Instances of the Number 3

by Salley Vickers

  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 wo
uld 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…

  About The Author

  SALLEY VICKERS is the author of the bestselling Miss Garnet’s Angel, Mr Golightly’s Holiday and The Other Side of You. She has worked as a university teacher of literature and a psychoanalyst. She now writes full-time.

  Visit Salley’s website at www.salleyvickers.com

  Visit www.Author.Tracker.co.uk for exclusive information on your favourite HarperCollins authors.

  From the reviews of Instances of the Number 3:

  ‘The sign of a real novelist—effortlessly taking a new line while retaining the same unmistakable fictional personality. Instances of the Number 3 is compulsive; like the Sultan listening to Scheherazade.’

  JOHN BAYLEY

  ‘Salley Vickers writes with a luminous and exacting perception that reveals us all as ghosts of ourselves, haunting and haunted by past, present and future loves.’

  RUSSELL HOBAN

  ‘When Peter Hansome dies in a car crash he leaves a wife, Bridget, and a mistress, Frances. Between the two women an unlikely friendship forms. When Zahin, a beautiful Iranian boy, turns up on Bridget’s doorstep claiming to have known her husband, he becomes part of the trio of mourners. How they cope and how their relationships and emotions shift is the theme of this wonderfully readable novel. Vickers is quietly, ironically funny and offers some deft observations. She also has a compassionate, non-judgemental understanding of human nature and a keen intellectual curiosity about faith, and its absence.’

  Sunday Times

  ‘Taken simply as a meticulously drawn portrait of smart London life in the Barbara Pym mould, this is an extremely classy piece of writing. But Instances of the Number 3 is a far more ambitious novel than that, exploring the different ways in which human beings can find salvation through selfdiscovery. Salley Vickers’ precisely measured prose combines a philosophical detachment with close observation of character to create a world where ideas live as vibrantly as people. Owing much to Virginia Woolf, it is a book that demands to be read slowly, but leaves you with plenty to think about.’

  Observer

  ‘Inevitably I opened Instances of the Number 3 with some concern that Vickers would not be able to match the brilliance of her first book. I need not have worried. The quality of her second novel confirms that she will have a long and outstanding career in writing.’

  MARTYN GOFF, Book of the Week, Times

  ‘Colourfully-drawn minor characters sit comfortably with passages of a more philosophical stamp, in which big questions are asked with the lightest of touches. The ending is particularly exquisite.’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Vickers’ novel is gallopingly readable and its two principal women are compellingly drawn.’

  JULIE MYERSON, Guardian

  ‘Salley Vickers is good at pungent lines in the right place, and clever with pace and narrative.’

  PENELOPE LIVELY, Independent

  ‘Salley Vickers is a remarkable optimist. She shows that happiness can be found even after it seems to have died.’

  DAVID SEXTON, Evening Standard

  ‘Gentleness of perception and sharpness of intellect sustain you long after the last page.’

  BEL MOONEY, The Times

  ‘Instances of the Number 3 has all the elements that made Miss Garnet’s Angel such a satisfying novel, but in larger quantities. It has the same intelligence and faultlessly elegant prose style, coupled with a compulsive story populated by interesting characters who engage the reader.’

  Oxford Times

  ‘Vickers’ portrayal of suppressed grief is masterly. Instances of the Number 3 is touching, thought-provoking and entertaining. I suspect it may also be extremely wise.’

  The Tablet

  ‘Studded with observations and asides that stop you in your tracks. Reading it is like having a fine meal with a good wine; you are left with a feeling of deep satisfaction.’

  JULIE WHEELWRIGHT, Scotland on Sunday

  ‘The author of Miss Garnet’s Angel again beguiles with her breadth of vision and understanding of human feelings and foibles. Her fiction has a haunting quality. A witty, ironic and thoughtful novel.’

  Choice Magazine

  ‘Witty, ironic and profound, this novel explores the frontiers of life and death, and forgiveness.’

  You Magazine, Mail on Sunday

  ‘The author of the acclaimed best seller Miss Garnet’s Angel has written an entirely original second novel that explores the links between various combinations of three people and the relationship between life, the experiences that shape it, and death.’

  Hello! Magazine

  ‘The classic threesome—husband, wife, mistress—proves mathematically unstable in Vickers’ profound comic novel. Her appealing characters bloom as the world opens up to them in surprising but logical ways. Philosophical concerns are woven seamlessly with earthy incident, so that bad cocktail parties resonate and good bubble baths matter. In the tradition of the late Iris Murdoch, this extraordinary book will inspire and delight.’

  Publisher’s Weekly

  Also by Salley Vickers

  Miss Garnet’s Angel

  Mr Golightly’s Holiday

  The Other Side of You

  Preview

  The Other Side of You

  Read on for an extract from Salley Vickers’ latest novel

  A failed suicide, Elizabeth Cruikshank, is admitted to the hospital where Dr David McBride is a psychiatrist. She is unusually reticent and it is not until he recalls a painting by Caravaggio that she finally yields up her story. Here you can read the first chapter.

  She was a slight woman, pale, with two wings of dark hair which framed her face and gave it the faintly bird-like quality that characterised her person. Even at this distance of time, which has clarified much that was obscure to me, I find her essence hard to capture. She was youthful in appearance but there was also an air of something ambiguous about her which was both intriguing and daunting.

  When we met she must have been in her forties, but in a certain light she could have been fourteen or four hundred—though when I say ‘light’ I perhaps mean that subtle light of the mind, which casts as many shadows as it illuminates but in the right conditions can reveal a person’s being more accurately than the most powerful beam.

  Once I would have known her age to the day, since it would have been part of the bald list of information on her medical file: name, sex, date of birth. Of the last detail I have a hazy recollection that her birthday was in September. She spoke of it once in connection with the commencement of the school year and a feeling that, in the coincidence of the month of her birth and a new term, she might begin some new life. ‘You see, Doctor,’—when she used my title she did so in a tone that located it at a fine point between irony and intimacy—‘even as a child I must have been looking f
or a fresh start.’

  Doctors are like parents: there should be no favourites. But doctors and parents are human beings first and it is impossible to escape altogether the very human fact that certain people count. Of course everyone must, or should, count. We oughtn’t do what we do if that isn’t a fundamental of our instincts as well as of our professional dealings. But the peculiar spark that directs us towards our profession will have its own particular shape. I have had colleagues who come alive at a certain kind of raving, who perceive in the voices of the incurable schizophrenic a cryptic language, a Linear B, awaiting their special aptitude for decoding. One of my formidably brilliant colleagues has spent her life attempting to unravel the twisted minds of the criminally insane. It’s my opinion no one could ever disentangle that knot of evil and sickness, but for her it is the grail that infuses her work with the ardour of a mythic quest. My colleague, Dan Buirski, had a bee in his bonnet about eating disorders. I used to kid him, a long cadaver of a man himself, that he liked nothing more than a starving young woman to get his teeth into. I said once, ‘You’re no example, you’re a mere cheese paring yourself,’ and he laughed and said, ‘That’s why I understand them.’ He’s lucky with his metabolism, but his grandmother and his two uncles died in Treblinka. Starvation is in his blood and he’s converted that inheritance into a consuming interest in humankind’s relationship with food. It’s a strange business, ours.

  And what was my peculiar bent, the glimmer in my eye which has in it the capacity to lead me into dangerous swamps and mires? For me it was the denizens of that hinterland where life and death are sister and brother, the suicidally disposed, who beckoned. Like is drawn to like. Alter the biographical circumstances a fraction and my colleague who worked with psychopaths would make an expert serial killer: she had just the right streak of fanatical perfectionism and the necessary pane of ice in the heart. And for all his badinage, Dan had a hard time keeping a scrap of flesh on him. I saw him once, after he’d had a bad bout of flu, and I nearly crossed myself he looked so like a vampire’s victim. But despite the concentration camps, death wasn’t his particular lure. That was my province.