A Bouquet of Barbed Wire (18 page)

‘Well, it’s true. I’d be dishonest if I pretended otherwise.’

Oh, Peter Eliot Manson, Sarah thought suddenly, conjuring his name to herself like an incantation, where are you? Walk in and rescue me, no, better still ride in, arrive on a white charger like the chap in that advertisement, all tossing mane and shining armour, and trample her beige Wilton under your hooves. Carry me off to marsh-mallow land where I needn’t be tough any more. What rubbish, she thought bitterly.

A key turned. A door slammed. Her mother’s face froze in the alert position and switched on a welcoming smile.

‘Well, well, well.’ Footsteps. It was the giant, it was Fee-Fo-Fum, and the child’s reaction was to hide. ‘Both my beautiful girls.’

Her mother got up as he came in the room. She made various small sounds, like purring and cooing, and exchanged kisses. Sarah sat stiff where she was. He came over and patted her on the head. ‘Hullo.’ She said hullo back. He was careful these days and did not try to kiss her, not since the
time when, alone with her, he had stuck his tongue in her ear and she had kicked him smartly on the shin. His bad leg too.
Good
. And Barbara swore he had once put his hand up her skirt but that could just be Barbara. One thing was certain, though, she thought, he wouldn’t have bothered with Mum if he could have got either of us. And at night he takes his teeth out and puts them in a glass in the bathroom. I saw them once. My mother sleeps with a man who does
that
.

She suddenly felt, if not actually light-hearted, a little drunk with contempt. At least my teeth are my own and I haven’t fried my skin into leather, and nobody buys me, I do what I like when I like, and I’m
young
. If I make a mistake, the odds are I can put it right (I made a mistake on Friday, not going to work); there’ll be another time. But they’re on their last chance and lucky to get it, I suppose.

Her stepfather sat down beside her; she felt the thud of his weight in the springs of the sofa beneath her and thought, Christ, when he takes his clothes off it must be
obscene
. She glanced at him furtively, with horrid fascination, as at something diseased or rotting, and observed the vast overhang of his stomach as it strained against his leather belt. He had hair sticking out of his nose and ears. She felt sick but there was a kind of satisfaction in feeling sick, and it led on to pride in Manson and all his lovely elegance. The two men were not even far apart in years. She thought, I am lucky, I am lucky, oh God, if only I haven’t ruined everything. I was silly to mind. It just gave me a funny feeling, using her flat. But I shouldn’t have minded.

She had let her stare become fixed and her stepfather caught her staring. He winked. ‘And how are all the boy friends then?’ Her mother put a glass in his hand, fussing round him as if he were a child or an invalid—in other words behaving, Sarah supposed, like a good wife.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Just fine.’ She knew the way to avoid
cross-examination would be to produce a monologue of her own, but she could not manage it.

He leered at her; at least she could not see the look on his face as anything other than a leer. ‘How many are there of them now?’

Sarah shrugged. ‘Oh, I’ve lost count.’

He appeared delighted; he did not seem to know she was being rude, telling him to shut up, leave her alone, stop asking her stupid questions. ‘Make them jealous and keep them guessing, is that it?’

‘Something like that,’ said Sarah, nauseated. Her mother in the chair opposite was gazing at him with a rapt expression, as at the fountain of wisdom and wit.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Like mother, like daughter.’

Her mother fell about on her chair, giggled, protested, became kittenish. She forgot to keep her knees together and Sarah glimpsed the bulging flesh above. The rest of her had been rigorously health-farmed but her thighs, always a weak point, had either resisted treatment or reverted promptly to type. Now I am being catty, she thought without shame, as a fact. Time to go. Not that it was ever really time to come. Not
here
.

She stood up, saying resolutely, ‘I must be going.’

They both protested, but her mother only mildly. She knows he fancies me, Sarah thought; she’ll never leave us alone again if she can avoid it. Well, that suits me. But why does he think it necessary to make all this bright chat, to be so
silly
with me, when he must be a clever man in business to have made so much money? She tried to be fair, to think how it could have gone. Hullo, Sarah, how are you? Yes, fine. You look well (or not.) How’s your new job going? Good. And the new flat? What about the other girls? Oh, there was masses of stuff, especially at the moment. But instead he had to be coy, leaving her nothing to say. And to make it worse, he probably thought he was being clever.

I am intolerant, she thought. I am intolerant and I don’t care; that’s how intolerant I am. When she got out of the house she ran and ran, along street after street of smug, silent white houses in the full gloss of paint, till she was past the boundaries of Belgravia (where she was sure his neighbours must despise him) and into Knightsbridge where she caught a Nineteen to the embankment. She enjoyed moving out of salubrity, watching each row of houses, each line of shops grow less exclusive and select, enjoyed seeing the litter and the dirt increase, and the people grow shabby. I’m sure there’s a way to be rich and real, she thought, but those two haven’t found it, and it’s all the worse because they started with nothing; it ought to be such fun to have made it that they’d be realler than anyone.

Down by the embankment she wished she had told them she was coming here instead of pretending to have a date. At the time it had been easier but now she wished she had stood up and said, ‘I have to go and walk by the river and look at water and ships and houseboats and swans and mud.’

Lorry drivers and men in cars and boys on bicycles whistled at her as they passed, and she smiled. She knew she looked good. Good, and tidy. Some girls could look good and messy but she had never learned how. She even admired the messy look on others, but it was not for her. Everything attractive about her—and she had studied herself like a textbook, for on herself depended everything—was based on neatness. Daily bath, twice weekly shampoo, teeth cleaned after every meal. Nails immaculate and make-up meticulous. What began as effort became simple routine and attention to detail. It was the same with her clothes: whether cheap or expensive they were always clean and pressed. Everything she had looked new because she kept it in mint condition. She set aside evenings for buttons and zips and recalcitrant hooks and eyes; her hems were always level and adjusted to her version of the fashionable length. She had learned
what suited her; she knew which magazines to read for guidance, which colours to wear and which to avoid, how to make her own clothes, adapting the more freakish fashions to flatter her; when to pay a lot (and what for) and when to economise, how to get an expensive effect from something cheap. She had learned because she had to, but she had also wanted to. Now, though neither clever nor beautiful, she could make herself appear both. She had to make the best of herself because she had nothing else to offer.

The same attitude applied to her job. She hated to make a mistake but aimed at speed
and
accuracy because she also could not bear to be slow; she was punctual because it was part of her image and gave her satisfaction (not least because it didn’t come easily). All in all, it was a text-book image, an impossible ideal, viewed from outside, maddening to others who were tempted to retaliate by hinting that anyone so methodical must be a born spinster. But since no one could look at her and do that, she had won. Except that she had few friends. She drove them all mad, and alienated most, with her competence. But it was not done just to impress. Sometimes she thought she only did it to hide the mess inside. At other times she thought it was simply a compulsion. And sometimes it made her cry.

H
E SAID
, ‘So there it is. My wife is staying on for at least a fortnight and the boys are staying with her. There’s no point in disrupting their holiday, after all, and there’s no one to look after them here all day.’

‘No.’ She put her hand over his and felt the strange thrill of contact that comes from touching someone on whom you have projected the love image. ‘I’m sorry. You’ve had a rotten time.’

‘It was a rough weekend certainly. But it’s worse for Cassie. She’s stuck with it. Still, the old lady seems to be rallying.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Oh …’ Manson had to think. ‘About seventy-five, I suppose. Something like that.’

Sarah said, ‘I missed you.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yes. Are you glad?’

‘I suppose I am. Yes, I am.’

‘Are you still angry with me?’

‘Angry? No. Do you want another drink?’

‘No. I was lying on Friday. I didn’t have a sore throat. I just wanted time to think.’

‘I knew that.’

‘Do you want to dock my pay? You’re perfectly entitled.’

‘After what I did? You were right, it was a shabby trick.’

‘No, no, I was wrong about that. I don’t know what I felt.
I was upset. It seemed such a risky thing to do and so …’

He said carefully, ‘Unnatural?’

‘No, no.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh, but it does.’ She looked and sounded desperate. He gazed at her, so neat and elegant in the burnt orange suit of linen and the flowered shirt, crossing and uncrossing her shiny black shoes, opening and closing her shiny black handbag, her huge dark eyes staring at him out of a pale, pale face. She looked as if she hadn’t slept and yet somehow made it suit her. The young, he thought, have such resilience, such capacity for drama. They can feel so intensely, and stay up all night, and still have huge appetites and not look run down. They thrive on emotion. Whereas I just feel tired. And look it.

She said, ‘Please don’t write me off. I’ll be so good from now on if you’ll let me.’

It was ridiculous. To be offered a second chance and begged for one in return. He knew what he ought to do, of course, and he had no intention of doing it.

He said, ‘Sarah, you’re beautiful but all I want to do right now is sleep.’

She said urgently, ‘Can I be there?’

* * *

He woke about six, in the unfamiliar hotel room, and expended a few seconds wondering where he was. Then his brain cleared. He felt wonderfully refreshed. They had dined early; he must have been asleep by nine. He felt a twinge of guilt about that: he had really taken her at her word. He looked down at her, marvelling at how neatly and quietly she—perhaps all the young—slept. He remembered watching Prue sometimes as a child or an adolescent and she had scarcely moved. He had even had difficulty in hearing her
breathe. Whereas he knew that both he and Cassie had developed, over the years, a habit of threshing about in bed, of snoring or grinding their teeth. (The first one to fall asleep was the lucky one.) He hoped to God he had not done any of that with Sarah.

With a sense of privilege as well as making amends he woke her up and made love to her. They were both very gentle, perhaps through being so recently asleep, until the end when it became explosive. He had intended to be experimental and different, to challenge her experience, but when it came to the point there seemed no need; after all they were not running a competition. He had the uneasy feeling all the same that she was probably more experienced, in variety if not in frequency, than he was.

He said afterwards, still holding her, ‘That’s the only time you ever lose control, isn’t it? The only time you aren’t neat and tidy and well-ordered. It’s beautiful to see you like that.’

She smiled. Her face was damp with sweat. ‘It’s my thing. My one liberating thing.’

He thought about it. ‘Towards the end you’re like an aeroplane preparing to take off. You stop taxi-ing and you rev your engines and then you make your run.’

‘And then I take off.’ She liked the analogy.

‘If you’re lucky.’

‘I’m lucky with you.’

‘Well.’ She was being too generous. ‘Not so lucky the first time.’

‘Well, first times never are.’ She amended: ‘Hardly ever.’

He thought, Now that’s something I must never ask: how many men, how often, how much better? Cassie said Prue had two before Gavin. Could that be a lie? and if it is, which way would she lie, more or less? Would Sarah lie if I asked her? But I can’t, mustn’t ask her. What does it matter, after all? (I don’t have a yen for virgins.) Enough that she’s here.
That makes me lucky enough. He was struck by his own lack of guilt; such a feeling of lightness in an affair was a novelty to him, an even greater novelty than the affair itself.

‘You make me feel good,’ he said to Sarah, in gratitude.

‘And you make me want to tell you all my secrets.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘No. They’re grubby little secrets.’

‘Nothing of yours could be grubby.’

‘Well, boring then. They really are. Anyway, I don’t really need to tell them. It’s enough to feel I could.’

He hugged her. ‘You’re a funny girl.’

‘Do I make you happy?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s good. You weren’t very happy when I met you, were you?’

‘No.’

‘You mustn’t worry about her, you know. She’ll be all right.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Oh, don’t be cross. Aren’t I allowed to mention her?’

‘Surely. After all, I took you to her flat.’

‘And I was silly about it. I’m sorry. Are you going to forgive me?’

‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘No, really. I nearly ruined everything. And I don’t want it to be ruined.’

He said seriously, ‘Well, it isn’t, so stop worrying. What I can’t understand is, why you should care. I can see exactly why I need you but I can’t for the life of me imagine why you bother with me, and that’s the truth.’

She said, ‘One day I’ll tell you.’

* * *

They took to meeting at the flat again, perhaps to prove to each other that all was well, two or three times a week. They
made love, talked, dined, and departed early for their separate homes, for the look of the thing. In between Sarah saw Geoff and Simon, for she was afraid to give them up; she had no confidence that the affair with Manson would extend beyond his wife’s return and yet she hugged it to herself like a golden bale of cloth that could unroll and stretch out for ever, as in a fairy tale. Her physical sensations with Geoff and Simon were undimmed, but emotionally she found it hard to continue. She was both pleased, at this unexpected evidence of fastidiousness, and alarmed, at the unprecedented loss of freedom. He had made her cease to enjoy her normal way of life. She tried to analyse it, for her own satisfaction; she needed to know. It was not that he was exceptional in bed—most of her boy-friends had been as good or better. Not that he took her to nicer places—he had to be discreet, and in any case Geoff, for example, probably had more money. Not that he was especially gentle and understanding—he was, but Simon was more so. On the face of it there seemed nothing she could not obtain elsewhere. She found herself listening more and more to pop songs (which must mean she was in love, that was how she always knew) and there was one that seemed to echo her thoughts. ‘It’s the way you make me
feel
…’ it said, not this or that, all the reasons she had dismissed, and she thought it was indeed the way he made her feel, and the way he made her feel was safe. She felt in the hands of an adult, protected, cradled almost, and this was incongruous since she so often comforted him. But the fact remained that he made her feel safe and cherished; logically she knew that she had probably never been less so in her life.