Lightning Encounter (12 page)

He sighed, he tapped his foot, he looked at the clock. Val was taking longer than usual this
morning.
Karen's mind leaped again the ten or so years to his fortieth birthday. He would make an admirable husband; like most husbands he would gripe at being kept waiting, and, Val, who always had a last minute something to do—find a hankie, a book, that elusive glove—would certainly keep him waiting. But his patience would always find that last inch of stretch. And he would be faithful; his wife wouldn't need to fear the dangerous years, between forty-five and fifty-five, because he wouldn't swop one of her grey hairs for a dolly bird done up in fashion's latest.

His voice cut through her thoughts. ‘Why so pensive?'

‘I've just put twenty-five years on your back.'

‘And that makes you pensive? Is it worse than the grey hair and the basset hound brow?'

‘Much worse,' she said. ‘Because I shan't be around to see.'

‘And would you like to be?'

‘Yes, very much.' It didn't occur to her to voice other than the truth.

‘Then will you have dinner with me on my fifty-fifth birthday?'

‘Thank you. I should love to have dinner with you on your fifty-fifth birthday.' It was a joke played out with serious eyes and grave faces.

‘Dates of such long standing should be appropriately sealed,' he said. Taking her face
in
his hands, he covered her mouth with his. She willed her lips to remain steady, even though she felt as if she was being slowly turned inside out. The suppressed feelings, the deeply buried urges, came to the surface, suppressing and burying that which had been a front, the unemotional facade the situation had forced her to adopt. Her mind cast out thought, she was incapable of logical reasoning. Her body, which had started off as taut as a bowstring, taut and determined, relaxed by degree. Relaxed, melted, trembled, finally acquiesced to the gentle liberties being taken.

‘I'm sorry,' said Ian, looking troubled as well as grave. ‘For that too-fierce embrace. If it's any consolation I intended only a light kiss, as befitted the occasion. It got out of hand.'

She wanted to say: ‘It's all right, my darling. I'm not pressing bounds, or erecting barriers . . . it's all right.' But she was enthralled still, completely held in spell, and then it was too late. His eye was back on the clock, and he was saying:

‘Would you mind going up and giving Val a knock. Officially she starts work fifteen minutes before I do, and if she doesn't get a move on, we're both going to be late.'

‘Of course,' said Karen in hasty retreat, barely seeing the stairs for the tears stinging her eyes. She had, for a blissful moment, forgotten there was a girl with a prior claim, a
girl
with a fragile smile and an elusive quality, hard to define, yet more potent than obvious beauty. Obvious beauty is fierce and compelling, it is the sun with none of the subtle cunning of the sunset. The sunset doesn't blazon her charms, she doesn't put on a golden dress, dig her teeth into a man's skin, alternately burn him up with her brilliance, and dazzle him with her smile. Instead she beguiles and entrenches with a gentler radiance, which quietly and shyly keeps slipping from view. Everyone sees the sun, not everyone sees the sunset.

I can't even compete, she thought wretchedly. It's not the sun against the sunset. It's two sunsets, and mine happens to be the paler one, the unsubtle copy.

The trees were very near today, their heads, closely pressed together, seemed almost to enter the room. It was an illusion, of course, brought on by her fretful mood. The vista was the one she normally saw when dusting Val's room; today it only seemed touching close because the menace of something creeping and pressing matched her gloom and melancholy.

He was the faithful type. Perhaps if fate had been kind and allowed her to meet him first . . .

The dusting, the straightening, the general putting to rights, the wiping out the smudges and creases of yesterday, had ceased to be novel and had become as routine as a roller
towel.
Without a beginning, without an end, the job was never done. As soon as one smudge was obliterated, another took its place.

‘Damnation to housework!' she said, venting her testiness on the empty room. ‘I won't do any more today,' she vowed.

She made herself a cup of coffee and gulped it down. Which was stupid, she should have sipped it, to use up some time. A large chunk of morning lay heavily on her hands. Knitting, she thought, was strictly an evening pursuit. Rebelliously she picked up the needles and the ball of russet wool, and cast on. Within five minutes she decided she disliked knitting, disliked it intensely. Dressmaking she found enjoyable. Cutting out, the fascination of watching the scissors slide through the material, machine stitching, whizzing along the seams. A truly satisfying pastime, bringing instant reward. Perfectly suited to her impatient nature. With knitting the stitches had to be assembled side by side, then mounted one on top of the other, with soul destroying slowness.

Why doesn't Ian do something about Val? she thought. Marry the girl. Or at least come to an arrangement. Perhaps they had come to an arrangement. They might be lovers. No, no, no. She knew with a quickening certainty they weren't lovers, but the knowledge brought little satisfaction. Simply because she knew Ian
wouldn't
find any deep or lasting fulfilment in possession through strength. A man could so easily overcome a moral girl, with just the one priceless gift, that of tenderness. There isn't a woman on earth proof against tenderness. And the strong ones, who firmly believe they are made of steel, are more vulnerable than their frailer cousins. Steel can't crumple, it has to melt.

Karen knew she would just melt all over the place if she had to witness any touching pre-wedding preliminaries between Val and Ian.

She hated Mitch, but she needed him more than she hated him. Because it was his hand that would deliver her from this impossible situation.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘Mitch, can you arrange a booking, quickly?' She wasn't being very sensible, she hadn't yet come to terms with what Mitch brushed off as nerves, but at least she was being practical. She needed the money, to pay off the debt, to be free of Ian.

Wouldn't it be easier, less of a strain, just to walk out? No, she'd been through it all, over and over again in her mind. She had to pay the money back first, then walk out.

‘I
wish you'd make up your mind,' said Mitch. ‘First the deal's off. Then it's on, so much so that you want me to rush a booking, any booking. Be patient, sweet. I assure you, my want is as great as yours, but we must carefully select the right place for our début.'

‘How patient?'

‘I've a man to see tomorrow. I'd like him to see us do a number.'

‘I haven't got a costume.'

‘You have. I've been shopping.'

‘You said I could choose.'

‘Did I? Not to worry, I'm sure our choice would have coincided.'

‘Where is it?'

‘The changing room,' he waved a hand airily in the direction of the bedroom, ‘is through there.'

The costume was laid on the bed. It consisted of a short skirt, with a full flare, in scarlet with a novelty diagonal overcheck in white. The blouse top was plain scarlet, with wide puffed sleeves, and a low scooped out neck.

She put it on. It made her legs look marvellous. She presented herself to Mitch.

‘Very nice,' he said. ‘But you've got it on back to front. It's supposed to be worn the other way round.'

She touched the scarlet material at her throat. ‘I wear it this way, or I don't wear it at all.'

‘All
right, darling. Don't get touchy. I said you could have a choice and that's your choice. You look charming.' He caught her by the shoulders and propelled her round. ‘You have lovely shoulder blades. Don't cover them up, just be careful not to stab me with them.' He walked round her until they were facing. ‘Why do I get the feeling I daren't turn my back on you?'

It's not only a peculiarity of children to want what is denied them. If Karen hadn't shown her disinterest quite so forcibly, he wouldn't have given her a second glance. As it was . . .

She ignored both questions, the voiced one and the unvoiced one, and expressed a question of her own. ‘How do I look?'

‘Sweet and sixteen. The image is preserved. How do you feel?'

‘Ridiculous. You've dolled me up to look like a cigarette girl.' She tugged at the wide sleeves, plucked the pelmet of skin. ‘Only not as sexy.'

He chuckled. It was an un-beautiful sound. He went over to the piano, it was by the window, and aimlessly, lazily, with complete lack of absorption—or was it his talent that made it look effortless?—he touched the keyboard. Picking up his fingers, seemingly letting them drop where they wanted, as if they didn't belong to him, as if he wasn't personally responsible for the blissful, all the way to heaven, perfect, perfect sound.

‘Come
on, doll, to work. And for heaven's sake, look happy. Everything is just beginning.' But he was wrong. It wasn't the beginning, but the beginning of the end. She thought there wasn't a power on earth that would condemn her for feeling drained and miserable.

Work, even the incompatible variety, can be a solace. And Mitch, the working Mitch, had a special sort of magic about him.

‘I don't know why you want me,' she said, when he'd called it a day, praised her feeble efforts, produced coffee. ‘You'd do better on your own.'

‘I tried going solo,' he said. ‘It didn't work. To eat I had to take that crummy salesman's job. I might be the strength behind the act, but I need someone to draw strength from. Someone who looks tear-apart fragile, but isn't.'

‘Me?' She flung out her arms, mocking him to cover up something tight and indefinable in her. A feeling, an ache, a desire . . . ? ‘Is it me you're describing?'

‘Doesn't it fit in with your concept of you?'

‘No.' That was it, it didn't. ‘It fits in with the general notion, though,' she said irefully. ‘Someday, when I suddenly crumple, somebody is going to get a shock.'

He went behind the piano to look out of the window. ‘What do you know, it's raining,' he said. ‘Look at the one legged mushrooms.'

She joined him to look down at the scatter
of
moving umbrellas. ‘There's a two-legged mushroom there.' A boy and girl shared the same umbrella. The girl's legs tapered into white boots. It was gentle rain, as soft as a blown veil. It jewelled the window boxes on the floor below, and glistened the pavement beneath the striding white boots.

‘Val had a pair of boots like that,' mused Mitch. ‘How is she, by the way?'

‘Improving.'

‘Is that a fact?'

‘Ian's fact. I find it hard to tell.'

‘What does she do? I mean, I know she sees a psychiatrist, but what does she do?'

‘Writes things down in a notebook.'

‘In God's name, what for?' He paled, looked peculiar. His expression went unnoticed. Karen was too busy staying her own pang of guilt.

‘I don't know. I haven't been interested enough to find out.'

* * *

Ian said: ‘My two girls will have to look after one another while I'm away. Don't forget to wash behind the ears and eat up all your protein.' Awkward glances were exchanged. He uttered a reflective:

‘M-m,' then added: ‘Oh well, I shall only be away for four days. Less if I can manage it. Then back to my piece of accessible heaven.'

‘Is
it still that?' said Karen, the more forceful Eve.

‘Perhaps not,' he pondered, wondering why. His mind was taken up with other things, or he would have known why. The Garden of Eden had only one Eve.

Ian was away for three days. The days formed themselves into a pattern of housework, of rehearsing, of knitting (not much knitting, three days accomplished a paltry six inches), of watching television.

The notebook had a purple cover, spotted with white dots. It measured seven inches by nine inches. Two thirds way down the pattern of dots was broken by a parallel white bar, two inches in depth. ‘Valerie Stainburn. Notes and Jottings' was written across this in violet ink.

Did its bright colour have a psychological significance? And what was the point of writing everything down? Ian had begun to tell her once, but she had not been sympathetic and he had dried up. Val said nothing. They shared a conversational vacuum. Did she find it easier to converse with Ian, or was this little book her sole means of communication?

If we can't communicate, we can't expurge ourselves of all the things that hurt us, and so they keep right on hurting us. That's what's called hell. Hell isn't a place, there's no down there. If we look down all we can see is our feet. There isn't any down. It's all up. We look up at the moon. If we stood on the moon it
would
be exactly the same. If we stood on the moon and looked down, all we would see is our own two feet. We'd have to look up to see the earth. Is that right? Can that be right?

No matter. Hell isn't a place. It's all the hurtful, painful things we lock inside of us. Hell is self-inflicted.

Perhaps I should get a little book. I would play safe and buy one with a green cover, just in case there is a psychological significance. Green is God's colour. If it has a significance it must be a good one, because He used it over and over again. Think of all the things He made green: trees, grass, the sea in a special light, my eyes.

I would write in my little book: There was a storm in the air. I could smell it. I could see it a long way off as a dark patch with splits of white. I wasn't afraid, by that I mean I had no sense of foreboding, or of terrible dread. It might fizzle away to nothing, like a cracker, fierce and sparkling and quickly spent. And even if it didn't, I wasn't unduly alarmed, even though I admit to a childish dislike of thunder storms, because, as I have been at pains to point out, it was a long way away, I hazarded a good half hour away, and my father was due home in considerably less time than that.