Colouring In

by Angela Huth

  ‘Quite,’ I said. Then added (perhaps to make up for my previous betrayal) that I thought it was possible he hadn’t found his feet, yet, back in England. This idea produced a sneering laugh. Found his feet? He’d only come from New York, for heaven’s sake. He’d got bags of money, a house that someone else was going to take trouble over, and plenty of friends. So if he hadn’t found his feet he was, in a word, pathetic.

  Then, suddenly, Carlotta ran out of steam. Her sigh, followed by a silence, was a relief. I noticed her glass, and the bottle, were empty. She looked rather endearing, sitting there, chin in cupped hands, staring out of the window, indignation filtering away.

  ‘Why don’t we go down to the cellar,’ I suggested, ‘and choose ourselves a bottle of something memorable?’ At the word memorable she looked up at me and nodded.

  Carlotta is knowledgeable about wine. She drinks a certain amount and, when we have dinner with her, always produces a very good bottle of something she thinks I haven’t discovered. I don’t think she’d ever been down to my cellar before. I felt it might interest her. She would probably appreciate the money I’d spent on its design – the lighting, the layout, the exact temperature – all things that hold no interest for Isabel. I think she’s only ever been down once since it was all finished.

  I went ahead. As Carlotta was wearing high heels, I gave her a hand down the last few steep steps. When we reached the bottom she continued to clutch my hand, tightening her grip. Then she shook herself free and went over to a corner where my most valuable and prized bottles await the right moment. She still wore the apron. Its strings made two patterned snakes over her bottom. Her head was on one side as she tried to see labels without removing bottles. Then she turned to me.

  ‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘Lucky you. What a cellar.’

  At that moment she looked desperately sad, vulnerable. Looking back I realised I was stirred by the pathos of her. At the time I was unsure what it was that made me want to cross the two yards that parted us, take her in my arms and rid her of whatever it was that had drained her of her usual high spirits.

  I quickly took a bottle from the rack next to me and suggested we go back upstairs. She gave a small shudder – throwing off whatever had assailed her, perhaps. Because when I offered a hand again up the stairs, she shook her head and bounded ahead of me. The odd moment, I realised, was a figment of my imagination. I had mistaken passing thoughtfulness, which had crossed her features like a shadow, for melancholy. Carlotta, shouting from above that she was going to open the French windows because the evening was so warm, was her normal bossy self again. I had misread her, and was shaken by my misreading.

  We sat on the sofa by the open windows that leads onto one of those small terraces that are common to Edwardian houses in London streets. From the garden came the faint smell of lilac: the blooms were just past their best. By day they had that cindery look that comes when some of their flowers have turned brown. But by night they still, just, held their scent.

  We both kept to our far ends of the sofa. We’d sat here, in just these positions, dozens of times, while Isabel was cooking, or upstairs saying goodnight to Sylvie, and in a way it was no different from any of those other times. Except there was, I think, the faintest trace of expectation between us. Not of anything nefarious. But I think I half hoped Carlotta, alone with me, would reveal something she had never before revealed – though perhaps she had to Isabel. She looked at me with smiling eyes and said she promised she would say no more about Bert.

  On the low table in front of the sofa I’d put two new glasses – our most delicate ones, kept for rare occasions – and carefully poured the Burgundy and handed her one. Then the telephone – on the table – rang.

  Isabel.

  She sounded cheerful, as she always does when in Dorset. Easy drive, lovely weather, and her mother had left the deepfreeze full of wonderful things so she wasn’t going to have to be bothered with cooking. I laughed, thinking of Carlotta’s heavenly omelette. How was Sylvie? How was I? About to go up and carry on writing, I said: I’ll ring you tomorrow evening. ‘Miss you, love you,’ I added. We always say that when we’re away from each other, small pebbles of words so well used I doubt either of us dwell on their meaning. They’re just habit, but I daresay we’d be alarmed if we forgot them.

  ‘You didn’t say I was here,’ Carlotta said when I’d put down the telephone.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I sighed. Took a sip of wine, needing a moment in which to answer the question to myself.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said eventually. ‘At least, I don’t know exactly. Something to do with not wanting a long conversation, and with knowing I really do have to get down to work…’

  ‘Would she have minded?’ Carlotta asked. ‘Surely she wouldn’t.’

  ‘No, of course she wouldn’t. I suppose I just didn’t want to get into the whole explanation, Bert not asking you out and so on. It’s up to you to tell her all that, not me.’

  All expectation – if that’s what it had been – between us had now disintegrated. We were left stranded, silent again.

  ‘Try the wine,’ I said at last. Carlotta leaned forward, hair falling over her face. She tasted it, said it was sublime, and returned her glass to the table. Then she rested her head on the back of the sofa, shut her eyes.

  I had never seen her like this before. Vulnerable, quiet, heavy. Nor had I realised that she was, well, quite so oddly attractive: long eyelashes, two dark curved smudges on her cheeks, the two small peaks of her top lip precisely defined. I had always thought of Carlotta as over-made up, eyes lined too harshly, lips too dark. This evening she seemed not to be wearing much make-up. Or maybe it was a crepuscular illusion. Apart from a candle on the kitchen table there were no lights on in the room. The sky outside was that pale darkness, watery from streetlights: the customary early summer night sky over London.

  I sat looking at her for a long time. Then two single tears, one from the outside corner of each eye, appeared, and ran a hesitant race down her cheeks. I was fumbling for my handkerchief when she jerked herself upright with a loud, animal-like noise, and began to sob. Instinctively I moved towards her, held her to me while her body heaved and the cooing noise of her weeping was alarming in the air.

  I don’t know for how long we sat clasped to each other. It reminded me of occasions when Sylvie was small: clutched together, swaying back and forth, I would try to comfort her. I stroked Carlotta’s curls, said nothing. She smelt of roses – tuberoses, perhaps: the scent was too strong. When eventually she disentangled herself from me, I gave her my clean handkerchief and she wiped her eyes. Mascara ran in black streams down her face. I couldn’t help smiling, and she returned the smile.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Anything I can … help with?’ I asked. But she shook her head.

  ‘Just, sometimes,’ she said, ‘living alone – seeing your friends happily married, children, house, family life … Just sometimes you despair … But mostly not.’ She gave another half smile. ‘I think it was Isabel ringing you,’ she went on, ‘that started me off. The idea that after fifteen years your wife goes away for a few days and misses you, and rings you, and really wants to know how you are. I’ve always imagined that one day I might have that sort of thing. But this is self-pitying rubbish,’ she added. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She was scrubbing at her face with my clean handkerchief, making it a worse mess.

  ‘You’re striped as a tiger, now,’ I said. ‘Tiger face. And of course, one day …’

  She gave a small snort of derision.

  ‘No, probably not. But thank you, Dan. You’ve been so kind. Such lovely wine.’

  She picked up the glass, took several sips. Then she handed back the handkerchief.

  I remember thinking it was imperative I get away from her. I took the handkerchief to the sink, ran it under the cold tap, wrung it out and returned to her. I had a distant sense that what I was going t
o do was dangerous, foolish. She stood up. I tipped up her face and began to wipe it clean. I tried to look fatherly.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again, when I’d finished. ‘You’ve been…’

  She couldn’t finish because I was kissing her. She was kissing me. My hand was full of one of her breasts. My inner eye was confused by scarlet flares and miniature fireworks. Carlotta was responding to the slightest movement of my free hand. Then a sudden paleness swarmed behind my closed eyes, bleaching out the colours. With one accord we pulled apart. I saw that the light in the hall had been switched on. I heard the dim slap of bare feet on the floorboards. Turning from Carlotta, I saw Sylvie standing at the kitchen door, looking at us.

  ‘I can’t sleep, Papa,’ she said … and ran towards us.

  ISABEL

  I can’t think why I felt so tired. Usually I’m full of energy. Suppose I’ve been working very hard, trying to complete that large order for the opera. And now there’s this order from New York: a dozen masks for Saks Christmas window. But I can’t face beginning until I’ve had a few days’ rest.

  So here I am in what I still think of as home: house of my childhood. It’s a little odd, being here without Ma and Pa. God knows why they’d rather be in Madrid than Dorset at this time of year, but in their retirement they’ve gone a bit travel mad. Rio, next, apparently. Strange I haven’t inherited their love of seeing the world. Britain holds quite enough for me.

  It’s all as it always was: the grandfather clock in the hall still half an hour slow, its loud tick providing a reminder of rhythm as you flit across the hall – persistent, its mellow voice, but not intrusive. There’s a smell of dog – Chancer, my mother said, would prefer to be with me than be sent away – and everything sags and bulges in the sitting room: flowered chair and sofa covers are so blurred that there’s no distinction between flowers and leaves. The arms of Pa’s usual armchair are threadbare. As for the curtains: fifty summers have left their linings in rags. However gently you pull them small pieces of blanched cotton flutter down. Their edges long ago relinquished their pattern, and now match the bleached patches of carpet near the windows, which was not the idea when Ma chose everything so carefully from Peter Jones half a century ago. There’s no point, as she keeps saying, in re-doing it all now. ‘We’re used to it, we don’t notice the wear and tear,’ she says. ‘We’ll leave it to you and Dan to do what you like – if you keep the house, that is, when we’re moved into some Home, or we die.’

  ‘Of course we’ll keep it. I love it, I love it.’

  I went for a short walk: examined the garden – more ardently cared for than the house – and went on up the hill so that I could look down on the hamlet, the church spire, the roof of the house, the fields that swirl down into the valley – a place I’ve been to a thousand times to listen to the silence. A place so minutely recorded in my mind that to return is merely to confirm: the transparent mental picture is simply coloured in by reality. I took deep breaths, expiring London from my lungs, my heart, my whole being. Then I walked quickly back down the cart track of reddish earth, a path that can’t have changed since it was walked by Hardy.

  Ma, as always, had left me well provided for. In the dusky kitchen – stuff on the shelves, a muddle of things that could have been thrown out years ago, shopping lists of yesteryear, their ink now brown and making me smile – I grill lamb cutlets, and tomatoes from the garden. There’s a silver-framed photograph by the stove, placed between bottles of oil and vinegar so that Ma can see it while she’s stirring: it’s Dan, Sylvie and me some years ago, Sylvie still at the gap-toothed stage. We’re here in the garden, lupins behind us – I can’t remember which summer, exactly. They roll so quickly into each other, melting into a whole ribbon of summers knotted with similar memories later only recognised by Sylvie’s height, or Dan’s greying hair.

  I think of them, now, without me. Dan will have read to Sylvie for a long time, as he always does when I’m away. Sylvie will set her alarm: she’s always afraid Dan won’t wake her in time for school. Dan might remember to heat up the fish pie, then he’ll be off up to his study. Rejection, I understand from the few hints he has dropped, is going rather well. He’s still trying to think of a good title. I must try to think for him on my walk tomorrow. Sometimes, titles just come to me: he’s used several of mine. When I rang him at nine thirty he said he was only just going up to work. He must have read to Sylvie for ages, and then been very inefficient about heating up the oven and the pie. But he sounded fine – he’s always fine when I’m away so I don’t know why I’m so often pricked by a nameless anxiety. In what is now Dan’s and my room when we’re here I get into the double bed and pick up my book, but I’m too sleepy to read. My head is cleared of masks. Through the open window I stare back at a full moon. Dan and Sylvie are safely there, is all I think, and I’m here. We’re all fine. Perhaps I’m the last one to fall asleep.

  SYLVIE

  I couldn’t go to sleep … because. Well, just because. I haven’t a clue why. Some nights it’s just like that. Probably because I spent too long on my maths homework and then got spooked by Mrs. Rochester.

  Chapter Six

  GWEN

  My mother used to say she was a woman of nervous disposition. She said this with such pride it sounded like a boast. For years I’d no idea what she meant, but I would nod in agreement as my mother was someone who didn’t like to be contradicted. Now I know what it means, I’m afraid I might have inherited that same nervous disposition.

  I wake up, nights, in such a sweat, fretting away. Nothing to do with the menopause – that was over long ago, thank the Lord. Sometimes I think I hear someone in the kitchen, though I know I’m imagining things, but I daren’t get out of bed and go and look. But mostly I wake with such a spinning head I can’t stop it. What is Gary up to? Is he trying to scare me? Is that his plan? And if so, why? What have I done to deserve such menace?

  He’s a lonely man, of course: not much to do. I don’t recall he had any friends. Not that he talked about himself much. Didn’t let on about whatever was going on in his mind – not that I asked. ‘There’s a fine line to be drawn between interest and prying,’ was another of my mother’s sayings. She warned me to keep questions to myself in case I should be thought nosey. She herself went overboard in this respect. She never asked me anything: whether I’d fancy another cup of tea, or a new pair of shoes, or how I was getting on at school – nothing. All this not-being-nosey seemed to me like a great lack of interest. My mother had her mind on quite a few things, but they didn’t include me. I remember yards and yards of silence as a child.

  One of the nights I woke up alarmed, thinking of Gary, something occurred to me: I thought perhaps it was revenge he was after … simple as that. Revenge for his own inadequacies. He had a good many of those, but I daresay the one that disturbed him most was the one I was privy to discovering. Yes, the truth of the matter was he was no good in a certain area. Rotten – I would go so far as to say he was on the road to total impotence. Without spelling it out, I did try to make it clear to him I didn’t mind about all that. The physical side of things has never been that important to me, I said – though not in so many words – and after one particularly embarrassing afternoon between the sheets, our so-called ‘sex life’ fizzled out. But perhaps what got him was the fact that I was a witness to his failing, and he wanted to punish me for that. Yes, I thought, that must be it: Gary’s after revenge.

  But having worked this out, I didn’t feel much easier. I was only able to put it all aside when I was at number 18, knowing I was safe there. Knowing he couldn’t get me. I’m damned if I’m going to let this silly fear, this nervous disposition, get me down. But it is hard, knowing someone’s out to get you. Stupidest thing I ever did in my life, befriending Gary. But there’s not much to be done about regret. Regret is a canker in the soul. But at least I’ve got my mobile now. That was a good decision … makes me feel a little bit safer.

  DAN

  Did Sy
lvie see us?

  The question will haunt me until there’s some proof that she didn’t. Her furious eyes were concentrated on Carlotta, who said something about it being late and dashed from the room. I said to Sylvie I’d take her back to bed. I was smoothing my hair, conscious of a red face. I got her a glass of milk which is what she usually has when she comes down at night. She took the milk but said don’t bother to come up. ‘I’m fine,’ she said looking at me hard. ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ she said and stomped off with hunched shoulders: a sure sign she’s put out.

  I spent a wakeful night, cursing myself, cursing Carlotta, trying to work out what had happened. Drink, I assumed. We’d drunk quite a bit during the course of the evening. But I knew that wasn’t the answer. I wasn’t drunk. I’d simply been overcome by a moment of pernicious lust for someone I didn’t even much like. I haven’t been so blindingly struck since I was in my twenties. Protected by my profound love for my wife, fancying other women – however delightful – has never been something I’ve contemplated. Carlotta isn’t even a delightful woman, despite being able to switch on the charm. And I certainly didn’t contemplate anything. I just found myself leaping upon her, almost out of control – boyish. The extraordinary and surprising thing was her response. Had she indicated an iota of distaste at my boorish behaviour, I would have stopped at once. But perhaps she had been contemplating, and things were turning out just as she envisaged they could. God knows what might have happened had Sylvie not appeared. I like to think we’d have come to our senses. I like to think we’d have defied weakness of the flesh. But perhaps that wouldn’t have been the case. Even now, as I think of Carlotta, breast malleable in my hand, hips writhing …