‘How long will this take me to do?’
Before she could stop herself, Emmy offered to help. He smiled his sweet, tired smile. ‘That would be very nice. Are you by any chance free now to help me buy the materials?’
A motorbike roared down the road and applied its brakes. Like a puppet jerked by its master, Emmy whipped round.
‘There you are.’
A leather-encased giant leant over the wall and Max was fascinated to see a pony-tail straggling from under the helmet.
‘Angus.’ Emmy looked from Max to the Adonis, every line of her thin face alight with longing, and Max shuddered for her. ‘Sorry, Mr Valour. I can help you another time.’
Naturally, Max could not compete with the testosterone-charged Angus - never would have been able to.
‘Tomorrow?’ Emmy was being pulled out of the garden by an invisible force.
‘Of course.’
Extraordinarily, they were back the next day. Both Emmy and Angus.
Building compost bins is a unifying activity, thought Max as he toiled on it. Nails, planks, posts and fingers - more often than not wrapped in Elastoplast — are the constituents. Those, and the smell of wood: dry, resiny, strong enough to tickle the hairs in the nostrils. Earth smells, which blends the sourness of impacted soil and freshly turned sods, dampened by September rain. Fixing together four simple wooden sides and a lid to ensure that weed seeds and pathogens are destroyed establishes a bond, between material and maker, between bacteria and rubbish, between the cold outer layer which shields and conserves the heat at the core.
He and Prue should have built a compost bin.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jamie suggested to Violet that it would be a gesture if they took the Valours to the theatre. ‘Since when have you been a theatre goer?’ Violet replied. ‘But yes, fine. Get your secretary to organize it and it better be Shakespeare.’ Perceiving he was puzzled, she added, ‘Don’t be witless, Jamie. Shakespeare is educational for Jane.’
They met in the foyer of the National Theatre. Neither Max nor Prue had been to the theatre for some time and Jane was excited. The theatre was brightly lit and humming with noise. As she pushed through the glass doors, Prue felt a stir of anticipation, a pleasing sense that she was out in the world, and it was an interesting place to be.
Violet, who looked in especially thin and confident mode, but felt acid and strangely rudderless, gave Prue a peck on the cheek.
‘You look pale, Prue. Stewing too much over Joan of Arc?’ She made it sound as if it ranked with unmentionable practices.
‘Not over much.’ Prue’s fingers made their customary excavation of the fluff in her coat pocket.
‘Perhaps it’s the grey then. I never thought it was your colour.’ Violet ran her eyes over Prue’s crepe trousers and jacket.
Prue had not looked at Jamie, but now she did. ‘This is very good of you both. I used to go to the theatre a lot before I married your father.’
‘Ah, yes, the fifties,’ said Violet, quick as a flash.
‘I’m not quite that old,’ said Prue.
‘I know,’ said Violet. ‘Some days you really don’t look your age.’
‘Hi,’ said Jane to Jamie.
Jamie bent and kissed her, and said, ‘I’ve been looking forward to seeing you. I need some advice on a computer I want to buy.’
Jane lit up like an evening star.
Violet kissed her father. ‘Get us some drinks, will you, darling Father. Mineral water for me. With ice and lemon.’
Max obeyed.
The foyer filled up.
‘By the way,’ said Violet, placing herself adroitly in Prue’s line of vision. ‘I’ve booked in at a health farm.’ There was a pause and Prue adjusted her expression into polite interest. ‘I’ve been a bit exhausted lately and I thought it would do me good.’
Jamie appeared surprised. ‘Have you?’
Violet shot her husband a look. Jamie was back in her bed, but, these days, that was about all. ‘I told you the other day.’
Jamie slipped a hand into his trouser pocket. ‘I must have forgotten.’
Prue had once read that spouses who exist in an uneasy silence at home are very often rude to one another in public. It was a tactic that Violet was indulging in. ‘Jamie, you’re so stupid these days. Don’t you ever listen?’ She underlined the role of the-one-who-kept-things-on-course (which she played to the hilt) by casting her eyes to the ceiling.
‘You’re going somewhere nice, I hope,’ said Max, the only one of the party who appeared to approve the idea.
‘Yes, very.’ Violet’s attention was temporarily diverted by the sight of a woman eating a large smoked-salmon roll.
‘I’m thirsty,’ said Jane.
‘Why didn’t you say so earlier?’ said her father.
Violet ignored them. ‘It’s near Newbury,’ she said. ‘I chose the one closest to Dainton . . .’ Prue knew then what was coming. ‘. . . and I wondered if you could look after Edward for me. Just for the Saturday and Sunday. Jamie or Emmy could bring him down.’
‘No,’ said Prue, her sense of well-being vanishing. ‘I can’t.’
‘Can’t I have something to drink?’ asked Jane crossly.
‘I haven’t told you the dates, Prue. How can you say no?’
‘Very easily.’
‘Mum, you are impossible to get through to these days.’
Prue glanced at Jane, and perceived, instead of her loved daughter, a lanky, avenging angel with a sulky mouth. Outside, the river shone with light, illuminating a thousand, thousand other lives.
Jane tossed back her hair in remarkable imitation of Emma Hughes, a sixth-former with whom, judging from the number of casual references slipped into the conversation, Jane had fallen in love. ‘Mum pays no attention to anyone but herself and she’s slipping. We had packet custard the other day.’
‘Jane . . .’ Max spoke softly but with a warning. Going in to play against a cross-grained adolescent probably resulted in the same queasy mixture of rage and laughter as embarking on a tennis match against a Wimbledon champion. Prue flashed a smile at Max, the referee.
Violet ploughed on. ‘About Edward, Prue. He wouldn’t be any trouble. And Jamie can help out. And Emmy’s only down the road.’
The bell sounded for the performance and Jamie ushered the party through the doors to their seats. Prue’s determination not to give in hardened. She thought of heavy, immovable objects: the Stone of Scone, the pyramids, the Giant’s Causeway.
‘Violet,’ she said as they made their way down the aisle, ‘I don’t think you understand. I don’t want to look after Edward. I have other things to do.’
‘Do change your mind, Prue.’ Settled in the middle of a row in the stalls, Violet leant across her father and prodded Prue on the thigh. She had no intention of giving up, and dropped her voice a note or two to add urgency, skilfully conveying surprise that such a reasonable request was being refused. ‘Don’t worry about the packet custard.’
Acid welled to the surface. The acid distilled from years of distrust, dislike and of knowing that whatever she did, wherever she turned, Prue had not succeeded with her stepdaughter, both failure and guilt sharpening dislike. Prue struggled not to be small and with the obligation, as she saw it, to treat the world with care, fought to forgive Violet if she could not forget.
She turned in her seat and said, loud and clear enough for the audience in the seats around to take an interest, ‘Will you shut up, Violet?’
‘Violet,’ said Jamie, obviously uncomfortable - almost, Prue observed, aghast at what she had just done, as if he had been betrayed -’why don’t we leave the subject?’
Violet gave her husband one of her wide-eyed looks. ‘I was trying to tell Prue not to worry too much about everything.’
She looked so earnest, believable and beautiful. Clever, clever Violet, hiding her secrets so well. Jamie touched his wife on the shoulder. ‘Careful, darling,’ he said and, metamorphosed by jeal
ousy’s mischievous alchemy, Prue’s determination melted into a hot tide and she wanted to cry out, ‘Don’t, don’t touch her. Touch me.’
Jamie registered Violet’s sharp shoulder blade under his hand. He had never seen Prue in a temper (neither, of course, she him) and the experience would alter, subtly, the image he carried. Jamie was learning about flux: the mutation from one state to another of the people he loved, Or, perhaps – the corners of his mouth dipped wryly - perhaps he was learning to see what was there in the first place.
Violet leant forward. ‘Prue,’ she hissed, ‘are you by any chance menopausal?’
‘My God, Violet. You’re the limit.’
Rage streamed through Prue, plus the urge to behave badly and she gave in to it. She leapt to her feet and squeezed her way along the row, provoking disgruntled murmurs and a great deal of rearranging.
‘Mum.’ Jane’s uncertain, muted whisper followed Prue’s progress. ‘Mum?’
Prue ignored her daughter. Another black mark. Another cold stone for Jane to lay on the wall building between them.
At the door to the foyer she turned and looked back. Jamie seemed stunned, Max impassive, Jane frightened and Violet, well, Violet looked like Violet when she had won an encounter. Otherwise, they were a perfectly ordinary group on an outing to the theatre.
No doubt her rage was perfectly ordinary too, but Prue felt she had not managed to develop sufficient neural pathways to deal with the changes in her life.
Outside the theatre on the river embankment she drew in London air, feeling the weight of her emotion choking the oxygen out of her lungs: pain, jealousy - and a passion that was in danger of going sour from too much weight upon it.
She was missing the first act of a play that she had wanted to see.
A wind blew off the Thames, a dank, sour wind, smelling of people and lives lived too close together. She wanted Jamie. How she wanted him. She also wanted her daughter, as perfect and unblotted by the world as the day she entered it. She wanted the second baby she had never managed. She wanted Max not to mind. She wanted to be in charge of herself again.
‘Before you get caught in a great passion,’ ran the letter of a seventeenth-century Portuguese nun, which Prue had come across during her research, ‘think well of the excesses of grief, of the uncertainties, of the diversities of impulse, of despairs, doubts and jealousies . . .’
Prue had not considered well at all. So unlike her. She had let herself slip into a rushing stream and had not cared about the rocks. The nun, she should have remembered, had been abandoned by her aristocratic French lover.
Prue breathed in the alien river smell and the traffic fumes. She knew she had lost her way.
In the interval, she sought them out to apologize, the old Prue on whom they relied. Of course she would look after Edward, it would be no trouble. Jamie was welcome to stay, too, and she was sure Emmy would not be needed. After all, Violet was a busy working mother and needed all the back-up she could muster. (Prue trusted she sounded convincing.)
Max and Jamie heard out this orgy of repentance in silence. Violet was repairing her make-up in the ladies.
‘That’s very good of you, Prue,’ said Jamie at last. ‘We appreciate it and realize it’s a big favour.’
‘Fine, I’ll tell Violet.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Jamie, ‘she said you’d come round.’
Prue stared at him. That was possibly the most tactless thing her lover had ever said to her and her faith in him was shaken. To stop herself from saying something irretrievable, she drank a slug of gin and tonic. Max slipped his arm round her shoulders.
‘Well done, darling,’ he said softly into her ear.
His tone conveyed complicity and understanding of her bad behaviour, and Prue was filled with gratitude for Max’s goodness. She turned in the circle of his arm and kissed first Max’s cheek and, then, his mouth.
Violet could be seen making her way towards them through the crowd in the foyer. She stopped to speak to an acquaintance.
You and I, thought Prue, are both prisoners of our gender. Lipsticked, scented and moistly compliant receptacles. Whereas, Joan had understood the predicament and tried to hack through the casing. But even she failed.
Jamie gathered up their glasses and, as he passed Prue, touched her haunch in a secret gesture. Prue’s flesh burned and the blood drummed in her ears.
She was helpless.
As they parted after the play, it was agreed that the Becketts would come down to Dainton for the following Sunday.
Since the Sunday morning looked promising, Prue revised the catering schedule and suggested a walk to Danebury Rings and a late lunch.
‘Fine,’ said Jamie.
‘Not fine,’ said Violet who, to do her justice, looked tired. ‘I don’t want to lug the baby up there. Besides, I’ve been there hundreds of times. I’ll drive the car and meet you.’
Prue retrieved a stew from the larder and asked if Violet could put it in the oven.
‘Oh, don’t bother with lunch,’ said Violet, repressing a vision of roast chicken, rubbed with tarragon, and roast potatoes. ‘Cottage cheese and apple will do.’
Prue looked Violet straight in the eye. ‘The rest of us would like lunch. You can eat apple and cottage cheese if you wish but I would be grateful if you did not make too much of a song and dance about it in front of Jane.’
Violet’s expression darkened. You betrayed me, Prue., it said. No, worse. You did not supply what I needed.
I hate you, I hate you. Daddy only married you because you were convenient.
Prue turned away.
It wasn’t true.. Helen had betrayed her daughter long before Prue replaced her, or failed to, but, if replacement equals betrayal, then so be it.
But what of Prue’s betrayal of a stepdaughter - for, surely, Prue must be judged for it even if she was no longer in loco parentis? Reluctantly, Prue faced the question: was revenge the fuel of her love affair?
The weather threw up one of those warm golden days in which autumn specializes, and the morning heated up. The party filed along the lane, crumbling dry, crusted mud underfoot and watching air shimmer above the hedges. Naturally, the fields had been harvested and, patchworked with brown and gold, they rolled up the contours of the land, framed by a scattering of late poppies, hogweed and cascades of blackberries. In the verges, pimpernels made their tiny orange statements and periwinkle crawled up the stems in the hedgerows. A smell of hot fruit and vaporizing dew, of cool earth and ripeness was in the air. Notwithstanding the assaults made on it by chemicals and humans, the earth appeared in good working order.
Jamie stopped to shift the rucksack containing water and rations.
‘Apple, anyone?’ said Prue.
Jamie moved closer and his hand made contact. For a second, she closed her eyes. Jamie’s thumb rubbed briefly on her flesh and then was gone. That’s your lot, she thought.
They moved onwards down the path, lumpy with outcrops of chalk and summer drought. For some reason, an avenue of pine trees which led nowhere had been planted to their left. Rabbits played in the grassy ride between the pines where the shadows were cast, uneven and dark.
That grass: green and thick. To brush through it with bare feet, moisture squeezing up between the toes . . . She imagined sinking to her knees, waiting for Jamie. Lying back, allowing the damp to lap her body in a blanket, the nettle to lash her skin and the outcrop of dry earth to lacerate the tender places on her body as she drew up her legs, and the sun striking them.
Jamie would blot it out and then, boneless and shaking with desire, she would give herself up to hot, juddering strokes of sex and love. She imagined, too, what she would look like afterwards: nettle-lashed, reddening, imprinted by grass, invaded and sated.
Prue chewed an apple. Jane needed new jeans. The freezer needed defrosting and Molly, apparently anxious to restore their entente back to the cordiale, had donated a quantity of tomatoes from the Greer greenhouse. They begged to be tu
rned into sauce. The harvest supper committee required ten apple pies.
The vision of her naked, sated body fled down the pine trees and vanished.
The party halted by the edge of the biggest field lapping the perimeter of Danebury.
‘Let’s cut across.’ Jamie squinted up at the slope beyond.
Max tested the soil with his boot. ‘Too soft going. You’d end up with a sackload in your shoes.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Jamie, and struck out over the field confidently, stuck it out for approximately fifty yards and beat a retreat. The sun picked out his fair hair and the sheen of sweat on his forehead. He looked young and untroubled, and Prue drank him in greedily.
‘You were right,’ he said to Max and sat down to empty his shoes.
Once again, he brushed against Prue and her naked, desire-tormented body ran over the stubble and too-soft earth and sank to the ground.
They squeezed over a professional-looking fence at the foot of the ring and found themselves facing a clump of dense woodland which circled the lower slopes.
‘Up, then.’ Max beat a path through the undergrowth.
Jane disappeared through an interlaced hazel and beech after her father. Prue tied her sweater around her waist and drew in her breath.
‘Damn and blast.’ Max could be heard swearing. He slithered back down towards them. ‘Someone’s put a sodding great barbed-wire fence up. We’ll have to walk round the ring and come up the other side.’
Jamie peered through the trees. ‘We can get over that. Fences are for getting over.’
Max sent him a look. ‘I don’t think Prue can manage.’
‘Yes, she will.’
Max shrugged. ‘She won’t.’
‘Yes, I will.’ Prue surged forward. ‘You lot can have the privilege of helping me over.’
In the event, Max held the wire down and Jamie draped his sweater over the barbed wire and Prue stepped across. The wire bit her hands, gave under her weight and every movement had an edge of danger.
Then they were up and over and into the open, treading ground impacted with history and myth.
Perfect Love Page 28
