by Angela Huth
He dared not look at his watch, knowing that he was already late. Besides, he was rather enjoying the close-up scanning of his worn and grubby carpet. He pondered on its life: who was the weaver of these hardy tufts? And when and where? He was beginning to enjoy the procrastination, provided by such ruminations, as he continued in his curious act of peanut hunting. Then the telephone rang.
‘William? Could you manage Prague, Thursday week?’ His agent.
Prague? What was the man thinking of? William heaved himself to his feet. He felt it was disrespectful to speak to Stephen, a man who had organised his working life efficiently for so many years, from a position on the floor. Peanuts fell from him.
‘The Addenbrooks, booked for months, have had to cancel. John’s got a suspected tumour. But I don’t want to let Prague down. You’d be doing me a hell of a favour.’
William’s mind was working slowly through all sorts of possibilities which might, in the end, make a trip to Prague impossible. On the other hand it would be foolish to put total faith into the power of peanuts, the Elmtree hadn’t had a foreign engagement for six months, and there was only one–Paris - pencilled in for the New Year. Pity the lilacs wouldn’t be out, he would have liked to have shown Bonnie Prague’s lilacs -
‘Well?’
‘You know I’m not keen on foreign dates, especially this time of year. I’d have to ask the others.’
‘I’d need to know by lunchtime.’
‘I’m just off for a rehearsal. You will.’
‘Thanks, William. Knew I could rely on you.’
Before returning to his knees to hunt the last of the peanuts, William put on a tape of Chopin nocturnes. Music of his youth, Chopin: he scarcely listened to such lacy piano music now, but he remembered its soothing powers. As a student William had secretly relied on Chopin as others relied on Andrews liver salts–balm to a hangover, reliever of inner turbulence caused by late essays. Now, the intensely familiar notes gave a rhythm to his plucking of the nuts, and soon they were all returned to the bags.
The second attempt at bashing was more successful. William was convinced that his secret curry ingredient was now being crushed to a powder so fine that it would be indetectable. In his triumph he swung the hammer down for a final blow that was more wild than he intended, and from somewhere a paper box of drawing-pins was spilt too. Small gold daggers raced for his knees, and bit into his fingers as he swept his hands about trying to gather them in one fell swoop. There was a knock at the door. William quickly stuffed the bags of peanuts into his pockets, but the door opened before he was able to stand.
‘Whatever are you doing?’ asked Grace, sympathetic.
‘Stephen wants us to do a date in Prague next week. Can you imagine?’ William was rising to his feet, banging at his trouser legs where drawing pins still clustered like determined burrs. Grace’s glance at her husband’s legs conveyed nothing of her curiosity.
‘I just came to remind you the rehearsal’s at eleven and at this rate you’re going to be dreadfully late.’
‘I know, I know. Everything’s conspiring against me this morning. I’m never going to have time to stop and get … am I?’
‘No, but I will. I’ve got to go shopping anyway.’
I am in blood stepped in so far, should I wade no more, returning would be tedious as go o’er, thought William.
‘Whatever would I do without you, my Ace?’ he said.
It was not just the morning, but the whole day that conspired against him. He was almost an hour late for the rehearsal, which gave Rufus–the first time for years he had not been the last to arrive–the opportunity for a smug little smile and some sarcastic sympathy. Grant was in one of his silent, grumpy moods, indicated by much banging of the fridge door. Even Bonnie’s smile was less exuberant than usual, when she looked up from warming her hands beside the Norwegian stove. William noticed she was pale. Her lips, usually so rosy, were the colour of skimmed milk. He hoped she was not sickening for something. He would not be up to any more anxieties.
‘Sorry, everyone. Not really my fault. Long negotiations with Stephen about Prague. They want us to go next week.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Rufus, who shared William’s distaste for foreign trips.
‘I’ll have to put off my medical check yet again,’ said Grant, whose regular visits to his private doctor gave him assurance that needed constantly to be renewed. ‘Otherwise I’ve no objection.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Bonnie, with a more eager smile. ‘Prague! Imagine. I’ve never been.’
‘Prague it is, then. Let’s get down to it.’
They were to run through Death and the Maiden for a concert the day after tomorrow in a country palace, where concerts in aid of various charities were held. It was not the sort of engagement any of them enjoyed, despite the above-average standard of the refreshments. The audience, who paid vast sums for their tickets, were smarter than they were knowledgeable, and The Maiden was the Schubert they always wanted to hear, perhaps one of the few pieces with which they were familiar. Still, it had been agreed long ago that the Elmtree would be willing to do a certain amount of concerts for charity a year, and Grace always enjoyed the annual outing to the illustrious palace. All the same, William was not in the mood for The Maiden this morning, and was ashamed that while Bonnie put her soul into it–she had not played it with them before–he switched into a mode that came from years of familiarity, rather than a burst of fresh energy.
The day dragged edgily. William broke the rehearsal half an hour early, but no one complained. Bonnie offered to make sweet peppermint tea, which she had brought with her, but William declined her invitation. He had too much on his mind to make small talk over tea. Rufus, he observed, dithered in his usual way, torn between not wanting to offend Bonnie and wanting to get home to his wife. Grant conveyed a ridiculous enthusiasm for sweet peppermint, quite out of proportion to the invitation. It was one of Grant’s weaknesses: he could rarely light on the perfect spot between reticence and over-enthusiasm. William, anxious not to witness Grant’s pathetic eagerness over the boiling kettle for Bonnie, hurried out. He did not want to add to his troubles by thoughts of where peppermint tea could lead his cello and viola.
William was little acquainted with the unease that is caused by the planning of nefarious acts. Until this illness, as he called it, of Bonnie, he had always considered himself a reasonably straight and honest man, averse to devious ways, a keen adherer to the truth. But now, with the peanuts in his pocket, gunpowder ready to explode his life as well as Grace’s, he was aware of the turbulent consequences of evil in one who is not by nature a wicked man.
When he jerked into the drive, pulled up the handbrake with an unkind ferocity, the Virginia creeper blazed angrily at him through the windscreen. He made his indeterminate way through to the kitchen as if unfamiliar with the hallway, the passage. He was afflicted by all the horror of the familiar becoming unrecognisable due to the blackness in his heart. He shook.
Grace was not in the kitchen. This alone was unnerving. She was always there when he arrived home, stirring things. But perhaps she had taken him at his word, and was indulging herself in a night off. With typical thought she had opened a book on the table at a page of easy, medium-hot curry. Beside it she had put the necessary ingredients. She was an angel, Grace. It was so strange that she must die.
To ensure her absence, William decided to go upstairs and find her. He could not risk her barging in just as he was sprinkling powdered peanuts into the mixture. He followed the powerful smell of jasmine bath oil, and the thin sound that the portable radio made of the New World Symphony. Grace was lying back in the bath. This was all very, very peculiar. William was aware that she would notice the intense shaking of his hands, so stuffed them into his pockets where the bags of peanuts gave him courage.
‘My goodness,’ he said. He remembered an advertisement, widely employed some years ago for bubble bath: picture a girl in a bath towel looking out of the window.
Copy saying something daft about wonderful things happen after a bath … Grace smiled at him.
‘I’ve left everything ready for you,’ she said. ‘No need to look in such a panic. I can help if you want.’
William snatched one hand away from the comfort of the peanut bag in his pocket, and held it up in the manner of an agitated conductor urging the wind instruments to switch immediately into pianissimo.
‘Good heavens, no,’ he said. ‘I can manage.’ He saw that on the shelf at the side of the bath, in a clutter of potions and fancy bottles, was a glass of white wine. There’s madness in the air tonight, he thought. Never in our married life has Grace ever taken a drink up to her bath.
She smiled. ‘I’m giving myself a treat,’ she said. The fingers of one hand twirled through a clutch of bubbles as if she were sifting through precious pearls, indolent, rich. So unlike Grace as to be astounding.
‘I’m delighted,’ William heard himself say. ‘Sort of thing you should do more often, my Ace.’
Both hands back in his pockets, now, clutching the peanuts, William knew he should go and begin his dreadful task, but he wanted to stay a moment longer. It occurred to him he had not seen Grace in the bath for more years than he could remember. In their early married life, William would sit on a small cork stool, in their chilly little bathroom in Finchley, while Grace lay back gently swooshing the water about–she had never been inclined to soap herself thoroughly. William would watch, fascinated, as the movement of the water contorted the lines of her body, stretching then compressing them, shifting the pale and dark parts of her skin fast and curiously as a kaleidoscope. They would talk. Sometimes Grace would shut her eyes against the steam. Her eyelashes, clotted into pointed spikes, would lie on her cheeks. And long strands of her hair, carelessly tied up, escaped to float on the water’s surface, casting snake shadows on the milky body in the water beneath. -Looking at Grace on the evening he planned to murder her, all this came back to William. He continued to gaze, shyly, in awe.
Tonight, he observed (meanly, he knew) the picture had changed a little. Bubble bath was no longer an extravagance. Expensive froth, its smell of jasmine strong enough to reach downstairs, cluttered the water. Grace’s body was almost entirely hidden. Half a foot emerged, a knee, part of one breast with its pale centre. Between the bundles of bubbles tiny fjords appeared, their water blue and pink. For a moment William was almost overcome with a desire to plunge his hands in the water, clutch at the sweet familiar breast, and beg Grace to hurry out of the bath, wrap herself in the warm towel and lie on the floor. As they used to, before Jack was born and domesticity cast its less carefree patterns. But then he let his eyes climb up to the neck emerging from the ruffle of bubbles, to the face … and the bathcap. That was the change that shocked: Grace’s hair screwed up into a pink nylon cap, the scalp straining to join it, the eyes slightly popping from the strain of elastic on forehead, the thickness of eyelash quite gone. Oh my God, he thought: how many years ago did Grace switch from a beautiful young Ophelia in the bath to this middle-aged woman with concern for her hair? How did I miss the moment of metamorphosis? ‘Hadn’t you better get going?’ asked Grace.
In the kitchen William set about making the curry with grim concentration. He had no wish to remember the Grace he had just seen: he wanted to replace the image with their old bathing days. He had always been a profound admirer of Bonnard, could quite understand the artist’s preoccupation with Wife in the Bath. He had painted Mathilde for forty years in various stages of nakedness, in and out of the water and, like the youth on Keats’ Grecian urn, she never aged. Artistic licence. But had Bonnard ignored the intimations of the passing years, the reality? Or had he not seen them? William wondered. He twisted the empty peanut packets and stuffed them into an empty soup can which he then hid under rubbish in the bin … Covering his tracks, the detectives would call it. If he himself had been a painter, and used Grace as his most constant model, would he have concealed the truth, out of love, nostalgia? Or would he have depicted her as she had become? Interesting question … William tasted the curry. Rather good. Rice fluffed up. Candle lit. Open bottle of wine on the table. Everything ready. Christ…
Grace arrived with damp fronds of hair, despite the bathcap, and unusually pink, shining cheeks. She had not done anything so alarming as to dress up: she had simply put on the clean clothes she was planning to wear the next day. Appreciation for this extraordinary evening flared from her like gold dust. For his part, William was grateful to her for not having chosen to put on some unfamiliar evening garment and thereby add a further air of the unusual to the evening. He would not want to see her carried away on a stretcher wearing a smart, unfamiliar dress, pearl earrings on unconscious ears.
They sat at the table, the curry and dish of rice between them. Grace was smiling, admiring. William knew that the normal easy silence of their suppers must be broken with more conversation than usual tonight: to conceal his minute observation of Grace’s condition, he must keep talking. Grace helped William to a large amount of the gleaming curry, then, in her gratitude, gave herself an equal amount. That was good.
‘I’m not much looking forward to Prague,’ he said.
‘But you’ve always liked Prague.’
‘Only at lilac time. We’ll be too early for the lilacs.’
William had not had time in his difficult day to go to the library and look up the symptoms of peanut allergy. What would happen? And when? Would Grace keel over, slump into an unconscious state, gurgle in incomprehensible agony? William did not know what to expect. The grip of fearful anticipation in his stomach made swallowing the delicious curry very hard. He toyed with the rice.
‘I don’t suppose young Bonnie has been to Prague before.’
‘No.’
‘You’ll have to take time to show her around. Take her for a walk over the Charles Bridge.’
‘Very overrated place. Not a patch on some of the London bridges, Paris, Rome …’
‘Oh, William: your expectations are always too high. You’re cursed with a sense of disappointment. It makes you such a bad traveller.’
‘True.’
Grace, always a fast eater, had got through a third of her curry by now and seemed absolutely fine.
‘This is incredibly good,’ she said. ‘Why’ve you waited all these years? You’ll have to do more.’
‘Unlikely. I don’t enjoy it, you know that.’
William could see that a fine line of sweat, delicate as a snail’s trail, had appeared on Grace’s upper lip. He swallowed. It was beginning to work.
‘You must take Bonnie to the cathedral,’ went on Grace, ‘and the Jewish Cemetery, obviously.’
‘We’re not going to Prague for a holiday, we’ll be rehearsing most of the day’ William wished Grace would stop mentioning Bonnie. Grace laughed.
‘Your forehead,’ she said. ‘Covered in sweat! Well, it is pretty hot.’
William dabbed at his forehead with a napkin. Could be that was the reason for Grace’s sweating lip.
‘Do you mind,’ he asked, ‘it being so hot?’
‘The hotter the better.’
‘It doesn’t make you feel …? I don’t know. Some people can’t take something powerful as this.’
‘Well I can.’
William took a long drink of water.
‘I’m not sure I can.’ He felt short of breath. His arms, curiously, scorched.
‘William: are you all right? You’re a funny colour.’
‘Think I’ve had enough. What about you?’
‘I’m fine. I’m going to have some more.’
‘You’re a funny colour, too.’
Grace laughed. Then, suddenly, the laugh turned into a choke. A purple flush streaked over her face and neck. She spluttered and gurgled–a deep, terminal gurgle, William judged it, that came from the chest. He had never seen anyone dying before, but surely this was the death rattle. He leapt up, triumphant and terrified. Banged her on the back. Even as h
is hand lashed the familiar padding of her shoulder blades, he wondered if he could still find his old black tie, bought for the occasion of his father’s funeral. -The choking turned to a scream.
‘William! Stop it. You’re hurting! I’m not choking.’
‘You are.’ Hope dipped.
‘Not much.–There. ‘I’m fine.’
She was fine, now. No doubt of that. William returned to his seat. He was the one being punished by his own hand.
‘But you’re not feeling … dizzy?’ The words came hesitantly from William’s own spinning head.
‘No–why should I be?’ She was into her second helping now, wolfing it down with great pleasure.
‘You look as if you might be.’
Grace looked puzzled.
‘You’re the one who seems most affected.’
‘I’m fine. Afraid I didn’t run to a pudding.’
‘There are pears left over from last night.’
Over the rest of last night’s stewed pears they both cooled down. William kept his silence for a while, but in his state of disappointed relief he was finally compelled to brush over the subject with the lightest of touches.
‘I believe the recipe actually called for peanuts,’ he said.
