The pause at the other end of the line became ominous with unsaid words. She pictured it as a summer sky grown plum with incipient storm.
‘You don’t have to worry, Prue.’
With breathtaking fickleness, Prue’s emotions did a volte-face. She had been wrong, after all — the kiss in the taxi had been one of pure relief from tension, only that. The nocturnal visit a politeness in a circle that took making love as one did meeting for a drink, or for a meal. Not wishing to insult her after the taxi episode, Jamie had made it a point of honour to invade the bedroom - from which he undoubtedly retired in relief. That was it. Jamie had not wished to hurt her feelings. All that had been required of Prue to extricate herself from a solecism was to hide them. Instead she had blundered. In the blessed privacy of the study, she balled her fingers into a fist and knocked it against her stomach hard.
‘I’m sorry. I made a mistake.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
She found herself smiling like an idiot with relief. You’ve gone mad, Prue Valour. Mad and dangerous.
‘But you’re right, Prue. Lunch is probably a bad idea.’
The study seemed very cold and dusty and the silence that followed the replacing of the receiver an ungrateful one. Prue studied one of the photographs. She had been thinner in those days and it had suited her. She studied her younger image critically, comparing it to the photo of Helen that also sat on the desk.
‘I don’t like you at all’, she told the beautiful countenance for the umpteenth time, ‘and, dead, you have been nothing but a menace.’ Helen’s glistening eyes and scarlet lips did not move. Neither did a tremor disarrange the shining hair.
Prue picked up Helen’s photograph and placed it at the back of the desk so that it was partially obscured by one of Max at a company dinner.
At his end of the phone, Jamie sat in his office twirling the biro stamped with the bank’s logo around and around between his finger and thumb.
‘Daydreaming?’ asked Dyson, one of his fellow asset managers, putting his head round the door. ‘Of the millions you’re going to make?’
‘I was thinking about cliches.’
‘Good God.’ Dyson parked himself on the chair in front of Jamie’s desk. ‘Have you got the answer to the great cliche of the economy?’
Jamie was suffering from a sense of shock at his own behaviour. ‘Just because a cliche is a cliche it doesn’t mean you should underestimate it.’
‘Good God,’ repeated Dyson, unimpressed.
Chapter Eight
The alarm shrieked into the darkness and tore Violet from sleep. For a few seconds she lay motionless, flattened and exhausted, before the adrenalin shuddered through her limbs.
The Scandinavians devote a whole vocabulary to snow. Mothers have evolved one entirely for sleep. Oh, that deliciously enabling warmth. That languor licking softly over a body quivering with need. Come, come fast. Stay.
Sleep.
Get up. Dress. Make breakfast. Feed Edward. Brush teeth. Go to work . . . Come back. Make supper. Brush teeth. Go to bed . . . Struggle up to Edward.
A cry sounded from the baby’s room and uncapped the borehole that fed Violet’s rage. Anger streamed through her and she jerked the sheet up over her shoulders. How much more could a baby demand of its mother? And how old would he have to be before he slept properly? She had been up twice during the night to service the ravening monster that apparently inhabited her son’s body and refused to respond to her nurturing. There was no reason for Edward to cry; and her anger was fed by the unreason. He received every possible attention. He was fed. He was clean. He was talked to. He was cuddled. But no amount of feeding, changing or rocking propitiated the ever-open mouth whose raison d’être, it seemed, was to scream.
Under the bedclothes, Violet strove to remember what it was like, not so long ago, for God’s sake, when she had no baby, and failed.
Jamie was making groggy-sounding noises and she turned over towards him. ‘See to Edward, Jamie, please. I’m finished. There’s juice in the fridge.’
‘Must I?’
‘Yes,’ said Violet sharply.
Jamie struggled out of bed and padded out of the room. Violet sank into the goose-down pillow. She craved peace, stillness, the utter bliss of not being wanted - and the certainties back by which she had lived her life before Edward.
She listened to Jamie talking to the baby, and to Edward responding with little grunts and giggles. Father and son went off downstairs. Violet let out her breath, rolled out of bed and stripped off her nightdress. Low-cut and lace-edged, it was part of the pre-baby existence, inadequate for night sorties, and she reminded herself wearily to buy some sensible ones. The idea of her, Violet, in a sensible nightdress intensified her rage. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself into the bathroom and to the mirror to start the armour-plating process with which she began the day.
The nakedness of her face never failed to set Violet’s fingers metaphorically itching, for here was the best, and most docile, material of all to shape, refurbish, alter and mould into the image she wished.
Cleanse, tone, nourish. Violet rarely deviated from the regime self-imposed after reading articles on skin care at an impressionable age in the sixth form. The articles had been high on scientific data, and a slightly sceptical but determined Violet had taken note and looked to the products they recommended much as the fully paid-up atheist might secretly cleave to the idea of the saviour- you have nothing to lose by assuming the benefit of the doubt.
If you wanted to believe, then liposomes offered one possible route to eternal youth. Violet was canny, choosing the most exclusive and thereby enhancing its mystique.
She glanced at the clock and picked up a moisturizer which had come in an icily elegant package and apparently incorporated these desirable liposomes in spoonfuls. A gremlin dancing at the back of her mind informed her that she had been conned: advertisers lie, it said, it’s their business. From long practice, Violet ignored it.
She applied the cream over her face and neck. Then she brushed her hair vigorously, this way and that, and studied the effect, checked her eyebrows, combed out her eyelashes and nipped at her cuticles with a special pair of pliers.
Jamie padded back into the bedroom and deposited Edward on the bed. Reluctantly, Violet yielded the bathroom to her husband. The baby’s gaze locked on to his mother and a smile revealed four white teeth.
‘He seems all right this morning.’ Jamie retrieved a towel from the floor. ‘Thirsty, though.’
Violet proffered a finger to her son. She did not pick him up, however, because she was now in her office clothes and there was dribble on his face and a patch of something dubious on his Baby-gro. Edward seized her finger and transferred it to his mouth where he bit.
‘Ouch. Little beast.’ Violet removed her finger and Edward whimpered with disappointment. In the bathroom, Jamie frowned at his shaving-soap-wreathed reflection.
‘Careful,’ he said through the door. ‘I’ve just got him into a good mood.’
Violet interpreted the remark as criticism and yet another wave of fury crashed over her.
‘I’ll sort out the breakfast,’ she said bad-temperedly, and meant: Lay off me, Jamie.
‘Do you have to be so cross, Violet?’
She wanted to run at him and bang her head hard against his chest until the breath was driven from his infuriating, superior, smug body.
‘Oh, do shut up,’ she said.
A flare of meanness and dislike leapt between husband and wife. Sensing the atmosphere, the baby began to cry but Violet made no move to pick him up.
Jamie looked at Violet and turned his back.
At weekends, Violet anticipated the sharp relief of walking out of the front door on Monday mornings, much as the patient anticipates relief from the dentist. The click of the lock, two paces down the red-tiled path, out of the gate, into the street - and there it was. Freedom. Air.
All weekend she toyed with the vision. A whole da
y, a whole week without my baby.
‘Morning, Vi,’ said Lavinia, her secretary, as Violet came in at nine-fifteen sharp on Monday morning.
‘Good morning,’ she replied, took off her jacket and hung it carefully over one of her padded tartan hangers. ‘Any messages?’
Lavinia scrutinized her pad covered in hieroglyphics. ‘Don’t think so.’
Violet squeezed behind her desk. ‘Lavinia, would you mind not calling me Vi.’ Lavinia looked blank and then turned pink. ‘It’s not my name.’ Violet’s tone was kindly - and deadly. ‘It’s a bit like me calling you Lav or Lavvy.’
‘Sorry,’ said Lavinia.
Violet requested a cup of camomile tea and began preparing for the marketing meeting, which promised to be difficult if not stormy. She arranged facts in her mind, honed what she knew to be a tricky argument over overseas discounts and read a report on a ‘big’ book that had come in for auction which, in the attempts to secure it, was whipping everyone into mania.
Gradually her irritation lessened and a warm, happy feeling began to grow inside Violet.
Unfortunately, the meeting was stormy and the wash hit Violet. Having neglected to produce some figures (which on reflection she should have anticipated), it was then pointed out that she had permitted a contract to go through that specified overseas royalties on the old basis of the published price, instead of the new practice of price received.
The criticism was listened to in silence. Nevertheless, it was a fair bet that behind the studiously blank faces — including Sebastian Westland’s — ranged around the table, busy minds were constructing defences to cover their backs, or engaging in Schadenfreude. As Violet well knew, the publishing industry was prone to redundancy during a recession. Violet’s fairy godmother should have told her that it was unwise not to be prepared.
The room grew stuffy and a scent of animals on the prowl hung suggestively over alert bodies and faces, blanched like mushrooms by city light.
Violet fixed a slightly widened gaze (it usually worked) on the publishing director, an attractive man but given to bouts of temper.
Even if you’d had one baby, two babies, three babies, and were hollow-eyed and boneless from lack of sleep, it made no difference. You couldn’t fall back on the excuse of exhaustion. That was no quarter. She had to be up there with the rest of them: just as tough, fighting and hungry as they were,
‘It would have been helpful to have had those figures,’ the publishing director reiterated and his tone was biting. ‘Can we have them next week? If not, someone else can do it for you, Violet.’
Never. Violet would have flung herself to the wolves first.
‘Leave it to me,’ she said, and arranged her mouth in what she hoped was a convincing smile.
There was a pause after this interchange before the next topic was introduced. Violet scribbled something, anything, on her notepad. They’re all looking at me, she thought, forgetting that most people concentrate on themselves (a school in which Violet was a premium scholar). They think I can’t cope. Or else they’re pleased I got it in the neck.
‘Violet?’ probed the publishing director. ‘What’s your view?’
The obstinacy and pride that lurked in Violet came to her aid and she raised her head and told them.
When she got back into her office, Lavinia had decorated Violet’s phone with a yellow Post-it sticker. ‘Emmy phoned: what do you want for dinner?’ For one moment, Violet thought she might scream aloud. For heaven’s sake, couldn’t Emmy work that one out? She seized the phone.
‘Is there something in the freezer, Emmy?’
‘Stewing steak, I think.’
‘Could you make a stew?’ Violet did not approve of them but she was beginning to see the benefits of their elastic properties.
‘I don’t know how.’
‘Didn’t your mother teach you anything?’
‘No. We bought them ready-made.’
Violet could hear Capital Radio playing in the background. ‘If you bought some mince round the corner, what about a shepherd’s pie?’
‘Sorry. I’m not sure how to do that either. Could you tell me down the phone?’
For God’s sake!
‘Right.’ Violet spoke very carefully. ‘Get down to Marks and Spencer’s and buy one of their fish pies or something. Do you have any housekeeping money left?’
‘I used it up when I bought Edward’s juice.’
In a very even, careful tone, Violet told Emmy where to find an additional supply. Meanwhile a buzz cutting through their conversation every thirty seconds informed her that calls were backing up. Lavinia was also waving at her from her desk and mouthing, ‘New York.’
Violet’s sense of well-being had well and truly dissipated. Irritation (I pay this bloody girl, why can’t she use her wits?), fury (why is everything left to women?), and a niggle that she had not made up the morning’s spat with Jamie threatened to swell into neap-tide proportions.
‘Look, Emmy. Just do what you think fit. Get anything just as long as there’s something to eat tonight. Got it?’
Violet flung down the receiver and then, to Lavinia’s extreme surprise, dropped her head into her hands. Pressure from the ball of her thumb made sparks float across her vision - great, flaring, yellow sparks that danced with a freedom that Violet no longer possessed.
Jamie thought about a report he had read on the situation in the midde-east as he struggled through St Mary Axe, which was still being cleared of millions of pounds’ worth of damage from a recent terrorist bomb.
It took only one step, but once taken the irreducible logic of the foot over the line made it impossible not to go forward. Was kissing his stepmother-in-law in a taxi constituted as stepping over the line?
‘Jamie. Do you think your life has changed much having Edward?’ Violet asked later, over the Authentic Fisherman’s Pie and (not often seen on Violet’s table) tinned peas.
‘Of course.’
Violet took a tiny forkful of mashed potato while her desire grew to wallop down greedy mouthfuls until her stomach ran with juices and food. She put the fork down on the plate. ‘You are not rung up at work and asked what’s for supper.’
‘True.’ It was a fair point and Jamie always tried to be fair. In times past, it had made Violet love him. Tonight, it appeared to madden her.
‘I think you should share running the house. I have an important job, too.’
She knew perfectly well that her sharpness stemmed partly from the drubbing she had received at the meeting, but she was not going to tell Jamie that.
It was quite clear that Jamie considered her suggestion a bloody awful one. Violet sharpened the whirling blades and went into battle. ‘Don’t interrupt my important job with questions about baked beans and nappies, is that it?’
‘In a word, yes.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘Come home and expect to find supper on the table but ask me not how it gets there.’
Jamie had the grace to look sheepish but he also knew that, with Violet, attack was the best form of defence. ‘Don’t be so nasty. I promise to help when I can.’
His half-apology lanced the atmosphere which had threatened to grow poisoned, but did nothing to solve the problem - which was probably insoluble anyway.
Nevertheless, Violet returned to the subject of their changed life during the nine o’clock news. A royal duchess had, apparently, jetted off somewhere exotic and pictures of her arrival flashed on the screen.
‘We can’t do that anymore,’ said Violet. ‘I thought we would be able to, but we can’t.’
‘Why ever not?’ Jamie picked up a strand of his wife’s hair and smoothed it between his fingers.
Violet considered the logistics of going on holiday. Pushchair. Sterilizing equipment. Nappies. Baby food. Travelling cot. Bottom ointments . . . An anchor chain had wrapped itself around her neck and was tightening.
‘Think of transporting all the stuff we need.’
‘It’s been done before
. Successfully, too.’ Jamie stroked her cheek. ‘Cheer up.’
‘How do you know?’ she flashed at him before she could stop herself and added, ‘Of course. Jenny and Lara. You’ve done it all before with them.’
She wished then that she had remained silent: Lara and Jenny were the big, burning areas which she knew, she knew, were wise to avoid. Jamie’s hand dropped away from the back of the sofa and he turned on her with a mixture of pain and anger that conveyed more clearly than words that Lara’s defection had inflicted a massive hurt.
‘Shut up, Violet. Leave the subject alone.’
It was so unusual for Jamie to show anger, or to reproach her, that Violet was silenced.
On the television screen, figures focused and faded, and the images danced.
‘Sorry,’ said Violet. ‘Kiss me.’
He bent over her, considering the beautiful but stormy face, and she breathed in his smell which she found so attractive. ‘Sorry,’ she repeated.
Jamie kissed her gently and without passion, then got up and left the room. The anchor chain jerked tighter around Violet’s creamed and tended neck.
‘We’ll do the assessment first, Mrs Beckett.’
The supervisor assigned to Violet in the gleaming gym to which she had rendered up a staggering fee for membership was dressed in pedal-pusher leggings and a T-shirt which said: ‘Workouts are healthier than sex.’
Violet did not feel qualified to comment and allowed herself to be ushered into a cubby-hole, grandiosely labelled ‘Assessment Room’. It contained a treatment couch, a machine which disgorged wires, an exercise bike, a computer and various charts in different typefaces and colours, which specified respiration rates, calorie values and fitness categories.
The supervisor shut the door, thereby trapping air so laden with sweat that the effect was of an old-fashioned wet woollen blanket. Violet swallowed.
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