by Rosie Thomas
I worked too, Jane answered silently. I did more valuable work than you. And what have I earned?
‘This isn’t like you,’ Harriet said.
‘I’m not like me.’ Jealousy made her feel even sicker than pregnancy. She didn’t want to feel it but it was there, rising like bile in her mouth. And Harriet sat opposite, calm and businesslike and judgemental. Separated from her, when they had once been close. I need a friend, Jane thought. If Harriet was still poor, she would share my problems. Suddenly her resentment was directed not against Harriet, but against money, the subtle rival, that had come between them.
‘Sorry,’ Jane said, without a clear idea of what she was apologising for.
Harriet was wishing that she had not rattled on quite so euphorically about love and Brighton. She took the evening newspaper off the table and stuffed it back into her bag. She was wishing that Jane had told her her news as soon as she had arrived, and that they could begin the evening again, following different paths. She wished that they could go further back, to some point – when? – when they shared the same perspectives. With the new distance between them what she felt now, mostly, was a kind of baffled impatience.
Jane would have her baby; surely the only problems were practical ones?
‘Look,’ she said cheerfully, ‘if you are fit, and the baby is healthy, there’s nothing that can’t be fixed. If you need money, you know, you’ve only got to ask.’
Jane appeared to rouse herself from more engrossing thoughts. ‘Ask for what? How long are you offering to provide for us? Six months? Six years? Until it’s grown up?’ The vista of her child’s long life opened terrifyingly in front of her as she spoke. She would be responsible for another human existence, responsible alone, when she felt that she could hardly control her own destiny.
Misunderstanding, Harriet said, ‘Don’t ask. I’ll just send the cheques.’
‘I don’t want your money.’ Jane was cold.
‘I’ll be here, too.’
‘Of course you will! You have been lately, haven’t you?’
Harriet stood up, horrified to find that they were quarrelling. She went to Jane, intending to hug her, but Jane shrank away from her, her arms wrapped protectively around herself.
‘My tits feel like septic footballs.’
They might have laughed, so recently, but now they did not. Harriet found herself thinking back, trying to work out when, and how, this gulf had opened.
‘Isn’t there anything I can do?’ she whispered.
‘You could put the dinner in the oven. It’s in the fridge, the dish with foil over it.’ That was all; Harriet did as she was told.
They talked in circles, after that, with a pretence that everything was normal. They discussed what Jane’s doctor had said, and the maternity leave she expected to take, and Peacocks and Harriet’s plans, and other, ordinary things that had made up the currency of their friendship. They didn’t laugh very much and they were wary of each other, too careful to shy away from threatening topics.
The talk was bland and the kitchen seemed chilly.
It was still early when Harriet said she must go. Jane came with her to the front door, as she had done so many times.
‘Keep in touch,’ she said drily. The porch lamp, shining down on Harriet, picked her out like a spotlight against the dark street. The incongruity of Harriet, here, struck her afresh, reinforcing all the evening’s impressions.
‘I’ll call you after the weekend,’ Harriet promised. ‘Have a rest. You’ll feel better.’
It would be nice, thought Jane, as she closed the door, if everything were as simple as it seemed to Harriet. If rest really would solve anything; if real life was simply a matter of hiring and firing, or making the right telephone call at the right moment. Instead of being messy, and murky, and complicated by our ignominious selves.
Harriet drove back to Hampstead. She was disturbed by the faltering of their friendship, but she believed that it was only temporarily interrupted. And she was confident that Jane herself would triumphantly survive. She was confused now but she had always been strong. She would make the necessary decisions and she would act on them. She would have her baby and her life. She deserved to win both races.
There were two messages from Robin waiting for Harriet on her machine. It was ten to eleven, and she decided that she wouldn’t call back tonight. It was late, and she didn’t know what she would say to him.
She left the machine on and went to bed, thinking about Caspar and Brighton.
On Sunday evening Kath and Ken were at home in Sunderland Avenue. Since Lisa had left home their routines had set firmly into rituals. On Sunday evenings they had a cold supper, the remains of the lunchtime roast that Ken enjoyed. Ken liked to spend the rest of the evening finishing the newspapers, scrutinising the sports pages and shaking his head over the scores. On weekday evenings he often retired to his little study off the hallway to catch up on business paperwork, but Sunday, he usually remarked, was his day of rest.
Kath would sit in the armchair opposite him, reading her book. Tonight she had a P.D. James that she was particularly enjoying. It had been a still, humid day and they had eaten their meal sitting at the white wrought-iron table out on the patio. Kath had cleared the dishes afterwards and turned on the dishwasher. It had been pleasant to come into the cool sitting room, turning on the lamps and picking up her book from the nest of tables beside her chair.
The only sounds in the room had been the crackle of Ken’s newspaper and the just audible hum of the dishwasher changing gear in the kitchen.
Kath had just been going to say, ‘Would you like a cup of tea, love?’ knowing that Ken would answer, ‘You sit there, I’ll put the kettle on,’ when she heard someone at the front door. She heard the sound of footsteps on the path before the knock came. The footsteps were slow and they dragged. Her nervous senses primed by the book she was reading, Kath’s flesh pricked. She raised her head but the person outside was already at the door, out of the range of the wide bay window that looked towards the road.
Ken only heard the knock. He put his paper down impatiently.
‘Who’s this? Bothering people at this time of night?’
It was only a little after eight o’clock. But visitors on a Sunday evening, unannounced, were unheard of in Sunderland Avenue. ‘I’m coming,’ Ken muttered, hoisting himself to his feet, although there had been only one knock, neither loud nor imperative.
Kath heard him open the front door. There was a mumble of voices, Ken’s clear and abrupt and another, much softer, that she could only just distinguish. But still the sound of it was familiar, and it set up reverberations of different anxiety.
She was already standing up when Ken called sharply, ‘Kath!’
She ran out into the hallway. In the glass shelter of the porch, amid her begonias and pelargoniums, Kath saw Simon Archer. He was sagging forward, half-supported by Ken. His clothes were filthy, and he had a patchy growth of white and grey stubble. His hair was matted, uncut.
Ken looked at her in bewilderment. ‘I thought he was an old derelict, on the cadge. But he asked for you.’
Simon pulled himself upright, holding on to Ken. He looked through the frame of flowers at Kath. He said in his precise, announcer’s voice. ‘You’d better get inside and shut the doors and windows, Kath. They’re right behind me.’
‘Simon, Simon.’
She went to him, drew his dangling arm around her shoulder. Between them Kath and Ken helped him forward, avoiding their lamplit sitting room, into the clear white light of the kitchen at the back of the house. They lowered him into a chair. Kath’s hand went involuntarily to her face as she looked down at him. She dropped it again when she caught the smell that clung to it, where she had touched him.
‘Who is he?’
‘Simon Archer. I knew him when I was a girl. I told you.’
‘Simon Archer. Harriet’s friend?’
Simon twisted in his chair, peering up at them. ‘Harrie
t Peacock,’ he said. ‘After Harriet Vane.’ Then he sat back, his eyes closing. The flesh had shrunk over his face, leaving his eyes bulging. There were shreds of food, or vegetation, caught in the stubble around his mouth.
‘It’s all right,’ Kath said. ‘You’re all right, now. Ken, will you get him a drink? And bring me a cloth, a towel, something to wipe his face.’
Ken brought a very small whisky. Simon sniffed at it, then drank. He began to shiver.
Kath said very gently, ‘Simon, can you hear me? How did you get here?’
He opened his eyes then. There was a look of pure, intense cunning in them. Kath knew at once that Simon had been driven somewhere beyond their reach.
‘Ha. It wasn’t easy. I had to take a long route, lie low, you know. But I did it. I had to, didn’t I? They came back, when I thought they’d gone. They were at my door, eyes looking through my windows. All over again, watching me.’
‘Who was watching you?’ Ken asked.
‘Who’s he?’ Simon said to Kath.
‘He’s my husband, Ken. He’s here to help, too.’
Simon ignored him. ‘So what did I do?’ He laughed, cracked laughter. ‘I left them to it. Left them an empty house, for their voices and their staring eyes and their questions. I came to you, Kath. I know you’ll keep your doors and windows locked. But they might be here already.’ His protruding eyes went to the patio doors. ‘Close those curtains, Kath. They’ll see in, otherwise.’
‘There’s no one out there,’ Ken protested. ‘Just our garden.’
‘Close them, Ken,’ Kath said quietly.
When it was done Simon seemed to relax. His head dropped back again. Kath saw that he was on the point of exhaustion.
‘Sit still,’ she ordered him. ‘You need some food, and a bath, and some rest. I’m going to get you a rug, because you’re cold.’
He nodded, like a child.
Ken followed Kath out into the hall. ‘What are we going to do with him? Poor old bugger, he’s not quite the full pack, is he?’
Kath took his arm. ‘We’re going to give him some hot food, a bath and some clean clothes, and put him to bed. In the morning we’ll have to get the doctor.’ Her soft lower lip stuck out more prominently, as it did when she was badly disturbed.
‘It’s our fault that he’s like this. It’s because of us, you see. Harriet, and me.’ Her words came out almost as a wail. ‘It shouldn’t have happened.’
In Brighton Caspar and Harriet had had a long, late lunch and had gone to bed after it. After they had made love, Caspar had fallen asleep. Harriet lay watching him, and listening to the sea.
It was early evening when he woke up again and lifted his head. Sleep had folded red creases in his cheek and he rubbed the flat of his hand over it, pushing his jaw to one side, like a man waking up on camera.
He saw Harriet beside him, awake, with the sharp lines of her characteristic alertness rubbed out of her face. She looked soft and pretty, and he reached out for her.
‘Was that OK?’ Caspar mumbled.
She laughed at him, stretching so that her legs brushed against his under the coil of sheets. ‘Do you have to make a performance of sex, as well as everything else?’
He was surprised. ‘It wasn’t a performance. I enjoyed it.’ He leaned forward and pursed his mouth against her bare breast. ‘Harriet, darling, is there any more Scotch over there?’
She poured it, but she held her hand over the glass.
‘Do you have to drink any more?’
He leaned back, contemplating her breasts as if he had painted them, was putting the finishing brushstrokes to them.
‘Yes I do, rather,’ Caspar said, reaching out for the glass. But when he had taken a mouthful of the whisky he pointed to the window, with the air of making a diversion, ‘Look at the light out there. Let’s go for a walk on the beach.’
Harriet got up and walked unselfconsciously to the window. The beach was visible as an iridescent ribbon, dotted with stick people and bounding specks of dogs. The sea looked flat, with only monotonous wavelets folding at the high tide-line.
‘Yes, let’s do that,’ Harriet said absently, surveying the scene.
But Caspar’s energy surprised her. He sprang out of bed and within minutes he was showered and dressed, waiting for her to put on her own clothes. He propelled her downstairs and out through the revolving doors of the hotel into the evening light.
‘Slow down,’ Harriet protested.
‘Seize the moment,’ he answered. ‘Always. Grab hold of it.’
Yes, Harriet thought. You’re right to do that. She liked his immediate appetite, feeling the contrast with her own circumspection.
They dodged through the traffic that clogged the seafront and ran between the kiosks and municipal flowerbeds to the promenade railings. Caspar stood on the lowest rail, spreading his hands along the top one to keep his balance as he leaned over to look at the shingle below.
‘Smell that,’ he roared, inhaling so fiercely that his nostrils pinched together. ‘That unique mix of seaweed and piss and frying chips. Doesn’t it take you back to seaside visits when you were a kid?’
The seaside had not played a big part in Harriet’s south London up-bringing. She wondered how largely it could have figured in Caspar’s prewar Tyneside childhood, and if the stories he wove out of his own history were true, or all part of the perpetual performance.
‘Not really,’ she answered.
‘Shame,’ he scolded her.
Two old ladies in pakamacs stopped to stare at him and then, recognising him, nudged each other delightedly. Caspar half bowed to them, then took Harriet’s arm and marched her down the steps to the littered shingle.
‘Let’s move on,’ he said, ‘before they ask for my autograph, and then reveal their disappointment at having mistaken me for Peter O’Toole.’
The suck of the sea became suddenly audible, and the pebbles grated under their feet as they turned westwards and began to walk, still arm in arm. Caspar was humming his favourite song, Gentlemen songsters out on a spree, damned from here to eternity … Harriet sighed with pleasure, breathing in the salty air that reminded her of nothing in particular. It was good not to be working. It was particularly good to feel that she didn’t have to demonstrate her control, over herself or Peacocks or anything else. With Caspar, control was not an issue. He seemed to do exactly what he felt like doing, with the egocentricity of the star. Full of affection, Harriet drew his arm closer and put her hand in his as they walked. His perspectives tilted the narrower sight-lines of her world. He was wonderful company.
‘Do you know what?’ he said, pointing with his free hand at the shabby-grand façades and curlicued balconies lining the seafront. ‘Do you know, I wish I’d been born an Edwardian? An actor-manager, like Irving. Bestowing my Lear on my adoring public. Eating and drinking before it became a sin to do either. Fucking in the robust, discreetly handled country house manner. A king to my own company. Elegant and raffish, just like this place.’
‘It’s Regency, not Edwardian,’ Harriet said pedantically, and they both laughed.
‘What about you, my Harriet? What would you have been born?’
She considered for so long that she sensed his impatience. So she admitted, ‘I’m happy with now. But then, I’m a woman. What other time would have given me the opportunities that I’ve already had?’
Caspar groaned. ‘Oh, Christ. A woman of our times.’
‘Why not?’ Harriet asked. ‘Why not? I’m proud of what I’ve done.’ Most of it, she added silently. Then she thought of the times when she had slipped into shops, just to look at the displays of Meizu, to measure them with her eye and to watch people picking up her game. She liked to watch them examining it and then to witness the moment of decision when they turned towards the till, satisfied with what they saw, prepared to buy. The moment never failed to give her a kick of excitement. And sometimes at a party, she had seen a group of heads bent in concentration and then realised tha
t the people were playing Meizu. Then someone, her hostess perhaps, would say, ‘This is Harriet. She’s the Meizu Girl, didn’t you know?’
It was different when the shield of anonymity was removed, but it always gave her pleasure to see her game being played, as she had planned it. She knew from the sales figures that her instinct had been right, but all the profits didn’t give her quite the same intense satisfaction as seeing a single sale, or one absorbed player.
Yes, Harriet thought, I’m proud of that. And again, why not?
Caspar was nodding at her side. His attention had already moved on. Caspar was Caspar, and he was not particularly interested, beyond the requirements of good manners, in her world or her business life. It was partly that, she reflected, that made his company relaxing. He didn’t ask questions, and he didn’t make her feel that she should attempt vague apologies for her success. His own was on a so much grander scale.
‘I like it here,’ Harriet said. Caspar heard the happiness in her voice.
‘I told you Brighton was essential for the proper conduct of a love affair, didn’t I?’
‘Brighton’s an extra. I like being with you,’ Harriet told him.
He stopped and turned to face her. Then he leaned forward, very slowly, and kissed her on the mouth.
‘Thank you,’ Caspar said.
They walked on for a long way. The sun set and the beach emptied of people before they turned back. Harriet’s calves began to ache from walking on the shingle. Lights came on in the hotels and apartments along the front, and the sky over the sea faded to vanishing green.
‘Are you tired?’ Caspar asked, and Harriet nodded. ‘Then let’s go briskly back and have a bottle of champagne while we’re thinking about dinner.’
He walked as springily as if they had just set out, drawing Harriet down to a stretch of more level beach exposed by the ebbing tide. He murmured, ‘One, two. One, two,’ coaxing her along. Harriet found that she could imagine how he had been with his children when they were small, in the happy times.
The more gentle slope of the beach drew them closer to the water’s edge. They were at the point where the foam drained into the pebbles when a seventh wave raced out of the dusk and broke, and Harriet and Caspar were sent scrambling and stumbling away from it, much too slowly. The sea swirled merrily around their calves as they staggered. They clung together as the undertow sucked at their feet, and then were left dripping on the innocent shiny stones.
