Laura appraised her slim white hand in the silver-framed mirror of the Guildford jewellers. It was wearing five rings.
‘This one,’ she said, discarding the rest and handing Charles a narrow platinum band, studded all the way round with diamonds.
Charles whisked out his American Express card, then replaced it in his wallet. This time, he’d better pay by personal cheque. He didn’t want Laura’s snide remarks about expense-account jewellery. She was no fool. Even the ring she’d chosen was by far the most expensive. It fitted best, she said, but she knew as well as he did that size could be adjusted.
That was the last of the shopping, thank God. He’d trotted after her into boutiques and beauty parlours, emporiums and fashion houses. His credit cards were wilting with the strain. Laura herself was blooming. She festooned him with the heaviest of the packages, tucked her free arm through his, and squeezed it.
‘Do you realize, Charlie, this is the first time you’ve ever granted me an entire day with you. The most I’ve ever been allowed before was four and a half hours, and that was Only because your plane was delayed.’
Charles frowned. He preferred not to be reminded that he was missing a briefing with the President of Amalgamated Automobiles, and had left the licensing of a new off-shore bank to an incompetent colleague. It was madness to take a weekday off, and double madness to waste it in a one-horse town in the backwoods. He’d presented Laura with the gift of a whole day and let her plan it, almost sure she’d settle for their usual hotel – a light lunch, an afternoon of love, followed by the crucial conversation which was the whole object of the exercise. He’d hardly expected her to plump for this provincial shopping spree, followed by a matinée of Love’s Labour’s Lost at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre. A matinée, for God’s sake! He hadn’t been to one since the school expedition to Lady Windermere’s Fan, and that was unendurable – three hours of coach parties rustling chocolate papers.
‘I suppose I must thank Frances for this unexpected favour,’ Laura was carolling, as they laboured down the High Street. Every time she took a step, her bulky paper carriers banged against his thighs. ‘So, she’s not come back?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sorry, aren’t you?’
Charles didn’t answer. He had no wish to broadcast his private affairs to the whole of West Surrey. He had hoped for a quiet stroll and a serious discussion in the secluded castle gardens, but every time he tried to steer Laura castlewards, she commandeered a lingerie department, or stormed a cheese counter, disgorging little snippets of his confidential life to grocers and salesgirls; mixing adultery with marabou and pregnancies with Pont-l’ Evêque. He steered her off the main road, down the narrow, winding path which led past the church to river and theatre. Here, they could talk more freely.
‘I was wondering, actually,’ Charles cleared his throat, ‘if you might – er – have a word with Frances for me.’
Laura unlatched her arm. ‘Do your own dirty work!’
Charles plunged after her, across the road. ‘Look, Laura, there are some things only a woman can say to a woman.’
‘Balls! You sound like some soft-shelled Agony Aunt on the worst sort of women’s mag. Why in God’s name should I be the one to persuade Frances to return to you? It’s preposterous! Using your mistress as an unpaid marriage guidance counsellor.’
Hardly unpaid, thought Charles, shifting two of the more substantial packages to his other arm. If they didn’t talk now, Shakespeare would monopolize the whole afternoon, followed by at least an hour of Laura as theatre critic, and any chance of sorting out his future, with or without her, would vanish in a mixture of Clive Barnes and G. Wilson Knight. He glanced nervously around, but only the gravestones were listening. ‘No one’s talking about Frances coming back. All I’m suggesting, Laura, is that you try to persuade her not to have the baby – in her own interests. If she goes ahead with this pregnancy, she’ll ruin her life.’
‘And yours!’ sniped Laura.
Charles strode towards the dead end of the river, a stagnant cesspool which coiled up almost to the theatre entrance, littered with chocolate wrappers and empty cans. The Yvonne Arnaud had once been an idyllic spot, not this tinny monster of a building, drowning in duckweed.
Laura was right. Of course his life would be ruined by Frances’ pregnancy. A runaway wife and an illegitimate kid hardly helped to boost a man’s career. Clients expected a tax and finance consultant to be a solid, conventional citizen, a family man with no messes in his life. And for fifteen years, he’d obliged them. Or he and Frances had. Frances had never let him down before. She’d always been serenely in the background, an unobtrusive presence, serving and supporting him, making the right remarks to the right people, choosing careful clothes and correct opinions, never late or shrill, rude or stupid, rebellious or unreliable. There was truth in the accusations she’d hurled at him at Croft’s. Yet, until this incident, he’d never even thought about her side of things; just taken her for granted as another creditable aspect of himself – his good taste, his impeccable education, his congenial, British-Standards-tested wife. But, now, she had ripped the whole facade to shreds and left him in a cloud of shame and scandal. Gossip and tittle-tattle would creep up on his life like poison ivy and stifle his good name, lose him all respect, deny him new commissions. Yet it was only now he missed her, admired her even, in some perverse fashion, for standing up to him. He was furious with himself for not having valued her more highly, for perhaps even causing her to leave. And he was furious with her for risking and ruining everything he’d spent a lifetime carefully constructing.
Laura came up behind him, wrinkling her nose at the stench from the water. ‘Don’t sulk, sweet, it spoils your profile. Look, I can’t talk to Frances, anyway. No one can. She’s obsessed. She’s always had this thing about babies. She’ll never mention it directly – that’s not her style. But she’ll force the conversation round to motherhood in general. Can career women be totally fulfilled? Is it selfish to be sterilized? You know the sort of thing. I think she sees me as an authority on professional childlessness. Laura Doesn’t Want One – is that monstrous, miraculous, or merely public-spirited? She never could decide. That’s why she’s pregnant now, I imagine – in order to find out. You can’t stop her, Charlie. This baby’s more than just a set of random genes. It’s an intellectual exercise for Frances, a holy grail, a ritual, a philosophical experiment.’
Charles stared at a rusty pram, half submerged in the water, and coated in slime. ‘Perhaps she isn’t pregnant. I mean we’re all assuming it, but there’s no real proof or …’
‘Oh, come off it, Charlie! She’s got all the symptoms, hasn’t she? And considering she’s taking a fertility drug … A friend of mine was put on Clomid and conceived the very first month. Triplets, actually.’
Charles shut his eyes. Christ! Magda multiplied by three. They were bound to be all girls – six women in his life, all manipulating him, mopping up his strength. But could he trust what Laura said? Wasn’t it in her interests to keep Frances pregnant, so the field was free for her? She had often hinted that their relationship should be more permanently established. Her husband was a farce and a nonentity – no risk there. But he wasn’t sure he wanted Laura on the front page of his life. He’d considered it, of course – in his position, one had to consider everything. Laura had advantages, maybe more than Frances, and her gelded womb was not the least of them. But she wasn’t Frances, and somehow that mattered fundamentally. He had tried to set the whole thing down on paper – pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, but there were no conclusions; just an aching hole where Frances should have been.
Laura was nudging him in the back with her bag of French cheeses. ‘Come on, darling, let’s go in. I’m dying for a drink.’
The bar was closed, and a queue from the coffee lounge snailed out almost to the foyer. They joined a battalion of blue rinses and pink plastic hearing-aids.
‘It’s Senior Citizens’ Day,’ Laura whispered. ‘They get in for 40p for these Thursday matinées, plus a free issue of Rowntrees fruit gums to keep their dentures busy.’
Charles ran his tongue round his own strong even teeth. His poker-faced business suit looked out of place amidst that gaggle of Crimplene cardigans and cut-price perms. There was hardly another man around. Only women survived old age – that was obvious. They killed off their men like black widow spiders – a night of love, followed by extinction for the male, while the female swelled and gloated in cannibalistic pregnancy.
The queue was hardly moving. There were not enough staff, and the counter had been incorrectly sited. Give him a week, and he’d re-plan the entire theatre, streamline the catering, sack incompetent bunglers, and ship the whole huddle of geriatrics back to their bingo. Instead, he was dragging his feet behind some octogenarian crone who was whimpering for Horlicks, and wouldn’t accept a no, or a lemon tea.
He removed Laura, himself, and his over-priced ham sandwich to the far corner of the lounge. Even here he was cramped. The chairs were too small, the tables ridiculously low, and he was still assaulted by bunioned feet and bossy handbags. It was a woman’s world, like the real one. Yet, all the more reason why he had to have a woman in his life. He had no intention of landing up as a freak, or odd man out, a pathetic divorcé, living on his own, patronized and pitied. It was undignified, inconvenient, and strictly incompatible with his business obligations, especially those to Oppenheimer. You couldn’t invite a millionaire to dinner, and then present him with baked beans on toast. And, since Frances had refused to rescue him from the tin-opener, then Laura must oblige. She was a dab cook and a dazzling hostess, and with any luck, she might have the weekend free. He glanced across at her. She was stealing the ham from his sandwich, leaving him the crusts, stencilling scarlet lip-prints on his clean white handkerchief. Once he was sure of her, there would have to be changes – a more unassuming brand of lipstick, for a start, and an embargo on his linen.
‘I was wondering, darling, whether you might be available this Saturday?’
Laura lit a cigarette. ‘Another matinée? You are brave! We haven’t survived this one yet.’
‘No, not theatre, dinner.’
‘Lovely, darling! Except I’m already dining. Clive got in first, I’m afraid. He’s booked a table at the Mirabelle.’
Charles coughed through her smoke. What the devil was she doing, dining with her own husband? If it hadn’t been the Mirabelle, he might have persuaded her to cancel it. But Laura was particularly partial to their contrefilet de boeuf Richelieu. So as far as Oppenheimer was concerned, he was still to be a laughing stock, a deserted husband, a clumsy, bungling cook.
‘Why not ask Frances? She should be eating for two, in any case. I shan’t object. Just be sure you don’t choose the Mirabelle. Foursomes are so boring.’
Charles banged down his coffee cup. The warning bell was sounding and a disembodied voice urging them to take their seats. Laura squeezed his hand.
‘You could always accept the baby as your own,’ she whispered. ‘Had you thought of that?’
Charles stormed up the stairs behind her. Of course he’d thought of it, and every other damn solution – resident nannies, early boarding school. If he wanted Frances, that was the price he’d have to pay for her. She herself had Magda to contend with.
No, Magda was a teenager, not a babe-in-arms. He’d never inflicted her infancy on Frances. No broken nights or piles of dirty nappies. Magda was just a visitor, and almost grown up. But Frances had a smelly, screeching urchin squatting in her body, kidnapping her life, her looks, her love, for at least another twenty years. Easy for Frances to talk about having both their children, as she’d done at Croft’s, but in actual cool objective fact, she’d proved herself incapable of coping even with one. She was idealizing Magda because she was a hundred miles away. If the kid came home again, the rows would resume, and Frances’ milk-and-water fantasies about their united family would dribble away in nagging and recrimination. The same with the baby – blissful when it was only a whisper of cells in her womb, but nine months on, there would be blood and puke and shit to contend with. Of course the tie with a child was precious and unique – he’d told her that himself. But it was the concept, the ideal of parenthood, rather than the endlessly bleating and excreting reality.
He glanced up at the stage. Somehow they had reached their seats, squashed between rows of dotards, sucking toffees and adjusting spectacles. How in God’s name could he concentrate on one of Shakespeare’s lighter comedies, when his mind was primed for a five-act tragedy, a battlefield, a blasted heath? His problems had even spilled on to the boards. When the curtain rose, Clive was up there, tripping about in purple knee-breeches and a fair moustache. The programme called him the King of Navarre, but only Clive would preen and pontificate like that. He and his Elizabethan gentlemen had vowed to abjure the company of women, and devote themselves to learning. He envied them. Women were not only a snare and a distraction, but a source of everlasting complication and deceit. No man could even know whether the child a woman bore him was genuinely his. All the guilt and obligation he’d felt towards Magda might properly belong to that legless, lecherous Jew the kid had mentioned.
The irony was, he’d tried to get rid of Magda, even when he believed she was his own. He’d branded Frances a murderer, yet it was he who had bribed both women to destroy their babies in the womb. Both had refused. When Piroska handed him that blue-eyed, puckered creature, wrapped in a blanket (‘She’s got your mouth, exactly,’ clucked the midwife), he’d felt horror and shame that this was the life he had wanted to snuff out. He tried to forget the incident, but somehow it had fuelled his guilt during the whole of Magda’s childhood, and had finally persuaded him to take her in this summer, when Piroska returned to Hungary. But if she weren’t his child in the first place, then the whole affair was doubly ironical, hopelessly confused.
Why, all delights are vain, but that most vain,
Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain.
He jumped. The actor had swept downstage, almost to the footlights, and seemed to be speaking to him alone, his sardonic blue eye fixed on Charles’ own. He had all but forgotten he was at a play. The Kingdom of Navarre kept turning into Richmond Green or Streatham Maternity Hospital. The three French ladies he had been promised in his programme had all changed their names since it was printed. No longer Maria, Katharine and Rosaline, but Laura, Frances, Magda. Rosaline was almost Magda’s double, the same dark, rebellious hair and secret swelling breasts.
Christ! If only he could exorcise his daughter – feel either simple love for her, or straight resentment at being made a fool of. But to desire the kid, for God’s sake, he hardly dared admit it to himself. He had even taken to fantasizing about her, imagining her sprawled naked on her bed, or wearing only a wet, transparent T-shirt. Somehow, her body was always fused with Laura’s, to form some tantalizing female paradox – the virgin seductress, the voluptuous innocent. It was shameful, decadent, and almost proof he couldn’t be her father. Could any natural father stoop so low, mix his own daughter’s body with his mistress’s, and then enjoy them both? He glanced sideways at Laura, sitting rapt beside him, the pale foothills of her breasts teasing him in the darkened auditorium. She always wore her blouses unbuttoned to the cleavage. Magda chose harsh, mannish shirts and fastened them to the throat. It was only he who swapped her round with Laura, unbuttoning, revealing …
He leaned forward and fondled Laura’s knee. He must make her real, disentangle her from Magda. Or banish both of them and try to concentrate. Laura would quiz him on the play, even quote from it. How could he confess he’d hardly heard a word? Hanging on to all that painted verbiage was like a drowning man pausing in his struggles to admire a sunset. Endless strings of empty words, gin-fizz emotions frothing out of cardboard hearts. Up on the stage, the king and his three young lords were already reduced by Love to dribbling fools, their vows forgotten, creeping through the undergrowth, composing sonnets. Junes and moons and panting bosoms of the deep …
Twaddle! Or was it? He himself had never composed a love-letter in his life. Was that a virtue, or a failing? He didn’t even know. Business was such a burden at the moment, it was all he could do to write his monthly financial reviews, let alone a sonnet. Even now, he should be closeted with the President of Amalgamated Automobiles, not this besotted King of Navarre. Perhaps his energies were failing. Once, he’d had time to mug up all the plays of Shakespeare, prided himself on knowing every last scraping and scruple of the footnotes, even the textual variations between Folio and Quarto. Now he felt only boredom and distaste, watching those clowns mortgage their studies and seclusion for a farthingale.
It was all too close to home, for heaven’s sake. Hadn’t he been duped himself, in the name of love? Crawling after one woman at Croft’s, playing truant for another, saddled with children who weren’t his. Even Laura guessed. He had tried to discuss Magda with her on the drive down to Guildford, but every time she said ‘your daughter’, he could hear the sarcasm glittering in her voice. Was every feckless father caught like this? You couldn’t win. If Magda really were his child, then he was an incestuous swine to take her to his bed in fantasy, and if she weren’t, then he’d not only been cuckolded, but squandered fifteen years of payments for her, in guilt and hard cash. The bills were getting steeper all the time. The nuns had sent the first account in advance, with extra charges for riding, tennis coaching, catechism classes. It hurt to have to pay for religious indoctrination. Though it wasn’t the money he minded – he’d pay for anything, so long as he was sure the child was his. But how, in Christ’s name, could any man be sure? If even Frances slept around, what hope was there that Piroska had been faithful?
Well, he wouldn’t be fooled much longer. He’d contact Piroska and insist she took her daughter back. It was not impossible. She’d already written and hinted that there were thorns in her Hungarian bed of roses. Miklos’ so-called wealth had materialized as three chickens and a goat, and the grandma was clinging grimly on to her life and property. Piroska needed cash. All he had to do was to make his cheque conditional. Bribery cost less than boarding school.
Maybe he’d even phone this evening, demand immediate action. He was weary of all the fuss and dawdle of foreign postal systems, the endless problems with a kid who had wrecked his marriage and shattered his self-esteem. He’d already lost Frances on account of her, and would lose Laura next, if he didn’t get things moving. Magda must be transferred to Hungary – and fast. It was the only possible solution.
True, there were still all the problems they’d started with – schools, foreign languages, housing, Miklos. But Magda would cope. She’d have to. She was so damned miserable already, a move could only benefit her. He’d barter a generous cash allowance for her immediate summons to Budapest. A telegram, perhaps? Yes, why not? A telegram from Piroska sent direct to the school. Piroska was hopeless at letter-writing, and Miklos might even talk her out of it while she sat chewing on her pen. But a telegram was instant and dramatic. He could more or less compose it for her himself.
‘Found new flat and fine school. Stop. Longing to have you join us. Stop. Come immediately.’ Not that he wanted to deceive the child. Perhaps he could find the flat and school himself, write to the Embassy, pull a few strings. Impossible – a Communist country, and Miklos breathing down his neck …
‘Miklos moved out permanently. Miss you darling. Plenty of room with Grandma for the two of us.’
No, he couldn’t lie to the kid. Christ! It was complicated. He couldn’t even concentrate, with those cretinous lovelords leaping about the stage, ranting on about Fevers In The Blood and Love Learned In A Woman’s Eye. He’d rather compose a thousand sonnets than wrestle with the guilt and deception of a dozen pre-paid words. Whatever he did, someone would be hurt.
He’d always prided himself on coping calmly in a crisis. This gibbering indecision was completely out of character. It was women again, wrecking his system, undermining his strengths. Was there really any need for frenzied haste and subterfuge? After all, the kid was safe at school. Couldn’t she stay there, and let the nuns put up with her, while he sorted out his other problems? He could wait till the Christmas holidays and take her to Budapest himself, in mid-December.
Frances would be four months pregnant by December – an obscene little bulge for everyone to jeer at. God Almighty! Every woman should be sterilized at birth. Laura was right, as she was so often. Of course it was safer never to risk a child. Perhaps he should settle for Laura and be done with it. No possibility of babies, then. A neat, uncomplicated, adult life, drawn up like a contract. Laura was a skilled businesswoman and would appreciate a fair deal, spelt out in all the small print. They could even live abroad, to avoid the scandal; retreat to a tax haven with a decent climate, and combine financial advantages with a quiet life. He didn’t want marriage, not yet. He needed time, and one last appeal to Frances. But meanwhile, Laura must be primed and feted, kept in hand as a reserve currency.
If those damn-fool lords could woo and win a woman, then so could he. Shakespeare had lavished twenty thousand words on nothing else. There was Berowne, the cynic, even he converted now, pouring out his love to a cardboard tree. He tried to concentrate. If he couldn’t write his own lines, the least he could do was listen to someone else’s. It was all part of the wooing. He leant back in his seat and closed his eyes.
There was only one interval. A visiting troupe of lutenists were playing Elizabethan songs in the corner of the still closed and shuttered bar. Laura stopped to listen.
‘I suppose they’re trying to compensate for a shoddy production,’ she whispered. ‘Total miscasting all round. Don’t you agree, Charles?’
He muttered something he half recalled from the Sunday Times review and tried to lure her past the countertenor, who was bewailing the pains of Love, in yellow velvet doublet and laddered hose.
‘I mean, fancy casting the King as a middle-aged bookworm, in spectacles. What’s the point of his renouncing love, if he’s past it anyway? Ice cream, darling?’
‘No thanks. Fresh air.’ He must entice her out into the garden, safely removed from all refreshments and distractions. She was still gabbling on about unsubtle lighting and anachronistic costumes. He chose the most secluded seat and enthroned her on it. They could hear the strains of the lute music echoing from the upstairs window. It should have been an idyll – river rippling in front of them, feet wreathed in flowers, ears lapped in love songs. But somehow, it was only another cardboard set, another bad production. The sky was pock-marked with clouds, the river sluggish and sludge-brown, brash French marigolds shrieking at shocking-pink petunias. He turned his back on the monstrous modern building glaring at them from across the river, and tried to blot out everything but Laura’s pale white hand.
‘Laura, darling, why don’t you wear your new ring?’
He removed the silver band from its plush-lined box and held it out to her. Berowne would have gone down on one knee, but this was stockbroker Surrey, not rutting Navarre.
She wasn’t listening, anyway. ‘What do you think of the Rosaline?’ she asked, swatting at a wasp. ‘A little too coy for my taste. But then, when you’ve seen Dorothy Tutin in the role, no one else quite measures up.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ He slipped the ring on the safe, largest finger of Laura’s non-marriage hand. The left hand, the dangerous hand, was already weighted down with Clive’s booty.
‘The set’s not bad. Though I had my doubts about all those dead leaves. I suppose they’re meant to symbolize the transience of love.’
Charles held on to the finger, pressed the tiny scratchy diamonds with his thumb. How could she keep jawing about symbolism, when he was more or less proposing to her? ‘Look, Laura, I want to make it up to you, not just with theatres and presents, but with time. You’re right – I have neglected you. But I intend to change.’
Laura had plucked a blade of grass and was tickling his face with it. Her laugh was like a scalpel cutting through his skull.
‘Good God, Charlie, so love’s labour isn’t lost! I do believe wily old Shakespeare’s made a convert of you. You sound worse than those love-lorn lords!’
‘Laura, I’m serious. You matter to me, darling, and I want to prove it. I know I’ve taken you for granted, but things will be different now. Look, why don’t we try and go away together. How about a weekend in Paris? Sometime in October, when the crowds have gone?’ If he promised her Paris, she might even swap the Mirabelle for Oppenheimer, this all important Saturday.
The wasp was wooing Laura from the other side. She sprang up, to dislodge it from her hair. ‘I’m afraid it’s a little late, my love.’
He stared at her scarlet back. She was wearing all red, too harsh for the faded afternoon. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s a very tedious journey from Johannesburg to Paris, darling.’
‘Johannesburg?’
‘Yes, my sweet. I didn’t really intend to tell you, in the middle of a matinée, but your sudden protestations of devotion have rather forced my hand.’
Charles made an angry swipe at the wasp. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Relax, darling. They only sting you if you needle them. We’re emigrating to South Africa.’
‘Emigrating?’
‘Yes, next month. Houghton Drive, just north of town. Five bedrooms and a swimming pool.’
‘We, who’s we? What in God’s name are you saying?’
‘Well, me and Clive, of course. Who else?’
‘But I thought … Look, Laura, this is absolutely nonsensical! You always told me you had no future with Clive.’
‘Poor love! I have been disloyal to him, haven’t I? You’ve always encouraged me, but that’s only natural, I suppose. Clive’s very easy to insult – he’s also very easy to get along with. I never realized that before. Funnily enough, it was you who made me see it. Clive loves me, Charles. He needs me. You don’t need anyone. You use them. I don’t exist for you as a person; nor does Frances, or Magda, or that poor, godforsaken brat Frances plans to bring into this wicked world. They’re just inconveniences to you, cyphers to be slotted into your electronic calculator and assessed for their investment potential, or their scrap value.’ She was still stroking the grass across his chin, cruel steel against soft flesh.
‘When Magda loused you up, you handed me my cards. You didn’t need me any more. Or, even if you did, I might prove dangerous. You never wondered how I might feel about it. In fact, you drove me back to Clive. It’s probably better, that way. You stay with your precious daughter, and I’ll stay with my old man.’
Daughter! That tone-deaf, blue-jeaned urchin who had lost him everything – his wife, his pride, his sex, his self-respect – and now Laura. Turned him into a cuckold and a laughing stock. He could see her now, picking her nose on his gilded Grecian couch, disposing of her chewing-gum on the underbelly of his Sheraton writing-table, dissecting meatballs with her fingers, dribbling gravy down her breasts, rinsing out her stained and bloody panties in his own private bathroom. This was the brat who had driven away his mistress, his voluptuous, witty, stylish, two-faced turncoat of a superwoman, who had the cheek, the insensitivity, to betray him with her own husband.
Well, she’d have to go, his ‘daughter’. He’d had more than he could take. His so-called flesh and blood would be sent packing to her mother as soon as he could conceivably arrange it. He’d phone Piroska the moment he got home and more or less command her to send that telegram. Why should he fret any longer over threatened O-levels and damaged lives, lie awake agonizing over near-miss abortions, when the kid was almost certainly somebody else’s? Magda could no more share his chromosomes than Clive could share a bed with dazzling Laura. It was time that Jewish dwarf took on the burden. If he’d fathered the brat, well, let him worry about her. Only he’d better do it back in Budapest. Because that’s where Magda was going, as fast as a telegram could take her.
When he opened his eyes, the kid had already gone, packed off on an aeroplane, deported on a train. There was only Laura standing over him, tickling his neck with her cruel grass rapier. He almost slapped it off.
‘I simply don’t understand you, Laura. This doesn’t make any sense at all. You always made out your … your husband was some sort of spastic mooncalf!’
‘Come, my sweet, you’re exaggerating. I admit he’s not as bright as you are, but that’s probably an advantage. And – no – his seduction technique isn’t quite as slick and assured, but he’s loyal and loving and a lot of other boring, dependable, old-fashioned things.’
Charles snatched the grass from her hand and crushed it into pulp. ‘Seduction? What d’you mean? You always told me Clive was impotent.’
‘Did I, darling? Or was that what you wanted to believe? Even now, you’re not listening. The only word you heard was ‘‘seduction’’. You’re still comparing penises with Clive. Perhaps that’s what all affairs are based on – a sort of eternal cock fight, the lover gaining inches on the spouse. Well, I’ve finished with affairs. I’m off to Jo’burg to queen it on my floodlit patio, with my half dozen coloured maids. I might even go in for a family myself – adopt a little Bantu baby. I have to fill those five large bedrooms somehow.’
‘You’re joking …’ He couldn’t take it in – Clive screwing her, Clive zipping off to Jo’burg, Clive winning. Laura winning. Slipping in her insults, slapping him down.
‘About the adoption, yes. You know how I feel about kids. Clive and I don’t want any. Nor do you and Frances – if only you could see it. That’s another reason I’ve finished with you, Charles. I rather despise a man who doesn’t know what he wants, or where the hell he’s going. Clive’s always been clear about the basics. He wanted me – and not much else. No kids, no other woman on the side, no driving ambition. You want everything, Charles, and you’ll land up with nothing.’
The phrases slashed like knives. There was a tight ball, spring-coiled in his skull, a black sun scorching through his body, blistering his life, black humiliation mixed with fury.
Laura had sat down again, and was staring at her sparkling middle finger. ‘Funny, really,’ she taunted, in her Judas-kiss voice. ‘This is what they call an eternity ring. Perhaps you didn’t realize?’
He was silent, fighting a strong urge to tear the ring off, rip her strutting husband from her arms, blitz the prissy, preening house in Houghton Drive.
She was picking daisies now, white petals on her scarlet lap, pretending she was presiding at a simple country picnic, rather than a massacre. ‘How long is eternity for you, Charles?’
He didn’t answer. Two-faced hypocrite! She’d gulped down all the presents, grown fat and glossy on his jewels, allowed him to slip a ring on her finger, the very moment she was leaving him. He had given up a precious working day, simply so she could restock her wardrobe for Johannesburg; actually paid for the lingerie she was to seduce her husband in! And there she was, sitting demurely making a daisy chain, slitting the stems with her cruel crimson talons, in the same way she’d ripped his life apart, and smiling as she handed him the rejects.
It was all the more intolerable, because there was some truth in what she said. If only she’d accused him of stinginess or stupidity, he could have shrugged it off, but Laura had stabbed him in his most defenceless places. He could feel his anger ticking like a time-bomb. He must defuse it before it exploded in her face, blew up the whole of Guildford. Never before had he allowed himself to get so close to danger, to lose his self-control, throw away his shield and his defences. He shut his eyes, tried to concentrate only on the rhythm of his breathing, to count the notes in the rapture of a thrush’s song.
Laura’s voice had crept inside the song, and was wrenching it out of key. She was leaning over him, fastening the completed daisy chain around his neck. ‘Let’s not quarrel,’ she murmured, letting both hands tease and linger. ‘I still fancy you, you know – even in a twenty-minute interval, surrounded by Guildford’s geriatrics, and despite everything I’ve said. Crazy, isn’t it?’
He felt a twinge of answering desire, clogged with only half-extinguished fury. Laura’s thighs were spread apart on the seat, the flimsy fabric of her skirt straining over them. She wasn’t just a bitchy tongue – there was a body attached to it, and it was the body he’d desired in the beginning. He’d first seen her sitting in the Golf Club, flirting with a bar stool, her long legs looped around the rungs, taunting him in black stockings. Today, the stockings were a paler shade of oyster. He placed his hand on her thigh, felt it warm and silky through her skirt. His head was a spinning roulette wheel. He hardly knew which colour would come up – the scarlet of desire, or the furious black of resentment and revenge. Even now, there was still some tantalizing overlay of Magda. He could feel the child underneath his hands, the long, sloping insolence of her legs, the swelling breasts pushing out her shirt, the neat, tight, dangerous, virgin bottom. Chewing-gum and nose-pickings hardly mattered any more – his hands were further down.
He sprang up from the seat, as if it had caught fire. Magda must go, if only for her own protection. If truth could be told in a telegram, it wasn’t Miklos who’d be cited, but his own vile, unpardonable obsession:
‘Magda, leave at once! Your brute of a father desires you.’
Except he wasn’t her father. He couldn’t be. Fathers didn’t feel such lust and murderous violence towards their daughters; want to fondle them and rape them, then bash their bloody brains in. He shuddered, felt like some foul debris chucked into a wastebin. Back in his office, he could still parade with rod and sword, still receive homage as monarch and Führer, but closed in the filthy dungeon of his mind, he was only chaff and scum. He was so exhausted, he felt as if he’d lived and laboured through all the centuries from Shakespeare’s to his own, yet this was a day off, a spree, a jaunt, a relaxation.
The interval was almost over. The lutenists had worked through Dowland, Byrd and Campian, and were now playing songs from the finale of the play itself.
When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight …
That’s all it was, paint. Even this theatre garden was plasticine and pigment. The tenor was flat in the upper register, the baritone had acne. He shaded his eyes from the pitiless purple-pink of the petunias, longed to lie down on the ground, and rot back into dust; or, at least, have Frances’ frail, familiar form beside him, her small, soft hands curled around his misery.
Balls! His wife had gone. Her small, soft hands were curled only around her womb, or some other swine’s filthy private parts. He kicked at a clump of daisies, decapitated their simple, smiling heads. He mustn’t give in to this spinelessness, this wallowing self-pity. Frances was best forgotten. At least Laura was still sitting there beside him. He must woo her, recapture her, stand up to Clive, refuse to let him win. If some sexless nincompoop with thinning hair and a handicap in double figures could bribe her with five bedrooms and a swimming pool, then he must offer more.
‘Look, Laura, I know things have been difficult, but just give me time. It can still work out between us …’
‘Can it?’ Laura broke the noose around his neck by plucking the largest daisy from the chain. ‘Let’s find out.’
She tore off one white petal and tossed it in the air. ‘He loves me,’ she chanted.
The countertenor’s strange, metallic voice was shrilling from the balcony:
The cuckoo then on every tree
Mocks married men, for thus sings he,
‘cuckoo’.
Laura wasn’t listening. All her attention was concentrated on the tiny white flower-head.
‘He loves me not.’ A second petal fluttered to the ground.
‘Loves me.
‘Loves me not.
‘Loves me …’
Charles was mesmerized by her soft, mocking voice. How could there be so many petals on a common daisy? White flags of surrender littering the grass. The warning bell was sounding from the theatre, above the chorus of the song:
Cuckoo, cuckoo! O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
He shivered. A spiteful wind was blowing off the river and the sun was all glare and no heart. He had no desire to return to Navarre – it was a vain and empty kingdom, and a cold one.
‘Loves me not,
‘Loves me …’
Stupid game! Laura’s voice was like an incantation. There was one last petal on the mutilated daisy – only one. Slowly, teasingly, she pulled it off, handing him the scalped stalk.
‘Loves me not,’ she whispered. He could smell the pollen on her fingers, and her Benson and Hedges breath.
The final bell was pealing across the garden, mixed with the still insistent chorus:
‘Cuckoo, cuckoo! O word of fear …’
Charles turned away, head down. He couldn’t endure that last act of the play, with its savage peasant songs, its jeering cuckoos. Laura took his arm, steered him back towards the theatre.
‘Come along, darling, we don’t want to miss it, do we? I doubt if there’ll be much Shakespeare in Johannesburg!’