A Bouquet of Barbed Wire (13 page)

The words struck a chill in Manson. He visualised, and for the first time, although the words ‘life to lead’ were frequently thrown about, a man with a donkey haltered by a piece of string and bearing panniers on either side of its back. The man was leading the donkey but both were trudging slowly and pointlessly towards some unseen destination at the end of a long, muddy lane. No doubt it was a scene he had observed on some long-forgotten country holiday but it was none the less valid an image, and that it should come into his mind at that moment seemed meaningfully apt.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So we have.’

‘Well, we’re not doing much about it.’ She was distressed: the house and the home were her creation, their family life was all she had to show for
her
life, and in ordinary circumstances it was much more than enough. But conversely if it was threatened, the threat was much greater because it struck at all she had. There was nothing else. Frightened, she said, ‘Please, darling, let’s do something as a family soon and stop worrying about Prue.’

Manson looked at her. The straight thick ropes of blonde hair were mixed with grey, her skin tanned from gardening in the sun, her eyes vague and thoughtful as always, her mouth, unmade-up and incongruously voluptuous. She was wearing trousers and a shirt and looked comfortable rather than elegant, but if he went closer there would be the special faded-scent smell that he liked. She was his wife. Together they had discussed thousands of days’ events over an evening drink, spent thousands of nights in the big double-bed. The fabric of their life stretched back so far you could scarcely see the beginning any more, and forward, where you could not see the end. What was wrong with him, what more did he want? He loved Cassie; he knew she loved him. So why this restless urge for something more, what more could there be
than work and love, a job and a wife and family, and a sufficiency with which to enjoy them?

But she did not look like Prue. Not at all. Prue was all him. And Prue was abroad with Gavin. He was sure something was wrong there. He could not believe all those tears had been for him. Something was wrong and he did not know what. He was powerless to help and his child might be suffering. Stemming from this, everything at home seemed colourless and purged of feeling. Prue was in a vortex of excitement or drama or pain somewhere and he could not reach her. The same force was around him in the street, everywhere he looked, young people involved with each other, feeling intensely; even that girl in his office had come in looking haggard the other day. But it was all for the young. There was some general current of feeling that they were all washed into, while he and Cassie, too old, were supposed to stand on the bank and watch without envy, or wander off along some sluggish tributary of their own. Envy. It was sheer envy. The realisation shocked him.

He said, ‘Meaning Prue isn’t family?’ and Cassie came back with it instantly: ‘Well, she’s practically got a family of her own.’

He said bitterly, ‘Yes, I’m well aware of that.’

‘Do you hate the idea of being a grandfather so much? I thought you’d be pleased when you got used to it.’

‘Of course I don’t hate the idea. But in due time—not like this, overnight. I don’t understand you, Cassie. Prue’s had no time to look around, she hasn’t even finished her education. God knows if she’ll even get her degree now with a baby on her hands.’

Cassie said softly, ‘There are worse reasons for not getting a degree.’

He stared at her. ‘Well, now I’ve heard everything. And coming from you—’

‘Why? What’s so surprising? Oh, I know I was very
academic but if I’d met you when I was Prue’s age it might have been a very different story. And I never wanted to work after we were married. I surprised myself in fact—I never felt I was missing anything. Maybe Prue’s like me—maybe all she needs is a husband and children. We may even have pushed her into going to college because we have this thing about education. It may not be right for her at all.’

Somehow he resented the idea of Prue being like Cassie, resented it very much. Now that he came to consider it, he realised that in all his fantasies about Prue’s destiny he had always seen marriage as a long way off. He had been sure that she had a brilliant future ahead of her, and those were comfortingly vague terms in which to think. But perhaps if he analysed it he had really visualised that future in terms of academic achievement. Disappointed—yes, he had been—when she failed to get into Cambridge as a student, he had perhaps seen her ending up there as a don. But he had not been aware of it till now. Idiotic. What a deeply-buried, foolish dream. How absurd to plan another person’s life. But in the case of a child—how tempting.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve been a fool.’

‘Now I don’t mean that.’ Cassie was always gentle when she sensed agreement or victory.

‘I do. I’ve been a fool to make plans for her. You’re quite right. Just because she’s capable of going to college doesn’t mean she wants a career. Now that girl in my office—’

‘You mean your new secretary?’

‘Yes, the girl Monica found me. Now she’s got no further education, she’s just a damn good secretary. But she’s ambitious, she wants to get on. There’s something driving her.’

‘What’s her name again?’

‘Sarah. She’s an ordinary girl from a very ordinary background and she’s not much older than Prue but she’s realised that shorthand and typing can take her round the world.’

Cassie said tenderly, ‘And is that what you wanted for
Prue—a trip round the world? When you can hardly bear her out of your sight.’

He bristled at that. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Well.’ Cassie paused to pick her words carefully. ‘You miss her now she’s away. You worry when you don’t see her for a while. Don’t you?’

‘Well, what’s so abnormal about that?’

‘I didn’t say it was abnormal.’ His use of the word puzzled her. ‘It just doesn’t fit in with round the world trips, that’s all.’

‘Oh, that was just an example. What I meant was—heavens, I’d have thought you would
know
this—I just wanted her to have freedom of choice, completely. The sky’s the limit. That sort of thing. Surely you can understand that.’

Cassie, made flippant by the tension in the air and the aggression of his speech, said, ‘Yes, she could have been an air stewardess.’ She did not know what she hoped to gain from this—to annoy him or to make him laugh.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Peter.’
It was unlike him to be so vehement.

‘Well. You complain I’m too quiet and then when I try to talk to you, you come out with a damn fool remark like that.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Well, it’s no wonder I don’t talk to you about Prue if that’s your reaction.’

Cassie was chilled. ‘You’ve missed the point. I’m not asking you to talk about
Prue
, I’m just asking you to
talk
. About anything. About work or the boys or our holiday. Anything
but
Prue, if you like. Because I think we’ve done too much talking about her. It’s pointless. You bring them up and let them go. You have to. Talking endlessly about things you can’t change is pointless. And I think it’s becoming a kind of obsession.’

The word was a bad mistake. She could see that as soon as she said it, as if she had struck him between the eyes with a
dart that had penetrated at once to his brain. He said, ‘Just what are you suggesting?’

‘Nothing. Nothing. I’m not suggesting anything.’

‘You said obsession. I’m concerned about Prue’s welfare, as any father would be, and I think she’s made a mess of her life and that worries me so I talk about it—and you call that an obsession.’

‘Obsession was too strong a word. I’m sorry. I mean I think you’re letting it get out of proportion.’

‘You said obsession.’

‘Yes, and I’ve said I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.’

‘Since when have you ever said anything you didn’t mean?’

Cassie panicked. She could feel the ground vanishing beneath her feet as if someone were rolling it up like a carpet. She said, ‘Darling, please don’t be so hostile. Do you realise we’re actually quarrelling? And we never quarrel.’

It was true. And it was one of the things he had always liked most about her. Her tranquillity. Now he was shocked to find himself regarding it more as a placid acceptance of disaster. The fact that she was not even half as concerned about Prue as he was seemed to put a great distance between them. He felt alone, as if he was Prue’s only parent, as if he had brought her up and lost her all by himself.

‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s right. We never quarrel.’

Cassie waited for peace moves but none came. She said helplessly, ‘Maybe it’s just as well I’m going away for a few days.’

T
HE MOMENT
she had gone the house was unbearably empty without her. It reminded him how unfitted he was for bachelor life. He wandered round aimlessly, picking things up and putting them down, turning on the wireless and turning it off, opening books and closing them again. Marjorie and Alec had invited him to dinner and he went to be polite, because he could not decently get out of it, but he felt they had only done it to take pity on him and he resented their kindness. It was a good dinner, as Marjorie’s dinners always were, and as he lived within walking distance he had rather a lot to drink. They talked desultorily about politics, television and money—they were renovating their house and obsessed with the subject—and he left early because Cassie was going to phone to let him know she had arrived safely. He had looked forward all evening to hearing her voice and yet when he did he was only conscious of the mileage between them: she sounded so far away, such a small voice, so distant. He knew it was not in her to bear him a grudge and yet he could not bring himself to refer to the quarrel, to apologise, to make it up, although he had intended to. To do so now, on the telephone, seemed to him to make altogether too much of it. So he said instead, ‘I miss you,’ and she said predictably, ‘I miss you too,’ sounding pleased and sad, but that was all, and then he talked for a moment or two to his in-laws and wondered yet again why he had never warmed to them. They were perfectly nice people who had always been charming
to him, but he had never been able to feel that they were part of his family. When the phone call was over he wondered if it was his relationship with his own parents that was responsible: he had never been close to them either, though they had given him every possible advantage. He had wanted to love them—at times he had felt almost physically weighed down by the love he had for them—but he had been a shy child who needed time in which to express love, and there had never been any time. His mother on committees, with dress-makers, with hair-dressers, at the theatre, on the telephone, lying down with a headache. And his father at the office, or abroad, or in his study surrounded by papers. And he himself playing games, or going to exhibitions, or studying, or away at school. And the house full of people, whether relatives, servants or guests: there never seemed a moment, looking back, when they were alone together, the three of them, with nothing to do except talk. It had made him all the keener to establish a proper relationship with his own children, to be an active father, to create a real family life, but he thought now that it had also stunted his emotional growth, made him capable of being a father but not a son.

The next day was sticky and warm. There was no news from Prue. He sat in his office as the afternoon petered out, trying to work but in reality preoccupied with dread at returning to the empty house. He had half-decided to ask Rupert to have a drink with him after work, maybe dinner; it was a long time since he had had an evening with Rupert and he was always an amusing companion. But about five o’clock Rupert looked in to say he was leaving early and was that all right? He still played the game of employee and boss, and his smile showed he knew it was a game, but Manson still enjoyed it as an amusing courtesy. He said yes of course, and laughed, and Rupert went off looking cheerful and arrogant, as if in expectation of a very good evening. Manson wondered idly if it was a man or a woman who was exercising
Rupert’s current attention, and then fell to considering his own changed plans. He could always go to his club, of course, but he did not want to; in fact he wanted to less and less often these days. Was it that he was getting old, he wondered, and too lazy to go anywhere after work, or was it the fear of finding himself becoming a club man, the least likely image he could ever assume. On an impulse, which he could never afterwards explain or justify, he said to Sarah, ‘Why don’t we knock off early and have a drink? Nobody can work in this heat.’

He could not see her face but there was only a second’s hesitation before she answered, managing to sound pleased and non-committal at once, ‘Thank you. I’d like that.’

He was somehow surprised that she accepted so readily: not that he had expected her to refuse. He did not know what he had expected: he had not thought beyond the actual invitation. He was not used to acting on impulse and did not know the rules.

‘There’s a place round the corner we can go,’ he said, ‘to save waiting till they open.’

Sarah smiled. ‘A dive?’

‘Yes. I suppose so. Do you mind?’

‘Of course not. It sounds fun.’

He said apologetically, ‘We can always surface at five-thirty and go somewhere decent.’ For the first time he wondered what she felt: did she think he was making a pass? If so she gave no sign of it. He did not put the same question to himself.

* * *

It was dark and cool underground and the lights at the tables made it seem like the middle of the night. Sarah rested her elbows on the table and her chin on her clasped hands, looking at him with calm, friendly eyes like a colleague. He asked what she would have.

‘Gin and tonic, I think, with lots of tonic and lots of ice.’

It sounded cool and saved him from having to think, so he ordered two. ‘Well,’ he said inevitably, while they were waiting, ‘how do you like the job—as much as you thought you would?’

She shook her head but she was smiling. ‘No. More. I really love it.’