A Bouquet of Barbed Wire (17 page)

She finished her drink and lay down, smiling at Gavin. She said, ‘I hope Sue remembers to water the plants.’

C
ASSIE SAID
, ‘I tried to phone you, but you’d already left.’

‘Yes, I left early and came straight from the office. How bad is she?’

They both spoke in low voices, instinctively. The whole atmosphere of the house was hospitalised: it even smelt different, and there was an institution air of routine and expectancy about it.

‘Well, it’s not good at her age, of course. (Poor Dad, he’s worn out, he’s been with her for hours.) But the doctor seems to think she has a fair chance. Only I never know whether to believe them when they’re being cheerful. Funny, isn’t it? If he was gloomy I’d believe him like a shot.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘It’s marvellous to have you here. I’ve felt so alone trying to cheer Dad up and keep the boys out of the way.’

‘How are they taking it?’

‘Oh, they’re a bit subdued. It’s rather awful—they keep saying to me, “Granny’s not going to die, is she?” and I have to say, “I don’t know, I don’t think so.” I can’t say I’m sure she won’t because then it would be so much worse for them if she does—oh, Peter.’

Tears. He put his arms round her and let her cry against his jacket. He was deathly tired. Driving home and sleeping badly after Sarah’s abrupt exit, going to the office full of trepidation and finding no Sarah but a message ‘Miss Francis phoned to say she won’t be in today, she has a sore throat,’ then a day full of phone calls and no one to syphon them off,
irritatingly punctuated by Rupert (‘Where’s your Miss Thing, playing hookey already?’). He had left early, deeply dispirited by the past twenty-four hours and set out on the long drive to Devon. How quickly it all turned to—what was it called?—wormwood and gall. Was this what ‘they’ meant by retribution? And now to find Cassie so distraught, so much in need of his comfort, was the final ironic straw. Illness was the last thing he had expected; with so much upturned in his own life he had not left room for drama in anyone else’s.

‘Poor love,’ he said to Cassie. ‘Poor love.’ He kissed the top of her head. All the guilt and exhilaration of yesterday had faded into a kind of weary tenderness. ‘You’ve been very brave. I’m sorry you had to be alone with it all this time.’

She looked up and smiled. He was moved and alarmed to see how much his presence comforted her; he felt undeserving. ‘Well, there was Dad.’

‘Yes, so you had to be strong for two;
and
cope with the boys. Shall I go up and see if they’re asleep? If they’re not I could make reassuring noises.’

She looked grateful. ‘Oh yes, would you? They’d love that. I went up half an hour ago and they were still awake then.’

He poured her a drink. ‘First things first.’

‘You are good to me.’

* * *

‘Is Granny going to die?’

Manson sat on a chair between their beds. ‘We don’t know for sure. But the doctor thinks she’ll
probably
get better, so you mustn’t worry too much, all right?’

They nodded solemnly. He saw in their bright, sleepy eyes the typically childish mixture of genuine concern and a certain ghoulish enjoyment.

‘If we pray will it help?’ School religion was strong at this age, he noted.

‘It might.’ He never knew how far to communicate his
own doubts to them: as wrong surely to indoctrinate doubt as certainty. He compromised. ‘But if it doesn’t it will be because she’s too ill, and we wouldn’t want her to live if she couldn’t get better, would we?’ Strange how this fraud must be perpetrated on the young, that everything happens for the best, as if they could grow up in a different world and never learn the truth.

One twin shook his head obediently. The other, already a free thinker, said, ‘
I
would.’

His brother turned on him. ‘Oh, you wouldn’t.’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘But that’s not
fair
. She wouldn’t
enjoy
herself any more.’

‘She doesn’t enjoy herself much anyway.’

‘She does when
we’re
here.’

Manson admired their self-confidence. He said, ‘Well, the odds are she’s going to get better, so you’ll just have to be quiet in the house for a day or two, and let her get plenty of rest. All right?’ He wanted to go now. His stomach was aching for a drink and the back of his neck, after such a long drive, felt ridged with cement.

The more ghoulish one of the two said, ‘If Granny dies will Grandad come to live with us?’

Manson froze: this was out of the mouths of babes with a vengeance. He had not looked ahead at all and here he was, presented with it. He wondered if it had occurred to Cassie.

The other twin said obstinately, ‘But she’s not going to die.’

‘She might.’

‘If she dies will she go to Heaven?’

‘Of course she will.’

‘No, she won’t.’

‘Well, she won’t go to Hell, will she? She’s
good.’

‘She’ll go to Purgatory like everyone else. My friend Sullivan says everyone goes to Purgatory before they go to
Heaven because no one’s
quite
good enough to go straight there. He’s a Catholic.’

The other twin, the disbeliever, roared with laughter. ‘He’s silly.’

‘No, he isn’t.’

‘Yes, he is.’

‘He’s my friend and he’s not silly.’

He longed to leave them to it but he couldn’t; he was obliged to say, ‘Do you want to wake Granny up and make her worse?’ They sobered instantly.

‘No.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Well, then, you’ll have to keep quiet. Try and go to sleep now and tomorrow you can make all the noise you like on the beach.’

He tucked them up; he did the good night-and-a-glass-of-water routine. Walking down the passage, so tired he felt he might fall down at any moment, he found himself suddenly and unaccountably thinking of Sarah. Her face flashed on the screen of his mind, all dark eyes and pale hair and sharp bones and that look of concern, and he said to himself, ‘Oh, my love, where are you?’ There was no place for her here, and being here illustrated the insanity of what he had done more clearly than anything else. Turning the corner of the passage, he almost bumped into his father-in-law coming out of the sick-room. He had been so far away in his thoughts that this really startled him but the old man noticed nothing. His eyes were glazed and red; Manson even thought he might have been crying. The old people were what was popularly called a devoted couple.

The old man said absently, ‘Ah, there you are, my boy. Good to see you.’ He put his hand on Manson’s arm. Contact was rare between them, reserved for occasions of great emotion. Manson’s and Cassie’s wedding, the births of the children, Prue’s wedding. Similarly the words ‘my boy’. As
always they moved Manson strongly, coming as they did, so seldom, from a man he hardly knew, whose daughter he had long ago taken away. He gripped the hand and felt the veins sticking up like soft string.

He said, ‘I’m so terribly sorry, is there anything I can do?’

The old man appeared to consider, as if there actually might be. Then he said, ‘No. No, I don’t think there is. Except—just hold the fort for a moment, I don’t like to leave her alone.’ He shuffled off into the lavatory.

Manson entered the room reluctantly. He looked at the woman in the bed, ugly and pathetic with illness, and was too much reminded of his own mother dying and himself, aged seventeen, desperate, because the magic, unspeakable words ‘I love you’ had never been said. He had shouted them over and over again, in a frenzy, till his father, out of very private grief, said curtly, ‘It’s no good, she can’t hear you,’ and that seemed like the judgment of God. He had wasted seventeen years of opportunity. He should have
made
the occasion, forced it if necessary, dragged the impossible words past his lips and
made
her hear them. She could not have been
that
busy. Useless, afterwards, to be told by well-meaning relatives that she knew, all the time, that she would understand. He had missed all his chances. He had let her die without being
told
.

His mother had died with a face like white marble. Perfectly white and beautiful, and so smoothed out that it could not be skin. He would never forget it. She was already one of the statues they placed over graves. It was like her to die so elegantly; it was in keeping with her life.

The old man came back and stood regarding his wife. ‘She looks peaceful, doesn’t she?’ he said, as if she were already dead.

Manson shivered. ‘Yes, very.’ He made an effort. ‘Now you mustn’t worry too much. You heard what the doctor said—he’s most optimistic’

‘Yes, yes.’ The old man resumed his seat and picked up the
paper. Manson wondered if he even heard the words of comfort, or needed them. Perhaps he too, like the twins, was caught up in the drama of life, and death, the uncertainty, the long vigil. ‘You run along, you’ll want to talk to Cass. She’s a good girl. It’s been wonderful to have her here. Providential.’

Manson went downstairs. Cassie was waiting for him, her feet up, on the sofa. She said, ‘I poured you a drink.’

‘Thanks.’ He sat down beside her and drank it: lovely healing fire trickled to every limb. ‘This is
just
what I needed.’

‘Are you hungry? I could cook …’

‘No. I ate on the way, in a pub.’

Already the journey seemed remote, to say nothing of the life he had left behind. He held her hand without knowing whether the compassion he felt was for Cassie his wife, whom he loved, or another human being, anyone who happened to be in distress.

‘How do you think she looks?’

‘Well … a bit strange. But she’s bound to—’

‘Yes. Dad’s been marvellous.’ A long sigh. ‘Did you settle the boys down?’

‘More or less. All the drama’s gone to their heads a bit.’ He wondered if he should say it; hesitated; said it. ‘They wanted to know if Grandad would come to live with us if Granny died.’

‘Oh God.’ Cassie closed her eyes. ‘You’d hate that, wouldn’t you?’

‘We can talk about it.’ He tried to sound easy-going and relaxed. ‘But I don’t think the situation will arise. I think she’ll get better.’

‘Do you? Really?’

‘Yes, really. Don’t you?’

‘Maybe. This time.’

‘Well, of course,
eventually
…’

‘Yes.’

‘W
ELL,’ SAID
her mother, opening the door, ‘long time no see.’

Sarah winced. The greeting never varied, perhaps because her visits were always infrequent. But this time it was a refuge, it was somewhere to go, however unlikely, where she was safe—and officially safe—from Simon and Geoff, and where she could
think
against a social background, just as some people might choose to study in a reference library rather than alone in a room.

‘How are you?’ she said, ignoring the greeting and kissing the presented cheek. It was heavily scented and satiny with cosmetics. Her mother wore a white linen dress with white embroidered flowers on it, and lots of gold jewellery on her very brown skin. She had actually overdone the sun-tan, Sarah thought. The skin on her arms and neck was beginning to look tough and dried up.

‘Oh, I’m very well. We had a marvellous holiday. Well, come in, sit down; you’re staying, aren’t vou?’ She moved edgily around the stiffly furnished room.

Sarah said, ‘Is he out?’

Her mother paused in the act of pouring herself a drink: gold bracelets dangling from the hand that held the bottle, ice clinking in the glass. ‘I wish you’d find some other way of referring to Bob than that; you make him sound like some kind of ogre and he’s been kindness itself to you.’

Sarah sat down. ‘All right. Is Bob out? Is my step-father
out? Is your husband out? Take your pick. Now it sounds like three different men.’

‘There’s no need to be offensive. I don’t know why you come if you’re in this kind of mood.’ But bickering was so much second nature that she let it pass. ‘Do you want a drink?’

‘No, thanks.’ Sarah could not explain how frugal—even puritanical—her mother’s ménage made her feel. In it she always ate and drank sparingly, feeling she might choke, refused presents, looked with disapproval at the trappings of wealth and thought of the deserving poor as if she had a social conscience.

‘Hm. Up to you. But you look as if you could do with one—you’re looking a bit peaky. Been seeing your father?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Oh, he generally makes you look peaky when he’s around. I’ve noticed it before.’

‘He was round the other evening—just called in. That’s all. I haven’t seen him since.’

‘Hm. On the scrounge, was he?’

Sarah didn’t answer.

‘He’ll never change,’ said her mother with satisfaction. ‘He’s got no initiative. He doesn’t even want to better himself. I suppose he got at least a quid out of you.’

Sarah didn’t answer but smiled faintly.

‘Aren’t you ever going to learn? He goes straight in the boozer with it, you know. If you think you’re putting a hot dinner inside him by throwing your money about you’re very much mistaken. The only way you’ll ever do that is to cook it yourself and watch him eat it. You’re soft. I don’t mind betting Barbara never lets him have a quid.’

‘John wouldn’t let her.’

‘Oh, John, John. That’s a lovely way out. Barbara wouldn’t give you a quid if you were dying. And good luck to her, why should she? That comes of having a hard life.
She’s learnt her lesson. Now
you’ve
had it too easy. Why can’t you learn from her mistakes? Get yourself a rich husband.’ She lit a cigarette, diamonds flashing, Sarah thought, almost self-consciously. Shivering in the light.

‘Like you,’ she said.

‘Well, why not? I haven’t done so badly, have I, and I’m no chicken. You’ve got youth on your side, you can take your pick, but you don’t want to work in an office all your life, do you, and you’ve seen what happened to Barbara. Now there’s no need for it. It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one, if you’re set on falling in love.’

‘So you said,’ Sarah replied. Often. Her mother was the sort of woman who would recommend any discovery—a rich husband, a new deodorant, a cure for piles—as enthusiastically as though her life depended upon it, or she were a major shareholder in the company.