For once Irene had a bad night. She longed to be able to sleep in order to be at her best for the first night of The House on the Canal, but she could not do it. So much hung on the play that she could not help worrying about how it would be received.
She and Richard had re-established friendly relations, although she knew perfectly well that they had discovered too many fundamental differences of opinion ever to feel the almost delirious affection that they had shared in Amsterdam. It was clear that he was still sleeping with Bella, but Irene had learned to accept that, not least because there was nothing she could do about it.
So far Bella seemed happy enough, and her grasp of the character she was playing had grown much surer under Richard’s tutelage. Irene knew that all she could do was hope that the break would come before Richard had done too much damage and that it would happen at a time when Bella was confident enough to cope with it.
Irene had always known that she could not go to Bella and explain what she thought Richard was up to or warn her of what the consequences might be. All she had felt able to do, one evening at the end of the rehearsal, was to take Bella on one side and compliment her on her performance, adding: ‘If there’s ever anything I can do for you, or any advice or anything you need, I hope that you will ask. Even if it’s after we’ve stopped seeing each other regularly like this. You’ve got my telephone number; so if you need help, please tell me.’
‘How sweet of you, Irene,’ Bella had said, looking surprised and sounding rather patronizing.
Irene had been able to imagine the thoughts that must have been going through her head: what could a fat, middle-aged woman like you possibly do for someone as thin, beautiful and poised for success as me?
You’ll learn, Irene had said silently. I’d just like you to learn more easily than I have done.
Hearing Fin snuffling beside her, she wondered if Richard and Bella were together at that moment and, if so, whether Richard’s wife knew about it and what she thought. Irene had never met her, but throughout the weeks of rehearsal her sympathy for the unknown woman had been growing. At first she had accepted Richard’s impatience with his marriage without question, but watching him work, and work on Bella, she had changed her mind.
Irene had accepted long since that her old daydreams of a fulfilling, happy life with Richard could never have been realized, even if Fin had not hijacked her, but she was coming to think that no-one had ever lived in the sort of happy marriage she had imagined might be possible. Her own battles with Fin were beginning to seem less uniquely frightful than she had once believed, and she occasionally admitted to herself that she might have made an unnecessary fuss about them. But she had still not found a way of communicating with him that did not involve hostility on both sides. Whenever she suppressed her own, he merely strengthened his, as though seeing a weakness in her made him drive forwards to take advantage of it.
He turned over in his sleep, grunting, and she edged away from him, wondering what he would think of the play when he saw it and how much of it he would understand.
She and Richard had had a serious disagreement over the way the last scene should be played. Her ending had been one of disillusion and sadness; Richard’s was triumphant. Irene still preferred her own interpretation of what she had written, but she had allowed herself to be persuaded to accept the box-office appeal of a happyish ending. He in turn had accepted some of her comments and criticisms and had even told her that she had made him see things he had never before understood.
The introduction of lighting, sound effects and real props had made the play seem more real to Irene and she had put up with banishment from the technical rehearsals with good grace. Then had come the dress rehearsal. Seeing the whole play acted in full costume on a real stage had been a worrying business, full of mistakes and dull patches and difficulties of all sorts, but she had been comforted by the theatrical folklore that said a good dress led inevitably to a flop and vice versa. She was hanging on to that belief with great difficulty as her pillows grew lumpier beneath her and Fin started to snore.
To her surprise, Richard had seemed more vulnerable after the dress rehearsal than at any previous stage of their collaboration, and she found herself comforting him for a change, telling him over and over again that the work he had done on the play had improved it; that she had benefited from everything he had said; that she was sure the first performance would go well.
Something made it possible for her to sleep for a while, but she woke out of a nightmare that slipped away from her even as she opened her eyes. All that was left was a sense of looming disaster and a great thirst. She fetched a glass of water from the bathroom and lay down again to sleep fitfully for a little longer.
When she woke for the fifth time, she sighed in frustration and looked at her bedside clock. It was just past six. She felt so awful by then that she thought she might be sick and got out of bed to run to the bathroom. She did not vomit, although she coughed and retched as hot saliva rushed into her mouth.
When she was confident that she had subdued the spasms and was not going to throw up after all, she pulled one of the dressing gowns off the bathroom hooks and put it on. Its vibrant print, which looked as though it had been taken from one of ‘Le Douanier’ Rousseau’s paintings, did not suit her haggard face, but for once she did not care how she looked.
Downstairs in the kitchen would be coffee, she thought, and even toast. She wished that Helena still lived in the house so that they could talk. Helena’s good sense and unfailing affection had always calmed her when she was in a state.
In default of Helena’s company, Irene made herself several slices of thick white toast, which she spread with butter and golden syrup and ate until her need for comfort was assuaged. Just as she was thinking that she ought to go to bed again and try to get some more sleep, she heard the sound of bare feet on the stairs outside and a moment later saw Jane’s face looking round the kitchen door.
‘Hi, Mum,’ she said with her usual careless greeting. ‘Are you drinking coffee?’
‘No, tea. I was too thirsty for coffee after pigging on toast and treacle. But if you’d like some I can easily make a pot.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll do it.’
To Irene’s surprise, Jane ignored the jar of instant coffee she pillaged at all hours of the day and night and proceeded to make a large pot of real coffee, even heating milk to go with it. She took great care to warm both the coffee pot and the milk jug before fetching two of the best breakfast cups, the only ones left from a wedding-present set, and warming those too.
‘Darling Jane, thank you,’ said Irene as her daughter poured out the coffee.
‘Pleasure. Did you get any sleep at all?’
‘Some. Not a lot. What about you? Why are you up so early?’
‘I heard you moving about and thought I’d see how you are. Were you sick?’
‘No. But I’m sorry to have woken you, particularly in such a revolting way.’
‘You didn’t. I was working.’
‘At this hour?’ Irene began to understand her daughter’s irritatingly frequent assaults on the instant coffee jar and the biscuit tin, both of which had needed replenishing almost daily. ‘Jane, you’re not overdoing it, are you?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. Mike says that one needs a first to get anything but a run-of-the-mill job in the City these days; and he also says that one needs to be able to do with very little sleep. I’m only getting into training for that.’
‘Helena’s Mike?’
‘Yes. I like him, you know.’
‘So do I, but if he’s going to ruin your health by making you work this hard I may have to change my mind about him. I didn’t realize you knew him that well or listened to him so carefully.’
Jane flushed and shook her head, but she looked pleased.
‘Is Hella all right, d’you think?’ she asked after a pause.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Irene, winding a strand of hair round and round one of her fingers. ‘I think she got into one of her panics a while back, but she seems all right now. Why?’
‘I’m not sure. She seems a bit stirred up to me. Different. Most of the time she’s much nicer than before; brighter, too, but sometimes she’s a bit distraite. I don’t think it can be just Mike.’
Watching her mother’s face change, Jane said with some of her old truculence: ‘Now what have I done?’
‘Nothing. No, honestly. It’s just that Helena’s been seeing something of her real mother for the last few months. I think it’s the only thing that’s any different in her life, so it’s probably that.’
‘And you mind?’
‘There’s no earthly reason why she shouldn’t see the woman, and all sorts of terrifically good reasons why she should. And if it’s making her happy even for some of the time then I’m glad.’
‘But you do mind, don’t you, even so?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I ask why?’
Irene looked at her daughter, who had bothered to get up and share the horrible early morning hours with her, and knew she could not say ‘because she’s the only person apart from Ivo who has never deliberately tried to hurt me’.
‘I suppose,’ she said after she had taken the time to drink some coffee and think up some words that might express what she felt and yet be acceptable, ‘because I feel that it might spoil the friendship I have always had with Helena.’
‘I can’t see why it should. In any case, she’s still revoltingly devoted to you, as far as I can see.’
‘Revoltingly?’
Jane pushed her rough, unwashed brown hair behind her prominent ears and then started to finger a large, infected spot on her chin. Irene only just stopped herself offering to buy some antiseptic skin tonic.
‘I think so. She treats you – and talks about you – as though you were some kind of saint. If I were you, I’d find that pretty creepy.’
‘Why?’ asked Irene, hastily adding, ‘darling?’
Jane laughed at her.
‘Because it’s so silly. Come on, Mum, get real. You must admit you’re no saint.’
At last distracted from the play, Irene began to smile. She hoped that Jane had no idea about her little fiasco with Richard in Amsterdam and was talking merely about faults in her character. That was likely; after all, Jane had spent a good deal of time over the previous five or six years commenting on her mother’s faults and telling her how best to correct them.
‘Yes, I do know that,’ Irene said, trying to feel amused and to forget the fury some of her daughter’s patronizing lectures had provoked in the past, ‘but I think most people would enjoy absolute love if it were offered.’
Jane looked at her most stubbornly critical and some of Irene’s good intentions slipped.
‘After all,’ Irene added more coldly, ‘when you’re offered little but criticism by other people, it is extraordinarily restful – to put it no higher – to know that somewhere you are loved unconditionally.’
Jane looked at her without speaking. It was not a friendly look.
‘Perhaps you’re too much Fin’s daughter to be able to feel that,’ Irene went on without even thinking of resisting the temptation to hit back. ‘Although I’d have thought that you must at least understand the principle.’
Jane shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But then how would I know anything about unconditional love? It’s Ivo who got all that was going.’
‘Oh dear.’ Irene’s pathetically inept comment was the best she could produce. Before she could improve on it, Jane remembered why she had come downstairs.
‘More coffee?’ she said brightly, putting her hand on the pot. Irene quickly covered it with her own.
‘Jane,’ she began, looking over the coffee pot and wishing that they could deal with each other as simply as she and Helena did, instead of performing endless rituals of courtship and conflict. Whether the rituals were benevolently intended or thoroughly malevolent, they had always been hard work and they had led, at least for Irene, to weeks of regret, self-justification, anger and unhappiness.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Jane coolly. ‘I’ve known for ages that you couldn’t help it, and I don’t blame you. After all, it’s probably only biology that makes you favour your male offspring.’
‘But I don’t.’ Irene’s protest was instinctive. After a moment she said more slowly: ‘Jane, you are and always have been unconditionally loved by me, however it may have seemed when we got across each other.’
Jane shook her head, apparently unwilling to say anything, but her expression was forbidding. The front door bell rang and she went to answer it, coming back a few moments later with a huge cellophane-wrapped bouquet of red, orange, and golden-yellow flowers, tied with a golden bow.
‘Goodness,’ said Irene, glad to be distracted from their painfully difficult conversation. ‘They must be from Richard Orleton. How sweet of him! He must have so much else to think about at the moment.’
Jane pulled a small white envelope off the cellophane and handed it over.
Irene held the note far enough away for her long-sighted eyes to be able to read it properly.
‘It isn’t Richard. They’re from Ivo. Isn’t he an angel?’
‘Vulgarly flashy if you ask me,’ said Jane as she plonked the bouquet down on the table. ‘Typical.’
Tempted to ask why Jane always had to spoil whatever pleasure her mother could garner, Irene looked up and saw the sullen expression with which Jane had often cloaked distress. It came to Irene that Jane could well have been thinking something like: I got up early and sat with you all through breakfast and made your coffee and listened to you and engaged with you. Isn’t that worth more than a poxy bunch of flowers?
Yes, Irene said to herself, it is. And I’m not fair. I do value what Ivo does for me more highly than anything of Jane’s. I don’t know why. Perhaps I assume that she ought to be around to help and be nice to me, while he …
Irene did not complete the idea, ashamed that she, who had so often railed against Fin’s unthinking sexism, should have demanded less of one child than the other simply because he was male. No wonder Jane had been truculent and grudging whenever she was asked to take a share of the domestic tasks that had been the whole of Irene’s lot until she had started trying to write. And on top of that, Jane had had to see Irene valuing Helena’s affection and help more highly, too. For the first time Irene asked herself whether Helena and Ivo had been so much kinder to her than Jane simply because she had been kinder to them.
She ignored the bouquet and watched Jane’s face. The sulkiness was being transformed into a coldness that was extraordinarily like Fin’s.
‘Jane?’
‘Yes?’
‘Lovely as flowers are, they’re not as important as company at a time like this. It’s been quite extraordinarily good to have had you here this morning.’
Irene got up, walked round the table and, in spite of Jane’s look of horror, kissed her cheek lightly. Without waiting for any response, Irene picked up the bouquet and took it to the sink. There she ripped off the ribbons and cellophane and dumped them in the rubbish bin before arranging the flowers in a tall white china vase. Still without looking at Jane, she carried it into the dining room and put it in the middle of the sideboard, where the strong colours lit up the gloom in a thoroughly satisfactory manner.
When Irene got back to the kitchen, she saw that Jane had fetched the newspapers from the doormat and was concentrating on the front page of the Independent. Irene was not sure where to go from there, but as she was washing out the coffee pot in order to replenish it for Fin’s breakfast, she heard Jane say: ‘Thanks. You know.’
Irene turned to look at her. Jane was still staring down at the paper, but Irene took a risk and stroked her rough hair. Jane did not move. Irene felt a current of sympathy running between them that made her think that they had achieved something worthwhile that morning. And she had to admit that most of it had come from Jane’s initiative. That must have taken some courage.
Hearing the sound of Fin’s footsteps outside, Jane glanced up briefly towards her mother, looking wistful and very much younger than usual. Irene smiled down at her.
‘You’re both up early,’ said Fin from the doorway. ‘Didn’t you sleep well?’
‘Perfectly,’ said Jane, shaking out the newspaper just as Irene admitted that she had woken several times.
‘And on the very night you most needed rest. Poor you,’ said Fin, sitting down in his usual place. ‘If that’s coffee you’re drinking there, Jane, may I have some?’
‘It had gone cold,’ said Irene, who was pulling the plug out of the kettle. ‘I’m making another pot. Would you like an egg?’
‘Not today, I think. I am a trifle costive. But thank you. Toast will do me fine.’
When Irene had brought the newly refilled coffee pot and a rack of hot toast and sat down again, Fin produced a tight smile and said: ‘Try not to worry too much, my dear. Whatever will be, will be, and thinking about what may happen to the play won’t make the performance any different.’
‘No, I know. But I can’t stop myself listing all the things that could still go wrong.’
‘You shouldn’t. There must be just as many that could go right. More perhaps. You know, I’m very much looking forward to seeing the play tonight.’
Irene was not, but she did not say so. She felt she could easily put up with not knowing that it had gone well if she could be protected from the risk of knowing it had failed. Then with a splendid, if unspoken, oath she had learned from an American hard-boiled detective story, she told herself not to be such a coward.
For their own private reasons, she and Jane both gave Fin the kind of silent breakfast he preferred. When Jane had eventually gone back to her books, Fin laid The Times down and asked Irene whether she would like to have lunch with him. Surprised by the unprecedented offer, she said: ‘But aren’t you in court today?’
‘Yes. But I have to eat, and you might find it easier to relax if you’re taken away from here for a while and given some good food and wine. What do you say?’
‘That I’d like it very much indeed. Thank you, Fin.’
He looked nearly as surprised by her warmth as she felt, but he nodded and told her he was glad.
‘I must get off now, though. If you want distraction, why not watch the trial this morning? It’s quite an interesting one. My clerk can bring you round to meet me when we adjourn. I’ll tell him to look out for you.’
‘It’s an idea, but I might not make it in time, Fin. I’m getting my hair properly put up so that at least I’ll look rich and confident tonight, and there are various other things to be done. But I’ll be there for lunch. What time will you adjourn?’
‘Between half past twelve and one, I expect. I can’t say exactly. If you’re late I’ll have to start, but you can join in at whatever point I’ve reached. I’ll see you later.’
Irene sat on in the kitchen, sipping cold coffee and letting herself enjoy the after-effects of Fin’s unexpected friendliness. She wondered whether it was only coincidence or whether he could have felt the unusually affectionate atmosphere that had grown up between herself and Jane and become infected by it.
Later, full of an enjoyable sense of benevolence, Irene rummaged in her desk for the batch of free tickets Richard had sent her for the play that night. Having checked that there were enough for all the people she had already invited to go with her, she then put one of the spares in an envelope with a note that said:
Dear Miranda, I am not at all sure how to put this, but I wondered whether you might like a ticket to the first night of my play, The House on the Canal. I’m afraid that it’s very short notice, and you will probably be doing something else tonight in any case. But Helena is coming with her young man and so it occurred to me that possibly you might like to come along, too. I gather that you have been seeing something of her recently.
My son, Ivo, and Helena have arranged for us all to go out to dinner afterwards with Richard Orleton, the director, and if you would like to join us I am sure he can ask the restaurant for another place.
I should like it very much if you were able to come. Yours sincerely, Irene Webton.