‘Don’t you?’
‘Well, yes—but it’s his work, after all. One just accepts it.’
‘I’d rather he stayed here.’
‘Perhaps he will, for a while.’
‘I hope so.’
‘We can manage without him, can’t we?’
Silence.
‘Can’t we?’
‘I suppose so. Not for good though.’
‘Oh of course not for good. But we needn’t worry about for good. It’s only ever for a little while.’
Silence again.
‘What’s bothering my girl?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Positive? Truly?’
‘Yes, truly.’
‘Tell me if you change your mind, won’t you?’
‘Yes. But I won’t.’
‘Time you went to sleep, darling.’
‘Goodnight Mummy.’
‘Goodnight my angel. God bless.’
Flora went downstairs and got out her needlework, and went on stitching the sea. She had covered several leagues by the time she glanced at the clock and saw that it was already eleven o’clock. It must be a rather long film, she thought. She sat and stitched, waiting to hear the sound of Simon’s car approaching the house, coming to a stop outside: in vain; the long minutes accumulated. At last she put aside her work and went upstairs to bed: but as she crossed the hallway, something made her quietly open the front door and stare out into the empty street. She stood on the threshold, uncertain, listening, perhaps, for a distant sound of Simon’s approach. Then she shook herself. How very silly, she thought. She retreated into the house and closed the door and ascended the stairs; she looked in on the sleeping children and then went to bed herself. How was it possible—for it was of all things unreasonable—to feel so apprehensive, so desolate? God, she thought, oh God. God, she said, oh God. There was no one else to ask.
39
‘What do you think of it?’
‘It’s good.’ Flora was reading David’s just-completed script. She kept her place and looked up. ‘Are you quite definitely going to do it?’ she said.
‘It looks like it. I’m seeing Emily tomorrow.’
Emily was Simon’s agent.
‘So far as I’ve got,’ said Flora, ‘it seems all to take place in London and the home counties.’
‘Yes,’ said Simon. ‘That’s it, more or less. The rest can be mocked up.’
‘No long trips away then,’ said Flora.
‘No, none.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I’m glad you think so.’
‘Of course I do.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I’m glad you think so.’
‘Of course I do.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Is there any gin?’
Simon went to make the drinks and Flora went on reading. When he returned she said, ‘There’s a little boy in here for a minute or two.’
‘Yes; I thought we might use Thomas.’
‘I don’t want him to miss any school.’
‘Well, we’ll see. Here, drink this.’ He handed her a glass and sat down. ‘How are you, Flora?’ he said. ‘Is everything okay?’
Flora was sitting on the sofa with her feet up; Simon was perched on the remaining twelve inches’ width. Flora moved her feet to give him more room and swallowed some of her drink. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Everything’s fine.’
‘How’s business, for example?’
‘Oh, fine. We’re getting a mench in World of Interiors next month.’
‘Oh, jolly good.’
‘It could be our big break.’
‘Well done.’ Simon thought about how valiantly Flora worked, and how brave she was. He was filled with a sort of anguished pity for her. He put his drink down, and took hold of one of her ankles.
‘Flora,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘I—I wish you were—I do wish I could make you happy.’
‘That’s as much as I could possibly ask.’
‘Let me know if there’s anything, anything at all, I can do, won’t you?’
‘All right. Can you stick around on Sunday? Lydia’s coming to luncheon.’
‘Oh cripes.
’ ‘You did ask.’
‘Snookered. Fucking snookered.’
‘C’est la vie.’
‘Too sodding right.’
‘She won’t stay long. She’s just picking up some curtain material I put aside for her.’
‘I might have to go out in the afternoon.’
‘Fancy that.’
‘If I do take this thing on we’re going to have to go like the clappers.’
‘Naturally.’
‘Seriously,’ said Simon.
Flora saw that he was serious; very serious. ‘You really actually want to do this one, don’t you?’ she said, surprised.
‘Yes, I really do, actually. I think I can make something of it. I think it’s my chance to do something really good.’
‘Something you believe in?’
‘Yes.’
There was a brief silence. Then, ‘So to speak,’ said Simon.
‘Oh, to be sure. So to speak.’
‘After all—’
‘Quite.’ Flora took Simon’s hand. ‘I love you,’ she said, in a tiny voice.
He leaned over and kissed her neck. ‘Darling Flora,’ he murmured.
Nell came into the room. ‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘Nothing.’
‘Can we have dinner now?’
‘Any minute,’ said Flora. ‘Any minute now. You can set the table if you like. And then call the others.’ Nell went away. Flora still had Simon’s hand. ‘Please don’t go out anywhere tonight,’ she said.
‘No of course not.’
‘How was that film?’
Simon had seen it several months before at a special screening. ‘It was all right,’ he said. ‘But not what I’d call compulsory viewing.’
‘That’s good,’ said Flora. ‘I’d hate to have missed anything compulsory.’
If only she hadn’t mentioned the film. But he’d given his word, now. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You haven’t missed anything you shouldn’t.’ After dinner he picked up the script and looked through it for a while and then he began to tell Flora what he’d been thinking about the look of the thing; the way it ought to be done; the meaning. ‘It’s noir,’ he said. They talked about that, and he managed, almost, to forget about Gillian Selkirk and the invisible line—like an electronic signal—which connected them, day and night.
40
Once Tom—no surnames, no pack drill—and Terry—a fortiori— were well away, the thing simply took off. Blood on the floor wasn’t in it. Some wag passed a whistle up to Mark—same caveat—who was doing his usual valiant chairing job; the dear man came in due course as close as dammit to actually using it. Other participants— David, for example—gave the topic their two pennies’ worth, but in the end you had to call it the Tom and Terry show: nothing so violent had been seen on our screens (so to speak) since Tom and Jerry.
As literary festivals went, Scunthorpe had an edge, all right. A lacerating, lethal-in-certain-cases edge. Nicola Gatling, assistant to the Director, spent the afternoon succeeding the debate ministering to the walking wounded, while the Director himself saw to those requiring intensive care: as Claire Maclise observed in her summing-up as presenter of Lizzie Ainsworth’s Channel 4 prog, it all showed how very much people really care about literature: and that had to be good, hadn’t it?
‘Sorry I missed it,’ said Simon to David after the latter’s return.
‘Rather glad I did,’ said Flora.
‘Catch it on the box,’ said David. ‘Tape it.’
‘Drink up,’ said Simon, pouring more wine into Sarah’s glass; ‘this is tax deductible.’ He was buying them all dinner in a fashionable restaurant, to celebrate the signing of
the contracts. ‘It’s a works outing.’ He poured more wine for Flora. She looked lovely tonight, the way she sometimes still did, in a shot-taffeta suit with a fitted jacket and very full skirt. Perhaps he should simply take her out more. Yes, that was the idea. Take her out. They could go to the ballet, for instance; etcetera. ‘Our Thomas is learning to dance,’ he told David and Sarah. ‘What do you think of that?’
‘It was his own idea,’ Flora told them.
‘Oh, in that case,’ said David.
‘I think it’s lovely,’ said Sarah. ‘I love men who can dance.’
David and Simon talked about the great project before them, which was going to put them indelibly on the map. You had to be indelibly there by a certain stage of your career or else that career was basically finito. Phew, they’d just managed it. Simon wasn’t stupid. He knew there was plenty of room ahead for screwing up. This festival of self-congratulation was the opener for months of hard graft. Ah, that narrow path; that black abyss: going home in the taxi with Flora he felt it all around him. By the time they ascended the steps to the front door he was stone-cold sober. They sent the babysitter home in the taxi and went up to bed, and he made love very silently and at length to his beloved, his brave, his lovely, his pitiable wife.
41
‘Is this really all you want?’
‘How could it not be? What else is there?’
‘Love, cohabitation, marriage, children, companionship, shared experiences, holidays.’
‘Washing up.’
‘All that.’
‘What if I were to say yes—to all that?’
‘Do you?’
‘I asked first. What if I were?’
‘I suppose we’d be in trouble, wouldn’t we?’
‘Exactly. I’m surprised at your not leaving well alone.’
‘But do you?’
‘I’m not in the habit of wanting things I can’t have.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought there’s anything very much you couldn’t have, if you decided you wanted it.’
‘You don’t actually like me much, do you?’
‘What an extraordinary thing to say.’
‘All right, let’s suppose I do want more: let’s suppose I do want love, cohabitation, washing up and the rest of it. What are you going to do?’
‘It’s a nice question. But since you don’t—’ ‘We’re supposing I do.’
‘Should we?’
‘It was you who started this line of enquiry, not I.’
‘True.’
‘I wonder why you did.’
‘Just wondering.’
‘You wanted to make quite sure.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Out of concern for me, of course.’
Simon looked at her. Had he any concern for her? Who was she, anyway? ‘Partly that,’ he said.
‘But for the rest—’ she said.
‘I’m concerned chiefly for myself,’ he said. ‘And mine.’ She said nothing; she was thinking. ‘That is as it must be,’ he said. ‘That is as you’ve always known it must be. I don’t want—I can’t have— complications.’
‘Complications,’ she echoed.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Love.’
‘Etcetera.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to stop seeing me,’ she said.
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I’m absolutely serious.’
‘Don’t even think it. Don’t even breathe it. You are completely essential to me.’
‘Such as I am?’
‘Fuck you, Gillian. Don’t play games with me. Autonomy, remember? This is what we are. This is what we do. It’s enough. More than enough. A whole world; and ours alone. Okay?’
He looked at her. She stared back at him. ‘Go on then,’ she said. ‘Do it.’
42
‘Why are you getting up so early? It’s Sunday. Oh God, you’re going to church again, aren’t you?’
‘As a matter of fact I’m not. And actually it isn’t all that early.’
‘It is. Why are you getting up? Stay here.’
‘I’ve got to make a pudding.’
‘What kind? Why?’
‘Bread-and-butter. Lydia’s coming to lunch, remember?’
‘Oh God.
’ ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘You know, I think I will. Wake me when she’s gone.’
‘I’ll wake you at eleven; you’ll just have time to make yourself presentable.’ Flora went into the bathroom and closed the door on her irritable husband. This was the sort of thing from which one sometimes yearned for a break—not just a few snatched hours, but a proper respite of billowing weeks. She let the shower rain down her back for a good ten minutes, and sprayed on masses of scent afterwards. She looked at her face in the mirror. I’m dying, she thought. She stared at her face, at the face of someone who had begun to die. It was not death itself she feared: not even judgment— supposing there should actually be a judgment—itself. She feared lack of preparation; shoddy preparation; incorrect preparation. She had to get it right—never mind, for the moment, why or to what end. She had to be right. Elle se devait d’avoir raison. She knew that the alternative was a living death worse than the dying one. That was why she did not fear death itself.
She got dressed in an old frock and a cardigan and went downstairs to make the pudding: the children came in and assured her with loud cries that they detested bread-and-butter pudding, and would not, could not, eat it: why couldn’t they have castle puddings instead? ‘Why, indeed?’ said Flora. ‘It’s one of the great mysteries. If you can tell me the answer I’ll give you sixpence.’
‘Sixpence!’ they cried. ‘Sixpence! What’s sixpence?’
‘It’s what I used to get from the tooth fairy,’ said Flora, ‘when I was a little girl.’ And she told them stories of her little-girlhood. They liked to hear these: they were tickled to death at the idea that she had once been a little girl. Not Janey, though. Janey was in the sitting room looking through the papers. Well, chiefly the colour supplements. But still. Janey was growing up. Childhood was streaming away from her in long glittering shreds; there was barely a glint of it left for the naked eye to see. ‘Janey,’ she called, ‘come in here and help me a moment, could you?’ And Janey came in, and read out to her a piece about the Scunthorpe Literary Festival, featuring such household names as David Packard and Claire Maclise. There was even a photograph.
‘Yikes,’ said Janey. ‘I didn’t know Claire was famous, or David.’
‘You just have to be looking in the right place,’ said Flora. Fame was another thing to be dreaded, another thing which could crush you to death; but she did not tell the children this, because it seemed too terrible a thing for them to know.
43
‘I might go for a bit of a drive-around,’ said Simon, ‘and suss out a few ideas for locations.’
‘Oh good,’ said Flora; ‘you could drop Lydia off on the way—do you mind?’
‘No problem.’
‘Perhaps the children would like to go along.’
‘Not this time. Truly. I can’t get anything sorted with them nagging at me for ice-creams and lavatories and God knows what-all.’
‘Can I have an ice-cream?’ said Thomas.
‘See what I mean?’ said Simon.
‘If only you hadn’t mentioned the word,’ said Flora.
‘Please,’ said Thomas. Oh dear.
Lydia sat smoking a cigarette and observing this scene of everyday family life: it was at once exotic and banal. ‘Let me have one of your cigarettes,’ Flora said to her.
‘Really, Flora,’ Simon protested. ‘Now I’ve seen the lot.’ The sooner he got this depraved spinster out of the house, the better. Curtain material, forsooth. He looked at his watch. ‘We ought to go fairly soon,’ he said. ‘Or the light will go before I get a chance to see anything.’
‘Ready when you are,’ said Lydia equably. Flora put the cigarette out, not half smoked. ‘It�
��s not really your style, my love,’ said Lydia kindly.
‘No,’ said Flora. ‘I seem to be incorrigibly clean-living. Awful, isn’t it?’
‘It’s just your karma,’ said Lydia. ‘Not your fault.’
‘If your karma isn’t your fault,’ said Simon, ‘I don’t know what is. I thought that was the whole point.’
‘It depends who you think you actually are,’ said Lydia.
‘Ah,’ said Simon.
‘What’s your karma?’ said Thomas.
‘Oh, God,’ said Simon; ‘look what you’ve started.’
‘Sorry,’ said Lydia. ‘Sorry, sorry.’
‘What’s karma?’ said Nell. ‘Why are you sorry?’
‘Oh dear,’ said Lydia.
‘It’s time we were off, anyway,’ said Simon.
Lydia got up. ‘Lovely lunch,’ she told Flora. ‘Thanks so very much. And for the material—it’s brilliant. I’m so grateful.’
‘What’s karma?’ said Nell.
‘Come and help me load the dishwasher,’ said Flora, ‘and I’ll tell you.’ They all said goodbye to Lydia—Janey had already gone out for the afternoon with her friend Amaryllis—and she and Simon drove off, Flora and the children waving from the doorway. Then they went into the kitchen and Flora told them, very briefly, about karma. ‘This is what Hindus and Buddhists believe,’ she said. ‘But as you’re not Hindus or Buddhists you needn’t.’
‘What are we?’ said Nell.
‘Christians,’ said Flora. ‘More or less.’
‘She’s more,’ said Thomas, ‘and I’m less, because she’s bigger.’
‘That’s about it,’ said Flora. ‘More or less.’
44
‘Still in the same place?’ said Simon.
‘Yeah,’ said Lydia. ‘Still the same.’ She gave him directions again.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Simon; ‘I remember.’ The battered street, the arrested decay. When they turned into it, it was no more. Feeble saplings had become almost-substantial trees; there was fresh paint, there were window-boxes. ‘I say,’ said Simon. ‘What’s been going on here?’
‘Urban renewal,’ said Lydia drily. ‘And so on. Sales of freeholds. New brooms. Gentrification. Progress.’
A Pure Clear Light Page 9
