by Angela Huth
Jack turned his blackening eye on her.
‘What were you doing, you bloody little flirt?’
‘Shut up, you two.’ Rufus spoke on William’s behalf. ‘Let’s get this mess cleared up.’
Given the command, everyone helped. Grant’s mother lowered herself on to the floor. She moved slowly round the room on all fours, picking up minute specks of broken glass. The old lady was still swathed in all her shawls, and William, despite the whole ghastly business, could not help noting that in her likeness to an old sheep she provided an element of humour. Rufus replaced the damaged tree, Iris dabbed at the blood on the carpet with her handkerchief soaked in mineral water, Grace swept around replacing things very quickly, and William poured new glasses of wine for everyone but Jack and Laurel.
Jack sat in his chair, brushing himself down, watching the clearing up all round him. Sullen, he made no effort to help or to speak. The looks of disapproval, launched by the helpers, he defended with a hostile jut of his jaw. He did not look at Laurel, whose sobs had turned to snivels. She still clutched at the protective curtains. The feeble bitch, thought Grace: and loathed Laurel, too.
‘Thish has all gone horribly wrong,’ observed Jack, at last, to no one in particular.
‘You can say that again.’ Laurel let the tulips fall from her.
Jack looked at her. ‘I don’t know what you think you were doing.’
‘You’ve never been able to take a joke. A bit of fun.’
‘Not my idea of a joke, oral shoshage.’
Grant’s mother looked up from her position on the floor near the grate, bewildered. ‘Moral?’ she asked. ‘Where does moral come into all this? I think you owe my son an apology.’
‘He’s not getting a bloody apology,’ said Jack. ‘Not on my life.’
‘You always spoil everything.’ Laurel moved close to Jack. She touched his only slightly swollen eye with one finger.
‘Leave off. Take your ruddy fingers off me. We’re going home.’
‘You bastard. You’re not going to forget this.’ Laurel burst into fresh tears.
‘You’re staying here as planned,’ said Grace to Jack. ‘You’re in no condition to drive.’
‘We’re going home, Mother, so don’t interfere.’
‘You do what your mother says, my boy,’ said William. He was conscious that he had been no very great help in the general shambles, and here was an opportunity to exert himself without danger of further confrontation. He carried two glasses of wine out to the kitchen for Bonnie and Grant, keen to leave the disagreeable scene in the dining room.
Grant sat at the table, head tipped back. Bonnie dabbed at his nose with a scrunched-up wet dishcloth. She touched him very gently. William stopped. His heart had remained calm during the fight. Now it lurched and stumbled. He put the glasses on the table.
‘Anything I can do?’
‘Thanks, no. Bonnie here’s a very fine nurse.’
‘I’m sorry about all that–my son. I don’t know what–’
‘Don’t mention it.’ Grant’s voice was thick beneath the dishcloth. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t resist giving him a dose of his own medicine.’
‘He deserved it. Should teach him a thing or two.’
‘Daresay the sausage was a poor joke, and Jack had had a lot to drink.’
‘No excuse.’ William shrugged.
Bonnie stood back to appraise her work on Grant’s nose.
‘Pretty good,’ she said, smiling at both of them. ‘Almost as if nothing had happened.’
‘Let’s carry on as if that was the case.’ Grant stood, ruffled Bonnie’s hair. ‘Thanks. Don’t let this stupid business spoil your party, William. Grace has done it all so well. Let’s go back and finish up the food.’
He left the room but Bonnie did not follow him.
‘Sorry about your dishcloth,’ she said, and threw the bloody clump into the sink.
‘No matter
‘- and about events in general.’ She gave him a look (didn’t she?) - a look that penetrated his turbulent being, a secret acknowledgement of something William did not dare to name. ‘I have to say–forgive me if this is rude–but your son Jack doesn’t take after his father.’
William smiled. Shrugged.
‘He’s trodden a dull path since Laurel came into his life.’ God Almighty, Bonnie was right up against him, the warm velvet of her pushing against the length of his body, her heavy arms flung round his neck–as she so often flung them.
‘But as for you, William, you’re a wonderful, wonderful host and no shoddy behaviour can spoil your party’ He could smell the claret on her breath. How much had she drunk? Not that William cared … in vino veritas, he believed. All he asked was to remain where he was, propped up against the dresser (fortunately) for ever, listening to her sweet words. He patted her shoulder with a hand that raged to cup a breast.
‘Dear Bonnie.’
‘You’re a man in a million. We all think so–Grant, Rufus, me of course.’ (Here, William rather wished the others had not been included among his admirers, but in the general bliss of things it didn’t really matter.) ‘And what I’m demanding, here and now, is a Christmas kiss.’
Bonnie placed her glorious mouth on the astringent line of William’s own. Her lips did not part, but pushed. William kept his eyes open so that the out-of-focus muddle of thick lashes and the exquisite pores of her nose filled his vision. Faintness shot through his body, emptied his head. Bonnie moved away.
‘There. Thanks.’ Her cheeks matched the holly berries on the table. There was a deliquescence in her bearing that spoke of the effects of William’s superb wine, it had to be admitted. But why not? He would buy her a lifetime of Montrachet ‘85, given the chance. ‘I mustn’t leave out Grant and Rufus, must I? Kissing.’ She giggled. ‘Here. Come on.’
William took her hand. They made their way to the door. The marvellous thing was the he knew that the others surely would not be dealt the same quality of kiss. It would be public–theirs had been private. What’s more, at the kitchen door Bonnie let go of his hand, quite rightly. She would not want the others to have any idea of the absolute oneness that she and William had just experienced. No: it was their secret, and William had every intention of keeping it too.
In the hall they saw Jack and Laurel dragging their feet upstairs.
‘persuaded them to stay,’ said Grace. They were both way over the limit to drive.’
They watched the couple turn the corner towards their room -not looking back to bid their audience goodnight.
‘At least,’ said William, ‘they don’t look very engaged.’
Bonnie laughed at this. She laughed so hard William half suspected it was her way of cheering them all. (Their almost passionate kiss had of course cheered him. His being was now privately burnished beyond measure.) Her laughter, he could see, worked on Grace and Grant. The evening, which had been so thrashed and spoilt by his son, now righted itself in Bonnie’s gaiety. He judged there could be some enjoyment to be had in the hour or so before the guests began to go.
In a muted way, there was. The remaining guests ignored the bloodstains on the carpet and the smashed balls on the tree–the inside skins of these delicate, broken balls were visible: they gleamed like mother-of-pearl, flushed with a paler version of their outside colour. The guests ate more than they really wanted for fear of disappointing Grace, and talked of Christmas plans. William refilled glasses, and dreaded their departure. Ten days holiday: ten days without Bonnie. He knew Grant was driving her back to her flat in Aylesbury–of course that made sense, but he could not like the thought, even with Grant’s mother as chaperone. He knew Bonnie was travelling north the next day to be with her own family for a week. Here, he and Grace would have their usual quiet Christmas, but beneath the surface there would be both yearning and agitation which he must keep from Grace. And then, the dreaded few days with Dick. The walk on the cliffs.
It was Rufus who, at almost midnight, suggested they sho
uld end the evening with a few carols. He was always keen for a singsong, secretly a little proud of his resonating voice–in his youth he used to sing a lot of Schubert lieder. Grace loved the idea. She clapped her hands, said she’d find her book of carols.
But Grant, apparently unaware of her offer, looked at Bonnie.
‘Bonnie’ll play for us,’ he said.
Bonnie smiled. Grace sat down again.
‘I didn’t know Bonnie played the piano,’ she said.
‘One of her hidden talents.’ Grant gave Bonnie an encouraging smile. ‘As we discovered in Prague.’
William saw the disappointment sweep over his wife’s face. He knew how much she would have liked to have been the accompanist.
Bonnie got up, moved over to the piano. Pale flakes of light showered across her velvet skirt like a rush of sunlight through leaves. She moved magnificently, everyone’s eyes upon her.
‘I haven’t played a carol for years,’ she said. ‘But I’ll try.’
Bonnie had no need of Grace’s music book. She could play anything by ear. She drifted through a few minor chords, warming up, trying out the piano. Grace felt an irrational tightness within her. She recognised a gift she herself did not have, would never have. The huge waves of the evening, stilled for a while when the fight was over and Jack and Laurel had gone to bed, now returned, almost swamping her. She turned to William. He stood in an awkward position, like a man trapped in volcano lava and made rigid. His eyes were on Bonnie’s back, expressionless. He was wonderfully conscious that after all there had been no opportunity–and probably no desire–for her to bestow Christmas kisses on Grant and Rufus. The thought gave him profound satisfaction.
‘Silent Night’, Bonnie began.
‘Stille Nacht.’ Rufus, also proud of his German, made it impossible for the others to join in. He had no intention of being denied his solo. In the past, his rendering of the carol had moved people to tears. This was not to be the case tonight, but he would give it his best. Glancing round the room he saw that Grant’s mother was asleep, Iris was twisting her engagement ring, and Grant was lighting one of his revolting cigars. Only William and Grace, in their unmoving postures of listening, seemed appreciative.
‘Heilige nacht,’ he went on, and moved one hand to his heart.
9
‘How much further?’ asked William.
He glanced at Grace. She was a fine driver, hands firmly on the wheel, nicely spaced as if guiding a ploughshare–eyes never leaving the slow lane which, she felt, was the appropriate place for their small, uncompetitive car. He always enjoyed being driven by Grace, even if her rigid keeping of the Highway Code meant that, just as when he was at the wheel himself, their journeys took longer than most people’s. But he had learnt from experience that to press her to accelerate, even a little, was counter-productive.
‘Not much.’ Grace had answered the same question twice since they’d been on the motorway. She was used to William’s anxiety always to get there, and to get back. She knew there was no use in guessing at exact miles (which confused him) or approximate hours and minutes (which annoyed him). Vague assurances soothed him best. But this morning he was in a particularly impatient state.
William turned on the radio. Delibes’s Flower Duet mushed through the car.
‘Heaven forbid. Hundreds of requests for that bloody awful piece, and the requests granted three times a week. The People’s Music, I suppose.’ He snapped it off. As usual William enjoyed raging against such ‘classical’ programmes. ‘There she goes again,’ he scoffed, as the presenter produced one of her dumbfoundingly simplistic explanations in the soppy voice of a Play School instructor.
‘Nothing you can do about it,’ murmured Grace, automatically. That was usually a pacifying reminder, too. Though not this morning. William’s contempt blew off him like snow in a wind.
‘I shall write to object. Been meaning to write for ages.’
‘So you have.’ Grace smiled as a very long vehicle roared past them, agitating the small car a little in its slip stream.
In the silence that fell between them for the next fifty miles both Grace and William reflected on the Christmas break. Each had felt, for private, unacknowledgeable reasons, the days had dragged unusually slowly. The old sense of blissful privacy, which for years they had enjoyed in the annual break from concerts, eluded them. But both of them were so preoccupied with their own thoughts that they did not notice the other’s distraction. Once Jack and Laurel had left–after a disagreeable breakfast the morning following the party, when they tried, through their hangovers, to justify their behaviour–Grace and William fell into their normal Christmas holiday pattern. They exchanged presents beside the tree, went to both midnight mass and matins in a distant church, where there were no enraging hybrid services and extraordinary requests to kiss your neighbour.
William poured glasses of the left-over excellent wine before lunch, and proposed a toast to Jack and Laurel.
‘Let us never, ever invite them to another party’ he said. ‘I never thought my own son could behave in such a brutish manner.’ Still smarting from the vision of Jack’s eyes scouring Bonnie, William spoke with feeling. ‘Vulgar, provocative. For once in my life I felt quite sorry for Laurel.’
‘She was no angel!’ Grace was loath to be uncharitable at Christmas, but Laurel’s blatant flirting with Grant had shocked her deeply. ‘Grant must have been revolted.’
‘He was.’
‘Pity about the tree. I’ve more work to do on the carpet.’
‘Still.’ William searched for comforting words. ‘I daresay there’s a certain gory pleasure to be had reflecting on the most horrendous party, and at least it ended nicely, Rufus enjoying his star turn.’
‘It did,’ said Grace. Having been passed over as the pianist was a slight she would keep to herself–for her, the most affecting part of the whole ghastly evening.
They agreed the party was an occasion best put swiftly from their minds. Over the guinea fowl and Christmas pudding their silence was easy as ever, only broken to rejoice in not having to share their minor festivities with Jack and Laurel.
Alone by the fire, though, Grace fretted about Lucien. Where was he? What was he doing? Was he putting up with Lobelia for the sake of a roof over his head? Or, unable to bear her company even for a few days at Christmas, when relations by tradition join uneasily together, had he opted for some friend’s floor, or a depressing squat? Most of all she wondered about the meaning of his message on the doorstep. Was it a mysterious sign of goodwill, despite the (probable) end of their friendship? Or was it a threat? And then, what if he needed her? If he came round and found the house deserted … Grace did not like to think of what Lucien might do if he was in one of his irrational moods. She must remember to make sure William locked every window and double-checked the alarm. Fortunately he was by nature security conscious–much more than her. So he would be pleased to think for once she was paying attention to locking up the house. Her insistence on making sure everything was as impenetrable as possible would raise no suspicions in his mind.
Even as she planned the barricading, Grace felt guilty. By not being here, should he want her, she would be letting Lucien down. And that she had no wish to do. He had disturbed her life in an odd way–most unpleasantly–but he had also been her supporter, her encourager, the one who brought a glitter into her steady life. She had insisted he go because his deviousness had driven her into a nervous frenzy. But she was still fond of him. She always would be. In truth, should she be asked which man meant the most to her, her son Jack or Lucien, the answer would come with no hesitation. It occurred to her she had never worried about Jack as she did about Lucien. Her son had never given her so much pleasure, and he pained her in quite a different way. The fact was that she could not love Jack in a way that she had always imagined a mother should love a child. And now here she was overwhelmed by protective, loving feelings for a strange, alarming young man she did not know well, but was drawn
to in a way that unnerved her. The idea of not being there for him, should he turn up, needing her, was almost unbearable.
While Grace tormented herself downstairs, in his room at the top of the house William played the first movement of Schumann’s A minor quartet–a movement of spirited wistfulness, he always thought–to himself to reflect his own yearning for Bonnie. Even the sound of her voice on the telephone would have been a consolation–bloody miles away in Northumberland. The small part of his being left over from his agonising about Bonnie was faced with an equal problem: how, precisely, to send his dear wife over the cliff … If the assassination could trammel the consequences, he thought, all would be well. But it was never as easy as that. Just to shove her over and hope she would end up as an untidy splatter on the shingle was naive. Someone would be bound to see him. His shock-horror might not convince a coroner. (It should: he would be shocked and horrified, mortified, even–but better not chance it.) Then there was the matter of regret. There was no doubt he would suffer regret, not to mention guilt, so vast it would be hard to overcome. But one thought of Bonnie, the scent of her hair as her head rested those few sweet moments on his shoulder, and he was able to put aside imagining how a murderer would be punished, even if not caught. How, how should he execute the foul deed?
On the day after Boxing Day, a grimy morning of extreme cold, William went up to his room and stood looking out of the window. The garden was tense with frost. There was not a glimmer of sun to sparkle the bare branches, or the ivy in their grip of rime. William took up his violin and started to play his part of one of the Mozart duos he’d played with Bonnie. The sweet, dry notes–as so often happened when he played alone–cleared his mind of peripheral matters and an idea began to unfold. As the sound of the instrument bit into the room, at first the idea wafted unclear as an underwater plant groping though a disturbed river bed. But when it reached the surface its shape was sharply defined. There it was. Clear. Obvious. Terrifying.
William stared at his solution, behind shut eyes. As an idea it certainly held great risk. But if he acted with great care … it seemed pretty foolproof. In his excitement he speeded up the andante. He ran this new, bright picture over and over again in his mind. He felt the strength of evil intent. He knew what it felt like to be a criminal, feel no conscience, exult in the idea of an unforgivable deed. These were dark places of the soul he had never travelled before, and he felt afraid, but determined.
