early as she had planned. The chimney had smoked and she had taken time to ring round the
Yellow Pages
in search of a sweep. A Mr Godwin was found who promised to visit when she returned in a fortnight. And she lingered on after the matter of the chimney had been resolved, dawdling and watching the rooks, reluctant to have to make the effort of the drive.

Zahin was at the gate when Bridget arrived and took the holdall from her.

‘Zahin! How did you know I was back?’

‘Instinct, Mrs Hansome.’ She had tried, and failed, to get him to call her ‘Bridget’.

‘I didn’t even know myself when I would get here.’

‘The traffic was heavy.’ He had a way, she noticed, of making questions statements.

‘As life!’

‘You are tired. Come in, please, and relax.’

Sitting with a glass of Jameson, Bridget thought: If only Peter could see this! Chaotic himself, he had the
obsessional nature which sees chaos in others’ mess but not his own. Bridget was no housewife and Peter’s fussy comments had been a source of ruffled feelings. Yet now, with Peter gone and unable to appreciate it, the house gleamed with the patina of dedicated care. Upstairs a bath was running and a scent drifted down to her.

‘Zahin, what is that you have put in my bath?’ she called upstairs.

‘I bought it in the King’s Road, Mrs Hansome. Meadow flowers—it is very you!’

Flowers had been in the dream of Peter. Or had they? The mind played tricks—she was aware of the human tendency to weave ‘reality’ out of wishes.

‘You are too kind,’ she called again. Zahin’s politeness was catching.

‘Oh, but it is not kind to look after one who is beautiful!’

Zahin had appeared at the top of the stairs which, in the Hansomes’ house, descended to the sitting room. Bridget had taken time to persuade Peter that the removal of a wall, and the inclusion of the space which had been the hall and stairway into the living area, would give an added dimension and light, but it took Zahin, standing like a model or a film star, to show off the alteration. He was dressed in a vivid blue silk shirt which Bridget had not noticed when he appeared so miraculously at the gate, and which brought out the colour of his eyes.

‘Zahin,’ she said, ‘that is called hyperbole.’

But she was not displeased. She was not beautiful, nor had ever been—but it was a long while since anyone had even pretended that she might be.

‘Oh, but you are.’ The boy was down the stairs now
and plumping cushions. Bridget could make out the shoulder blades which she had fancied resembled incipient wings. ‘Beautiful in your spirit. I see it.’ He stared at her and to her chagrin she found she was blushing.

‘Get away, child!’ she said, and his voice followed her as she hurried up the stairs,

‘I know what hyperbole is, Mrs Hansome—and it isn’t you!’

No, indeed, she thought, lying in the bath, where she had brought up the tumbler of golden whisky, she was not much given to exaggeration. Peter had, one had to admit it, embroidered—improved on life, as he might, if challenged, have put it. But she herself did not wish such improvements. Not for reasons of greater honesty than her husband (about human honesty, even her own, Bridget was firmly sceptical) but because it wasn’t safe, she felt, to polish things up, or dim them down. Not to name things as you found them put you more at their mercy…

If Peter Hansome had not named things quite as he found them it was because he had problems discerning them clearly in the first place. Reality may be singular but the sense of it is not, and ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’ refers to more than simple taste. ‘A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees’ perhaps puts it better. Many conflicts of opinion can be explained by the fact that perceptual systems depend on the personalities of the perceivers.

In Peter’s case, behind all his responses lurked a chronic panic, which coloured—or obscured—his apprehension of reality. Although he would never have owned to it he
could not forget that day when half his known world walked away and left him. From this moment, he had constructed a personality upon which such a loss had made no obvious dent; but this did not mean that the dent had not been planted. As a child the knock had made for a wary caution. In time, and with training, the wariness had become overlaid with an acceptable veneer, one in which a kind of genial sociability acted as a polished surface which deflected intimacy; but the most significant feature of his character was that at bottom he was frightened of people.

It takes a rare man to know he is afraid—and why. Peter was not aware that he was fearful of other people’s power to remove themselves, nor that he had chosen Bridget because although she exuded a power which did not always make him feel comfortable, it did not, at least, feel as if it might desert him. And in this he was correct. That he was capable of being harmed, perhaps mortally, through loss of another’s love, was a secret, even from himself. Dormant and lethal, it lay hidden at the centre of Peter’s universe, until the October day when the truck driver adjusted his cassette and exploded Peter’s former reality.

It is part of nature’s way to meet threat with superfluity: toads puff up their skin, snakes rear, peacocks rattle and spread their tails; the habit of hyperbole is but another version of this florid system of defence. Lying in her bath, inhaling the scent of meadow flowers, Bridget remembered Peter, late one Christmas Eve, returning, as she now understood, from seeing Frances. She heard again the familiar accent of anxiety, concerned to account for time which could not be accounted for except by
honesty or omission—‘I would have been home earlier but there was an accident on the M4—terrible catastrophe—I shouldn’t be surprised if someone got killed!’—and wept for the way life had apparently taken him at his word.