Back at school, Jane’s friend Victoria (she of the divorced parents) had said that people always stopped loving each other. Jane was disinclined to believe her, but Victoria insisted. ‘It always happens. Wait and see. Then you get someone else.’
Of course, Victoria would say that. Imperfect as her knowledge was of what took place between men and women, however, Jane grasped enough to know that the card with its glowing painting and hasty inscription that had rested against her jumper had the power to hurt her father.
Her mother could hurt her father.
Jane thought of the loneliness of being teased, the bewilderment of realizing that the world was ranged against you, and not knowing why, of hearing girls snigger as you passed, of finding unwelcome objects in your desk, of lying awake at night, alone, cold and afraid. She could not bear the idea that her father might feel the same. Jane spent so much time thinking about the card, puzzling out what it meant and what to do, that she could not sleep and her appetite, which had picked up a little, dwindled.
‘I want you to have a cup of tea, darling.’
‘I don’t want one.’
‘Please. I’ll have one, too, and then we’ll talk.’
The regulation shoes looked frighteningly too large for Jane’s feet and her tights were baggy around the ankle.
‘How about hot buttered toast?’ Prue reached for the bread board.
Wanting to throw herself on her mother and bury her head in her shoulder and, in the same breath, wishing to inflict hurt as she was hurting, Jane glared at her. ‘I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want anything to eat. I want to watch Neighbours.’ She added under her breath because she liked the effect it would have on her mother, ‘And I’m going to make you watch me starve.’
Prue went white, then red. Then she sat down and put her head in her hands. Trying to forget I’m here, I suppose, thought Jane angrily.
She left Prue to contemplate the corpse-like shape of Jane’s outdoor things on the floor. Bending down, she picked up the coat and smoothed out the sleeves. Then she folded the scarf and restored the gloves to their proper shape. Such everyday, mundane things whose wool was soft and worn to the touch, and she held them as tenderly as if they contained a breathing imprint of her daughter. She looked up and her gaze locked on to the garden. In the winter dusk, the Prunus autumnalis looked stark and unyielding.
‘Joan’s life’, wrote one of her biographers, ‘had been led on the high planes of feeling and it was fitting that death should meet her in the same high key.’ In other words, it would never have done if, after the Paris débâcle, Joan had meekly returned to Domrémy to tend her sheep or sat down and hemmed handkerchiefs for her bride chest. It was required by everyone that she died dramatically — the ones who loved her, or rather her image, the ones who hated her and wished for the tongues of fire to sear her bones. Courageous, heroic, the woman who, voices ringing in her head, had done much to change the idea of what a woman could be, Joan required it of herself.
Imagine. If you have stood beside your sovereign in Reims Cathedral as he was anointed by the holy oil and crowned at your instigation, the oriflamme grasped in your hand. (All other standards were excluded but Joan’s. As she said: ‘It has borne the burden and it was right that it should have the honour.’) If you have ridden with the wind in your ears and the sun at your back, smelt the sweat and horse and blood, wept with anguish and pain at your own wounds, experienced the noise and exhilaration of the charge, fought with your comrades over the white dust and through black mud, listened to their oaths, the sound of the trumpet signalling victory, and the quiet commands of God, how could you give it up? How could you, wrote Prue in her notebook, return to the spinning and dusting?
Imagine, too, standing on the ramparts of the city of Mélun and listening to the voices of St Catherine and St Margaret telling you that you would be captured shortly, that you must not be surprised, that you must take everything as it came, however difficult.
That God would look after you.
Then what?
At the beginning of May 1430, it was clear to anyone with strategic nous that the town of Compiègne would be besieged by the Burgundians, with backing from the English. Compiègne had remained loyal to France but its bridges were vital to any army wishing to dominate that area of the country known as the İle de France.
Joan, who had spent an uncomfortable nine months after the coronation hanging about the French court champing to get back into the field, rode out anxious to act as its saviour.
She was in Crépy-en-Valois where news reached her that Compiègne was finally under attack. Under the cover of night, Joan and a chosen few rode through the thick forest, harnesses jingling in the sleeping hush, their chargers’ feet sinking into the soft forest floor and, without alerting the besiegers, entered the town during the hour of the false dawn.
These were Joan’s last moments of freedom and, Prue hoped, she spent them as she would have wished. It would be the last time Joan felt the roll of her horse between her thighs, smelt leather, sweat, listened to the rapid exchanges between her men, looked up at a peaceful sky.
By five that afternoon, Joan was ready to attack. Mounted on a demi-charger, the lilies on her standard undulating in the wind, she rode out through the tender May evening with its long shadows, its scent of growing things and promise of heat to come, and charged the Burgundian camp.
The going was hard and, in the end, Joan’s retreat back to Compiègne was cut off by a detachment of Burgundians and English. Pushed off the causeway into the boggy land by the river,
Joan was seized by the floating panels of her scarlet and gold huque and dragged from her demi-charger.
She was taken . . .
Prue found it very hard to write about the capture.
‘I want to talk to you, Prue,’ said Max that evening, and rose from his armchair, his face set and drained of all humour. He walked to the window and looked out, one hand shoved into his pocket. ‘We’ve got to do something.’
She did not dare to ask what he meant and sought refuge in evasion. ‘Oh.’
‘We have to face some things, Prue.’ Max swivelled round to look at his wife. ‘I . . . We . . . are failing to do so.’
She heaved up from the chair with the sagging seat which she had always meant to replace and went over to stand beside him. ‘Are you talking about Jane?’
‘Partly.’
She noticed that his hand was trembling and she put out her own to touch him. Quick as a dart, he moved back out of reach and she was left, hand suspended, with a sensation that he had kicked her.
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t.’
Prue said quietly, ‘You’re angry with me, Max, aren’t you?’
He turned back to contemplating the dark garden that reminded him of the one through which in his childhood dark monsters had slid. The frog monster. The bad fox. The fanged weasel. Clever, hungry killers. ‘I’m angry with myself.’
Impatient that, at the crucial moment, she should feel so weak, Prue wanted to say, So am I.
Nevertheless, if confronting the worst about yourself, she should expect that it hurts. Prue swallowed. For the maximum damage limitation, she needed to be canny and wise, much wiser than before.
‘Prue. Go and sit down. I can talk to you better from a distance.’
The past was a different country. How many times over the years had she and Max talked, sitting close to one another, often with his arm draped over her shoulders? How many times had he played with a strand of her hair, or wrapped his big fingers around her longer, finer ones while they debated this or that? Which car to buy. Which school for Jane. Which holiday to take. Countless.
And how many times had Prue cast herself on Max’s shoulder and wept over Violet, then the baby who came, and then the baby who never did, with fatigue, with frustration? And how many times had he comforted her, and she him? Many, many.
Max regarded the pale countenance of his wife. Life wa
s made up of a series of losses — loss of confidence, faith, love, money, health, taut muscles, eyesight . . . Max had imagined that he had that knowledge safely under his control, and understood how to use it.
‘Stay there, Prue,’ he said, more to reinforce the point to himself than anything else.
Back in the sagging seat, she flinched at what was to come. Courage, she muttered to herself. Courage, courage.
Max cleared his throat. ‘We must sort Jane out, Prue. The situation can no longer be ignored.’
‘I agree.’
‘Do you know why she is like this?’
‘No.’
The silence that followed her denial was broken by the clink of keys of the gun-safe which Max tossed from one hand to the other.
‘I think I know, Prue.’
Stop, she wanted to cry cravenly. Turn the clock back. I don’t want anything to be said. Let’s leave it at that point when the balance goes neither one way nor the other.
Clink went the keys.
‘Are you . . . are you unhappy, Prue?’
Perhaps Max had meant to ask other questions outright but at the last minute, pulled back by caution or an understandable shrinking from pain, failed to do so. His expression was quite calm and no one, not even Prue, could have gauged what it hid.
As the one who had built and consolidated for as long as she could remember, Prue now found herself desperately in the wrong.
‘To go back to Jane,’ she said. ‘Puberty. And she’s being teased.’
The keys disappeared inside Max’s fist. ‘I thought you would answer a direct question,’ he said. ‘You disappoint me.’
She sighed. ‘Of course I’m happy.’
‘You forget I have experience and I know the signs.’
‘Yes,’ said Prue, clipped and bitter. ‘You do have experience and I’m sorry for it. I know I lag behind you in that. But, Max, I paid the dues. Helen and Violet were hung round my neck until I thought they would stifle me, and I could never get away from them. They’ve always been there in our marriage.’
As she spoke, a memory nagged at Prue.
‘You never said.’
‘I suppose there’s a lot I’ve never said.’ She moved slightly and the light played on her thinner face and accentuated the strain visible on it.
Jamie had told her once that Violet had accused him of hanging Lara round her neck.
‘But you would not lie to me, Prue?’ He knocked his fist gently against the wall. ‘I wouldn’t like to think that.’
‘No, I wouldn’t, Max. There’s no reason.’
‘So, there is no need for me to worry?’ Max had got himself under control.
Her grey eyes met his blue ones.
I understand perfectly that the price is silence, was the message in hers, provided I do nothing to rock the family boat. So why are you asking me now?
Darling girl, take what I offer in the spirit it is meant. I understand better, far better, than you can imagine. But have pity, for it’s tougher than I had imagined.
Was this, she asked herself, a collusion between them?
Max persisted. ‘No need is there, Prue?’
Prue took a deep breath . . .
‘I’ll ask you again,’ said Max. ‘There’s no need for me to worry?’
Prue did what she thought best. ‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s no need to worry.’
Max stuffed trembling hands into his pockets.
The sight of those shaking hands brought a lump into Prue’s throat and bolt of guilt striking through her. Joan had to suffer (and yield up her physical freedom.) So, without question, did Prue. Only in her case, Prue was a liar and would carry the weight of her lie on her back, up hill and down dale, until her skin was bruised and torn. . All the while, knowing that because she lied her daughter was starving herself because she suspected something was wrong, and her husband’s hands were shaking with grief at the effort of sustaining a marriage.
‘We must concentrate on Jane.’
‘I am thinking of Jane.’ Prue felt her heartbeat return to normal. ‘I think of her most of the time.’ She continued, ‘I think we should keep her at home for the rest of the week and then send her back. Otherwise she will fret at missing what her friends are up to. In the holidays, I will help her make up some of the work.’
‘The eating?’
‘Worrying. But I’ve checked out her weight with Matron and she tells me she has not lost any till this last week. So I think she was eating more or less OK. Plus, she’s growing fast . . . Mrs Harriman did say that the girls had been talking about anorexia among themselves and one or two of them had been trying it on.’
‘Dad?’
The door was pushed open to reveal the figure of their daughter in an old pink nightdress that she insisted on wearing even though Prue had bought her new ones. She was hugging her copy of Goodnight Mr Tom.
Max looked up with the softened expression he reserved for his women. ‘Why aren’t you in bed?’
Pale and huge-eyed, Jane advanced into the room. ‘I was listening at the door,’ she said, her mouth stretched in a smile that neither of them recognized on the face of their eleven-year-old daughter. It was a smile which belonged on an older face and with an older spirit.
‘You naughty girl,’ said Prue. ‘Straight back to bed.’
She put her hand on Jane’s shoulder. Jane fixed her with a look which combined hatred and yet love — betrayed love, Prue supposed - and shrugged herself out of Prue’s grasp. The book fell open in her hands and a piece of thin cardboard fluttered to the floor. It fell with the painting face up.
Max picked it up. He looked at it, then turned it over. Prue felt the rushing and beating of her pulses build to a crescendo and, for a second or two, was in danger of fainting. Max looked up. Jane hovered by her father’s chair, one leg bent behind the other in the attitude of innocence. A smile remarkable for its bitterness pulled at Max’s mouth, but his eyes were damp.
It is true, said those eyes as he handed it over to Prue.
‘Is that yours?’
The pulses shrieked in Prue’s ears and wrists. You knew, said her eyes in return. She took the card and examined the serene, sinless Madonna. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That’s Kate’s. I liked the picture, so she gave it to me.’
‘What does it mean, Mum? What does it all mean? Why was Dad so sad?’
Prue was putting Jane to bed, removing the pile of computer magazines from the bed, brushing the fair hair and proffering a toothbrush in front of her daughter’s nose. ‘Funnily enough, grownups do get sad. One day,’ she said, ‘I will explain but not now.’
‘Why not?’ Jane mumbled through a mouth full of toothpaste.
‘Because you are too young and you must accept that.’
‘But who was the card from?’
‘From an old boyfriend of Kate’s, I think.’ Prue watched Jane in the mirror. Jane rinsed her mouth and spat out quantities of toothpaste.
‘Oh,’ she said, and Prue relaxed a little.
When Jane was in bed and tucked in, Prue bent to kiss her. Her lips made contact with the sweet, fresh skin and lingered.
‘But you see, Mum, it’s frightening when I don’t know about things,’ Jane said out of the blue.
Prue sat down on the bed. ‘I agree. But in good time. Till then, you must trust Dad and me.’ She ran the edge of the sheet under her fingernails. ‘Why did you take the card? It wasn’t yours.’
Jane’s eyelids masked her expression. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just did.’ She was silent. ‘Why was it there, Mum?’
Downstairs in the drawing room, Max was sitting quietly in his chair, his hands on either arm. A glass of whisky stood untouched on the floor by the armchair.
As she came back into the room, the twilight had been finally routed by the dark, and his figure was shrouded. She bent to turn on the table-lamp and went over to draw the curtains.
‘Is she settled?’
Prue nodded.
‘I love you, Prue.’
Unlike his wife, Max was used to solitude and suspected that, as in the past, it might be his portion in the future. He was well acquainted with it; it was his companion in life. The prospect of being alone emptied his mind and allowed the emotion and feeling to wash within the bone shell that housed his brain.
Life had to go on.
‘Have a glass of whisky,’ he said, ‘and we could watch the news.’
Prue thought her heart was in danger of breaking.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Half-way back from Winchester on Saturday morning, Max remembered the gun.
It was due for collection from the gunsmith’s where he had taken it for repairs. The repair had not really been necessary and guns were best left in their safes. Nevertheless, Max had taken it to the gunsmith.
With an exclamation of impatience, he guided the car into the centre of the road, checked that it was empty and made a U-turn.
The detour would make him late for lunch. Not that that mattered too much, except to Max who was hungry, for the house was in chaos on account of the Valours’ annual pre-Christmas drinks party due to take place the next day.
The Becketts were also staying for the weekend.
‘Do you want to go ahead with it?’ Prue had broached the curious — and ominous — calm that suggested everything, but also nothing, which had settled over their home life. ‘Shall we drop it for this year?’
‘Why?’ he had replied.
Because, Prue had begun to say… But Max cut her off.
‘If you want the party,’ she conceded, ‘that’s fine.’
Max thought to himself that, if one reflected hard enough on events, it was possible to predict what was going to happen. Now he was older, he could see how the same betrayals, disappointments, lack of love, greed, foolishness, repeat themselves in each generation, in each family, in each relationship.
Perfect Love Page 32
