Harvest

by Celia Brayfield

  It was a comfortable existence. Her new companions did not ask questions. Like her, they were witty and comfortably supplied with company cars, apartments and credit cards, although their futures were uncertain. Away from the heated turmoil of their newsrooms they knew they could not follow the moves in the corporate games. It was the nature of the medium that editors would come and go, policies lurch violently to the political right or left, the economic up or down. In London, heads would roll, desks be cleared, men fall overboard, and all it would signify in the Paris offices was an alien voice on the telephone, an unfamiliar hieroglyph on the fax. Some were freelances already, and the others noted their precarious existence with anxiety, because permanent foreign staff were becoming a luxury.

  They kept up their spirits by recycling old gossip, which was fresh to Grace since she was new to the medium of print, and by recounting the nightmares that they had escaped – but not the worst, those atrocities which were too horrific to speak of. They talked only about the little things they were glad to have escaped, the muggings, parking restrictions, the rotting hospital service. Then the conversation would turn to the pleasures of their exile and so, comforted, they would stroll away into the soft evening to find their favourite little restaurants.

  The gentle bravado corresponded perfectly with the strategy Grace had evolved to dull the pain of loving Michael. At first she was afraid that he would follow her, but months went by and she heard nothing. A few more years and she recognized that she had made progress in her rehabilitation; most days she could be optimistic and constructive, something resembling the person she might have been if Michael had never occurred. She thought of him as a natural disaster, something which had hit her life without warning and wrecked it. Once in Florida she had passed a drive-in movie which had been hit by a tornado. The huge screen lay crumpled in the field like a giant handkerchief. That was the scale of her own devastation.

  Nick was in the café one evening; she had met him a few times, the brother of one of her new colleagues, a virologist attached to a multinational research team. He mumbled and his wiry golden hair was thinning at the front. A big man, but his round blue eyes always seemed to be looking up at her in apology. She had liked him but felt no genuine attraction. He admitted openly that his first wife had left him, complaining that he was dull. The ritual of home thoughts in the café was boring Grace by that time, and the old news adrenaline was flowing less readily. Nick was another escape so she had drifted along with his unhurried courtship.

  Her mind persistently argued that he was a good person and ought to be loved. Now they were married, and probably happy. Nick was happy, at least, it was his nature. They were waiting for a baby, something else she thought he deserved, that she owed him. Stress, they agreed, must be a factor. Below their joint reasonableness, they felt desperation. Neither was capable of buying a house for pleasure, but the baby was different, the deciding reason to buy the Alhambra.

  Michael still appeared in her thoughts every day, but here he seemed less powerful than in Paris. At the Alhambra, Grace found it easier to reflect on the present, which meant thinking of her husband, whom she could not love, and their child, which she could not conceive. Lately the superstition had crept up on her that this was her punishment for the affair.

  When the adults assembled for supper, Xanthe suddenly flipped into a screaming tantrum. It flayed Jane’s nerves; tantrums had been Emma’s speciality, Xanthe had never displayed a moment of temper in her life until now. Was her lovely little last-born to be as wretched as the rest? Michael was actually frightened by the sight of the pretty creature transformed into a gargoyle by her uncontrollable rage. Antony had the whisky out by the time Debbie took the child away for the fail-safe solution, a ride in the car.

  Night slowly embraced the land. High in the old walls the birds roosted and were silent. The vault of the sky was black and at first stars glittered optimistically, but in a while clouds, invisible in the darkness, gathered and extinguished them, a handful at a time. Louisa held court over the meal, trying to fascinate both men. Michael’s thoughts dissociated. He had drunk too much, and the surges of self-loathing which always accompanied re-integration into his family were strong. He needed release; everything else started to lose its meaning.

  His body was hot with tension; Jane felt it across the room and it made her desperate to be bright, to stoke up the conversation and postpone the inevitable moment when they would be alone. His fingers were moving constantly, the nervous mannerism which betrayed his tension. When Michael had a new woman he went through some kind of internal agony that had only one resolution: sex. And he would choose to have sex to prove his innocence, and to try to quell her internal rebellion – which she knew he had sensed. If she let him into her body now, she would feel like killing herself.

  The moment came in the end, a little after midnight. Louisa dragged Antony, now sentimentally drunk, away to their quarters. Jane saw that Michael, unusually for him, had drunk enough to be a little out of control. They began the measured ritual of washing and teeth-flossing and hanging up clothes which she prolonged in the hope that he would fall asleep before she came to bed.

  ‘I think I’ll just look in on Xanthe.’ She put on a nightshirt, a Doris Day cotton thing treated with some wonder compound which made its white ruffles ever-fresh.

  ‘Why?’ he said, already installed against his pillow. ‘She’s fine now. Debbie said she’d sleep in the girls’room, didn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, did she?’

  ‘Yes, didn’t you hear?’

  There was no way out. She got into bed with him.

  Around her chest there was a thin, fierce pain, as if someone were tightening a wire around her ribs. Michael was not an insensitive man; that was the problem. He was not a man who would be content with a body. He wanted your heart and mind as well. Perhaps that was why he was insistent about having the light on.

  He was stroking her hair. ‘Michael.’ She had to clear her throat. ‘I’m really tired tonight. Could we just snuggle up?’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  He had an erection, she could sense it across the cool sheet between them, although she was holding her lower body away from his. The pain in her chest was more intense. ‘Nothing. Please …’

  ‘No, there is something. I felt it when I came in. What is it? Tell me, my love.’

  ‘There really isn’t anything. I’m just tired, that’s all.’

  A silence, and then he said, ‘Sixteen years we’ve been together – don’t you think I know when there’s something going on with you?’

  She was struggling for words when her body betrayed her, and the pain cut right into her chest and let out great screaming sobs, four or five of them, tearing open her mouth, bursting her lungs, leaving her gasping chaotically like a woman in the crisis of childbirth.

  ‘My God, Jane, my love, whatever is it? There, there, now, come on, come on now, you must tell me, come on …’ She had crawled away to the edge of the bed but he was leaning over, reaching out for her, his breath still smelling of whisky under the toothpaste.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’

  Although her face was turned away she knew he had reacted. He knew. Horrible that their very intimacy blocked the way out of this hell.

  ‘Oh, no. It’s not that again, is it?’ That voice. So many nuances of menace.

  Thank God, she could not get control of her breath to answer him.

  ‘It is, isn’t it? This is another one of your … this is about one of your suspicions, isn’t it? This idea you have that I’ve been unfaithful.’ Absolutely rational, he was. Not the kind of man who dismissed his wife’s feelings because he did not understand them. ‘You’re out here by yourself and I’m a long way away from you and you’ve been feeling insecure, getting tortured by imaginings, is that it?’

  She was cold now, very cold. So cold she was shivering. Cold right to the core of her mind, freezing her disordered senses. She could sit up, and drag the qui
lt around her knees. When things were frozen, they were very clear. ‘Michael, I know. I know. That’s all.’

  ‘You can’t know. There isn’t anything to know. Jane, please, how many times do I have to say this? I have never, ever been unfaithful to you.’

  She kept silent. Nothing she could say would get through. He was such a snake, he would twist and slither and get himself out of any argument she raised, and besides, she had no argument, only her instinct. Better to save her strength.

  ‘You put me in an impossible position, you know that, don’t you? I can’t prove that there isn’t anyone else. There just isn’t, that’s all. There never has been. I wanted to make love to you – would I want that if I had another woman? But I can’t make you believe me. It’s about trust, isn’t it? It has to be. If we love each other we trust each other. But …’ A deep, traumatized sigh. ‘You make me feel so guilty. And there’s nothing I can do. Is there? I mean, is there? Because if there is, tell me. Tell me and I’ll do it, whatever it is. Whatever I can do to make you trust me. I’ll do it. I swear.’ He lost control a little, towards the end; he did not quite manage to keep the anger out of his speech.

  That old, sick, disorientated feeling. He would go on the same way until she gave in, until she agreed with him, let go of her own vision and found some way of distorting herself into the shape that fitted the hole left for her in his picture of his world.

  ‘No.’ It was the first word that offered itself. ‘No. Michael, there is nothing for you to do here. I have this idea. You are right about that.’

  ‘Thank you.’ A sarcastic murmur.

  ‘And I know you think I’m wrong.’

  ‘But I know what the truth is – don’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you do. So you know that what I’m thinking is not true, but I know that it’s all I can think. I can’t change my mind about this.’

  He was sitting up himself now, leaning forward, almost leaning over her.

  ‘But that’s crazy, Jane.’

  ‘If you are right, yes it is. It’s a delusion.’

  ‘What is this?’ He ran his hands through his hair, holding the side of his head as if the thought itself would not fit inside his skull. ‘I just don’t understand. Are you trying to humour me because you think I’m drunk, or something?’ He had drunk too much, he could feel it, the flush of alcohol in his face. ‘You’re saying you’re having delusions that I’m unfaithful? That you’d rather do that than just accept the truth and trust me?’

  ‘Well, yes, Michael. I think that is what it comes down to.’

  ‘But that doesn’t make sense. Jane, I’ve always respected your mind, you’re an intelligent woman …’

  ‘I do accept that it doesn’t make sense, Michael. But there isn’t anything I can think of that you can do that will make me trust you.’

  He was angry now, his fist hit the pillow and the whole bed shook. ‘I can’t stand this, this is like a nightmare. You’re accusing me of something, refusing to hear any evidence and finding me guilty.’ Then nothing for a while, one of his final moves, a pit of silence dug for her to fall into with explanations or apologies. Not this time.

  She bit her lips, but the pit was yawning. At last she said, ‘When we were married, I thought I’d be entering into the greatest happiness I’d ever know.’ Then the road opened up in front of her, right to the end, and it was so direct, and the end so close, that she stopped speaking and felt afraid.

  ‘I only wanted to make you happy, Jane,’ he said. ‘It’s all I want now. Truly. You must believe me.’ And then he got off the bed and walked to the door, reaching for his bathrobe as he went. ‘I think you need some space now, I’m going downstairs for a while.’ He went out.

  She fell sideways and lay curled up, a few tears of relief running from her open eyes, remembering, reviewing. Against her bride’s expectation, he had given her so few scraps of joy. One hour, two hours, never more, never so much as a whole afternoon. Always the work, the story, the filming, the editing, the meeting. Then the day when she was newly pregnant with Emma, and Andrea Moynihan had turned up on her doorstep, in tears on her behalf, blocking out the daylight with her bulk.

  A lovely woman, Andy. Jane would never have managed Imogen without her mentor in stepmotherhood, scooping up the wretched child along with her own, initiating Jane into the mysteries, and when the problems began, night after night, assuring her from the base of her psychology degree and her warm heart that it was not her fault. Once her kids were in school, Andy had gone back to work, counselling at a big city hospital.

  Every word she said came right back when Jane needed the memory. ‘I should not be telling you this, but I have to. I was called to see this woman today who they thought had tried to kill herself by driving her car into a wall. She said it was an accident, she was just upset. I don’t care if I get struck off, I’m your friend, I can’t be professional about this. What she was upset about was Michael. They’re having an affair. Oh God, I wish we’d done more on ethics when we were training. Let me come in, Jane. I need to use your bathroom.’

  The pain had been fearful, but she had done nothing then. A mistake perhaps, but she was afraid of Michael, and afraid for Andy’s job. A few hours later he rang and she heard the shock in his voice when he told her that one of his producers had been injured in a road accident. She had sympathized and offered to organize the flowers. Andy came back with advice; men strayed when their wives were pregnant, it was a fact of life. A certain kind of immaturity made some of them unable to find a pregnant woman sexy. But it was just a phase.

  It made her feel powerful to keep the secret. Perhaps the power was what he needed from his affairs, the power of deceiving another and keeping the truth for yourself.

  After that day, and before it, there had been the distances and the false behaviour, the sneaking away for telephone calls, the calls to the house, dead lines, wrong numbers, bold women’s voices asking for Michael. After that day there had been one or two letters, the sad looks other women gave her, the silent, patronizing approval of his male associates, the occasional courageous soul who solemnly passed on a rumour. Five secretaries he had had since then, and all of them must have known. Each one had her own strategy; Marianne was terribly soft, caring and conscientious, as if to make up for Michael’s cruelty with her own kindness.

  The bed was inviting now. Jane straightened her body out, found a pillow and got comfortable, feeling great tiredness. Something had shifted at last. Perhaps she would be able to sleep. Her throat was dry.

  Michael went downstairs, struggling with panic. He needed his equilibrium back, his heart was hammering. Jane was acting out of character. Complaints he had endured, she often had a compulsion to make everything his fault – natural, perhaps, in anyone who underachieved their ability. If she had stayed in the civil service she could have had the career she deserved but … her choice, he hadn’t pressured her. This was a new thing, it was bizarre.

  Out on the pool terrace the night air seemed heavy. The drink was still making him clumsy and he put a hand out to steady himself on the wall. At the far side of the terrace a figure sprawled low in a chair, faintly lit by the reflected light from the pool.

  ‘Debbie, is that you?’

  ‘Yes, this is me.’

  He was annoyed once more and crossed to her side of the pool. ‘What are you doing out here? What about the girls?’

  ‘The girls are asleep. They’re OK. I came out to watch the moon.’ The hand which gestured at the sky held a can of drink, but it did not escape him that the arm was graceful. The moon was an unrecognizable thing, a huge blood-red disc hanging low over the horizon. He paused, considering what to say, longing to turn the tide of his violent discontent.

  ‘I’ve never seen a moon that colour before.’

  ‘Me neither.’ Her defences seemed to be down.

  ‘There’s something I remember in the Bible: the sun shall turn to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and terrible day when the Lord sh
all come.’

  ‘If we’re expecting Jesus tomorrow he’d better like garlic.’

  His harsh laugh flew out across the fields and echoed faintly from the hillside. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

  ‘They’re your chairs.’ The length of her legs was remarkable, and their smooth straightness. Everything about her was like that, elongated and unblemished. Her hair was unclipped, and she was lying with her head thrown back so it hung like a curtain and the moonlight caught its sheen.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Debbie, but I sometimes get the impression that I’ve offended you in someway.’

  A wisp of black cloud veiled the moon’s upper edge. From his seat beside her she appeared in profile against the faint light of the sky, smooth forehead, vigorous brows, a tough, short nose, sharp chin and then the girlish swell under her T-shirt. He had never seen any evidence that she wore a bra.

  ‘I don’t mind you saying that at all, Mr Knight. I know I can be too much in people’s faces sometimes. You haven’t offended me, you would know for sure if you had.’

  ‘There is something I wanted to ask you – about my wife. How’s Jane been these last few days?’

  ‘How’s she been?’ She seemed not to understand. He had expected her to sit up and pay attention, but she did not stir.

  ‘Has anything upset her?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Nothing unusual, anyway. There’s been no real pressure since she wrapped up her last series. The children make her tired. Their problems make her tired, I should say. They’re nice kids in themselves.’

  ‘I’m worried about her. The mood she’s in – I’ve never seen it before. I suppose you’ve had a lot of experience with other families. How long have you been over here?’