Perfect Love

by Elizabeth Buchan

  Emmy reached for a chair and sat down. ‘You never said, Mum.’

  It was only when, later that evening, she lay sleepless on nylon sheets so clean that they emitted sparks every time she moved that Emmy asked, Why don’t you bloody help me, then?

  Consequently, the idea of a roof over her head, a place for the baby, help and support, grew rosier. She pictured putting the baby to sleep in a freshly painted room in which hung a dancing mobile of grey and red elephants like the ones she had seen in Mothercare. She pictured, too, sitting at a kitchen table eating soup and fresh bread, with the radio playing.

  These were stubborn, hard-to-ignore images, and they featured Emmy alone.

  Emmy had no feminist axe to grind, or any views on the absolute necessity of looking after yourself which allowed her a degree of flexibility and willingness to contemplate surprising courses of action. Lucky Emmy.

  I could make myself live with Mr Valour, she informed the darkness. It’s easy, really. Just for a little while. Until I’m on my feet. Then me and the baby will bugger off.

  She regretted the element of self-serving in her plans, but it could not be helped for she understood intuitively that being on your own did not guarantee liberty — rather the opposite. It took away the freedom to be soft and generous.

  The bedroom was chilly and Emmy’s lips felt dry. She heard a scuffle outside in the garden. A fox? A rat up from the river? She pictured the latter trotting, head down, from its damp moss-licked mud-hole to the frost-scented, hollow pile of leaves under the beech, its feet leaving the imprints of curtain hooks on the lawn.

  Did she have to be alone?

  Towards dawn, Emmy got up and stood, shivering, by the window, still fogged with night vision. Soon, the missel-thrushes would be waking, shaking out their white underwings and pale wingtips. Soon, they would signal the new day in harsh, rattling chatter and set about the business of finding a slug, a snail, a berry. After the breeding season, missel-thrushes often fed together in family groups.

  Dix points the missel-thrush. Nul points humans.

  It would not be so bad living at close quarters with someone you did not care for. After all, Emmy claimed experience in non-affectionate co-habitation. Her parents had done it for years.

  She washed, brushed her obstinate hair into some kind of shape and put on her black leggings. Black and white were magpie colours. Apt for someone who was about to occupy someone else’s husband’s nest.

  She trod stealthily down the stairs to the kitchen - anything to avoid her father and his temper this morning. Two spoonfuls into the Frosties and her stomach rebelled. Her knees went odd, too. She bet she’d been right about what was up with that nice Mrs Valour and Mr Valour. She just knew something was wrong. Mind you, Madam and her husband were not exactly a pattern for the young and in-love. At least, she still had the energy and interest to be curious. That was something.

  All day Emmy hovered by the telephone, notting. That is, not picking it up, and wasting considerable time and energy in not doing so. Yes, please, she could say to Max. I’ll come and be housekeeper. I’ll have the baby in Winchester, stay with me mum for a bit and then I’ll come. That would be very nice, he would say, and puts my mind at rest.

  Emmy recollected the thick carpet, the dry-cleaned curtains and pretty china of Hallet’s Gate. She smelt the drift of pot-pourri and the expensive beeswax polish Mrs Valour favoured. Was she selling her baby for a brand of furniture polish? Her soul for a bowl of rose petals and a cushion with tassels?

  For in her heart, Emmy did not quite believe that the housekeeping bit would remain so.

  And what of Angus, wherever he was? Did he ever think of her as he stripped the knickers from the Sals and Cherrys and buried his body in theirs? Did he remember their secrets, the jokes, the whisper of breath over their passion, the drift of hair on a pillow and a shared thought?

  Emmy did, but also hugged the knowledge that memory was a mist: it distorted the shapes of objects, and concealed hazards.

  Just before he had left the house in Austen Road that last time, Angus had turned back, boots dangling from his scarred, tough-skinned hand.

  ‘I never thought you’d be frightened, Em,’ he said. ‘I thought you were made of strong stuff.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she had told him. ‘I don’t want risks.’

  What was she doing now if she wasn’t taking a risk? And how much more, silly cow that she was, would she prefer to be taking the risk with Angus?

  A regular payment a week in hand from Mr Valour. Tax and insurance paid (unlike his daughter who had not got round to it). It meant she would not be able to go on the social once she had started, but the deal was a good one.

  Emmy did what she always did when she felt trapped and went out. Christmas trees shone red and green pinpoints, mixed with dazzling white, from windows on to a day that was not going to bother over much about getting light. Emmy looked up. The huge beeches that dominated this end of the village were still, frozen into dormancy.

  The village and its occupants appeared to Emmy’s fevered, bothered mind to be waiting. For what? Christmas? For the recession to end? For more optimistic times?

  She trudged on, her life wedged awkwardly in the lap of others. Someone else’s house, someone else’s husband to look after.

  The light at the top of the rise was dull and flat, the land dripped brackish water and the puddles were frozen around their edges. Was she still capable of discerning the beating life in the woods and under the hedgerows from which she derived so much pleasure, which she needed to exist as she needed the glass of pure, cold water? Was that also suspended, and driven underground so that she could not find it? Suddenly, Emmy found herself clinging to the gatepost into Oven’s field and sobbing.

  Emmy dialled Cherry’s phone number and a woman answered. Her voice was familiar.

  ‘Is that Sal?’ Emmy asked, surprised.

  ‘Yeah.’ She did not sound friendly.

  ‘This is Emmy. Remember? Do you know where Angus is?’ And why aren’t you in the country? she wanted to add.

  The voice hardened further. ‘Since you ask, I haven’t seen the bugger for weeks, which is typical.’

  Emmy swallowed, paused and made the hardest request of her life. ‘Do you know where I can get hold of him?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  Emmy licked her lips. ‘Plenty.’

  Boredom, disenchantment or perhaps a spirit of mischief overcame Sal’s reluctance. She gave Emmy the number and, in a rare moment of feminine solidarity, offered the following advice. ‘He’ll always have his hand up a skirt, you silly idiot. Do you want that?’

  No, Emmy did not. Neither, judging from her tone, did Sal, after all. Well, well. On balance, there were worse things. Lack of understanding. An ultra-clean kitchen and a bare heart. The mess and pain of Angus and his women terrified her, but she thought she had learnt that terror, at least, was portable and life was composed of a series of loads… and debts.

  Thirty seconds later, she dialled the number.

  ‘Can I speak to Angus, please?’

  ‘Who is it?’ asked a bruising sort of voice.

  ‘Tell him Emmy.’

  She heard the echo as Angus’s name was shouted through the house. It took some time before anyone came to the phone, and her mother’s colourful china plate beamed down on a shaking Emmy.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Emmy.’

  ‘Hell. Are you all right?’

  Emmy found that her throat was blocked and her eyes were streaming. ‘Of course.’

  There was a silence. Clearly Angus was not going to be cracked easily and Emmy realized she had been stupid. She could not ring Angus up, coolly inform him that she had changed her mind, and then reveal her little bundle of news.

  ‘Are you going to say anything, then?’ Angus sounded frighten-ingly cold and distant.

  ‘No. Yes. No.’ Emmy’s voice did not sound right either.

  Angus softened. ‘You
are OK?’

  ‘Yes. It’s nothing. Forget this.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At Mum’s. I’m staying till Monday morning. Look, Angus, it’s all right. I’m fine. Bye.’

  The dialing tone cut in and she was left to stare at it and the pad beside the phone which, for some reason, was disguised as a liquorice allsort. Emmy pressed a hand to her stomach. It’s you and me, she thought. You and me. Us.

  After their tea, Mrs Horton sallied out to an underwear-selling party. Her father was sleeping off the day in his bedroom. In desperation, Emmy turned on the television. The script-writer on Casualty had decided that a stomach hemorrhage was highly entertaining. Shackled to the sofa by repulsion, Emmy watched for a few minutes and then turned it off, just as the luckless doctor and the wall were being artistically splattered by an actor who, to his credit, looked as though he could wring the script-writer’s neck. If that was entertainment, then Emmy was beautiful.

  She went to bed and slept.

  Up at seven o’clock, she went through the routine. Teeth. Hair. Leggings. T-shirt. Since she was feeling masochistic, Emmy stared at herself in the diamond-bright bathroom mirror. The sight was not reassuring. On impulse, she reached for a relegated bottle of Charlie and dabbed some behind her ears and on her wrists. Too late, she forgot that scent made her feel sick.

  A noise like a wounded aircraft coming in to land advanced up the lane and, bottle in hand, she froze. It brought back the days when Angus flew down the lane on his gleaming machine and swept her away, a knight on a bike, smelling of sump oil.

  Her sadness and loss made her throat swell and she watched in the mirror as tears dammed in her eyes and slid on to her cheeks.

  Look at me, jeered the image. That’s all you’ve got, Emmy.

  So absorbed was Emmy by this touching vision of tragedy that she did not, at first, take on board that the noise had stopped. By the house, in fact. The gate banged shut, and someone squelched up the path.

  Only one person did that.

  Emmy screwed the top back on to the scent bottle and put it with extreme care in its place on the shelf. Pregnant women were known to have funny ideas - think of the stones of them eating coal, or longing for exotic foods.

  Someone thumped on the door and her father bawled, ‘Go to hell.’

  Emmy went down the stairs and opened the front door. There, looking cross and tired, stood Angus. Emmy’s hand flew to her mouth.

  ‘What . . .?’

  Angus yanked her outside on to the concrete doorstep. ‘I’ve come to find out what’s going on.’

  Emmy began to shiver from cold and excitement, the smell from the scent making her nausea rise in retch-making waves.

  ‘Well?’

  Emmy’s defences fell with a crash.

  ‘Oh, Angus, help me.’

  He watched her for a moment or two, long enough for Emmy to grow really frightened. Then he said, ‘What do you think I’m here for, you silly cow? So. What is it?’

  She lifted her pale, tear-stained face to him and her lips formed the words, but nothing emerged. Instead, she laid her hands on her stomach. Angus’s eyes travelled down Emmy’s body and came to rest on the bunched fists.

  ‘Oh, Emmy,’ he said, enlightenment percolating slowly into his brain. ‘You would.’

  ‘Shut the door,’ Mr Horton roared from the top of the stairs.

  Angus cocked his head. ‘Are you coming with me this time?’

  This time, Emmy did not hesitate. She pulled the front door shut and said, ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  She followed him down the path and through the squeaking gate. Angus rummaged in his carrier and chucked her a pair of leathers and the spare helmet. Emmy caught them with both hands.

  She imagined the comments - the sort she had learned while living with the Valours - being uttered behind the doors of Dainton’s houses and cottages as they passed with an ear-splitting noise emitting from the bike’s engines. Yobs. Selfish. Should be shot.

  Hallet’s Gate and its damp, heating compost heap peeled away to their left.

  It was a nice idea, Mr Valour. I’m sorry. I would have done my best. I would have done my best.

  A few cars were straggling out of the drives, driven by men in shirt-sleeves, the white bloom of their aftershave still overlaying their complexions. As usual, the traffic on to the main road had clogged to a standstill, apart from pin-striped cyclists in trouser-clips, who sailed past. A bus drew up at the stop by the junction and a couple of girls in short Lycra skirts, Doc Marten’s and permed hair shining with moisture got on.

  Emmy was shivering uncontrollably. She tugged at Angus’s back. ‘I’m going to die of cold.’

  ‘We’ll stop at the services.’

  Andover now lay behind them and Emmy sang a farewell to the town she knew best. In the market place, stalls — pink polythene mushrooms - would be springing up, and those in trouble and on the dole would begin their creeping progress in search of bargains.

  Good oxtail there, and cheese, Emmy told them silently. Rabbits are cheap, too.

  The doors to the precinct would be reset for their daily open/ shut performance, and synthetic aromas would waft from the shops specializing in potions and knick-knackery. How do they make a living?

  An assistant would paste up another ‘Special Pre-Christmas Sale’ sign on the china and electric store, and the butcher would assemble shrink-wrapped chicken thighs, ham, and mince the colour of terracotta. Barclays Bank would continue to shine its hideous turquoise signs into the arena, a reminder that shopping and money were as linked as peaches and cream, love and marriage.

  She and Angus?

  Goodbye, said Emmy, heart thumping, teeth chattering, baby fluttering.

  Angus rode up to the Fleet services as if Hell’s Angels were on his tail. He stopped the bike and helped Emmy, frozen into a state resembling rigor mortis, on to the ground. Her knees buckled and he grabbed her.

  ‘Tea,’ he said. ‘Egg and chips.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ said Emmy.

  The Muzak was hard at work in the restaurant, which was already fugged with steam. Angus steered Emmy past the tables settled her by the window.

  ‘I’ll get you the best breakfast of your life. Trust me, Em.’

  That was it. Emmy must wait and trust. Trust, even though it was a risk. Precisely because it was a risk.

  Half dreaming, she closed her eyes. Then she opened them to watch as Angus balanced a loaded tray in one hand and two bottles of milk in another. He slid the tray down on to the table. Both plates were lapped in fried eggs, baked beans, overdone bacon and grilled tomatoes. Once again, Emmy’s eyes closed.

  If you make me sick, she told her baby silently but fiercely, I’ll never forgive you.

  ‘OK?’ Angus flicked at Emmy’s chin with a finger that stung her skin.

  The nausea that threatened at the sight and smell of grease and food rose alarmingly.

  Don’t you dare.

  It subsided.

  ‘OK,’ said Emmy and picked up her knife and fork.

  Chapter Thirty

  Prue took the phone call later that morning.

  ‘Yes, Emmy,’ she said eventually, after a prolonged interval. ‘If I told you how delighted I am at your news would you believe me?’

  She went to find Max. He was in the study, polishing the butt of the gun that Prue had last seen illuminated by the moonlight. Weak at the knees, she stopped abruptly in the doorway, reliving the sensation of stones biting into them, and smelling the cold night air scented with smoke and leaf-mould.

  ‘Shouldn’t you put it away?’ she asked after a while.

  If twenty years had not qualified her for insider knowledge or wisdom when it came to dealing with herself, they certainly did not qualify Prue dealing with Max. The only thing of which she was now sure was that she knew less than at the beginning of the marriage and everything was in flux.

  Max shrugged. ‘Don’t worry, I won
’t use it again.’ He did not look up.

  Prue bit back the temptation to reply: That’s what they always say. Instead she slid her hands into the pockets of her cardigan and wrapped them over her middle, aware that the gesture revealed her nervousness.

  ‘Emmy’s just phoned to say she’s sorry but she can’t take the job, after all.’

  Plainly disappointed, Max looked up at last.

  ‘She’s going to live with her boyfriend, the father. That’s very good, though goodness knows how they will manage.’

  Max contemplated the perfect gloss and smooth grain of the butt. ‘I should think they’ll manage perfectly well,’ he said, and his tone suggested that Prue had been guilty of patronage.

  So she had been. She advanced into the room, which felt cold and, because no one had cleaned it lately, sported a thin veneer of dust on the furniture.

  ‘Can we talk, Max?’

  Prue asking for forgiveness was like Joan’s executioner asking her to absolve him. (The records related that he had pitched up at the Frères Pécheurs shaking with terror. God would damn him, he wailed, for burning a saint. He is also said, traditionally, to have insisted that, despite the quantity of oil, sulphur and fuel he had thrown on to the pyre, he could not get Joan’s heart or entrails to burn. They, and anything else left of her, had been thrown into the Seine.)

  Still hugging her cardigan around her middle, the old, soft, sleepy-eyed Prue stood by her husband - except that she was not. ‘Max, please put that thing down, the gun, I mean, and talk to me.’

  Her closeness stirred his senses, honed after twenty years into the conditioned reflex. He knew now that the image he held of his wife was deceptive - and why should it not be? So was his own. Funnily enough, the one person who had not bothered to hide anything had been Helen, and how thin a person she had proved. Max sighed, and placed the gun in its case, shifting his bulk out of the daylight coming through the window into the shadowed area of the room.