Instances of the Number 3

by Salley Vickers

  ‘Can one call a tortoise “cow”?’

  Frances was not deceived by Painter’s habits of speech: she knew him to be a man of warm, if secret, sensibility. After Peter was killed she had found herself ringing the artist in need of the kindness which lay beneath the superficial savageness. Also, he was from Cork and she liked an Irish accent. Maybe that was why she got on with Bridget…?

  Painter had got round to his current fix. ‘It’s this effing catastrophe,’ he complained, indicating a canvas composed of tiny delicately painted squares of lilac—recognisably a mutation of the hall wallpaper. ‘Look at it, will you just—I’ll have to destroy the whole bollocking thing.’

  ‘Maybe it just needs some balance,’ said Frances carefully. She had decided long ago that it didn’t much matter what one said to Painter about his pictures—all that was required was to sound as if what was said made sense. What was important was that Painter felt safe in showing her uncompleted work. It was like being the stooge to a highly strung comic—he relied on her to feed him the right lines.

  ‘No, no, no, no,’ said Painter, falling into the familiar patter, ‘it’s vile, vile—I’ll have to ditch it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Frances, ‘I see what you mean—but it would be a pity.’

  They stood side by side and stared at the canvas. Frances had noticed before that Patrick was nice to be near: he gave one space; there was no crowding in—or pulling away.

  A tortoise, presumably Fred, ambled through the door and rested where a patch of sun lit up the pattern of the carpet.

  ‘“Gaming in a gap of sunlight”,’ said Painter resting his foot on the tortoise’s back. ‘I’ll scrap it then, shall I?’

  This was the crucial moment. Frances gambled, ‘Maybe you’re right…’

  ‘Or maybe I could do something with it,’ said Painter, quickly. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you generally know.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ said Painter relieved. ‘Glad we sorted that out. Damn that tart—I could do with a ginger nut.’

  Frances walked down to the corner shop with Painter where he bought Typhoo tea, ‘Extra strength’, and two packets of biscuits. The woman in the shop said, ‘You still want the Sunday Sport, Mr Pinter?’

  ‘Pinter?’ asked Frances outside. ‘What’s this?’

  A sly smile spread over Painter’s face. ‘Their mistake, not my doing. She thinks I’m Harold Pinter. Writes plays,’ he added helpfully.

  ‘I know he’s a playwright—a highly civilised one. What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s an identity swap,’ said Painter, slightly sheepish. ‘When the silly cow took over from the Patels they told her I was famous—and she read the name as Pinter. She’s got a daughter doing Media Arts at Luton. I can’t help it if the woman’s a star-fucker.’

  ‘Is that why you’re ordering the Sunday Sport?’ asked Frances, light dawning. ‘Honestly, Patrick, how infantile!’

  13

  If an impression has been given that Peter Hansome was not a particularly brave man it would be misleading. At boarding school he passed through the ordeal of separation from home and familiars without even the sharpest-eyed, and most malicious, of his peers noticing that the experience left him feeling he was bleeding alive. More heroic still, he resisted the urge to find relief from his own despair by joining in with tormenting those less successful at concealment. He became popular, up to a point, never reaching that pinnacle of popularity which, from the start, attends the lucky—if luck is what it is. And ‘luck’ made up no conspicuous part of Peter Hansome’s history.

  Once we are in the way of losing things, life seems to determine that other goods shall go: having lost his father Peter went on to lose his mother, to a Member of Parliament who chose Peter’s siblings, Marcus and Clare, as the foci of his step-parental care.

  There is a kind of person who, if aware that an affection is not directed towards them, will set out to destroy it. With the acuity of the sadistic, Evelyn Hansome’s second husband recognised the deep link between his wife and her second son. Such bonds between mothers and sons are not uncommon—nineteenth-century fiction depends upon them; but they should not, for that reason, be dismissed as unreal. Peter watched his mother falter in her expressions of love towards him and knew that she did so, not through any dereliction but through the desire to protect him. But understanding does not necessarily dispel reaction: as the mother became guarded, so did the son. When his stepfather died it was difficult for Peter to find a way back to any spontaneous expression of feeling.

  By the time he reached Cambridge Peter presented to the world the character of a conventional public schoolboy. He was rangy and, on the surface at least, good-humoured. Differences from others he expressed in minor, socially acceptable ways, by changing subjects from history to anthropology, for example. About this time he made friends with his father who, when Peter left university, celebrated the event by taking his son to a Soho strip joint. Peter responded to the prominent breasts and buttocks with an excited fascination he later defined to himself as loathing—though whether it was the naked gleaming girls or the profusely sweating figure of his father beside him which produced this reaction he could not have said. These uneasy emotions he ascribed to feelings of loyalty to his mother. It was the last year of conscription and he was about to leave for military service.

  He went to serve in Malaya, where he learned to command men and issue orders. And it was in Malaya that Peter Hansome first fell in love.

  14

  Zahin explained that he attended a college near the King’s Road. ‘I am doing physics, also maths and chemistry.’ He sighed.

  ‘But why do them if that is not what you want?’ Bridget asked, and Zahin had explained that this is what his family wished for him.

  ‘I am to be a chemical engineer. In America there are big salaries for this work.’

  Long ago Bridget had recognised that not having children put her at a disadvantage in understanding parental motive. Unimaginable to her the idea of setting another human being to do anything for which they had no inherent desire. Yet a rebellion against a parent was the basis of her own escape; maybe it was necessary that the young were made to comply with uncongenial demands—to ensure a kind of survival of the fittest…?

  Zahin, despite his expressed reservations, appeared to take his academic obligations seriously. Each morning, already showered and neatly dressed in his sober navy or grey pullover, he woke Bridget with a tray of tea. Only occasionally, on half-days and holidays, did he break out and dress in the colourful shirts, such as the blue silk he had been wearing the evening she returned from Farings. These he ironed with a professional skill. What he seemed to like best, however, was cleaning.

  It had not escaped Bridget’s notice that Zahin’s programme of cleaning included her bedroom. Not usually at a loss, she was unsure whether or not to take this up with the boy. On the face of it, it was an atrocious invasion—it was clear to her that he had not only tidied her dressing table, but that his domestic efforts had extended to more private areas.

  Bridget’s chests of drawers were full of the antique lace and cotton which she creamed off from her commercial purchases. She enjoyed the knowledge that beneath her rather serviceable clothes lay unseen knickers and bodices and petticoats, ribboned and tucked and sewn with the fine seams of French seamstresses. Peter had enjoyed them too—in particular a pair of knickers with a convenient flap, one an adroit hand could undo and make use of (without recourse to further removals), cunningly fashioned, no doubt, for some busy Frenchman’s mistress.

  Peter himself had sometimes taken advantage of this prudent piece of design economy while visiting his wife at her shop. Both parties had enjoyed the wordless exchange. Since her husband died, Bridget had not thought about this much enjoyed arrangement but seeing the knickers carefully folded, alongside her other underwear, it seemed right they should be put away in tissue paper—it was not likely that they would be useful again
.

  But what to do about the hand responsible for that neat folding?

  There is some law which determines that a pronounced trait or characteristic in childhood will often tend, later in life, to turn into its opposite. Bridget’s childhood had been made turbulent by her questioning mind. She pursued matters—especially with her father—which might have been better left undisturbed. After she left Ireland, Bridget had worked first in a hospital, then in a hotel. The hotel manager’s second in command was a cautious kleptomaniac. Bridget, being sharp, noticed him slip a lighter from a drinks table into his pocket. But further observation suggested that he confined his thefts to those guests who treated the staff rudely, and decided, when another member of staff under suspicion for the crimes was threatened with dismissal, not to come forward with what she had seen.

  The innocent staff member was dismissed. About this Bridget felt no compunction. She could have averted the injustice but…it was not, exactly, that she couldn’t be bothered—more a sense that there was something dangerous in any tendency to meddle. Better to let the criminal go scot-free, she felt, than get involved in acts of moral denouncing. If she had pushed the thought a little further, she might have added that a touch of injustice here and there was safer than too much righteous interference. And, to be fair, she would have acknowledged that that was reasonable only if she, too, were prepared to take a pinch of injustice as part of her own measure.

  This small illumination lit the way for others: Bridget, while she lost none of the quickness which so antagonised her father, dropped some of the indignation which had attended it. She became expert at letting things ride; and, indeed, it was partly this quality which had endeared her to Peter.

  Sitting at her dressing table, from whose surfaces all trace of her pale French powder had been dusted, she decided to let the matter of Zahin’s intrusion into her bedroom ride too. So what if Zahin had inspected her underwear? It was underwear she was proud of.

  15

  Bridget’s plan was that she should visit Farings every fortnight. To establish her presence in London she made a point of calling in on Mickey. It was clear that Mickey had taken the hump.

  ‘Nice, is it, your new house then?’ she asked, as if enquiring about the comforts of a bordello.

  ‘Very. There’s not much to do to it, which is just as well.’

  ‘What you going to do with yourself there then?’

  Bridget guessed that Mickey hoped for an invitation. Besides the fact that her neighbour was a committed ‘townie’ it would be hopeless if Farings became a place where she had to invite people. She steeled herself not to be drawn. ‘D’you know what, Mickey—I really want to do nothing there. That’s the point.’

  ‘Frances like it, did she?’ So that was it. Mickey had discovered that Frances had visited and was jealous.

  Frances, too, was conscious that there was a coolness between her and Bridget’s neighbour. Her introduction to the Hansomes had, after all, come through Mickey, who was not to know that there were delicate reasons why Frances, having been introduced to Peter, had suddenly to cease to be seen near his home. In the aftermath of Peter’s death she had tried to re-establish a friendly link; but Mickey, who had an elephant’s memory, wasn’t having any of it.

  Frances and Bridget were spending Saturday together, so when Frances turned up and found Bridget out she called at Mickey’s house to see if Bridget was there. The meeting didn’t go well.

  ‘She’s annoyed with me,’ Frances said, back in Bridget’s kitchen after Mickey had made only the most perfunctory attempt at civility. ‘She thinks I dumped her after she introduced me to Peter.’

  ‘Well, you did,’ said Bridget.

  ‘Yes,’ said Frances, stung, ‘but there were reasons…’

  ‘Yes, like sleeping with my husband!’ jeered Bridget. ‘Listen, don’t worry about it—Mickey loves to take umbrage. I’d rather it was you than Zahin she took against—it’s more convenient,’ she added, then, not being quite without kindness, noticed that Frances’s face had that crumpled look as if she might have been crying.

  Frances had, indeed, been crying. Lacking Bridget’s steelier foundations, she was, nonetheless, possessed with more than average self-control. When she wept it was generally in private. And had an impartial observer been present they would have had to report that the crying was, mostly, not of the self-indulgent kind.

  Frances had not cried so thoroughly since she lost Hugh. Or rather, since she told Peter about her younger brother. It was one of the most treasured aspects of her time with Peter that he had encouraged her to cry her heart out—all over him—tears she had not been able to shed when she learned she had lost Hugh.

  Frances and Hugh had shared a language, and a country—like the young Brontës, she had been told since. Only Peter had been trusted with the fictional land she and Hugh had dreamed up together, where children had the power of telepathy and were acknowledged superior to adults.

  If not telepaths in the full sense, Frances and Hugh certainly shared some unspoken communication. On the day that Hugh drove into the gatepost, Frances, a hundred miles away, came down with a migraine so severe that she had to be admitted to hospital. It was in hospital that she was told of her brother’s death, a fact which seemed to cause her so little surprise that the nurse who had come to tell her believed that her patient couldn’t have heard and told her—in identical words—again. ‘We have some very sad news for you, I’m afraid…’

  Frances had found Peter’s arms to encircle her while she cried for Hugh; but there was no one to hold her while she cried for Peter.

  Driving to the Tate, Bridget felt compunction. ‘Let’s have lunch,’ she said, as the London Eye loomed. ‘My treat. I never thanked you properly for your help with Farings.’

  Astonishing how strong a part food plays in our humours. Just as dyspepsia can rapidly translate into bad temper, the offer of a cup of tea, the share of a sandwich or an ice lolly will often provide more of a fillip than the most carefully chosen words. Bridget kept her thoughts to herself but the promise of a meal found its way to Frances.

  ‘I don’t think they do lunch there on a Saturday but I’d love to go somewhere else,’ she said, and felt calmer.

  A short while later, standing with Bridget before a Sickert of two women on a couch (‘I wonder if that’s how Peter saw us?’ Bridget asked herself), Frances turned, and, in the room beyond, caught sight of a large painting.

  A man and woman seated at a café table; even at a distance it was possible to tell that this was a couple engaged in some equivocal escapade. The woman is looking, a little too yearningly, into the face of the man, who has a bunch of flowers at his side, presumably a sop to conscience and not for the woman who is seated by him. Looming over the couple, prepared to take their order, stands the figure of a waiter, manifestly aware of the nuances of the situation his customers find themselves in.

  As she gazed across at the painting, Frances, in peripheral vision, saw another figure also looking—so that after a moment she turned to Bridget to say, ‘Look, over there. For a second I thought it was Peter…’

  Peter, standing before the painting of the Edwardian threesome, felt the eyes of his mistress on him, and turned back round the corner to melt into the crowd.

  16

  Bridget had driven up to Farings on the Friday night to be ready for the sweep the following morning.

  The front doorbell rang on the dot of 10 a.m.

  ‘You’re punctual, Mr Godwin.’

  ‘Godwit. Like the bird—everyone makes that mistake. I used to be a psychoanalyst—a job like that you have to be punctual.’

  ‘Good heavens! A psychoanalyst!’ Bridget, who prided herself on being unsurprisable, was surprised.

  ‘No, my joke…’

  Bridget was relieved. She disliked anything of that sort—though the thought of a psychoanalyst sweeping chimneys was appealingly bizarre.

  ‘My joke—my daughter’s married a shrink—so I
tease the son-in-law. Tell him she only married him because of her dad being like clockwork. A father complex, they call it!’

  ‘Do you think it’s true?’ Bridget was intrigued. She had read that the Irish were said to be unanalysable because they couldn’t distinguish external reality from their own unruly Celtic unconscious.

  ‘About Corrie having a father complex?’ asked the sweep. He was on his knees delicately fitting long wooden-handled brushes together. ‘This’ll be starlings’ nests.’

  ‘I meant psychoanalysis,’ said Bridget, embarrassed. ‘I wouldn’t be so rude as to ask about your relationship with your daughter.’ The sweep had nonplussed her—not at all common.

  Mr Godwit was lying on his back staring up the chimney. ‘Yup, starlings,’ he announced. ‘Little blighters. Be about half an hour doing this. All right for you?’

  Bridget made tea for them both and came and watched as the sweep turned and furled his brushes with a dexterous competence. ‘If you go outside you’ll see the brush head coming out the chimney. My dad used to ask me, “Can you see the starling, then, sitting on top?”’

  He seemed an unusually cheerful man and without the knack of being irritating which the perennially cheerful often have.

  ‘Godwit,’ she said over a second mug of tea, remembering how he had introduced himself, ‘Godwits are birds, aren’t they?’

  ‘Black-tailed, Bar-tailed—you get them round Pembrokeshire. Wonderful coastline for waders.’

  ‘I bought this house because of the rooks,’ said Bridget. It was the first time she had told anyone.

  ‘That’s lucky. Rooks won’t go where there’s bad feeling. They building yet?’

  They went outside. Bundles of nests made black raggedy marks in the elm trees against the sunlight. ‘I saw a charm of goldfinches last week,’ said Bridget, not noticing that she was showing off.