Easy Silence

by Angela Huth

  Grace, unsure whether to believe him, was unnerved by the story. She poured him tea.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I had a rough night. You’re a good woman.’ He put down the knife. Grace knew she must say her piece before her resolve faded. She sat not directly opposite Lucien, but a little to one side. The sour smell of his clothes, his unwashed skin, had begun to override the smells of cooked apple, lemon and various herbs.

  ‘This has got to stop, I’m afraid,’ said Grace. She knew she sounded like a schoolmistress, and spoke with a note of unintended apology.

  ‘What has?’ Lucien’s sluggish eyes faintly widened in an attempt at humour.

  ‘All this coming here. You come more and more often, uninvited. I can’t cope any more.’

  ‘I thought I was welcome. You’ve always made me feel welcome.’

  ‘It’s become … too much. You don’t know the dread I live in, thinking you’ll run into William.’

  ‘Ah, it’s the husband who doesn’t approve. I get it, man. I get it.’ Fist bang on the table. Tea slopped on to the cloth. ‘I could come later, be sure he was out of the way.’

  Grace shook her head.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. I work in the mornings.’

  ‘Not always, you don’t.’ Lucien laughed. ‘That’s one of your problems. In fact I’d say some people might quite rightly call you something approaching lazy’

  ‘I’m not interested in your opinion of my working schedule, Lucien: you know nothing about it. I’m just telling you I want these breakfasts … these meetings, to come to an end.’

  Lucien sighed.

  ‘Pity, that,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve enjoyed our conversations. Looked forward to them.’ He picked up the knife again. ‘But if that’s what you want,’ he said.

  Silence.

  ‘It is. I’m sorry.’ Her victory almost won, to apologise was the least Grace could do.

  ‘I suppose you feel you can’t trust me around any more. I’d be nicking the silver three times a week.’ He gave the merest sneer of a smile.

  ‘I don’t suppose you would.’ Grace tried for lightness. ‘It’s not that. It’s just the whole … thing of your visits. I can’t cope with the tension of them any more. I can’t put it any clearer than that, though I realise I’m not being very specific.’

  Lucien now held the kitchen knife in two hands. Eyes on its blade, he slowly pushed the tip of his tongue (an unhealthy bluish dun colour) out between his rigid lips. He put the point of the blade against it, pressing hard enough to make an indentation.

  ‘Sharp, isn’t it?’ he said, suddenly bored. ‘Anyhow, I get the picture. I get the picture. So if that’s how you feel, Grace, who’m I to go against you?’

  He suddenly got up, moved to the sink and emptied the mug with great force.

  ‘Sorry about the waste.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Lucien. You’re being over … I didn’t mean I didn’t want to see you ever again.’ Grace stood too, awkward, disturbed by the look on his face. She slipped the knife into the table drawer. This made Lucien smile.

  ‘That’s the message that came through. I’m not stupid when it comes to messages. Anyways, no half-measures, that’s me. If I’m fond of a person I don’t believe in half-measures.’ He gave a little toss of his head in the direction of the uncooked apple pie. ‘Best let you get back to your cooking.’

  Several things clamoured in Grace’s head, but she said none of them. She watched Lucien slope to the back door, more hunch-shouldered than usual, and slam it behind him.

  When the reverberations of him had died away, she retrieved the knife and went back to trimming the pastry. Her sense of relief was clouded by a measure of foreboding, and somewhere in the depths of her there was a shadow of sadness, of loss.

  On the flight home William found himself sitting beside Bonnie. This was not a matter of chance. Lugging her copious hand luggage up the crowded aisle she had turned and announced to her fellow players she wanted to sit next to William–a request she had never made before.

  ‘She’s in a mood,’ William heard Grant mutter, and unease seeped through his tired body. In the old days there had sometimes been tensions or disagreements between the players, but they had been spared of moods (women’s moods) of the sort Bonnie had inflicted on this trip to Prague.

  Bonnie, having efficiently settled her viola into the overhead rack beside William’s violin, bundled herself into the free seat next to the window and patted the vacant seat beside her. She sat in a vortex of twisted things: overflowing carrier bags, scarves, magazines, jackets … William had no idea how to begin to help her make some order of the muddle. Having sat down and placed his one, small, neat, regulation-sized briefcase under his own seat, he stood up again vaguely aware he should make some offer to help her. There was a look of impatience on Bonnie’s face, not the gratitude he was hoping for.

  ‘Sit down, William, till I’ve sorted myself out.’

  He obeyed, confused. Bonnie shifted herself from side to side, crossly punching at bags and pulling at garments. As she twisted herself about her breasts were slung from side to side beneath the pale angora of her jersey. William shut his eyes. He thought of the ugly woman in the church: of tinned artichokes, marigolds, The Gold and Silver Waltz - things that made him shudder. It didn’t work.

  Bonnie was nudging him. He opened his eyes.

  ‘Can you put these up?’ She thrust a pile of bags and garments into his arms. They seemed to have a life of their own, squirming about. He stood, moved cautiously into the aisle to assess the next move. How was he to open the door of the rack, arms loaded?

  ‘Having trouble?’ Grant, on the inner seat across the aisle, looked up from the Guardian with a satisfied smile.

  ‘Open it for me, would you?’

  ‘I’d consider it.’ Grant folded his newspaper very slowly. Rufus put down his book (a new biography of Brahms–to be seen reading the latest musical biography was his only form of showing off) and grinned. Whether it was at Grant’s enjoyment of William’s plight, or encouragement for William himself, it was hard to tell.

  In his own unhurried time Grant rose and opened the overhead rack. Then he sat down again, quickly returned to his paper. William, who was not a tall man, rose on tip-toe and heaved the mass of Bonnie’s stuff vaguely in the direction of the empty shelf. His aim was clumsy: he missed his goal by a long way. The bags disgorged their clutter–jackets and scarves poured down over his head and fell to the floor. Grant and Rufus, concentrating on their reading once more, did not seem to notice William’s distress. Bonnie, back to him, was staring out of the window. William, conscious of the unravelling of his dignity, began to pick up the things that had spilt on to the floor. After an age of inept dithering, an air hostess came to his rescue. In a trice everything was stuffed neatly into the rack–she was a fine, tall girl with dazzling lipstick that made her mouth look like a cut-out made of Cellophane paper -and William was able to return to his seat. He noticed that Grant’s eyes had slid from his paper to the air hostess’s athletic ankles, and the observation had a calming effect. Here was proof that Grant’s general eye for a good-looking woman had not dimmed. Had he been in love with Bonnie, in love in the way that he, William … then glancing at another woman would have been out of the question.

  ‘I hate taking off,’ said Bonnie, when the plane’s engines started. ‘I can never like flying.–You’ve not done up your seat-belt.’

  She leant across William, hands playing innocently over his stomach and loins as she searched for the two metal clasps, locked them together. Dear God … William gripped the arms of his seat, clenched his teeth.

  ‘You look as if you’re preparing yourself for take off in a rocket. Relax! And don’t worry, I’m not going to make a scene like yesterday among the bones.–Sorry about that.’

  William turned to her, smiled. He hoped she would read his silent message of complete forgiveness, understanding, devotion …

  ‘We’
re off the ground,’ she said, impressively cool for one who was nervous of flying. But as the plane rose more steeply she covered William’s hand with hers, and dug her nails fiercely into his splayed fingers. He would have been happy to die at that moment, he thought. But his bliss lasted for mere seconds. Bonnie snatched her hand away and twisted once more to look out of the window. What a fidget she was, thought William, although impervious to any such annoyance.

  ‘When I was a child I used to think what fun it would be to put a ladder up against the clouds, and climb up and bounce on them …’

  ‘Did you?’

  They both fell silent, then. William tried to quell the chaos in his head, and the pounding of blood through his veins, by breathing very slowly. Bonnie opened the in-flight magazine–that was the last thing he wanted, to lose her to a magazine. He saw he was in danger of missing his chance to carry on in the extraordinary vein they had left off in the hotel bar. How could he retrieve her attention? Perhaps he should use the opportunity to confront her with a matter, a personal matter, that had been worrying him for some time.

  ‘I want to talk to you about Haydn,’ he said at last.

  ‘Oh no: not Haydn. Not here, please. We had Haydn last night.’

  ‘And beautifully you played it, too. Whatever you may feel.’

  Bonnie sighed, turned another page of her magazine. She studied a whole-page advertisement for some kind of bath essence. Girl in a bath towel standing at a window. Distant man on a charger approaching.

  ‘You know we’re doing our usual G major for one of the Christmas concerts?’ asked William, after a long pause in which he weighed up the wisdom of the question.

  ‘I know that’s the plan, yuh.’

  ‘Op. 77 No. 1.’ William was giving himself time to think.

  ‘I know that, too.’

  ‘Well, I just think … I mean I know your … dislike of Haydn in general. But it would be hard to imagine anyone not being seduced by this particular quartet.’ Bonnie pursed her lips, causing a flash of dimple. Turned over a page. Beefeaters posed like china mugs beside the Tower of London. ‘I mean, it’s so merry’ said William.

  ‘Each according,’ said Bonnie, after a while. ‘Haydn’s particular brand of merriment does nothing for me.’

  William, mid-sigh, decided to take a risk. Perhaps he could persuade her to take a more tolerant view of the great composer by re-involving her with his secret category.

  ‘It’s an upstairs piece,’ he whispered.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘You remember, I told you …’ ‘Oh that. Yes.’

  ‘You should trust me.’ The despair he felt about his love (was it love?) for Bonnie was turning to the bleaker, but more familiar despair, that came to him when defending a piece of music he loved. Perhaps he should try a less subtle, more authoritative note. ‘Anyhow: whatever you feel, it’s in the programme. We’re going to have to get through it. My suggestion is that you listen to it as much as possible in the next few days, and you might find yourself coming round to it–’

  ‘I might. Can we stop talking about Haydn, now? I want to get on with my reading.’ Her attention was now on a photograph of a soppy-looking young man and woman on the brink of copulating over a tub of ice cream.

  William, puzzling at unknown dark corners of Bonnie’s mind, turned his eyes to the small window beyond her. The intense white of a hard-edged cloud filled his vision. He allowed himself to imagine Bonnie bouncing on this white mass, but the agreeableness of the thought did not disguise his feeling of failure concerning Haydn. He had handled that badly. The odd thing about Bonnie was that she made him feel clumsy in his negotiations–a feeling that, in all his experience of dealing with musicians, he had never known before. What a strange, entrancing, difficult, irresistible creature she was. In many ways it would have made for a much happier journey had she chosen to sit next to Grant or Rufus: but then of course he would have been denied these few hours when proximity to her gilded his soul, and did something a great deal rougher to his ageing body.

  ‘You’re thinner,’ said Grace, as William came through the door.

  ‘Ooh, am I, my Ace? Perhaps. That foreign food.’

  They kissed each other gently on the cheek.

  ‘Lovely you’re back.’

  ‘Lovely …’ William put down his small suitcase. Grace picked it up

  ‘I’ll just get your stuff into the machine. We can have supper in half an hour. I’ve done you an apple pie.’

  ‘I bet you have.’

  He followed her upstairs, noticing that the weight of his case made her bend quite far to one side. A pretty curve to her spine, he thought. If he’d been a painter, if he’d been Bonnard, he’d have liked to paint a woman carrying a suitcase.

  In his study, the thick familiar silence brought a kind of peace to his heart. He shoved a few piles of scores up the sofa, made room for himself, sat. Tonight, in order to avoid talking about Prague, he would introduce the idea of spending a few days with Dick after Christmas. Surely it would give Grace something agreeable to look forward to … winter walks together along the cliffs.

  Along the cliffs … With astonishing force William’s original Dorset plan came back to him. Even as it rose before him, bright as Macbeth’s dagger, he forced himself to remember his conversation with his rational half in Prague. But since his conclusion, things had happened to shift his firmness of purpose. Bonnie had wept on his shoulder. Bonnie had chosen to sit next to him on the plane. Bonnie’s fingers, doing up his seatbelt (he had made sure to undo it himself) had ravaged his good intentions–Bonnie, Bonnie, Bonnie–what was she doing now, alone in her little flat in Aylesbury, not two miles from Grant? Why was he not with her, smothering her dimples with all the pent-up kisses that it was agony to hoard? Why could they not just go off and -

  ‘Supper,’ he heard Grace calling from downstairs, and he moaned out loud before rising and forcing himself into his usual, straight-backed, regimental position, expression swept clear of guilt, and prepared to face his dear, dear Ace over her loving apple pie.

  For a few moments Grace stood contemplating the whirling soapy mass of her husband’s dirty shirts, pants and socks in the washing machine. The domestic sight brought her some relief. William was home. There was nothing to fear any longer. Should Lucien threaten her any further, she would get William to deal with him, see him off, take out an injunction if necessary. (Loyalty kept her from envisaging the scene between the milder man and the aggressive brute.) But she knew in her heart there would be no need for such a confrontation. Lucien’s exit had been very final. He would not be returning. The realisation had been sinking more profoundly into her since his departure. By now, along with the feeling of perverse loss, was the thought that without his visits her life would be … duller. Lucien’s peculiar, erratic behaviour had quickened the days … though of course when it came to the weighing up, to be dull and safe was better than to be in a state of constant trepidation.

  To deflect such reflections Grace firmly turned her mind to her husband and the quiet evening before them. She could see it all: staccato news from Prague, appreciation for her home cooking, apologies for no news from home … then the sinking into their usual happy silence, both relieved to have to make no further effort. She turned her back on the washing and arranged a smile with which to greet William as he came eagerly downstairs.

  By halfway through the roast chicken they had finished with carefully edited news from Prague, and the equally perfunctory news of Grace’s progress on her book at home. Then, better take the bull, thought William, although to switch his mind from a vision of Bonnie–head hiding in his neck, outside the bone-church–would require an almighty effort. His vision of that scene, curiously, was not as it had been through his own eyes–scraps of scalp peeping through her head–but that of an observer some distance away in the cemetery, regarding the odd couple they made: beautiful young girl seeking comfort from an older man. Man’s head tilted back to accommodate girl’
s head in his neck. Man’s legs solidly apart the better to support her weight. The clarity of the picture was unsettling.

  ‘Dick suggested we might go and spend a few days with him after Christmas,’ he said.

  ‘Dick’s last cottage was freezing.’

  ‘I expect there’s central heating in this one.’

  ‘Jack and Laurel want to come down for a few days over the New Year.’

  ‘Oh, Lord. Do they?’ When Bonnie had reached to do up William’s seatbelt, he was near to fainting with pleasure. He would like to lie back and let Bonnie do up seatbelts across him for hours on end. The fantasy began to take a grip.

  ‘They always do. But I expect we could manage Dorset for a day or two.’ No more than a day or two, please God, thought Grace. By after Christmas Lucien might change his mind, start his visits again. She wouldn’t want him to arrive to find no one at home.

  ‘We could go for walks,’ William said, so quietly Grace had to strain to hear him. But he had to say something to disguise the moan that was rising within him, the deliquescence that was rendering him useless under Bonnie’s hands, metal fastenings irrelevant.

  ‘Are you all right, William?’

  ‘Quite.’ He forced himself upright.

  ‘You’re pale. You’re not eating much.’

  ‘Along the cliffs,’ said William. He smiled, made an effort. ‘You used to love walking along those Dorset cliffs.’

  ‘So I did.’ Though the last walk she remembered with acute feeling was the one in the park. Those horrible dogs. The incongruity of her and Lucien: him dirty and unshaven making coarse, funny observations, her in a pale mac whose lack of style had never occurred to her before, and her stiff little handbag with its gilt clasp. Funny Lucien hadn’t seemed to notice these things. Funny how, walking beside him, the park was quite different from normal.

  ‘You’re looking a bit pale yourself,’ said William. He suddenly noticed that was definitely the case. Grace’s cheeks were usually fine and ruddy. Odd how after a whole breast of roast chicken and tip-top bread sauce she could look so grey. ‘Did your friend Lucien take advantage of my absence?’ William had no idea why he asked the question–except that perhaps the mention of the rotter’s name might spark a bit of colour into Grace’s cheeks. He couldn’t have cared less how often Lucien came round so long as it was not when he was at home.