by James Lasdun
After she’d finished, she went to the town center to do some errands. She was coming out of the greengrocer’s on High Street when she saw Hazel Crawford walking toward her with the dogs. She smiled, bracing herself for the encounter. But on seeing her the woman looked abruptly away and crossed to the other side of the street.
The snub, if that was what it was, didn’t touch June in a personal way—Hazel Crawford was not someone whose good opinion mattered to her one way or another. But it was certainly peculiar, and its disquieting mystery fell over the cheerful mood she had been in for the past few days, not altogether dispelling it, but blurring it, like a half-opaque scrim.
The next day was Mrs. Dolfuss’s day. She was an odd character, this Mrs. Dolfuss; honest to a fault (any loose change she found she would lay out conspicuously on the mantelpiece), but taciturn and singularly humorless, and she had always intimidated June. She spoke with the light burr and idiosyncratic grammar of the older locals, mixed strangely with a foreign accent, and June had a dim memory of having been told that she was a refugee, or had been brought over by refugees, though she had no idea from where, or how she had ended up in this rural corner. All June knew of her personal life was that it centered around a church somewhere in Mayborough, one where, judging from the pamphlets she left behind, a peculiarly bleak brand of Christianity was practiced. When June had informed her about her divorce, the woman had looked almost physically uncomfortable, as if the news placed her in a suddenly stressful relation to the house. Since then she had given an impression of being there on sufferance, coming strictly in observance of some regrettably binding agreement.
At the appointed hour that Friday she arrived on her bicycle, wearing a brown raincoat and a black plastic fisherman’s hat. It was drizzling, but even allowing for that it seemed to June that there was something more concertedly forbidding than usual about the woman’s appearance. Instead of letting herself in as she usually did, she knocked, remaining outside the door when June opened it.
“I’ve come to give my notice, Mrs. Houghton,” she said, looking fiercely at her employer. “I did consider phoning but I come up meself in the end because I’m not ashamed to speak my mind. The fact of it is I can’t be in conscience working here no more so if you’ll kindly pay me to when I last come, I’ll be on my way.”
“What are you talking about?” June asked in a daze. “What are you saying?”
The woman’s round, haggard face seemed to dilate in the gray air as though swelling on her own obscurely affronted rectitude. She shifted her weight on her feet: “What I’m saying, Mrs. Houghton, is I don’t judge others because it’s their business how they carry on, but where I work and who I work for is my business.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying there’s some kinds of carryings-on I’ll not be party to. So if you’ll pay me what I’m owed in my wages I shan’t be troubling you no more.”
Abruptly June seemed to grasp what had happened.
“All right, I’ll get your money,” she said. She went inside for her purse, and thrust the money into Mrs. Dolfuss’s hands. For a moment the woman looked nonplussed, hanging dripping in the doorway as though she expected June to defend herself, perhaps even beg her to reconsider, and it was a gratifying minor victory to be able to thwart her in that.
“What are you waiting for?” June asked.
Later, she regretted being quite so high-handed. It was obvious the woman had been manipulated, and equally obvious by whom. Vindictiveness was rare in June’s experience, but she wasn’t, after all, a complete stranger to it. She knew well the feeling of luxuriant, almost voluptuous destructiveness it released, over and above any justified punitive function it might serve. It seemed clear to her that something similar—some pure malicious pleasure—was discernible in Paul Crawford’s behavior. No doubt there was a practical element too, at least from his point of view: preempt any attack she might launch on his standing as a family man, respected member of his profession, et cetera, by undermining her credibility among those who might matter. But she could feel something else too: some chill, gloating delight in the discovery of this power to harm her. Even when he had come to her door that night she’d sensed something much icier than simple lust going on. Certainly nothing as frolicsome as the word “totty” had seemed to be on his mind.
It rained all weekend and on into the next week. She stayed inside, brooding on what had happened. Who besides Mrs. Dolfuss had he maligned her to? What exactly had he said? It struck her that there was no reason for him to have restricted himself to the story about her and Alan’s brother. He could be inventing all kinds of unpleasant rumors about her. It came to her suddenly that he had told his wife she’d made a pass at him as he was seeing her off from their house after that dinner. Yes: she could imagine it as clearly as if he were right there, speaking in that affected way of his: Quite the little Miss Bedroom Eyes, that woman. She was all for dragging me home across the common with her on some pretext about the dark. I had to send Martin out with her just to keep her claws off me … Was that why his wife had crossed the street? Meanwhile, what other things might he have spread about her? Nothing specific came to mind, but the sense of being spoken about, of remarks being made in the village shop, loaded questions asked in the bar of the White Hart, innuendos dropped into the conversation at the post office, was vivid and disturbing. The clear, invigorating air of her new life here in the country had been polluted, it seemed to her, a foulness spread into it.
What strange vacillations of feeling were being forced on her by her new neighbors! The boy’s bluebells, the mother’s snub, the piano piece, and now this. She spent the week shifting between these two moods. It was as though two mutually exclusive realities were being laid before her. One moment she would be playing the Bruckner, calm and alert, with a sense of being close to the source of some mysterious strength. And then a moment later she would find herself in the caustic atmosphere of the boy’s father—hurt, enraged, and filled with her own, increasingly vivid, thoughts of revenge.
That Saturday afternoon, as she was about to leave the Sainsbury’s car park in Mayborough, she saw a Range Rover with a familiar face at the wheel pull into a parking space. Keeping herself out of view, she watched Paul Crawford climb out and walk toward the Sainsbury’s entrance. An idea came to her, a sudden image blooming in her mind, irresistible in its stark, obliterating splendor … She stood a moment, stunned at this resurgence of her old audacity, then smiled to herself, and took a pen and paper from her bag. She was about to start writing when she had a better thought, and went on into the supermarket instead.
It was crowded, but the man’s tall figure in its tweed country coat was easy to spot: he was at the poultry section, appraising the respective merits of some pink young ducklings. He was handsome, there was no denying that. His cropped, silvering hair had a bristling look as if it might make the nerves in your flesh tingle. The line of his clean-shaven chin jutted forward.
You could say anything to people, she’d discovered in London, if you thought of yourself as an actor in a play, preferably some sparkling comedy. Impudence, malice, tenderness, brazen flirtation—anything was possible if you could summon that particular heightened, theatrical poise. Pausing a moment to armor herself, mentally, with spotlights and an audience, she moved in softly beside her neighbor.
“I was just going to put a note on your car,” she said, not looking at him.
He took his time responding.
“Were you indeed.”
“Yes. Shall I tell you what I was going to write?”
“I don’t see that I can prevent it.”
“Oh, I think you’ll be pleased. I’ll give you the exact words.” She cleared her throat: “‘I find I am unable to stop thinking about you after all. Let yourself in at midnight tonight. I’ll be waiting for you upstairs.’ There.” She turned to face him. “No need to RSVP. Goodbye.”
With a brief, candid glance into his eyes, which app
eared once again to be appraising her with that air of detached, amused connoisseurship, she turned and walked unhurriedly out of the shop. On her way home she stopped off at the ironmonger’s to pick up a small can of red paint.
It was late afternoon. By the time she got to the common the sun was melting orange through the treetops. Inside the house she poured herself a glass of wine. There were several hours to kill. She was aware of something volatile inside her: a strong, surging excitement, edged with faint dread. An uneasy urge to go over her plan repeatedly in her mind, assure herself of its invincible brilliance and logic, was making her restless. Small doubts began to assail her. Perhaps he wouldn’t come. Well, that didn’t matter. Perhaps, if he did come, he wouldn’t leave, even after she’d thrown the paint at him. Not possible: he wasn’t the type to risk getting into serious trouble. Well, then, the paint—wasn’t that going to make a horrible mess of her cottage? Worth it, she assured herself. She looked out across the common. Occasionally at this hour you’d see a fox creeping under the tall tendrils of rosebay willow herb. Sometimes a barn owl glided by, heavy-bodied like a cargo plane.
Movement caught her eye—a figure deep in the woods, hidden and then unhidden by trees. No detail was discernible, not even enough to show whether it was a man or a woman, and yet she recognized immediately who it was. At once she found herself in a state of bright astonishment, in which several things appeared to be happening at once. Her “plan,” in all its frail brilliance, seemed to collapse abruptly and evaporate like some flimsy illusion. But meanwhile another, still more incandescent invention rose up in its place. As it disclosed itself, she could feel the encroaching doubts vanishing abruptly from her mind. This was what was called for, she realized: an act of vengeance that would also be one of sweetly fantastical magnanimity … She wouldn’t even have to spatter her walls with paint, she realized: the sight awaiting her antagonist as he opened her door was going to be all the red paint she could possibly need.
Opening wide the windows, she sat at the piano and began playing the “Reminiscence” piece.
It seemed easier than it ever had before. Passages that only a few days earlier had continued to elude her, unfolded with a fluency that made them sound, for the first time, purposeful. It was as if some final obstruction had been lifted, restoring abilities she hadn’t felt since she’d moved from her parents’ home, leaving her piano lessons and all other such childish things behind her. As her hands traveled over the keys, her mind raced forward, not so much planning events as foreseeing them, as if what awaited her was as clearly and unequivocally written as the notes on the staves before her, and would itself, in due time, become the indelible material of reminiscence.
He had recognized the piece, he would tell her as she opened the door. She would pour them each a glass of wine. Already she could feel his enigmatic aura spreading over her, not quite that of an adult, but not that of a child either. Not even quite of this world, it seemed to her. He was like a state of mind from long ago in her own life, miraculously recaptured and held out before her. They would sit on the sofa, talking. At a pause, she would bring up the subject of the bluebells. She’d regretted sending him away that afternoon, she would tell him. And taking his hand in hers, she would ask:
“Am I going to be given a reprieve?”
The gangly figure had emerged from the woods. Out into the darkening evening she sent the simple melodies. After a moment, she saw him look toward her house. Slowly, as if drawn against his own will, he began to move toward her, mesmerized, it appeared, by the phrases her fingers were conjuring from the instrument. She looked down as he came closer, but she could feel his steady approach, as if he were looming upward through her own consciousness. Then, as he came through the garden gate and stood at the opened window, she turned back up to face him, not troubling to feign surprise, merely smiling at him as he peered in at her, the edges of his light, loose clothes translucent against the low sun, his hair lit like a ring of red fire.
“Martin!” she said.
And for a moment she felt a sharp anguish welling up inside her, as if the convergence of wish with reality was, after all, an experience as close to pain as it was to pleasure.
Then, glancing at the clock, she stood up to let him in.
PETER KAHN’S THIRD WIFE
In a jeweler’s boutique in Soho, the young sales assistant was modeling a necklace for a customer who had come in to buy a gift for his fiancée.
“Something out of the ordinary,” he had said, and the assistant had shown him a cabinet with a necklace in it made of lemon- and rose-colored diamonds. The man had admired it but, after learning how much it cost, had laughed.
“Out of my league, I’m afraid.”
“Let me show you some other things.”
The assistant had led him to another cabinet. “These are more affordable. They’re set with semiprecious stones.”
The man had nodded and peered forward into the lit glass case.
“If you have any questions,” the assistant had said, “I’ll be happy to answer them.”
For a while the man had looked in silence at the things inside the case.
“I’ll tell you what,” he had said abruptly, “let’s have another look at that first necklace.”
“The diamond?”
“Yes.”
And so now she had taken the expensive necklace from its case and was modeling it for him while he sat in a chair opposite her, looking at how it lay on the flesh below her throat.
This was a part of her job, but in her seven months at the boutique she still hadn’t grown used to it. It made her self-conscious to sit and be stared at by a man she didn’t know, and it seemed to her that the men themselves were uncomfortable. Either they found it hard to look squarely at her in this moment, or else she would feel them peering too intently, as if they felt it their masculine duty to try to make a conquest of any woman who submitted herself so willingly to their gaze.
But this man was neither furtive nor brash. He was at ease in the artificial intimacy of the situation, intent in his scrutiny, but making no attempt to promote himself.
He was in his thirties, she guessed, dark and heavy-set. Brown hair curled on his head in thick clusters.
He nodded slowly. “All right,” he said in a bemused tone, as though not so much deciding as discovering what he was going to do, “I’ll take it.”
A moment later he was signing his name, Peter Kahn, on the three credit card payments into which he had had to divide the transaction. Then he went out of the store, carrying the flat box with the necklace inside it in his coat pocket.
Over the next couple of years he reappeared in the boutique several more times to buy his wife anniversary and birthday gifts. The assistant, whose name was Clare Keillor, would model the pieces he was interested in, and each time she would experience the same calm under his gaze. It was as though for a moment she had been taken into a realm glazed off from the everyday world, where a form of exchange that was inexpressible in everyday human terms was permitted to occur between strangers.
She had no idea whether Kahn himself experienced anything resembling this, or whether he even remembered her from one visit to the next, but she found herself revolving the memory of the encounters in her imagination after they had passed, and when several months went by without Kahn coming back into the store, she would begin to wonder if she was ever going to experience their peculiar, almost impersonally soothing effects again.
On one occasion his cell phone rang while she was modeling a pair of earrings for him. He excused himself, saying that this was an important call, and she waited while he spoke. From what she heard him say, it became clear that he was in business as an importer of wines and that he was trying to persuade a partner to bid on a consignment of rare French bottles that were coming up for auction. Evidently he was encountering resistance, and his tone became increasingly heated.
“Taste it!” he said. He proceeded to describe the wine in the mos
t extravagant terms, which in turn appeared to prompt even more resistance. “Well then, let’s find customers who do give a damn!” he shouted. Then he snapped shut the phone.
Apologizing for the interruption, he tried to concentrate again on the earrings, but his mind was clearly on the altercation he had just had. The strong feelings it had aroused were still milling behind his eyes, and for a moment as he looked back at Clare, he appeared to forget why he was looking at her at all. He was just staring at her as though knowing there was some important reason why he was doing this, but not clear what it was. Then, as she looked back into his eyes, he seemed to stop struggling to remember and simply accept that this was what he was doing. And now for the first time she did have the impression that he was seeing her as she saw him, that he too was in that lucid atmosphere and was encountering her there with the same feeling of ease as she herself felt. Then the moment passed, and they were each back in the everyday reality of their own lives.
He decided against the earrings and left without looking at anything else.
Two more years passed. Then, on a hot morning in July, Kahn appeared once again in the store.
He stood in the entrance for a moment, adjusting from the boil and glare of the street to the store’s air-conditioned dimness. He looked less youthful, fleshier and redder in the cheeks, but still handsome and with a more developed air of consequence about him.
“I’m looking for a wedding gift,” he said, “for my fiancée. Something a little … out of the ordinary.”
Clare looked at him for a moment before answering. He gave no sign of recognizing her, and despite knowing there was no reason why he should, she felt dismayed. A few minutes later, however, as she was modeling some new pieces for him, there was a startled motion in his eyes.
