Perfect Love

by Elizabeth Buchan

  ‘Hallo, Mr Valour.’

  Emmy Horton came up behind Max so noiselessly in her rubber soled Doc Marten’s that he jumped. Embarrassed, he turned towards her, a big, tear-stained figure and Emmy’s heart contracted with pity for she recognized suffering. Without thinking, she did the only thing possible and touched him on the arm to give comfort. For a moment, they stood frozen, Emmy’s hand on the waxed sleeve, and she thought he would protest at her presumption. She removed her hand.

  ‘I thought you were in London, Emmy, with my daughter.’ Max blew his nose.

  ‘Down for the weekend,’ she replied. ‘Wanted to see my mum.’

  Fresh air had whipped some colour into her face and her hair -from what Max remembered - had improved.

  ‘Are they well?’

  ‘Yes. Edward has lots of teeth now.’

  ‘I hope my daughter isn’t doing too much.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Emmy and, naturally, Max missed the irony.

  A group of birds circled overhead and Emmy’s face jerked upwards. ‘Bullfinches,’ she said, her tone implying that Max would know exactly what she was talking about. ‘They must be nesting. They’re vegetarian, you know.’

  Max did not reply and Emmy felt she should move on. She dug her hands into her jacket pockets. ‘Nice to see you, Mr Valour.’

  At that moment, Prue came into view over the rise. ‘There you are,’ she called.

  To Emmy’s embarrassment, Max swung round 360 degrees and turned his back on his wife. Prue came to a halt.

  ‘Max?’

  Emmy looked from husband to wife uncertainly. Aha, she thought and said, ‘I must go.’

  ‘Everything all right in London?’ Prue asked.

  ‘Yes, I was telling Mr Valour here that the baby has lots of teeth.’ She decided to make a run for it. ‘Bye.’

  Prue waited until Emmy was out of earshot before turning on Max, white with fury. ‘What on earth’s the matter? Why were you so rude?’

  ‘Don’t be melodramatic, Prue.’

  She calculated what to say next and modified her tone. ‘You’ve been impossible since you’ve got back from Scotland. I don’t know what’s got into you.’

  Prue’s voice trailed to a close. If she felt her indignation was spurious, why should Max believe it? What if, she thought, he knows? Then she thought: He does. In all her life, she had never felt fear like that which now rose in her like oil from the bore, hot, strong and choking. No, Max can’t know . . . She struggled to master the fear with common sense. He can’t possibly know.

  ‘I think I’m owed an apology.’

  ‘Are you, Prue?’

  He stared down at his wife and realized that he did not know the woman who stood with her arms folded across her body against the breeze, a typical pose. He had made the mistake of imagining that he did - as he had imagined he had summed up Helen all those years ago.

  But what Max really did not know was himself.

  Suddenly, he was ashamed. Ashamed of his prying into Prue’s desk, of the shaky conclusions that, as a result, had taken up residence in the raw areas of his heart, but on no real evidence - and ashamed that he could not live up to his own precept that infidelity was merely a spasm of flesh. And, yes, he was ashamed of the jealousy that raged inside him.

  ‘Max.’ Prue, in turn, was beginning to feel sick and shaky. ‘Are you ill?’

  He wanted to shout that he had had enough of everything. He had no proof, only some words on a scrap of paper - and marriage should not falter on something so flimsy.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Since we are here,’ said Prue after a moment, ‘why don’t we have a good walk?’

  Still struggling with the painful shortfall between theory and its application, Max bit out, ‘Oh, do shut up, Prue.’

  It was then Prue gave herself away. Normally, if talked to in that manner she stormed off. Now she stood quite still for a second or two, then moved towards her husband.

  ‘Darling, I can’t bear to see you angry.’ She tucked a treacherous hand into his elbow where it rested against his sleeve. ‘Please don’t be so cross.’

  In silence, they progressed up the road towards Danebury Rings but, since the wind had veered and was blowing sharp and cutting, they turned back before they reached it.

  ‘I’m going to paint the outside of the house,’ Max announced the following week.

  ‘Couldn’t we get someone to do it for you?’ Prue was struggling with WI accounts and not very interested.

  ‘I can manage.’

  Prue shrugged. Since the weather had turned wet it was not ideal for painting, but she said nothing. Instead, she was a witness to a great deal of bucket-rattling and virtue up a ladder and could not rid herself of the notion that Max was making a point.

  It was a tough, uncomfortable job and Max sometimes felt nauseous from the paint. He also fell off the ladder and bruised his right hip. Watching him limp around with tins of paint was worrying. So were the livid bruises that spread like purple mud under his skin.

  He, too, refused Prue’s arnica and asked that she please leave him alone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Max phoned Violet on Sunday night and asked if he could stay with them for the week. He was sorry to impose, but his club was booked up. The reason he had to be in London, he told her, was Europe. Not unreasonably Violet expressed bewilderment until her father explained that the firm’s senior partners were holding a brainstorm-ing session on the latest developments in the European Union and how it affected corporate law. It was also intended to aid Max to put into place his plan to tie up with other law firms, and it was vital that he attend day and night.

  ‘Terrific,’ said Violet drily when she heard the venue was Claridges. ‘You won’t starve.’

  Glacé nougatine, garnished with praline, cream and white chocolate. A sweet, oozing picture darted and fretted across Violet’s unrested mind. Violet replaced it with the steamed fish she planned for supper. She herself had been struggling to master the latest intricacies of the European market with relation to book publishing and said, ‘You can give me some tips, Dad.’ Only then did she make a rapid mental review of the fridge and gritted her teeth.

  When he arrived on Monday evening, Max seemed tired and to Violet, who was not given to a great deal of observation, older. The more intense for being unfamiliar, a sudden panic made her remember her father’s mortality - and, come to that, her own.

  THIGH-ABDUCTOR DEATH OF TWENTY-SEVEN-YEAR-OLD. MACHINE SPLITS RISING PUBLISHING STAR VIOLET BECKETT IN TWO. HUSBAND SOBS: ‘SHE ONLY WANTED TO BE THIN.’

  Don’t be so stupid, she told herself. Even so, death bobbed into Violet’s mind - a grinning little mannikin who stuck out his tongue and perched on top of a toadstool.

  Apart from his (unhealthy, as Violet pointed out) desire for meat and two vegetables at his evening meal, Max was an undemanding guest. He played with his grandson, entered into the spirit of bathtime and talked to his daughter while she cooked.

  ‘It’s good to be here,’ he said as they sat in the freshly painted, sanded, tile-decorated kitchen. ‘You’ve made it very classy, darling.’

  ‘Thanks, Daddy.’ Violet sat down opposite her father and poured out wine. ‘How’s the brainstorming?’

  Max hunched over his wine. ‘Fine,’ he said, without enthusiasm. He roused himself to offer one or two facts but, clearly, the subject was not uppermost in his mind.

  Violet’s attention focused on her father’s hands. Big hands, with fingers bruised and slightly swollen from the DIY, flecked with age-spots. They were gentle hands, and ones she trusted above all else. Succumbing to a rare impulse, Violet leant over and held one against her cheek.

  ‘My darling Dad,’ she said as those trusted fingers stroked her hair. Father and daughter stayed thus for a moment or two and then, as ever incurably restless, she leapt up to finish the meal. He let her go and drank his wine.

  It was good to have her father in the hous
e, Violet acknowledged, as she turned off the light in the bedroom that night. It made her feel safe.

  She turned on to her side. ‘Have you had words with Daddy?’ she asked Jamie drowsily. ‘I noticed you avoided him.’

  She felt him edge further away. ‘No, why?’

  ‘You’ve seemed to get on, but you’ve hardly said a word to him while he’s been here.’

  ‘Max understands,’ said Jamie, his voice harsh-sounding in the hush. ‘He knows about relaxing at the end of a day’s work.’

  ‘You selfish toad.’ Violet woke up. ‘It’s not too much to ask for you to be polite. I’m the one that does all the work. All you do is dish out the drinks.’

  ‘You’ve missed my point.’ Jamie bunched the pillow around his ears. He tried to woo sleep. The room was too warm and he wished he had opened a second window.

  After a bit, Violet resumed the conversation. ‘Emmy tells me that Mary Marcus has run off with a lover and left the children behind.’ Her voice cut like a pair of scissors into the silence. Snip. Snip. Shaping pieces to sew up into gossip — in this case about the family further up the street. ‘I’ve often noticed a strange chap coming out of the door when I get back at night.’

  Jamie said nothing.

  ‘Imagine,’ said Violet who, to give her credit, did not normally gossip, ‘Rod has refused to give her any money or allow her to see the children.’

  Jamie now knew that indulging in subterfuge sensitizes practitioners to fellow travelers and he had been alerted to Mary’s activities well before Violet’s announcement. He recognized the signals - a strange car outside the house, Mary’s lack of sweat when he met her on a so-called early morning jog, her reluctance to mention her husband, her obvious misery and strain. In London, it was easy to run an affair—just like a business, really.

  ‘Poor Mary.’ He turned over.

  ‘Poor Mary! Poor Rod.’

  Jamie did not sleep well and asked himself, over and over, why he was doing what he was doing. He had had no intention of ever risking his marriage, or of disregarding the rules, or losing integrity. But all those things were happening, had happened . . . and he had made the mistake of taking them for granted, of not understanding that they required policing. Why?

  The answer was simple. Love.

  Love, which involves all-consuming sex, has no regard for social rules, neither does it care about timing (much) and it is unencumbered (unlike the rest of us, whether we like it or not) with morality.

  At breakfast, Jamie was horrified to discover that Max was considering remaining with them over the weekend. Fortunately, Violet reckoned that enough was enough.

  ‘You’ve got the midsummer fete, Dad,’ she pointed out.

  Max shrugged. ‘Somehow I can’t work up the energy. It’s nice being here and I’m enjoying a break from home.’

  The word ‘refuge’ slid into Violet’s mind.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, more sharply than she intended. ‘Prue would be furious. You’ve never not done your bit.’

  ‘Grammar,’ said Jamie.

  Violet whirled round. ‘Shut up, Jamie.’

  A vision of Dainton bathed in summer goodwill, redolent with a smell of home-baking, decked in bunting, forever sunny, took shape in the minds of the three people around the breakfast table, hand-tinted like an advertisement- and just as reliable.

  Before he could stop himself, Jamie asked, ‘Does Prue mind being left on her own?’

  ‘No,’ said Max curtly. ‘I don’t think so.’ He looked across the litter of jams, butter and plates at his son-in-law and acknowledged the younger version of himself. He registered Jamie’s charm, his intelligence (but not brilliance), his habit of smiling with all his face and his knack of focusing his full attention on whoever was speaking to him. The country was not ruled by first-class degrees, it was ruled by charm, and the application of good second-class degrees, like Jamie’s.

  ‘Boo,’ said Jamie to Edward who was sitting in the high chair. Looking furious, the baby banged his spoon on the rim of his plate. Jamie laughed, reached over and pulled his son into his lap. The baby’s expression rearranged itself into contentment. Jamie stroked the top of his head and kissed it.

  Then Max perceived youth and confidence and recognized in Jamie a capacity for passion and feeling - elements that, if he had ever possessed them, were slipping away from himself.

  Violet made a remark about Prue’s homemade cakes and Jamie smiled at her. What that smile contained, Max was not sure, but he knew then he should go home and face whatever was there.

  Prue was deep into fete preparations and did not have time to do more than serve Max a scratch meal on Friday evening and leave him to it. It had been a tiring week and she never slept well when left on her own.

  You look exhausted,’ Molly greeted her on Saturday morning. ‘And you’ve lost weight.’

  ‘Good,’ said Prue.

  ‘Losing weight,’ Molly poked Prue in the soft part of her hips, ‘usually indicates something.’

  ‘Surely not,’ said Prue.

  ‘Waste of money losing weight.’ When Prue looked puzzled Molly amplified the statement. ‘You have to buy new clothes.’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’ Prue dumped a load of linen tablecloths on to the nearest bench. ‘Shall we get these on?’

  ‘Max back?’ Molly shook out the sheet on top of the pile.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Been away some time,’ said Molly as if it had only just struck her.

  Prue turned away to steady a vase stuffed with irises which was threatening to topple. Molly said nothing more.

  However well aired, the village hall always retained a lingering, slightly unpleasant smell, a combination of must, used-up air and drains. By eleven o’clock, the stalls were up and overflowing into the courtyard outside. Prue congratulated herself. There had only been one altercation, between the ladies on the cake stall and the ladies on Ideas for Presents, an argument that threatened to take on comedy sketch overtones, as to whom should locate where. After sensitive negotiations, Ideas for Presents was persuaded to retreat to the courtyard where it was supposed to act as a draw. Dainton featured in tourist pamphlets and was situated smack on the tourist ley-line between Winchester and Salisbury, and the holiday season was in swing, there would be, Prue hoped, enough potential victims who would be seduced with bracelets and necklaces cunningly constructed from buttons and beads.

  The hall filled up with a mixture of village inhabitants. Elderly couples from the council estate and retired couples of the sherry and Rover variety. The younger generation of tired-looking mothers in leggings (‘I really shouldn’t but they’re so comfortable’), clutching clones of daughters and accompanied by sons wearing T-shirts which bore slogans such as ‘Save the Whales’. Their husbands wore olive corduroys and bright-coloured sweaters, and made jokes over oven gloves, lavender bags and tomato plants. The tourists tended to wear shell-suits in pear-drop colours.

  Whatever, the money spent here today meant that Bosnian refugees, Guide Dogs for the Blind and the Church would be beneficiaries to the tune of a couple of hundred pounds or so. Not much, thought Prue, unaccountably depressed, buying a particularly awful example of macramé and then worrying that she had been patronizing because the macramé would hit the throw-out box by the end of the day. To feel pity made her uncomfortable and Prue avoided it wherever possible. Instead she concentrated on thinking constructive thoughts about what the raised money could do.

  Max only showed up in the last stages of the fete, just before the raffle was drawn by a journalist whose claim to fame was that he once worked for a couple of months on the Sunday Times but whose position as ‘a Writer’ gave him eminence denied him in London.

  ‘Poor sod,’ said Nigel Fraster, a self-styled village wit, to Prue. ‘Only bit of employment he’s had for months.’

  Having made a short speech about how flattered he was to be officiating, the journalist picked a ticket out of the metal drum.


  ‘Pink. Number fifty-seven,’ he announced.

  ‘Me, me, me.’

  Prue heard her daughter shriek from a long way away while a freezing sensation stole over her limbs. The first prize was a ride in a helicopter which could be heard tuning up, untunefully, in the field below the church. The prize had been donated by its owner, a dealer in fertilizers, who had recently bought the manor house and was not, as yet, quite sure of his reception, which veered between acid remarks about the nouveau riche and the if-you’ve-got-it-why-not-flaunt-it? variety.

  ‘It’s me. It’s me.’

  Red-faced with excitement, Jane pushed through the phalanx of disappointed boys who emitted visible hate signals. His moment over, the ex-journalist gave a world-weary smile and turned to Prue. ‘The owner insists that children are accompanied by an adult. Just in case.’

  ‘You mean half of the family but not a quarter can be wiped out.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Over the heads of the crowd, Prue sent desperate signals to Max. You go. You go. But Max ignored eye contact and turned away.

  Damn him. Max knew that she was terrified of flying and he also knew she would be unwilling to make a scene. He was, in effect, abandoning her.

  Damn him.

  Someone once told her that you lose consciousness before you hit the earth. Either that or you died of terror.

  The rotating blades switched up from a whine to a scream as soon as she and Jane were strapped into the seat of an alarmingly small cockpit and, wishing to disgrace neither her daughter nor herself, Prue prayed for control.

  The pilot shouted something that Prue could not hear and she shook her head. He pointed at the sky, grinned and flicked the switches. Prue watched her hands fasten the seat belt.

  The engines crescendoed, and a noise returned to haunt Prue. It was the sound made by the man who had fallen? thrown himself? out of the ninth-storey window in Victoria one ordinary day as she had walked to the station from the Tate Gallery and encountered the cluster of onlookers grouped around the smashed thing on the ground. Fear clawed at her stomach and she prayed that she would not faint.