Then, shortly after the Big Italian Adventure fell through, when there seemed to be nothing left to hope for in life, something Philip said to her began a process of understanding. She and her cousin had bumped into each other at a crowded drinks party in a tiny flat on Ebury Street. He said, 'You're rather keen on my friend Alistair, aren't you?'
Rosalind averted her gaze, but then she brought it determinedly back again. 'Well, he wrote to me a bit after that ball you took me to, that's all. Actually, I haven't seen him for ages, and when I do it's only by chance, at a party like this,' she said.
Philip was amused by her uncharacteristic petulance. 'Well, I shouldn't be at all surprised if you hear more from him now, Rozzy.'
She looked at him hopelessly.
He laughed—he was always irrepressibly charmed by romance—and leant towards her. 'Listen, he's just been offered a pupillage at Alan Campbell's chambers. You know Mr Campbell, don't you? Great friend of your wonderful mama's—probably madly in love with her like everybody else. Anyway, this is between us, but apparently there's no question of their not taking him on. Mr Campbell told my father he's the best candidate they've seen in years. Great future ahead of him and so on. Alistair's going to be a huge success.'
'Oh,' she said, nodding, not understanding how this related to her. 'Good for him.'
'He'll ask you out to dinner in no time. Bet you.'
It was just as Philip had said. At first it was merely to friends' parties, though: he asked if he might escort her, if they might arrive together. She was delighted.
Having the opportunity to watch Alistair with friends less close to him than Philip, she began to notice how insecure he was. She saw he was pretending to have had all the experiences they talked about so casually—shooting, fishing, skiing. It wasn't pretending exactly: he just let it be assumed that he knew exactly what they were talking about by remaining completely still and saying nothing. She could feel the brute force of his self-composure as she stood beside him. She could not imagine why he thought it was necessary, when his friends were plainly so much in awe of his intelligence–just as she was. But nothing could throw Alistair off his brilliant argument like being asked how good his tennis game was or a suggestion they all try some swanky new restaurant together the next week.
When her mother first brought up the subject of Alistair, Rosalind felt the issue at first-hand. 'Suzannah tells us you've got a young man,' her mother said, her eyes not lifting from the newspaper.
Rosalind buttered her toast, pressing out this betrayal of confidence under her knife. 'No, I haven't.'
'Oh?' The paper lowered. This simple exclamation of her mother's could mean a thousand different things. It was always an invitation to do better. 'What I mean is, he's just someone I know. That's all. A friend.'
'I see. We've met him, haven't we?'
Suzannah really was very indiscreet. Rosalind swallowed her toast and said, 'Yes, at Philip's twenty-first birthday party.'
'That friend of Philip's? From Oxford?' her mother said, plainly in full possession of the facts.
'Yes,' Rosalind said.
'With the dark hair and the rather gaunt look? Terribly earnest?'
'Yes, I suppose so.'
Rosalind thought Alistair was chiselled, not gaunt, and 'terribly earnest' did not relate at all to the vicarious thrill of sitting beside him at a party and hearing him talk on any subject in the world. Of course, the biggest joke and pleasure of all was that he would break off his brilliant argument to ask if she needed a refill! It was crazy—that intellectual young man being interested in dull, ordinary her. She had laughed and laughed internally when he told Philip, 'Tolstoy can wait a few minutes,' because he was getting Rosalind another glass of fruit punch.
'Well,' said Rosalind's mother, pausing to sip from her coffee cup and replacing it carefully on the saucer,'I hear he's not stupid. Alan Campbell appears to think he's worth something, anyway. But, Rozzy, you mustn't go falling in love with him.'
For the first time in her life, Rosalind's curiosity overwhelmed her instinctive desire for privacy. 'Why not?'
'Why not? Because he couldn't possibly look after you, darling. One can tell things about a person's upbringing—the standards they're used to ... There's a certain polish. Don't make me spell it out.'
'But he's going to be a barrister.'
The newspaper was already up, seemingly impregnable. 'Is he?' came the weary, sceptical reply.
'Yes. With Mr Campbell. He must have said so. It's a very good profession.'
'I'm aware of that, Rosalind, but he'd be starting from scratch. Most young men you might be interested in have already got something to begin—'
'Mummy, I think you've got the wrong idea about him. I think Suzannah must have given you the wrong impression. She truly doesn't know anything about him. He's one of Philip's best friends, you know. They're inseparable.'
Helena Blunt was unused to hearing Rosalind challenge her, but she respected spiritedness and she smiled behind her paper at this rather touching ploy of using her favourite nephew Philip as a sort of royal seal of approval. She could not imagine what it would be like to be as simple-minded and transparent as her younger daughter.
Rosalind had never attempted to conceal or deceive before. But when Alistair told her about his mother—a story that, after all these years, had proved to be a lie!—she had known her parents would look down on someone who did sewing for other people and lived in a tiny cottage in a village somewhere in Sussex, the name of which she could never remember, though she knew she must have been told. The fact that Mrs Langford was a widow, that she might have been a serious writer but used all her time and talent on doing underpaid translation work would have left her father cold. Her mother might have liked the idea of it, though: she would have respected Mrs Langford's courage and cleverness. But ultimately, Rosalind knew, her parents wanted a Hugo Ellerson for both of their daughters.
There was no question of depicting Alistair as a Hugo, but she could at least manage the picture he gave of himself in accordance with what she knew about her parents' prejudices. That these prejudices were nothing more than the standard snobbery of the day was something Rosalind learnt with mounting disillusionment. Like most children, she had grown up thinking her family was rare and exceptional, engaged in a unique drama.
It did not give her pleasure to be dishonest. She had always known that certain things Alistair told her didn't ring true, or didn't contain the whole story—of course she had. Not that she had doubted for a moment that his mother had died of lymph cancer, but it had been peculiar that there was not one other family member to meet and not one friend in existence from before his Oxford days. And he was incapable of talking about his father: there was only the bald fact of his death. It was as if Alistair knew nothing about him.
But Rosalind was in love, and, improbable matchmaker though he was, dry, sarcastic Alan Campbell had spoken so highly of Alistair and his professional potential that her parents were able to contemplate the idea of a marriage. So long as his past went consistently unmentioned, he might redeem his present with his future. Under these unspoken conditions, he began to be invited round for lunch or drinks.
Rosalind saw that Alistair's quick brain had propelled him into a world whose rules she had never even defined as rules before. Just as his mind made her feel authenticated and safe from exposure to the intellectual ridicule she constantly feared, she made sure to offer him what little she had in return. She took great care slowly to lift the right spoon or fork at dinner so that he could imitate her. She said, 'Why don't I take your arm?' or 'Why don't you help me to put on my coat?', or, 'Look at me, barging ahead, so you can't even open the door for me!' at all the right moments. She took great trouble with her appearance and saw what good it did him to walk into a party with her on his arm.
But she also began the long habit of pretending to Alistair that she did not notice the gaps in his account of himself. Of course, it had always preoccupied her
that he did not have any photographs of his 'beloved' mother or, in turn, that his mother did not appear to have left him any of her possessions. Rosalind was acutely aware that, after those first heartbreaking descriptions of his mother's work, Alistair never told a single anecdote from childhood. It was as if he had no past and she conspired with him to maintain this illusion, in public and in private, because she understood the agony of a sense of inadequacy, even if she did not understand its source in him. This subtle transformation of sympathy into deception was Rosalind's first act of love.
Now she looked down at the frightened face in the newspaper cutting. The weak, frightened, stupid face. Alistair had never failed her before, and she had never failed him. This was what love was: it was not failing each other. This was what they had silently agreed. And between them, with each other's help, they had never said or done anything wrong in front of anyone—even each other.
But now in her hands was a flash-lit portrait of failure: this photograph, taken by an unthinking stranger. How much better it would have been not to know about Alistair and Karen Jennings! And if only Ivy Gilbert had not had an attack of sentimentality about a son who had not contacted his mother for almost forty years, a son who had been heartless enough to tell everyone his mother was already dead! She would rather have lived in ignorance of these facts.
Yes, she answered the Sophie in her mind, more dishonesty. So what? Wasn't it better than this? After all, for a great many years dishonesty had looked like health and happiness, like life. And honesty? Honesty looked like her husbands shamefaced picture in the paper, like her daughter's starved body, like death.
Her lip curled. The fear on Alistair's face was grotesque: it was revoltingly intimate, like the smells you would never dream of mentioning, the sounds you pretended not to have heard. She began to cry. She felt contaminated. She pushed the cuttings safely back under the mattress because she could not stand the sight of her husband's fear any more.
Chapter 15
Alistair put down the receiver in the hall. 'Well, it's all done now,' he told Rosalind. 'I've arranged for the industrial cleaners to go in tomorrow afternoon. I left a box of things there that might interest Ivy and Geoff. I'll just send them the keys,' he said. 'It's just so much simpler that way.'
The rapid aversion of his face after he had said this made it obvious to her that he did not want to explain himself. He had said he might see Ivy Gilbert in person, and Rosalind thought he should, out of respect for someone who had cared enough to call and announce his mother's death. But he had decided against it. Rosalind sighed inaudibly and pushed the hair off her forehead.
Alistair picked up the envelope containing Mr Wilson's 'breakdown', which she had put beside him while he talked on the phone. 'Very efficient, these estate agents,' he said, holding up the letter. He was in the habit of holding things up as proof these days—cups, books, his glasses, whatever he had referred to abstractly in speech.
'Good. I'm glad,' Rosalind said. She was carrying a laundry-bag stuffed with clothes. She had it propped on her hip the way she had carried Luke and Sophie when they were little. She began to climb the stairs.
'Goodness, look at all that. Has that son of ours got you doing all his washing? Can't the cleaner do it?' Alistair said.
She turned and furrowed her brow 'I've done our washing for years, Alistair. It's a total waste of money having Lani stay an extra hour just for two people's washing. She irons your shirts, of course. That's the hard part. I just bung it in the machine and flick the switch.'
'Oh, I see.'
Hadn't he heard her reduce the quality of her actions to mere mechanics on some other occasion only recently? This troubled him for a moment. But, as ever, he was profoundly struck by how unspoilt she was. He had made a lot of money, but somehow she had never treated it as hers, never indulged herself. She made her clothes last; she still wore the watch she had been given for her twenty-first birthday. He wished he could give her a present—but of course it would look like guilt rather than a genuine desire to see her smile about something—which, in fact, it was. He would have liked to buy her the silk jacket she had admired one afternoon a couple of months ago as they walked back from a restaurant. They had eaten lunch together—just the two of them, which was rare—and as they caught each other's eye over the menu, a silent acknowledgement had passed between them. It was a whisper, a nascent anticipation of peace to come. Stretched out ahead of them was a series of quiet lunches, discreetly luminous as a string of pearls. What could be so bad about getting old if it was going to be like that?
Retirement could seem to Alistair to be a kind of annihilation. He was liable to bouts of panic, to feeling a landslide of his identity. 'My occupation gone!' he would say to himself, only half believing that he was being melodramatic. But that afternoon Rosalind's calm gaze had penetrated the depths of his fears. Perhaps it really was for the first time that he imagined they would read the papers after breakfast, that she would prune the roses, that he would collect the Venetian glass he had always admired in pictures. One of them would say, 'Shall we take our books out on to the terrace and just sit and read for a while?'
'Yes, what a lovely idea. Shall I bring some tea? We can look at all our letters after lunch, can't we?'
Perhaps these gentle routines really would soak up the frantic significance of his dashing from court to chambers; perhaps they would blossom it all out in a garden of softer colours.
'Oh, lucky you!' Rosalind said, pointing at the menu. 'They've got Tarte Tatin, darling—your passion.'
'Aha!' he answered, thinking he really was very lucky indeed.
Yes, he thought. Her ordered mind, in which everything was clean and folded and sprinkled with lavender water, would steer him quietly towards ... sleep. There would be no annihilation. This was love, not the eroticized battle of intellects which he had dreamed of in secret, which had excited him dangerously when he was up against a woman in court. Love was bringing out a jumper, an extra cushion, sweetly remembering a favourite dish. He felt wise and happy that afternoon.
The jacket was still there—he had driven past the shop with Luke. She would have looked beautiful in it: the dark pink would have brought out the elegant pallor of her complexion. Why had he not rushed in and bought it for her straight away, when she stood there smiling at it after lunch? Why hadn't he ever done that kind of thing impulsively, he wondered.
It occurred to Alistair that this last sequence of thoughts was probably typical of the adulterous husband: choosing from a range of palatable remorse options, he had decided to feel he had not bought his wife enough presents.
Rosalind had noticed he was doing the odd sentimental expression he had developed recently and she averted her eyes, faintly disgusted.
'Have you heard from Sophie?' he asked quickly.
She jogged the laundry-bag as though it had wriggled away from her. 'Um ... yes. I was going to tell you about it,' she said.
'Oh? What's happened?'
She saw how white his face had gone and she knew he imagined Sophie had hurt herself. 'No, it's nothing like that,' she said. 'Don't worry.'
'Thank God. What, then?'
'She's just gone away, that's all.'
'Gone away?'
Rosalind came back down the stairs so that she was level with him. She put down the laundry-bag. 'Yes. She's got herself a teaching job.'
'A teaching job? What?'
'Yes, teaching English.'
'But she's a journalist. She's got a job at the Telegraph, for goodness'...' He spoke abruptly, without thinking, jogged by his paternal pride, which was as sure in him as the patellar reflex. As soon as a stranger exerted the slightest pressure at the relevant point, it had him boasting about his clever daughter: 'Yes, I have. One of each,' he would explain, 'thirty and twenty-eight. My daughter—she's the eldest—she works for um ... for the Telegraph?' (This odd questioning emphasis had first been added to this setpiece to imply modesty, a sense of proportion that recognized the
re were people in the world who had never heard of the Telegraph. But the formula was repeated out of pride, as he soon discovered there was no other reaction available to the listener, who was invariably English, than a stressed 'Yes, of course - the Telegraph', which might refer to his odd tone—or might be an expression of awe.)
'Yes, Sophie's done tremendously well,' he would say. 'Of course, she's the real academic of the family.' He was so starry-eyed when he spoke about her.
'Well,' Rosalind said, 'I'm afraid she's given up her job.'
'But her flat. Her job. Her flat,' he said senselessly. 'She just bought that sweet place in Chiswick. What do you mean she's gone away? Where?'
'Ghana. She's gone to Ghana to teach English.' Rosalind found she was enjoying telling Alistair this. She took in the shock on his face. Was this the power Sophie had enjoyed as a teenager? She could see its appeal. She shrugged casually saying, 'Yes. She wrote and told me,' knowing this hidden intimacy between herself and her daughter would hurt him.
'She wrote you a letter?'
'Yes. I only read it yesterday. It had been sitting there for a while—I'm not sure how long, but she said she'd send an address when she was settled.'
'I don't understand,' Alistair said.
'Well, there isn't much to understand, is there?'
'But I thought she liked her job. She did so well to get it. She's worked so hard. And the flat—that was a big landmark.'
'She wasn't happy, Alistair. You know that.'
His shoulders sank. His eyelids lowered a little. 'I do know that. Of course I do,' he said quietly. Then he rubbed a hand over his face. 'Oh, God, is this all my fault?'
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