And then it was also because of Mike, who had impressed her with his unaffected gallantry, with the flash of his boyish smile as he appeared at the bottom of the staircase. He was an innocent. She trusted him immediately, and once he had relaxed into himself, he was alluring in his way. He leaned back, arm across the window ledge, and opened himself to the whole of the room’s possibility. Whereas Arnold Buch sat straight up with one leg crossed over the other and jiggering. He looked at Martha with such brazen intensity that her heart scuttled for cover. His complexity excited her as much as Mike’s straightforward masculinity drew her to him. She moved between them like a cat, performing a version of herself she hadn’t yet encountered. The emerald dress transformed her, entitled her. And those two men saw her only as she was perched on that window seat, by the piano, radiant with stolen confidence and champagne giddiness.
If Arnold Buch hadn’t played the piano and Mary Galmotte hadn’t offended him, they would have stayed the whole night there, but Arnold’s mood was turned. The party soured under his scrutiny, became a mere parade, a spectacle. They were separate from it and better than it. Suddenly Martha felt she had to impress Arnold, she had to prove she was better than the others. He said he was going to drive to the ocean—who wanted to come? Martha rose instantly. She glanced at Mike. She knew he would come too, but she wanted to make sure.
Daisy seemed delighted by the story. She interrupted. Which one, she wanted to know, had Martha fancied?
Martha hadn’t known then, but now she thought she couldn’t have liked one without the other. She wouldn’t have trusted Arnold without Mike and wouldn’t have found Mike interesting enough on his own. Arnold was fascinating in a way that Mike wasn’t. He was unpredictable, his intelligence was disarming, but she glimpsed a coldness, and she bounced right back towards Mike who was there, warm and waiting.
‘Was Arnold Buch handsome?’ Daisy wanted more.
He probably was to some but not to Martha. He was tall but all head, as if his body was just there to carry it around. Except when they had played pool. He was surprisingly good at that. It was the only time he looked to her like a man and not an intellectual. Mike had exactly what Arnold lacked; he was alive in his body.
It was hard to know who was leading the whole thing. Arnold at first because of the car, but afterwards it seemed to be all of them leading and following at once. Perhaps Arnold always was, but he let them think they were too. He was clever enough to do that. He drove like a madman, nearly hit a cat. A good omen, he claimed. He sang a lot, telling them to sing along. Songs like ‘Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying’. He liked those melancholy songs. Mike didn’t sing, he still didn’t sing. They drove for nearly two hours. They were all drunk. The ocean appeared, and the moon hung like a huge pearl above it, and they went straight to the beach, took off their shoes. Mike ran and jumped at the shoreline; Arnold plunged forward, still talking. Moonlight rippled over the sea. They took off their clothes and went swimming. Martha was drunk enough to feel porous and blank, guided by senses, lying between sea and air. Either they were playing at being completely free of any future or past, or for that moment they really were. They stayed up till dawn, watched the orb of sun peep over the horizon while they shivered in a huddle beneath the suit coats. Martha buried her wet feet in the sand.
Afterwards they went to the Continental Hotel. Arnold stopped the car, leaned over the back seat, grinning.
‘Two of us should book the room. Martha, who will you take with you? Do you want to be Martha Buch or Martha Bloom?’
He had laughed at this. Either to hide or accentuate the discomfort that this question raised. He didn’t give Martha time to reply; he said that it was far more beautiful to bloom than to buck. He ushered her and Mike in together, as if they were his underlings or accomplices, pieces in his game.
‘Mr and Mrs Bloom,’ he said and bowed.
The hotel was old and grand, a sandstone building with verandas all around and a view of the bay. They smuggled Arnold up the back stairs. Mike had the key and pushed open the door, already with a proprietary air. The room had languished through winters and decades; its furniture was elderly and polite. There was a pale-yellow bedspread, an armchair and a dressing table with a round mirror. They all edged in. The intimacy of the room made Martha uncomfortable and she went to the window and yanked it open. The early morning flooded in. The air smelt of the sea, and the baker’s truck shuffled past below. Arnold hauled the armchair across the room. He faced it to the window, sank down, hoisted his legs up on a padded stool and closed his eyes.
‘I’m taking a nap,’ he said.
Mike had already lain himself flat down on the bed, perhaps too exhausted to care, or perhaps because he was Mr Bloom. Martha didn’t know. She peeled back the bedspread and curled, careful as a cat, on her side. Mike’s body shifted closer to hers. Like that they slept until the late afternoon. And then Arnold roused them with his singing, his frenzied eyes, holding aloft a bottle of champagne. The night began again.
‘How did it end?’ Daisy asked.
End? Martha threw her hands over her eyes. The end always came with you. ‘I thought you would have guessed. That hotel. It was where I conceived Tilly.’
Daisy leaned closer.
‘With Mr Bloom?’
‘Yes,’ Martha lied. At the last moment she lied. ‘With Mr Bloom.’
26
Who was Tilly Bloom? Tilly didn’t know. Alice had said, ‘Just be yourself.’ That was the whole problem; Tilly didn’t know how to be herself. It was something so natural, so normal for Alice, but not for her. And now she was on her way for her first piano lesson and it was such an awful day, so hot and muggy the air would sweat if it could. The sky had been drained of its blue, and was now scorched a dirty pale colour, a colour that couldn’t even announce itself.
Tilly wished she hadn’t admitted to Alice that she liked Raff. But Raff Cavallo was going to change everything. She would sit with him on a li-lo and sail downstream. Her life had moved longingly towards that moment at the Res. While he had lain there and talked so easily to her, turning his face towards her, her body had exhaled a secret long-held breath and the very tips of her sprang to life. And if she did have a self it had burst out of hiding and filled her so well that she felt expanded with it. Life was different. Larger, deeper, nearer. And all this had made her so much better, so much closer to Tilly Bloom than ever before. Now it was worse than humiliating to think it might not be more than that. Her heart stumbled around inside her like an animal trying to get out. Tilly had expected something to unwind easily, naturally, like the opening of a letter, but instead she had folded herself up and begun to fret.
Alice had met her in the park on the way to her lesson. They shared a cigarette. Alice’s face had that terrible reassuring expression, but Alice couldn’t possibly understand.
‘So, what’s happening? Have you talked to him?’
‘No.’
‘Doesn’t mean anything. He probably doesn’t even know you like him.’ Alice dragged her close and slipped her arm over her. ‘Of course you like him more the more unavailable he is. That’s just what you do,’ she said.
Tilly’s heart was unsteady, flammable. She couldn’t think what to say.
‘Well that’s how he is, though. He never makes an effort,’ said Alice.
‘I’m so embarrassed to be going to his house for piano.’ This sounded dismal.
‘Just be yourself.’ Sometimes it felt like Alice was wiping her clean with a Wettex, dusting her off, plumping up the cushion of her spirit with a sharp pat.
Tilly held her feelings very tightly inside again. She looked away.
Now, as she trudged along, alone in the heat, she understood why Alice’s advice had been irritating. Alice made it seem that being yourself was the simplest thing in the world. As if everyone was just busy being themselves: announcing their love, their soreness, their little vertiginous hopes—stomping forward, saying this is mine, this is me. Did they
all know how to fail, how to fall over, how to be dirtied, half-built, black-eyed, heart limping, pounding and afraid, too?
When she tried to picture the self that lived inside her it was like looking for a ghost. Tilly had steered herself through life so far without it anyway, by watching which way to go, by stepping carefully, by checking herself against others. She studied people’s ways, how she was in their eyes. She shaped herself to fit into the places between them, sliding in unobtrusively, like a girl without a ticket sneaking a seat on the bus. But she wouldn’t know how to behave when she saw Raff. She didn’t even trust herself to be true. This was what hammered at her now as she walked.
She almost laughed at herself: to think she could lose something that she had only imagined having. And yet that was what had wrenched her open—the sense that she had lost something and the feeling of it bleeding out.
She didn’t have to go to her lesson. She could write a note to Daisy and slide it under the door saying she had unexpectedly had to hurry home to look after Ada. She could just go lie down under the tree that Ada called William Blake and wait till it was time to go home.
27
Martha hadn’t told anyone the truth. It had become so conveniently blurred that she could hardly see it anymore. What happened between her and Arnold closed the space in which possibility had lived and brought on a terrible disquiet.
She had always blamed the delirium of the night. She felt they had made an unspoken pact. It was a game and she was the one who lost. For a long time afterwards, she had tried to see it like that. Then she had tried not to see it at all.
She had been asleep when Arnold heaved himself on top of her and did his jagged dance. She had caught sight of the yellow curtain fluttering and her own confusion all at the same time. The air came in silently. She could still hear Arnold breathing heavily at her neck, after he had finished.
For a while he lay on top of her—a dead weight. Then his body began to shake. He rolled off her and crumpled. He sobbed. She was appalled. She was the one who had been abused. Not him. He wasn’t the man she had thought he was. The sophisticate. The dark gentleman. He had invaded her and now he was playing the feeble and broken one. She said nothing. She turned her back on him and listened to his sobs, each one a fist beating against her ear.
She had never asked Mike where he had been for fear that he would ask her what had happened. And she could never tell him. Their lives had grown from this silence like flesh over a wound.
Mike woke them early in the morning. He had the car and he wanted to leave. Arnold was so hungover that Mike had to almost carry him to the car. They put him in the back seat. He lay on his back, his head to the side and his hand dangling from the seat, limp as an uprooted flower.
Mike ignored Arnold and hardly spoke to her. He just sped her away from it, as if he knew what was needed. He drove the car with a gallant straightforwardness that she was grateful for. When, weeks later, she discovered she was pregnant, she chose him to save her again.
She blamed Arnold for cutting off her youth. Arnold and everything about him became repellent. He had insulted her, first with his body and then with his sobs. In comparison, Mike was all substance. In his arms she was prized; beneath Arnold Buch she had been violated. From this she had lurched, wiped her eyes, and in the struggling light of summer, flung herself towards Mike.
She had loved Mike then. But it became harder as time went on to love the man she came to know and not just the man who had adored her. The man whose opinions and aspirations were predictable and small, the man who pestered her in bed, the man whose competence and conformism had once been appealing, even soothing, but now was so stultifying. He had offered her a worthwhile and feasible happiness. By the time she realised it was an enclosure, she couldn’t get out again.
But she did still love him. She loved him because he was there. His reliable arms wrapped her life up in his, as if they were a present to each other that neither had given. But that love was now tired and old. That was just the way it went. Love frayed like old clothes that you kept because your life had been lived in them. She had made the right decision without ever realising it. She should love Mike back. She should show him that she could.
Despite all her efforts to block him out, Arnold Buch still crept into her mind Especially when Tilly played the piano. He had ensured his own mystique by leaving, but he had left this behind, the musical ability. He was an uneasy memory, who had emerged dusty and formal to perch on a chair in her living room after all these years. He was so harmless, even impotent. And if he suspected anything about Tilly, he didn’t say. Her fear of him asking her meant that as soon as he got there, she had wanted him to leave. It was too much, having them all in the same room and Mike telling him how Tilly played piano and suddenly the awful tangibility of her secret hovering between them, a ghost that only she could see, but which they might glimpse. It was enough that they had had to entertain Arnold. She had put on her dress because she had wanted him to see how well they were doing, she had wanted him to envy Mike, she had wanted to win this time round. In the end, what did she care about Arnold and his opinions? She didn’t want to think about it. Her head throbbed.
It was already midday, and everyone had left her in peace. Mike was playing tennis. Tilly had her piano lesson, Ada was next door and Ben was probably cruising the streets. Martha padded down the hall, still in her nightie. She would go back to bed once she had got a glass of water. She stood at the kitchen window staring out at the garden. The poor trees. Maybe she could sit in the shade of the elm tree. It was no cooler inside than out. Her limbs ached. All she wanted to do was lie down in some dark, cool place.
A fox slid past the trees. Or was it her foggy head not seeing properly? Surely a fox would not be there in the middle of the day? It must have been someone’s dog, a red heeler. But then it came out from the shadows of the hedge and sniffed at the base of the olive tree, in broad daylight, just as a dog would, but with its blackened socks, brushy black-tipped tail and the unmistakeable fox face.
Martha was astonished. Here was the fox that killed her chickens. Seeing it was like finally seeing the unseen. The hidden showing itself, the darkness standing there in the light. It was the fox of all her childhood stories. The fox that tried to eat Henny Penny, the fox that cunningly lured the duck from the pond, the bird from its perch, the lamb from its mother. The one that had bitten off Peachie’s head and broken Bolshie’s neck. She was filled, almost childishly, with a primal fear. It was as if her very own dark secret showed itself in the blank, white sunlight, sniffing, as if it were only a dog. Martha’s skin prickled.
She opened the door. The air was unbearably hot. She would be sunburnt in an instant. She should forget it, but she was walking quietly towards the fox, and the fox had stopped sniffing and was looking at her. It was larger than she had expected—probably a male. Martha stopped and stood still. She expected it would slink away, but it came closer. She stood still, waiting to see how close it would dare to come. It walked towards her, its head at an angle of inquiry. It was now so close Martha leaned back, momentarily frightened by how close it was and how it looked up at her. Foxes were scared of people. She shouted shoo and kicked out at it.
The fox sprang at her foot and sank its teeth into the bare skin.
Martha screamed. The scream came again as if from someone else. This didn’t happen. Foxes didn’t attack people. Martha shook herself from her own disbelief. She dropped down, and her hands pulled at its jaws. The pain was terrible. She shouted at the fox now, as if it was a dog. As if it would obey. Stop it. Blood ran from its teeth, her blood. Its grip was like a steel trap. It was quiet, experienced, a calm predator. It didn’t growl or writhe, it just bore down, ignoring her commands. Her fingers weren’t strong enough. Her palms sweated. It was her strength against the fox.
No one would come. Martha realised this with horror. Did animals fight till the death? This was killing. She was being attacked, just as the chickens had been. T
he fox that killed Peachie was trying to kill her. She kept screaming at it, as if the fox would respond. It had made a terrible mistake, an error of judgment. She was a person. She wasn’t prey.
Her hands worked desperately to open the jaws. Then, without warning, the fox let go and with a flicking snap latched onto her hand. She heard her screams as if they belonged to the air; they were hysterical, mixed with breath, high-pitched. She ran towards the large trunk of the pine tree, dragging the fox, she slammed it against the tree, her cries now like grunts. Still it held. She sank to the ground; the fox was on its side. Its yellow eye staring intensely at her. Her knee pressed heavily on its throat. The fur was warm. She felt the animal beneath her and leaned all her weight onto it. Now it was she who was crushing. Her breath came fast. Between them, Martha and the fox, something locked, as if neither could give way without giving everything. She pressed down harder.
The fox lay motionless on the ground. Could it be dead now? She felt a hot rush of relief, and her head dropped. Her foot throbbed. All she wanted was to get away from it. She lifted her knee slightly. The fox didn’t move. Its mouth fell open, and she took her bloodied hand away. The fox lay still. Martha stood up and her knees buckled. She closed her eyes for a moment.
Suddenly the fox was just a small animal that had made a terrible mistake.
Martha stumbled to the house and slammed the door. Her breathing was still fast. She put her hand to her chest, tried to slow it. She was covered in sweat and blood. Her nightie clung to her. She had to look at the foot. The blood was thick and sticky around the jagged wound. There were gashes on her hand where the teeth had dragged. She went to the bathroom, stuck her foot under the bath tap, and washed her hand at the same time. The blood ran; translucent red ribbons of it poured over her foot. She found a bandage and wrapped her hand in it and then plugged the holes in her foot with cotton wool and wrapped a sock around the foot. She limped to the phone and rang the hospital. A woman answered.
The Last Summer of Ada Bloom Page 15
