by Angela Huth
Ursula answered after an unusually long time.
‘How’s the cat?’ Ralph asked. ‘I’ve been feeling reasonably guilty.’
‘The cat? Oh, the cat.’ Pause. ‘There was a bit of a drama, I’m afraid. I took against it the first morning when I saw it killing a pigeon. I chased it, tried to rescue the bird, but it ran away. It hasn’t come back yet. . . . I’m sorry. Sarah loved it. Perhaps it will.’
‘Perhaps it’s trying to find its way back to you.’ Ralph chewed his pen. ‘How did Sarah take it all? The quick disappearance?’
‘Desolate, as you can imagine. Cries herself to sleep. Bloody cats. I don’t know how to console her.’
‘Look, give it a day or two, and if it still hasn’t come back, I’ll -’
‘Please don’t bring us another one.’
‘No.’ Ralph sighed. ‘All right. I am sorry. Any other news?’
‘None. And listen. I’m in a desperate hurry. We’re meant to be at St Crispin’s at seven-fifteen, and I haven’t made the children’s supper. I’ll ring you as soon as there’s any cat news.’
‘Thanks.’
I’ll ring you as soon as there’s any cat news. The words were repeated so clearly Ursula might have been in the room. Again Ralph sighed. There were times that bachelorhood and the solitary life were far from a pleasure. Perhaps his mother was right. Perhaps he should, seriously, put aside his wasted feelings for Ursula and look for a wife.
He rose from the chair, went heavily to the kitchen wondering if there was anything frozen he could tempt himself with for dinner. It was then he remembered it was his birthday. (Why had his mother forgotten? She always did.) He was forty-two. Middle-aged. He picked up a glass. It was an occasion to open the bottle of fine malt whisky Ursula had given him last Christmas. He remembered her pink cheeks from unaccustomed champagne at lunch, an orange paper hat on her head. She had hugged him extravagantly by the Christmas tree, making the children laugh. For a split second, they had been so tightly packed together that Ralph, stabbed by cruel fantasy, had had to dismantle her arms quite brusquely so that she should not feel his reaction.
He opened the bottle, poured the whisky, and because it was his birthday he allowed himself to continue his remembering.
* * *
Mary walked across the field to the place where the balsam poplar lay. It was evening. The anxiety that had accosted her that morning, deflected by Rosie Cotterman’s strange visitor, had not returned. Thanks to the visitor, the morbid thoughts of Bill’s life after her own death had been scattered. She had returned home eager to ring Rosie, whom she had not seen for some time, to find out if she had made a successful sale. At lunch, she and Bill had talked only of their curious neighbour: the odd, solitary life she led, the little they knew of her after so many years, her extraordinary single-mindedness. When Bill returned to continue sawing up the tree in the afternoon, Mary refrained from ringing Rosie immediately for fear of interrupting negotiations, although she was impatient to find out what was going on. Never having experienced the precarious state of supporting herself, she had always taken vicarious delight when commercial success came to her friends. She restrained herself till after tea. Rosie, in one of her more forthcoming moods, accepted the invitation to a drink. It would be by way of celebration, she said. The strange man from London had bought three pictures for ludicrous money.
Halfway across the field, Mary became conscious of the lightness of heart and freedom of mind that often came sudden from heaven between bouts of anxiety. She reflected – as she was always able to do at such moments – on the life-diminishing effects of her doom-filled spells. ‘Is the life we do not know worth all the tormenting thoughts that corrode our brain?’ she asked herself. For nearly fifty years she had listened to Bill talking about Balzac, but Chekhov was her man: Chekhov had asked that very question. What had his answer been, she wondered. No, surely. All reasonable people must consider corrosion of the brain through tormenting thoughts of death a foolishness we should not allow ourselves, an unhealthy indulgence that should be controlled. And yet . . . how? At moments like this, unfettered, Mary felt the usual determination not to succumb next time. But the attacks took her unawares. They crept up from nowhere, gripped before she could muster the strength to repel them. And once in their stranglehold, she was helpless. Relief would only come with time (sometimes hours, sometimes days) or surprising interruption, such as the incident of the man on the beach this morning. Calculated deflection – cooking, reading, gardening – were of no avail, though she continued in her customary way of doing all these things, no matter how savage the attack.
Her ability to carry on as normal, during the black times, was, she liked to think, a disguise Bill could not see beyond. He had only the faintest knowledge, Mary was certain, judging from his observations, of her plight. Very occasionally she had considered trying to explain, but it was too late now. Besides, she always thought the subject too amorphous, too silly, too shaming, even, to describe, even to the man who would best understand. It was the only secret she kept from him. By keeping it, she believed she had spared him many years of worry on her behalf. As it was, they had had a married life that was rare in its continuing happiness.
Mary turned the corner. A few yards ahead, back to her, Bill was waving his electric saw over a small branch. Beside him was a pile of meticulously neat logs. Mary smiled at this characteristic show of orderliness: the logs would have to be carted by trailer to the shed, but to Bill this was no reason to throw them carelessly on the ground in the first place. He was a man of strong habit in matters of time and symmetry.
The pile of logs was also small. Mary, still smiling to herself, considered how many hours Bill had been working on the tree by now. Fast sawing was not one of his skills, or perhaps his enjoyment of the job slowed him down. Mary continued to watch him. The back of his head was unruly with thick grey hair that overlapped the neck of a sweater she had knitted many winters ago. His powerful shoulders moved with a rhythmic thrust and rise: his knees, in slumped corduroys, were slightly bent for better balance. How potent is the familiar, she thought. And then she knew, quite suddenly, he would be all right without her. Was it the neatness of the logs that convinced her? She saw them as a symbol of the discipline that would rule his life, a discipline the death of his wife could not corrode. Bill was a man strong enough not only to survive after her death, but to continue to enjoy his life. The thought, in the cool evening air, gave her comfort.
Mary knew he had no idea she stood behind him. The snarl of the electric saw meant he could not have heard her. She felt a slight intrusive guilt, having crept up on one of his pleasures unobserved. Before she could step into his vision, he turned. Surprised, he held the buzzing saw high in the air, then switched it off. The sudden silence was infinite.
‘Look at that.’ He grinned, pointing to the pile of logs.
‘Wonderful.’
‘Slow work, though. Poor old tree.’ He kicked the trunk, looked at his watch. ‘Haven’t come for me, have you? Six-thirty I said I’d be in.’ His self-appointed hour.
‘Rosie’s coming at six. She won’t stay long. Says she’s busy. Missed a whole afternoon’s work because some man came and bought three pictures.’
‘Ah.’
Bill picked up a log, looked at the pithy whiteness of its wood in its thin skin of mottled bark. He added it to the pile, shuffling it about with all the precision of a bricklayer squaring up the next brick in a wall. When it was placed to his satisfaction, he looked at his watch again.
‘I’d better come back with you, then.’
He said it lightly. The decision bore no trace of sacrifice. Self-appointed hours were for his own benefit. He was always happy to change them for his wife’s convenience.
‘I’ll make an early start tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Hope Rosie got a good price.’
He offered Mary an arm. She took it. They returned to the house in the bright silence of the evening.
* * *
‘Where’s the cat now? Dead, I expect, and none of you care.’
Finally, Ralph, intent on one of his languid conversations, had rung just as she had escaped upstairs.
She now sat at her dressing-table looking critically into the mirror. She had wanted to make a particular effort, as she always did, for dining in College. The fact that no other dons’ wives, as far as she could tell, were interested in making a similar effort, spurred her on. The dress she had chosen was jade silk, very simple. She would be overdressed, of course, because any silk dress in a gathering of academics’ wives was overdressed, and she did not care. Make-up completed – she would probably be the only one to indulge in anything so frivolous as mascara – and hair brushed into as wild a halo as she could manage, to contrast with the scrunched-up perms that would be meeting in solidarity – there was only jewellery to be chosen. Ursula’s fingers ruffled through a pile of paste stones with a sense of wicked defiance. She chose long earrings, and the brooch shaped like a lyre. No-one but Martin would notice, because the average Fellow was as sartorially unobservant as his wife. But at least the wearing of such things gave her pleasure.
She pinned the brooch on her shoulder, checked its position in the mirror. Then she saw the reflection of Sarah, standing at the doorway.
The cat was in her arms.
‘She’s come back,’ the child said. ‘She suddenly just jumped up at the kitchen window. I let her in. She was famished, I think. I gave her some milk. Isn’t she good?’
Sarah moved towards her mother, stopped beside her. The cat seemed uncomfortable in her arms, rigid. It stared at the floor.
‘Isn’t she good, I said, Mama?’
‘Very,’ said Ursula.
‘Aren’t you pleased? Weren’t you worried? We won’t let her run away again.’
‘No. We’ll do our best.’
Martin then appeared in the mirror’s reflection. Ursula saw him observe her own anguished expression, and Sarah’s smiling face.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘The cat’s come back,’ said Ursula.
She set about putting on her earrings. Their small glare made dancing reflections, pale as moonstones, on her neck. The opposite of shadows, she thought, mind gliding hectically about.
Martin came up to his daughter and kissed her on the head.
‘Great relief for you,’ he said, thus loyal to both wife and daughter. ‘But I’m late and I must hurry. You take the cat back to the kitchen and – I don’t know – settle it down.’
‘The basket’s still there,’ said Ursula.
‘Okay.’ Sarah moved away. ‘But anyhow, as I was the one who found her, I’m going to name her. She’s going to be Catt. C A T T.’
‘Very good name,’ said Martin, shutting the door behind her.
Ursula sighed. ‘Oh Lord,’ she said.
‘Damned cat.’
‘I hate it.’
‘With any luck it’ll be off again.’
‘Ralph’s a fool.’
‘Poor old Ralph. He’s so bent on pleasing.’
Ursula stood up. She turned to Martin who was undoing his tie. His eyes washed up and down her in humorous rather than earnest appraisal.
‘If more of the wives looked like you,’ he said, ‘there’d be an overwhelming vote for them to dine in more than once a term.’
Ursula laughed. Martin took her in his arms, kissed her eyes, trailed a hand through her shining hair. The cat was forgotten again.
* * *
Thomas drove down the M40, uncomfortable in the dinner jacket that was destined to be cleaned for the Farthingoes’ ball. At home he had had to change fast. There had been no time to show Rachel the pictures, or tell her the few things he proposed to tell her about the day. A state of blissful detachment had slowed him down, made his fingers clumsy as on an ungloved frosty day. Even as Rachel had urged him to hurry down the front path, he had been doing up his black tie. Concentrating on this, and dizzied by the glowing state of his heart, he was in no condition to observe details. However, through the mists of his euphoria something – something rather unusual – had struck him. About Rachel.
Now, to check his suspicion – the road being almost empty – he glanced sideways. Indeed, he was right. She was looking very peculiar.
‘You’ve done yourself up a bit, haven’t you?’ he asked.
Rachel patted her hair. A flash of scarlet nails bit into Thomas’s astonished eyes.
First step in her plan to signal availability had been to go to the hairdresser. She had not been to Giorgio for years, and rather enjoyed her pampered afternoon in his salon of brown and gold leather. After three hours she emerged with hair in a charming Edwardian bun on top of her head, wispy curls about her ears. Oh, so seductive, Giorgio had said.
‘Just went to the hairdresser, for once.’
But it wasn’t just the hair. Thomas gave her another glance. Her skirt seemed to be flashing gold stuff – Christmas stuff, he would judge it – while the black velvet top had a low V-neck that revealed a deep groove of cleavage.
‘I mean, women in Oxford don’t dress up much,’ he said, confused.
‘So? I’m not an Oxford woman. You used to like it when I dressed up. You were always encouraging me to spend more money on clothes.’
‘Not used to you taking up my suggestions, I suppose. Have I seen that before?’
‘No. New this afternoon.’
Rachel patted the gold skirt. The movement caused savage rays to shoot up into Thomas’s eyes, even though they were firmly on the road. He desperately wished she was wearing her usual old black dress. All this gold stuff was completely inappropriate for an Oxford College.
‘And, you may have noticed,’ Rachel went on, ‘I took out the earrings.’
The earrings, he remembered, were the only ones he had ever given her. Wedding present. Socking great rubies set in gold and diamonds. She had not retrieved them from the bank for years.
‘Good heavens,’ he said. ‘Where do you think we’re going? The Mansion House?’
Rachel’s small silence indicated he had offended her.
‘But a good idea,’ he added quickly. ‘You might as well wear them when you can.’
Rachel moved huffily in her seat. Nails, gold skirt, earrings all sent out their clashing rays, dazzling in the evening sun that blazed through the windscreen. Whatever would old Pruddle think?
‘And your afternoon? Successful?’ When Rachel had digested Thomas’s implicit criticism, she was calm and cheerful again.
‘Very. Three pictures. Marvellous.’
‘What was this Rosie Cotterman like?’
Thomas allowed himself a long time. ‘Rather odd,’ he said eventually. ‘Eccentric, I suppose you might call her. Lives alone on the marsh.’
‘Young?’
‘Oh no. Quite old.’
‘How old?’
‘Hard to say.’
‘Roughly?’
Why was she so interested in Rosie’s age? The matter had not occurred to Thomas.
‘Mid fifties, perhaps. Or even sixty.’
Peculiar thought, that. He had never looked at anyone over thirty. Rachel was the oldest woman in his life.
‘Not that old, then. Though, even at forty-five, I can’t imagine being sixty.’
They re-entered their silence. Thanks to Rachel’s general indifference about anything to do with his paintings, the subject of Rosie was now obviously over. Thomas’s thoughts returned to his short, ineradicable hours with her: her voice, her hands, her topaz eyes, all such an enchanting confusion in his mind that it was a wonder his body was able to continue the automatic driving of the car.
Beside him, Rachel smiled to hers
elf. She thought how funny it was that Thomas’s anticipation should be entirely connected with good wine – which, judging from the flare in his eyes, it undoubtedly was – while her own danced in quite different areas. The possibility of a don was what occupied her own imaginings. An available don with whom sometimes there could be lunches on a punt on the Cherwell, talks of books and poetry and university politics, just as when she was an undergraduate – but calmer. She asked nothing else. She did not crave emotional involvement, sex, passion, romance. She abhorred the idea of complication. No: all she desired, she told herself quite convincingly, was companionship. At one dinner in St Crispin’s, would she find it?
To be realistic, it was unlikely. But as Thomas accelerated over Magdalen bridge, a salute to his youthful way of driving, perhaps, and the late sun drenched the tower with gold to match her skirt, Rachel noticed her hopes were rising.
The Senior Common Room, in which High Table guests gathered for drinks, was architecturally a fine room: barrel ceiling, handsome cornice, deep windows. But some years ago even the most myopic of the Fellows had noticed that it could do with refurbishing. This decision caused almost as much heightened feeling as the one concerning the provision of contraceptives in the undergraduates’ cloakrooms – a subject which had forced Fellows for many weeks to scour rusty areas of moral philosophy deep within them. Outsiders, who like to believe the minds of learned Fellows grapple with more serious issues than the colour of paint, would have been amazed by the furore in the Governing Body once the Motion to Redecorate had been passed. Their approach to so unfamiliar an area as interior decoration was naturally cautious. It was agreed the whole thing had to be decided upon by committee: no such undemocratic act as appointing one competent professional, to present alternative schemes, could be considered.
And so the Fellows, of disparate tastes, struggled with this new and perplexing subject. It soon became clear that it would be hard to achieve any unanimous agreement, except on one point: no wives, absolutely no wives, should be allowed to interfere. When this suggestion was made, it was received with much nodding of wise heads and concealed smiles, as the Fellows thought of each other’s North Oxford houses, all that sponging and dragging and pretentious rubbish. Definitely none of that for the Common Room. No wives. Jolly good idea.
