Bliss (15 page)

And Harry, meanwhile, can lie back on the verandah of his charming house at Palm Avenue and sip his Veuve Cliquot and wait for the rain to come and try to persuade himself that he may, after all, have been crazy.

Lucy went to sit beside her mother who held her hand contentedly. The lunch might just work, if Betty didn't get too drunk, if Harry didn't start taking notes again.

'What's the first course?' Harry said.

'Escrivée Amoureuse.'

'Ah,' he said.

The rain began to fall, very gently at first, making loud slapping noises on the banana leaves, where it collected in tiny dams which dipped and broke and then reformed. The poinciana, like so many feathery hands held palm upwards, let the rain brush carelessly through its fingers.

The Veuve Cliquot was old enough to have assumed a golden colour, and Harry was rot unappreciative of its beauty, nor was he ignorant of its cost, nor the contribution Krappe Chemicals made towards its purchase.

He had reread his notebooks and found them a little extreme, a little frenzied, not to say unbalanced. And all their evidence, he thought, was insufficient to justify this terrible, risky strategy of Goodness which he viewed, just now, sitting before this gentle curtain of rain, in a little the same way as he might have thought of a slightly embarrassing sexual indiscretion.

But he is not quite ready to deny his notebooks. Even now, as he yawns, stretches, and points his sandalled feet, he .has promised himself One Last Test.

The bar wasn't quite right, but it would do. It was the best bar she knew but in no way equalled the bars she would have liked to sit in. The bars she would have liked to sit in had a chrome rail parallel to the smooth leather bar top. They had elegant art deco mirrors reflecting beautiful people carelessly dressed, and those little lamps with figurines by Lalique, each one valued at something like three thousand dollars.

But here, at least, they did put pistachios on the bar instead of peanuts and they made the Tequila Sunrises from real orange juice and it was the best bar in this town and as long as nobody told her it was a chic and elegant bar (thus forcing her to disagree violently with their provincial judgement) Bettina was very happy there. She didn't mind that Joel was late. She wasn't even mildly irritated. She looked at the bottles on the shelf, felt the shiny dark envelop her, and wondered (raising her eyes to the mirror) whether she mightn't just pick up someone. She looked, she thought, interesting. She was satisfied with her sleek dark hair which now, thanks to Edouard, came in two sleek sweeping pincers beneath the high cheek bones of her rounded face. Her large mouth (Revlon Crimson Flush No. 7) was very red. She did not look nice, or easy, but she did look interesting. She could have been anywhere (Budapest 1923, Blakes Hotel London 1975).

When she had finally gone through the agonies of leaving Harry, when she had her own business, she would go to Blakes Hotel in London and sit in the bar there.

She sat at one end of the bar and watched the door with a wonderful sense of expectation as if, at any moment, the most beautiful man might walk through the door, three days' growth on his handsome face, a loose linen jacket thrown over his shoulders, a dark face, sensuous and violent, but an intelligent forehead.

So when Joel came scurrying through at this moment she was, without knowing why, irritated and depressed. She was always disappointed when she saw him: physically he was not quite what she had remembered.

Joel always rushed. He had no cool. Harry had more style than Joel, who almost waddled, and there, there still, were those damn cufflinks he wouldn’t take off.

'Hello, honey.' The bar stool farted when he sat on it. She tried to tell herself it would have happened to anyone. 'I've been getting your husband on to an aeroplane.'

'Do you really have to wear those cufflinks?'

But Joel was ordering a drink. 'He nearly missed the damn plane.'

'If you really want to wear cufflinks why don't you come with me and I'll buy you some.'

'I don't know why in the hell he wants to go down there, we could have done it on the phone. Hey... get your hands off my cufflinks. What are you doing?'

'I'm taking your damn cufflinks off.' Joel sat at the bar with his cuffs flapping at the bottom of his coat sleeves. 'What in the hell do I do now?'

'Pull your sleeves up,' she said and started giggling. 'Did you have a nice day at the office?'

'Hell, honey, that isn't funny.'

Bettina ordered another Sunrise and Joel removed his suit coat, put it fussily over the next bar stool, rolled his shirt sleeves up, and put his coat back on. He sulked for a while and Bettina looked around. In the end he started talking to stop her looking around.

'He's not in a very healthy state of mind?'

'Who, honey?'

'Your husband.'

'Ah,' Bettina waved a ringed hand, 'he's just growing up.'

She liked Harry when she was away from him. He towered over everyone else she knew.

Joel started laughing incredulously, 'Oh that's good, honey, that's really good. Just growing up. He tells me in the car that he is going to be Good. Is that
sane
? Because, honey, if that's sane, then I want to be crazy.'

'It's not your style, darling.'

'What isn't?'

'Being crazy isn't your style.'

'What in the goddamn hell do you mean by that?'

His chin was starting to wobble so she changed the subject. 'Who did you take to lunch?'

'I'm taking George Lewis out to lunch next week. I've got a table booked at La Belle Epoque.'

'He said he'd go last week.'

'Well he had to cancel.'

'Why can't we steal someone else's clients? Why do we have to steal Harry's clients?'

'We haven't stolen anyone's clients yet.'

'Damn right we haven't,' said Bettina bitterly, wondering if she had got herself stuck with a schmuck who couldn't even get one account. She had listened to Harry when she shouldn't have, and ignored him when she should have listened.

'
You
do it then.'

'Alright, fuck you, I just might.' The bastard. He knew she couldn't. He knew it gave her the shits to be unable to do this thing that she wanted to do more than anything else. But how could Harry Joy's wife phone up a prospective client and take him out to lunch.

'Well do,' he said smugly. 'Do it yourself.'

'I just might.'

But he wasn't even threatened by it. In fact it restored his good humour and a little colour crept into his face.

'What I was thinking,' he said, and began to run his chubby finger around the wet rim of his Scotch glass.

Bettina listened. When Joel spoke like this she thought of an ice-skater. Suddenly the little bugger was so damn elegant it was almost unbearable.

'What I was thinking was it might be
better
and
simpler
and less
disruptive
for everyone if we just had him committed.'

He took her breath away. Bettina, literally, could not speak. And when she looked at Joel she saw that he meant it: he had that strange little prim smile on his face and his eyes were wet but how or why they were wet she didn't know. Some emotion moved him. But she smelt no weakness, only a sly satisfaction, a boneless strength.

'Christ,' she said, 'you little creep.' But her eyes were bright with admiration and the smile seemed to stay on Joel's face even while he sipped his Scotch.

That night, in the branches of the fig tree beside his house, Harry would conduct his Final Test.

It had not been easy to get there. Joel had been attentive and kind. He had driven him to the airport and waited for him to board the plane.

'You go, Joel. No point in waiting here.'

'No, no, I'm fine.'

When the plane had finally begun to board Harry had still waited.

'You go,' he said. 'I'll go on in a second. I'll just wait for most of them to get on.'

But still Joel wouldn't go, and Harry found himself both irritated and moved by his kindness. Joel waited to watch him walk down the boarding finger and waved him all the way on to the plane.

He took his seat and stood up again.

'I'm on the wrong plane,' he told the hostess, and smiled wanly. 'Sorry:' She took the ticket from his hand.

'No,' she said, 'you're on the right plane, sir. Please be seated.'

'I want to get off.'

'But this is your plane.'

'I don't care. I don't want to fly on it. I was only
pretending
to get on it.'

'And you just got carried away?' the hostess said sourly, stepping back into the galley to let him past.

And now he was up the fig tree just as he had planned to be, ready to observe what Actors did when they had no audience. The final test was hardly worth all the effort.

It was not so uncomfortable. He had been in worse situ-ations. For this particular branch he had a good view of his neighbour who was taking advantage of the late summer light to dig a hole. This was quite consistent with his behaviour in all the years before Harry had died and he found it, in a peculiar way, soothing to watch him scurrying and puffing around his garden like a little mole. The neighbour always enjoyed holes and mounds of dirt. The earth in his garden could never lie in peace, always on the move from one corner to another. Just when it was settled in, he would decide to shift it. It had all the senseless motion of a sadistic punishment and yet the man (known affectionately as 'the Miner' by the entire Joy family) looked happy enough as he surveyed his mound of dirt and his hole in the ground.

Harry settled in against the trunk and lit a cigarette just as the Miner was walking across to his back door. He stopped and stared up at the tree. He stood very still.

'Hey you,' he called at last, 'you, in the tree.'

'It's only me,' Harry hissed.

'Who's you?'

'Mr Joy.'

The Miner replied in a similar style, in a piercing whisper: 'What's up?'

'I've lost my key.'

The Miner's wife came and stood on the back step: 'Who is it?'

'Mr Joy, from next door.'

'What's he doing?'

'He's lost his key.'

'The boy is home.'

'Your son is home,' hissed the Miner.

Harry knew that his son was home: he could see yellow light shining through the chink in the heavy curtains three feet above his head.

'I know,' he hissed back.

Down on the back step of their house the Miner and his wife had an anxious little conference.

'He knows,' the Miner said.

'I'm not deaf.'

The Miner took a tentative step towards the fence. 'Do you want me to ring the bell for you?'

'Stupid, stupid,' the wife exploded and went inside and slammed the door.

'I want to surprise them,' Harry whispered.

'He wants to surprise them,' the Miner told the darkened screen door. Obviously she had not given up all interest. The door creaked outwards, inquiringly. Another whispered conference concluded with a sharp little bang as the screen door shut like a trap and the Miner, as in the manner of one reluctantly following orders, left his territory and came down the side path on the Joys' side of the fence.

It would appear that he wished a more confidential talk.

It was not an easy tree to climb and the Miner did not acquit himself well. The problem was the first branch.

'Stand on the chair,' Harry whispered, deciding it better that the climb be executed quietly if it was going to be done at all.

'What chair?'

'There.'

It was almost dark now but it was still possible to see the bulges and creases in the Miner's bulbous form as it approached, heralded by wheezing.

'Hi.'

'Hi.'

Such American-style casualness in the middle of a tree. Was he going to remark on the weather?

'He's not here,' the Miner said at last.

There were so many people who were not there. Harry couldn't think what he meant.

'The blue BMW.'

Joel drove a blue BMW, but why would anyone climb a tree to tell him that Joel, as was perfectly obvious, was not visiting his house.

'The person you are trying to surprise,' said the Miner, trying to take possession of Harry's branch, 'is not here.'

'Thank you, Mr Harrison.'

'You're welcome any time.'

'Can you find your own way down?'

'Yes, I think so.' But he had only retreated by one branch when he stopped. 'Mr Joy?'

'Yes.'

'I must discuss the fence with you sometime. We are going to have to replace it.'

'I'll drop in, Mr Harrison.'

'No hurry.'

He crashed his way through the lower branches and just when Harry judged him safely down, there was a sharp crack followed by a soft thud and a yelp of pain.

'Are you alright?' he called.

There was no answer, but he thought he saw the shadow of the Miner limping along the darker shadow of the fence and then saw it slide inside the still-dark screen door.

Harry, already, was doubting the wisdom of his final test and the Miner had reminded him, had let him see himself as he must be seen: Harry Joy was crazy. He fervently hoped he had been. His theory, so cleverly arrived at (if they are Actors they will reveal themselves when they think their audience is absent) seemed puerile to him, more affected by champagne than common sense.

So there he was, considering leaving his tree, climbing down, finding a bottle of wine, removing himself from that uncomfortable, undignified position, when Joel's blue BMW pulled up outside, and it was only the fear of being thought mad that stopped him climbing down and saying: here I am.

He waited, and, with no real interest, watched.

He heard Joel turn off his blaring radio. He saw Bettina lurch from the car. The clink of bottles. Bettina saying: 'You open the door for me again and I'll break your bloody arm.' Laughter. Joel locking the door and having trouble with his keys.

His partner kissing his wife. His partner's leg jammed hard between his wife's legs, in the glow of the street light, against the hedge, beside the footpath.

No.