* * *
“Well, you two … you couple.”
Hubert smiled. He and Elizabeth, Dominick and I were having a welcome-home dinner at a restaurant close to their home. Elizabeth was not a cook.
Bronzed, hair bleached, dressed in cream silk shirt and dark brown skirt, Elizabeth talked of Greece. Each word was shot through with love. She spoke of colour with her pretty painter’s eye, and I felt sure that inevitably she had entered her Greek period. Its blue-green lightness and celestial white would be broken only by some cascade of blushing pink petals. Or perhaps, for dramatic contrast, a black-clothed peasant would ride or stride his or her way across the canvas.
“Well, Madame et Monsieur Hubert Baathus, newly wed … happily married … give us a definition of married happiness.” Dominick was always searching for definitions.
“It does not exist,” Hubert said.
Elizabeth looked shocked.
“Marriage has no intrinsic happiness. Happiness is to be with the one. And to be the only one for the other.”
“With or without marriage?”
“Yes. Though the ease and convenience and pleasure of formal togetherness is a delightful thing. A wise thing. So marriage is wise happiness. No?”
“Your English is improving dramatically.”
“Thank you, Ruth.” He smiled at me.
“Hubert’s English is only a little stilted when he first meets people. He is shy.” Elizabeth spoke.
“Shy? … Only a little,” I replied.
“Wise happiness. I really like that. You both, I hope, will have years and years of wise happiness.” Dominick raised his glass. “To wise happiness—the happiness of Elizabeth and Hubert.”
We all went back to Hubert’s flat, now their home, for coffee. It was a masculine flat, heavy, dark woods, paisley-patterned curtains, leather sofas—conventional, though elegant. The handsome abode of a handsome man. He looked at me looking at the flat.
“We’ll move to Paris in a couple of years. It seemed pointless to set about furnishing a new house.”
“Is that definite?” Dominick asked. I was still digesting the thought of separation.
“Oh yes,” replied Hubert.
“That’s why I’ll continue to paint in my studio, until we go to Paris,” Elizabeth added. “Hubert assures me that I will have a studio, high at the top of the house.”
I envisaged a new Paris period of rooftops—grey-slated. Which cliche would she pick? Wise happiness was, I felt, going to be very boring. But if I were Elizabeth, what would I find with Hubert? If I were Elizabeth?
“Well, we must leave you two. It’s a joy to see you back again. So harmonious. I’m always searching for mathematical harmonies—their beauty would astound you. The Greeks believed they were the essence of goodness, you know.”
“Why, Dominick. I’ve never heard you speak so romantically about your work before.”
“No, Ruth. Perhaps I’m afraid of mockery.” He did not say whose.
“Love’s a miracle. A way of seeing someone … suffused by light. It’s like my painting, my unfashionable, light-filled painting. Love’s an extra dimension to sight. It gives a light that only the loved one seems to have. And only the lover sees. That’s how I see … Hubert.”
Elizabeth turned away at the end of her extraordinary little speech. A speech quite out of character. In her thin, fine face there was a frightening fierceness. Had I, through my astonishment, betrayed my hatred? Had she run for cover?
“Previously, my life was a little spoiled and selfish. Elizabeth has made me better.” Hubert, handsome, happy—and humble.
“And what is the outward sign of this improvement?” I tried to sound mocking.
“There’s no outward sign, Ruth. But I have changed. For example, I mock less.”
I had been put in my place.
“Well, Hubert, your English has certainly improved. No problem with nuance anymore.”
He laughed.
“Oh, Ruth, you too will melt.”
Dominick winced at this implication that he was ineffective in thawing my coldness.
Sensitive as ever, Elizabeth noticed. “Dominick has, I think, already started the process. Now I’ll be very French, and give you two kisses and say au revoir.”
The kisses were perfunctory. We waved goodbye, and left. The less harmonious couple.
NINE
* * *
Is it possible to seduce a happily married man in the early days of his marriage? Particularly a man who sees in his new wife qualities that have meant little to him before.
The ordinary strategies would most certainly not work. Swimming too close to him in the discreetly hidden pool at Lexington, or over-enthusiastically leaning forward in low-cut gown, which I rarely wore anyway. Such full frontal assaults were not for such as he.
At a celebration dinner for my parents’ anniversary I wore a perfect curve of dark, red velvet. Though it served to emphasise the ripeness of my body, I knew the effect to be of little interest from the lack of tension in his open, smiling response. And, to be truthful, I too disdained the slight vulgarity of my display.
No, Elizabeth had not married a fool. And the light she saw around him allowed no access. Slowly I began to accept that, with Hubert, perhaps only patient malevolence might work.
There was a day—at Lexington. We sat together in the garden. Alone, for some reason. And I tried to hold him with my eyes. I moved—subtly—closer to him. He looked at me. Coldly. Knowingly? Then he stood up. “I think I can see Elizabeth. Excuse me, Ruth.”
Was there an ambivalence? In the words? Or had I been given a signal? “Keep a distance.” Had he absorbed me, Ruth? Or simply recognised my purpose?
Sometime after that I suffered a mild illness. When I left hospital I felt weary. And as Dominick persisted with his entreaties, I thought of surrender. To him. In marriage. Why not?
My secret life, with its thrilling labyrinthine ways and fierce cacophony of voices—my own surface voice, its contradictory echo and the imagined voice of my victim—enthralled but increasingly weakened me.
My work, never the centre, became more and more peripheral. “Making my way” in publishing was neither necessary to me financially nor of profound interest to me intellectually. I had proved to myself that I had the ability and the discipline to succeed in my chosen field. My life’s ambition, however, lay elsewhere.
And Dominick was, in his way, appealing. I enjoyed his adoration. He was totally within my control. The idea, once considered, grew more powerful. And Dominick, sensing victory, made a sudden assault of great intensity. Flattered, and not a little exhausted, I succumbed.
We were married quietly in London. Lexington had already had its triumphant wedding day. I did not want to be the second bride.
But later I was again pre-empted. Elizabeth became pregnant. Her son, Stephen, born after a cesarean operation, brought extraordinary joy to both Elizabeth and Hubert. Their flat was re-organised for the new baby, and Hubert’s return to Paris was postponed. The proud father—the happy husband—remained pure.
And Stephen became a catalyst for William, who was born almost two years later by easy vaginal delivery—a son for me and for Dominick. Now Dominick had everything he wanted. The woman he loved, and a son. Is it any wonder that I sometimes sought to punish him?
I was, however, a good mother. A dedicated mother. When I looked at William I ceased to think. I discovered in myself a desire to worship. Porcelain perfection, bathed by me and then dressed again. The impenetrable mystery of cries and silences, and eyes that gazed back in flat knowingness.
Later, a tough, sturdy mobility, moving towards me. Then, old sounds made new. Mostly for me. Surely it should have been enough. For me. For anyone. But then it never has been.
When the maternity nurse left, everything to do with William was done by me. Dominick was both surprised and elated by this.
I knew my love for William entranced him. So there was solace for Dominick.
I kept a balance for him. It seemed only fair.
Having bought the adjacent studio flat, with great care to maintain his beloved harmony of dimensions, Dominick created a space of order and symmetry for his beautiful wife and child.
Against a backdrop of white walls, he placed, in careful patterns, a geometry of furniture. At angles, touching, cream chaises-longues, a circle of black chairs, a perfect rectangle of low wooden tables with wrought-iron legs—old Indian tables, he told me. An antique globe dominated one end of the living room and a magnificent telescope stood at the other.
William’s room was small, buttercup yellow. On his bed, impossibly coloured green cows and shepherds seemed to chase each other through a yellow field of flowers. He found them soothing, and grasped his soft cover to him like a rag-doll lover, one who offers no resistance.
Our bedroom was a subtle contrast of blues and navy. Dominick created, behind a hidden door—I have a key—a long walk-in dressing room for me. Along one side, on racks, were the clothes that wrapped round the body Dominick adored. My shoes stood in neat, colour-coded battalions. On open shelves, my carefully folded sweaters sat softly, one on top of the other, an organised rainbow of black and cream and red. A small dressing table contained a pretty array of creams and powders—less attractive objects remained in their drawers.
It was here, in this narrow, dark room that I kept the items belonging to Elizabeth. The high heels—black patent. Two silk slips—one olive green, one black—to which I had made some alterations, to suit the different requirements of my body. Stockings. A hairbrush, a new acquisition. A beret. Also new.
I was aware of the sexual connotations of many of these items and of the purpose to which I might put them. However, even these most intimate accoutrements did not imply a lust for Elizabeth’s body. No, I was much more demanding. Elizabeth never seemed to miss these items. Would you? Such small things? Over years?
Initially, in the early days of my marriage, I was very secretive—hiding them under layers of clothes. Or placing them, with care, at the back of drawers. But as time passed, my dressing room became more and more my private domain, never to be invaded. I relaxed. These “items” were not for normal wear.
They were for secret times. Times when I gazed in fascination at my Elizabeth-decorated body and walked around my dark kingdom in a kind of trance.
The pattern of my early relationship with Dominick continued in marriage. I became increasingly fascinated by my power over him. It was, I knew, a small achievement. A small art. But then I was never ambitious. Few people are. Perhaps there is in us some inherited, ancient knowledge. The majority do not desire the world—knowing on some primitive level that it disappoints. They are quite content to let the blind few pursue their path to wisdom. And to watch those trapped by genius forced to sacrifice themselves, and those trapped by talent to emulate them. Much better to be in the audience, watching the actors find the surprise ending.
TEN
* * *
Perhaps I was numbed by motherhood. I moved through time, as though in a fog. And five years slumbered on to the telephone call.
A call to Lexington, where Elizabeth and I, our husbands both away on business, had decided to spend the weekend.
I took the call. I listened. Then I carefully put down the receiver. I stayed for a long time, alone, in the sitting room. Then finally and very slowly I went to find her. She was cutting roses in the garden.
She turned and saw my face. Something told her to run away from me. From the terrace she ran across the lawn. Half-walking, half-running through parkland, she stumbled through the bushes and staggered on and on towards the lake. Trying to escape from the knowledge I had. The knowledge I would bring to her. When I caught her. Or when she stopped. Which would happen sooner? It was a question of courage. Hers.
And of course finally, magnificent, she turned to me.
I whispered the words.
“No. No.” She screamed.
And she fell—the body’s truth in the great moments of life.
Of all those who could have brought her such a truth, I was the messenger. Selected by chance—Dominick’s trip to California; my parents’ visit to London. I stood and watched her as the knowledge wound itself around her. And I listened, as she made the high, thin sounds of a woman mourning. Razor-sharp sounds that cut the air.
And then, on her knees still, she beat the ground for him. But it resisted. Or if it softened at all, it was only to receive him later.
She was defeated. A defeat so instant, so total, that her past life died in a second. And her new one came screamingly alive. She was stunned alive by an expert, and death had taken her protection away. I saw it all in a second’s pitiless pity. Then, I knelt beside her and comforted the tragic widow. And I thought that I would never break them now. Or ever know her through Hubert. In a sense I had been robbed of my prey.
ELEVEN
* * *
We bury with many different emotions. Rarely with intimations of mortality. “Buried” is the ultimate separation of them and us. As others’ lives are often only dreams to us, so also others’ deaths.
Only occasionally is there agony. And it was Elizabeth’s that day. Grief swelled her face as though all the fluids of the body, lymph and blood, were surging in a wave of revolt, crashing against the rocks of bone structure. Her eyes, however, remained abnormally still.
It seemed excessive to me. But I could feel its power. I kept my distance.
I thought of a year hence, or perhaps five years. Hubert, a dreamy ghost of a handsome husband—a memory to be respected by the second husband. For he would most assuredly arrive, from somewhere in the future. To live the life Hubert had lost. Would it make a difference? To her? In five years’ time?
After the Latin mass, and the searing Dies Irae, Elizabeth—my father’s hand firmly on her elbow, and followed immediately by Hubert’s parents, tall, trembling, not touching each other—led the procession down the aisle of the seventeenth-century chapel in Tours. I walked, profoundly calm, beside my weeping mother. Dominick was not with me. He had, sensibly and kindly, taken a bewildered Stephen and an excited William to friends in Scotland.
The English mourners whispered as they followed the cortege to the small cemetery where Hubert was to join his ancestors.
“Modern plague, car crashes. Biggest killer of men under …”
“No one else was killed. That was a mercy.”
“It took hours to get him out—he was badly …”
“He was terribly … broken. Everything.” The Frenchman searched for words. “Everything … broken …”
Except the eyes. Which of course they closed.
Elizabeth allowed herself to be led from the cemetery and sat in total silence on the flight back to London. She had declined to attend the family gathering at Les Cyprès, the Baathus château. Hunched in the back of the car during the drive to Lexington, she neither moved nor spoke.
When we arrived, she went straight to her rooms. Silently, fiercely, she motioned us to leave. And she stayed there. Hour after hour. Then day after day. In silence.
No speech, no sound of any kind was allowed. When we entered with food, or tried to speak to her about a doctor … about help … she looked at us as though our words were causing physical agony.
My parents grew more and more distraught at her muteness. I tried to calm them. I knew Elizabeth would recover. She would see it as her duty. To Stephen, her son, a duty of care. A duty not to cause further suffering to people who had been so full of love for her. Elizabeth even suffered selflessly.
After four days we heard a scream. Long and high. And then another and another. We raced towards her rooms. When we reached her, she was frantically trying to close the window.
“I have lost him. He’s gone. Just now. He wanted to go. He wouldn’t stay. I couldn’t hold him. I had him in here.” She hugged herself, shaking violently. “Come back, Hubert! Come back! Please, please, Hubert! Come back!” She turned t
o us, desperate. “I didn’t want to wake him. He was so quiet. He was lying asleep, in me. I was afraid you would wake him. When you came to talk to me. Afraid that … he would waken. And he would go. Oh, Hubert! Hubert! He has just left me. He fought his way out of me. I am empty, Hubert. I am empty. I am empty.”
We stood there. Petrified, made into stone by her pain. Unwilling, frightened witnesses to extremis.
Later she agreed to have the family doctor visit her. They remained together quietly talking for hours. When he emerged he told us she would sleep. Possibly for days, on and off. And she did.
It was finally over.
TWELVE
* * *
“We’ve been approached by Derwent Harding PLC with an offer for Alpha Publishing. We’re obliged to consider this offer.”
“We shouldn’t have gone public when we did,” I said to my father. We were all at a hastily arranged family dinner.
“Yes. Well, Ruth, the Board was very keen at the time. And even though I’m chairman, as a family our contribution is minimal.”
“You know, Father, I’d thought of trying to start a book publishing division at Alpha. Perhaps in a few years’ time, when William is older.”
“You’ve never mentioned this to me before.”
“Perhaps I wanted to surprise you.”
“That’s something you have never found difficult. Ruth, we have our responsibilities to the company to consider.”
“A kind of corporate noblesse oblige is it, Father?”
“In a way, yes. We’re still the major shareholders,” he continued. “But it’s the Board’s opinion that this is a serious offer and it must be taken to the other shareholders. I shall offer to resign as chairman.”
“What will happen to Alpha if it accepts the offer?” I asked.
“Well, it will still trade under that name, but it will be owned by Derwent’s. It does mean that our titles will have greater development opportunity. It’s a very good idea really.”
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