by Rosie Thomas
Helen went across and leaned her head against the window. The view engrossed her as it always did. Magdalen, All Souls’, St Mary’s, Tom Tower, she said, counting off the towers and spires as her eyes travelled over them. Oxford peaceful and impregnable under the evening sun. Tomorrow was the last day of her last term. After tomorrow she wouldn’t belong here any longer.
And where would she belong?
Helen realised with startling suddenness that she had no idea. Dimly in the past weeks, and with reluctance, she had thought of Mere and a life watching the fields and the slow roll of the seasons. There wouldn’t be that, any more. It was as if a sudden stiff breeze, sharp with the salt tang of the sea, had swept through the stuffy room. She felt free, drunk with freedom. Tom had asked nothing of her, and had promised her nothing in return. She could do anything now, but she knew too that if she chose to she could share her freedom with Tom.
Remembering something, Helen went to her cupboard. At the back, hidden behind boxes and suitcases, there was a little square package. She pulled the wrapping away impatiently and looked down into the brilliance of Tom’s sea picture. The pin that he had hammered for her was still in place. She hung the picture again and stood back to look at it, smelling the flower scent and the tough, challenging draught of sea air.
Stephen waited in his rooms. Pansy was just over an hour late. Hardly at all, by Pansy’s standards. She had stayed with him here only infrequently, but there were signs of her occupation everywhere. There was a paperback novel he had once made a disparaging remark about, which had doubled her enthusiasm for it. There was a bottle of Perrier on his drinks tray because she always asked for it, and through the open door to the bedroom he could see a scarlet sweater tactfully folded and put aside by his scout. In the drawer of his desk, hidden from the inquisitive eyes of students coming for tutorials, there was a photograph of her. She had given it to him in the early, incredible days when she had made him a present of herself. She was wearing her Rosalind-Ganymede costume, breeches and a white laced shirt and a leather jerkin, and she looked vulnerable and mischievous and maddeningly desirable. On the reverse, in her execrable loopy handwriting, she had scrawled ‘To darling Stephen, all my love P.’ Banal, Stephen tried to tell himself. Undereducated, self-centred and spoiled. But for each of those things Pansy was a hundred others too. He ached for her as he had never stopped doing from the moment when she had leaned forward and kissed him full on the mouth.
Time after time, in the company of his puzzled children or listening to Beatrice’s tearful voice on the telephone, Stephen wished that he had never seen her. But it was unthinkable that he could do without her now. So he waited on in his rooms, irritable and anxious, and imprisoned as securely as if she had locked him in.
At last, crossing to the window for the fifteenth time, he saw her coming. Short skirt, long tanned legs and hair bleached even blonder by the sun. She was strolling along without a trace of hurry.
Bitch, Stephen thought. Then he saw the heads of the students lounging on the grass turn as she passed, and a hard knot of excitement formed inside him. He moved to arrange himself and his papers at his desk, pretending to be absorbed in his work.
‘Seven o’clock?’ he asked when she came in, smiling at her in spite of his anger.
‘Sorry.’ Pansy was withdrawn, almost sulky. He reached for her at once but she slipped out of his reach and left him feeling lecherous and slimy.
‘Can I have a drink?’
‘Perrier?’
‘No. Gin, or Scotch or something, if you’ve got it.’
Stephen mixed the drink, his eyebrows raised in faint surprise. When he handed it to her, he smelt her flower scent and the peachy freshness of her skin and the knot in his stomach tightened.
Pansy swallowed the drink straight off and then, at last, she met his eyes.
‘I’ve come to tell you that it can’t go on between us.’
The words fell like little drops of ice into the pleasant room. She waited, unmoving, and then Stephen laughed. Of course she was joking.
‘It?’
‘I can’t see you any more.’
Not a joke, but still he tried to laugh. He wanted to be warm and fatherly, dismissing this childish whim.
‘Pansy darling, what do you mean?’
Even as he said it, he saw the little, steely face and the cold blue determination in her eyes. He knew what she meant and shock silenced him like a blow in the chest.
‘I mean that I’m going away. To the States, as it happens. To work for a while.’ Pansy looked down and away from him and for a moment he thought he glimpsed discomfort in her eyes. ‘I’ve come to thank you, Stephen. And say I’m sorry. And goodbye, I suppose.’
Stephen stared at her incredulously. He put out his hands and then dropped them again.
‘Thank you?’ he repeated. ‘To thank me and then go? Just walk out after all the months we’ve been together and everything we’ve shared?’
There was a little silence and then she said, ‘You did just that to Beatrice, except that it was years, not months.’
Stephen went white. How had this cold little creature replaced pliant, sexy Pansy?
‘I left my wife for you.’
‘I never asked you to do that, Stephen. I never wanted you to. Listen, please listen. We made each other happy for a while but now it’s over. Please, let me go without a scene.’
‘A scene? Jesus Christ, a scene?’ Stephen was shaking now, and he realised something else. For the first time since childhood he was going to cry. His eyes stung and then the tears came, burning his face.
‘Oh no.’ Pansy was staring at him. ‘Please, no.’
Stephen’s hand groped like a blind man’s, he found the arm of his chair and then sat down.
Pansy moved awkwardly to him and took his head in her arms. She stood looking down at him, stricken, but he never saw that.
‘Don’t cry for me. I’m not worth it.’
Stephen pulled himself away from her and said through stiff lips, ‘I’m not crying for you, you little wrecker. I’m crying for the paltriness of it all.’
‘Yes,’ Pansy mumbled after him. ‘The paltriness of it all.’
She reached the door and then the staircase beyond. Then she was running, running away without the vaguest idea of where she was going, oblivious past the curious admiring eyes that had watched her arrival.
As she ran and a sharp pain began to stab in her side, she was rolling down the practised steel shutters in her mind.
Put it behind you, her feet pounded. Close it off. It’s done with now. It’s too late to change any of it. Perhaps another time it’ll be different. Perhaps you’ll be able to feel like everyone else. Think ahead, now. Think of what’s coming and what you want to do. That makes it worthwhile, doesn’t it?
As she ran on Pansy’s face was clenched and for once almost without a trace of prettiness.
For a long time Stephen sat with his head in his arms. Then he jerked open the desk drawer and looked down into the smiling, tantalising face. With one savage gesture he screwed the print up into a glossy cracked ball and sent it spinning away across the room.
The next evening Helen sat peering into the awkwardly placed little square of mirror in her room. It felt all wrong to be dressing up.
There was nothing to celebrate tonight.
But still her fingers went through the motions of putting up her hair. As she twisted a few glossy tendrils to frame her face she stared gravely at herself. Her face was naturally pale but tonight there were two spots of colour high on her cheekbones. The grey eyes looking back at her were bright and anxious. Helen secured the knot of hair with two elegant pearl combs, lent by Chloe. She was ready now. Behind her her dress was hanging against the wardrobe door, white broderie anglaise, ruffled and starched, demure with a low-cut front that belied its own innocence. All she had to do was put it on, but still Helen sat in front of the mirror looking at herself and trying to fathom the churning feelings
within her.
In a few minutes Darcy would be here. She would have to find the words to tell him that she couldn’t marry him, and the thought alone made her feel sick.
But then, she was dressing for a ball and Tom would be there. Even though she shouldn’t be going, probably wouldn’t be, she was getting ready with care because it was for him, and she longed to see him. There was satisfaction in her glance at herself because she was looking pretty, for Tom. Guilt, anxiety and apprehension over Darcy warred with her very happiness. She had never felt so confused. It made her light-headed. Everything normal seemed threateningly misshapen, as if she was drunk, or drugged.
Helen leaned forward and began mechanically to make up her eyes in the way that Pansy had shown her, at Montcalm, so many months ago. She remembered herself standing in the pink and blue bedroom, decked out in the brilliance of her borrowed ball dress. It was Oliver who filled her head then. Oliver who made her want to look her best. Even at this distance, the naive futility of those hopes made her mouth twist into a smile. Oliver’s dominance over her seemed far away now, diminished by distance and the avalanche of events that had overtaken her since then. But she would never forget the magic of their short days together, and the sharpness of her first love. The urgency of it had driven her, from the moment of meeting him, all through the early wintry Follies days. It had driven her further, when Oliver’s brilliance had glanced away to reflect on Pansy, to Darcy. Sometimes there had been enough of Oliver’s ghost in him, as when he had first kissed her at Mere, to stir her faintly in response. And he was Oliver’s antithesis too, solid where his brother was evanescent. She had clutched at the security he had offered, then found herself imprisoned by it.
How a single year has changed everything, she thought. Helen reflected that she would barely recognise the shy, hesitant girl who had been herself a year ago.
If only, she whispered, if only changing so much means that I’ll never make the same mistakes again.
I don’t want to be hurt any more. And I can’t bear ever to hurt anyone myself. Never again, after this.
Someone tapped at the door. ‘Helen?’
‘Wait. Just a second,’ she called guiltily. Darcy was here already and she was still sitting in her long white slip, staring into the familiar yet frighteningly apart reflection in her mirror.
She let her comb drop with a clatter and reached for the dress. The white ruffles rustled as she dragged it on, but she couldn’t reach the little pearl buttons at the back. The colour in her face was heightened as she struggled.
‘Come in,’ she said, despairing of managing it herself.
Darcy stopped short in the doorway.
‘You look stunning,’ he said simply. And then, ‘Let me do that.’
One by one, his outdoor hands looking incongruous against the delicate fabric, he did up the little buttons. Darcy’s face was reddened too. When the last button was secure, he bent and kissed the exposed nape of her neck.
‘You look different,’ he said, and Helen wondered if she was imagining the sadness in his voice. ‘Is it because you’ve done your hair like that? Helen, I’ve missed you so much.’
He turned her round to face him and kissed her again. With pain and tenderness she saw his colourless hair damped smoothly down, making his face look rounder and younger, the careful black tie and the smoothness of his dinner jacket showing the developed muscles of his shoulders.
‘Darcy. Darcy …’ she began.
But the sadness that she had glimpsed, real or not, was all gone. Darcy looked like a little boy now with a big secret that he couldn’t bear to keep to himself any longer. He was looking round impatiently.
‘Are you ready? Come on, we must go. Where’s your wrap, or whatever it is?’
She had Chloe’s black velvet evening cloak, and he put it around her shoulders. Bemused, she let him lead her down the stairs. The first-floor gallery was empty and dark, but there was a square of light and the sound of voices below. At first sight from the wider sweep of stairs, the high panelled hall seemed full of people. Helen glimpsed Chloe’s mass of dark red hair, Pansy’s wand-like slimness, more faces she knew from As You Like It, and her College, and others, strangers to her. Everyone seemed to be laughing. They started to clap and cheer as she came down the stairs with Darcy at her shoulder. It was impossible to imagine anything more incongruous with her mood.
‘What?’ she asked Darcy, blankly. He beamed at her, but there was anxiety behind it.
‘To celebrate. Your Schools, of course, and our engagement. We’ve never had a party. I wanted to give you one tonight.’
Oh God, no, she wanted to say, but Darcy was already leading her into the crowd. Chloe hugged her. Her friend was vivid in dark green shot silk, with long jet earrings dangling extravagantly in her ears.
‘Do you mind all this?’ she murmured. ‘Darcy was so keen to do it.’
‘No,’ Helen said, hearing her voice coming from a long way off. ‘No, of course not.’
Chloe turned back to her partner. She was with Dave Walker, Stephen Spurring’s College ‘token Red’. Helen remembered that Chloe had struck up an ill-assorted but lively friendship with him. The night was full of surprises, she thought. Dave grinned at her. He was mock-defiant in his leather jacket, his floppy red bow tie a parody of the stiff black of the other men’s.
‘Mmm,’ and ‘mmm, well done.’ Pansy theatrically kissed both her cheeks. There was a tough-looking little man with ginger hair standing beside her. ‘This is Scott Scotney,’ she said, introducing him as if the name ought to mean something to Helen. ‘Do you mind me bringing him to your party?’
‘Not a bit.’ Helen was utterly dazed.
Through a little avenue of people, she saw Oliver at the far side of the hall. He was lounging, detached and negligent, but when their eyes met he blew her a kiss and then beckoned deliberately.
‘Hello, lovely,’ he murmured and lifted her chin with one finger so that he could kiss her mouth. ‘Hart was invited. But he thought, under the circumstances, that it was tactful to refuse.’
Helen leapt back. ‘Oliver. If you dare, if you have dared, to say anything to Darcy …’
‘Oh, I haven’t. Don’t look so frightened. None of my business, is it? But your demure exterior does deceive. I don’t think Darcy recognises that at all.’ Helen shivered. Oliver wasn’t safe. There was a wildness about him tonight that scared her, even through her confusion.
‘Our last Oxford night,’ he reminded her. ‘Time to stop playing, and dressing up.’ One finger flicked his coat. ‘We’d better make it one to remember.’
Oliver was wearing the uniform of his privileged dining club. There was a green braided velvet coat with satin facings over a white waistcoat and starched stock, tight black trousers and buckled shoes.
‘How exotic you look,’ she said, with an attempt at lightness.
‘Not like a pantomime footman?’
No, not like that. With his fading gold hair and the tight-drawn Plantagenet lines of his face he might have been a ghost, a sad apparition allowed to materialise for a single night … Helen shook herself. She was being fanciful, but there was nothing pantomime about Oliver tonight.
Darcy was marshalling everyone ready to leave. They swept out of Follies House to the line of waiting cars. For his celebration dinner Darcy had booked the whole room of a chic North Oxford restaurant. It was a feat of organisation, Helen realised, in Commem Week when the whole world was dining out.
She had wondered how she would ever get through it, but the meal passed in a merciful blur. She could eat hardly a mouthful of the food that came and went in front of her. She was too painfully conscious of Darcy down the long line of faces at the other end of the table, raising his glass to her in an unspoken toast. She knew what it must have cost him to break out of his shell of reticence to do this for her.
And later she must tell him. Watch his face change …
The waiter came and lifted away another plateful of bare
ly tasted food. She was just able to focus on the talk around her, smiling in response to her friends’ brightness.
Pansy was alight with vivacity next to her ginger-haired escort. Helen had never seen her look more beautiful. Her dress was a tight-bodiced billow of hand-painted rose silk, worn with a necklace of rose crystal that shot points of light. She looked like a Fragonard portrait.
‘That’s the Scot Scotney,’ Chloe murmured to Helen, and Helen vaguely recalled that he was something to do with films.
Out of the blur again Pansy was telling her, ‘He’s the director of Eyes of Flame. He saw me as Rosalind, by some immense fluke, and I went to London to do a test for him. His next movie’s Moll Flanders and he wants me for Moll. It’s Hollywood, Helen.’
For a happy moment everything was forgotten as she jumped with delight for Pansy. Scot Scotney, of course. Cinema’s Glaswegian enfant terrible. He looked more like a street tough to Helen. She had never seen a man so apparently unimpressed by Pansy’s beauty.
‘Look at hairr,’ he was saying. ‘Wearring half the budget of ma last picture on hairr barck.’
Pansy was clearly enchanted with him. ‘He got that scar on his cheek in a knife fight when he was twelve,’ she whispered. Pansy had already left Oxford behind her. Helen thought briefly of Stephen, and guessed that Pansy must have discarded him by now.
Discarded. She was doing the very same thing herself, and Darcy had never deserved it. Miserable recollection flooded back and swamped her pleasure in Pansy’s good news.
The meal was almost over. There was no chance to talk to Darcy. She would have to go on to the Ball with him, and all these other people. Tom would be there. Giddily her mood swung from sadness to intense expectation.
If only she could get through this horrible, garish, bewildering night. After this, she could face anything.
