Between the Regions of Kindness

by Alice Jolly

  She doubts that Frank has ever been with a woman before and she feels tenderness towards him, and pity. Winning the school shield for tennis is no help to him now. He comes to stand close beside her, his eyes bulbous and shallow blue. She can hear his breath heaving in the silence of the house, feel his blood pulsing. He watches as she unhooks her other stocking and slides it down her leg.

  About Violet, Frank says. It’s rather difficult because she can’t go out in the evenings much – because of Mr Whiteley’s illness.

  Yes, Rose says. Very difficult.

  As she reaches towards him to undo his belt, he stands absolutely still, helpless, resigned to his fate. She undoes the front of his shirt to reveal the white expanse of his chest. His skin is shivery and looks too tender to touch. The least pressure and he will bruise. She reaches out her hand, slowly bumps her finger down over the furrows of his ribs. When she lays her hand flat on his stomach he gasps, and leaning forward he begins to undo her dress, snagging at it clumsily. So she pulls the dress off herself and takes off her liberty bodice as well. Then she reaches her hand into the front of his trousers and takes hold of him.

  Pushing himself at her, he yanks off his shirt and pushes down his trousers, then pulls her against him, roughly. She pushes back the snow-field covers of his mother’s bed and lies down. He climbs on top of her, his hands fumbling, his knee digging into her thigh. His hand catches in her hair and strands tear away, stinging, from her scalp. She knows that there is a part of him that hates her. He scrabbles between her thighs, pushes her legs apart. Then he exhales sharply several times, makes a sound like a sob and falls against her. Her thighs are wet. He draws back with a look of panic, sits on the side of the bed, his head buried in his hands.

  I’m sorry, he says. I’m so sorry.

  Rose reaches out and touches him, strokes the skin of his back, tells him that it doesn’t matter. His shoulders heave and sob. From the bedside table an alarm clock ticks. Through the window Rose sees the top of distant trees, a tiny aeroplane motionless in the sky. Beside her, he tries not to cry and she tries not to feel tenderness for him but does. How weak men are, she thinks. Everything is left to women, finally. She slides off the bed and kneels beside him. Somewhere in a distant bedroom Violet is howling but Rose shuts the door of that room, silences her.

  It doesn’t matter, she tells Frank.

  Then she eases his legs apart and takes him in her mouth, works on him with tenderness until the moment when he is ready to enter her. And she shows him how he should do it – gently, while looking into her eyes. And she looks up at his blond hair, and the whiteness of his skin, and she feels for a moment that she might want him to touch her forever.

  Afterwards he rolls away from her and she goes to open the window. Cooler air touches against her skin. A breeze is rocking the branches in the garden now. The aeroplane has left a trail of silver across the sky.

  Wait a minute, she says and heads down the stairs. She finds a box of cigarettes on the sitting-room mantelpiece, sherry and glasses on a low table. Another gramophone stands on the sideboard – two in one house – and Rose looks through the records. All of them are classical or military. She puts on a Beethoven symphony, turns the volume up loud. Gathering the sherry and cigarettes, she stops for a moment, enjoying the feeling of being naked in this neat room where every piece of furniture, every picture, turns away from her in shock. The inappropriate grandeur of the music makes her want to laugh as she crosses the hall and hurries back upstairs. Sitting on the bed, she pours Frank a sherry and starts to light a cigarette but Frank pulls her to him.

  And so they make love again – for longer this time. Rose loves to touch him, to feel the length and smoothness of his limbs. He is so white, clean and smooth as marble. Rose pulls herself against him as she feels him reach his climax. Frank gasps for breath and grips her arms too tightly. Rose, I want you to marry me.

  Rose laughs, pulls herself away from him, digs her toe into the side of his leg. Oh Frank, for God’s sake. She sits up and pours herself sherry, feels the burn of it on her lips. Frank has pulled the sheets up over his body, hiding himself. Rose knows he feels a little ashamed of what they’ve just done and she pities him. She pours him sherry and tries more laughter but he refuses to be amused. Instead his white face is hot with anger.

  Don’t be silly, Frank, she says.

  Rose, you’re not listening. I want to get married to you.

  Rose looks away, annoyed. She had thought Frank understood the rules. She can’t believe how stupid rich people can be. Spoilt little boy, she thinks. Isn’t it time that someone should deny him what he wants? She hopes he isn’t going to make trouble.

  Rose, are you listening to me?

  Frank, I don’t want to be married – not to you or to anyone else. Not ever. I’ve got better things to do. She reaches out for the cigarettes, lights one for Frank, but he refuses and so she places it between her own lips. All the while Frank watches her, his eyes pressing against her skin. She blows out smoke, looks down at him. Anyway you can’t get married to me because you’re engaged to Violet.

  No, I’m not.

  All right – but as good as.

  Frank’s face is iron and storm. He sits up, turns away from her, pulls on his shirt, then turns back to face her. I’m not marrying Violet, he says. She’s a frigid cow and I’m not marrying her. And anyway, she doesn’t love me.

  I’m sure she does.

  Perhaps not as much as she loves you?

  Don’t be silly, Frank. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  And the other thing is – I might as well say – I’m not going to sign up.

  What? Why?

  What do you mean – why? You know why.

  But Frank – you’ll be sacked.

  Then maybe I should save them the trouble and resign.

  Rose says nothing because she knows he’s beyond reason.

  What’s the matter? he says. You know that’s the only thing I can do. You know that’s the right thing for me to do. And I thought that surely you’d approve.

  Approve? What does my approval have to do with it?

  Rose gulps down the sherry and reaches for her dress. The air of the room floats blue with cigarette smoke. The thumping, yearning music from downstairs is beginning to irritate her. Its cadences shout veiled warnings. She feels a shudder pass through her like the beginning of fever. Frank is being childish but he’ll have forgotten about all this tomorrow. She picks up her cigarette, strides over and slams the window shut. The trees in the garden appear strangely crooked, the pond an ugly scar in the earth. That silver line still cuts the sky in half. Rose watches the smouldering tip of her cigarette. How very silly of Frank to ruin the afternoon – but there’s nothing to worry about.

  13

  NOW

  Oliver – Brighton, February 2003

  Oliver hears her voice – that brassy, intrusive voice. She’s downstairs in the Stop The War office. He could go out, walk down to the sea, walk anywhere, but there’s no point. He opens the door that leads up to his flat. As he ascends the stairs, the body of a man dangles in the stairwell, suspended by his neck, silent. A suicide, a preventable death. Oliver turns away, closes his eyes. He enters his flat, pulls the bolts, turns the key, although he knows that no lock or key can keep out the waiting future. In the kitchen, he pours a glass of wine, identifies that point on the soothing white of the wall, presses his head against it, feeling the familiar imperfections of the plaster against his skin.

  He wonders what has become of the boy – perhaps he’s dead? He doesn’t have to be in Iraq to die. One of those buses could be involved in an accident, he could leave the group, wander into a dangerous part of Istanbul – or whatever city he has reached by now. Oliver presses his head against the wall. Even when the vicar first suggested letting the peace protesters use that downstairs room, he had sensed pain stalking him. Time passes – minutes, hours? Time is only a construct in men’s minds. All that will eve
r happen has already happened and will keep happening forever now. Perhaps she’s gone home? But no, he hears footsteps on the stairs. Then an insistent knocking. At the door, he steadies himself before he pulls back that redundant bolt.

  She looks quite different – no business suit or high-heeled shoes. Instead, a knee-length blue coat, a pale blue cotton shirt, jeans, hair which is tangled and wet. She smells of something sweet and expensive – a hint of lemon, or perhaps lime? Shivering, she stands with her arms wrapped around her. I need you to help me, she says. She swallows and pushes her damp hair out of her eyes. As though illuminated by a sudden flicker of white light, he sees her hand – the skin sand-coloured and smooth. His heart stumbles and then rushes on.

  Have you heard from him? Oliver asks.

  No – yes. Just an email which came – but that was over a week ago. And now they’re at the border – they may even have crossed. I don’t know.

  So they will go in?

  Yes, I think so. There are all these messages going around from the other relatives but still no one actually knows. Apparently they’re likely to have all communications equipment confiscated at the border.

  You better come in, he says.

  She steps into the room, her eyes picking out Grace’s vases. He should have hidden them away somewhere. He’s never invited anyone into this room before. It’s achingly cold, he realises, although he hadn’t noticed before. He gestures to a straight-backed chair which is close to the broken gas fire. He moves the only other chair and sits opposite her. Her face might once have been attractive but it’s been obscured by so many layers of want and disappointment that he can’t see who she really is at all. Her wet hair drips onto the shoulders of her coat, stains her shirt with drops of darker blue.

  She’s staring around her at the white plastic shelves and a former tenant’s attempt at a paint effect that might once have suggested marble but now looks merely grubby. The strip of beige carpet, marked by the last tenant’s furniture, and the vacant curtain rails present themselves for his consideration as they’ve never done before. A faint and persistent buzzing comes from somewhere – perhaps the fridge or a fly trapped somewhere? He waits, confident that silence will prove dangerous.

  Her eyes return to the vases on top of the cupboard. They’re not large but they dominate the room. The colours vary – indigo, sea green, blue-purple. The shapes are organic. Inside the glass – so small that she cannot see – tiny bubbles float and glitter, held in stillness. As she tilts her head, the light on them changes, figures appear dancing in their shadows. For a moment he shuts his eyes and sees Grace, as she was when he first saw her. Eight years old. The cleanly drawn jawline and the swing of her strawberry-blonde hair. Her head turned away from him, she sits in the pew in front of him in the church of St Mark’s, Falmouth.

  The Gulf War, Lara says. You know, in 1991. You remember that British soldier they took hostage. His photograph was all over the papers. Well, they never said what was actually done to him, did they? That was never revealed, was it? She stops to catch her breath. I need to find a way of getting him back. I need you to help me.

  Of course, I’ll do anything I can.

  I know you can help me. She holds out those indecently smooth hands. You can pray – or whatever you do.

  I don’t understand, Oliver says, although he understands only too well.

  Please, she says. I know that you can bring him back.

  He shakes his head, looks away from her. I don’t know what you’ve been told but none of it is true.

  She says nothing but her hands are still stretched out towards him. He shuts his eyes for a moment, as he does when he sees The Dying, hopes that when he opens them she might have gone. But she remains solidly there, absolutely present, drips of water still seeping into her pale blue shirt, her hands innocent in her lap.

  You make a mistake. I’m sorry about your son but there is nothing I can do.

  She is deflated, shrugs her shoulders stiffly, stares down at her fingers. He sees how alone she is. People like her, with money and good taste and family living all around them, are often lonely. She stands up, shrugs, picks up her bag. I’m sorry, she says. I’m upset, I shouldn’t have come, I’m sorry.

  Quietly she starts to cry. She’s a woman who isn’t used to crying and the sound is quiet and strangled, tight with shame. She is ripe, overdue. Her despair touches against his own. He feels angry that temptation has been placed so squarely in his path. This isn’t a man walking out between two parked cars or a phantom dangling from a windowsill. It isn’t a woman lying on the tarmac at the side of a motorway bleeding to death. This is easy, very easy.

  Her sobbing is pitiful. She seems to have shrunk. He has to take away her despair before it raises his own to an unmanageable level. What he can bear for himself, he cannot bear for others. She turns to look back at him and he sees the yearning in her eyes. Of course, she thinks that it’s all high drama, a mumbled incantation, a whiff of smoke, a fizz of electricity, a miracle, but usually it’s invisible, subtle, impossible to quantify. A subtle and silent switch that flicks somewhere. You can feel your way to it, just by concentrating, listening. It’s happening now and he isn’t in control. He hates the fact that it’s so random, fickle. The captain is back at the helm of the ship, at least for this moment. Just let the process unfold.

  I’m sorry, he says. I didn’t mean to be unkind. Please, sit down.

  She sits down again awkwardly, wiping tears from her eyes.

  You know in his letter he said – I want to exist. That’s what he said. But nobody has to go to Iraq in order to exist.

  She catches a sob in her throat, wipes at her eyes again.

  You know, he’s always said that none of it has anything to do with not having a father but it must have something to do with that. I mean, his father abandoned me when I was seven weeks pregnant and never wanted to see him. That must have had its effect but he never wanted to talk about any of that. And now it’s too late.

  Oliver is fascinated – perhaps even a little envious – of how absolutely self-centred she is. For her the war in Iraq is about what happened to her twenty years ago. But he must push these thoughts aside, concentrate.

  No, he says. No. It’s not too late. It’s never too late. That’s the opportunity that you’re being offered here – the chance to have a different relationship with your son. This isn’t a random event – nothing is. There are reasons why this has happened.

  Punishment? I suppose that’s what it is. I mean, that’s what people like you believe and I’ve never accepted that but now… I was only an averagely bad mother.

  One mustn’t be scared of confrontation. Conflict and healing aren’t opposites but lie close together. I don’t believe in punishment, he says. But I do think you may be being offered a possibility, an opportunity to understand something. And it might take twenty years for you to understand it but you will understand it if you want to. You need to find some meaning in this. That’s the only thing you can do. That’s the only way you’ll cope.

  He dislikes himself for saying this because he doesn’t believe it. He’s selling her a line. But what else is one to do with the despairing? One shouldn’t underestimate the value of cliché in times of disaster.

  But I don’t know where to start, she says.

  Maybe begin by doing nothing. By making some time – see what comes along.

  I can’t do nothing. I work full time. I’ve always had to work full time just so I could do the best for Jay.

  I can see how difficult that must be, he says. These words, he has discovered over the years, are often all one needs to say. Empathy, that’s what he talked to the boy about. Another cliché he questions – but sometimes, sometimes, the mere fact of being understood can heal.

  You know I don’t believe in God or prayer, she says. And yet now I find myself praying all the time. And endlessly making bargains with God. I keep asking – what do you want? What do I have to do? Anything, anything for him
just to come back safe.

  Oliver is familiar with this talk about God, about bargains. People always fall back on that, even people who have no religious education, no faith. Deep in us all, imprinted there from the beginning, is the idea that if we are good then we will be rewarded. Even in this secular age, it’s a language people understand. He doesn’t bother to argue with her. If it’s going to help her get through the day then what does it matter? He had thought her stupid and shallow. Now he realises that although she may be shallow, she isn’t stupid.

  As I said before, I think it might just be a question of a bit of quiet.

  I know what you’re saying. But I just don’t have any support. My mother and father. They don’t understand. All my mother cares about is the first night of some play. And my job, it’s the one thing I have which is mine. It’s me, it’s who I am.

  But Oliver knows that soon she will break – maybe not now, maybe not in the way that he expects – but it will happen. It’s already happening. When he looks at her now, she’s quite different. Something has dropped away from her. The layers of want and disappointment are breaking up so that her face is now, distantly, visible. He doesn’t want this power over her. He should have left well alone. If someone is desperate then you can get them to believe absolutely anything. As he looks at her, and sees how she’s changed, he’s frightened for her.

  I must go, she says. I suppose that the only thing I can hope for now is that there won’t be a war. The peace protesters may be my best hope. Thank you.

  That’s quite all right.

  Her eyes move up to the vases again.

  They’re beautiful – really extraordinary.

  Yes.

  Do you mind me asking where they came from?

  They were made by my wife – Grace.

  Even now he finds it improbable that the word wife should be used in relation to Grace. The fact of her being married had always been ridiculous.