Monday Lunch in Fairyland and Other Stories Page 8

  ‘Sure you won’t come, Muriel?’ he asked. She shook her head. ‘Well, whatever you like. I’ll pop in again some time soon, anyhow. Drop by, you know. Next week, perhaps.’

  Janice tugged at him again.

  ‘Honestly, all this unpleasant atmosphere just because I mentioned an omelette and a couple of tangos,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t credit it.’

  Muriel put her hand to the mantelpiece, held on to it.

  ‘That would be nice,’ she said to Gerald. ‘Please do.’

  ‘Any evening suit?’

  Muriel regarded him, smaller than Janice, kind eyes, thin frame weighted down one side by Janice’s arm. Janice herself held her head high, cigarette stuck in her plum mouth. Smoke blurred the triumph in her eyes. Muriel wondered. She sighed.

  ‘Not Tuesdays or Thursdays,’ she said quietly, to Gerald. ‘You see Thursdays Jan – Janice Sullivan, my friend – Thursdays she comes here. Tuesdays I go to her house. Twice a week, every week, since the war, since Bob died.’ She saw Gerald nod and let himself be led away by Janice. ‘Twice a week . . . just quiet evenings, we have, talking over old times.’ She paused. ‘So Tuesday it’ll be my turn to go over to Jan, you see . . .’

  But by then Gerald and Janice were out of hearing, gone. Muriel realised her explanation was left only for Bob, in his oval frame. She replaced the photograph carefully on the mantelpiece, and looked at it, and wondered again. It took her quite some moments to realise how silly she was being – to scoff at her doubts, and to brace herself to the task of her albums again, where she could be alone with Bob and remember, as she looked at the hundreds of photographs to prove it, the happiness of their marriage.

  Monday Lunch in Fairyland

  She met him at a party somewhere. Noticed the decayed state of his leather jacket before his face. Neither heard the other’s name in the mumbling that goes for an English introduction. But they danced. When the music came to an end he said he was K. Beauford. The K stood for Kestrel. He liked it, but everyone else thought it so pretentious that he had long ago given up using it. Except his mother. And her name? Anna. O-oh, he said, giving the word two syllables. She thought, from his smile, it would have been nice to talk to him. But the music smashed into the room again, and he disappeared.

  ‘Saw you having quite a dance with K. Beauford,’ said Mark, driving home. They both sat upright in their lumpy marital car. ‘Met him once, years ago, fishing. He kept us supplied with the best white wine I’ve ever drunk. Called something like Annaberg. Never met it since. Cooled it in rock pools. Bloody marvellous.’ He smiled. Fishing memoirs always made him smile. Smiling made his moustache hunch up to brush the keel of his nose. Sometimes this would tickle, and he would push it down with a thick finger.

  ‘O-oh,’ said Anna.

  Breakfast in their London kitchen. Perhaps three weeks later. Feeling, as always, of an indoor storm. Flurry of cornflakes. Thunder of fists on the table. Rain of splattered milk on chairs and floor. Years ago, as lovers, Mark and Anna had calm breakfasts. Years ago they would speak, and gaze, and pour coffee absent mindedly. Now, a child clutched a postcard in a sticky hand. Anna snatched it. For her. Picture of Buckingham Palace. Strange writing. Nineteen days to track you down, am no detective. Love K. Beauford. Oh, yes. Leather jacket. Pale as milk at the elbows. Fishing with Mark. Mark quite hidden behind The Times. Anna propped the postcard between two mugs on the dresser. If he hadn’t been so deeply into Bernard Levin she might have said something about it.

  ‘Get your coats on,’ she shouted to the children.

  Next card three days later. Buckingham Palace from the air, this time. Would you consider lunch as my reward? Love K. Beauford. Hooting outside of the school-run car. Lost satchels. Running noses. Smudgy kisses. Mark’s baggy morning eyes dull with the promise of a hard day. All gone, suddenly. Alone with the silence of 8.45 a.m. This mess to be cleared before she could begin her own day. No immediate impetus, though. She sat. Dabbed at toast crumbs on the table, letting them prick her finger. Would she consider lunch? Yes, she would consider mere lunch. So innocent an event could not affect the order of her life. She had no wish for anything, ever, to affect the quiet order of her life. Its domestic tides, its familiar routines. Books for intellectual stimulus, flowers for pleasure. Small clinging arms for love, Mark’s good-humoured laugh for companionship. Yearly holidays for adventure, Christmas for excitement. Smug, perhaps, but orderly. Compared with so many, after fifteen years, happy. Untempted by the shoddy delights of extra-marital associations. Those who had vaguely supposed had been severely snubbed. But lunch, just lunch. The smallest of treats. Preceded, if necessary, by a lecture on the lack of future. And of course not a secret. I’m having lunch with K. Beauford, she would say to Mark. If she remembered.

  The quiet of the house, daytime, rose up: bulbous, engulfing, warm. Only to be shattered at four. That clatter of footsteps just as silence could be borne no longer, its peace grown chill. Squealing bell. Rush for television and instant tea. The noise. The telephone.

  ‘I must have caught you at a bad time.’

  ‘Rather. Only by five minutes. Who is it?’

  ‘K. Beauford.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘How about Monday? That lunch.’

  ‘Yes. Why not?’

  ‘La Cuisine, at one.’

  ‘Sorry, I can hardly hear. La Cuisine?’

  ‘At one.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘Bye.’

  She had let the toast burn, felt no concern at the lack of peanut butter. ‘You’re so bloody spoilt, you lot. It’s Marmite or nothing.’ Unfamiliar puzzlement in their eyes. The whole weekend ahead – the smallest one in tears. Oh God, make up for it with an extra long story . . .

  . . . Increase of the size of the Round Pond that Saturday. Mark’s kite entangled maddeningly in the trees. Hours till it was brought down. All absurd, such impatience. Just for lunch. Mark’s hands efficient on her body after his favourite braised celery and coq au vin for Sunday dinner. Things she hadn’t cooked him, come to think of it, for a long time.

  Monday, noon, she thought she looked quite old. Brushed her hair to cover a lot of her face. Wore clothes she hoped might seem like ordinary Monday clothes. Paid for the taxi out of the housekeeping money, disloyalty shaking her hand.

  K. Beauford sat in a distant corner of the restaurant. Its kitchen air. Strings of onions and garlic hanging from the ceiling, like unfinished chandeliers. He stood. Same leather jacket. Deep lines round his smile.

  ‘Hello, hello.’

  ‘Hello.’ Anna sat.

  ‘I thought I’d always send you pictures of Buckingham Palace.’

  ‘I wondered at their significance.’

  ‘No significance. I recommend the watercress mousse.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here, really. I’m not used to lunch. I never go out to lunch. You’re almost a blind date, aren’t you? At my age.’

  ‘Oh, do stop twittering,’ he said.

  Very pale green, the mousse. White wine that tasted of grapes. Trout. Fennel salad. He said he lived far away, by the sea. Hardly ever came to London. Had a wife, mostly absent, to whom he would always remain a husband. So no need for the lecture. Relief. Such relief Anna’s hands sent her hair scattering backwards, revealing all her face.

  ‘At last I can see you,’ he said. ‘Scrutinise.’

  Confused, she told him something of her orderly life. Very brightly. Made it sound desirable. Which it was. The children would be having mince at school now. Mince on Monday, so fish fingers for tea. Never imagining their mother . . . Mark at the Savoy with a chairman. Making an important decision. Never imagining his wife . . .

  In the end she had not told him. Would later. Tonight. K. Beauford was pressing her to pear flan. She was not resisting, liking his laugh. A furry quality. He was telling of his evenings. Alone with his dog. Not a reader, but a maker of complicated model cars for his sons. No, he felt no need to see people. So long as lunch
appeared at one, and dinner at eight. Orderly, too, you see. That was the way to keep going. Invent one’s own discipline to prevent floundering. Protect oneself from intrusion. Plant trees. Visit people’s lives. Resist indulging in explicitness. Catch the train you first intended to catch. Which was in half an hour.

  No word of ever meeting again.

  Orderly life quite intact.

  Goodbye, goodbye.

  Nothing to fear. The children wanting tea. Full of relentless instinct. Mama, why are you wearing that dress? She knew quite well his part of the coast. Yes, darling, now I’ll help you with your Geography. And after Geography, listen to news of Mark’s lunch. Glad you’ve come to that decision as last, darling . . . . No time to reflect. Seas very savage in winter down there. Dinner at eight alone with the dog. Postcard writer. Visitor.

  Eleven days without a signal. Then third picture of Buckingham Palace by the second post. This one from an engraving, 1914. Have discovered the Whitlaws nearby are mutual friends. Possibility of plans? Love K. Beauford.

  Possibility of what plans? The telephone, startling.

  ‘Hello, hello. Are you coming to the Whitlaws?’

  ‘What? I’ve only just got your card. I don’t know what you mean.’ Outside, movement of the one bare tree. In summer its shadows blurred the geometric shadow of the wrought iron gate. Any minute now the car would be drawing up, bearing children.

  ‘When are you coming?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Couldn’t you make next weekend?’

  ‘Mark will be in Brussels . . .’

  ‘Someone can look after the children. Surely.’

  The children. There they were. Scrambling out of the car. One school beret falling into the gutter. Anna waved, smiling, through the window.

  ‘What? Next weekend. I must go, I’m afraid. The bell.’

  ‘I’ll be expecting you.’

  Apologies for keeping them waiting at the door. Exclamations at a cut knee. The arrogance of the man! The ridiculous nature of the summons. Of course, it was out of the question. Quite impossible. Where would the children go? She buttered their crumpets, full of love.

  Mark, with the enthusiasm of the innocent, thought her idea a very good one. Nice to see the Whitlaws again and he loathed it down there. The children so pleased about going to their aunt. Plans falling into place with horrifying ease. For what?

  On the long train journey she wondered. Just another lunch, perhaps. A long way to go for just another lunch. But no use speculating. In effort to remain calm, heart strangely beating.

  The Whitlaws made no mention of K. Beauford for twenty-four hours. They were pleased to see her, pressed on her more food and wine than she cared for. The children rang her. She rang the children. Snow on the moors, forsythia in the courtyard. Mark rang from Brussels. Marvellous sun there, he said. But progress slow. Not back till Tuesday. Why had she come all this way to be without her children? Then it was announced: K. Beauford was coming to lunch on Sunday. Hadn’t they met somewhere? He could give her a lift to the train.

  Sunday was dour. Unbroken cloud. Anna pulled her belt into its tightest notch. She felt thin.

  K. Beauford was punctual. Talkative. A bit wicked.

  ‘Having discovered we all knew you, the next thing I hear is you’re down here. It’s an awfully long way to come for a weekend. Isn’t it?’

  ‘She’d come any distance to stay with us,’ said the Whitlaws.

  They left after tea. Late sun through a flurry of snow. Drove over the moors. In silence. Then K. Beauford said,

  ‘There are all sorts of fairyland, you know.’

  His car skidded through the thick gravel of his drive. In the snowy dusk, giant clusters of weeping copper beech trees. Indeterminate parklands.

  He led her through outer and inner halls. Dark pictures. A room whose crimson silk walls twitched with firelight. She sank on to a broken sofa. Its stuff scratched the back of her knees. He pulled the curtains against huge panes of black snowflakes. Muffling a church bell.

  ‘We can have dinner and I’ll put you on the sleeper,’ he said.

  They explored the cellars. Gloomy stone passages veining the foundations of the house. Hundreds of bottles of orderly wine, dust obscuring the labels. Strong rooms of polished silver chalices. Crates of yellowing books, first editions waiting to be sorted. Kitchen tall as a barn. Old-fashioned black range. Mixing bowl and pile of chopped onion on the huge wooden table only signs of culinary activity.

  Dinner at eight. The gong as the hall clock struck. Two places at the far end of a long white-clothed table. A silvery butler who poured Mark’s remembered wine: Annaberg.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ Anna said.

  ‘Three postcards then a visit. That seems to me the proper order of things.’

  ‘Do you eat like this, every night, by yourself?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The table laid like this? The candles?’

  ‘How else?’

  ‘It seems so odd, these days.’

  ‘Have to keep things going. There’s not much of it left.’

  ‘Kestrel Beauford,’ she said. As if trying out the name for the first time.

  ‘Silly whim of my mother’s, really.’

  ‘K. Beauford. I don’t know what I’m doing here.’

  ‘You keep saying that. I suppose you ought to be at home with your husband and children.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re not.’

  They drank port by the fire. Wine red against fire red against red of silk walls. All reds confused. Billy Paul singing.

  Me and Mrs Jones

  Have a thing going on . . .

  One hour, she was thinking, till the train.

  ‘Alternatively,’ said K. Beauford, ‘you could go back in the morning. Or the afternoon. Or tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Quite impossible.’

  But there she was making telephone calls. Very calmly. To Brussels. Quite right, you stay on, said Mark. To the aunt. Oh, very well, she said. No, it won’t be much of a bother. The children are quite happy. Elaborate stories. Everyone believing her. Guilt dulled by wine. Wine making the stories of her life quite funny, so that K. Beauford was laughing in his endearing fashion. Hand stretched out towards her. But at rest on the crumpled sofa. As if frozen on its journey.

  Very late he showed her to a cold room. Switched on the one-bar fire. Double bed with icy sheets.

  ‘Only three postcards and here I am. What am I doing here?’ she said.

  ‘Do stop asking that question,’ he said. ‘You can go tomorrow on the five-thirty. I promise.’

  ‘You promise?’ she said.

  ‘I absolutely promise, my love,’ he said.

  Five-thirty. On the train in the stuffy carriage. She quivered. Next to her, cartons of farm eggs, pots of Devonshire cream. He had given them to her. Saying: for the children’s breakfast. She would explain they were from the Whitlaws. The train jerked, moved forward. Dark bare platform where moments ago K. Beauford had been kissing her goodbye. I shan’t wait and wave, he said. And had not mentioned when, or if, they would meet again.

  Oh my love that wet and shining winter beach the sandpipers pecking at the frills of sea you said they were sandpipers I didn’t know and you said quietly now if we go quietly we won’t disturb them and we came so close before they flew away a small bush of wings in the grey sky urged higher by their own cries of alarm and me with my arm through yours absurdly bulbous in a puffed anorak of dreadful tangerine so out of place I said on this empty shore shouting against the wind so you could hear and laugh and feeling you shorten your step to coincide with mine. . . .

  All well at home. All pleased with eggs and cream. Stories of the aunt. Stories of Brussels. Scarcely a thought for her weekend. Thank God. For it hung, indelible, a double image upon her daily life. Which had resumed its normality so fast. Only, within, the orderliness had flown.

  Impatiently she waited. Aftern
oons were worst. Then, in the silent house, the churning mind that nothing could divert. Fear of going out for fear of missing the telephone. The pacing, the trying of all the old familiar chairs. Mind a visible thing in the mind’s eye: a yellowing ivory ball as carved by the Chinese. Intertwined rats of miniscule teeth and savage eyes. Twisting, turning, never still, gnawing at the memories. You’re very thin darling, Mark said. Never usually noticed such things. And you’re restless at night. Can’t sleep? What’s the matter? Concerned eyes. Oh don’t be so silly, she said, hating his hands. And in the morning shouting at the children.

  Because you are far away by the sea in the private ocean of your park knowing that lunch is at one and dinner at eight and your dog will sleep by your bedroom fire and you plan the planting of more melancholy trees and spray silver paint on to plastic motorbikes and maybe sometimes think of me though you didn’t say you would you said in fairyland the figure is there all the time unconsciously conscious if you like you said K. Beauford why don’t you ring me?

  Complications of infidelity unimaginable to those who have not experienced them. He rang too late one evening: Mark’s car drawing up outside. So she sounded terse, bright. Yes, tomorrow, three o’clock. No, not here. Not possible. She would meet him somewhere. Put off the dentist and the meeting with the headmaster. Mark asking for ice. Nothing, nothing of the days that had passed. I’m coming, Mark, with ice: her voice almost a scream.

  And terrible hours, fighting for calm. Till she met him in a dark wine bar in the Kings Road. His jacket black with rain. They watched its streamers liquidise the windows. Stabbed out cigarettes in a plastic ashtray. Arms touching, and their thighs.