A Bouquet of Barbed Wire (10 page)

Cassie sensed a withdrawal of spirit in Manson, though superficially they were as close as ever. They did not discuss Prue at all: a tacit armistice. Cassie took the phone calls and Prue and her father exchanged guarded messages of affection through her. She regretted her conversation with Marjorie and made sure it could not recur, by never being alone with her. She made small, domestic efforts to please Manson, feeling that she must make amends to him for the offence he did not know she had committed, be ‘a better wife’ in textbook terms to compensate for a moment’s disloyalty.

She longed to speak of holidays, and could not. She yearned silently for Scotland, where they had spent their honeymoon, and to comfort herself pictured them returning there, perhaps when the heather was out, driving and stopping as the fancy took them, and growing close again through nostalgia. And she saw them both younger, as they had been
before there was anything to worry about or any tension between them, and she was happy, and she wanted to cry. Intellectually she knew it was impossible to turn back the clock, but she longed for a miracle nevertheless. Perhaps she had been wrong, seeming to take Prue’s side against Manson, but she had only meant to belittle the conflict and so recreate family peace. Instead she seemed to have driven him into some lonely interior place where the conviction of being right was sufficient to sustain him. He had shut her out. She went about the house in a daze, her mind constantly reviewing the situation, each move, each tactical error, like a game of chess, and the boys had to repeat things they said to her and then she was profusely apologetic. But they, being twins, did not mind too much and went on playing together: even at ten they were largely independent of her at home, and the school life they shared so closely made a further bond. She wondered if it was in fact their twinhood which made her love for them so casual, easy and undemanding. She had examined her feelings closely after lunch with Marjorie and she did not honestly think that the intense, possessive element was there. But then, how to focus such emotion on a dual object? And she had always been fearful of loving one more than the other, of discriminating between them. Since they were so close to each other, irrespective of normal, healthy violence and argument, they seemed to set her an example of unadulterated love. The purity of their feeling for each other, their instinctive empathy, was something she had to emulate. Now she wondered if in her efforts not to love one or the other too much, she had failed to love either enough. And she thought that perhaps, if so, it was a good thing, she had done them a favour, for they would all be spared the situation that Prue and her father were now in. But it struck her as sad that too much love should be as damaging as too little.

* * *

Sarah, making love with Geoff, wished she could stay in bed for ever. It was the only place she felt safe, and sure of her talent to please. The rest was manufactured and artificial, not instinctive: the effort to be smart and amusing and invulnerable. He wanted a glossy girl with no problems, she thought: at least she did not feel she could burden him with any without spoiling her image as an entertaining companion with other men in her life. She was not his responsibility. She was not Simon’s, either, but Geoff did not know that. He had found out about Simon by accident but had shown no jealousy; she interpreted this as relief that he need not take her too seriously. He had presented himself superficially, as a play-boy, mocking the family firm (‘But where else could I get such a salary at my age?’) and teasing her (‘You’re after my car and my cock, in that order; I know you.’) and she had accepted him at his own valuation. His conversation was less interesting than Simon’s but he made love better and took her to more exciting places in the Jaguar, for which she felt disproportionate affection. It was the height of some adolescent ambition to be driven about in a red E-type by someone who looked at least like the men in advertisements, though he was in fact an engineer with a rich and indulgent father. His family tolerated her. She thought it would be a good thing if she could get the Jaguar phase, as she called it, out of her system: but it showed no sign of abating. The two men complemented each other: dates with Geoff made it easier to enjoy cooking on Simon’s gas ring, standing in the rain for buses, paying for herself at the cinema and listening to his post-graduate study problems. He was gentle and serious and showed a sort of tenderness for her that moved her very much, though she had never put it to the test. He did not know about Geoff and she hoped he would never find out: he would not, she felt, understand how reassuring she found it to move from one to the other. She did not see it as cheating. With Simon she was gentle and serious, like him,
and reciprocated his tenderness: there was a sibling warmth between them. Whereas with Geoff she was tough and sexy, appreciative of luxury but off-hand and casual, because she felt this was what he expected and she did not want to disappoint him. But each role seemed equally valid. Geoff had been hard to find, and in the end she had had to steal him from one of the girls in the flat she then shared. Subsequently, having broken a basic law, she of course had to leave the flat, and in her hurry to escape from the atmosphere she had created, she had plunged too fast into the new flat, without sufficiently vetting the other three girls. Connie was recovering from a broken engagement at a leisurely pace and ostentatiously not bothering with men. The others picked their way through her sharp remarks as through splinters of broken glass. Ann was probably a soul-mate, Sarah decided, as she was out a lot and the telephone constantly rang for her. But it was with Annabel that she had made her mistake, for the lease was in Annabel’s name and though all were theoretically equal it was Annabel who made final decisions on who came and went, by virtue of her original tenancy. She had accepted Sarah readily but then both she and Sarah had been on their best behaviour, instinctively compensating for their deficiencies by each appearing respectively more broad-minded and more conventional than they really were. It was only later that Sarah discovered there were house rules (no doubt Annabel felt such a nice girl would not need to be told) and men could not stay overnight. The reasons given were inconvenience to the other girls, use of the bathroom, and fear of the landlord, for even Annabel did not dare to raise moral objections, but Sarah got the message and a very unpleasant one it was. Not that it really mattered, at least at the moment, for both Geoff and Simon had somewhere they could take her, but it was the principle of the thing: she did not feel her room was her home if she could not behave as she wished. Her previous flat where there had been no
taboos, apart from the one she had violated to get Geoff, seemed a paradise of freedom by comparison, and she began to miss it keenly, and to wonder, with her new job and her increase in salary, how long it would be before she could afford to live by herself. She had known all along, from the day she left school, that this was what she wanted to do, but she was not prepared to do it in a slum.

Geoff asked, ‘What’s your new boss like?’ as he was driving her home.

‘Great fun. And very easy-going.’ Simon had asked the same question and to him she had said, ‘Oh, sweet. Rather a sad man,’ because Simon liked feeling sorry for people and would devote his surplus pity to dogs, cats and newsvendors, as well as the starving millions, if she did not keep him supplied with other worthy objects. Besides, she liked to create different images for Manson as well as for herself: it seemed to make them more equal.

* * *

Prue found now that when Gavin made love to her she could not shut her eyes for a second without seeing her father’s face. It was unnerving and made her blush. Gavin had planted such a vivid image of Manson in her brain that even to talk to her father on the telephone now embarrassed her. It was in fact more embarrassment than indignation which had caused her long silence and eventual rudeness. Now she did not know what to do: she seemed to have got into a self-perpetuating situation. And she hated the job, though she dared not admit to Gavin that her father had been right. Only the prospect of France served to sustain her. Her back ached and she was bored, working with one eye on the clock and spinning out her lunch-hour as long as she dared. She had never behaved like this at college. If this was what working was like, in the ordinary world, she would have to do post-graduate work as soon as she qualified, or stay at
home with the baby. For long, arid portions of the day she sat at her desk with the appearance of working and let her mind drift. She recalled her courtship and marriage, in long passages of sexual fantasy, but eventually, by whatever route, her thoughts always came back to what she now regarded as the feud. Much as she might genuinely regret and deplore it, it also gave her a certain keen satisfaction because it demonstrated her power over her father. She had never had such power over another person before. It was like teasing an animal. She was ashamed of herself but she could not stop, because she found it fun.

M
ANSON FOUND
himself becoming fascinated by Sarah. She was so genuinely keen on her job, asking him questions without being intrusive, and thinking up ways of streamlining the office routine. Rupert assured him that she was still arriving early and taking minutely accurate lunch hours. But it was more than that. He took active pleasure in seeing her there in the outer office as he came and went: she was so clean, so tidy, so suitably dressed, so discreetly scented. She was any man’s dream of a girl with whom to confront the world: This is my secretary. He could be proud of her at meetings. He felt mildly ashamed of not missing Monica—dear Monica—but Rupert was quite right, as usual: it was pleasant to have a secretary who was elegant as well as capable. When he thought of Monica’s sturdy arms and legs it seemed to him by contrast that Sarah’s bones might break if she bumped into anything. She was tiny and angular under the golden skin, which had little golden hairs on it when you looked more closely, over a letter or something—perhaps she was really blonde after all—and the back of her neck was soft and somehow vulnerable, like a child’s. Like Prue’s. He had spent many years looking at the back of Prue’s neck with delight. Now he realised that he still thought of her as a child. A child with child, confused, despoiled, led away. Whereas Sarah—what a difference those four years made. She was so out-going, so forward-looking. He saw at least two different young men calling for her after work or sometimes
at lunchtime, so she was clearly not making the same mistake as Prue and going steady with one with a view to falling in love. She had talked of travel: she wanted to see the world. She would like her own car, she said, when she could afford it; she had passed the test already and sometimes friends would lend her a car so she could keep in practice. He pictured her in a white sports car, very much a status symbol, hair blowing in the breeze, as in the petrol ads, only sometimes the hair was dark when he pictured it. He had always planned to buy Prue a white sports car when she was twenty-one; he did not know if he still would. As things were, Gavin would benefit. Prue was so soft, she would be sure to lend it to him. Manson did not know whether he could stand the sight of Gavin roaring up to his front door in the white sports car, Prue’s birthday present, with her sitting meekly by his side. And he did not trust Gavin not to kill Prue (and himself, please God) on the road; he was sure Gavin would drive too fast.

So Prue might not get her present; and he might not get the pleasure of giving it to her. Jewellery, perhaps that was the answer. Gavin could hardly wear her jewellery, although these days one could not be too sure, anything seemed possible. But it would be satisfying to give Prue the jewellery that Gavin could not afford to buy her. Maybe he should not wait for her twenty-first but start now with the coming birthday, and of course Christmas. He began to feel excited at the idea. A really beautiful piece, something so stunning that she would forget they had ever quarrelled. And she would have to wear it whenever she saw him, at least, and each time she put it on she would think, she would have to think, My father gave me this.

‘Sarah,’ he said. She was typing but the door between their offices was open for ventilation as it was late July and remarkably warm. People were beginning to remark on the summer.

‘Yes?’ She stopped typing and turned her head with a half-smile.

‘It’s my daughter’s birthday in October and I’d like to give her some jewellery. What do you suggest? She’s about your age.’

Sarah said, ‘What does she look like?’

‘Small, dark, pretty.’

‘And what sort of clothes does she wear?’

Manson flinched. ‘Sometimes perfectly normal and sometimes rather … hippy or whatever it’s called nowadays.’

Sarah said doubtfully, ‘Maybe long ropes of pearls, if she wears beads. If she likes pearls, that is. I don’t myself but a lot of people do.’

He couldn’t see Prue in pearls. He said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Of course,’ Sarah said, ‘the point is, do you want to give her what you think she wants or what you’d like her to have?’

He was momentarily chilled. ‘How very perspicacious of you. Both, I suppose.’ A dishonest answer, he thought with disgust.

Sarah said, ‘Then how about a gold bracelet. You can spend whatever you like and it’s classic and never goes out of fashion and she can wear it all the time, with everything.’

He thought about it. He liked the picture. ‘Yes, that’s a good idea.’ But he was not sure if it was the bracelet itself that he liked or Sarah’s description of it. She had seemed so sure that Prue would wear it all the time. How had she known that was just what he wanted?

‘Or a watch,’ Sarah said. ‘Has she got a watch?’

‘Yes. That was her eighteenth birthday present—’ laughing apologetically. His eyes lighted on Sarah’s own watch, very slim and gold and unobtrusive. Easily a hundred pounds. ‘Rather like yours,’ he added. Again by suggesting a watch
she had hit on something that Prue would seldom remove. He found it uncanny.