Sheer Abandon

by Penny Vincenzi

  Josh groaned. “I can’t cope with her,” he said, “let alone her boyfriend.”

  When the clock struck four, he went downstairs to make himself a hot toddy.

  Peter Hartley had been in church since very early. He had spent a little time on his knees alone, remembering Martha, and quite a lot of time in the vestry tidying up, hanging up the choirboys’ cassocks and sweeping the floor; it was only when he found himself sorting out the prayer and hymn books, a job that the verger and his wife always did, and indeed enjoyed doing, that he realised what he was really doing: postponing his return to the vicarage and to Grace.

  He felt very bad; it was only a few weeks since Martha had died and he missed her terribly and the brilliant light she had shone into his rather drab life. Nobody knew it was drab, of course, or, rather, that he found it so. His unshakable faith helped a great deal, and the knowledge that he was doing it all for God; and there were wonderful moments, at weddings and confirmations particularly, but also when he was taking the communion service, or delivered what he felt was a good, rather than an all right, sermon. But the fact remained that day to day, his life was filled with thankless and tedious tasks.

  His other prop and mainstay was his beloved Grace, and being apparently robbed of her, as well as of Martha, was proving almost unbearable. What had begun as bewilderment and moved to reproach was now turning to hostility: based, as far as he could see, on a deep resentment that he was finding comfort from God and she was not.

  “It’s all right for you,” she had actually said. “You’ve got comfort—I haven’t got any.”

  Meanwhile, she continued not to eat: or rather, as he was beginning to see it, to starve herself.

  When he got back to the vicarage, the post had arrived; the usual junk mail and two proper letters, as he thought of them. One from a parishioner, asking if he would sponsor her son on a trans-Siberian cycle ride, and another, written in a very childish hand, from someone called Kate Tarrant.

  I just wanted to say that I’ve been thinking of you both a lot, and I do hope you are beginning to feel a little bit better now. I only met your daughter twice, but she seemed a very nice and interesting person. It was a very good experience to be at the funeral and to learn more about her and all the things she had achieved in her life.

  With very good wishes, yours sincerely,

  Kate Tarrant

  Kate Tarrant: now who on earth was she? She’d been at the funeral, she said, but he had no idea who she might have been. Until he saw her helpful PS on the other side of the paper: “I came with Jocasta Forbes,” she had written, “one of the girls your daughter went travelling with before she went to university.”

  Now Jocasta he did remember; she had come up to them and talked for quite a while. A beautiful girl, charming. There had been two other girls with her: one who had also gone travelling with Martha, very nice, a doctor he seemed to recall, one much younger, with long blond hair: perhaps that had been Kate. Grace might remember. Or young Ed—he had seemed to know that particular crowd. It would give him something to talk to Grace about later, perhaps even lift her from her dreadful lethargy. His busy, bustling Grace: lethargic. It was terribly hard to bear.

  He took it up to her.

  “Now look, we’ve had such a nice letter. From one of the young people who came to the funeral. You remember Jocasta, with the blond hair who went travelling with Martha all those years ago?”

  “Peter, it’s all a blur.”

  “Anyway, there was another girl with her, much younger. Nearer Ed’s age, I’d say. It’s from her. Kate’s her name. Such a sweet little note.”

  “Well”—she shrugged—“that’s nice. What does she say?”

  “I’ll leave it here, you can read it for yourself.”

  “I’ve got a terrible headache. I really don’t feel up to reading.”

  “It’s very short. I’ll go and get your tea. If you haven’t read it when I get back, I’ll read it to you.”

  He laid the letter on her bed and walked out; when he looked back, she had picked it up and was reaching for her glasses. It was odd, the way these young friends of Martha’s seemed able to cheer her up. Or at least interest her.

  Grace did remember Kate now. Pretty girl. She’d noticed her because she had that lovely fair hair and then those huge, dark eyes, a bit like Martha’s. Her mother was lucky. She still had her daughter. She hadn’t seen her wiped out, her brilliantly promising life ended, all through a bit of stupidity. She hadn’t got to go on living on a planet that didn’t contain her daughter, full of people who didn’t matter because they weren’t her.

  She wished she and Martha had been closer; she’d always had the feeling that Martha was keeping her just slightly at arm’s length. Never discussing her boyfriends, her private life, only her career, always her career. She’d probably be alive today without that career. She wouldn’t have been driving up from London, far too late and much too fast, in that car. She’d be working safely in Binsmow, where they could keep an eye on her.

  Ed had obviously known her very well. She wondered if they’d got engaged or anything like that. Of all the people who kept coming to see her, she only enjoyed seeing Ed. She could talk to him about Martha, learn a bit more. She would like to see more of Jocasta, too. And Clio, the pretty dark-haired one, she’d liked her too. Between them, they probably knew more about Martha than she did. Well, it was no use thinking they’d have time to come all this way to see her. They were young, they had their own lives, and they were busy, happy…

  Grace turned on her side again and started to cry. She felt so alone in her grief. Peter had his God. She had no one.

  Jocasta would not have said she was pleased about the drama of Josh and Kate, but it gave her something else to think about, apart from her own worries and misery.

  In spite of everything they had said, she had expected to hear something from Nick. If only a note. Or a call on her mobile. Or the promised postcard. Just to check that she was…well, she wasn’t sure what he would be checking, but they had shared a fairly amazing experience that afternoon—God, already over a week ago—and a complete silence was a bit unnerving. Maybe now he just saw her as another girl; but that wasn’t right, he had said he would always love her. And that he would always be her best friend. Did being your best friend really include having that sort of amazing, stunning sex? Maybe it did. And oh, God, it had been amazing. Every so often she just sat very still and concentrated on remembering it, and became hideously excited.

  Whatever else it had done for her, that afternoon, it had made her realise she couldn’t go back to Gideon. Sex with Gideon was, well, dull. It was fine, it could be very good in fact, at worst it was extremely pleasant and, obviously, bonding—but it was always the same. She felt terrible comparing him with Nick in bed, it made her feel dreadfully disloyal, and even a bit of a trollop, but she couldn’t help it.

  She had expected thunder and lightning, given his intensity and his experience and his dangerously seductive tongue, and she had got only a sunlit afternoon. A very nice sunlit afternoon, to be sure, but one that just went on and on. In fact—and she would never have believed this possible of herself—she had come to be quite grateful for the nights he fell asleep, while she sat beside him reading. Or even—on some truly awful occasions—carrying on and on reading until he went to sleep. She had heard girls, usually ones in long-established relationships, saying things like that and been quite shocked. And very sorry for them. Now she understood.

  Sex with Nick had always been good; always, always. Not necessarily extraordinary, but good. Sometimes fun, sometimes more serious, occasionally really quick, now and again very, very long—Sunday sex, as she thought of it—when she came and came and wanted it never to end. But never dull. And they were absolutely honest: that had to be important. If she didn’t want it, she said so and he never minded; if he was too tired, he said so and she understood. They told each other if they didn’t like something, or if there was somethi
ng they thought they might try, which often led to giggling failures and an agreement that the missionary position had a lot to be said for it. She couldn’t imagine that sort of honesty with Gideon.

  And then they had it in all sorts of places, some more unlikely than others, sitting in the bath, standing in the hall, on the beach, in the woods, even occasionally, and rather riskily, in Nick’s car. The point was it was an integral part of them being together, as much a part of their lives as eating or drinking or working; she could no more imagine a sexless life with Nick than one without conversation. She could very easily imagine a sexless life with Gideon.

  Well, life with him just wasn’t going to happen: sexless or otherwise. She had written to him now, telling him that she thought they should get a divorce as soon as possible, that she could see no hope of their ever being able to live together happily, and that prolonging matters was just making them worse. She gave him the name and address of her solicitor, and said she would hope to hear from him shortly. She supposed she should feel sad, but she didn’t; apart from being lonely, her only emotion was still anger.

  Maybe she should write to Nick, but saying—what? That she missed him, that she still loved him, that she wanted to see him? No. That was out of the question. He would think she had come back to him on the rebound, or that she was whining again. She had to get his respect back; she had to be strong. If, in the fullness of time, he heard that she had left Gideon, that would be quite different, but he mustn’t think it was anything to do with him. That would be emotional blackmail; it wouldn’t be fair.

  Gideon read her letter and then tore it up and threw it in the wastepaper basket. If she thought he was going to make things easy for her, so that she could marry Nick sooner, she was very wrong. He had managed to convince himself that she had left him because she had gone back to Nick. His vanity would not allow him to consider any alternative. A young rival was better than an intrinsic fault in himself.

  Beatrice had been absolutely wonderful. Josh had called her from his office at midday, unable to stand it any longer, and asked if they could meet after work for a drink.

  “What on earth for, Josh? Why not at home?”

  “Because I’ve got something I want to talk about and I don’t want the girls around. Or anyone, come to that.”

  They met in the American bar at the Connaught. Beatrice arrived, looking rather pale. She clearly thought Josh was going to tell her he had some new girlfriend.

  “Which I suppose, in a way, he had,” she said to Jocasta, brightly.

  The news had been so extraordinary and shocking that she had found it difficult to find an appropriate reaction at all. What exactly did you say, when your husband told you he had just discovered he had a sixteen-year-old daughter? “How nice,” or “I can’t wait to meet her”? Or “How could you?” Or “How dare you?” Or “Never darken my doors again”?

  None of them seemed right. Beatrice sat and looked at him, at this person she really did love, who had hurt her and humiliated her a great deal, who had vowed never to do so again, this charming, good-looking, troublesome person, and found that her overwhelming emotion was sympathy. She waited for this to be replaced by something less noble, like rage, or outrage, or jealousy—and it wasn’t. Sympathy remained: and she said so.

  “For heaven’s sake, Josh,” she said quite sternly, “a lot of seventeen-year-old boys sleep around. That was just incredibly unfortunate.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I suppose it was.”

  “And certainly Martha was. Poor Martha.”

  “Yes,” he said, “poor Martha.”

  “I can’t imagine why she didn’t tell you. Or her parents. I suppose she just felt she couldn’t.”

  “I suppose.”

  “What a sad, sad story.”

  “Absolutely. I feel bad,” he said suddenly, “that she had to cope with it all, and I just got away scot-free. It seems so terrible.”

  “Yes, well,” said Beatrice, slightly brisker, “you have a certain talent for getting away scot-free, Josh.”

  The sympathy was waning now—just a little. She looked ahead and saw enormous problems. Did they tell Kate? What did they tell Kate? Did they tell the girls? What would they tell the girls? How would they understand? Josh and Beatrice had only just begun to broach the subject of babies in mummies’ tummies growing from little seeds.

  What about the media, did they need to know? And most problematic of all, how did she fit into this new relationship? Not very comfortably. People would talk, laugh even: she would appear foolish, naïve, cuckolded all over again. Josh might have been only seventeen at the time of Kate’s conception, but the fact remained that he had been caught with his trousers down. Very far down. People would remember the last time. And the time before that. And would they believe that he had known nothing about it? Probably not.

  “I think I need some time on my own,” Beatrice said, “just for a while. I’ll see you at home.”

  She went for a walk. It was a perfect evening, golden and warm, the buildings all touched by the late sunlight, the streets, if you caught them at the right angle, did indeed seem paved with gold. She walked through Berkeley Square and into Bond Street, wandered up and down it, looking in the shop windows, in Aspreys, and Chanel and Tiffany and Ralph Lauren, finding them strangely distracting from Josh’s clumsy, painful story, and even managed to admire a coat here, a bracelet there.

  And then through into Regent Street, where she contemplated, as she always did, the perfection of its architecture, and marvelled that she could do so, crossed it and went beyond, into the seediness of Soho. As she walked among the strip joints and the blaring music and the pimps and the throbbing motorbikes and the shop windows filled with underwear and studded leather and impossibly high-heeled feather-trimmed shoes, all serving as half distraction, half background, she saw a girl, no older than Kate, her face horribly childlike, despite its heavy lipstick and fake eyelashes, hanging around a doorway with a man dressed in a flashy suit and a lot of gold jewellery, clearly old enough to be her father, clearly her pimp. And she thought what an obscenity that was, and that it should be stopped, somehow, that children should be children, should be safe from adult life and its ugliness. And that brought her rather tortuously to Kate, where her emotions somehow settled, shook down into some sort of order, and she discovered, above all, a concern for Kate. Her childhood might have been happy, but it had its ugly, dark side—a mother who had abandoned her, and a father vanished, no one wanting her, coming to claim her. That was ugly.

  Of them all, Kate had had the worst of it and she deserved the best now. She was a child and they were adults; if Josh found the situation distressing and she found it painful and Kate’s adoptive parents found it difficult, that was their problem. Kate must come first, and they should all do what was best for her. It was perfectly simple.

  She called Josh and said she was coming home.

  It was Jocasta’s suggestion that she and Josh go together to see Kate.

  “I know it seems I keep muscling in on these occasions, but she does know me best. I don’t even know that we should tell her, not straightaway. I think we should take her out for a drink or something, and just chat and she can get used to Josh—not that anyone ever could, but she obviously liked him a lot the other day, after the funeral—and relax her a bit and then we can decide whether we should even tell her then, or wait till another time altogether. Not another great solemn sit-down, like when we told her about Martha. What do you think, Beatrice?”

  Beatrice said she thought that was probably rather a good idea, and hopefully less shocking for Kate. “God,” said Jocasta, “you are being stunningly wonderful, Beatrice. I’m totally filled with admiration.” Beatrice felt she didn’t have much option, but she smiled politely and said she’d go for a little walk while Jocasta called Helen.

  Helen had taken the news with remarkable calm; so much had happened to her over the past few weeks that she would hardly have been surprised if Joca
sta had told her Prince Charles was Kate’s father. Or Brad Pitt. Or David Beckham.

  It actually seemed a fairly happy option. At least it was someone they had all met and who Kate liked.

  “I suppose that explains the similarity between you and Kate,” she said to Jocasta.

  She agreed that Jocasta and Josh should tell Kate together. “It will come much better from you. And he can answer lots of her questions. Including hopefully about—about Martha.” She still found it difficult to refer to Martha as Kate’s mother.

  She told Jim, who was less pleased.

  “Public school, I suppose,” he said irritably. “Like his sister.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Any idea which one?”

  “Eton, I think.”

  “Well, that’s all I need.”

  Helen opened her mouth to tell him not to be so silly and shut it again. She knew what this was about: what she had been through a few weeks earlier. When Jim had done his best to comfort her, but not really understood at all. He did now. Fearing rejection, criticism, comparison. Most of all comparison.

  She also knew that despite his passionate socialism, his total commitment to the comprehensive ideal, and his hostility to the public-school culture, Jim felt threatened by the innate confidence which an expensive education provided. The thought of his beloved Kate being the offspring of an old Etonian made him feel physically ill.

  “Did we meet him? At the party?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But I did see him. Jocasta pointed him out to me.”

  “Oh yes. What did he look like?”

  “Well, he looked—you know. Tall. Blond. Slightly overweight. He was dancing the Charleston, rather well actually, with some girl.”

  “His wife?”

  “Oh no, I don’t think so. She’s a barrister. This girl looked about eighteen.”

  “Dear God,” said Jim, “a lecher. That’s all I need.”