by Angela Huth
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not much good at domestic analysis. I’m very lucky in having Ursula. We don’t work things out. We just feel our way. It seems to suit us.’
Rachel finished her second glass of red wine, smeared her plate with congealed gravy to look as if she had eaten something, and decided to play her last card – flattery.
‘You seem to me to be a very good man,’ she murmured.
Almost imperceptibly, Martin retracted from her. Her cheeks burned.
‘Rubbish,’ he said sharply.
And then came the moment that Rachel, next morning in the privacy of her dark room, relived a dozen times with horror and tears.
Martin turned to her, eyes steady, impatience shadowing his expression.
‘It seems to me, Mrs Arkwright, there’s something on your mind that you would like to say, and you’re having trouble saying it. Why don’t you just tell me what’s the matter?’
Rachel looked at him in frozen horror. She felt waves of blood scorch her cheeks, tears cut across her eyes. She hated him for his perception and his insensitivity, for his cruel slaying of her hopes, and for his polite indifference.
‘I couldn’t possibly,’ she whispered, and the white arm, with perfect timing, came between them to snatch away a third uneaten course.
Eyes down, hands clenched on her knees, Rachel saw Pruddle’s knotty fingers scramble into her skirt, grasp kindly at her knuckles.
‘My dear Rachel,’ he said, ‘I hope you’re enjoying yourself. I’ve been deserting you. Tell me how you are, and how dear Thomas is.’
Rachel turned, savaged, to concentrate on Pruddle and news of his fossil collection. Tinned strawberries under a cover of snowy meringue passed before her, as did vols-au-vent stuffed with prunes and bacon, and still she found herself unable to eat a thing. She kept drinking, though: many glasses of claret and exquisite Chateau Yquem. The chant of voices, the guttering candles, the stone floor beneath her swelling feet became the diffuse stuff of dreams, unable to hurt any more. There was only one more incident left, before she and Dr Martin Knox went their separate ways, and that she would remember always.
It was time for Pruddle to rise to his feet, say another grace. As Rachel moved to copy him, the independent spirit of her gold skirt betrayed her again. It bulbed up over Martin’s thighs like a small parachute. In her dazed state Rachel put out a happy hand to quell it, and found herself grasping the Fellow’s hand. For an infinitesimal second she felt the warmth of his fingers, then wrenched her own away. Martin was kind enough to smile, but she recognised his look. It was one of pity.
‘Benedicto benedicatur,’ murmured Pruddle.
At the opposite end of the long table, Thomas crossed his hands over his stomach and bowed his head. It had been a long dinner. Disgusting food, as usual. Wine pretty good but oddly, he had had little desire to drink. He had made adequate conversation to the two etiolated women on either side of him, both keen to talk about their children’s progress in school, and had occasionally allowed himself a glance at the glorious woman almost opposite, in a dress of peacock blue. Not that, in his present blissful state of love for Rosie Cotterman, he would have been interested in making any approach. Simply, she had the look of a woman who would not have been offended by his preoccupation, and he would have liked to be beside her. She could only be, he guessed, wife of the handsome man at Pruddle’s end of the table, with whom Rachel seemed to be having a lively conversation.
Grace over, Thomas gave a dutiful glance towards his wife. He wondered if she would be as eager as he to leave early. The events of the day were beginning to press upon him. He stifled a yawn, discreetly pawed the ground with a cramped foot. Rachel, he could see from here, was scarlet in the face and unsmiling. In fact, he noticed, as she moved away from the table, she stumbled, and the gallant Pruddle offered his arm. Somewhere beneath his own overwhelming sense of happiness Thomas felt a small tremor of concern. Rachel, who rarely drank more than a glass of wine, might have judged it impolite to refuse the splendid choice provided. She was altogether in a funny mood, tonight: the unusual hair, the unseasonal dress, earrings out of the bank. All most peculiar. He hurried after her.
But he was detained by the slow shuffling crowd, in particular the woman in blue, just ahead of him, who had stopped to wait for the handsome Fellow, Rachel’s companion at dinner. When they met, the man put an arm briefly round his wife’s shoulders, bent his head to whisper something in her hair. They both laughed, moved unhurriedly together. Their discreet private moment in a public place reminded Thomas of such times in the early days of his own marriage, and he envied them.
By the time he had caught up with Pruddle and Rachel, they were halfway across the quad, on the way back to the Common Room. Rachel was listing slightly, despite the support of Pruddle’s arm. Her golden skirt, bright under a full moon, billowed in a small breeze.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Oh, my dear Thomas.’ A trace element of relief crossed Pruddle’s old face. He came to a halt, Rachel clutched to his arm. ‘Very good to see you. Trust you’re coming up for coffee and so on.’
Thomas scanned Rachel’s face. She seemed not to see him.
‘You’re looking pretty good, old thing,’ he said. He patted her vaguely on the bottom. The gold skirt raised its hackles under his hand, silently snorting in protest.
‘Isn’t she?’ agreed Pruddle.
Rachel aimed a wisp of a smile somewhere between the two of them. Thomas took her other arm.
‘Get some coffee into you,’ he said.
Alone by now in the courtyard, the wavering trio made their way to the door that led to the Common Room. As they moved in uneasy silence, Thomas was aware that his mind had become a split screen. On the one side, the here and now, he was definitely not enjoying himself. Due to Rachel’s untoward behaviour he would have to concentrate hard for the next hour or so, put on a good show for Pruddle’s sake, a task for which he had little heart. But on the other side of the screen, huge and shining and private, was the thought of Rosie Cotterman, whom he loved with a terrifying suddenness and force. The fact of her existence, miles away, gave him strength to manoeuvre his drunken wife up the stairs with affectionate skill.
‘Good old Thomas,’ muttered Pruddle. He was bent almost double as they pushed towards the top of the stairs. Thomas, who had the advantage of the bannister for support, tugged at his wife so that Pruddle should be relieved of the greater part of her considerable weight.
‘Brace up,’ he hissed, too quietly for Pruddle to hear.
‘Up,’ whispered Rachel obediently, missing a step.
On the lonely staircase her skirt, earrings and eyes all glinted with a certain defiance. Rather magnificent, in all her absurdity, thought Thomas, and fancied that the portraits of Pruddle’s predecessors looked down upon them in agreement.
* * *
In the place where Toby Farthingoe camped in the woods, not far from the vicarage, the brightness of the moon was of little avail. Branches of the trees, dense with new leaves, allowed the merest scattering of light on the undergrowth. But Toby’s eyes, accustomed to the chequered darkness, missed nothing.
It had been a good night. He had arrived at ten-thirty, settled himself, warm in a waterproof jacket, on a groundsheet. The Italian cook, who believed his nightly sojourns in the woods were to meet a more companionable creature than a badger, had made him enough sandwiches for two – prosciutto in French bread – and a thermos of strong black coffee. These were packed in a basket beside him but, absorbed by the sounds and smells of the night, he felt no hunger.
Away from his machine, he had intended to think about a complicated part of the new computer programme he was devising. Having struggled with the problem all day, his tired mind had turned instead to the time his interest in badgers had begun. It was a day – he must have been about ten – when he heard his father, a keen amateur naturalist, ask his mother for a fine new shaving brush for Christmas. It must be b
adger hair, he said: he could only shave with badger hair. When the brush arrived, Toby examined it closely. His father had pointed out the delicate design of each hair – white at the bottom, black in the middle, and white again at the tip. Overall, he had explained, a badger’s hair looks grey. But when it moves, the hair ruffles into changing shades of darkness, making a perfect night-time camouflage. Toby, intrigued, went with his father on his next badger-watching expedition. It had been one of the most exciting nights of his boyhood – that first experience of night out of doors, far from the safety of houses, exposed to alien rustlings in the bushes, the hoot of owls and screech of pheasant, soughing of trees, rasping of branches, clawing of bramble, occasional thorns lit with a crumb of moonlight between the shadows. Fear sharpened his anticipation. He had sat close to his father on a tree trunk, one foot squirming in a mysterious mush of leaves, sucking peppermints, not speaking.
‘Listen. Listen to the night, boy,’ his father had whispered just once. ‘And keep your eyes about you.’
Toby obeyed, and was rewarded. An old boar appeared not a yard from them, lifted its head and sniffed the air. For a few seconds, Toby was able to observe every detail of its black and white head: the knowing eye that buttoned the wide black stripe, the white-tipped ears, the quivering jet nose. . . . Toby held his breath. The animal looked at him, then moved back into denser shadow, calm, unafraid. Toby, trembling, grasped his father’s hand. He remembered envying the badger’s oneness with the night. He remembered admiring its caution, but lack of fear, in the strange dark world of the wood, and how his own fear had left him.
After that first night in the woods, badger watching became his passion. Gradually, he realised that he, too, was a nocturnal creature, happiest, most at peace, in darkness. While others sought salvation in God, or art, or sun, or the company of family and friends, his hunting ground was the countryside at night. He felt no fear, no haunting, even in storms or rain, or silent freezing snow. But the excitement – the excitement on seeing yet another badger, never left him. He had felt it tonight. A sow had appeared out of the bushes – Toby knew her sett was not far away – followed by three young ones. She settled herself, resting from the journey with the resigned air of a mother who has come to a playground to watch over her children. The babies gambolled round her like kittens, cuffing one another, rolling over to expose their silvery underbellies, then daring themselves to leap a couple of feet away from their mother’s side. Their small striped faces were sometimes clearly lighted by a scrap of moonlight. Toby regretted, as he often did, that he had been deflected by computers from his first ambition to make wildlife films. If you had the patience, he had discovered, the opportunities were extraordinary.
Tonight, when the babies followed their mother away, obedient to some unseen signal, Toby turned to the coffee and sandwiches. It had been an exceptional performance, but he knew there would be no more. He ate and drank, and lay back on the groundsheet waiting for the usual sleepiness that came to him in the early hours before dawn. But tonight his mind was sharp, awake. He watched the clouds rummaging through a small patch of visible sky, and thought of Frances. The thoughts provoked guilt, as they always did. For the last week or so, he had been wholly occupied with his new programme by day, and the delights of his solitary excursions to the woods by night. He had deserted her. The fact that she, too, had much on her mind with all the organising of the party, was no excuse. He knew, from the look in her eyes every night after dinner when he kissed her goodbye, she was puzzled he wanted to go. She had not complained or even responded to the terrible suggestion that she should come with him; but he knew that his leaving hurt her.
Now, the part of him that Frances could never begin to satisfy, was sated by half a glorious night, and he was left with a base desire for her. While he would not ever want her to be here with him, sharing his secret place, he still sometimes very much fancied being in bed with her. It was one of those moments. With uncomfortable urgency he gathered up groundsheet and basket, and made his way fast along the small, familiar path. Once out of the woods he saw that both moon and sky were paling.
Toby opened the bedroom door quietly. Frances was deeply asleep. He stood by the bed looking down at her. One long arm was thrown out over the bedclothes, the rather sharp profile softened by long hair scraped, as always, behind her wounded ear: the silver thread of the scar glinted on the lobe. Gently, Toby pulled back the sheet. Frances was naked – had given up, perhaps, the pathetic idea that a satin nightdress might tempt him. He looked at the roundness of a breast, squashed into an imperfect shape by the arm, and the childlike neck.
Toby ripped off his shirt, undid the belt of his trousers. In his violent haste he did not bother to take them off, but threw himself with hampered feet on to his wife, plundering her sleep, forcing her into surprised and confused wakefulness.
In the morning, Frances found the bed empty again. Under the sheets, she came upon his crumpled trousers, and wondered whether to laugh or cry.
* * *
Rachel was wakened next morning, most unusually, by Thomas bringing her a cup of coffee.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
Painful fronds undulated through her head. She felt sick. Through half-closed eyes she saw that Thomas looked anxious.
‘I’m all right. Why?’
‘You seemed a bit under the weather last night.’
‘I just couldn’t eat anything. That food. . . .’
‘Ah. That must have been it.’
Thomas half drew the curtains, making sure the sun was shielded from his wife’s sore eyes. Such consideration, she thought, dabbing about the bedside table for a packet of aspirin. What had come over him?
‘Thanks for the coffee, anyway. Are you off?’
‘Not just yet. Got a few papers to see to upstairs.’
Rachel felt a stab of irritation that exacerbated the pain in her head. She ached to be alone in the dark, to know the house was empty, so that she could go over the events of last night, and thus try to exorcise her degradation. For this she needed absolute privacy. Thomas stood by the door.
‘Anything else you want? I’ll look in to say goodbye.’
‘No. Don’t. I think I’ll go back to sleep.’
‘Very well. See you this evening.’
Thomas blew her a kiss, keen to be gone. There was a sort of inner bounciness about him, Rachel observed, before closing her eyes. Perhaps it was due to some kind of uncontainable moral superiority. He had drunk little, uncharacteristically. She had drunk too much, equally out of character. He was triumphant. She was weighed by invisible stones to the bottom of a dark pit.
Overhead she could hear Thomas’s heavy tread: backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. What was he doing? Further irritated, Rachel swallowed three aspirins and drank the cup of coffee. Then, falling back into the protection of her pillow, she allowed the tears. She wept quietly for a long time, whimpering with shame, humiliation, self-scorn. Had she been less exhausted, she realised, she might have seen some humour in the foolishness of the situation. Signalling availability, indeed – what a preposterous idea! How could she ever have kidded herself that she had a chance in hell of a man responding to those signals, particularly among such a desiccation of dons? She must have been off her head, allowing herself to be carried away by stupid fantasies spending all that time and money only to end up making herself a laughing stock. There was at this moment nothing funny about any of it. In years to come, perhaps, she could look back, privately reflect and remember, and allow herself a small smile. But for now she could only live through, and try to shake off, the terrible abjection.
Thomas’s footsteps stopped at last. In the silence, her weeping over, Rachel forced herself to confront the worst thought of all. This was it: her hand, restraining her skirt, had brushed Dr Martin Knox’s hand by mistake. He, she knew, did not imagine the gesture was a mistake. For the timeless moment that their fingers had been accidentally intertwined, Rachel had bee
n charged with a blissful electric shock. Even through the dullness caused by wine, she had felt it clearly. And she had wanted to go on grasping his fingers. More than anything she had felt for years and years she wanted to go on holding the hand of the handsome tutor.
Those were the facts.
Confronted, stated, they should now be buried. Sleep would best exhume.
Warm, comfortable, headache fading, Rachel slept.
When she woke, at midday, she felt surprisingly energetic. She dressed quickly, then took the gold and black dress from its hanger. Its skirt, which had proved so treacherous, ballooned about her as she carried it downstairs. The gold was horrible in the morning sun, the gold of cheap paint. She went to the grate in the sitting room where, occasionally on winter nights, authority was defied and wood fires were lighted. She took up yesterday’s evening paper from the sofa, twisted its pages one by one. In the empty grate lay a few black petals of torn-up paper or card, too thick to crumble into finer ash. When she had made the twisted newspaper into a base for the fire, she stuffed the dress on top of it, pushing it into as small a bundle as possible. The velvet bodice responded placidly. But the gold skirt, recalcitrant to the last, billowed up at her, bubbling over the edges of the grate. As she punched one bit back, another puffed up. Rachel and the skirt fought hard for several moments. Rachel screamed obscenities as the engorged skirt defied her over and over again. Then suddenly all the fight went from it. Deflated, it panted against the sides of the fireplace, waiting.
Trembling, Rachel struck a match, put it to the paper. Flames rose quickly. With no wood to crackle, their silence was alarming. So was their height. Some of them escaped the chimney, spurted up towards the mantelpiece. Rachel moved back. She watched fascinated, as fingers of orange flame and golden skirt entwined, parted, entwined again, the one consuming the other.
