Perfect Love

by Elizabeth Buchan

  ‘What do you mean, darling?’

  ‘We’ve been discussing it in RE.’ Jane seemed impatient with her mother’s slowness. ‘You know in the Bible, the story of the woman taken in adultery.’

  Prue subsided. ‘Oh, her,’ she said rapidly. ‘I’d forgotten.’ Normally, Prue took seriously her parental duty to explain. Today she gave only the briefest of outlines.

  Jane considered what Prue had told her. ‘Wasn’t she stupid, Mum, to get herself into trouble?’

  Prue fiddled with her glass of water. ‘It’s not always straightforward, Jane. You will discover that as you grow older. Think of when you get into trouble at school. You don’t mean to but you do.’

  As a defence it was not notable. Prue knew that. But at the final count, the matter was simple. You either did something, or you did not.

  ‘But, you see,’ said her daughter, pushing away her half-finished plate. ‘In a funny way I do want to get into trouble. It’s more fun.’

  Framed in the window, the beech tree at the end of the garden swayed in counterpoint to the Prunus autumnalis which was now fledged in green

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Prue said.

  ‘Mum! You tell me not to swear.’

  Prue leant over the table and caught her daughter’s hand. Its slightly grubby arrangement of skin and bones lay trustingly in hers and, more than any theory, had the power to make Prue stop in her tracks: to reconsider what can be disgorged from the most ordered and ordinary of linen cupboards or kitchens once they become muddled and out of control.

  Prue stroked the hand resting in hers. ‘You, my girl, are becoming bossy.’

  A trip to Phantom of the Opera and roller blades it was, the latter resulting in a crop of bruises to which Jane would not allow Prue to apply arnica because she wanted to display the war wounds back at school.

  The plan was to spend two nights at Austen Road, which would allow time for the show and, as Prue explained to Jane, for research in the London Library. Jane enjoyed the show and so, in a masochistic fashion, did Prue, who found herself biting her lip at the spectacle of the Phantom’s agonized, racked desire. But such was the decibel level that she emerged from their fabulously expensive seats into the cool night feeling as though she had been hit on the head with a hammer.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Jane happily. ‘I love it when it’s sad.’

  Later, Prue lay in the freshly painted spare room and listened (as Emmy was doing) to the bark of Emmy’s urban fox. Max, fortified by several whiskies, would be asleep in his hotel lapped by mountains, shadows and the rainsoaked Highland air. Sleep peacefully, she willed him across the miles, and felt the burn of her treachery work its way down her body.

  She endeavoured to concentrate on the things that mattered: the WI meeting, the manure that needed to be dug into the vegetable patch, Jane’s half-term report. What had Molly been going on about? Ah, yes. How dreadful it was that the parish magazine had been requisitioned for the debate over fox-hunting, which was rapidly reaching flashpoint. These were the bricks that built a life. Prue’s fingers searched for the edge of the pillow case. They mattered and should not be carelessly overlooked. But, faced with the contrast between a solid, undistinguished municipal building or the breathtaking achievement of Michelangelo’s Sistine Library, or medieval France’s jewel-like, turreted cities, it was difficult not to abandon sense for beauty.

  The unhunted fox in the London garden barked again and Prue dozed on and off. Animals were safer in cities than in the country. No one would dream of setting hounds on the scabby, bone-thin scavenger rooting in the dustbins set out like plastic tombstones along the street.

  Along the beige-carpeted landing lay Jamie. She pictured him sprawled under the duvet in the pyjamas that, in a strange anticipation of intimacy, she had washed several times. Prue imagined listening to his breathing and with a curious finger traced the outline of his body.

  She hovered. She watched. She breathed kisses over the silent body and tasted cool, silky flesh under her hot mouth, and tried to sleep.

  The next morning, she woke early and dressed in an emerald green silk shirt and jeans. She brushed her hair, which she was allowing to grow longer, tied it back and put on a pair of new pearl earrings which were large enough to make a statement about her confidence and finances.

  A Woman Taken in Adultery.

  The night’s dreamings returned as she addressed her reflection. Question: if she had already sinned in her mind, surely it was irrelevant if her body followed suit, all of which argued it was fine to go ahead. The sin had been committed. Had the doctrinalists thought that one out?

  Leaving Jane to fuss happily over Edward with Emmy, she assembled her notebooks and said goodbye. Eyes shining, Jane glanced up at her mother. ‘Take care, Mum.’

  Prue hesitated, and then let herself out of the door.

  The foliage in the gardens and on the trees was lit by an emerging sun, and pollution wrapped the road in a thick nap. The tube was hot, slow and littered with discarded morning papers. Someone had been sick and the combination of vomit and sickly sweet disinfectant made Prue gag. She picked up a Daily Mail . . . Dan Quayle was criticizing a television soap for depicting a main character giving birth to an illegitimate baby, and was also of the opinion that the Los Angeles riots were due to a ‘poverty of values .

  Poverty of values. Prue cast aside the paper.

  At the entrance to the London Library, she bumped into Adrian League, one of Max’s colleagues who had retired the previous year, a fellow fishing enthusiast. Then he had looked eighty. Now he looked a brisk sixty or so in studiedly casual clothes.

  ‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘You look twenty—’ and realized she was being tactless. ‘You look wonderful.’

  Adrian had never been one for small talk. What are you doing here, Prue?’

  ‘Research.’ She felt she did not sound as convincing as she should. Adrian’s eyebrows lifted, the implication being that the last thing he associated with Prue was research. That annoyed her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m writing a biography of Joan of Arc.’

  Adrian drew Prue to one side and his expression sharpened. ‘Have you got a publisher?’

  It was a question that worldly people always asked Prue, and Adrian was very worldly.

  ‘Yes,’ she lied, and smiled sweetly. ‘In fact a couple of publishers are vying for the rights.’ She popped the cherry on the iced bun and completed her perdition. ‘I have to make up my mind very soon. Good, isn’t it?’

  Afterwards in the concealing recesses of the history shelves, Prue’s cheeks burned. Not having a track record in lies — hers tended to be easily exposed — she was amazed by the speed and determination with which she had resorted to them. Nevertheless, Adrian’s superciliousness had won him a poke in the ribs and she had enjoyed watching him struggle to readjust his expression. How she was going to extricate herself from it she didn’t know. Did it matter?

  All these lies.

  Yes, no, yes? She supposed they did, otherwise she was removing the base on which she had pitched the tent of her life.

  Prue bent her head over the books. Every so often she looked up. The seconds walked slowly past. She smelt dust, assorted scents from the women in the room, a whiff of someone unwashed, felt her own warmth. The books on the shelves seemed so solid, so large, so formed, and their dun, rich colours deep and mysterious.

  At twelve thirty, Prue packed up her books into a large, reinforced plastic bag that bit into her fingers and made her way into Oxford Street.

  Oxford Street was full of women carrying similar plastic bags and similar secrets, a feminine conspiracy silting down layers to create a petrified forest of lies. The egocentricity of passion and guilt were mixed in Prue’s imagination.

  At Great Cumberland Street, she turned right, walked north to a hotel set back in a crescent, and halted by the entrance, which was spruced up with a red and white striped awning. A further step forward was required.

  Or a
turnaround and retreat.

  Why hadn’t adultery just happened? It was so much easier to be dragged out of turquoise waters on a Caribbean beach and ravished Or to be thrown down into summer hay. Or to be woken at midnight and told by the equivalent of the man with the box of Milk Tray that you had no option but to yield.

  Setting your face north up Great Cumberland Street was harder, an operation edged around with the mundane and small decisions that made it unbearable and took away the joyous, glamorous elements that had made it inviting in the first place.

  Then why do it?

  The bag was making Prue’s arm ache and her back twinged. Strands of hair stuck to her cheek and her tights felt damp around the waistband. She did not feel fatale, but shaky and unconvincing. According to novels, and to Kate who listened to tales from other women, other women did this sort of thing with style. Or they should. There was no point in transgressing if you did it meagrely.

  I can’t do this. The traffic beat on in its uncaring fashion and Prue fled back down the street. She stopped at the first junction and looked back over her shoulder to the red and white stripe.

  If you are hungry, why don’t you eat? said a voice in her head.

  Prue breathed in the traffic fumes, tasted sulphur and carbon monoxide and felt them stream through her blood, alongside the slippery ache for Jamie. Oh, yes, she couldn’t deny she was hungry.

  Jamie.

  Max?

  Two minutes later she was standing in the hotel entrance, a depressing mixture of cream paint and fake crystal lights.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  The clerk at the reception desk was a brown person: eyes and hair of the same colour, and no doubt his thoughts were brown. Prue instantly took against his expression which she imagined combined knowingness and contempt. Because - the voice in her head had switched tack - you are not the first awkward-looking woman to hover in a strange hallway, and certainly not the last.

  She declined the offer to be shown upstairs. Number 35, first floor. Prue made for the lift and then changed her mind and trod up the stairs.

  Why did this have to be so obvious?

  The anchor pattern in the carpet transfixed her, mainly because she kept her eyes fixed on the floor. When she raised them, it was to read the numerals 3 and 5. Her heartbeat jumbled with anchors flashing across her vision.

  Jamie was waiting. Two seconds after Prue knocked, he opened the door and she slid in.

  ‘I feel like something out of those made-for-telly American movies,’ she said in a tone that did not sound like her.

  The door was of a cheap composite wood and it shuddered as Jamie closed it. A DO NOT DISTURB notice swung from a peg on the back with instructions on how to use the fire escape if necessary. Prue found herself reading it.

  ‘Prue,’ said Jamie who had not touched her, ‘are you here or not?’

  Holding tight to the plastic bag, she turned. After a moment, she said, ‘I’m here.’

  Jamie took the bag from her. ‘Are you frightened?’

  She nodded. Jamie dropped the bag on the floor and stood quietly waiting. Then Prue knew why she was in this fake hotel. It was lust. Lust to possess the bones, skin and feel of Jamie. To have his flesh bury itself in hers.

  He smiled. ‘Chintz again.’ He indicated the bedspread and she smiled back.

  ‘That’s easy.’ Prue went over to the bed and rolled up the bedspread and tried to stuff it inside the wardrobe. The material was slippery and refused to go quietly and she found herself laughing.

  ‘Diary of a chambermaid,’ she said, and sat down on the denuded bed.

  Jamie stood over her and she looked up at him.

  ‘Why, Jamie?’ she asked. ‘Violet is so new to you.’

  He raised his hands and spread the fingers wide in a gesture of non-comprehension. ‘It wasn’t a process. It just was.’

  She looked down at her own clenched, shaking hands.

  ‘You can change your mind, Prue.’ Jamie pushed his hair back.

  He looked pale and washed out - as if this whole thing was too much. It seemed to Prue that Jamie was looking right through her, and she saw, too, that his hands also were shaking. She concentrated on those tiny indicators, for it meant they were equal. It meant that neither was able to do this lightly.

  ‘But please,’ he added.

  At one point Prue shrank for she did not want her imperfections to be catalogued. Daylight is not prejudiced, and there was nowhere to hide the slack skin at the top of her thighs or the stretch marks on her breasts. Not that she had minded these stigmata, particularly the stretch marks because they were a result of having Jane and branded her as a mother, but she did not want to spoil things for Jamie. She wanted to save him from the corrosions of her femininity, to save his desire from carrying the burden of varicose veins and compacted fat. She wanted to give him a perfect body.

  After that, Prue did not think very much. And after that, as they unfamiliarly entwined, Prue gave up the pretence that it was only lust. Lust had been left behind in the cathedral at Winchester. It was worse, far worse. For what she - used and smarting - knew was love.

  Jamie’s arm tightened across her body and his hand swept as light as sand running through an egg-timer across her quietened body.

  ‘Prue,’ he said with wonder in his voice. ‘Prue.’

  Violet liked to eat dinner at eight thirty sharp. Jane, she had informed Prue, was too young to eat with them and Prue had not argued. At half past six she fed Jane pizza and packed her off to bed with Goodnight Mr Tom, a favourite book that went everywhere.

  In the kitchen, Violet was making a mung bean salad and something unspeakable with tofu. Prue tried not to shudder and rolled a glass of Australian chardonnay between her fingers. The idea of food make her queasy.

  ‘Tell me how you met Jamie,’ she asked, needing to say his name.

  Violet swivelled and directed an unfriendly look at her stepmother. ‘I thought I’d told you.’

  ‘Not properly.’

  A piece of tofu quivered at the end of Violet’s knife. Prue watched it, fascinated.

  ‘It’s funny how you recognize people.’ Violet tossed the salad. ‘I was having lunch at the Four Seasons in New York.’ She paused for Prue to register the right degree of impressedness. ‘Jamie was sitting in one of the corner tables. I took one look at him and thought: He will do.’ Handfuls of tossed salad rose and fell in a green landslide into the bowl. ‘He says he took two looks. The rest was simple. I suppose we’re the same kind of people.’

  ‘You’ve dropped some lettuce,’ said Prue and pointed to the floor.

  ‘Blast.’ Violet retrieved it. ‘Of course, Jamie being in the Four Seasons helped because I knew he was the kind of person I wanted. Seeing him in a Donut Diner drinking through a straw would have been different.’

  Violet’s honesty was sometimes startling. And, Prue acknowledged to the chardonnay, admirable.

  She drank more wine. All of us have a dark side, but it is the fortunate ones who encounter it earlier in life. The reason? If you stumble on your rotten side in, say, your forties, you are unprepared.

  Prue went upstairs to check on Jane who was reading in bed.

  ‘Are you having a nice time?’ Jane asked pointedly without looking up.

  Prue sat down. The anti-Violet axis was alive and well. ‘Sorry about the early bed, darling. But I wish you’d eaten all the pizza. Violet was put out.’ A trace of moisture on Jane’s face alerted her. ‘Have you been crying?’

  Jane shrugged. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Sure? You can tell me.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Jane angrily. Her wet eyes bored into her mother. ‘You look odd.’

  Prue swept a hand over her face. ‘What sort of odd?’

  ‘Odd, that’s all.’ Jane chucked her book on to the floor where it lay, a broken-backed reproach.

  ‘Don’t do that.’ Prue was extra sharp. ‘You know you don’t treat books like that.’

  Jane
pulled the sheet up around her face and said, ‘Sorry’, in such an offhand manner that Prue wanted to spank her.

  ‘If this is what London does to you,’ she told her daughter, ‘then we won’t be coming back.’

  Unexpectedly, Jane struggled to hold back tears. ‘You’re not so nice yourself.’

  Stung, Prue clicked out the light and went downstairs to eat tofu and mung beans. Normally such a careful mother, by the last tread she had forgotten her daughter.

  Violet had laid the dining-room table and lit candles. Jamie poured glasses of wine and, outside, the evening dimmed to grey and opal. A white clematis was reflected, pale and thoroughbred, in the dusk from a neighbour’s garden and fixed itself in Prue’s stimulated imagination - innocence retreating as the dark pulled it further and further away.

  The wine played tricks on her body, stretched by nerves and flooded with adrenalin, and sent a rush to her brain. There she sat, suffused by the relief of being defenceless against emotion, and drenched in wet meltingness of desire, opposite the woman she had just betrayed. She drank her wine, watched Jamie and her flesh pricked and burned with love.

  Across the table, Jamie ate and drank and occasionally looked directly into Prue’s grey eyes and she knew, without question, there was no going back.

  As she and Jane waited by the ticket barrier at Waterloo for the Dainton train, Prue constructed a pattern of departure.

  First the cluster around the notice-board, followed by an eddy towards the platforms. Then, a whitewater rapid of last-minute passengers who knew the form, succeeded by the desperate dash of those who did not.

  Girls in short skirts, opaque tights and high heels, carrying OK’s and Hello!. Men wearing mackintoshs over Burton suits. City slickers in loafers or the more solid-looking solicitor types in a three-piece pin-stripe. Women in Barbours carrying Harrods’ bags and overlarge brown leather handbags, relics from the seventies. Prue was surprised by how many men were eating sweets.

  What transgressions and triumphs lay behind their pallid skins, were housed in slackening bodies?