But the reality of the grotto was chilly, and we stood at the side with our shoulders hunched and our heads jutting forward because of the low roof, and when we looked in the pool, the water was dark and we had no reflections.
“What about George Harrison’s fur coat?” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” I was embarrassed to have mentioned it. So trivial compared to the loss of a child.
“George Harrison?”
“She said she met him in Ireland, before she met you. She told me his fur coat was in your bedroom up at the house.”
“How could it be? A coat saved when we lost everything on her imaginary boat, including our son?”
I had no answer. I tried to consider the sort of person who would make these things up. I imagined Cara in the sitting room, sawing through one of the bitter oranges she’d picked, with a blunt kitchen knife, one of a set from the Museum. Peter had promised to sharpen them but he hadn’t got around to it, and every mealtime when Cara was preparing the food she would complain that he had sharpened the garden tools but couldn’t sharpen a kitchen knife, and Peter would promise he’d do it soon. I pictured her now, grinding the two halves of the orange against our jade glass orange juicer maybe getting a drop or two out.
Peter and I climbed to the top of the grotto where the grass was short, cropped by rabbits. The roof had given way a little and there was a shallow dent in the ground, the length of two bodies side by side. We sat down in it, with the air motionless around us and the noise of the cascade beside us, as the water flowed out of the lake. Peter lay back on bent arms and closed his eyes, and I stared at him, so beautiful and tired, and deserving of someone other than Cara.
I wanted to make him happy. I wanted to tell him that I loved him, certain he felt the same way, but I hadn’t got any further in my ruminations than the kiss that might happen after our mutual declaration. What then? Would he tell Cara immediately? Where would we go, the two of us?
On top of the grotto I turned to him, all of me aware of the beat of my heart. He sat up, rested his elbows on his knees, and propped up his chin. Beside him, I knelt, trying to make myself say the words but struck dumb. Instead, I untied the belt of my dress—the dressing gown—and let it fall around me.
“Franny . . .” he said without moving.
The air touched my skin.
“Franny . . .” he repeated, and moved back as though to get a better look at me. I remember smiling.
“Fran,” he said and I waited for him to take me in his arms. He sat up fully but didn’t move towards me, so I took his hand and pressed it to one of my breasts. I held his wrist and felt how cool his skin was compared to my own while I pushed his hand onto my nipple and his fingers spread out and away as if they were rearing back in fear. “Oh no,” he said. “No.” He retreated, shuffling on his knees and pulling his wrist away from my grasp. “Please, Frances. I’m sorry. I think you’ve misunderstood.” He took hold of the dressing gown from around my thighs and bottom and brought it up to my shoulders to wrap me in it, pulling it forwards where it fell back. “I’m so sorry,” he said again. He must have seen the terrible disappointment in my expression, the tears coming, because he added, “But we can still be friends. We’ll always be the best of friends. Franny?” And then in pity I supposed, or so he didn’t have to continue looking at my face, he drew me to him and put his arms around me and held me, and I felt the firmness of his body against my soft one.
I wanted to tell him that it would be different with me, that we both knew it, but his body tensed and then he pushed me away. I turned in the same direction as his gaze and saw Cara, staring at us from the concrete jetty across the lake.
“What does the Bible have to say about impotence?” I ask Victor, the pretend chaplain. “Sexual dysfunction?”
He blushes, shuffles, scratches the crook of an elbow through his shirt.
“I’m asking for a friend,” I say, and smile, and for the first time he puts his head back and laughs. It surprises me, his laugh: it is deep and rich and envelops me in happiness.
I would like to ask him more about the bomb in the Underground station—what he told me has often been on my mind—but perhaps a requirement of his contentment is forgetting.
“I have read,” I say, “that scientists are working on a pill which if taken no later than six hours after something bad has happened will mute one’s memory of that event. The accident or catastrophe, or whatever, will be less painful to recall, like watching someone else’s memory I suppose, or a film. Would you take the pill, Victor? Would you have taken it when you left that Underground station?”
He strokes my hair and doesn’t answer, or I haven’t spoken. Perhaps he believes that pain as well as joy makes us who we are.
I remained there, sitting on top of the grotto with the dressing gown falling off my shoulders, while Peter got up without looking at me or saying another word and went across the weir and Cara turned to go back into the trees. I could only suppose that they met under the rhododendrons and walked up to the house together. I didn’t know how much she had seen.
I didn’t want to return to Lyntons straight away. I went to the mausoleum thinking I would spend time with the two wives but the place was gloomy, the flowers on the chests of the women were dry and colourless, and I noticed the smell of urine in the corners of the tomb. Hunger drove me back in the end, hope that I might find some food somewhere. The storm that had threatened hadn’t materialised, and the sun was low over the hangers, elongated into bands of apricot and red. The cows had gone from the field but the sweet fetid smell they left behind lingered under the cedar. I should have walked a different route and gone around by the front or the portico because I couldn’t resist looking up at Cara and Peter’s rooms. Already it felt like it was the end of something. Many of the building’s windows had been closed and the lowering sun reflected on the uneven glass so that behind each pane a fire seemed to roar, consuming the house unnoticed. Only Peter and Cara’s sitting room windows were open and I saw Peter lean on the sill and look out. He had a glass in his hand, a tumbler. I could hear that album on the record player, the one we always had on—Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel. I stood beside the cedar, and in the half-light I must have blended in with the tree, but I thought Peter saw me because he seemed to raise his glass as if in a toast, perhaps of forgiveness or apology. I raised my hand in salutation but even while I hoped, I knew things wouldn’t be the same, couldn’t ever be the same.
If I had gone to their rooms then, would the ending have been different? But I was too ashamed, the embarrassment of rejection was too raw, and I didn’t know what Peter might have told Cara. He could have said that I’d undressed and pressed his hand against me; maybe they had laughed about it. But then I remembered that Cara had said I wasn’t that interesting, not worth talking about. I went in through the side door, then up the spiral staircase to the attic.
They were quiet in the rooms below mine. I leaned out of my window and looked down, but saw nothing. In the bathroom, as I packed my toiletries, I heard the water in the pipes again, the splash of their bath. I changed out of the dressing gown and put Mother’s underwear back on, and my skirt and blouse. They were tighter than ever. Everything I had still fitted into my two suitcases. Gathering it all together didn’t take long; the only items I packed which I hadn’t arrived with were the cigarette case Peter had given me and Cara’s note. I considered whether I could just leave, or if I should say goodbye, but if one of them was in the bath I would have a while to wait. I sat on my bed and watched the shadows in the garden lengthen.
Then I was taken with a sudden need to hurry, an urgent desire to get away from Lyntons as fast as I could. I checked my watch—if I was quick there was a bus I could catch from the main road to the railway station, otherwise I would have to pay for a taxi or stay overnight at the Harrow Inn. I didn’t have any real plan of where I was going, except back to London.
I put my h
andbag and raincoat over my arm, picked up my two cases, and walked down the spiral stairs. I could have carried on to the bottom, let myself out of the front door, walked around the fountain and along the avenue. But at the small passageway I hesitated, took a step down and back up, then elbowed my way through the baize door on to Cara and Peter’s hallway. Outside their room I put down my cases and folded my raincoat over the top so it didn’t touch the floor. I pressed my ear to their door, but heard nothing.
I tapped, embarrassed, hoping they wouldn’t be there and I could leave another note and creep away. No one answered, there was no noise. I turned the handle and stepped into the room. Dirty saucepans and bowls that Cara had used for cooking the salmon and potatoes were still on the table, and a woven basket contained the dry end of a morning roll. One of the wine glasses we used was on its side, a puddle leaching into the mahogany. The record continued to turn on the record player, the speaker giving out a repeating crackle. In the kitchen area Cara had been squeezing the oranges: four pulped and hollow halves with clean edges lay on a board. A third, pitted and lumpy, sat alone in a latticework bowl. Blue and gold to match the dinner service.
“Hello?” I called out. “Cara? Peter?” Their bedroom door was shut; the place was too still, too silent. I stood in the middle of the room, listening, and then rummaged in my handbag for a pen and piece of paper. I heard a noise from the bathroom, the sloshing of water in the bath. “Peter?” I called again, and Cara came out into the sitting room, leaving the bathroom door partially open. Her evening dress—she had changed into the silk one with the thin straps and the feathers—was a darker green across the front, as though she had spilled something down it.
“Cara,” I said. “I didn’t realise you were here.” I took my hand out of my bag and went forwards. Her arms were wet, her hanging hands dripping water where she stood, the loose green cloth puddled around her feet. She stared at me. “Is Peter about?” I said. “I came . . . to say goodbye.” I wasn’t brave enough to ask what she might have seen from the jetty. She continued to stare. And although Peter might have been naked in the bath, something made me shift around her so I could see into the room. Suddenly Cara came out of her trance-like state, and in one quick movement took the key from the other side of the door, closed it, and locked it. But not before I glimpsed something, someone, in the bath, low down under the water, blondish hair floating. “Is that Peter?” I said to her as she stood away from the door and I jiggled the handle. “Is that Peter in the bath?”
She stepped backwards, almost stumbling over the dress, righting herself before she tripped, but dropping the key. We both dived for it, grappling on the floor and bumping heads. I had my fingers on its metal shaft and then Cara got hold of it, and while I was still down, Mother’s underwear digging into me once again, she stood and flung the key out of the open window beside us. “No!” I cried, but by the time I was kneeling on the window seat, the key had gone—it wasn’t on the terrace, and considering the force with which she’d thrown it, must have been lost somewhere in the box hedges.
“You can’t go in there,” Cara said, standing in front of the bathroom door. “This is nothing to do with you, Frances.”
“What have you done?” I shouted, pushing her aside and rattling the door handle, shouting Peter’s name through the wood. “Let me in!” There was no response. “What have you done?” I said again. “Peter’s in there, isn’t he?”
I pounded on the door with my fists while she stood, impassive, watching. “Is there another key?” I asked, knowing there wasn’t. I looked out of the window once again as though it might have reappeared. I hammered on the door some more, looked at Cara, and then threw my weight against it, but like all the doors at Lyntons it was solid, well made. I only bruised my shoulder; the door didn’t move.
She sat sideways on the window seat in her old position: feet pressed up against the frame, staring out of the window. “Don’t go anywhere,” I said, and she turned her head to look at me, but didn’t reply. I left the sitting room, ran along the hallway past my suitcases, and switched to the spiral staircase, down to the basement. I put the light on and one hanging bulb after another illuminated the corridor. Here I paused, trying to control my breathing and force myself on, to the butler’s room where Peter kept his tools. The sledgehammer sat beside the chest. It was heavier than I had anticipated and I had to hold it out in front of me, my shoulder muscles complaining before I even reached the stairs.
When I burst back into their sitting room, Cara was standing in front of the window with one foot up on the seat, as if painting her toenails. She twitched when I came in, perhaps expecting me to have been gone for longer, maybe to fetch the police. I dragged the sledgehammer behind me, furrowing the rug as I went, and when she saw it she took one step from the window to stand in front of the bathroom door again.
“Get out of the way,” I said when I was facing her.
“You can’t go in there,” she said. “Just go home, Frances.” I didn’t know where she meant.
I pushed her and tried to swing the sledgehammer at the same time, but the two of us became tangled in the green dress and when I pulled the hammer back, she also had hold of the handle. “Let me get in there!” I screamed at her. “This is about that stupid pact, isn’t it? What have you done? What have you done!”
“No! Let go,” she shouted. She pulled hard on the heavy end of the hammer, she was stronger than I had expected and the shaft slipped from my hands. The weight of the hammer end almost carried her with it, through the open window behind her. But at the last moment she twisted and the hammer fell out and down. We heard it land and I shouted her name or some other word. She was half out of the window, tilting back, her legs still inside the room. Only the tips of her fingers, clinging to the sides of the frame, and my foot pinning the hem of her green dress to the floor, kept her from falling. The orange sun framed her beautiful face and hair in a perfect halo, a golden nimbus fanning out around her, and for a second I was reminded of Victor’s sermon about light and transformation. There was an instant when our eyes met and I saw she was calm, all the anger and the anguish gone. Then she released her fingers and the dress ripped away from under my foot, and she fell backwards with nothing to stop her. I heard the heavy thump, the crack of a skull and a cry that was only an exhalation of breath. I covered my face with my hands, stuck to the spot for I don’t know how long, until I had the courage to look out.
The silence in the house was absolute. For the first time, I was alone. I knew what I was going to find, but still I went up to my bathroom and removed the floorboard, and for the final time looked through the judas hole, at Peter. My love. The bathwater was pink, and my sample knife was on the floor, although I knew he hadn’t done this to himself. There was nothing to hurry for any more. I watched him lying on his back, his arms by his side. His eyes were open, but they seemed to focus beyond the spot in the ceiling where I looked down at him, to a point above the roofs of Lyntons, and up into the evening sky. He was motionless, as if he too were a gisant, carved and placed on top of his own tomb, his body alabaster. I willed him to get up, to push his hands on the edges of the bath and rise dripping, from the water. I lay beside the removed floorboard and I cried for him.
After a time, I went down to the terrace, not to make certain Cara was dead—I had known that as soon as I looked out of the window—but to collect the sledgehammer. All my muscles were quivering, my body shaking, but I dragged the hammer from under her head. From the light falling out of the windows I saw that one of the right-angled edges of the hammer end had hair and skin sticking to it, but by the time I had dragged it across the dirt under the rhododendrons it had rubbed off. The shaft, though, was sticky with blood.
The hammer bumped behind me down the steps, gathering grass when I passed the chicken sheds and cutting a fresh groove in the earth beside the lake. When I reached the bridge, I lifted the hammer in both hands at the very end of the shaft and swung it at the stone. I don’t kn
ow how much damage I did, not enough to have it all fall into the lake as I wanted. When I couldn’t lift the hammer one more time, I left it there and walked back up to the house, under the portico, across the drive, and along the avenue to the church. I don’t remember, but I was told that this was where Victor found me, in the vestibule with blood on my hands.
TWENTY-THREE
My father came to the trial, turning up on the first day in the public gallery amongst the journalists and general gawkers. It took me a second look to recognise him, an old man, still a stranger. Luther Jellico. I’d thought of him often although I hadn’t seen him for almost thirty years. When I was young and idealistic I imagined scenarios where he arrived at the Dollis Hill apartment and understood everything without me even speaking. He would take me to live with him—my aunt out of the picture—in the big house in Notting Hill, although I knew in reality it had been sold. Later I looked for him in antiques shops, at antiquarian book fairs, and in libraries, rehearsing what I would say.
I might have carried around the guilt of my parents’ separation like a bad meal in my belly, but it was my aunt whom I considered to be the real villain. It was she who had made me choose between the fox-fur stole and the truth. It was from her, as much as from Mother, that I learned that the truth isn’t always the right way. When, after we had lived in the apartment for a couple of years, the Christmas cards and birthday presents stopped coming, it was my aunt I blamed for making my father abandon me. The wicked stepmother I never saw. And after she died, although I was an adult by then, I waited for my father to return to Mother and me. I waited but he didn’t write, or telephone Mrs. Lee downstairs, or call at the door. I didn’t see him again until that day in court.
Now his hair and his moustache were white, his neck scrawny, but with just one look, all the love and anger came rushing back. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. When I should have been concentrating on what the wig men were saying, making certain I got my story straight, I was staring up at the gallery, while he averted his gaze. You’ve come! I wanted to shout. Too late! Too late! I couldn’t wait for that first day to be over so I could be passed his note, or his request for a private visit. I tried to work on the strength I would need to tear it up in front of him or deny his request. A muscle I exercised while the day dragged on. I asked the officer who took me back to my cell in the breaks to double-check, but there was no note, no request.
Bitter Orange Page 25
