Harvest

by Celia Brayfield

  Relief lightened his eyes and his smile returned. She prayed that he would not try to touch her at that moment. Nick was a great man for hugs, pulling smaller people right off their feet, but when she was distressed she never wanted anyone to touch her. Now she wanted to be alone, searched for a pretext and went outside to find her sun hat by the poolside.

  Five dragonflies were hovering in formation over the surface of the pool. All the village was dozing after lunch; the calm was profound. The gold of thousands of acres of sunflowers and wheat gleamed in the sunshine. The roof tiles burned red, the white stone walls shone, and when wind rippled the crops and stirred the hazel and blackthorn in the hedges, the fields appealed to wash up around the mound of ancient buildings like seas around a lighthouse.

  Just when I thought I was safe. In her mind, Grace repeated the phrase to herself. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. She smiled, then wiped her hand over her face, imposing seriousness. She was feeling fear, a special fear, an old, painstakingly forgotten sensation she had never wanted to have again, the fear that was part of loving Michael Knight. Humour had been her anaesthetic – her humour covered up too much.

  Over the palms and oleanders of the neighbouring garden, the back of the house looked south, towards the distant mountains. Even on hazy days like this one there was a sense of the backdrop of dark, snow-topped peaks. Today there were storms down there, so distant the thunder could not be heard, but even in the brightness the lightning flared silently like fireworks far away.

  Grace collected the cushions, smart in striped Basque linen, and put them under cover at the end of the outdoor dining table. It was a big table, enough for ten people; they had bought it in anticipation of their children, picturing their extended family gathered around it. Time was cheating them of that vision. Nick’s mother had died the previous year, and hers was becoming too arthritic to travel. She had failed to get pregnant.

  The cat had appeared silently through the wall, hoping for fish-heads. Above, she heard Nick closing the shutters of their bedroom against the afternoon sun. He was hurt, and it annoyed her, although he had responded only to her pain and taken no thought for his own. Nick liked to stand on firm ground, he was always questioning her, asking her things about herself she could not answer. Michael had never been like that; Michael was as sensitive as a sea anemone, always withdrawing into wounded silences. Nick wanted everything in the open, whether he understood it or not. Every day, Grace pledged herself not to compare them, and every day she did it.

  The butcher across the road was running up his shutters and the stall-holders of the street market were setting up their trestles by the time she reached home. With relief she ran to the bathroom and got rid of the steak. The smell of vomit pleased her, it was familiar and an honest stink, not some lying fragrance brewed in a laboratory from chemical roses. The meat was still in lumps, brown islands in the white ice cream. She decided to leave the stuff in the basin for a while, let its good ugly smell soothe her.

  Outside the window the pigeons jostled each other on the ledge. They were her friends, she gave them crumbs and the close noises of their scratching feet and cooing conversation went on all day. Although her room was high up, the window was very small and awkwardly set under the eaves, not at all conducive to throwing yourself out. She had taken the room because she liked those little cramped windows; she could be sensible about things like that.

  She slept for a few hours, then woke up in a rush of nervous energy, anxious to dispose of what she had stolen as fast as possible. She turned the bag out on the bed and began to divide up the haul. It was bad to have talismans of deceit in her space longer than necessary; they could spread infection. The photograph frames were really quite pretty, too decorative to sell just for the weight of the silver. Maybe she would keep them until Sunday and try that woman with the kind face who sold old silver at Saint Sulpice. She ought to be knocked out by them, they were definitely antique.

  Damn, Sunday. She had promised her father, his party. Well, this year they could do it without her. This was business, it was more important. He’d get that, he couldn’t miss, the principle on which he’d based his life. Business is more important. She could get Jane to tell him. Or try. Jane was only strong when you didn’t want her to be; when you needed her to stand firm she had a way of oozing away with that wispy half-smile of hers, as if it was something she couldn’t help and was anyway no more important than burning the toast. But Jane would be pleased if she stayed away, that was something you could always do right by Jane.

  Stephen was coming, hadn’t he said that? Adorable Stephen, he always did what he said. Yes, she was sure of it. How lovely. He’d sort everything, he always did. There’s nothing in the world Stephen can’t take care of, even me. Had he said when? Shit. He wouldn’t like this game; if he knew, he’d get judgemental. Have to work fast.

  Having no fingernails long enough, she used a nail file to open the backs of the photograph frames and take out the pictures. Father in uniform and mother in a fox wrap and orchids. A young woman with very soft eyes and long blonde hair, the bride, for here she was again in the wedding photograph, wearing a silly white dress with a peplum and puffed sleeves. Two blobs of babies in cradles, then the mum, dad and the kids all together, not that recent for he looked thinner. Already the boy had that blank look, a little man, a little android, fascia fitted and programme running, standing beside his mother and facing the world with a set jaw. The girl was grinning like an idiot in her father’s embrace.

  That asshole ought to have a memento of this night, she decided. Indeed, he had said so at one point, some slushy line about how he would always remember it. God, why did they always lie so much? Was it an instinct in them, like wanting sex? Was it the same instinct, was there a place on that pathetic little chromosome where the genes for lust and lying slotted together? Perhaps if she was HIV he would already have a souvenir. The notion seemed perversely romantic. No dilemmas then, no need for all these escape plans, the way out was straight ahead. She was not HIV, or they would have told her when they did the blood test. Perhaps they didn’t test for that without your permission. No, that was for ordinary people, if you were pregnant now they checked you out for everything. Still, even if she was, and even if she had given it to him, it would be years before he knew.

  What to do now, to make him remember, rub his nose in it, what could she do? His address was on his driving licence in the wallet. She had a good thick envelope, and a stamp. In the kitchen bin there was a plastic bag. She took the photographs into the bathroom, dipped them, one at a time, into the bowl of vomit, dropped them into bag, put the bag in the envelope, sealed and stamped it.

  Stephen was coming. She remembered, he had said Friday and now it was Friday. How nice. She was always all right with Stephen, whatever came down he handled it. Why should he have to, though? He was sweet, and she gave him so much grief. He ought to be getting on with his own things, with his important business, not mothering a useless creature like her.

  Guiltily she looked around the room. Everything was tidy. Tuesday, Monday, whenever it was when she last dropped a tab, she had gone mad tidying up. Amazing how orderly you could get when you were tripping. No clothes even on the floor, she was still wearing the same things. In the bathroom there was just the shelf, a mess of dust and makeup, and the shower tray was grimy. She could leave them; such a housewife, old Stephen, he tidied and cleaned because he enjoyed it and he would need something to get into.

  He was a policeman too, always looking for her drugs. Well, that was OK, there weren’t any now. Two temazepam in the little mother-of-pearl box, but temazepam was straight, you could shoot as much as you liked if you were really that fucked. A good insurance policy, Mr T. He would bring you down if things turned nasty. It was good to be careful, there were things around now they said turned people into animals.

  All the same, if Stephen was going to be around she wouldn’t be able to get hold of anything. He w
as coming for a week. A long time. Maybe she could catch up with Marc somewhere before Stephen arrived.

  The envelope was still behind the tap, needing to be posted, so she ran downstairs with it. In the street the market stalls were all set up hopefully, polished apples and plump tomatoes, bunches of carrots and onions. She stayed on the vegetable side of the road, avoiding the disgusting butcher with his bowls of bloody liver and cow’s tongues like great white slugs. Suckling pigs looked like dead babies. The postbox was at the end of the street and she slipped the envelope into it. Letting it fall felt good. It felt like dropping a heavy weight which she had been carrying too long. She walked away, imagining that she could float like a ghost.

  Marc was always in the Café Brésil in the afternoons. It was off the Beaubourg, one of those crammed studenty places where you couldn’t hear yourself speak. She was still tired, the missed sleep was catching up. All cities were revolting in August, even Paris; sticky heat, dust, bad-tempered people, nothing in the shops but the end-of-season tat that no one wanted to buy. For a while she drifted along Saint Germain looking in shop windows, then settled on a bench in a little park and let the drone of the traffic and the bustle of people lull her into a doze.

  She came back to consciousness slowly and began to focus on Marc. He did not take American Express. A cashpoint, then a taxi. The streets were already clogged with traffic, weekenders getting away early.

  The café was crammed, people were packed in, eight or nine around every tiny table, yelling at each other through the din. Marc was in his usual place, behind the pillar at the back with a couple of friends, looking like he always looked, thin and blond with a little sharp smile. He was pleased to see her, naturally; one of my best customers, let me get you a cappuccino. He had those little ways of making the business elegant, behaving like a high-class purveyor of luxury goods to a discerning clientele.

  ‘Looking forward to the weekend?’

  ‘A friend’s coming over.’ Across the heads of the crowd, the barman put down her coffee; she scraped off the chocolate powder and stirred in the froth.

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Going out?’

  ‘No. He’s not a party animal. My father’s having a thing for his birthday but I’m going to miss it.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘At his place down in the south. Too far to go.’

  ‘It’s a long way then?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  It sounded like casual chat, but he was figuring out what to offer her.

  Another good thing about Marc, he was really creative about the business, always looking for new things, like he really wanted to give you exactly the experience you were in the mood for, even though you wouldn’t know what you wanted until he gave it to you. ‘You had snowballs?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Acid and E and jam on it. They’re good.’

  She pulled a face, unimpressed.

  ‘Gates of Heaven?’ he offered.

  ‘Gates of Heaven’s really nice,’ one of the friends contributed.

  She agreed with him, but felt a little manipulated. ‘Straight acid would be OK.’

  ‘Certainly. I’ve got strawbs, Martians…’

  ‘Give me some strawbs.’

  A very organized man, too. Everything in little plastic envelopes in an old tobacco tin with green and gold decoration on the lid; she picked it up and admired it while he sorted out her stuff.

  ‘I suppose I’m going to have to get grass off someone else?’

  He nodded his head; Marc considered grass juvenile and beneath him. ‘I’ll give you a present,’ he said as if to make it up to her, sifting through the envelopes with his delicate small fingers. From the bottom of the tin he pulled out a packet with some scraps of white card in it, carefully shook one out to add to the pink square of strawbs.

  ‘One of your free samples? What is it?’ He was very reliable, but she liked to appear cautious. You had to keep people at a distance or they started thinking they could take you over.

  ‘Microdot. They’re new, I’ve just got them. Good, they last you. It’s a trip but there’s gotta be something quite whizzy in them, people tell me they keep you up, keep you going. Try it, tell me how you like it.’

  ‘Supposed to be quite heavy. I wouldn’t do them on your own,’ the friend warned, looking at her as if she was some idiot girl who couldn’t take care of herself.

  ‘Thanks. Aren’t you kind, giving me presents?’ She picked the notes out of her wallet and pushed them across the table. Nothing furtive about Marc, he was in good standing with the management and valued by the clientele. The plastic envelope went into her makeup purse, under the old tissues and the eyeshadow that had lost its lid and put purple powder over everything. There was so much junk in there Stephen would never find it.

  Her street was closed because of the market, so she had the taxi drop her back on Saint Germain and walked the last block. There he was, Stephen, walking out of her hallway and looking up, trying to see her windows. He must have run up to her room while she was away, got no answer. His hair had grown, how cute the way it sprang up and fell forward all shaggy like a pony’s mane. Oh, the loveliness of seeing him, it poured in the way bright sunshine did when you pulled the curtains at midday.

  ‘Imi! I thought you’d forgotten,’ Lovely to run into him, big and solid, his thick heavy clothes smelling of silly aftershave.

  ‘You smell of silly aftershave.’

  ‘But you gave it me.’

  ‘Did I? When did I?’

  ‘Last birthday.’ Such terribly red lips. All that healthy red blood, manly red blood.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. I was touched you even remembered.’

  ‘I must have decided it would be a real Keith and Linda thing to do.’

  ‘Keith and Linda?’ Oh God, that puppy face. She hated it when he looked that way.

  ‘Fabulously naff, like you giving me chocolates.’

  ‘But I’d never, you hate them.’

  She pulled away violently and sat down on a vacant barrow. ‘Leave it alone, can’t you? I think you are a Keith really, deep in the marrow of your bones. You need radiation to burn it out of you.’ Where had it all gone, the joy of seeing him? Now she felt sour and weak, and the putrefying hopelessness that was forever eating away at the corners of her life suddenly multiplied and advanced towards her core.

  ‘Come on, let’s go for something. Coffee, something. Come on.’ His hand, picking up one of hers, was hard and his fingers were cold. Stephen’s fingers were always cold, even now in high summer. When they used to make love, she had liked them, his cold hands.

  She let him lead her towards the coffee shop at the crossroads, only twenty yards further down the street. The woman with the fruit stall outside her door was grinning, showing all her teeth. ‘That woman thinks I’m your sister – she told me after you were here last. I suppose because we’re both tall and we’ve got black hair. Maybe because I’m so awful to you.’

  ‘At least you said that.’ Sensing that she was under discussion, the stall-holder picked out an apple, flourished it, polished its matt golden shoulders and gave it to Stephen, then found another for her. There were thanks, smiles, polite bows, a little conversation. Not my brother, my friend. My special friend. My mate. He is Stephen, I am Imogen. No, not my fiancé. He was last year, now he’s my mate.

  ‘You’ve confused her now.’

  ‘So what. She’s a stupid woman.’

  ‘It’s a good apple.’

  ‘Always look on the bright side, Keith.’

  ‘That’s what I always say. It’s good to be here, Imi.’

  ‘Don’t talk crap.’

  Louisa lay in the sun by the pool, frowning at the girls, Emma and Xanthe, splashing in and out of the water. Antony read a book, sharing the shade of one of the white umbrellas with Jane, who spread a large sheet of paper on a table and was trying
to work out a seating plan.

  ‘Would you mind terribly if I put you near Michael?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ They had been friends much too long to fight, and by now also too long for there to be any need to explain their differences. Louisa loathed Michael and despised Jane for tolerating him.

  ‘Please, Louisa, for me. He likes you.’

  ‘I don’t want to sit next to your husband.’

  ‘I don’t mean next to him – just near him. You’re a wonderful conversationalist, you can hold your own with Berenice Stern … How about next to Stuart Devlin?’ NewsConnect’s war reporter, monosyllabic and mentally never out of a camouflage shirt, was the only unattached man on the guest list.

  ‘Oh, all right.’ Jane wrote in the name, telling herself that her friend was still single after thirty-nine years of wanting passionately to be married because she had no understanding of love, or of men, motherhood or family dynamics. These unspeakables had been aired years earlier; now it was only necessary to touch base with them occasionally. Originally there had been anger, then distance in its place. Now there was resignation, slightly bitter but familiar and comfortable.

  ‘Mummy, Debbie’s teaching me to dive. Are you watching?’ Emma ran up, dripping with water which splashed over Louisa’s feet and caused her to recoil with an exclamation of annoyance.

  ‘Yes dear. Be careful.’ Jane was preoccupied, wondering where she would seat Grace Evans and her husband – if they came. She was beginning to hope for an apologetic telephone call from the husband, making their excuses.

  The child ran away, watched with distaste by Louisa. ‘Are those red patches her eczema?’

  ‘Yes. When she’s in the water she gets cold and it looks worse than it is.’

  ‘Poor thing. She looks hideous.’

  ‘Not so loud, she’ll hear you.’ Jane was always defensive on the score of Emma, partly from pity for her afflicted daughter, partly from the ineradicable feeling that every problem her children had was her own fault. ‘The sun’s good for it and the water seems to make it itch less.’