by Barbara Else
‘Why have you got those tickets?’ asks Ruth.
He flaps the folder at her. ‘I’ve wangled a trip for me as well. I can meet you in Vancouver. You and that city, I could get amazing shots.’ He glances at Bella again. ‘And what do you do, Bella?’
Bella, still holding the pumpkin casserole, begins to shudder. Eliot juggles the dish away from her, sets it on the coffee table, then supports Bella with both arms.
‘It’s a difficult time,’ says Jocasta with another probing look at Eliot.
‘Sorry. Yes,’ he says.
Ruth hands Bella’s wine glass to her. ‘I opened a bottle just for you and you haven’t had a sip. Come on.’
Bella stares as if she’s never seen the glass before and tips it into the vase of flowers. For heaven’s sake. The things were dead already, it’s not likely to revive them.
‘Um.’ Eliot gives a cough. ‘Excuse us. Thank you, Ruth.’ He almost carries Bella out and down the driveway.
Poor Bella, this is awful, awful for her.
‘Sorry,’ says Craig. ‘I did choose a bad time.’
‘I’ll run along.’ Jocasta smiles. ‘Let me know if you need anything that I can help with.’
The annoying neighbour leaves. A hot breeze whips in through the window, around the room, and disappears. The casserole’s still sitting on the table.
Craig stuffs the travel folder in his jacket and smiles too. Ruth waves at the bottle of whisky. He helps himself. Young men are good at that. Especially ones who wear linen jackets and collarless shirts. He’s not that young, mid-thirties and more, probably. But charming. It looks as if a cat has licked his hair.
‘You should have phoned.’ Ruth’s jaw feels stiff. She has a gulp of whisky. ‘I’m afraid I’m hardly up to talking.’
‘I guess I’ve been presumptuous. It was just that —’ He pats the pocket with the tickets in, glances out the window after Bella, then concentrates on Ruth.
Vancouver, with Craig along? Some women might find it fun. She’s found Canadian men very polite in the past and it’s fatiguing. Word is in the trade that you have to be very direct if you want them to visit your hotel room. Ruth has not wanted it, thanks. She’s never been thoroughly unfaithful to Walsh. But you like to hear the gossip and certainly you like to flirt. Flirting’s like a Wonderbra for the ego.
Ruth talks fast to deflect herself.
‘You seem rather taken with Bella. She does design. In silver. A bit of painting. She could be very good if she would only let herself go. Eliot thinks so too. He’d love to be her Svengali.’
Craig squints. ‘African design? Is that still hot?’
‘Excuse me?’ asks Ruth.
‘Svengali shall not die? That was a big movie, in its day.’
Ruth’s bones quiver with tension. It is bizarre how suddenly she wants comfort from a man who doesn’t know the difference between a fictional hypnotist and a real-life wild game park. She pours herself another drink. She is being as scattered and as vague as Bella. Craig’s attention is very flattering — he was flattering last night too — but she must stop feeling so confused and make him leave.
‘Bella was married to Barnaby Rivers,’ says Ruth. ‘We’re all bruised by the news. In fact, Craig, you really ought to go.’
‘Rivers. Right, I’ve heard of him. And she’s living with the beef-faced guy now? What does he do? Into art as well? Importing?’
She shakes her head. Craig sidles towards her, one step, two; clumsy. He shoves one sleeve up and scratches his elbow. Boyish. And endearing.
‘Hey, I’d love to take your photograph. Not just on the trip. There’s a photo essay I’ve been working on — Look, I can come back another day if you like, but are you okay on your own?’
‘Really,’ says Ruth. ‘No photographs. Please go.’
But she’s leaning physically towards this charming boy. Barnaby, the thought of him, won’t leave her: all Barnaby’s wives; Barnaby’s father, the pompous miniature lecher in his cassock. Barnaby only wanted things if they were beautiful. The roaring fills Ruth’s ears.
Craig moves even closer, looking worried. That air of responsibility is shockingly appealing.
The phone rings. Ruth fumbles to it: Anna.
‘Mum, you’re badgering me, Mum. I am taking great care of …’
‘Be quiet, Anna, listen. Oh God, we need to talk to you.’ Ruth tells Anna about Barnaby, and when the funeral is. ‘Now Anna, once Walsh has come home …’
‘Oh no,’ Anna is saying. ‘Oh no — this complicates — oh. How awful!’
There’s a click, and the line is dead. Ruth’s hands begin to tremble.
Craig steps up to her side. She grips his arm. He is tentative at first, but takes the phone from her and puts it down.
This is no good but Ruth must lean on something. Someone with steady breathing — anyone would do. She has never wanted a lover and, to be on the safe side, years ago she promised herself that if she did find one nothing would take place in her own home. As if that would make it less adulterous. Less shameful. More relaxed.
Rules are just things that get broken. And time, after all, is a river. It will bear her sins away.
chapter four
You can’t take something from a dead man and not give something back. Bella has to tell someone what she did at the funeral parlour. Once they’re home maybe, once Eliot sits down with a big glass of Glenlivet.
Even in Bella’s haze of shock she worries about Eliot. He is so good. She is probably using the man, taking advantage of his kindness.
They reach Eliot’s house and park in the driveway. From the way he collects the evening paper from the letterbox, combs his fingers through his hair as he climbs the few steps to the front door, the way he holds his key to slip it into the lock, Bella sees how Eliot suffers. He’s stopped touching her again. Although she collapsed on him at Ruth’s, though he carried her out and put her in the car, he must think the embargo’s still in force, the one she made when she realised she must go and see Barnaby.
Why doesn’t Eliot take over, make his own rules up as other men do, show stupefaction that anyone could have rules that differ from his? But Eliot never does that. Which is why she might be in love with him. That’s if what she felt in herself until the shock about Barnaby occurred was the possibility of love, not simple wonder that a man can be so calm and self-contained — that the one time she and Eliot made love was so astonishing.
Problem, though: if a man will not impose himself on you, how can you know if he’s falling in love with you too? Eliot might have welcomed the embargo. He might think their relationship’s a dead end.
Eliot leaves the front door ajar. It is stuffy in the living room and Bella opens the windows too. The heat stirs but that’s all. She sinks on to the window seat and Eliot lumbers to the dresser. His hands, long-fingered and fine, are careful on the etched-glass doors. He fetches out a tumbler and pours a measure of the whisky for himself, no water. Weary as she knows he is, he passes through to the kitchen and returns opening a bottle of Saints Riesling for her. He folds back the etched-glass doors again, moves over the rows of glasses on the shelves, selects one with a silver rim from the set he scarcely uses, holds it to the light to see if it needs wiping, wordlessly pours half a glass, and sets it on the sill for her. He takes a swallow of his whisky and drops heavy as a bear upon the sofa.
Late afternoon light fills the room. Scent from the bowl of lavender wreaths around her. It’s the lavender with two long petals like the ears of a mad rabbit. She’d picked masses of it just before Lydia phoned late Monday afternoon, had been placing the white bowl on the coffee table as Eliot answered the phone and called her to it.
Bella looks at Eliot on the sofa. The perfect room. The perfect man. The peace, the quiet.
An absolute pit of confusion. She ought to tell him what Barnaby had been holding, and tell him what she’d done.
Eliot stares at his glass, and has another gulp from it.
Bella should also do someth
ing for dinner. They’ve left the pumpkin casserole at Ruth’s. Once when Anna was having a crisis with a teenage boyfriend whom she claimed would put her off men for all time, Jocasta had sped over with a plate of savoury muffins. Ruth had been irritated but Walsh calmed her down, and Bella suspects Ruth’s come to count on Jocasta for those old-fashioned gestures — for the way she senses trouble and offers food to ease it. Bella would have liked the pumpkin casserole on the agenda here tonight. But since they left it behind, she feels she ought to cook. She’s been so dreadful to Eliot over the last few days that she should keep her end of the wordless deal they seem to have agreed on.
First, tell him about Barnaby, what a bastard Barnaby had been — just show him the little cradle, in her bag.
But her capacity for speech has been erratic since Lydia phoned. Bella hadn’t realised who Lydia must be at first, it was so unlikely that Barnaby’s sister would want to speak to her. Lydia’s nearing sixty, still dressing like a PR company tart of more than a decade ago in tight red suits, with close-cropped dyed black hair, lashing anything that moves or breathes with the metaphorical broomstick of her theories — theories, take note, as Lydia isn’t a practitioner. Critics hardly ever are. But nobody can tell Lydia she is wrong.
‘It’s bad news,’ Lydia had said on the phone, ‘it’s bad news, Bella.’
Since that was what Lydia usually implied when she had to talk to Bella, Bella had slipped her mind into defensive mode, imagined herself a small sharp-toothed animal in camouflage, the way she’d learned to cope at parties in New York. Animal mode was often useful during life with Barnaby as well, in this hillside city half a globe away.
‘I felt I was the one to tell you, Bella,’ Lydia was saying, ‘and I thought you ought to know before Eliot. But I won’t expect you to attend the funeral. It would be easier, you understand, if you keep away, thank you.’
Bella must have whispered something in return, for Lydia ended the call. That terrible call. Bella, still struggling with the shock of having left her husband, now had to grapple with the shock that he was dead.
She hasn’t sipped her wine yet, though Eliot has finished his first whisky — no, his second. He had downed the one Ruth gave him, double quick. Had Bella really tipped her own drink into Ruth’s flowers? She shivers with embarrassment.
Please speak to me, Bella wants to say to Eliot, tell me you’ll stand between me and the black-cap witch, then I can go to the funeral and fight his family just by being there; fight the ghost of the tippling archdeacon, his mother, even Barnaby’s alarming sister. At least, I’ll have a try. If you and I have a future, I can cope.
Silent bargains can’t be expected to work.
She could simply pull the little cradle out of her bag, answer Eliot when he asks her what it is and how she got it. She could go to her lawyer, put it on his desk and see what he thinks: was it desecration or no more than a last marital skirmish? Her lawyer might burst out laughing, though she isn’t in a jolly mood herself. It isn’t very jolly, being appalled by your own actions. But the cradle, in its way, might mean that Barnaby did love her, that it wasn’t all proprietorial outrage, the huff and puff of hurt pride.
Eliot seems bemused as he gazes at his empty glass. He heaves off the sofa, goes to the cabinet, and Bella hears another splash of whisky. He drinks, then splashes more. Lips pressed firmly together, he frowns at his glass and sits down again. He’s got the bottle in his hand as well this time. He looks so lonely.
The image of Barnaby’s face, the stillness of it, the angry badger hair, floats before Bella. The whole point of leaving Barnaby was to stop being handmaid to a fake, stop being patronised and put aside. He’d been livid that Bella walked out; hassled her with those phone calls, even with presents that she’d fired back at once. He had also taken off to Sydney for a holiday, so he can’t have been as upset as he’d claimed. He probably also had at least one small affair to salve his ego. Men did in those situations, usually with younger women.
So Bella must kick herself out of this paralysis, especially now she’s seen what the pompous goat was holding in his coffin. The bastard knew she’d go to see him. Nobody but Barnaby could infuriate her so much.
But how can she own up that she wrenched the miniature from his grip and replaced it with a card of migraine pills?
Bella feels a choke of hysterics. She sets her glass beside the bowl of lavender, ducks off the window seat, scoots under the memory of the long box with its satin lining and the pair of shiny black shoes, the dinner suit and plaid bow tie, the cold dead grip, and flings herself on her knees beside the sofa. She grabs Eliot’s arms and buries her head in his chest.
He doesn’t seem to know quite what to do.
Nor does she. She could have given the poor man a little warning.
At last he puts the glass and bottle down and takes her forearms. Bella scrambles up beside him. She winds her hands around his neck, inside his collar, nuzzles hard beneath his ear. Warmth fills her belly. The smell of him, the soft skin of his neck, the tang of whisky.
Eliot holds her so tight she cannot breathe. If he keeps holding her like this they won’t be able to get their clothes off. Bella tugs him up; they begin to move towards the corridor, twined as they are — should they just lie down on the rug? No, if this is the first time she can make love with Eliot and not commit adultery, she wants to take time over it. Which bedroom should they go to? — his, yes, the bed is bigger, she doesn’t want a teenage grapple on a single bed — she’d forgotten how she’d loved the way he smells — as long as they get their clothes off, as long as he hauls her around as he did that one long night, that wonderful night, over his vast expanse of mattress, kissing, rolling, biting, twisting, licking at her, pressing his beautiful long fingers deep into her flesh. Then he’ll tip her part way off the bed while they make love until she screams.
The doorbell rings.
‘No,’ Bella whispers.
Eliot groans.
They glance down the hall to where two shapes are wavering beyond the textured glass. Mormons? Mormons are easy to chase off. It’s even acceptable to ignore them, as long as your door’s already shut. But legs and shoes, an arm, are visible through the crack. Eliot holds Bella to him for a moment, then straightens up at a second, more insistent ring.
He pulls the door wide. Two young people in slim black trousers smile and hold their hands out. They’re wearing labels and carry plastic clipboards.
‘Hullo, sir! My name is Mason!’ says the man with a joyful smile. ‘And this is Layla! Have you had a good day, sir?’
A man and woman: not Mormons then, because they bicycle around in same-sex couples. They’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses either because they’re too snappily dressed and there’s no captivating child along to stop you setting the dogs on them.
‘We’re from Pizza Palace!’ says the woman. ‘We’ve got a very special deal for you this week! We’re signing up your whole street!’
Bella’s first love-making in three months is interrupted for a special deal on pizza? While Barnaby is lying embalmed, probably being viewed this minute by his domineering sister and his histrionic mother? Bella wants to sob: it could be laughter, though it would be an empty kind.
Eliot stands full height. Six-four is pretty imposing. Even if you didn’t know him, you’d realise this man is furious, holding it in.
‘I don’t believe in door-to-door marketing,’ he says in his deepest voice. ‘Not for pizza, vacuum cleaners, or religion. Spread the word.’
He slams the door and slings the chain on. The black and white figures shuffle behind the frosted pane and back off as a third figure clatters up the steps and beats upon the glass with an open palm.
‘Eliot!’ It’s Anna’s voice. ‘I’ve heard about Barnaby.’
Eliot looks at Bella. She doesn’t want to lose the mood, but the pizza offer’s done it anyway.
‘Oh, Eliot,’ she says. What a lovely smile he has: wry, understanding. Damn him. He always seems to
understand her best when she’s inarticulate.
‘Eliot!’ Anna cries. ‘I know you’re there. I saw you. It’s me!’
The selfish cry: me, me! Bella knows one reason she couldn’t decide about children till it proved to be too late. That selfish cry has to be answered. How can you have kids when you cry that selfish cry to yourself, still, every day? Another reason: when your husband cries that selfish cry? When you buy into it and rush to wrap the wounds at every wince and moan? And, oh, be honest, Bella, when you discover how to goad the man and make him wince and moan? She and Barnaby? A pair of children playing games: when she wasn’t being assistant to the magician, she usually played mother.
Bella gives a smile that’s upside down. ‘I guess we have to let her in.’
Anna helps herself to a full glass of the Riesling. It looks as if she’ll overdo the wine as well as the grief-stricken appearance: the sleeked-back hair, black skirt like a slim lace bell.
‘How on earth am I to do this?’ Anna mutters, her forehead pleated up.
Surely Anna ought to see that Eliot and Bella have more to cope with over Barnaby’s death than she does? But Bella follows her usual strategy and keeps quiet.
Eliot lets his hands rise, a gesture of comfort and of warning. ‘Something like this throws us all off balance, Anna. But Bella needs some peace.’
‘It is so unfair.’
‘Death’s like that,’ Eliot growls, and pours more whisky.
‘Barnaby will know how we all feel,’ says Bella. ‘At least, if you believe in a kind of hereafter.’ Bella would prefer not to speak at all, if the only things that come out are clichés.
‘The thing is, Bella …’ Anna takes a swallow of her wine. ‘You refused to talk to him. You don’t know what he wanted.’
Bella manages a little laugh. ‘Everybody knew that. Fun and money.’
‘No.’ Anna takes a breath and dives on. ‘What if he’d planned to have a child?’
There’s an explosive snort from Eliot.
Anna’s face turns fiery and her jaw appears unsteady.
