Wish Her Safe At Home

by Stephen Benatar

  “Don’t you think they’re such a lovely colour—foxes? Such beautiful and rippling things? So graceful?”

  “But what on earth put foxes in your mind?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe God did. So why is it insulting to call a person foxy?”

  I paused. They didn’t answer.

  “Anyhow, Celia, before too long you should honestly give it some serious thought. Though that’s really a case of the pot calling the kettle black! I realize that I never did; not even after Berkeley Square. Except that I was then a lot younger than you are now. Anyway,” I continued, “you’re both very well aware, aren’t you, of the gentleman whose name is commemorated on the front of this house?”

  “You mean,” said Roger, “the plaque?”

  “Yes—it’s strange.” This hadn’t occurred to me previously. “You’ve never asked me about him, have you?”

  “Haven’t I?”

  “No, not once. I wonder why?”

  Still. I was prepared to be charitable; prepared to put it down to nothing more than pure jealousy; prepared to help him get over it. (Well, at least, get over it to some extent.) I rose to my feet and went towards the portrait. I gave Horatio our secret little smile. With my right hand I made a gesture of presentation.

  “Well, I think the time has now arrived to introduce you all.” (I heard Celia hissing at her husband to stand up; felt slightly saddened he should have needed such a prompt.) “It is with great pleasure,” I went on, “that I present my dear friends Roger and Celia Allsop. It is with great pride and pleasure that I present my dear friend Horatio.”

  There! I had done it. It was a shame that I had felt a little piqued with Roger—I had been fully meaning to introduce him, and therefore Celia too, with pride as well as pleasure. Now I could only hope they hadn’t noticed. (But why is there always something to mar these great occasions? Why?)

  “You mean... Mr. Horatio Gavin himself?” asked Roger in wonderment.

  “Yes. Yes!”

  “But how fascinating! How fantastic! Really, that’s tremendous.” He turned back towards the picture. “How do you do, sir? What a rare and extraordinary privilege to get to meet you!”

  This was everything I could have wished for. My little faux pas obviously hadn’t mattered one little scrap.

  “Rachel,” he said, “was the portrait painted, do you know, during Mr. Gavin’s lifetime?”

  “Oh, yes—certainly.”

  “And it’s an original of course? I’m sorry. I know almost nothing about art.”

  I gave a small forgiving shrug and a smile of fond indulgence.

  “Who was the artist?” he asked.

  “Well, that, I’m afraid, I really couldn’t say.”

  Somehow this had never seemed to me of much importance. Somehow I had never actually thought of the painting as being... well, just that. A painting.

  “It’s so very dark,” said Roger. He was standing at the fireplace, with his fingertips upon the mantelshelf, gazing intently upward. “So hard to make out any signature... ” After a minute, though, his heels came back to the floor and he half turned his head towards me, his eyes bright. “But where did you pick it up?” he asked excitedly. “Or was it always here?”

  It was an excitement which I loved him for.

  I laughed. “What are you suggesting? Pick it up, indeed! Yes,” I said, “he was always here.”

  “May I take him down?”

  “Oh,I... ” Surprise made me awkward. “No, I’d prefer it if you didn’t! I’d much prefer it if you didn’t!”

  His hands were already halfway there; they didn’t stop. “Roger!” cried Celia.

  He lowered them at once. “I’m sorry. Just wasn’t thinking. All that booze! All that excitement!”

  And almost as if rebuking himself—well, certainly as if preoccupied—he abruptly brought his head down and looked into the fire. He rested his right elbow on the mantelshelf. He raised his left foot and placed it on the andiron. I clutched the back of a chair and thought that I might faint.

  The instant passed. At least, the worst of it. And Celia hadn’t noticed; I was sure of that.

  Roger turned round. It was Roger. He was smiling again and with all his usual amiability. But just the same I had to look away. I felt as if there’d been some violation.

  “Do you know,” he said, “I really think this picture might be worth a pound or two. We ought to have it looked at.”

  I stared at him; perhaps a little blankly. Celia made some comment. I was under the impression she had made it practically at random—as seemed to have happened once before. (Or had I grown confused?) I suddenly became aware she must have asked me something.

  “What?”

  I turned my head towards her, slowly.

  “Well, you mentioned previously that if it hadn’t been for him—for Mr. Gavin, I should say—then you yourself wouldn’t be here in Bristol. What did you mean by that?” “Oh,” I said, “I don’t know. Nothing—probably nothing! I’ve forgotten.”

  She was tactful. She didn’t press the point.

  “Roger, I think it’s time that we were on our way. Oh, incidentally... who is Mrs. Pimm?”

  She gave me a faint smile.

  “The fact is, Rachel, we feel we want to get to know everything about you. Everything!”

  41

  I don’t know when the following dialogue took place. Somehow it seems cut adrift from time, like a rowboat quietly loosened from its moorings, while its occupant, entranced, oblivious to each hill or field or willow tree upon her way, lies whitely gleaming in her rose-embroidered silk, trailing a graceful hand and sweetly carolling beneath a canopy of green.

  The question I put to him required courage. I had hesitated for a long time. But I knew it was important. “What about Anne Barnetby?” I said.

  At first I thought he wasn’t going to answer. (Oh, no! Not you! Don’t join the club of those who won’t respond!) And I couldn’t have enquired a second time.

  But then he did reply, and very simply, just as I had hoped he would. “Anne Barnetby? I loved her.”

  And now it was easier to go on. “And she? Did she love you?”

  I prayed for an affirmative.

  “I believed so. I believe she almost did.”

  I held my breath.

  “She toyed with me,” he said.

  Yet I detected no resentment. “So what became of her?” I asked.

  “She married. Anne Barnetby married the man of her choice.”

  “And regretted it, I know.”

  “I’ve no idea; I never heard from her again. Nor from him. He’d been a friend of mine at school.”

  “One of those you swam with naked in the creek?”

  “Yes.”

  His voice was no longer as casual as he might have hoped. But that was good. Even after all this time he couldn’t speak of her and wholly hide the fact that he still loved.

  Yes, that was good. It was wonderful. For what did it matter if he hadn’t recognized me yet?

  “A clean break is always for the best.” I sensed it might help him if I drew out the conversation for a while. I wasn’t simply talking tongue-in-cheek or just for the sake of it. I wasn’t merely fishing. “Surely,” I said, “it must have hastened the whole process of forgetting.”

  Silence.

  “You did forget?”

  “I... ”

  “Never?”

  “When I began to think I was recovering,” he said, “I soon realized how absurdly mistaken I was.”

  “My poor sweet love. My dear. I know she must have come to hate herself.”

  I don’t believe he heard me. In any case he plainly missed the message I was meaning to impart.

  “This may sound fanciful,” he smiled, “but later she returned to haunt me.”

  “Her ghost?” I’m not sure what my feelings were just then.

  “No, no, it’s not as bad as that!” He laughed—yet not with any mirth. “My mother always claimed I
was theatric. She said my rightful home should be at Drury Lane alongside Mr. Garrick. No, I was haunted less by her than by the idea of her; or by the idea of the two of them together: the realization of everything I’d lost. Even when I could no longer—quite—visualize that much-loved face, the thought of all that I was missing might have had the power to... ”

  “Yes?” I asked.

  Though I shouldn’t have prompted. My voice reminded him he had an audience. His eyes regained their focus.

  But I led him forward gently—well away from all those former thoughts of self-destruction I knew he now recalled.

  Oh dear! Could I have been the one who had driven him to the brink of that? (If only Anne Barnetby had had a successor who had restored Horatio’s faith in love, and if only I myself—as I had briefly fantasized—could have been that beautiful and fortunate woman. But life is far too testing: that easy route would not have done.) I felt unbearably ashamed; yet at the same time unashamedly overjoyed. I knew of the wondrous ending we had both arrived at. Now Horatio must discover it too. What a reunion that would be! How I would atone for all my many failings!

  “Her face,” I said, “that lovely face, the one you cannot quite visualize? Have you never been reminded of it?”

  “It’s strange that you should ask me that. Because... and not so very long ago... ”

  “Do I remind you of her?” I put my hand to my breast and looked at him wide-eyed, all charmingly aflutter. “Oh pardon, sir, I interrupted.”

  He said: “Perhaps at odd times, yes, you do. Some fleeting expression which... But what I was going to say was... not so very long ago the image suddenly returned in all its clarity. In all its dreadful clarity.” He added quietly: “I had forgotten how unsettling such a clear remembrancer could be.”

  I nodded, commiseratingly. “Well, I don’t want to speak out of turn; yet I don’t feel that reminder could have come from anyone but me!” I smiled. “Well, after all, it couldn’t have been Celia, could it? Oh, I know she possibly strikes people as being fairly sweet and even almost pretty—although, admittedly, in a rather frigid sort of way... ”

  “No, it wasn’t Celia.”

  “And I don’t feel it can have been Sylvia?”

  “No, no, not Sylvia.” We laughed together over that.

  “And it surely couldn’t have been Roger or young Thomas. So it must have been—”

  “I’ll tell you when it was.” My, my, such manners! (Had I set a bad example?) But he was rather masterful. “It was when you showed me that book.”

  “Book?”

  “Yes, you’d been to the library. Don’t you remember? There were several pictures in it; you’d said there was an actress you wanted me to see. There was one picture in particular, in which she posed beside her husband. You showed me many times.”

  “Because you asked me to.”

  “Yes.”

  It had been a little ceremony, a little act of adoration. For over a week we had performed it every day. Until, with an expression of unmistakable pain, he had pleaded with me not to continue.

  The thing was this. Although he hadn’t recognized me yet (but, as I say, the time was drawing close), although as yet he hadn’t made that final joyous leap... still, of course, whenever he had seen the book, it was naturally I who had been holding it. It wasn’t strange that he should feel perplexed.

  42

  That night of my dinner party.

  I began to feel better. Later—after my guests had gone and Horatio and I had the house all to ourselves again—I totally got over it. I truly did. Excitement reasserted itself, came flowing back exactly as it should have done. I wasn’t like the child who knows what he wants while he wants it (they could hand you the moon—you’d grow tired of it soon). Oh, but I’d really started to believe I might be. Just when I had almost everything I wanted... Just when I could see it all so nearly coming true... Oh, what a terrifying thought, that I might be intrinsically fickle, spoilt, impossible to satisfy!

  But I quashed it. And as I say, thankfully, so thankfully, intoxication caught up with me again. As I undressed I sang. Yes of course! My theme tune. “Oh, if you want to be a big success—pom, pom!—here’s the way to instant happiness—pom, pom!... ” And I was young and beautiful. I must be. Otherwise none of this could possibly have happened. They didn’t know that I had varicose veins (even though mere children sometimes got them!)—they never would know—that was the great big glorious confidence trick. So what on earth did a few silly veins matter? Where was their importance in the vast eternal scheme of things?

  And then I stopped. I stopped singing. I stopped performing my little musical striptease. (So tantalizing to the gentlemen!)

  I suddenly thought... how stupid I was. It came over me so strongly. Jesus had said, “Pick up your bed and walk.” He had cured the blind, the paralytic, the mad. Just like that. Rise from the dead. Chase out those devils. Open your eyes. Walk. So easy. I really felt—I really did feel—that the next time I ran my fingers down the back of my left leg they would encounter... only smooth flesh. I really did feel that.

  * * *

  In fact I tried it. No, not “tried”—just did it. And how right I’d been! My fingers found nothing but smoothness: lovely silky smoothness. No bumps, no blemishes. I was a whole person once again.

  Fit to be a bride of Christ.

  * * *

  Really a whole person.

  That night he came back.

  No, I express myself badly. Not for a moment had he ever been away.

  What I mean is—he came back as I had viewed him only once before. Unclothed.

  And he came with love.

  I’ll tell you how it happened.

  I hadn’t been able to sleep; and after what appeared like hours of tossing and turning, half-dreaming but continually jerking awake, my mind still racing and delirious, I decided to get up and go to make myself a hot drink and a sandwich (it seemed preposterous I should be hungry after such a meal; yet actually I’d felt rather too excited to eat)—then listen to some music. It was a mild night and with my young and silky, firm, unblemished limbs I had no need of any nightdress. I threw it off, luxuriously—and felt so free, so unencumbered. I floated down to the kitchen, remembering how we had laughed and fooled about and sung over the washing up and made it almost the loveliest part of the whole lovely party. The kitchen seemed so full of happy ghosts, my own very much included. I glided upstairs to the sitting room—it felt equally alive, maybe even more so—and selected a record, sat down and ate my sandwich, drank the milk; took a pink carnation out of a vase and joyfully threaded it through the hair of my maidenhood. I made a small garland of daisies (I had picked them just the previous day; had them right beside me in a honey jar) and carefully set it down in that same hallowed spot... how sweetly it added to the charm. I may have fallen into a reverie; lulled by the Water Music I had put on the player. I saw myself searching for bluebells in the moonlight, feeling the dew-damp grass between my toes... I wanted to run straight out and find some; had begun to leave my chair. But then suddenly he was there again, at the fireplace, and even as I completed the action—having forgotten the bluebells and determined this time really to hold him if such a thing were possible—he turned round and smiled and extended his hands to me. And he said:

  “I’ve been waiting for you for so long.”

  * * *

  He admired the fine, upstanding quality of my breasts—even before he started stroking them; the flatness of my stomach, the smallness of my waist—“Surely,” he laughed longingly, in a tone of wholly undisguised wonder, “my fingertips could almost meet around it? And oh my one true love... I can’t believe in so much excellence and grace. Tell me this isn’t just a dream! Tell me you won’t fall to pieces in my arms! Tell me that you’re no mere fragment of a starved imagination—and of my endless years of waiting and desire!

  “Then to Rachel let us sing,

  That Rachel is excelling;

  She excels ea
ch mortal thing

  Upon the dull earth dwelling...

  “All this outer loveliness,” he said, “ and a heart that’s filled with poetry, sweetness and delight.” He clearly marvelled at such a glorious combination. “My Rachel, my darling, my all. You have fresh flowers in your cunt.” He bent, and watered them with tears.

  43

  “Ah. i see that madam has come back. It is so lovely, isn’t it?”

  “I’d like to take it,” I said.

  “You would?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “I’m sure you won’t regret it, madam.” Yet was it my imagination or did she sound a jot uncomfortable? “Your daughter will be coming in too?”

  “No. That won’t be necessary.”

  “But any small adjustments which might be thought desirable... ?”

  “We can see to those at home.”

  This time I wasn’t wearing gloves. It didn’t matter. Indeed I had left them off on purpose. She’d be able to gawp discreetly at my wedding ring.

  “In fact I want to tell you something. My daughter and I often get mistaken for sisters. Even for twins. We have precisely the same measurements.”

  “Then you’re very fortunate, madam.” She began to gather up the dress. “Extremely fortunate.”

  “And I’d state with complete confidence that this gown is the correct size. Wouldn’t you? But please don’t ask me to try it on. Not here. It wouldn’t seem appropriate.”

  “I must admit,” she said, “I should feel happier if I could only see the young lady herself.”

  I laughed. “Oh, ye of little faith!”

  “Madam?”

  I hastened to reassure her. “And that remark applies almost as much to me as it does to you.”

  “Besides,” she went on, “I’d naturally feel interested to see her. We all would; it’s a very special dress. We’d like to wish her luck.”