Another Kind of Cinderella and Other Stories Page 9

  ‘One day, about this time of year, they leave my father with the next-door neighbour, and go off for the day downriver on a punt. Maybe some kind of celebration – birthday or wedding anniversary. Maybe some sort of patch-up in the place they’d been so happy before they married. Next thing, Ellen’s drowned, Jack’s taken off for questioning. He swore it was an accident. They’d had a good day, he said, but admitted he’d had too much to drink. His story was they were bounding about in the punt and it had tipped up. Ellen fell over the side – funny story, that, when you think how heavy a punt is. Ellen gets trapped beneath it, can’t swim, can she? And those long skirts. You can picture it, her struggle. Jack says he tries to save her, but then he’s confused with drink, isn’t he? Doesn’t try bloody hard enough, is what the family think. He brings her body up, though, dumps it on the bank, gives her the kiss of life, and that’s the last kiss he ever gives her. Big trial, all over the papers. People round here still remember the Williams case. Any rate, he gets off. Scot-free. Well, no witnesses, no evidence. Case over: my father gets adopted by a cousin, the lock keeper here: that’s how I came into the job. He and Jack never speak again, and I was never allowed to set eyes on Jack. By all accounts he was a nasty piece of work behind the sweet talk, and the funny thing is, he did end up in a college. I forget which one, some job in the kitchens.’ Mr Williams paused. ‘So I can’t help you more than that. That’s the story of my grandmother Ellen. I bet your dress was pretty . . . she had an eye for nice things, my gran. Sad ending, really. Moral is, as my wife Jean says, you shouldn’t say yes when you mean no, however hard you’re pressed.’

  Isabel left soon after the story ended, apologising for the length of her stay. His wife did not appear again, though Isabel could hear sounds from the kitchen. Outside, butterflies lay spread-eagled on the front path. Isabel guided her bicycle between them, the sun heavy on her bare arms. She began the long ride back to Oxford slowly, for the machine was old and cumbersome, and the warmth of the afternoon sapped her strength.

  Jacques’ declaration of love spurred a slight change in his pattern of invitations. No more teas at Browns were suggested but, the evening after Isabel’s visit to Mr Williams, he invited her there for dinner. They ate gravadlax and ravioli and Jacques asked Isabel, in his naturally formal way, if she would now go out with him. Such were his feelings, he said, he could not imagine any week, any day, without her. He loved her.

  Isabel did not answer for a long time. Then she said, ‘I think we should just remain friends, nothing formal. For the time being, anyway.’

  Jacques’ mouth tightened and a wayward shadow ran over his face.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I’ve been very careful to take things at your pace. Not to alarm you, not to ask you too soon for any kind of commitment.’

  ‘I know you have, and I appreciate that. I’m afraid I can’t explain my reluctance . . . It’s just a feeling, an instinct, that you and I would be wrong.’ She knew there was no possibility of trying to explain to Jacques the signs, the reasons, that caused her to hesitate to take up his offer. He would observe once again that she was crazed from too much work, and suffered from a fevered imagination.

  Jacques laughed.

  ‘While girls less conscientious than you are flayed by love affairs, two years hard study with no light relief has left you haunted by unreal things, visions, illusions fostered by an exhausted mind. The fact is, you’re simply tired.’

  Was that the truth of it?

  He sounded arrogant in his conviction. He patted her hand.

  ‘It’s not that.’ Isabel tried to be patient. ‘Honestly. I’m sorry.’

  Jacques laughed again, this time a shallow laugh.

  ‘You may think you can get rid of me that easily,’ he said. ‘But I’ve waited a long time for the right girl. I’m not going to give up. What do you want – a proposal of marriage? I’d be happy with that. Would that convince you of my love? Will you marry me when you come down next year?’

  Isabel, like someone drowning, watched the remembrances unfurl: their first meeting in New College gardens, their first picnic, so many pleasant teas at this very table, Jacques’ admirable restraint that exactly matched her own. She pondered, too, on the realisation of her secret love for him, a love still undeclared. Was she a fool to resist, or should she take heed of the tragic Ellen and the strangely familiar Jack?

  Jacques could not quite conceal his impatience. ‘What is your answer?’ he asked.

  ‘The answer is no, Jacques,’ she said at last. ‘I can’t marry you.’

  Isabel was aware that the words, even as she said them, did not belong to her. Her refusal of his first proposal was merely an echo, a reflection in time.

  Jacques smiled quickly, as if not to alarm her.

  ‘I shall ask you again,’ he said, as she knew he would.

  To Re-Arrange a Room

  Robert woke first. He glanced at Lisa. Tawny hair, slightly troubled look, even in sleep. He wondered if, when Sarah was back this time tomorrow, the image of Lisa would remain imprinted on the pillow, superimposed on reality.

  He knew she had had a disturbed night. She had cried after he had made love to her, and promised it would be the last time he would see her weeping. Then she had turned away from him, restless. After a while, she had said ‘Robert?’, very quietly, and he had feigned sleep. He was exhausted by their interminable arguments – some calm, some whipped into the slashing words of anguished souls – while they tried to resolve the predicament that had suddenly (suddenly?) appeared six months ago. He did not want to spend their last night in further pointless discussion. There was nothing more to say. It was the end.

  ‘Robert? In exactly five minutes I shall get up.’ Lisa managed a smile. Robert touched her cheek. He understood he had five minutes in which he could change his mind, explode their decision. If he pulled her towards him, she could stay for ever.

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  He tried for a neutral tone – should have been easy enough, a single word. But it acted upon her like a gunshot. In a second, she was leaping from the bed, cold air splicing the warm scattering of sheets. In one long, continuous movement, she pulled on her jeans and jersey, snapped her hair back into a band, produced her severe, efficient morning face.

  ‘Packing up won’t take me long,’ she said.

  In the huge room that was both their kitchen and sitting-room, Robert poured himself coffee, sat down at the table. Helping her was beyond him.

  ‘There’s plenty of time,’ he said. In fact, there was not. Sarah had insisted on arriving at two.

  ‘How much?’ The depth of Lisa’s desperation sang out in the short question. Robert could not tell her she must be finished in an hour, if he was to re-arrange the room before Sarah’s arrival. He watched Lisa rip Indian shawls from the sofa. She had put them there the first week she moved in, to hide Sarah’s ‘hideous’ brown corduroy cover. Robert had found them enchanting. When they made love on the sofa, which they often did, they could hear the tinkling of small silver bells sewn to the shawls’ fringes.

  Lisa flung them into an empty box, where they expired with a few muted chimes. She gathered cushions, brightly coloured, vaguely ethnic. Some were embroidered with squares of glass mirror, angry eyes in the light of the February morning. Lisa kept back one to hug to herself.

  ‘Still smells of the sea,’ she said.

  They had stopped in an east coast seaside town. Waiting for a shower to pass, they had sheltered in a gift shop, found it among all the ugly things. When the sky cleared, and a white sun came out, they took it to the beach. They spread their macks on wet sand, laid their heads on the cushion and waited till the incoming tide reached their feet.

  ‘Sea lingers,’ said Robert. He could see tide marks on the silk. His hand was shaking.

  Lisa stretched up for the picture above the fireplace: sentimental watercolour of Edinburgh Castle. They had come across it in a shop behind Princes Street – Robert had slip
ped out of his conference on World Pollution to join Lisa for lunch. Later that afternoon, silent in front of Van Gogh’s turbulent Olive Trees in the National Gallery of Scotland, she had cried out that he had never told her he loved her. Robert, startled, though they were alone in the gallery, told her to keep her voice down.

  ‘Why,’ she had cried, no quieter, not caring. ‘Why’ve you never told me?’

  Robert knew his helpless shrug appeared callous. It wasn’t the place to explain.

  ‘When you know it’s the truth, what need?’ he offered.

  ‘That’s not good enough.’

  ‘I’m not a man of declarations, you know that. I try to act what I feel.’

  ‘Women need declarations. At least, I do.’

  ‘God, you do. I’m sorry I fail you there.’ He gave her his handkerchief, kissed her wet cheek. It had been her first accusation. Their first row. After that, he often observed she tried to contain herself. But she could not stop asking the question.

  Eventually, he did bring himself to say the words, in response to the hundredth time of asking. But it was too late. It was no good. Obliging with a response was not the same as a spontaneous declaration, Lisa screamed, just when he thought she would be pleased. He began to lose patience. From that moment, the fragile structure of their affair began to flounder.

  She was swiping things from the shelves – ornaments, jars, postcards from mutual friends – throwing them into an empty box, careless of their fate as china and glass clashed against the cardboard. Then it was books, her books. Gaps left in the shelves, boxes full. The room stripped of all her things. Unrecognisable. Robert looked about, horrified.

  ‘What about them?’ He glanced at the curtains. Lisa had made them herself, cream linen. She had spent many evenings, at the beginning, sewing – saving money, she said, as her machine buzzed away. When she hung them, a veil of summer sunlight filtered through the folds. At night, the moon diffused itself through the loose weave of the material, making the room a shadow-cave.

  ‘Can’t take them. Much too big for my flat. Burn them, why not? Keep them, even?’ She laughed nastily. ‘Can you help me with the boxes?’

  Why had he not asked her to be his wife? Why could he not have faced the whole palaver of divorce, Sarah’s anger, Sarah’s hurt? And spent the rest of his life with this wild, brave, sweet creature whose love for him had never been in any doubt?

  ‘Course I’ll help you with the boxes.’

  ‘Then I’ll be gone.’

  They loaded her small car. She faced him. Snapped off the band from her hair so that it fell about like it did in the evenings. Thin legs parted, arms folded, defiant.

  ‘I’ve left the snowdrops,’ she said. ‘She’ll wonder about them, but that’s not my problem. You could throw them away, too.’

  Robert shrugged. He did not like to speak.

  ‘Well: for three years – thanks.’ Lisa shivered. ‘At least I’m glad it’s February. Most years, after February, things get better.’ She gave a fractional smile. They kissed. She drove away.

  Robert decided to do all that had to be done very fast. The short time to himself between the departure of his mistress and the return of his wife was inadequate for any internal adjustment. But Sarah had been insistent. (Years ago, he had loved her in her most adamant moods.) It was two o’clock or never, she said. Her lease on the rented flat was up, she had to be out. She had no intention of wandering the streets while her husband, apparently agreeable to her return, indulged in solitary reflection.

  It was an awkward job, taking down Lisa’s curtains. Robert stuffed them into plastic bags and hid them in the shed. Even more difficult was putting up the old ones. He shook them out, heaved them up the step ladder. Fat blue roses entwined with sour green leaves, clinging to orange trellis. How many evenings had Sarah sat in front of them, garish floral halo behind her, listing reasons why he was a useless husband?

  They were in place at last. Terrible. Drawn back as far as they would go, their bunchiness further darkened the room. Robert found the lime and blue velvet cushions, so carefully matched in bad taste, which used to stand on the brown sofa. Sarah liked them to be on tiptoe, Robert remembered: on one point, so that they made diamond shapes against the back of the sofa. He tried. They fell over. He couldn’t try again.

  What else? The shelf above the fireplace looked naked. He reinstated his father-in-law’s picture of a prim galleon on frilly sea. Remembered the candlesticks. Lisa had moved them to the table for use, she sensibly said. But had never cleaned them, so their pewter had turned to luminescent black. Robert dumped them at each end of the mantelpiece. He threw away the stumps of candles, finally burnt out last night. Searching for new ones, he came across the photograph. He looked at it. He and Sarah in Paris, late Fifties. Their first illicit weekend. Taken by a student who had joined them for a drink in a café. They had bought the whole film from him, given him a few francs besides.

  ‘God,’ Lisa had scoffed when she found it one day, ‘your clothes. You looked old then.’ She had tossed the photograph away, no questions, not interested. You look even older now, she meant. Twenty years older than her – and don’t forget it. At the time of the photograph, he and Sarah had felt very young. The solemn handbag was no indication of passionate spirits. His love for her had been on a different plane . . . still was.

  He remembered that the day Lisa had sneered at the photograph was the day he began to wonder.

  It was all done by twelve. Robert sat in the armchair pushed back from the fireplace, as Sarah liked it. Shorn of its crumpled shawls, scraped down to the skin of its beige brocade, it felt skinned naked, alien. He would have to ask her for a few changes . . . above all, the curtains.

  His hands and feet were frozen. This time last year it had snowed. Lisa and he had walked through the Savernake Forest, snow-quiet, muffled breaking of twigs, arguing about the power of the past – its habit of intrusion. Oh God, what have I done?

  Into the silence bit the quiet, menacing crunch of his wife’s key. She had refused to give it back – said it would be symbolic of giving up hope. He had thought it impolite to change the locks. She could be trusted not to come round.

  He stood, turned. Sarah’s eyes were crinkled into a wonderful smile. Perhaps she had just been out shopping, never been away.

  ‘Everything’s the same,’ she said, looking round.

  He saw at once in her ageing body and lively face the woman he had always loved most, despite everything. He went towards her, hoping, dreading. His own smile, unexpectedly easy, responded to her innocence.

  They kissed. In the tangle of guilt about her, about Lisa, only one thought occurred: you could spin a whole axis in a single morning. To re-arrange a life, you simply had to rearrange a room.

  Sarah, drawing back from him, had observed the Paris photograph on the mantelpiece.

  ‘My worst nightmare,’ she said, ‘was that you might have changed things. But you haven’t. Once we’ve had the curtains cleaned, you’ll never know I’ve been away.’

  ‘May it be that easy,’ Robert said. Her busy eyes had now reached the table, and Lisa’s bowl of snowdrops.

  Alternative Behaviour

  Where did we go wrong? She’ll stomp into the kitchen, Meriel, stub out her roll-up cigarette in a saucer though there’s always an ashtray provided. She’ll look in the fridge, slam shut its door with a snort of disapproval no matter how much it holds; she’ll push back my cooking things and sit herself on the table and swing her skinny legs weighed down with those horrible great boots. Even before she’s said a word, Meriel brings menace into the house. She shatters our peace. In truth, we’re afraid of her.

  What should we have done differently?

  We’ve tossed the question between us so many times that it’s become stale. We can find no solutions and we can’t go on asking ourselves, says Douglas, quite rightly. We can’t go on torturing ourselves, condemning ourselves, battering ourselves with guilt, exhausting ourselves with
questions that have no answer. Our firm intention is just to accept, to question no more. But the haunting remains, the wondering. The constant regret.

  Sometimes, when we slip into theories without meaning to, I suggest to Douglas it’s because we’re so dull. A dull, once happy couple. Reluctantly, he agrees. He doesn’t like to think we’re dull. To him – to me, we’re not. Until all this, we have had and appreciated our small pleasures in life: security, just enough money, solid house with a nice bit of garden for the roses that are Douglas’s hobby, holiday abroad most years, quietly in the same hotel near the Pyrenees where we can walk and gather wild flowers.

  By others’ standards, our ambitions have been minor ones and we feel no smugness in having achieved them to some extent – Doug a partner in the firm of solicitors after only twenty years. He specialises in divorce and never ceases to be amazed by other people’s unhappy marriages. Over the years he’s come back with stories of cruelty and violence and calculated unkindness you’d scarcely believe. But he enjoys the job. He’s good at it, plainly. Also, his golf has improved as well as his roses – I doubt you’d see a better show of them anywhere in Berkshire.

  As for me: well, all I’ve ever wanted was a quiet life, running the house efficiently, cooking for the family, enjoying the Bridge Club once a week. When Meriel went to weekly boarding school, I admit I did indulge in a few evening classes in pottery, History of Art and botany – things I’d had no chance to study at school and had always hankered after. But whenever Meriel was at home I’d put them to one side. I’d make sure my reading was finished by the time she was back so that I could listen to all her news over a slice of Victoria sponge, drive her over to her friend Lily – whatever she wanted. In all fairness, I don’t think she could ever accuse me of neglect, though I suppose, yes, our life to her might seem unexciting. Dead, she called it, in one of her rages.