‘What George and I did,’ Sophy said uncertainly, ‘wasn’t anything. I mean, it was, but it didn’t mean anything. We don’t even fancy each other. It was just – everything else, all the parents, all that.’ She put her hands together between her knees and squeezed them hard. ‘I thought I was pregnant.’
There was a small convulsion in Gus’s cushion.
‘But I’m not.’
Silence.
‘I’m not telling George that. I’m not telling him I thought I was or that I’m not. I told Mum because I was so relieved I couldn’t help it. I sort of told my father but he wasn’t listening. I’m only telling you so you know it all. So there’s nothing left to know. Like you like it.’
Gus raised his face and stared straight ahead, woodenly, at the picture of the Irish fishermen on the wild, dark beach.
‘And I don’t love anyone,’ Sophy said. ‘A boy, I mean. I’m not keen on anyone. I – really like you, Gus. I always will. But we’re kind of practising, aren’t we, seeing what it’s like. You’ll have heaps of people after you.’ She paused and looked at his profile for some seconds. ‘You’re really good-looking.’
Not a muscle twitched. She went on watching him for a while and then she got to her feet.
‘I’ll be at school on Monday. I’m a bit scared, because of last week. Mum says I don’t have to explain but I don’t know what to do instead. I suppose I could say family crisis, couldn’t I? It’s true after all. You and I must know more about them than anyone, after this summer.’
She stood looking down at him for a moment, as if she was uncertain quite what she should do next. Then she said, ‘Bye, Gus. See you at school. See you around,’ and went out of the room.
After she had gone, he sat on for several minutes, quite fixed and still. Then he drooped a little and picked the cushion up and put it over his face and lay back on the sofa. He stayed like this for a while, then he sat up and looked at the flowerpot. It was a real one, made of terracotta. He stuck a forefinger into the earth and felt the avocado stone below the surface, smooth and round and hard.
He got up, wiping his earthy finger on the seat of his jeans. He bent down and picked up the flowerpot in both hands and carried it into his bedroom. The windowsill, narrow anyway, was crowded already with the model aeroplanes he had once so loved to make and the commemorative mugs he collected from all the football teams. There were also a lot of curled-up foreign stamps and defunct biro innards and dead flies. He put the flowerpot on the floor and cleared a space in the centre of the windowsill, pushing things aside with both hands so that various objects fell to the floor. Then he picked up the flowerpot and put it dead in the middle, between a Spitfire and Manchester United, and watched it for a long time, as if by very willpower he could make it grow.
Hilary’s field had been ploughed.
‘Winter wheat, no doubt,’ Laurence said.
The wide headland round the edge was still untouched, and the grass on it was even longer and more rough and bleached and the weeds now looked tough enough to survive a desert.
‘I start here,’ Hilary said, putting a hand on the gate. ‘And then I go down that side first, and then along the bottom where there’s rather a choked stream full of brambles, and then up this side.’
‘I see,’ Laurence said. He climbed the gate and turned, balanced on the top, to give her a hand. ‘Well, today, shall we do it the other way about?’
She looked at him.
‘Do you think we ought?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do.’
She landed in the field beside him.
‘Is that where we flew kites? Up there?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the dog ate Adam’s?’
‘Yes. That poor man—’
They set off unevenly side by side, stepping over the rougher lumps.
‘I’m shaking,’ Hilary said.
‘Would you like to hold my hand?’
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Perhaps later, when I know.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’m not spinning out the agony. I just don’t know where to begin.’
Hilary stopped.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t walk and worry.’
She subsided into the grassy tussocks. Laurence waited a moment and then he sat down beside her, facing her.
‘Hilary,’ he said, ‘would you let me stay?’
She couldn’t look at him. She gathered up the folds of her skirt and wrenched them tightly under her knees, making a sort of bandage, against feeling.
‘You were right,’ Laurence said, ‘about our marriage, about still loving you. Our marriage isn’t dead, it just had a severe illness. And I do love you. Still. I think I can’t do without loving you. You’re sort of in the fabric of me. When I tried it wasn’t just that I couldn’t imagine life without you, but that I knew there wouldn’t be one. Well, there would, a kind of life, a kind of limping life, but not the one I’ve led, the one I need and want.’
He paused. A little wind blew against them and dropped a feathery ball of seeds in Hilary’s lap, greyish down speckled with black.
‘But I’m right too,’ Laurence went on, ‘and this bit’s harder. I love Gina. I wasn’t making any of that up. When I said I’d always loved her, that was true too. Is true. But I don’t love her enough to have her instead of you. And even I, from my male have-your-cake-and-eat-it depths, know I can’t have both. I don’t even want both, I’d rather not have the dilemma, to be honest. I would like to stop loving her, bang, just throw a switch, turn the light off. I think if I didn’t see her that would happen and I will strain every sinew to make it happen, I swear I will. But that’s why I have to be tentative, you see. That’s why I can’t just blow up balloons and throw a party and say it’s all over, folks, my mistake. I know, with my whole heart, that if you’ll have me I want to stay. But I also know, given how I feel about Gina, that I’ve no right to expect to be allowed to. It’s bloody unfair that it’s your decision, I know that. But I don’t know what else to ask you.’
He stopped again. Hilary picked the seed ball out of her lap and held it up in the air, plucking it apart so that the little black specks blew away in the breeze.
‘Can you,’ Laurence said, ‘forgive me enough to let me stay with you, and bear with me while I get over Gina? I don’t know if I could do it in your place, so I’m not expecting miracles.’
Hilary said slowly, not looking at him, ‘I might be horrible.’
‘I know.’
‘I might not be able to help myself. I might be unable to resist venomous little remarks. I might not be able to bear to be touched.’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know, Laurence. I longed with all my being for you to say this, and now that you have, I don’t know. I feel full of desolation.’
‘Oh my darling,’ Laurence said. ‘Oh Hilary, I’m so sorry.’
She bent forward and put her forehead on her knees.
‘I want to want it,’ she said. ‘I long to want it. But I can’t seem to reach the feeling.’
He said, ‘Could you take me on trust? Could you stand that? Because I love you with my whole heart.’
‘Maybe—’
‘It’s a gamble. I know that. I also know I’ve got to work harder than you.’
‘Don’t,’ she said.
He bent so that he could see something of her face.
‘Do you love me?’
He thought she nodded.
‘Do you?’
She lifted her head.
‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I think so. At this precise moment, I can’t quite remember about love. I can’t remember what it feels like.’
‘You will. You will remember.’
He put a hand out and laid it on both hers, clasped around her knees. He waited for her to take hers away, but she didn’t. It occurred to him, out of his own need, to push her for a proper yes, an unmistakable one, but he thought better of it. Instead, he simply stayed there, hi
s hand on hers, and watched her.
Chapter Nineteen
GINA HAD FOUND a possible-sounding flat. The particulars said that it was on the right side of Pau for a view towards the Pryenees, that it had four bedrooms, a salon of great elegance and a roof terrace. There was a photograph of the building it was in, a tall nineteenth-century apartment block, and someone in the French estate agency had stuck a luminous red-paper arrow in the top left-hand corner, to show where the flat was. The price was good. It would mean using all her share of the proceeds of High Place, but that didn’t take into account the money Laurence would have when the equity in The Bee House was sorted out. There would be enough for them to travel, to have the children out as often as they could come. Gina bent over the photograph with a magnifying glass, and tried to imagine some personality into that line of long blank windows across the top of the building in Pau.
It was mid-afternoon. In an hour or so, Sophy would be back from school unless, she said, she stayed for drama club. She had appeared the day before with a determined, red-haired girl called Lara, whom Gina had never seen before, and they had disappeared up to Sophy’s room with a bottle of mineral water and a jumbo packet of crisps, leaving Gina downstairs feeling rather out of things. Lara had been perfectly friendly but Gina couldn’t help wondering what Sophy had told her, how much Lara knew. She had bold eyes under her bright bush of hair, and a robust, unafraid presence. They had been closeted upstairs for almost two hours, and then Lara had come down, collected her bag of books, said, ‘Nice to meet you,’ to Gina, and sauntered off.
Gina bent again over the particulars. Two of the bedrooms looked extremely small and there was only one bathroom. She wished there was a photograph of the roof terrace which might be the thing that made all the difference, or might simply be a bare concrete space, with a washing line. If it was, of course, they could make it into a bower with pots and trellises and tubs. Whatever it was like, the view was bound to be wonderful. She looked out of the glass door of the kitchen to the garden and saw, as she always saw, the low wall below the camomile lawn, and the careful planting, and the Gothic bench. She was tired, oh so tired, of living without a view. A pretty prospect was one thing but it wouldn’t, in any way, compensate for not having a view.
As she watched, she heard the street gate bang shut. Sophy, early for some reason. She picked the French flat brochure up quickly and slid it under a nearby newspaper. Then she cupped her face in her hands and waited for Sophy – and perhaps the faintly disconcerting Lara – to come into view. She didn’t. Laurence did.
‘Oh!’ Gina cried, springing up. ‘In the afternoon!’
He came into the kitchen and took her in his arms and kissed her on the cheek. Then he held her for a second or two.
‘Look,’ Gina said, breaking away. ‘Look at this!’ She pushed the newspaper aside and seized the French brochure. ‘Do look. It’s a flat. It’s a rooftop flat with views!’
He took it. He looked just as usual, she thought, if a bit tired. No wonder he was tired. The strain of things at The Bee House must be terrible.
‘Ah,’ Laurence said, flicking through. ‘Un salon très élégant, I see.’
‘And a roof terrace—’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you think? Do you think it looks possible?’
‘I think,’ Laurence said, laying the brochure down on the table again, ‘that it looks very French and rather forbidding.’
‘Laurence!’
‘Well, you asked me. And I told you.’
He wandered past her into the hall.
‘Do you want some tea?’
‘No,’ he called. ‘No thanks.’
She hurried after him.
‘What’s the matter? Why are you so restless—’
He was standing in the sitting-room, standing behind an armchair and leaning on the back. She noticed his hands particularly, the fingers grasping the padded cushion.
He said, ‘My dear Gina, my darling Gina, I am not coming to France.’
She stared at him. He left the armchair, and came to where she stood, just inside the sitting-room door, and took her hands.
‘This is beyond apology,’ he said. ‘Way beyond.’
She went on staring, straight ahead at the point where his throat rose out of his open shirt collar.
‘I’m staying here,’ Laurence said. ‘I’m staying with Hilary. I love her and she’s my wife and I’m staying.’
Gina whispered, ‘Did she ask you?’
‘No,’ Laurence said. ‘She only asked me to think very seriously about our marriage before I declared it dead.’
‘But you did that!’ Gina cried. She tore her hands away. ‘You did that, ages and ages ago, and you thought it was! You said so!’
‘I know,’ Laurence said. ‘There was a time when I did think it. When I thought Hilary felt it too. But it isn’t dead. I don’t want to say these things to you, I hate saying them. But there’s no way of not hurting you.’
Gina put her hands to her head as if to reassure herself it was still there.
‘Don’t you love me any more? Don’t you? Don’t you?’
He said quietly, ‘Yes. I love you.’
‘Then why all this? Why all these horrible things you’re saying, going back on your word, throwing me back into the pit—’
‘Because,’ Laurence said, and stopped.
She seized his arms.
‘Because what?’
He looked right at her.
‘You don’t want to know—’
‘I do! I do! You must tell me, you must, you must—’
He sighed.
‘I can’t love you, you see, without Hilary.’
She gave a shrieking scream, as if he had slapped her, and beat at him with her fists.
‘Liar, liar, liar! What utter crap, what utter, stupid, heartless, lying crap! You loved me long before Hilary, long before, there were years and years before her—’
He took her flailing wrists and gripped them.
‘There were. But then I met her and learned to love her.’
‘It’s the boys, you’re staying for the boys—’
‘No. I’m not. I’m staying because I want to mend my marriage. If I can. If Hilary can take it.’
Gina pulled free and retreated a few steps.
‘And what about me?’
‘Gina—’
‘Where does that leave me? I’ll tell you where it leaves me, you lying coward, it leaves me without love or a home and a future. D’you hear me? No love and no future. How can you do this to me? How could you do this to your worst enemy, let alone to me?’
He said nothing.
‘You started it!’ Gina shouted. ‘You began all this! It was you who kissed me and told me you were in love with me! It wasn’t my idea!’
‘No ideas like this are unilateral, Gina—’
‘So you want to defend yourself, do you? You want to watch my life fall into utter ruins and explain that it has nothing to do with you? Is that what you want? How disgusting can you get, how base and vile and wicked—’
‘Stop that,’ Laurence said.
She cried, ‘But I can’t believe you don’t even feel guilty!’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘I haven’t any words to describe how I feel. But I didn’t think it would help if I told you how I felt—’
‘So instead you came to tell me that you love Hilary more than me.’
He was silent.
‘Say it.’
He shook his head.
‘Say it.’
‘I love Hilary more than you.’
She turned away from him and crumpled up on the floor by an armchair, putting her face into her folded arms. He saw her shoulders shaking. He went across to her and put a hand on her. Her head whipped up.
‘Please don’t touch me.’
He took his hand away.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Gina said, her voice choking. ‘I can’t believe that two men could do this to me
. In the space of three months.’
A small impatience, of which he was not proud, rose in Laurence.
‘I shan’t plead with you,’ Gina said. ‘I shan’t abase myself to your repulsive level. I suppose Hilary is full of triumph.’
‘Far from it. She’s as full of confusion as I am—’
‘Oh,’ Gina said. ‘Poor Hilary.’
‘Shut up,’ Laurence said.
She bent her head down again. He looked at the back of her neck, exposed by her hair as it fell forward, and thought how unchanged it was from the sixteen-year-old neck he had sat behind in that long-ago school bus going up to London to see Paul Scofield play King Lear. How you could hate love sometimes, how you could loathe its slimy, seductive trails, how you could despair of yourself for ever having thought it was the key to all happiness and believed its piecrust promises. He sat on the arm of the chair above Gina’s bent head.
‘I shouldn’t have done it,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have started it. But I thought I had no choices, I thought I was following some path laid down for me along all these years, an inevitable path. You know that. You understand what I’m saying. You felt it too. I don’t underestimate any of the damage I’ve done. I daren’t.’
She raised her head and looked at him.
‘How do you know you won’t get tired of this frame of mind? As you have of me?’
‘I’m not tired of you,’ Laurence said patiently. ‘I’ll never be tired of you. But you aren’t where I belong.’
She sat up a little straighter and ran her forefingers under her eyes, where the tears had collected.
‘Belong—’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t-belong anywhere.’
He said nothing. Gina gave a great sigh and rose to her feet. She turned her back to him.
‘Please go,’ she said. Now. Right now, when I’m not looking.’
A little later, she sat in the waiting room of the counselling service, and looked out of the window at the supermarket roof on which rain was falling, making the brown tiles gleam dully. They had said Mrs Taylor’s appointment book was quite full that afternoon and Gina had pleaded and pleaded – she had been quite startled to hear herself – until Diana came on the line and said she could see her, just for half an hour, at the end of the day.
The Best of Friends Page 26
