In the absolute quiet, with her arms still folded, she drew a long breath and sang them ‘Are You There?’
It was strange to hear the song that till now had existed only in the solitude of the house given its full value, the light and shade and feeling it deserved. As always with a good song she herself was moved by this first breathing of life into the words and melody. And it was a good song, it had both universality and particularity. It could live on its own. It sang her.
When she finished, she got off at once, as the others had; so promptly in fact that she did so in silence, and the warm wave of approbation didn’t break over her till she was back in her corner with another half-pint being pushed in front of her. She was euphoric, but did not show it. She wanted only to be one of them.
It was as she stood there, saying that yes, she did write songs from time to time and, thanks, she was glad they liked it, but no, she wouldn’t do another – as she stood there she felt, quite unmistakably, someone looking at her from across the room. Amid all the faces and the talk, the bonhomie and backslapping, she felt the touch of this one look like a butterfly’s wing – the shadow of a butterfly’s wing. She could not identify its source, but when the music started again and attention was once more focused on the band, she allowed herself to scan the room.
She saw him at once. His was the one face not turned to the front, but towards her, with furious attention. The shock of seeing that face, here, and being subject to its almost accusing output of energy, was intense. He’d been here all this time? Watching her? Yes, and he’d heard her sing, seen her stupid vanity, witnessed – Jesus! – her self-regarding emotion . . . But then why should she care at all about his good opinion?
Shaken, she began to make her way to the door, aware that he was doing the same thing. There was nothing for it but to tough it out.
She got out first, but he caught the bar door as it swung shut behind her.
‘Not so fast.’
The first handfuls of rain rattled on the frosted glass at the top of the outside door. Behind them in the bar the music and the drinking continued. Between the two doors, in the small shabby hallway of the Harbour Light, that smelt of beer and old chip fat, they stood facing one another.
‘Yes,’ he said, as though she’d asked a question. ‘I am.’
‘What?’
‘I am here.’
Maybe, she thought afterwards, maybe, in another place and in other circumstances she might have pissed from a great height on his arrogant assumption. But the experiences of the past couple of weeks had stripped a layer from her defences. She had set out her emotional stall in there, and been proud of it. Too late now to come the bitch from hell. Nor, she found, did she want to.
He spoke firmly into her hesitation.
‘And I shall be for the next few days. But from tomorrow, I shan’t be on my own.’ So. Another married one, she thought as she drove back to Glenfee with one eye closed and his headlights in the rearview mirror. Married, rich, opportunistic, on holiday with his poor benighted bloody wife – the worst sort. Worse than basically honourable Gordon whom she’d kicked into touch. Far worse than any one of the three or four casual encounters she’d slept with since.
Worse still, because he’d been on her mind, and had stolen a march on her.
Three hours later he left. He did not, this time, kiss her on the cheek, but threw down his card, like a gauntlet, on the bedside table before leaving. She listened to his footsteps down the stairs; the brisk click of the front door; the sound of his car starting. The streaming, uncurtained window was illuminated briefly by his headlights, before the dark and rain closed in around the house like a hedge of thorns . . .
Stella closed her eyes.
Mad, bad – magic.
CHAPTER SIX
‘Four things greater than all things are –
Women and Horses and Power and War’
—Kipling, ‘Ballad of the King’s Jest’
Spencer 1942–3
1942, the year he turned twenty-two. Spencer McColl ended his first real love affair and started unawares on the road that led to his second.
The first was Trudel ‘Apples’ Flaherty – Trudel for her German maternal grandmother, Flaherty from her father Seamus – who was one of those girls considered easy but, curiously, not despised for it. This was because with Trudel it was simply a matter of generosity, both of form and temperament. Five foot six, a hundred and forty-eight pounds and structured along Wagnerian lines – there was more than enough of Trudel to go round and it was her pleasure to share it.
The fact that there was a war going on on the other side of the pond between England and Germany lent a certain added piquancy to Trudel’s attraction – it showed a good sound American independence of spirit to be fondling all that yielding Teutonic flesh, though Spencer felt he had to make a particular point of explaining to his mother that Trudel was only a quarter German, if that.
‘Don’t be silly, I know that,’ Caroline had said, ‘your friend’s American. And besides it’s the Nazis who are causing all the trouble, not the German people.’
It was only much later that Spencer fully appreciated his mother’s fairmindedness. After all, it was her tiny offshore island that was under threat, her people who were fighting the war against what the press described as ‘the most fearsome war machine ever conceived’. She scoured the papers for such paltry news items as were available and fiddled endlessly with the radio in the hope of picking up scraps of information. Her beauty faded a little and she looked harassed and tired. It wasn’t too much fun being at home these days.
He’d known Trudel, or known of her, for some time, because everyone did. She was pretty unmissable with her big, creamy figure – another reason for the ‘Apples’ tag – and her halo of fuzzy blonde hair. All through the feverish whacking off years it was Trudel who saw you right, either vicariously or by giving you a helping hand.
She was a year older than Spencer and by the time she showed him what was what she’d already left high school and was working as a mother’s help for Mrs Lowe, the doctor’s wife. This mundane job only added to her charm. She seemed created for it. When she took the two little Lowes out in the afternoon, one in the stroller and one by the hand, she appeared much more like their mother, their ideal mother, than the squinny Mrs Lowe who lay on the sofa at home with another on the way. Calm, curvaceous, indulgent, nurturing, full of fecund promise, Trudel was the spirit of motherhood made flesh.
This was probably why it was impossible not to like her. Even the parents of Spencer’s contemporaries, who must surely have known her reputation, tended to smile upon her as if they couldn’t really believe what they’d heard. In spite of her undiscriminating sociability she was so clearly a nice girl. The Lowe children adored her. And as for their own sons, at an age when they wanted to feast their full on the forbidden fruits of life, Trudel represented a table laden with an apparently inexhaustible supply of delectable goodies. Also, there was a kind of discretion in her general availability. You were safe with her because there was safety in numbers.
But Spencer fell in love with her for the oldest reason in the world: he thought he was different. He thought she understood him and saw something in him not present in her other admirers, and he in his turn took this as a sign that she was more complex and intuitive than she appeared to the herd. By definition this theory could never be tested, but once adopted it was only natural that he should make everything support it. So when in the extremity of passion she gasped his name, when she smiled and nodded as he talked (she was a good listener and not talkative herself), when she took his hand in both of her soft, cushiony ones, and told him in her confiding manner that she wanted nothing more than to marry a good man and have his babies – when she did these things they seemed unique and particular to him.
He was not so foolish as actually to propose marriage, but privately he considered himself to be marked for that preferment. Sometimes, in the summer after he too le
ft high school and was working for Mack in the yard, he’d accompany Trudel on her afternoon constitutionals with the Lowe kids. There was no canoodling on these outings, both of them behaved impeccably though he’d usually wind up in a state of agonising tumescence that necessitated five minutes of solitary activity on the way home.
Another good thing about Trudel was that she came clued-up and fully equipped. She knew about rubbers, explained how and where to get them, and was able to put them on with delicious deftness. She kept a supply herself – a perk of working for the doctor – and in the rare situation of there being none available she was sufficiently practised to ensure that no risks were taken. She was in every sense a safe pair of hands.
To begin with Spencer didn’t mind being one of the many, so long as he believed he was special. But after a while it got irksome, knowing that on evenings when he couldn’t get away some other guy was having a good time, no matter how little it meant to Trudel, whose feelings he didn’t for a moment doubt.
He put it to her one afternoon when they were with the Lowe kids. They were actually sitting in the Flahertys’ back yard, where there was an old tin hip bath with water in, and the kids were running around in the buff having a terrific time. Seamus was at work in the saddlery – he won county prizes for his leather-tooling – and fat amiable Mrs Flaherty was perspiring indoors with iced coffee and a magazine so there was no hint of impropriety in the arrangement.
‘I can’t get out tonight,’ said Spencer. ‘I’ve got to go out helping pick up and deliver jobs.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Trudel placidly. ‘You’ve got your work – I’ve got mine.’ She nodded in the direction of her charges as they splashed and shrieked.
Spencer cracked his knuckles, and as he’d intended, she put her hand over his, wincing. ‘Don’t do that!’
‘Sorry.’
‘Cheer up. How about tomorrow?’
‘Should be okay. Trudel—’
‘Mmm?’
‘Are you seeing anyone else tonight?’
‘Not that I know of.’ He knew she was telling the truth. She was such a free spirit, she wrote her own rules so completely, that it was a waste of time getting jealous or angry. But Spencer was struggling with both.
‘Will you though – if someone asks you?’
She shrugged. ‘I might do. No – I don’t know. Why?’
He wanted to ask, Why would you want to? But instead he said: ‘Because I don’t want you to.’
‘Oh!’ She laughed in a motherly sort of way and patted his leg. ‘Don’t be silly. You’re my number one. You know that.’
‘I’d like to be your only one.’
‘You are. Kind of.’
‘I mean, really.’
She looked at him with a big grin and shining eyes. She seemed to find this whole conversation fun.
‘Am I your only one. Spencer?’
‘Yes.’
The moment he’d said it he wanted to take it back. Instead of the stirring declaration of singleminded passion that he’d intended, it came out sullen and pathetic.
‘That’s nice,’ said Trudel equably. ‘That’s sweet.’
‘It is not! It is not sweet.’
‘Because you are sweet,’ she went on as though he hadn’t spoken. ‘You’re the sweetest boy in town. And the smartest.’
She looked at him as she said this and there was a warm lasciviousness in her tone and the way her lips moved around the words as though she were licking ice cream. He felt himself stir with desire and tried not to think of how close her body was, her billowing breasts in the cotton dress, her smooth thighs squashed down on the edge of the garden chair.
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she replied, as if it went without saying, ‘and I love you.’
He didn’t stop to ask himself why she thought him smart, it was enough for him that she did. Indeed the mere fact that he wasn’t, on the face of it, the smartest, confirmed him in his opinion that theirs was a special relationship. He knew he was going to do something great with his life, he felt it in his bones, in his water, and Trudel with her woman’s intuition knew it too.
Temporarily mollified, he let the matter rest there. But the worm of jealousy, having once stirred, waxed and grew fat. And the arrival of Bobby Forrest on the scene did nothing to dispel it.
As a matter of fact Bobby had been around for a while too, but unlike most of the other guys had shown no interest in Trudel. This, he let it be known in various subtle ways, was because he had no need of her. Bobby was one of those youths in whom the hormones struck even earlier and more impressively than in Spencer. He was very dark and by the time he was fourteen he was five-ten and a hundred and sixty pounds, sported a distinct moustache, his voice had broken, and he could do some pretty crazy tricks with his cock. Added to which he had a handsome confidence which proclaimed him ready for anything. Most of what the other boys learned about girls they learned from Bobby, or from stories about him. And at school he was a jock, which gave him still more of an advantage.
As if that weren’t enough he was also a good-natured fellow who didn’t in the least mind sharing the fruits of his experience with anyone who’d listen. In fact, had Spencer been able to he would have seen that Bobby was the male version of Trudel.
When he discovered that the two of them had been to the movies together he was shocked and outraged. Where had Bobby got the money to take her? And what had gone on during and after the show?
He asked her the very next time he saw her.
‘You said you loved me.’
‘That’s right. And I do.’
‘But you went out with Bobby.’
She laughed, ‘Oh, Bobby!’
‘What did you do?’
‘We went to the Greta Garbo movie. She is the most beautiful woman in the world,’ Trudel added a little wistfully, but Spencer wasn’t bothered about that.
‘Did you kiss him?’
‘He kissed me,’ she said.
‘It’s the same thing!’
‘No, it’s not.’ She was calm as ever, not in the least defensive.
‘You told him not to?’
‘No.’
‘You pushed him away?’
‘Of course not!’ She began to laugh again. ‘Why would I do that? We were at the movies!’
‘So what’s the difference,’ he insisted furiously, almost in tears, ‘between him and me?’
She put her hand to his face and looked at him with a sweet, tender, silly-boy smile. ‘You’re you, Spencer, that’s the difference, you know that.’
It wasn’t much of an answer, but he was as always disarmed: willingly convinced for the moment that whoever else she allowed to kiss her he occupied some special and superior place in her heart.
But that was while he was with her. By the time he’d been one hour out of her company the terrible pangs had returned, chewing at his vitals.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’ asked his mother as he pushed his supper around. ‘This isn’t like you.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t eat.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, but do you feel all right? You’re not sick?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Do you want to leave the table?’ Mack asked.
‘Thanks.’ He pushed his chair back and headed for the door, aware of the concerned look they exchanged behind his back as he did so.
Everything went on pretty much the same. Trudel never said no, seemed always to be available, but he knew – because others had told him with a hint of gloating – that she was still seeing Bobby. There weren’t any others these days, it was a joke among the guys that Apples was turning into a nun, but that only made it worse. If there had once been safety in numbers there was now real danger in being one of only two, because that meant that sooner or later she was going to have to choose between them. At least that was what Spencer thought, even if Trudel didn’t. With self-destructive persistence he urged her to
make the choice and she mildly refused to be pushed around.
It did make him sick in the end. He lost weight, couldn’t sleep, was cranky and miserable. Mack gave him a week off work and Caroline made him go to the doctor. He got to the surgery at the same time as Trudel was arriving for her day with the children.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘I can’t eat.’ He was rather proud of himself for this obvious, physical sign of his consuming passion.
‘Oh . . .’ She stroked his hah back off his forehead. ‘That’s not right, Spence. You do look kind of thin, I noticed.’
He grabbed her hand and held it to his chest. ‘You can make me better. You know how.’
She let her hand stay there, spreading her fingers under his, over his heart, so he thought he’d die of longing.
‘Nonsense,’ she said gently. ‘You only have to eat. And be happy – don’t get so mad at the world.’
If he was getting mad at the world, he thought, it was because the world was going mad round him.
And then Trudel disappeared. She just wasn’t around, and Yolande Haynes started taking out the Lowe kids with the new baby in its baby carriage. All Mrs Flaherty would say when Spencer called was that she’d gone away for a while, but she looked tearful, and Mr Flaherty was grimly taciturn. Or at least he was until Spencer got to the gate, and then he called after him.
‘Spencer McColl!’
Spencer stopped and turned. ‘Yes, sir?’
There was some sort of hiatus, a muted exchange in the doorway: Mrs Flaherty appeared to be remonstrating with her husband but he shooed her firmly and gently back into the house and came down the path to Spencer.
‘My wife’s upset, as you can see.’
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