Irene dressed for breakfast. She had known for years that Fin disliked her habit of coming down in one of her many flamboyant dressing gowns, particularly when she left the sash trailing behind her and the dressing gown itself hanging open over her nightdress, but until she had understood something of her part in the war they had been fighting, she had never been prepared to change her habits to placate him.
She put on black trousers and a well-ironed natural linen overshirt, did up her hair, and went downstairs to lay the kitchen table, feeling remarkably pleased with her own generosity. In the time it took Fin to get up and follow her to the kitchen, she had made coffee and toast and boiled his egg. He registered her unusual tidiness with raised eyebrows, but he said nothing, which was disappointing if not altogether unexpected.
She watched as he began to perform his usual morning rituals, folding The Times open at the Law Reports and placing it to his left. Then he tapped around the shell of his egg with the blade of his knife as he always did before lifting off the top in a neat hemisphere and laying it upturned on his plate to the right of the egg cup. He straightened the handle of his coffee cup so that it was precisely at right angles to his knife and waited for her to pour his coffee.
Irene knew every move he would make and in what order, but instead of the usual boiling irritation at his predictability, his ludicrous routines, his prissy, pernickety movements, she felt something like pleasure in the familiarity of it all.
Leaving him to his chosen silence, she fetched the post from the hall and sorted it into two piles. In hers was an envelope addressed in Jane’s writing, which she opened as soon as she had sat down again.
Hi, Mum, Thanks for your letter and the cheque. It saved the day. I’m glad to know that the play’s going well. My tutor is starting to talk optimistically about the chances for my degree, but we’ll have to see. I’d quite like to wipe Ivo’s eye with one as good as his, I must say.
On which score, I think I’d better work through the summer instead of trying to get a job or go abroad. Would you mind if I bummed around in Herbert Crescent? Tell me some time. If you would mind I can make other arrangements, but I’d need notice for that, so the sooner I know the better.
She had signed the letter ‘J’ without any mention of love or anything else. Even so Irene felt warmed by it. The tone was offhand in Jane’s usual way, even rather graceless, but the whole letter was quite different from her usual sharply phrased notes. Still looking down at it, Irene reached for the coffee pot and accidentally spilled a little on Fin’s newspaper as she refilled her cup.
‘Really, Irene.’ He might have been talking to a boisterous puppy, she thought in a surge of familiar fury that she could not prevent. ‘Must you always make such a mess?’
‘Sorry,’ she said with all the casualness she knew he hated. Looking up to see what it was she had done, she added: ‘I wasn’t looking. I’ve had a letter from Jane.’
‘So I see.’ Fin was removing the last of the springy-looking white from the bottom of the eggshell.
‘She seems happier now and much friendlier than usual.’
‘Well, that’s hardly surprising since you’ve been sending her money behind my back.’ Fin’s voice had cooled and hardened like cracking, overcooked toffee. ‘I thought I had specifically asked you to refrain from that.’
‘You know you did,’ said Irene. She felt as though she might have to hold on to her throat in order to stop hotly furious words from erupting all over him, and she was determined not to let that happen again. Her own kinder feelings towards him had pleased her so much that she wanted to hang on to them for as long as possible. ‘And I sent her only enough to pay a single electricity bill to stop it being cut off.’
‘I sometimes wonder whether you deliberately set about trying to do the very things that will cause me most distress or whether it happens by accident because you’re too insensitive to understand.’
Irene forced herself to wait before speaking. She drank some coffee and then she smiled slowly and she hoped pleasantly.
‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ demanded Fin, crunching his spoon through the empty eggshell that he had been protecting so carefully as he ate.
‘Yes. But I don’t think you can have heard what I said. I told you that I sent her only enough to pay that one bill. It was an important one and your cheque hadn’t covered it. She telephoned one afternoon wanting to speak to you. You were not here and so she told me what she needed and that she needed it by the following day. I therefore sent her seventy-five pounds.’
‘Then where has she suddenly got five hundred from? Don’t lie to me, Irene.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, sighed, and added: ‘That, at least, is something you’ve never sunk to before.’
‘No,’ she agreed, working hard to remember the pleasure her own benevolence had brought her. It was hard to keep any of it in the face of Fin’s unreasonable refusal ever to listen to anything she said to him or take it seriously, but she had to try. ‘I don’t lie,’ she went on. ‘And I’m not lying about this. I have wanted to send Jane a substantial amount of cash because, although I agree with you that she must learn to control money and not be controlled by it, I don’t think you’re giving her enough; but I said I wouldn’t and I didn’t.’
Irene paused and wondered how long she could hold her fire if Fin started sniping at her again. At the sight of his derisive, disbelieving expression, she laughed unpleasantly and gave in to temptation at last.
‘You of all people ought to know that I haven’t got anything like five hundred pounds that I wouldn’t have to account for to you.’
Fin glared at her.
‘How do you know she’s got that much anyway?’ Irene asked, looking back at him and seeing no signs of affection at all. All her own gentler feelings, all her plans to achieve peace seemed like weakness again.
Fin opened his mouth to speak and she thought he looked remarkably like a snake as his head swayed on his thin wrinkled neck.
‘She told me so in the letter I got yesterday, taunting me in exactly the tones you’ve just used. When I saw that she had written separately to you, I assumed …’
‘And you thought it fair to make assumptions about my truthfulness on no evidence whatsoever?’ Irene laughed. ‘With all your training in weighing up the merits of a disputed case? You surprise me, Fin.’
Seeing hurt in his eyes, which suddenly looked very like Helena’s, Irene felt a lurch of unexpected but unmistakable distress.
‘You sometimes make it exceedingly hard to be fair, Irene. But I wish …’
He did not tell her what it was he wished. She leaned forward to refill his coffee cup and then pushed the toast rack nearer to him.
‘Fin?’
‘Yes?’ He was not looking at her and the expression on his face told her that he wanted her to think he was bored with the conversation and wished to be left alone with the newspaper.
‘This is all getting very silly. D’you think there is any way in which we could call a truce so that we might perhaps negotiate some kind of permanent peace?’
Fin sighed and assembled one of his other familiar expressions, the one that said: you are so stupid, feckless, untidy and careless, that my life with you is like carrying around bags of lead on my back. His mouth produced rather different words.
‘Irene, what are you talking about?’
‘We’ve been battling with each other for years over the stupidest, most trivial of things. Why don’t we just stop for once and talk about the big ones, the ones that matter, and find out what it is that’s really wrong between us? It would be so much better for the children – not to speak of being less unpleasant for the two of us.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, and there are much more important things to think about than your childish resentment. For one thing, if Jane’s been importuning people outside the family to lend her money we must find out who they are and what she’s said to them, and put a stop to it at once. I shall have to make some discreet enquiries.’
‘Why not just ask her?’ The effort Irene was making to contain the fury Fin’s insult had provoked made her voice sound more contemptuous than she had intended. She added more moderately: ‘Or if you don’t want to, I’ll do it. You have to trust people sometimes, you know, Fin. If you don’t, they will never become trustworthy.’
He wiped his lips fastidiously and dropped his napkin on the table as though it were filthy.
‘I must go,’ he said.
Half wishing that she were saintly enough to ignore the provocation, Irene shrugged and turned away. She had done her best and he had offered nothing in return. She was not prepared to give any more ground.
Almost as soon as he had gone and she was sitting alone amid the wreckage of their breakfast, the telephone rang. She picked up the receiver and heard Helena’s voice, sounding unusually tentative.
‘Oh, I can’t tell you how good it is to hear you,’ Irene said at once. ‘I’d have rung you myself if I hadn’t been afraid of disturbing your work.’
‘Are you all right, Irene?’ said Helena. ‘You don’t sound it.’
‘Not exactly. I got up this morning full of compunction about what I’ve been doing to your father and determined to make up for it. But I made one gigantic mistake. I assumed that if I stopped needling him he’d stop needling me. But it didn’t work. I don’t think he even noticed. He just savaged me for going behind his back to send Jane five hundred pounds. When I said that I hadn’t, he even accused me of lying. Considering that I’d gone out of my way to suppress my maternal instinct to send her everything she wanted because he was so fucking sure he knew best, I feel unutterably furious.’
‘Oh, Irene, I am sorry.’
‘Why? It’s hardly your fault that Fin is so unreasonable.’
‘No,’ said Helena, drawing out the vowel. ‘At least I hope not. But it is my fault that Jane has suddenly got five hundred pounds. It was me who sent it to her.’
‘You? Why? I mean it’s kind of you, but …’
‘I sort of felt guilty in a way. A client had just paid a huge bill and I was feeling flush and thinking about poor Jane being so worried about her bills and probably cold alone up there in the north. So I sent her a cheque. It never occurred to me that I ought to brief you or that Fin would use it as yet another stick to beat you with. It’s almost as though one can’t do anything at all – take any kind of action – without causing trouble.’
‘Helena, calm down,’ said Irene, alarmed by the note of hysteria. ‘It was tiresome to have Fin banging on at me this morning, but it’s not serious.’
‘No? Good. Oh, thank you.’
At the sound of Helena’s jumpy voice, Irene suspected that some new panic was in the making. Past experience told her that it was probably better not to ask questions but to be ready with reassurance if and when it was invited.
‘I suppose my perennial sympathy for you made it all seem worse,’ said Helena, still obviously upset. ‘I’d do anything to stop Fin causing you such trouble, you know.’
‘It’s not your responsibility,’ said Irene at once.
‘What isn’t?’
‘Our war. You shouldn’t feel any obligation to join one side or the other. In fact, you shouldn’t join in at all. It’s not your problem – or your business. Now, what is it I can do for you?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ Helena said unconvincingly. ‘I just wanted to find out how you were and to thank you for your message, the one I found when I got in last night. I was sorry I wasn’t here when you came round. Did you need … ? I mean, was there a problem?’
‘Oh, yes, I did come to Clerkenwell, didn’t I?’ Irene laughed. ‘Sorry. Rather a lot seems to be happening to me just at the moment, but Fin’s idiocy this morning has made me forget nearly everything else. You know, I did take to your Mike.’
‘Did you? I’m glad. He liked you, too, although he said he was surprised by your scruples about talking to him unchaperoned.’
Irene laughed again and felt more like herself.
‘I know you mind about your privacy, Helena, and I didn’t want to be responsible for invading it. But when you feel like letting us meet properly, I’d love to have a chance to get to know him. He looked just the sort of confident, funny, intelligent, generous person we all dream of finding.’ Thinking of the unbridgeable chasm between such a dream and the reality of Fin, she wanted to swear. Instead, she asked at random: ‘What were you up to last night if you weren’t with him?’
‘I was having dinner with my m—with Miranda.’
‘Oh. I didn’t know. I mean, how absurd of me! And how nice for you. I hope you enjoyed it?’ Irene’s voice had become clipped.
‘Not entirely. I find it difficult being with her,’ said Helena frankly. ‘And we hardly ever talk about anything real. We tried yesterday, but the realest thing that got said was when she told me that …’ Helena paused for a moment and then because it was so important added in a rush: ‘That the only hostility she has ever felt towards you was because I love you so much. I’ve never told her that I do, but she can apparently see it written all over me. Look, I’d better get on. I hope today’s rehearsal goes well. ’ Bye.’
‘Helena,’ said Irene urgently, but there was no answer. She sat looking into the silent mouthpiece of the telephone, wishing that she had never grudged Helena either her freedom or her apparently almost perfect lover. Then she remembered the last thing Helena had said and looked at the kitchen clock.
‘Oh, shit!’
If she did not hurry she would be late and that might make Richard think she had been upset by the row they had had. Irene was damned if she was going to let him think his insults had even registered in her brain, let alone troubled her.
Running upstairs for the jacket that went with her canvas trousers, she seized her makeup, banged all the doors shut, shot back down to the kitchen to fling the uneaten toast and Fin’s eggshells into the waste disposal unit, piled the plates in the dishwasher and ran for the front door. Then she thought of something else and took a minute or two more to scribble Fin a note about Helena’s generosity to Jane in case he got home from work first and started making embarrassing telephone calls to friends and relations who might have lent her money. Then, having turned on the burglar alarm, Irene fled the house.
There was a taxi coming from the Knightsbridge Crown Court as she double-locked the front door behind her and she yelled over her shoulder to the driver. He stopped with a shrieking of brakes and waited for her. She gave the address of the church hall, asking him to hurry, and collapsed onto the seat as he drove off. Putting on her makeup in the swaying vehicle was more difficult than she had imagined, but there were enough traffic jams and red lights to let her get most of it on before she arrived at the hall.
Rehearsals that day were something of an anticlimax. Richard greeted her unemotionally and got down to work as soon as the last of the actors had arrived. He spent most of the morning going over and over the same minute parts of a few scenes without achieving any new effects. Irene was surprised to find herself becoming bored as she watched. After lunch, he moved on to the second part of the play, and the atmosphere grew more intense. He showed less and less patience and everyone else became thoroughly tetchy. Actors, even those with the smallest parts, began to question their lines, saying that they were unplayable or sounded false.
Irene found herself having to defend some that she particularly valued and detested the feeling of being unfairly criticized. Eventually she did agree to change a few small passages and sat at the back of the hall writing and rewriting them until the actors were prepared to accept them.
It was not only hard work but also dispiriting. By the time Richard sent the cast home, Irene had an excruciating headache. Even the thought of spending the next few hours with Fin seemed preferable to another moment with the people she had once found so sympathetic, who had turned on her and almost destroyed her faith in the work she had done. She sat in her chair, listening to them all clomping across the hard floor to fetch their bags and calling farewells to each other in voices that sounded shrill with malice. Eventually there was silence again and she leaned down to pick up her own bag.
‘Don’t worry about it so much,’ said Richard. She looked up and saw in his face the first kindness she had been offered all day.
‘I didn’t realize you were still here.’
‘You didn’t really think I was going to leave you feeling like this, did you? I just had to wait until they’d all gone.’
‘Even Bella?’ said Irene before she could stop herself.
‘Even Bella. At this moment your needs are rather more important than any of hers, so I sent her home. Try not to let today get to you, Irene. Everything’s going to be fine, you know.’
‘Today was horrible. I don’t see how …’
‘Just teething troubles,’ Richard said, looking at her with sympathy in the eyes that had seemed hard and critical all day. ‘A new play is always tricky at this stage.’
‘Then how can you bear to go through it so often?’
‘One gets used to it,’ he said, plumping down on a chair and putting his hand over hers. ‘It’s always difficult and depressing, and one begins to think that there will never be a happy resolution, but there nearly always is. It’s just a question of hanging on, and doing all the necessary work, and not letting anything anyone says hurt you.’
‘That’s going to be quite hard,’ said Irene, who would have denied feeling anything but anger if it had not been for his surprising gentleness. She never let Fin know when he had hurt her. ‘After the actors had all been so sweet to me at the beginning, they seemed beastly today, cruel.’
‘I know. But you just have to let it wash over you and not take it personally.’
‘I don’t see why I should,’ said Irene. Then laughed at herself. ‘Sorry to sound like a petulant three-year-old. It’s probably only my headache that makes it all seem so vile.’
‘You sound like a woman who needs to relax,’ he said gently, rubbing her hand. As she swayed a little towards him, he smiled with the same smile she had seen in the restaurant in Amsterdam. His hand moved further up her arm. ‘D’you want to come and have a joint at the office with me?’
Irene quickly took her hand from under his and drew her whole body away from him, leaning uncomfortably sideways.
‘Do you mean what I think you mean?’ she demanded.
‘That you look like a woman who needs to relax? Yes. That I think the best way of relaxing is smoking a joint? Yes. What are you looking like an outraged virgin for? Have you got so bogged down in your wretched husband’s stuffy legality that you take the nonsensical drug laws seriously? You must be mad.’
‘I take all laws seriously. I have to while I’m married to Fin. Anyway I don’t approve of drugs.’
‘What? Not even alcohol? That does far more damage than cannabis, you know.’
‘Perhaps, but alcohol’s not illegal. I’d never have thought you’d…’ She paused, looking at him, and then slowly shook her head. ‘Is that why we were searched at the airport? Did you have something with you then?’
‘Certainly not. I never carry anything through Customs. That’s just stupid, and there’s no need,’ said Richard, who seemed amused by her reaction. ‘There’s no reason why it should have been anything to do with me. It could just as easily have been something about you or your luggage that set off their suspicions. One never can tell with that mob.’
‘Don’t be childish. Of course there wasn’t anything about me.
If you’d been buying hash in Amsterdam, which I take it you had, someone must have seen and shopped you.’
‘As it happens I did nip out to a smoking café after you ran out on me that night. A man needs to do something, you know, when he’s in that state. But there’s no reason for anyone to have spotted me. The place was chock-a-block, and with plenty of Brits, too. They can’t all have been searched on the way back. Must I get rid of my stash now? Are you going to shop me for possession?’
Irene looked at him with what she hoped was a withering expression and stood up, saying merely: ‘I think you’re absurdly irresponsible to risk being caught breaking the law, but it’s nothing to do with me. I must go. Will you need me tomorrow?’
‘Absolutely. Nine-thirty sharp. Don’t be late. We’ve got a lot to get through.’
She left him without another word.