by Angela Huth
I took the bus home, too, and reflected no more on the banker or the job I had turned down in such cavalier fashion. Maybe I should live to regret it, but I don’t think so. My regret is of a different kind.
Home, I looked round the dreary little room, poured myself a glass of wine. I had not telephoned Carlotta, as I’d meant to, because there seemed to be no pressing need to get on with the restoration of the house. I was already used to it as it was, found its imperfections rather soothing. Besides, I hadn’t the energy to face Carlotta’s relentless liveliness just yet. I needed quiet … in which to think of Isabel.
I had not rung her, either. I was anxious to make sure she had believed me. But perhaps to her the incident in the cellar had been so trivial she had forgotten it already, and to start explaining it again would give it an importance that could actually undermine my assurances. The arguments swilled around in my head. Time went by, I did not make the call. I could only hope she believed my explanation. The puzzlement was – and I’ve been through all this so many times – that I could have sworn that, just for a second, something had flared within her, too. Some recognition. Had I not been aware of that, I would not be as confused as I am now. Perhaps, when I see her next, there will be clues.
When I let myself into the house the telephone was ringing. There was no answering machine – another mod con I suppose I’ll have to get – so it rang and rang … persistently. I took off my interview tie, undid my collar and answered it with the kind of physical reluctance that makes your limbs clumsy. I fell over a chair.
Carlotta.
She listened impatiently to my apologies for all the huffing as I tried to untangle myself from the telephone cord, and pick up the chair as well as myself from the floor: sympathetic she was not. Then she barked the news that unless I was positively not going to be there, she’d take the opportunity to come round this evening. She had a lot to show me, and as builders were lined up to start, I had better start thinking about where I could move to for a few weeks. This threat rendered me silent. I had no desire to move anywhere. I might have to inform her that I’d become very fond of the William Morris curtains, and the general shabbiness, and re-decorating would have to be postponed. But all I said was that I’d expect her at seven.
The telephone rang again. Dan, this time. First moment of pleasure of the day. I sat in the one armchair – savouring possibly its last moments of sagging seat and threadbare arms – and listened to his accounts of Rome and Nairobi. Dan only has to go a hundred yards down the road and can come back with a good story. Forced abroad, his richesse of anecdotes requires much of a friend’s time, and he knew me always to be a keen and sympathetic listener. Perhaps he had missed me as an audience all the time I’d been away. Now he described to me a dozen small details that no one but he would notice, and made me laugh and raised my spirits. In return I told him about the interview, and was pleased he agreed I’d done the right thing. I told him Carlotta was coming round to sort out the house, and I rather dreaded all that. His – jokey, I think – advice was to keep her at a distance: with the best of intentions, she was known to take over peoples’ lives. But he assured me she’d do a good job on the house, and talk about Carlotta ran out. Then Dan said Isabel was planning to go down to Dorset for a few days to visit her parents. He suggested we should have lunch in the next day or so, and I could fill him in with the way my life was going. I agreed, wrote down the name of an Italian restaurant in my empty diary.
We’d been talking for almost an hour when I put down the telephone. I pictured him going downstairs, perhaps, telling Isabel of our lunch plan. I could not imagine her expression. Noncommittal, I suppose. Not a very exciting piece of news.
I wished she wasn’t going away. I wish so much she wasn’t going away.
GWEN
When you’ve been working for people for several years you can’t help but pick up on things. With Mr. Grant back, I could see Mrs. G was much happier. She’s used to his coming and going, of course, but she always misses him. Though she never says anything, I can tell. Something about her.
At our coffee break the morning after Mr. Grant got home, she told me about Mr. Bailey, their old friend, coming round on Saturday. He’d taken her and Sylvie for a ride in his new posh car, she said. So that solves that mystery – the mystery of the tall man I saw hurrying down the steps. I don’t know why, but I’d had a nasty feeling that there had been some kind of a ding-dong. Some kind of unpleasantness. The way Mrs. G had stood so straight, stiff. But it must have been my imagination. I couldn’t see very well through all the greenery and that.
As for myself, I’ve put Gary out of my mind. There’s no point in letting him haunt me, disturb my nice quiet life. On Monday morning, giving the front hall a special polish for Mr. Grant’s return, I felt so safe it was hard to believe that Gary and his nasty ways existed. I felt confident, happy in my work. And a good idea did come to me: I’d buy a mobile telephone. I’m not at all a gadgety sort of person, and I don’t like to see people in the street with their blank eyes and their phones clamped to their ears, and … why on the bus do they have to ring someone just to say they’re on the bus? Beats me. All very unnecessary, to my mind. But when it comes to danger, to protection, I’ll have to admit a mobile telephone is a very good idea. So I’ll get one and keep it in my pocket. Then if Gary gets up to any more tricks, I’ll ring the police.
Once I’d made up my mind about all that I felt much happier.
CARLOTTA
Hey ho, I was off. In low-key mode, I decided. Not too much of the old vitality. I had a feeling Bert could be intimidated by liveliness.
I swapped my briefcase for a rush basket – more user-friendly, I thought. In it I put some – but not too many – samples of materials, mostly plain bleached linens … nothing too cutting-edge to alarm him. I took a couple of paint charts and also three or four small sample pots of paint, and a new brush. In the likely event of Bert not being able to envisage a colour I suggested, I would open a pot and brush a few sample strokes on the walls. I thought he might find that fun. He might even see the point of the job I used to do – though thank goodness I’m no longer officially in the business, clients constantly changing their minds and builders letting one down.
As for the matter of builders – rather depending on how our meeting went – I thought I might mention that if Bert’d like to camp out chez moi just for a couple of weeks … well, that’d be no problem. Then I decided I’d change ‘camp out’ – which he might associate with discomfort and student-type quarters – to ‘stay.’ I’d quickly assure him of his own bathroom, linen sheets, and my absence from home all day. Then I’d shrug, indicate it didn’t matter to me one way or the other – it was just a thought.
I found Bert in distracted mood (when is he going to stop doing all this tiresome distraction and pull himself together?). There was half a bottle of wine and a glass on the table beside the revolting old armchair. He just stood in the middle of the room scratching his head and saying was he expecting me? I reminded him of our telephone conversation this afternoon, and he apologised. Said it had been a day of quite important decisions. One of them had been to turn down the offer of a job in banking. He didn’t mention the others. With huge willpower I managed not to enquire further, and hoped he’d appreciate my reticence.
Then he said, looking at my basket, ‘Have you brought me eggs? I could do with some eggs.’
‘No,’ I said. I’d brought samples. Stuff for the house.
At this he looked so forlorn I almost suggested I should come back another day when he felt more up to the business of renovation. But I said nothing. He fetched me a glass, poured me wine.
The part of my plan to sit next to him on the sofa – and I’d decided in the end against wearing the sexy black top – went up in smoke because Bert chose to return to his vile chair. Bit of quick thinking called for here: I sat on the floor at his feet, chose samples of material from the basket and held them up like offerings.
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Bert was profoundly bored by the whole process, but made a great effort – I could see – to take from me a single piece of duck-egg blue linen and declared he liked that. ‘Could be curtains in here,’ he said, enthusiasm waning as he spoke. Then he saw the sample pots of paint and observed they wouldn’t go very far. I wasn’t sure if this was meant to be a joke, or if he was plain stupid. I laughed a bit and explained that I could try them out – here I picked up the brush and waved it – on the white kitchen wall so that he could get an idea. But he interrupted firmly. ‘No, please,’ he said, ‘I’m not a colour man. I wouldn’t want to have to choose from stripes of paint. Please, please, Carlotta – do as I said before, choose whatever you want. I’ve absolute faith in your taste.’ Then he tilted back his head and shut his eyes.
‘O.K,’ I said after a while.
‘Thank you for your efforts,’ he said, eyes still shut. ‘I do appreciate them.’
Eventually he opened his eyes, and I sensed we were both floundering in the uneasy silence. He patted my hand. Avuncular. I could see he was making another effort to stir himself and concentrate on the tiresome business with which I’d come to him. He re-filled my glass. Gave the briefest tweak of a smile, I suppose to tell me it wasn’t my decorating plans that were bugging him, but life in general. Very gently, I broached the subject of the builders, and the need for him to have to move out for a few weeks.
He sighed and said he’d rather anything than try to live with them. Resignation clouded his face. I said he’d probably hate the idea, but he could always use my spare room (which on the spur of the moment I calculated would be the least alarming way of saying ‘Come and stay with me.’). I listed the benefits. I assured him we’d hardly meet, there’d be no having to make conversation at breakfast because I left for the office long before I presumed he’d be up. It was just a thought, I added, and I could quite see it might not appeal to him.
There was a long silence. Again he patted my hand. Then he said, ‘Carlotta, you’re looking very pretty.’
Was that an acceptance? A compliment in lieu of an acceptance? A refusal? I’d no idea.
‘It’s a very kind thought,’ he added. ‘I’ll think about it. I need time to think about what’s best to do.’
I suppose I’m impatient, but I’m irritated by men who need time to think about very simple matters. Infuriated by his lack of decisiveness, I looked up at him with calm and understanding eyes. My reward was his promise that he’d move out next week so, yes, I could give the green light to the builders.
It was at that moment – a resurgence of his distracted fatigue – that I realised the evening was going nowhere. He was plainly not going to ask me out to dinner. And even had he done so, I would have said no. In his boring, self-preoccupied mood it would hardly have been a lively evening. So I stood up, looked at my watch and said I had to go. I was due … he didn’t ask where, and I daresay he knew I wasn’t due anywhere. He came out to the car with me and promised he’d ring me with an answer to my kind invitation in a day or two. We pecked each other on the cheek, he patted me on the shoulder – added bonus, that, I suppose. Then I got in the car and swooped away without looking back.
He was going to be a challenge, Bert was. God, he could be unrewarding, though. My demure, sympathetic mode seemed to have got me no further than my alluring vitality. What should I try next, I thought? And what were the chances he’d come and stay?
These questions frothed back and forth over a sense of pretty acute failure. I needed to talk to someone who could see the whole thing from an objective point of view. I couldn’t face going home to eat the remains of a packet of Parma ham with a slice of past-its-prime melon. I decided to drop in on Dan and Isabel. I knew they’d ask me to stay for supper, and afterwards, when Dan had gone back to his play, I would call upon Isabel – always wise – for advice.
I might even find out a little more about her evening alone with Bert.
DAN
I hate it when Isabel’s away. I know it’s absolutely essential for her to go to the country from time to time, and she doesn’t do it often, so I can’t really complain. But I still hate it. The house, denied her presence, is bigger, emptier. The chill of stillness goes through me.
I’m being ridiculous, of course. Sylvie is marvellous on these occasions. She seems to sense how much I miss Isabel, and keeps close to me. I cooked her spaghetti which she ate with bottled tomato sauce, and said yes to two helpings of caramel ice-cream (Why, I wonder, are we so foolish as to bribe or comfort our children with unhealthy food?). Then we got down to Jane Eyre, which she seems to be enjoying. I read it quite slowly and she interrupts every now and again to ask a question – usually the meaning of a word. When I’ve explained it to her, she writes it down in her book, her private collection of words. If nothing else, Sylvie will have an exceptional vocabulary and I shall be delighted. This love of words has nothing to do with Isabel or me: her curiosity was entirely her own – from a very early age. Of course we encourage her, but we also encourage many other things that she ignores.
I turned out Sylvie’s light and went down to the kitchen. It echoed in a way it never does when Isabel’s at home – or perhaps it does and I don’t notice. I was going to finish the bottle of wine in the fridge and heat up a fish pie that Isabel made yesterday. She always leaves me well provided for, but I still never manage to carry out all her instructions. ‘Scrape some baby carrots,’ she said, ‘and make a salad: there’s masses of watercress and endive.’ But I couldn’t be bothered. I wasn’t hungry. I’m domestically lazy. The vital feeling was to get back to my study as soon as possible and carry on with Rejection. I have a feeling it’s going quite well. I’m enjoying writing it, it buzzes along. But then I often feel that, and what happens? I send off a handsomely laid out edition of the finished product, with a statutory SAE overloaded with stamps for safety, and the result? Nothing. The envelope is not made use of. The script never returns. I never hear what the faceless man behind the desk in the office of some provincial theatre thinks of it. I’m left tormented, and the torment never quite dies. What’s so puzzling is my constant eagerness to return to this form of self-torture. Perhaps one day I shall force myself to realise that I’m no bloody good at writing plays, and I might as well give up. Then, I’d be free.
But I don’t want that kind of freedom. I want to go on trying.
I was reflecting, as I often do, on such painful matters, when the doorbell rang. I finished pouring myself a glass of wine, annoyed. I’d no desire for any kind of interruption. My evening was pleasurably planned. I didn’t want to talk to anyone but Isabel, when she rang later. But that’s the trouble with living in a street of friendly neighbours, and indeed friends: they drop in.
Carlotta, it was. Backlit by the evening sun, a halo of hair frizzed by the strong light. She apologised for not ringing to warn of her arrival but said she’d had a dreadful time with Bert, was fed up, and didn’t think we’d mind her coming round for a drink. When I explained that Isabel had gone to her parents, Carlotta’s face clenched … appalled, disappointed. She backed away – another inch and she would have fallen down the steps. I put out a hand, pulled her through the door. ‘In that case I must go,’ she kept on saying with the hollow firmness of one who has every hope of being persuaded to stay. And what could I do? She looked so forlorn. What had Bert been up to? I was faintly intrigued. All these thoughts skittered through my mind and I saw my quiet evening of writing float through the air and break like a bubble. ‘I’m all alone, for God’s sake,’ I heard myself, saying ‘please stay.’
‘If you really mean it, then,’ she answered, making her way towards the oven.
Carlotta knows our house, our kitchen, well. Often she’s helped Isabel cook. She knows where things are. She’s efficient. She doesn’t have to ask questions. ‘You’ve got eggs,’ she said with a decisive glance at the basket, piled high. ‘Omelettes, then. Salad and cheese and – look – Isabel’s left a mass of raspberries. You
can keep the fish pie for tomorrow.’
She was in charge, I could only thank her. I gave her a glass of wine but she shook her head, and instead put on Isabel’s old apron to protect her tight black dress. Had this been chosen for Bert’s approbation, I couldn’t help wondering? If so, it should have had effect. It showed her small waist and very rounded breasts to great advantage. What I found confusing was that from the waist down, in the disguise of the apron, she could have been my wife. I smiled. ‘Missing Isabel?’ she asked. I confessed I was. I wasn’t much good without her, I said.
Carlotta’s one of those natural cooks who fling in a bit of this and a bit of that, and suddenly something that smells deliciously of herbs and garlic is there, ready, perfect. My darling Isabel is not in this category, far from it. I don’t mind, but it’s hard not to admire someone to whom it all comes so easily. She tossed a salad of glinting leaves, threw in chives, cut a tomato into transparent slices so fast that all I could see was the flash of the blade. I was aware that, in the admiration I felt for her speed and skill, resentment also lurked: that she should be exhibiting this talent in our kitchen, that she should be so much better at all this culinary stuff than Isabel, was unreasonably irritating.
‘Good thing I came,’ she said a long while after we had spoken. I wasn’t sure whether she meant because she could cook for me, or whether she thought that she might make up for Isabel’s absence. I nodded agreement and laid the table.
Over supper she confessed the trouble she was having with Bert. He was so hopeless to deal with, she said – and I was to understand she meant on a professional basis. She wanted to make it quite clear that all she wanted from Bert was friendship. She was in no way ready for another relationship with some dithering man: she had had procrastination, indecisiveness up to here – her hand swooped across one breast rather than her temples – since she’d had to tell Mike to bugger off. I said I quite understood. Fond though I was of Bert, I added, he’d be a tricky number to be involved with. It was not for nothing he was still a bachelor. I’d forgotten about the warmth that intense agreement so often, and confusingly, induces. I could feel this warmth, born of our agreement: it was almost tangible between us. But in a moment it was blasted by guilt. How could I have suggested to Carlotta that Bert was tricky? That was an act of unforgivable treachery. I tried to change the conversation, but Carlotta would not be deflected from her theme: Bert was a loser. Basically – here she shook her head so fiercely that her dotty hair shimmered like the leaves on a tremula pendula – Bert was nothing more than a hopeless loser. And she had made up her mind that all she was going to do was to re-furbish his house, because she was not a woman to break her word, then make no further effort.
