That she had intended to die tidily in the bathroom was clear enough from the amount of blood in the bath, but, being completely unscientific, she had no idea how long the process would take, and at some point, through either boredom or panic, she had endeavoured to reach the sitting-room, leaving a trail of blood to mark her slow progress along the corridor. When I found her she was sprawled across my newly upholstered brocade sofa, her leaking wrists still marginally out of reach of the phone.
But if you prefer to begin at the very beginning, I have no objection. When Beatrice asked me to be Gemma’s godfather, I remember I made one of my feebler jokes (to cover my surprise and embarrassment, I think). I remarked in my flippant way that this would be the closest link God and I were ever likely to enjoy. Beatrice of course did not laugh, nor even favour me with a smile. She was shocked. She was always the kind of woman who shocked easily (a constant temptation to me) and more so, I suppose, since the death of her husband. To have a funeral and a christening within so short a space of time not unnaturally fixed her mind upon higher things. Eternity was, if not in her lips and eyes, certainly in the forefront of her thoughts, leaving no room for irreverence.
Holding the squalling infant wrapped in the family shawl, I pondered the words of the service, the life of rectitude to which the child was being condemned by proxy. I was responsible. Surely the works and pomps of Satan, whatever they were, would be more fun? The cries faded as the discomforts of virtue eased, and the red-faced, wrinkled creature looked at me with my dead brother’s eyes.
Gemma was a posthumous child and even I, self-cast cynic that I am, could see the pathos in that. My brother Hugh was on his way home in 1945, having served his country with hardly a scratch, as they say, making us all believe that his was indeed a charmed life, when he carelessly stepped on a mine and blew himself up, together with several of the men serving under him. It was a messy accident that need never have occurred, and it took me some months to recompose his features in my mind – to stop picturing fragments of Hugh scattered all over the oft-quoted foreign field.
People tend to think, because I am flippant and cynical, that I have no feelings. That is untrue. I cared deeply for Hugh. I felt for him the kind of obsessive love that only jealousy can inspire, for he excelled in everything – looks, charm, sport, study and luck – and I was proud of my defeat. As he was younger than I, my progress through school and college preceded his, and my notable mediocrity provided him with, as it were, a plain carpet on which to perform and dazzle. I would even go so far as to say that his death was a greater loss to me than to his wife. But, as I am often reminded, I know nothing of marriage.
Beatrice’s grief was genuine enough: they had not been married for sufficiently long to become either quarrelsome or bored. I simply did not regard her as a creature of much depth. No doubt she felt as much as she could and it was not her fault that her capacity for feeling was so limited. She was intensely practical, not given to flights of fancy, displays of emotion or any kind of introspective excess.
My brother Hugh had made the army his career and had seen ten years’ service at the time of his death. Beatrice settled down with her child to a life of the middle-class poverty that some people call comfort, much in the way my mother had done with us in 1917 after our father was killed. It was unpleasant to see the pattern being repeated: the large house divided into flats and let to a succession of quiet, childless couples, for motherhood had not made Beatrice fonder of other people’s children even at a distance, and certainly not in contact with her own property. Her pension was insufficient for her needs and the family assets, such as they were, shrank severely when my mother died and death duties had to be paid.
My mother had resisted all persuasion to make sensible provision well ahead of this event, seeming to believe it was less likely to occur with each year she survived. And, like many old people, she had not only clung to belief in her own immortality but also cherished her money as the only source of power remaining to her. She was not a greedy or a selfish woman but she wanted to give in her own good time. Useless to explain covenants, bequests, deeds of gift to her. She saw no urgency because she intended to live for ever. Meanwhile, money warmed her old age like a shawl.
She did, however, go so far as to make a will – a small concession to family pressure – and when this was read to us (the greatest possible secrecy having surrounded it during her lifetime) it provoked, as wills do, a family scene. Beatrice was horrified to discover that only half the estate came to her. The other half had been left to me. But since I was a bachelor and she had a child to support, it was obvious that she was entitled to two thirds and I to one. She argued this forcibly and I was compelled to agree; in fact it seemed prudent to agree before she concocted some even more specious argument and succeeded in proving that I was only entitled to a quarter or maybe a fifth. ‘Surely you want to make proper provision for your own god-daughter,’ she said, and I suddenly caught a whiff of the panic my mother must have felt. It was irrelevant to point out to Beatrice that the money was my mother’s to dispose of as she wished and that we had even a moral duty to respect her wishes and abide by her decision. I genuinely believe I would have felt this if my mother had left me nothing but I could not hope to make Beatrice accept such a fanciful idea. I paid up. It was, after all, in Gemma’s interest that I should do so.
Gemma was a beautiful child, and I speak as one who finds most children nauseating. I avoided her as far as possible until she reached the age of four, which is where, it seems to me, the humanising process begins. I wanted nothing to do with the moist and scruffy little animal preceding that stage, and I was rewarded for my patience. Gemma at four was enchanting. Nothing at all like her mother, fortunately (Beatrice is one of those rare and unlucky women who combine blonde hair and brown eyes with sallow skin and a large nose), but the image of dead Hugh, dark-haired and pale, with the same enormous cornflower-blue eyes, a colour so vivid as to be almost vulgar, surrounded by thick, dark lashes that looked as if they had been painted on. I was proud to be seen with her: I have always been much affected by beauty. Some people regard this as a vice or a weakness, but I do not. I took Gemma out once or twice a week, the more public the place the better, so that I could be envied and she admired; I bought her imaginative presents at Christmas and birthdays, considerably taxing my bachelor ingenuity, since I scorned to ask advice from Beatrice; but I never gave her money again after the affair of my mother’s will. I considered I had given her enough.
Beatrice was pleased to see that I took my godfatherly duties so much to heart. ‘She needs a man’s influence,’ she used to say. ‘It’s not good for a girl to grow up without a father.’ Then she would stare at me suspiciously. (My family secretly fear that because I have never married I must be homosexual or a womaniser: they have not considered that I could be both, or neither.) It was unnerving and absurd, like being surveyed across a hedge by an anxious cow.
Occasionally, as a cure for insomnia, I would give my mind to the problem of why my brother Hugh, who could have had any girl whose path he happened to cross, should have chosen to marry Beatrice. I know, of course, that human nature, like God, moves in a mysterious way – it was this fact that first attracted me to a literary career – but the marriage of Hugh and Beatrice seemed more inexplicable than any other event I had ever observed. If I had been a believer in providence I should have said that they had been permitted to marry purely in order to produce Gemma. The achievement of Gemma and the brevity of the marriage would seem to bear me out. But I am not a believer in providence, inclining to the view that any supernatural agency there may be tends to the malicious rather than the benign, so let that pass. They married, Hugh died, and Gemma was born. I cannot think so ill of my brother as to believe that the marriage would have lasted had he lived.
Beatrice is a woman much given to moderation and I am a great believer in excess, so Gemma and I became conspirators from an early age. Most of my time with her was spent ensuring that she had more of everything than Beatrice considered good for her. If I took her out to tea I would ply her with cake and cream buns, eclairs and meringues, jelly and orange juice, until guilt overcame her natural greed. ‘I mustn’t have any more,’ she would say eventually, her eyes round with longing. I would ask why not. ‘Because Mummy’ll be cross.’ Then I would produce my ace. ‘But Mummy won’t know.’ Poor Gemma wrestled with her conscience and generally lost.
‘Now I don’t want you making that child sick again,’ said Beatrice before our next outing.
‘Gemma’s never sick,’ I said righteously. ‘Are you, Gemma?’
She shook her head, nervous and excited at being caught in the adult crossfire.
‘Well, last time you took her out she couldn’t eat her supper and she was nearly green when I put her to bed,’ said Beatrice, snapping her thin mouth trap shut.
‘What nonsense,’ I said. Gemma trembled: no one else ever spoke to her mother like that.
It was the same when Beatrice went out in the evening. As Gemma grew older I took to spending occasional weekends with her and Beatrice in the country. It was pleasant for me to get out of London sometimes and Beatrice would take advantage of my presence to visit various people she claimed were friends, leaving me alone with Gemma. The game then was for me to persuade Gemma to stay up beyond the prescribed bedtime hour. I usually succeeded, and a delightful atmosphere of wickedness would build up during the evening. ‘Just one more round,’ I would say if we were playing cards, and watch the ensuing struggle with her conscience as Gemma’s eyes crept guiltily to the advancing clock. On the most spectacular occasions she would be flying up the stairs in her nightdress as Beatrice scraped her key in the lock at midnight.
‘What time did that child get to sleep?’ Beatrice demanded at breakfast. ‘She could hardly get up for church this morning and she had great dark circles under her eyes.’
I shrugged innocently. ‘I put her to bed when you told me but I’ve no idea when she went to sleep. Do you want me to spy on her?’
She stared at me. ‘What extraordinary words you use.’
‘It’s my profession,’ I said smugly.
‘You don’t let her read in bed, do you?’ she accused me. ‘She’ll only strain her eyes.’
‘Read in bed?’ I echoed, shocked. ‘Of course not.’ And remembered the golden days of Gemma’s childhood when I had read her Grimm and Hans Andersen, the little mermaid dancing as if on knives for her love, the girl spinning till her fingers bled and she dipped the spinning-wheel in the well and lost it, the horse’s head fixed above the gate, the dwarf putting a ring of hair on the girl’s finger, and later, something about being flayed alive. Those were our favourites, when Beatrice imagined we were still with Little Grey Rabbit. I watched Gemma turn pale as I read; I would stop and wait till she begged me to go on. Eventually Beatrice’s voice would peal up the stairs: ‘That’s enough now, you two,’ and I would drag myself away, downstairs to a good dinner with a dull woman. In the morning, accusation. ‘Whatever did you read to that child? She had nightmares.’
‘Did you give her cheese for supper?’ I enquired.
Beatrice sighed; she was building a great reputation for martyrdom. ‘Really, Alex, it’s too bad. You come down here and get her over-excited and I have to cope with the results. You’ve no idea how hard it is to bring up a child alone. You really mustn’t undermine everything I do.’
‘Perhaps, if you feel like that, you’d rather I didn’t come at all.’ My injured voice. I was surprised that it worked: I daily expected Beatrice to put a complete ban on my visits. But that, I suppose, was too extreme an action for her temperament, and besides she had a curious sense of family loyalty. I was the only male relative left on whom she could depend, and of course I was Gemma’s godfather. A rift was unthinkable, and would have reflected on her judgment. I used to fear that she might remarry, which would have reduced my influence considerably, but luckily her natural endowments made this unlikely, and as time went by, my position became completely secure.
Gemma at fourteen started to become interesting. Hitherto, she had been an attractive plaything, with all the charm of a puppy or kitten. But there is, necessarily, a limited amount of subversion that can be practised on a child. My scope was restricted by her age. Oddly enough, it was Beatrice who alerted me to the first crisis. We had met for lunch on one of her rare shopping expeditions to town. I could not see the necessity for shopping, since nothing she bought could possibly enhance her appearance, but she seemed to consider these periodic efforts essential.
She behaved strangely through lunch, not listening to the anecdotes I had prepared to amuse her. She was absent-minded, vague, unlike herself. I studied her face, while I talked and she failed to listen, and thought how rapidly she was ageing. The make-up she used, though it probably qualified as discreet, settled itself in the folds of her face, the frown creases on her forehead, the wrinkles round her eyes, the streaks of dissatisfaction that ran from nose to mouth. She ate too much and took no exercise, so a double chin was emerging, apart from the comfortable spread of her figure under her clothes; and her lipstick, too dark to be flattering, leaked into the sharp, fine cracks she had etched in her mouth by pursing her lips too often in disapproval. She was too young to be running to seed in this way, but it was happening nevertheless. I was glad that my brother Hugh was not there to see it.
‘I’ve got to talk to you about Gemma,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’m very worried about her. She’s met this boy. Well, he goes to the local boys’ school but he’s always hanging about the gates, waiting for her. He walks her home and they stand around talking for hours. I think she likes him.’ She looked at me despairingly. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Need you do anything?’ I was soothing. ‘It’s natural, isn’t it? She’s bound to start getting interested in boys sooner or later.’
‘Well, I thought later rather than sooner,’ said Beatrice sharply. She was really worried. ‘He’s quite unsuitable. Peter Hughes. His father runs a bicycle shop in the village. I don’t want Gemma associating with people like that.’
‘Unless she’s planning to become a child bride, does it really matter whom she associates with?’ The words struck me as quaint, more suited to a description of criminal activity than adolescent friendship.
‘Of course it matters,’ said Beatrice. ‘There’s no knowing where these things will lead if they’re not checked. I am solely responsible for her, after all. If any harm should come to her, it would be my fault. People are very merciless about parents these days. Whatever happens, it’s always the parents’ fault.’
‘But why should anything happen, Beatrice?’ I asked. ‘And what sort of happening do you have in mind?’
To my amazement she flushed. A blonde, sallow woman, prematurely faded, with dull red cheeks, is an extraordinarily unattractive sight. I fixed my gaze on a distant pot-plant, green and inoffensive.
‘You must know what I mean,’ she said.
I let her flounder for a few seconds. ‘A romantic entanglement,’ I said finally. ‘Romeo and Juliet. Well, she’s the right age. Stolen kisses behind the shrubbery. Would that be so terrible?’
‘I wish you’d be serious,’ said poor Beatrice. ‘She’s far too young for any nonsense like that. I don’t want her being mauled by common boys from the village.’
‘Would it help if his father was a lord?’ I enquired.
‘If she makes herself cheap, she’ll get a bad reputation,’ said Beatrice. ‘And you know what that means. All she’s got are her looks and her good name. She’s not a clever girl, I’m afraid. Last term’s report was most discouraging.’
‘You sound as if you’re trying to sell her to the highest bidder,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it a little early for such desperate measures?’
‘She’s not a clever child,’ Beatrice repeated. ‘I’ve got to be practical. She’s very average at school, she’s got no special talent. I can’t see her having a brilliant career at anything.’
‘Therefore she must make a brilliant marriage,’ I said. ‘Is that what you mean?’
‘Well, why not?’ She eyed me sternly. ‘She’d be very happy if she met the right young man.’
‘But not a boy from the bicycle shop. Of course not, I quite see that. Are you afraid his adolescent passion will overcome him? Do you see him flinging Gemma across the seat of his cycle and pedalling off into the distance? Does he perhaps run the junior branch of the Surrey White Slave Trade?’
‘You’re impossible,’ said Beatrice. But she managed to smile.
‘What do you want me to do?’ I had been flippant long enough.
She looked quite grateful for my change of tone. ‘Talk to her,’ she said. ‘Could you? Explain to her that boys don’t respect girls who make themselves cheap. She’ll accept it, coming from you.’
‘You mean it’s not true?’
‘I mean she thinks you’re a man of the world.’ She did not explain what she herself thought I was. ‘If I tell her, I’m only her mother, trying to spoil her fun. We’ve already had arguments about what time she comes in. She wants to go to dances in the village and mix with all kinds of people. She complains that some of the other girls have more pocket money to spend. I tell her they have fathers to support them.’ As always with Beatrice I felt uneasy at the mention of money.‘Yes, I do see that a rich husband is the answer,’ I said, ‘as soon as she reaches the age of consent. Do you think we could falsify her birth certificate, just to be on the safe side?’
‘If I didn’t know you so well,’ said Beatrice, ‘I’d be really angry.’
‘Mummy’s being ridiculous,’ said Gemma crossly, curled up in the big armchair. ‘Everybody in my form has a boyfriend. I can’t be the only one who hasn’t, I’d feel so silly.’
‘Does that mean any boy would do?’ I said. ‘Or is Peter special?’
He wasn’t, of course. I saw that at once. Her face puckered up with the effort of unaccustomed diplomacy.
‘He’s all right,’ she said slowly. ‘He’s very nice. I like him.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I believe you.’
‘Well, you know.’ She appealed to me, with a gesture of the hands that I found particularly attractive, flexing her spatulate fingers with eloquent helplessness. ‘I’ve got to have someone to go out with, haven’t I? I mean I can’t not have a partner for the school dance, I’d feel awful. Everyone else has got somebody to go with.’
‘Yes indeed,’ I said. ‘It would be dreadful to be a pariah at your age.’
She pouted. ‘You’re laughing at me. What does that word mean?’
‘A social outcast.’
‘I thought it was a dog.’
‘It can be. Why did you pretend you didn’t know what it meant?’
‘I don’t, not really. It just makes me think of dogs.’
‘A dog of low caste in a Hindu village,’ I elaborated helpfully.
‘Poor dog.’
‘I expect it gets used to it. Maybe it doesn’t even know.’
‘I bet it does. I expect people keep kicking it and throwing stones at it. Are they beastly to dogs in India?’
‘I’ve really no idea.’
‘I bet they are,’ she said gloomily.
I felt we had exhausted the dog, entertaining as it had been. I had, after all, a duty to Beatrice. ‘Gemma,’ I said tentatively. ‘This boy, what’s his name’
‘Peter.’
‘Peter. Is he… fond of you, do you think?’
She eyed me warily. ‘You’ve been talking to Mummy.’
‘Not exactly. She’s been talking to me. It’s not the same thing.’
‘No. Well, tell her he’s all right. He doesn’t… do anything.’ She flushed. ‘That’s what she’s worried about, isn’t it?’
I hesitated. ‘Something like that.’ I thought we were on dangerous ground and I did not want to stem the flow of adolescent confidences.
‘Well, he doesn’t.’
She sounded so grumpy that I felt expected, even compelled, to ask, ‘Do you wish he would?’
The flush deepened but she showed no sign of wanting to put an end to the conversation. ‘Other people’s boyfriends do.’
‘Do they?’ I said. ‘Or do they just say they do?’
‘I don’t know.’ She looked grateful. ‘That’s what I keep wondering. I mean, I don’t believe everything I’m told.’
‘No,’ I said gravely. ‘Of course not.’
‘But I think it’s true. Some of it, anyway. I don’t think Janet would tell me lies.’
‘Is she your best friend?’
‘Yes. She might exaggerate a bit but I think most of it’s true. Anyway, Peter’s not a bit like her boyfriend. Do you think he really likes me?’
‘At least as much as you like him.’
‘Oh!’
‘Well, he may need a partner for the school dance too.’
‘Yes. I hadn’t thought of that. So he doesn’t really fancy me at all, that’s why he hasn’t even kissed me.’ She stared at her skirt and blushed, looking so young, confused and irresistible that it was all I could do not to kiss her myself.
‘Of course he fancies you,’ I said. ‘He’s just being respectful. Your mother would be proud of him.’
‘Well, it’s a bit boring. I feel terribly out of it when everyone else is talking about what they did at the weekend. I’ll have to start making things up soon.’ She was totally serious. ‘I can’t talk to Janet at all at the moment, I’d feel so silly if she knew. I can’t talk to anyone.’
‘You can talk to me,’ I said.
‘Can I?’ She seemed actually grateful. ‘Can I really? You don’t mind? You don’t think I’m silly?’
‘No.’
‘And you don’t think I’m a dead loss. I mean, you don’t think every boy I meet’s going to be like Peter?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I certainly don’t.’
She relaxed a little. ‘That’s all right then. Only – we’re doing Romeo and Juliet this term and I had to read that speech, you know, the one about the fiery-footed steeds and all that…’
‘I know the one.’
She looked up, pausing dramatically: such eyes, that a man could have drowned in, or a boy, even such an insensitive retarded lout as Peter obviously was.
‘Did you know I’m the same age as Juliet?’
The naivety and self-importance of the young never cease to astonish me. ‘Yes. A few weeks younger, actually.’
She lowered her eyes again and I had to content myself with admiring the lashes. ‘I wish something would happen.’
Very little did happen, though, for several years: Beatrice saw to that. Gemma was kept at school for as long as possible, then transferred to some other establishment where she learnt to cook, type and arrange flowers. She was not sent abroad: Beatrice could not accept that any surveillance, however expensive, would be as effective as her own, and she had traditionally British fears about the unbridled appetites of continental men. English appetites, though presumably under better control, were further diluted by numbers and a deliberate policy of confusion. Gemma’s young men – I abandoned all attempts to memorise their names after the luckless Peter Hughes had been dismissed – were alternately welcomed and spurned. ‘Mummy’s in one of her moods,’ became an essential statement in Gemma’s life. Although my sympathies lay naturally with Gemma, I had to admire – as an artist – the skill with which Beatrice over-encouraged the young men (till Gemma grew sick of them) or subtly allowed them to make fools of themselves, or let them softly perish through cold neglect. She also developed headaches and various mysterious ailments, despite which she nobly tried ‘to do my best for you, darling,’ so that Gemma, whether coming home reluctantly early from a dance or sourly submitting to an uncongenial dinner party, was forced to admit that her mother had only her welfare at heart and would make any sacrifice to give her pleasure. Therefore she could not accept these sacrifices and offered her own instead.
Beatrice was aided, of course, by the fact that none of the young men provided exactly what Gemma was looking for, and whatever qualities they did possess were generally lost in the crowd that Beatrice encouraged under the pretext of giving Gemma ‘a good time’. Safety in numbers is a sound though old-fashioned policy, but I have never seen it pursued with greater verve. Poor Gemma, of course, wanted only to fall in love, but like an animal trying in vain to make a nest, was never allowed to settle long enough to build anything but the most flimsy structure.
We talked, she and I, at intervals, and always with a feeling of trust and intimacy, although often in a vague and elliptical way. Knowing that I was the only person in whom she chose to confide completely (there was a touch of rivalry between her and Janet) was a heady sensation. Listening to her words, seeing the play of emotion on her face, I sometimes felt she was more truly mine than if I had penetrated her. She was still a virgin, I was sure of that. The young men changed constantly; the miracle remained unaccomplished. I ran over her complaints in my mind.
— ‘He’s very attractive and he makes me laugh, but we never talk about anything important.’
— ‘He’s so intellectual – why doesn’t he kiss me more often?’
— ‘He’s awfully nice, just like a brother. I wish I fancied him.’
— ‘I don’t feel comfortable with him at all. I keep waiting for him to pounce.’
Affection made me dishonest and, much as I might have lied to a terminal cancer patient about their chances of recovery, I tried to convince her that she would one day find all the qualities she sought in one person – despite all the evidence around her to the contrary. Love, or the desire for love, is after all very like a fatal illness. She latched eagerly onto my reassurances. ‘Do you really think I will? Oh, I do hope so. It’s not a bit the way I imagined it.’ Poor child, she was nourished on romantic literature. ‘Give it time; be patient,’ I tried to say, but these are the qualities that youth thinks it can least afford. She was almost nineteen. Five years of half-measures, of endless popularity and continual disappointment: that must have been far more searing than my jaundiced middle age. If you expect little or nothing, you are seldom let down, but poor Gemma was young and therefore expected everything.
Christopher Clark: the very name has a fine solid English ring to it. Lacking the affectation of a final ‘e’, it suggests the courage of its own convictions. Insert the prefix ‘Dr’ and you have a pillar of society, the dependable middle-class professional man, dedicated to doing good and making money, and seeing no contradiction between the two. No wonder Beatrice was excited.
‘Such a nice young man… a doctor, you know… only thirty… and he seems really interested in Gemma.’ These essential points were reiterated breathlessly, monotonously, incoherently to me throughout weeks of increasing hysteria. Beatrice had sighted land; she had struck oil; her ship had come in. I realise of course that I mix my metaphors, a practice I normally deplore; but for once only mixed metaphors will serve to convey the flurry of Beatrice’s conversation. After a lifetime of wading through shells containing nothing but boring old oysters, she had at last discovered a pearl.
I was reluctant at first to examine this pearl, preferring to indulge my own fantasy. I imagined a hearty young man (Gemma had met him at the tennis club), fair and florid in the traditional English way, inclined to sweat but terribly good in a crisis. Gemma herself did not talk about him: not having heard the wedding bells resounding in Beatrice’s ears, she imagined she had merely found a good partner for the mixed doubles tournament. There was, of course, great competition in the village for such an eligible young man, newly arrived in the district to join an expanding practice, but, luckily for Beatrice, Gemma’s beauty, her affability and her more than adequate backhand made her a clear winner.
Christopher Clark: I could not have been more wrong about him. A thin young man, taller than I expected when he rose from his chair to greet me; dark-haired, sallow-skinned, almost gaunt in the face as if from fatigue or starvation; looking older than his years, then (a sudden smile lighting up the hollows) looking younger and full of that rare commodity, genuine charm; shaking hands firmly, asking how I was and actually seeming to care. I thought of his patients being greeted by this apparition in the surgery: surely at least half their psychosomatic ailments would disappear on sight.
We waited for Gemma (he was taking her out to dinner to celebrate their victory on the court) and he asked me politely about my journey down, my whereabouts in London, my profession, and the pleasures of weekending in the country, all as if my answers were of the greatest possible concern to him. He chatted amiably about himself in return, but without revealing very much. Perhaps there was not much to reveal.
Gemma was late: a bad sign, I thought. Beatrice called up the stairs to her and plied us with more drinks. I accepted; Christopher Clark declined, as a driver. I applauded his willpower.
‘Oh, it’s not difficult,’ he said deprecatingly. ‘I never do drink very much. What I’d really like now is a cigarette but unfortunately I’ve given them up.’
He spoke as if this had been an accident or an arbitrary decision imposed from above, rather than a matter of his own personal choice. I admired his prudence but I did not warm to him. It is the misfortune of prudence to be admirable rather than attractive. I even began to wonder if Gemma had not in fact found herself rather a dull dog, as they say. Then we heard her step on the stair and the dull dog pricked up its ears and started to wag its tail. I caught a look of complacency on Beatrice’s face before she disguised it. Gemma came in, looking and smelling delicious and acting offhand, with the sort of confidence a woman only has when she knows she is about to be unconditionally admired. ‘Hullo, Chris, sorry to keep you waiting,’ announced carelessly, flung over her shoulder as she turned to me: ‘When did you get here? Oh, how lovely to see you,’ and hugging me, though more for his benefit than mine, I felt.
I did not allow myself to be distracted by Gemma: I made a fuss of her as a loving uncle should but kept my eyes on her escort. His face was flushed; he had knocked over his empty glass (and not even noticed) when he stood up to greet Gemma. Suddenly he seemed too tall, and his hands and feet too large. Now he turned to Beatrice. ‘We won’t be late back. I’ll take great care of her.’ Already they were partners in conspiracy. Gemma seemed unconcerned, flitting round the room, cramming nuts and olives into her mouth and sipping Beatrice’s sherry. ‘Gemma, darling, you can have a drink of your own if you want one,’ Beatrice remonstrated lovingly, playing the affectionate mother to Dr Clark’s attentive suitor.
‘No, no, then we’ll be late for dinner and that will never do,’ said wicked Gemma, enjoying her power. ‘Chris will be cross. Hey, that’s rather good. Chris-cross.’ She giggled.
‘Gemma, that’s not fair,’ said Beatrice. ‘You’re much too indulgent with her, Dr Clark.’ I heard her revelling in the prefix. Gemma swooped down on us both with goodbye kisses; Dr Clark shook hands. They were gone. Beatrice sat back with a sigh and allowed a smile of self-congratulation to spread over her large face. I poured myself another drink. Before she could ask me what I thought, I said, ‘Oh yes, he’s in love with her all right.’
For the first time in her life Gemma became secretive. I knew of course that she and Dr Clark were frequently together but I knew it only because of Beatrice’s squeaks of approval, to which I was subjected almost daily on the telephone. Gemma herself said nothing and I felt it would be a confession of weakness to ask. I had never been excluded from her confidence before: I did not know how to handle it. The pain of it surprised me, I who had thought myself at last immune to such humiliations. To have it proved to me that there was still even a fraction of my heart that could be so vulnerable was alarming, to say the least. I feared the loss of control: over Gemma and over myself.
So I could hardly have been more surprised when a few weeks later Dr Clark rang up. He sounded nervous. ‘I’m sorry to presume on a brief acquaintance,’ he said. ‘I got your number from the phone book.’
I was immediately cheered. ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Why not?’ He could easily have obtained the information from Gemma or Beatrice: that he had not done so suggested conspiracy, which is always attractive.
‘The fact is—’ he said, and hesitated. I didn’t help him.
‘Well, I want your advice.’
I invited him to lunch at my club, where he appeared ill at ease. After very little small talk he said abruptly, ‘You see, the thing is, I want to marry Gemma but I don’t know how she feels about me.’
‘Well, neither do I,’ I said unhelpfully.
‘She hasn’t talked to you then?’ he asked, with an eager acceptance of doom.
‘If she has,’ I said, ‘you can hardly expect me to betray her confidence – now can you?’
‘No, of course not.’ He played with the food on his plate; he looked more than ever gaunt and shadowed, totally vulnerable. I began to enjoy our conversation. ‘I just thought… as she thinks so much of you, as your opinion is obviously very important to her…’
‘Yes?’ I was gratified. If Gemma had not talked to me of him, at least it appeared that she had talked to him of me.
‘Well, I thought you could give me some idea, I mean if I should speak to her… if you think I stand a chance.’
‘I can’t imagine why you haven’t asked her already,’ I said, taking pity on him, although in fact the reason was perfectly obvious: love had completely eroded whatever self-confidence he normally possessed. I was interested to observe such an old-fashioned phenomenon at close range: Dr Clark, it struck me, might well have been the hero of a Victorian novel. ‘Don’t you realise that every mother with a marriageable daughter has been after you from the moment you set foot in the village?’
He smiled. As usual his face lightened, making him seem positively attractive. If Gemma was not in love with him, it could only be because he was so obviously in love with her. ‘I wouldn’t have noticed,’ he said. ‘As soon as I saw Gemma—’ He paused, and I wondered what extravagance he was about to commit. ‘Well, I suppose it seems ridiculous to you, you can’t possibly see her as I do, but to me… well, she’s everything.’
The usual inadequate hyperbole. I was lost for a moment, witnessing absolute love. Other people’s emotions never fail to absorb me. The intensity with which they feel creates my belief in their value as human beings. Unlike me, they have not yet opted out, not yet discovered that human feelings are treacherous and doomed to end sooner or later in boredom or pain. I longed to pitch Dr Clark into this maelstrom of suffering, to see if he would swim or sink: he was obviously yearning for a guiding hand to shove him over the edge. I longed also to involve Gemma in something beyond her control: then surely she would confide in me again. Or was she silent because he had become less manageable and more special? Was she threatening me with a sudden need for privacy?
‘So why haven’t you asked her?’ I said.
‘Because she might refuse,’ he said simply. ‘As long as I wait, I can still hope. I really can’t ask her without some encouragement, there’s too much at stake.’
I considered this man, in his prime, sought-after like an estate agent’s favourite district, highly qualified, holding lives melodramatically in his hands when occasion demanded, completely demoralised by a girl I had seen grotesquely bandy in nappies, but who had now grown bewitching enough to torment us both.
‘Do you want me to put in a word for you?’ I asked, thinking the cliché was all he deserved. And yet I envied him: it wasn’t all contempt. He at least stood a chance.
His face lit up flatteringly. ‘Would you? Would you really do that?’
‘For what it’s worth,’ I said. ‘But I think you overrate my influence.’
‘Oh no,’ he said curiously. ‘I don’t think that.’
I was alerted to some danger I could not define. Perhaps I had underestimated Dr Clark. ‘Besides,’ I went on as if he had not spoken, ‘what if too much encouragement had the opposite effect? Gemma’s always led a very sheltered life, you know. Her mother’s seen to that. Now her mother obviously approves of you. Don’t you think the time may have come for Gemma to rebel?’
He looked concerned. ‘You mean if her mother didn’t approve I might stand more chance?’
‘Right in one, Dr Clark,’ I said. ‘So why should I add my voice to the chorus of approval and ruin your chances altogether?’
I could see that he did not enjoy my levity, but he was obliged, in the circumstances, to go on being civil to me. I saw myself rather as a malingering hypochondriac, tiresomely claiming too much of his time and attention but too profitable to be shaken off.
‘What do you suggest then?’ He still managed to be charming, even deferential, but I thought it was fairly clear that we disliked one another.
‘If I were you I should seduce her.’ I leaned back to observe the effect of this suggestion and thought I discerned shock.
‘That is, of course, if you haven’t already done so,’ I added, certain that he had not.
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you.’ I had strained his courtesy to the limit: he was offended, both by the suggestion itself and by my intrusion into his privacy. I had trodden on sacred ground.
‘As a seducer,’ I went on, feeling the old-fashioned term was appropriate, ‘you would represent to Gemma something she knows would shock her mother.’
He said quickly, ‘But her mother wouldn’t know.’
‘All the better. Gemma would be in possession of a secret – the delicious knowledge of behaving in a way her mother would consider wicked, while still being regarded as innocent. What could be more delightful? After all, there’s no way you can make yourself less eligible in Beatrice’s eyes. But there is a way you can appear more exciting to Gemma. At the moment, you are merely adoring, devoted, respectful. She probably knows you want to marry her, so she has the upper hand. But if you seduce her – without proposing – she’ll be confused. Dazzled with pleasure – one hopes—’ I added maliciously, ‘—yet prey to anxiety. Remember she’s an old-fashioned girl. The wind of change hasn’t blown very far into Surrey yet. She’ll be afraid of pregnancy, afraid of losing you. All the romantic novels she’s ever read will be there in the back of her mind to help you. A vision of herself dishonoured. Seduced and abandoned, like a popular heroine. Has she lost your respect? That dread word. Will another girl steal you away? What are your intentions? Has she ruined her future prospects? She’ll have sleepless nights. A proposal then and she’ll fall into your arms, weeping with gratitude.’
He stared at me. ‘You’re talking about the middle ages,’ he said inaccurately.
‘I’m talking about Gemma. She’s been conditioned. By her mother, her background, her reading, her temperament. There are plenty of girls like her, no matter what the papers say.’ He instantly dismissed the heretical suggestion that Gemma might not be unique. ‘But it’s Gemma I love. I want to marry her.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘And I’m telling you how to do it.’
Gemma’s wedding: the small church banked high with flowers; the smell of incense (Beatrice of course was High Anglican); the quavering voice of the vicar, an elderly friend of the family, as he put forward the unlikely proposition that Christopher Clark should worship his bride with his body; the matron of honour Janet, the only friend from school (Gemma had never made friends easily), now hugely pregnant and about to leave for Canada with her husband, clutching her own and Gemma’s bouquet to her stomach like a wreath for her unborn child; the mad organist playing just a shade too fast for the choir; Beatrice’s snuffling tears of joy behind me as I declared beyond all reason that I gave this woman to be married to this man.
They both spoke softly, seriously, their small clear voices audible yet tenderly faint. We were witnessing such a private ceremonial that we were almost intruders. The triumphal music afterwards (Widor, as I recall) made optimistic mockery of marriage as most of the congregation knew it, suggesting unalloyed bliss. Outside, some idiot with a camera clicked and clicked, making us line and regroup like soldiers in any combination from one to dozens, flashing our self-conscious smiles. At the reception, anaesthetised by champagne, I made some ridiculous speech about standing in loco parentis and Beatrice started to cry again. Christopher replied with something brisk and grateful, the couple circulated, cake that nobody wanted to eat was cut, and a lot of people got drunk.
I could not see her clearly, my little one, in her swirl of white, with her smile for which no adequate praise had been invented, but I know she glided around the room and gave everyone a few precious moments of her time. Some hours must have passed, I suppose, but it seemed very soon that she was drifting away from me, unfamiliar in a new blue suit, still smiling but looking slightly puzzled by her own happiness, her own actions. There was a lot of noise and flowers were thrown and foolish people did things with shoes to the departing car and confetti fell like multi-coloured summer snow. The goodbye kisses were meaningless, only the ever-increasing distance between us was real, and I had lost her. ‘Thank God,’ said Beatrice by my side. ‘Thank God, thank God,’ until I wanted to kill her, until it would have given me the purest pleasure to squeeze and squeeze her neck until her face turned black and her eyes and tongue bulged out. I do not know what happens in these cases but I imagine it must be something satisfyingly repulsive. ‘Thank God, she’ll be safe with him,’ she breathed, as the car disappeared out of sight.
When I got home, I wept.
She had said to me, ‘I suppose I must be in love with him.’ Wandering round my room, pale as a lover from mythology or folklore, not quite hearing what I said because a luminous veil of self-absorption hung between us. ‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ she said, and looked at me, mutely imploring indulgence.
It was so obvious: her whole system had undergone a severe shock. Well-brought-up girls take these things very seriously. The normal course of events, to be enjoyed, shrugged off and giggled over by others less respectable, to them is world-shattering.
I said untruthfully, ‘Gemma, I don’t want to pry. But you can have a love affair, you know, your first or your hundredth, and it doesn’t have to mean you’re in love.’
She coloured embarrassingly. I waited. ‘I can’t—’ she began, and stopped. ‘No, I really do love him,’ she said.
I poured her a drink, and one for myself. At least it gave me time to think. I said, ‘Gemma, my love, listen to me. It can happen to any of us. At any age. It even happened to me once or twice. Can you believe that? It’s a fever, a disease. Delicious, engrossing, intoxicating, but it passes.’
‘No,’ she said, her eyes above the glass challenging me to prove her love was not eternal.
‘You’re nineteen,’ I said futilely. ‘Don’t you realise how often this can happen in your life?’
We stared at each other, completely sundered for the first time. ‘I’m going to marry him,’ she said.
I had known of course from the beginning that this was what we were discussing. I had done my work too well. Hoist with my own petard, I think is the expression, beloved of English schoolmasters, for elucidation in lessons on figures of speech; I believe I even included it in my own classic textbook, the one that still pays the rates.
‘I’m not trying to stop you marrying him,’ I said dishonestly. ‘But I am trying to stop you feeling that you must. Enjoy it, make the most of it, but wait till you’re rational again. Then if you still want to marry him – perhaps. But in a year, six months, you may not even want to know him. If you meet someone else you may find you’ve been drinking beer. The next one might be champagne.’
‘You don’t understand,’ she said, the classic words dividing youth from age.
I was so frightened (though ashamed of my fear) that I did not attempt to argue. ‘I want to,’ I said.
There was a long silence. She drank her drink and looked around the room. She had given up smoking under his influence but I could see her twitching as she missed the accustomed prop. ‘I can’t do without him,’ she said slowly. ‘Before’ – and the colour flooded her face again – ‘I think I took him for granted almost. You know – he was just someone who took me out. It was nice. I could tell he was keen on me. I felt… powerful. But now…’ She lapsed into long retrospective silence so erotic that it seemed to colour the room. ‘Now it’s different.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know.’ I felt myself becoming inadequate. ‘But it’s a drug. Believe me, Gemma. A drug.’
‘Maybe that’s what I want,’ she said defiantly.
I got up. My drink was not finished but I put some more ice in it for punctuation. My head had never been clearer but I could see defeat grinning at me from a corner. I had been too clever for my own good and I had underestimated both Gemma’s appetite and Dr Clark’s ability.
‘You don’t have to marry your first love,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see, this whole experience just gives you an idea of your own potential. You’ve no idea what you might be able to achieve in the future.’
She looked at me, shock turning to actual distaste. I saw it clearly; I had never seen it before. ‘You mean,’ she said slowly, ‘you want me to go on like this for the rest of my life? One affair after another? Is that what you want?’ She was so angry she had ceased to blush and the love-lorn pallor had returned. She had never looked more attractive: I wanted to scoop her up into my arms.
Why not? was what I longed to say. Instead I said, ‘I want you to be happy.’ The truth, and yet how inadequate when what I meant was: I want you to suffer, survive, enjoy, despair, expand and die. I want you to live. That’s what I want for you.
She said coldly, ‘That’s fine then. Because I’ll be happy with Chris.’ Then suddenly she relaxed and a look of rapture passed over her face. ‘Mummy’d be so shocked if she knew.’
It was about this time that I became involved with Oswald and Miranda. A petty, inadequate revenge, and one doomed to misfire, both by damaging me and failing to touch the person for whom it was intended. No: I am being too partisan. Strange how even at this distance old prejudice seeps through. It was simple compensation, if I am to be accurate. Not meant to hurt Gemma. Merely the last fling of an ageing, rejected lover. Not meant to hurt anyone, in fact, least of all myself. But my aim was unsteady.
They both had other names, of course. I renamed them after they came under my spell. I could still in those days exercise a kind of magic, if I cared to put my mind to it. And I did care. Only life was too empty for me to be excessively particular in my choice.
Oswald had a normal, healthy, attractive name that suited him admirably. He was a lively, athletic boy with an enquiring mind and the sort of enthusiasm that is the prerogative of the young. He radiated energy and curiosity. So I downgraded him: I envied his facility to charm and conquer. Miranda was a different matter. Pale and subdued in manner but with extraordinary hair, the yellowish-red colour of leaves that fall early, before the end of August. So she was upgraded, romanticised, removed from her ordinary little name. I like to pretend I cannot even remember what they were called before I set my mark upon them. I wanted to uplift her, to put her high above him, out of his reach. And him I wanted to degrade, to place far beneath her. Myself at the centre, I would have easy access to both.
They sat at my feet, sometimes even literally, sprawled on the carpet, rolling their ridiculous unhygienic joints which I shared to bridge the generation gap. They had been thrown out of their lodgings for this curious modern habit, which made it easy for me to offer them shelter – easy but reckless. They were not in love, I swear they were not in love, then, as I looked at them, but they were entangled. Yet out of this entanglement came at first not strength but weakness. Separately I could not touch them; together they were vulnerable. Sometimes I used to wonder if they had in fact banded together for the sole unconscious purpose of being destroyed.
I had the feeling that my interest in them made their relationship exist: I provided a hot-house climate in which it could flourish. They talked about themselves incessantly, as only the young seem able to do, never bored, finding their own emotions perpetually of absorbing fascination. Miranda’s pale grey-green eyes, startling in her freckled face, would glaze over with intensity as she analysed her feelings for Oswald; he would glow with absurd vivacity as he talked about her. They were like brother and sister: only my presence provided them with an incestuous bridge of words.
‘It’s a lovely little boy,’ Beatrice shrieked at me down the telephone. I glanced at my watch: it was half past four in the morning.
‘Is she all right?’ I asked carefully.
‘Eight pounds two ounces,’ yelled Beatrice as I spoke. ‘Isn’t that splendid? Oh, I’m so happy, I can’t believe it. I’m a grandmother. Christopher’s here, we’re drinking champagne. I’ve been crying. Aren’t I a fool?’
‘She’s all right then,’ I said.
‘What? Oh, Gemma. Yes, of course she’s all right, what d’you mean? Oh, I don’t know how to—’
‘Let me speak to him.’
Silence, tinged with indignation. ‘Who? Christopher?’
‘You said he was with you.’
Another pause. ‘Yes, of course he is. We’re celebrating.’
‘Then let me speak to him.’
There was some muffled muttering and then he came on the line.
‘Alex. Sorry to wake you up, but we thought you’d want to be the first to know.’
‘You mean the third.’
‘What? Oh, yes.’ He actually laughed.
‘Is Gemma all right? Medically speaking, I mean.’
‘Yes, of course. She had a bit of a rough time but she’s fine now and the baby—’
‘I don’t want to know about the baby,’ I said. ‘Not yet. I want to know about Gemma. Give me your professional opinion. What sort of rough time did she have?’
There was a short silence. When he spoke again his voice had iced over.
‘Well, it was a forceps delivery, which was a bit of bad luck for her, but she’s perfectly all right. Very tired but very happy.’
He dispensed his knowledge so casually. The telephone was clammy in my hand. I reached for a cigarette and lit it with difficulty.
‘Stitches?’
He seemed surprised at the question. ‘Well, yes, she had an episiotomy but that’s fairly routine—’
‘Not always,’ I said.
‘I don’t think you quite understand—’
‘On the contrary, I know all about it.’ I had spent Gemma’s pregnancy reading medical textbooks. ‘It can be avoided.’
There was a sharp pause. Then: ‘I really don’t think we need go into all these details of my wife’s delivery. I can assure you she had the best of attention, in case you’re suggesting otherwise. Grayson is a first-rate chap, a personal friend of mine—’
I put down the phone.
Gemma’s post-puerperal depression lasted a long time. In hospital she was euphoric, or, as Christopher had put it, ‘very tired but very happy’. She talked incessantly, like someone high on drugs or alcohol, extolling the baby and her own new exalted frame of mind. Motherhood had changed her, she said. She elaborated on this at great length but the gist of it was that she felt transformed by the elemental nature of the experience. Something like that. It all made me feel faintly sick, and possibly envious too. Christopher sometimes intruded on my hospital visits and sat there looking smug, though he forbore to use the actual words ‘I told you so’. Beatrice would also turn up, gushing as she unwrapped flowers, grapes and woolly animals, so I was seldom alone with Gemma.
I gave her a silver bracelet, inscribed with the date of the child’s arrival, and studied her face. It was certainly true that motherhood had changed her, though not entirely in the way she meant. She looked subtly different, as if all her features had been taken apart during her ordeal, and though reassembled in the same order had somehow lost their former symmetry. There was a look of strain, of uncertainty, even of surprise at her own survival. She looked as though she had been very ill, or away on a long journey. She did not look, in a word, herself. It was like watching one of those films in which a secret agent is the double of the heroine and is forced to impersonate hen They are identical, even played by the same actress, and yet you know that something is wrong.
When she got home with the child, an event to which she had been looking forward intensely, the euphoria gave way to continual fits of weeping. Beatrice tried to jolly her along; Dr Clark assured me it was all perfectly normal, a word to which I took great exception. Influenza may be normal too, or in certain countries smallpox or cholera, but that seems no reason not to take it seriously and extend some compassion to the sufferer. I was the only person who appeared to sympathise with Gemma: Dr Clark complained that this sympathy was misplaced because it only made her worse. ‘It’s quite a natural reaction,’ he said. ‘It happens to lots of women. They look forward to the whole thing so much that when it’s over they get a feeling of anticlimax. Maybe like publishing a book?’ he added feebly, to appeal to me. ‘And apart from that, they’re physically very tired and rundown and their hormones—’
I interrupted him savagely. ‘I really don’t want to hear about Gemma’s hormones, thank you all the same. Nor do I particularly care how many millions of other wretched women have the same reaction. It’s Gemma we’re talking about and Gemma we’re supposed to be caring for. One person. An individual. Not a load of statistics in the Lancet. Your wife. My niece. Your daughter,’ I added, rounding on Beatrice.
She flushed angrily. ‘Really, Alex, there’s no need to get so heated.’
‘It seems to me,’ I said, ‘that there is every need.’
‘You may find it satisfying,’ said Dr Clark, icily calm, ‘but the fact remains that it does no good and may even do positive harm. Gemma is going through an uncomfortable but perfectly normal reaction to the experience of childbirth. Giving her all this excess sympathy is simply self-indulgence on your part and likely to make her feel a freak. If you really care for her as much as you claim, you’d make some effort to control yourself in her best interests.’
‘I notice you have no difficulty in controlling yourself,’ I said.
He stared at me and finally could not resist the provocation. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
I lit a cigarette, partly to prolong the moment of confrontation and partly to offend him. He loathed people smoking in his presence.
‘I notice a considerable change in your attitude to Gemma,’ I said. ‘Over the past year, that is. I can remember a time when you were metaphorically on your knees, desperate to marry her. Once she was actually your wife and certainly after she became pregnant, you allowed yourself to be positively casual, even complacent about her.’
We looked at one another, straight in the eyes, two enemies on a battlefield. There was no pretence left. Beatrice was breathing heavily, shocked but afraid to speak.
‘That simply isn’t true,’ he said at length, calm as ever. ‘But even if it were, I have no need to explain myself to you. Gemma and I, as it happens, have a perfect understanding. You remind me very much of a man who can’t believe in anything he doesn’t see. No wonder you have no religion. Well, not everyone cares to parade their feelings in public. The deepest feelings, in fact, are naturally private. You have no idea of our relationship because it is no concern of yours. Why should we show it to you? So kindly don’t speak to me of things you don’t understand.’
‘I’d rather not speak to you at all,’ I said without premeditation.
He smiled, and I realised the extent of my error. ‘That’s easily arranged,’ he said. ‘I simply shan’t invite you to my home again. Gemma is of course free to visit you as often as she wishes. I imagine that arrangement will suit us all very well.’
Beatrice, to my amazement, burst into noisy tears.
‘Chris has been marvellous,’ Gemma said. ‘I really don’t know how he put up with me. I was so awful.’
I smiled politely.
‘Oh, I know,’ she said. ‘I know. I’m so sorry you had that stupid row. But it will blow over, really it will.’
‘Probably.’ I was secretly hoping it would not, enjoying the stolen-fruit aspect of Gemma’s visits to me. Sometimes Beatrice was willing to babysit; on other occasions Gemma was obliged to bring the child with her and I had to endure his snuffling presence, the carry-cot on my bed, the discreet nappy-changing in the bathroom, the frequent bouts of screaming hysteria. Gemma’s patience amazed me: she seemed so loving with him, so unperturbed.
‘I’m working on him,’ she said now.
She meant Christopher, of course.
‘Please don’t,’ I said. ‘At least not on my account. I’m perfectly happy with things the way they are.’
‘But it’s so silly,’ Gemma said. She frowned: it was clear that we were marginally spoiling her happiness. Two people who loved her must necessarily love each other; it was part of her simple code. ‘He’ll come round,’ she said with confidence.
‘And suppose I don’t?’ I said to tease her, although in a way I meant it.
‘Oh, but you will,’ she said. ‘Won’t you? For me? When you’re ready, I mean.’ And she gave me one of her irresistible smiles, nearly the old Gemma again, the carefree enchantress I remembered.
‘I suppose so,’ I said, beguiled.
She leaned back in her chair, making herself thoroughly comfortable. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘you don’t really understand Chris. He can’t show his feelings in public, so naturally you think he’s being tough and cold when you see him. But he’s only being self-contained. When we’re alone he’s lovely to me. Really.’
I let it go. She was, after all, only two years married, still intoxicated by her presumed complete knowledge of another human being.
‘It was my fault really,’ she went on, pouring out generosity and also power. ‘I shouldn’t have been so neurotic. I really went to pieces – that’s why you both got so upset. I think it was the awful responsibility of it that struck me, once I got home. When Chris was out and if I rang up Mummy and she wasn’t there, I felt completely alone with Jonathan. It was terrifying. Like a nuclear disaster. As if there was no one else alive except me and Jonathan, so I was entirely responsible for him. If I did anything wrong he might die. That’s why I just couldn’t stop crying.’
‘I know,’ I said. But I didn’t, and I grudged her the experience.
‘Anyway, it’s all right now,’ she said happily. ‘I can cope. It’s easy. Honestly, I look back sometimes and I really wonder what all the fuss was about.’
‘You look very well,’ I said with tactful truth.
‘Oh, I feel marvellous. Really, it was so ridiculous cracking up like that. Poor Chris. He had a dreadful time.’
‘It will help him to understand his patients.’
‘Miaou.’ She grinned at me cheerfully. ‘You are naughty. He’s really so nice and you just won’t give him a chance. Can’t you be friends for my sake?’
‘Give it time, Gemma.’
‘Oh, all right. But it really is awkward for me. I want to invite you to dinner. It’s not the same without you. Chris’s friends are awfully dull.’ She stopped, flushing slightly, having caught herself out in a disloyalty. ‘No, that’s not true, they’re nice, but they’re too clever for me. I can’t think of anything to say to them.’
‘So you need your idiot uncle to play buffoon,’ I suggested.
‘Something like that.’ She smiled, clearly not in a mood to let me get away with anything. ‘No, you know what I mean. You and I could be frivolous and they could talk shop. It would balance out.’
‘Yes, Christopher does seem a trifle serious,’ I said, greatly daring. ‘As far as I remember.’
‘Well, he’s got a very responsible job.’ She eyed me sternly. ‘You can’t expect him to be… well, like us.’
The word sang in my heart. We were a unit again, two against the world, alien and irresponsible. Even dangerously provocative, with a bit of luck. A law unto ourselves. Yes? Oh Gemma, are you coming back to me? Are you sliding within my orbit again, my love, my child, my creation?
‘The only thing is…’ She frowned. ‘Oh, I probably shouldn’t ask.’
‘Ask.’
‘Well, I was just wondering. Are those two students still with you?’
‘Oswald and Miranda?’ I said unnecessarily. ‘Yes.’
‘Hm.’ She considered this, turning her glass in her hand, suddenly, I felt, in need of a forbidden cigarette. I lit one, to exacerbate her need.
‘I wish you’d get rid of them,’ she said. ‘I mean, isn’t it awfully unethical, fraternising like that? Having them in your home, isn’t it a bit dangerous?’
I rejoiced I had got her on the raw at last. ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘It depends on your point of view. They need somewhere to live. Why shouldn’t I take them in? I’m too old to be cautious.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘It just seems unhealthy somehow.’
Her intuition amazed me. ‘Really, Gemma, now you’re being ridiculous.’
She considered this; she always tried to be fair. ‘I can’t help it,’ she said at length. ‘I just don’t like them.’
Oswald and Miranda left me about the time of Gemma’s second pregnancy, although the two events were in no way connected. They were in love, they said. They required to be alone. They found my presence suffocating and intrusive. They considered I was poisoning their love. They compared me to a vampire sinking its fangs into their necks and sucking forth blood. They lacked privacy: I had seduced them into my home by offering them free accommodation which I knew they were in no position to refuse. I had therefore taken advantage of them by giving them what they most needed; in return I expected their lives; I demanded their innermost thoughts to feed my diseased imagination; I was exploiting them as human beings, like someone keeping animals in a cage and requiring them to mate for his own amusement. I was evil, and they were lucky to escape from me, yet they still found it in their hearts to pity me because they had so much more than I.
All that in a letter which I have kept but do not care to reproduce verbatim, as I find its hysterical tone offensive. Written by Oswald but signed by them both, the product, no doubt, of one of their pot-smoking orgies which I had missed while visiting Beatrice. A letter left harmlessly lying on the kitchen table with the keys to the flat, but which, after studying the venom it contained, I was surprised not to find pinned to my pillow with a mediaeval dagger. They lacked the courage to face me, of course, and so ran away in the night when I was not there.
The child clung to Gemma’s left breast, which was grotesquely swollen with milk and traced with blue veins like a road map; she cradled its elongated head in her hand and encouraged it to suck, although it did not seem to need much encouragement. ‘Aren’t I lucky she’s a girl?’ she said fondly.
I had not considered this before but now that she mentioned it, it did strike me as vaguely familiar, so presumably everyone else, such as Beatrice and Christopher, had already told me so, only I had not been listening. ‘Yes,’ I said, trying to sound a note of real enthusiasm. ‘Very lucky.’
She had not asked me if I minded the breastfeeding. With the first child, there had been a certain reticence; now, total maternal confidence had taken over. How could I be offended by something she found so natural? Not that there would have been much point in her asking: had I told her, she would only have been hurt. But I felt I was an involuntary intruder on a private ceremony, and besides, I did not care, aesthetically, to see Gemma’s breasts in that condition. I tried to look away, but there was something obscurely fascinating about such intimate exposure; I pondered the strange fact that in a few months Gemma’s breasts would be back to normal, a state in which I could appreciate them, and I should never be permitted to see them again.
‘One of each,’ she went on, ‘what marvellous luck. When you’re only allowed two, I mean. Oh, I pretended I didn’t mind, all the time I was pregnant I kept telling myself and everyone else it really didn’t matter a bit, in fact two boys might even be easier in the long run – but oh, the relief when they said she was a girl. And I couldn’t think of any boys’ names this time – that was a bad sign, wasn’t it?’
She smiled at me, completely unaware that I had absorbed only one remark. ‘Are you only allowed two?’ I asked. ‘Why?’
‘Oh.’ She looked away, then back at the child. ‘Chris has got a thing about population. He thinks we should all keep it down. I suppose he wants to set a good example to his patients. Oh, he’s right, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘I mean I agree with him, really.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, nearly.’ She gave me a guilty smile.
‘Would you like to have more?’
‘It’s not that, exactly, I mean it’s not as definite as that, it’s just the feeling that I can’t. That I mustn’t.’
‘Yes, I do see. Any prohibition increases temptation.’
‘I suppose so.’ She had clearly not considered the matter in these terms. ‘No, it’s not just that.’ She stroked the baby’s bald head; it clutched at her breast with its crinkled hand. ‘She was so easy to have, so much easier than Jon, and she’s so much more placid already than he ever was. I don’t know, maybe it’s me, maybe I’m just more confident with her, I know what to do this time, I’m relaxed. That’s why it seems such a pity, giving up something as soon as you learn how to do it well.’
‘Like never dancing Giselle again once you’ve got it right.’
‘Yes. What made you say that?’
‘You wanted to be a ballerina when you were a child.’
‘So I did. I’d almost forgotten. Why do you remember more about me than I do?’
‘Perhaps I’m more interested in you than you are.’ And than Christopher is, I thought.
She laughed. ‘You can’t be. I’m not very interesting.’
‘There you are, that proves it.’
‘Oh, you. Why can’t I ever outwit you?’
‘Probably because I am old and full of low cunning.’
‘You’re not old. But full of low cunning, well, maybe you are. I don’t know.’ She smiled at me.
Hard to describe and impossible to exaggerate how much these conversations meant to me. Moments of tender, inconsequential intimacy such as I had once feared we might never have again. At the same time, not panic exactly, but that warning voice: now that she is back, after her long excursion, make sure that you keep her close to you. Don’t let her escape again.
‘There’s another thing, though,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘About children, I mean. Once you’ve had them, if you’re not going to have any more, then what do you do?’
‘I don’t know. Bring them up, I suppose.’
She sighed. ‘Yes, of course. I was just being silly.’
We were all hideously reconciled at the christening. I say all, because during the estrangement Beatrice had shown signs of discomfort, as well she might, at being forced to straddle such a tricky social fence: loyal to me in private but still persona grata at Christopher’s boring dinner parties. Now, in church, we were forced to reassemble as one family. I had often pondered the mystery of Christian forgiveness but had not before experienced the element of compulsion that went with it. I was there to be forgiven, whether I liked it or not. Oh, nothing overtly tasteless, of course; it was all very British. Christopher coming up to me, a strong handclasp, to be manly, and a pat on the shoulder, to be condescending. ‘Good to see you, Alex; glad you could make it,’ was all he said. In other words we were to pretend we had never insulted each other. A splendid tradition. I even allowed myself to wonder frivolously if at least one of Gemma’s motives for having the baby had been to bring about this rapprochement. A pity it had to take place in church, though, since I am never at my best on alien ground. A pity, too, that it seemed the function of my family to drag me willy-nilly nearer, my God, to Thee. No doubt they would do a first-rate job on my funeral, too, when the day arrived. Christopher might even deliver an oration for the dear departed, suggesting a life misguided rather than misspent, and Beatrice would murmur what a pity it was I had never married, I had been like a father to Gemma, you know, such a shame I never had children of my own, it might have made all the difference.
We assembled afterwards at the Clark residence, the first time I had been admitted under its sacred roof for several years. Gemma gleefully pointed out various domestic improvements to me: she had turned into quite the talented little… homemaker is I think the word for it. I admired her efforts; Beatrice fussed round us, helping her with sherry and small things to eat; Christopher and a gaggle of medical cronies discussed professional matters in loud voices. Gemma and I concentrated on each other and Jonathan: he was not a particularly engaging little boy but even so I could see he was profoundly disturbed by the new baby, so I thought he deserved some attention. What Gemma and I called jealousy, Christopher referred to as sibling rivalry, which was of course normal (his favourite word). Beatrice in her turn said his nose was out of joint and chucked him under the chin. The new baby began to scream its dislike for the entire occasion and was put away early for the night.
‘The joys of family life,’ I remarked as I drove Beatrice home. She wanted me to stay the night but I was pretending an early appointment in town.
‘Oh, you.’ She laughed; she was a little drunk. ‘Why do you always want people to think you’re cynical?’
I said nothing. How like Beatrice, I thought, to make believe that unpleasant facts are not unpleasant after all but merely false.
‘What makes you think I’m not cynical?’ I said at length, as she seemed to expect an answer.
‘I know you.’ This extraordinary statement left me entirely speechless. ‘You’ve got a soft heart underneath. Look at all you’ve done for me and Gemma. I’ll never forget how you gave us that money when Mother died.’
She was like a highwayman praising the generosity of his victims after they had handed over their valuables at gunpoint.
‘And today,’ she went on, ‘it was so nice to see you and Christopher together again.’ Suddenly she made a most peculiar noise and I realised she was actually crying.
‘Beatrice,’ I said, ‘whatever’s the matter?’
The noise was repeated, a cross between a sick cow moaning and water running out of the bath. ‘I’m so happy.’
‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘I’m very glad.’ The sherry had obviously been stronger than I thought.
Beatrice took out her handkerchief and trumpeted into it. ‘It’s been such a lovely day… that dear little baby… and you being there… and Gemma’s so happy with Christopher… oh’ – another great howl – ‘I do wish poor Hugh had lived to see it.’
As I was equally glad he had not, I kept silent, blessing the lethal landmine. Typical, I thought, of Beatrice to turn maudlin at the end of such a tense and beastly day when we were alone and there was no one who would take her off my hands. I parked carefully and helped her into the house, where she insisted on cooking me dinner. As I thought this might sober her up, I let her get on with it. The meal was superb as ever but the conversation a high price to pay: Beatrice reminisced endlessly about relatives dead and alive whom I had long since forgotten. She wanted me to stay the night and make an early start if I must, but luckily the problem was solved for me when she fell asleep in front of the television set. She snored, and she had put on a lot of weight. I stood looking at her for a moment, marvelling that Gemma had ever emerged from those ungainly loins – then I crept away, into the night. On my way home I drove unnecessarily past Gemma’s house. There was a light in her bedroom, although it was only half past ten: I wondered if she and Christopher were making love. I decided not: Christopher looked to me like a man who preferred a decent covering of darkness for his erotic pleasures. More likely reading the British Medical Journal – perhaps a piece on new birth control methods – and for Gemma… a magazine on mothercraft.
Picture the scene: Christopher carving at the head of the table (yes, he really does preserve traditions like this), Beatrice on his right getting more than her fair share of meat, Gemma opposite him looking thoughtful, and me on her right, or Christopher’s left if you prefer, facing Beatrice and offering up silent thanks that the children have at last been put to bed. The subject: one of those sex scandals beloved of the British press. It may have involved a politician or a doctor or a duchess, I don’t remember; in fact we probably had conversations about all three at one time or another and I am amalgamating and compressing them into one quintessential evening. What I extracted was this.
Christopher: ‘I’m sorry, Gemma, I can’t agree with you. It doesn’t depend on circumstances, it’s a matter of principle.’
He actually pronounced those words; I am not inventing. I would certainly not put words in his mouth, nor indeed go anywhere near his mouth for any purpose whatsoever if it could be avoided.
Gemma said, ‘But it’s people’s feelings we’re talking about. You can’t just condemn them without knowing all the facts and you can’t know all the facts just from reading a newspaper.’
Beatrice tried to make peace. ‘Perhaps Christopher meant that people in such responsible positions can’t afford to have human weaknesses like the rest of us.’
To my surprise, Christopher turned on her. ‘On the contrary, I’d say the same about anyone, whatever position they held. The effects are more serious, of course, in this particular case, but the principle’s the same, whoever’s involved. I know it’s fashionable nowadays to talk about the permissive society so maybe I’m old-fashioned.’
I choked on my glass of wine to camouflage laughter. He looked at me suspiciously but could prove nothing.
‘I see the casualties of the so-called permissive society far too often to think there’s anything amusing about it,’ he said crisply.
‘If you’re talking about young people, then of course I agree with you,’ Gemma said. ‘But these are adults. You’ve got to make some allowances for them having strong feelings and not always being able to control them. These things happen.’
‘Certainly these things happen,’ said Christopher, carving with surgical precision, ‘but they needn’t, and with a little more self-control, they wouldn’t.’
‘Don’t you think’ – I could no longer resist joining in – ‘don’t you think perhaps discretion is what we need more of, rather than self-control?’
He handed me my plate. ‘In what way?’
‘I was thinking of the eleventh commandment… Thou shalt not be found out.’
Beatrice started to smile, then, catching Christopher’s glance, flicked the smile off abruptly like a light switch.
‘Is that really what you believe?’ Christopher asked me contemptuously.
I ate some meat to give myself time to think. He had certainly given me the worst pieces, with a lot of fat and gristle. ‘Well, you must admit,’ I said, ‘that if the whole affair had remained a secret no one would have been hurt. In fact, I often wonder – if no one knows about something, can it truly be said to have happened?’
‘Forgive me, Alex, but in my view that’s metaphysical rubbish. Adultery is always a serious matter, whether it’s secret or not, and if you abuse a position of trust as well, that only makes matters worse. It means you have no integrity.’
Gemma said quite sharply, ‘Isn’t integrity a matter of being true to yourself?’
‘I don’t think so, not entirely.’ He was still perfectly calm. Calm but inflexible. ‘We all have social responsibilities, we don’t live in a vacuum.’
Well, I supposed I should be grateful that he had not actually said, ‘No man is an island.’ In fact I was somewhat surprised: he had looked all set to let loose another stupendous cliche upon us. And to think that I had once – however briefly – found him charming. A moment of puppyhood, no doubt, right at the beginning, when he was still trying to please, before he was sure he could capture Gemma and mould her to his taste.
Gemma said, ‘Yes, all right, I agree with that, but nobody’s perfect and I just think we should all be more charitable when people make mistakes. You know – like hating the sin but loving the sinner.’ She must have thought she was being cunning, invoking religion.
Christopher permitted himself a smile. ‘Well, now at least you’ve used the right word.’
Beatrice said uncertainly, ‘The meat’s delicious, Gemma. Done to a turn.’
In fact it was overdone. Cooking had never been Gemma’s strong point.
‘Is it? Good,’ said Gemma absently. ‘I’m sorry, Chris, but I can’t help thinking how much those people must have suffered, whether it came out in public or not. I mean, all those letters and phone calls and trying to commit suicide – imagine what somebody goes through to get in a state like that. You can’t just condemn them, however wrong they are. You’ve got to sympathise.’
‘That’s where we differ,’ said Christopher, helping himself to more gravy. ‘I don’t have to sympathise at all.’
Just straws in the wind, no doubt, but I treasured them nevertheless.
And the beginning? A soufflé one day in September, I suppose. My diary says simply: ‘Gemma here, lunch, 12.30’, and below that, writ small, indeed by a hand cramped with irritation and too many hours with a dustpan and brush: ‘Ring agency’.
Gemma was early. I was so accustomed to her being late that I was still on the telephone when she rang my doorbell and I had to interrupt my conversation to let her in. I left the agency lady assuring me that she would do her best for me, no one could do more, and returned, having welcomed Gemma, to hear that if all else failed she would send me an out-of-work actor by the end of the week. That hardly seemed satisfactory, but I could tell from the sound of her voice that she had reached the end of her patience, and besides, I badly wanted a gin and tonic, so I thanked her and hung up.
‘You look cross,’ said Gemma teasingly. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me? Shall I go away?’
I smiled and started the drinks ritual. ‘I’m delighted to see you, my dear Gemma, but less than delighted at the prospect of cleaning my flat by hand for another three days. Ice?’
‘Two, please.’ Gemma treated ice like sugar, alternately stirring it and crunching it up. I watched her with my usual pleasure as she licked the finger that had played with the ice. ‘Have they found you someone else then? Definitely?’
‘Hardly that. They’re threatening me with a paid-up member of Equity, no less.’
‘Oh well,’ said Gemma, deep into gin and tonic. ‘She may be pretty.’
‘She happens to be a he.’
‘Well. Why not?’ She actually blushed: I found it one of her many charms that she still could.
‘It’s all a vicious rumour,’ I said. ‘Concentrate on facts. It’s a fact that not only has Mrs Thing left me but the vacuum cleaner has had a seizure as well. I crawl around on my hands and knees, sucking up dust in a highly personalised manner.’
Gemma laughed. I enjoyed her laughter. No one else seemed to find me particularly amusing in those days, nor indeed now, but we are not here to talk of the present. What else do I remember? I made the soufflé, surpassing myself, and Gemma and I ate it, she emitting flattering cries of delight. I could tell from her manner, a mixture of external animation and internal gloom, that she was disturbed about something and I waited for her to be ready to tell me.
‘Christopher well?’ I asked, passing time.
‘Yes, fine.’ She stirred her salad with a fork.
‘And the children?’ This was more important.
‘Oh, yes.’ She ate some salad, put down her fork, took a long draught of Riesling. ‘God, it’s so funny with them both at school.’
‘It must be. The great day finally came.’
‘Yes, it did. I wish it hadn’t.’ She had a strange, lost look about her. ‘Chris says I’m being silly.’
‘Does he?’
‘Oh well, he’s being very understanding really.’ She frowned at her near disloyalty.
‘Of course.’ It was his stock-in-trade, when not pontificating about other people’s morals. Kind, well-balanced Christopher, reducing emotions to hormones and exercising his professional judgment. Always understanding where Gemma was concerned (so she said) but not above a little brisk snap-out-of-it if the case should warrant it.
‘I expect I’m getting on his nerves,’ Gemma said with self-pitying guilt. I picked up my cue. Occasionally she allowed me to slander him.
‘What nerves?’ I said.
Gemma giggled and drank some more wine. ‘He’s so busy,’ she said, making allowances. ‘It must be awful for him having me complaining about too much spare time when he hasn’t got any.’
‘He’s a dedicated man,’ I said spitefully. ‘He doesn’t want spare time, he enjoys his work.’
‘Yes. I wish I did. I mean I wish I had some work to enjoy.’
‘You don’t really. You’ve been reading too many Sunday supplements. Can’t you enjoy just lolling about doing nothing? Can’t you sit in the garden telling yourself you’re a wife and mother, backbone of the nation, and you’ve nothing to do till half past three, thank God?’
‘No,’ said Gemma. ‘I can’t. I wish I could. Oh, I suppose I’ll get used to it. Chris keeps telling me what a lot I can do with my time.’
‘Such as coffee mornings and good works?’
‘Something like that. Or even studying something – God knows what.’
‘How about a job?’ I suggested. ‘A part-time job. School hours only and fulfilling, of course. Isn’t that what all the smart young mums do these days?’
‘Maybe.’ She looked doubtful. ‘But in my case it’s hardly worth it, it’d all go in tax. Besides, what could I do? I hate typing and I do enough cooking at home. I’m not trained for anything – at least not for anything I like. Mummy always said I wasn’t talented and she’s right, I’m not.’
‘Something with children?’ I said feebly. Gemma’s malaise was affecting me: I could see all too clearly how ill-equipped she was to face the yawning void between nine and four. The world was out there somewhere but she was not part of it, and how could she be?
‘I don’t like other people’s children,’ she said.
‘I know the feeling.’
We looked at one another and smiled. I refilled our glasses.
‘Let’s face it,’ Gemma said, ‘I’m a parasite. No, really. I’m just sponging on Chris and the kids, making them my excuse for living. I’m like one of those dreadful women you read about. I want to do something only there’s nothing I want to do.’
We progressed to apple pie (home-made of course) and cream. Gemma ate like a healthy schoolgirl. ‘The really awful thing is,’ she said, with her mouth full, ‘I feel my life is over and yet it’s only just begun. I mean, here I am, nearly thirty, and I’ve got a nice husband and two lovely kids at school’ – I noted the choice of adjectives carefully – ‘and what the hell do I do with the rest of my life?’
She was a little drunk by now, of course. I must allow for that.
‘It’s a dreadful feeling,’ she went on. ‘Like going mad or losing your memory. There’s something I’ve missed or forgotten, but I don’t know what it is. Like a bit of the children’s jigsaw getting lost.’
‘That’s a good image.’
‘Oh, don’t be so professional,’ she snapped. And then: ‘Sorry.’
I smiled at her to indicate forgiveness. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’
She followed me into the kitchen. ‘Can I have a large brandy with it? Or a large something?’
‘My dear Gemma,’ I said, ‘you can have a large anything you like, insofar as it’s within my power to give it to you.’ Suddenly she grinned at me. ‘You are good for me,’ she said. ‘You let me talk about myself but you don’t take me too seriously.’
I filled the kettle and plugged it in. ‘I take you very seriously indeed but I don’t let it show in case you get conceited. I take all beautiful people seriously.’
‘There, you see?’ she said delightedly. She studied herself in the mirror I keep in the kitchen in case anyone calls unexpectedly. ‘I suppose I could always grow my hair again,’ she said. ‘D’you think that would give me a sense of purpose?’