As she imagined the man and his children there in the house, she had inklings of what it felt to be the woman of the house of a family, the children running noisily up the stairs, a ball repeatedly bouncing off the outside wall.
Now, two children would come to live and play in this house and she would have a husband who was a father. She was to be a stepmother, a wife.
During the lost days at his house, she had worn a dress of the wife, but had rejected sensible wifely underwear, choosing instead to wear none while hers dried after washing.
She had also continued to wear the bracelet, which he had recognised and acknowledged, and to which he had not objected, tangling it into their perversity. Maybe it was a ceremonial bracelet – a seal of office – marking her ascendancy to the role of his wife and the passing of his former wife from his life. Maybe it represented continuity of the dead wife’s life. Maybe, as he had said, it would please her to see the family re-formed.
She was impatient to take on the new roles.
She cupped her breasts with both her hands, the breasts of a stepmother, mother. A motherly breast, a motherly bosom; she tried out the words, and wondered how it would feel to have the heads of children resting on her covered breast. Would they lay their heads on her breast?
Would they come to her? Would they obey her? Would they laugh with her? Why did she think that the love and passion she felt for their father would engulf them also? She knew it would.
Richard told her that he felt himself recreated as a young man. She had smiled at that – he was still rather young in her eyes. She was uncertain whether he saw her as a woman being ‘around his age’ or whether he preferred to see her as the Older Woman. They were different parts; perhaps she could play both. She was sure that another part of her attraction for him was that she was a Woman From Abroad. The problem with feminine mystiques was to know how to fulfil them for the lover in all their sensual detail at the appropriate mood, and yet still be the true person one was. Yes, surely they were also part of the true person. One must not lose the mystiques in the mire of the everyday.
And she had unleashed within herself yet another woman. A woman she hardly remembered had awoken the sleeping hormones of her fertility, even if only as poetry of her mind. At least for a time, she wanted the poetry of procreation to be part of their romance.
And what of her brother? Of Janice? Of the Richters? Of their other friends? His friends? How would they receive this change?
She did not know what had happened about Emily. She would telephone her. Some explanation would be needed. The house seemed to be spick and span. Ambrose must have spoken to her. They would have to get their story straight.
And Ambrose – how to fit him into her life? This was the second time they had parted ways, and she knew she could not help him through this time. Others would have to do that.
It was a pity that Allan had returned to London.
She had not told Richard about her earlier marriage to Robert. She would erase her first marriage, expunge it. Two marriages were socially possible; three tipped one over into another category, perhaps into being a scarlet woman, a foolish woman, an unstable woman. A film star could have three marriages, not she. And she thought it was definitely time to drop her age a little.
Something also warned her. Not a shrill warning, hardly even detectable. It was a warning that at some point in the foggy future she would have to pay something for all this that had been granted to her. It would not be straightforward. And even if Ambrose now passed from her life, she would have to live with the truth that Ambrose, in an unfathomable way, was her: he was she. It was the implications of this that she did not understand, but sensed that it was now part of her past, not her future; perhaps there had been some final subtle amalgamation of herself.
Would she still follow Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson’s view of marriage? Independence of movement; independent friendships; separate rooms – no bedroom squalor; separate finances.
She fancied that he would be a man who would wish to continue with a solid, old-fashioned marriage. She thought she could manage that. Perhaps it was a mature thing to find herself with a man who was not a mirror image of herself.
Perhaps she was ready for that.
She did not have a long, winding road of infinite time ahead of her. Now, she had been offered a family.
I Am Recalled
Ambrose and she met in his rooms at the Hotel Canberra and she found that he had moved back into those that they’d had when they had lived there. They were now bare of any trace of their former presence. She thought he was probably using the rooms and their memories in an attempt to haul her back to him.
It was around 10 pm and he had been to a reception and was in his dinner suit with his bow tie untied around his neck. They sat themselves in the armchairs. He seemed sober and did not offer a drink. She decided that drink was not what they should have at this moment.
The first thing he remarked on was the bracelet.
She looked at it and decided to say nothing.
He leaned back with his hands behind his neck and she was embarrassed by his faux nonchalance. It hurt her heart.
His first question was whether the affair had been going on since the Prime Minister’s dinner. He asked the question in his embassy voice.
‘We had not seen each other since the PM’s dinner party.’
He stared at her, seeming to doubt that. ‘No plot? No deceit? No betrayal?’
She shook her head.
‘Thank you. I called over his file.’
‘Did he pass? Is he a Good Man?’
‘As good as the public service might want – or if you were a person who wanted a good man.’ Ambrose grimaced and then added, ‘If you wanted a man.’
She gave a small smile and did not say, Yes, I’m afraid, that is what I want. Instead she said, ‘I thought I might try it for a change.’ That was flippant. She looked up and smiled, ‘However, please tell me if anything truly awful about him comes across your desk.’
‘I could fabricate something.’ There was a short silence and he looked directly at her and said, ‘Anyhow, everything has changed.’
She was frightened. ‘How so? What has changed?’
‘I am recalled.’
‘Recalled?’
Her first thought was that if she had known this some time before she might have postponed revealing her clandestine engagement with Richard – she would have let Ambrose go ahead to London and would have stayed in Australia for a time on some pretext, living the fiction that she might join him. Then she could have told him by letter. Would have avoided hitting him face-to-face with the developments between Richard and her.
No, that would have been plot, deceit and betrayal. Nearly any indecency was authorised by the passion of love, but had it happened that way, it still would not have excused such ethically weak behaviour.
Another thought collided with these – that going back to London with Ambrose would have been a serious option for her at this time of life, had it occurred before the blooming of her involvement with Richard.
She found herself suspicious of Ambrose. ‘Are you serious about the recall? Or are you simply telling me that you intend to flee?’
‘The HC said my posting was no longer tenable.’
‘The burlesque?’
‘Misuse of the Commission’s box at the cinema.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Although, given the times, that was just conceivable.
‘It was the burlesque. Sir Stephen didn’t like my dress. Dress too short; act too long; nose too bloody.’
He was cracking hardy.
Their joking back then about the possibility of a catastrophe after the night of the burlesque had turned true. But she was not willing to give his announcement the strength of shock. She did not want anything to diminish the dazzle of her erotic and romantic affair of the heart, and all the gifts it promised. She denied his news its full admittance, refused to let it in
to rob her of any skerrick of the engrossment she wanted to give to her heart. It would be a way of Ambrose usurping her engrossment, as rejected lovers tried to claim back their lover by the appearance of sudden illness, of pathetic collapse in an effort to win back, if not love, then the trappings of love: pity and care and exclusive attendance from the lover they were losing.
Eros was on her side. Eros had decided to make her new love easier by dispatching her old lover to the other side of the world, to make a clear place for her new life. She had been given the choice of a new direction – the choice of finding a niche in Australia and, just before it was too late, to find a family life.
She also felt a rush of practical considerations: of the house; of the legal things of marriage, the dividing of possessions; of Ambrose’s professional future. Possessions were not a problem. There were so few possessions that rightfully belonged with Ambrose. So few shared possessions. What of the rocking horse?
Following closely on these thoughts, she felt seized with panic about how his departure would be seen in Canberra. Would he be seen as a scandalously disgraced diplomat? Would she then be seen as the wife of a scandalous diplomat, who had deserted her husband at his time of disgrace? A more powerful panic came into play – the humiliation of being related to a socially embarrassing aberration, now revealed. There could be gossip about the burlesque and the breakdown of her marriage and of Allan’s flamboyant presence. The gossips would weave a sordid tale. Personally, she could handle that, but what if the gossip should reach Richard and turn him against her? Or harm his career? She could not tell Richard the true nature of her marriage to Ambrose, its disreputable ambiguity. Richard was not the sort of person who could understand that. Was there anyone who could understand that? Nor would the telling be fair to Ambrose.
Were it to come up when the gossip reached him, she would find a form of words to handle it. And she thought she was capable of being a proper wife to a proper man in all its conventions.
‘Do you think that your secret life – our secret life – will come out? Be talked about?’
‘Why should it?’
‘You don’t suspect that that is what is behind this recall? Above and beyond the matter of the Legacy burlesque?’
‘If being a pansy were an offence in the FO, then the FO would be seriously short-staffed. I think the discomfort of the High Commissioner is all that was considered – the concert. Scandalised churchmen.’
‘Don’t you think people saw more than that? That you revealed something about yourself? And, therefore, about us? About me?’
‘Don’t really see it that way.’
She wondered if he were being obtuse, but how would they ever know? There was a stream of gossip that never came to the ears of those being gossiped about.
‘So you have tired of your nancy-boy?’
Had she? ‘I will never have you out of my life. One way or another – nancy-boy or diplomat or sage or confidant or doctor or Major – you will always be in my life. Unless, that is, you wish otherwise.’
What sort of empty consolation was that? Yet there was, finally, nothing of comfort a rejecting lover could offer the rejected. ‘How did you hear about the recall? How was it put?’
‘I heard first from Allan. He called me long-distance from London. He had seen a draft cable. I knew something was brewing. It’s been rather chilly in the Chancery. Thought it might blow over. It hasn’t.’
At least he had Allan. He had so few close friends here. He had other friends in London. He would be happier in London. The clubs, his other life.
He then said, ‘Of course, you could come, you always . . .’ He cleared his throat, hesitated over his words.
She had so rarely heard him incoherent. She waited on him, giving him time to arrange his words.
He said, ‘When you’ve finished your amourette, I mean. You could skip back to London. We’ll be happier there. More high jinks there.’
She thought of leading him to think that the affair was a passing fancy, but she knew it wasn’t and she would not do that.
She said softly, seriously, reaching across to take his hand, ‘I think I’ve now made my bed here. In more than one way.’ She made an attempt at a wry smile. ‘I hope. What is happening is very serious.’
He did not acknowledge the finality of what she had just said. He went on, ‘They will find something for me to do at the FO. Will share Allan’s digs for a while. A sunny appointment on the Med. Or back to old Genève, perhaps. We could find you a cosy position in the Red Cross or somewhere like that. Much better.’
She thought that it was more likely that they would retire him. Put him out to grass. She looked at him. He was showing his age.
Another thing occurred to her: that because of the strangeness of his sexual nature, he did not feel able to claim her, to beg for her return, or make an emotional demand on her. He could not demand that she adhere to her vows as a regular husband might or as an injured lover might – demands that were rarely ever listened to by the departing lover. That she had accepted him and his nature he probably saw as a great gift, a remarkable concession by her, or something lent to him by fate. If she were now wishing to withdraw this concession, this indulgence, there was nothing he could say. He could only gracefully retire into the darkness and not be a hindrance to her new life.
Looking back on it all, she thought that she had never involved herself in his sexuality as a favour. It had been part of her sexuality too.
‘That’s good – your going to live with Allan.’ She had often wondered if they’d had a physical sex thing. That would relieve her. Even now, she was ignobly and unreasonably jealous of Allan. As a victorious lover, she wanted all, she wanted to have all her claims on the world recognised and celebrated, even to claim her discarded lover. She wanted him to still be her loyal liege. How vain. But in a palliative sense, it was good that Allan was there for Ambrose at this time.
He kept on with his lover’s illusion. ‘Just until you come over. When you come over we’ll find something swank. Park Lane. Some apartment at the dark-blue end of the Monopoly board. And there’s always the Orchard in Wiltshire.’
Bribes.
She avoided the illusion to which he was clinging. ‘Deep in your heart, you always wanted to go back to London.’ Perhaps, he had unconsciously intended the burlesque scandal to bring about his recall; that it had been a way of burning his bridges.
‘Possible.’
He wasn’t releasing her, he was keeping a door open for her; or trying to stand in the door to stop her leaving. She said, ‘You’ll be much happier back in good old Europe.’
‘As one who leads a life of scarcely amusing angst, how would I know what will make me happy?’
She gave him a sad, comforting smile. ‘Oh, you find your fun and games from time to time, and you play with the dark arts of diplomacy. You make angst your playmate.’
He was not in the mood to acknowledge this. He was in the mood for moping.
How, sometimes, everything fell into place. As a determinist she was not suspicious of the workings of what was commonly called fate. Coincidence, the turn of events to one’s advantage, that could be accepted as reasonably trustworthy in its correctness, or its usefulness – the fate unconsciously engineered for us by the backroom wizards of the mind. Not something that could be anticipated or intelligently manipulated, but something that, when it occurred, could be accepted as a reasonably sound outcome. Eros had cleared the way for itself.
She said, ‘I suggest that as far as the HC goes, and as far as our circle goes and the world in which we move, we say for the timebeing that I am staying back here to clean things up. That I intend to follow.’
‘Could be the best move. Leaves the door open for you to return to London.’
There was no way she could dislodge this wishful thinking and she let it pass. It was true that it was necessary for her to have breathing space for things to come into place with Richard, and for her divorce from Ambrose
. She could not at this moment publicly debut their relationship.
He said, ‘Will save a bit of face – awkwardness.’ He tried for a joke. ‘I would rather, though, not mind losing some face. Might give me back the youthful look.’
For a time, Ambrose moved back to Arthur Circle to avoid tricky questions, occupying the guest room. Richard was made uneasy by it and she had to work to reassure him.
She began to reveal, in confidence, the change in her life to their close circle, but officially Ambrose and she remained a married couple and she would be following him at some point back to London.
She felt a great fondness for him, and tried not to allow their living together to fall back into its former intimacies or to create a pattern. Cruelly, she wanted him out of her immediate life. Emily knew that something was wrong but did not comment.
It wasn’t working. She was self-conscious when Richard and she made love at Arthur Circle. She spent time at Richard’s house, but he was uneasy about overnight stays because of the children and neighbours.
There was, then, another turn of events. As it turned out, Ambrose wasn’t sent back immediately. It seemed that he was required to observe and, in some backroom way, to service a royal commission following the defection of Vladimir Petrov, Third Secretary of the Soviet Embassy, whom they’d known socially.
It was a very dramatic time both diplomatically and politically.
The Royal Commission was set up to investigate claims by the Petrovs that there was an espionage ring in Australia. Ambrose was required at the Commission hearings every day. She met him now and then for a drink at the Canberra, never more than two.
The findings were that the Petrovs were truthful witnesses, that the Soviet Embassy in Canberra had been used for espionage in Australia, and that the only Australians who spied for the Soviet Union were Australian communists. But no one was put on trial.
Cold Light Page 39
