A Few of the Girls (21 page)

Bella was vague. Dr. Cecil was firm. She left with no prescription of any sort, and a cheery wave from Dr. Cecil, who decided that she was going through an early change of life and asked her to keep in touch, to drop in now and then just for a chat about her health.

So it would have to be a health farm. That might get a stone off dramatically. Bella had plenty of housekeeping money. Three months ago Jim had opened a special account for her and put in a generous sum each month. With a sudden start she realized that he must have done this when he had decided to leave her anyway: a method of giving her money of her own in advance of the departure date. She had enough to pay for a week in one of those expensive places if she needed to, but might that be playing into Jim's hand if she just cleared off at once? She would wait and see. Meanwhile, eating nothing.

Bella was very hungry when Jim came in at midnight. She was wide awake and dying for a bowl of soup, but she would have nothing. Didn't those magazines tell you that slimming should begin with a shock to the system? Jim looked tired and not anxious to talk. He got a throw ready to sleep on the sofa and said they'd have a proper conversation in the morning.

Bella said that there was nothing to stop him sleeping in his own bed, where he had slept for fifteen years. He looked startled, as if she had said something in bad taste. No, he'd prefer to be in the sitting room, please.

“You were able to sleep in our bed all the time this affair was going on, and it didn't revolt you,” said Bella.

“I know,” he said, ashamed of himself.

That night was almost entirely sleepless for Bella, but she dozed a little.

In the morning, she put on her long navy caftan, the most slimming thing she owned; she made up her tired face carefully and brushed her hair. She came down as Jim was making the coffee.

“Let's decide on a temporary parting,” she said before he could say anything. “Let's just say a period like two months, and then we meet again and see how we are getting on without each other. If we are miserable then we'll come back together and there's no harm done. If we still want to stay apart then we can make all the arrangements then. How about that?”

“No,” said Jim. “That wouldn't do at all. You see, I'm not going to be miserable. It has nothing to do with trial separations. I want to marry Emma, and I don't want some more hypocrisy—I'm responsible for enough of it already. So what I want to discuss today is what you are going to do, how much money you'll need, what way you'll need it.”

This wasn't going as Bella had planned.

She listened and watched as the sums were done on her shopping list pad. So much going in here, so much there, insurance policies to be kept up. Bella was to let him know if she would like him to sell the house—it might be better all round, new starts, and money in the bank.

“Where are you going to live?” she asked dully.

“I don't know yet, it depends on whether we sell this place or not…”

The calculations went on. She felt very low. She walked away from the kitchen table in the middle of it.

“I'm going out,” she said suddenly. “We'll talk about it again.”

“I won't be here again,” said Jim despairingly. “This is our day for talking about it.”

“No, you can write to me about it,” she said.

A shadow of relief came over Jim's face.

“So, I'll take some of my things—well, most of my things—today then. I mean, I won't take anything joint, we can discuss that again.”

“Yes,” said Bella.

She walked down to the shopping center and in the coffee shop looked up the National Marriage Guidance Council in the phone book, asking them for their nearest branch. It wasn't far away. She rang the branch and they said to call in that afternoon and make an appointment. She filled in the time wandering around the shops. Perhaps they could cure her marriage? Why else would they have been set up if they couldn't mend marriages that had gone bad?

The woman said that Bella could make an appointment for counseling next week.

“Why not now?” said Bella in distress.

That wasn't the system, apparently. It might have been based on the fact that people had run in for counseling after a row, and that they didn't really need it at all. Bella didn't know. Anyway, she had to accept next Thursday or nothing, so she took next Thursday.

She went to a bad movie and went home. Jim had gone, leaving a note saying that he had put another hundred pounds into her bank account for emergencies and would write to her next week. His clothes, suitcases, and a few of his books had gone. Nothing else.

It's a hard life if you keep up pretenses, but you can keep going on some kinds of hopes, and Bella had two lifelines, the diet and the marriage counseling. She parried questions about where Jim was, she refused one invitation, and canceled the people she was going to have for drinks. She accepted another invitation to a neighbor's house, saying that Jim was away, but she felt dizzy from lack of food, and she wouldn't eat anything there so the evening was not a success.

Finally Thursday came and she found herself in front of a clergyman of all things. Bella hadn't much time for clergymen, but this one seemed very nice and relaxed, and he never suggested that religion might be the answer for anything, which eased her mind.

In fact, she thought, it must be very easy to be a counselor, you only have to listen and nod. He gave her no advice; he gave her no suggestions. She told him the whole story about Jim and how it was a middle-aged madness, and about Emma, who must be twenty-five years younger than him, and about the nice home that Bella and Jim had built up for years. But the counselor didn't have any ideas about how to get Jim back. No helpful hints or schemes, no plans of campaign.

“Well, naturally I've gone on a diet,” said Bella in a businesslike way. “That was probably half, if not two-thirds, of the whole problem. I've eaten practically nothing for six days now, and I've lost five pounds, so
that
side of it is under control at any rate. It's just that I don't know what to do in terms of making him come back, when I should expect him back, and how to work on it.”

The gray eyes of the counselor were friendly and reassuring, as was his gray, shabby cardigan. But they didn't seem to flicker with any recognition or pleasure when she mentioned her diet, he didn't seem to see that this was the best thing she could have done.

“It is a good idea to lose weight, don't you think?” she asked anxiously.

“Has your weight made you feel unhappy?”

“Well, obviously since I'm much too fat, and this girl is probably a skinny little thing, it must have a lot to do with that. I know I have the willpower to lose the weight. What I was hoping you would tell me is what to do then?”

He was a good listener; he had said nothing when she had gone into little bouts of self-pity about who was going to help her dig the garden, and why should she be turned out of her own house at the age of forty-five, and when was this country going to have laws that protected marriages?

He had prompted her with a few little grunting remarks about why she and Jim had drifted apart, and whether she and he had been able to talk to each other about things that mattered. He said that it was usually better if both parties came to counseling, but she had said vacantly that Jim wouldn't consider it. He seemed to have a debt of honor to this little tramp at the moment. When they got back together, perhaps he might come then. But she said it doubtfully.

“You really think that the relationship was so alive that it will be saved,” the kind gray man said, not as if it was a question, more as if he was just saying a statement, expecting her to agree or disagree.

“Well it must, if I get my figure back, and have as much to offer him as this teenager.”

The counselor said nothing. So Bella went on, “I've decided I'm going to get as much money as I can from him, and the first thing I'm going to do is go to a health farm. I'll stay for three weeks, and then I'll be in such good shape that I'll be able for anything. I'm not going to take this sitting down. Some women would let themselves go completely, but I've learned my lesson. Once I'm two stone lighter, and can fit into size ten dresses again, there'll be no problem.”

She felt a bit worried in case she had got the whole idea of counseling wrong, because he didn't seem to have much cheer for her, just a friendly handshake as she was leaving him, assuring him that once she was slim, everything would be as it always had been, a wonderful, close, good relationship, which was, after all, what Jim had promised when they were married in a church all those years ago.

Sara had always been what they called anxious. She jumped at the slightest sound. She hated having to read aloud in class, and she was always afraid that something awful would happen.

Mainly it didn't. But you couldn't explain that to Sara.

They could have been in the caravan that was blown off the cliff—all right, so they were not, but they could have been. So it was the same principle.

She worried about Nesbit, their dog, in case he might have rabies.

“Darling, he's just running around in circles. It's what puppies do,” her mother said. But Sara was afraid that it was a mad thing to do and that Nesbit might have to be put down.

When Sara went to work in the bank she was always afraid there would be a raid and that men with machine guns would come in and ask them to lie on the floor. The others shrugged. So they would lie on the floor. There was a procedure for this, no one was to be heroic. But still she scanned the faces of perfectly innocent customers.

When she met Richard, who worked in an estate agency, he thought it was sweet that she was frightened of the world. “I'll always protect you, Sara,” he would say, stroking her head.

The day they married, Sara was afraid that the wedding car would not turn up, that the vicar, who was somewhat red-faced, would have a seizure at the altar, that Richard's mother would get drunk, and that the guests would get food poisoning. None of these things happened, but the bridesmaid did twist her ankle by dancing too violently, so, as Sara said many, many times, you knew there would always be something.

In their new house she would start to panic in case the deeds had not been properly drawn up, the roof adequately supported, the neighbors might be people on a witness protection scheme, and the whole area liable to be flooded at high tide. None of these fears was realized, but a car did crash on the corner and the learner driver was taken to hospital with whiplash, so, as Sara said over and over, you never know the day or the hour; there was always something.

And Richard was very eager to have a family immediately but Sara was worried about it. They were so young still and there was so much to be planned and thought out and got right before they thought of children. She also said that it was an increasingly violent world to bring children into.

Richard stroked her hair and said that it wasn't right to be so upset about things. Perhaps they might go to the doctor who could give her some medicine that would make her less anxious, or get her to see a counselor. He wasn't saying that he would protect her and keep her safe anymore—he was saying he had heard of this wonderful man or that wonderful woman.

Sara was very upset by it all. Richard thought she was mad. She was far from mad. She was sensitive, that was all. She could see things before they happened. What was the word?

Forebodings,
was that it?

Richard didn't think so. Was it
presentiment
? he wondered. No, that wasn't exactly it either. They looked it up together in the dictionary and found
premonition.
Yes, that was the word. It meant when someone got a kind of warning ahead of time. Like a soothsayer maybe, or a fortune-teller, or someone very sensitive to the vibes around them.

Sara laughed, delighted with the word. And Richard suggested they go upstairs to bed.

But Sara said there was far too much to do.

What sorts of things?

Oh, like unplugging all the appliances in case of an electrical fire, checking the smoke alarms, patrolling the garden with Nesbit because there might be people watching the house and it was good to let them see that there was a big guard dog on the premises.

Richard said that Nesbit was such a fool of a dog he would welcome burglars in and lie down waiting for his tummy to be rubbed. Sara took no notice of this whatsoever. Instead, she reminded him that she had to check the house alarm in the kitchen: eighty percent of burglars came in the back door; you had to be prepared. So Richard went upstairs alone and was asleep when Sara came to bed. Something that happened more and more as the months went on.

And then Sara began to get premonitions about accidents that were going to happen to Richard on his way to work. One was very strong indeed. She could literally see the truck that mounted the pavement and killed Richard. She could hear the screams. So she telephoned him immediately. He was walking along the street near work with a colleague and had to go into a shop doorway to cope with her hysterical voice.

“Darling, you can't have these fantasies, it's just not normal.”

“Are you near the zebra crossing?” Sara cried.

“Yes, I'm looking at it, I'm about to cross it. Sara, this won't do. You can't go on like this…”

“Please don't cross it, Richard!” He hung up.

She rang his office ten minutes later, expecting to hear there had been a terrible accident. Instead they said they would put her through to Richard straightaway.

“No, Sara. Not now. We'll discuss it tonight. I am not going to live like this.”

Sara staggered through her day at the bank. She called her mother and asked if she could meet her for lunch.

“Was there ever any madness in our family?” she asked.

“Not on my side,” her mother said. “Though your father has a couple of dotty aunts. Why?”

“Richard thinks I'm going mad.” Poor Sara told the whole story of the premonitions and how, in all honesty, she just could not let him walk to his doom.

“But it
wasn't
his doom,” her mother said.

“Well, that's because I altered what was about to happen. When I called, he had to stop and talk to me about it, you see.”

“Yes,” said Sara's mother doubtfully.

“So what should I say to him tonight?”

“Tell him that you are very sorry but it was only because you love him so much, then take him to bed and love him to bits. That usually sorts most things out.”

So Sara did just that and the great row never occurred, and Richard seemed very pleased that marital relations had been restored again. Unfortunately he didn't realize that it was a one-off, and the next night he began to make signs that suggested he thought it was going to be a regular occurrence—but of course Sara had to check so many alarms, unplug so many appliances, and parade Nesbit that Richard was asleep when she got to bed.

She had two more premonitions, but instead of ringing Richard she telephoned her mother. One was that the ceiling was going to fall in the foyer of the estate agency; one was that he would get food poisoning from a salad. Neither of these things happened and her mother talked her down on both occasions.

Sara's mother had begun mentioning seeing a counselor who specialized in unreasonable fears. Sara pretended she hadn't heard. There was nothing wrong with her. She was just lucky that she had such sensitivity she got premonitions, that's all. And, all right, she wouldn't call Richard at work again. But everyone must back off trying to drag her to a shrink and make her take happy pills. She was fine.

And time passed. She had fortunately very few premonitions about the bank, which meant a fairly easy, uninterrupted working life; and only one or two about home, where she thought Nesbit might be nervous sleeping downstairs and brought him up to their bedroom, where he slept at the end of the bed and virtually put paid to any of the minimalist marital activity that had survived into the fourth year of their marriage.

Richard had stopped asking about starting a family. He was staying later at work, and they had very few friends and did little or no entertaining. Sara was usually too tired to go out anywhere, what with the ceaseless round of security duties and the statistics that most homes were robbed in the evening, when the owners had just gone down the road to the pub.

Most of Sara's friends had small babies now, and they would urge Sara and Richard to go the same route. Richard didn't bring anyone home from work anymore—Sara was too strange and uneasy. He sometimes talked about Ted and someone called Nell—when he was late home he had often had a pint with them, but there was no suggestion that they come back to Richard and Sara's for a meal.

And then one morning, right out of the blue, Sara got a premonition that Richard was going to go out and see a house with a client and the floor would collapse. She could see Richard falling and struggling to hold on and then the rest of the bricks and mortar collapsed on top of him, killing him.

Well, as Sara often said to people, what would you have done? It wasn't just that she thought such a thing could happen, she could actually
see
it.

Sara sat there in her bank, shaking all over. For the rest of her life she would live with the guilt that Richard went to his doom because she was too scared to speak up. Yet she knew that both Richard and her mother would have her in a funny farm if she dared to warn him. What a decision to make!

She sat for what seemed ages but was about half an hour, deciding between the two evils. If only she had a friend in Richard's office, someone she could confide in, someone who could help her. But he would just hate Sara to call Ted or Nell with what he said was one of her cracked ideas. So that wasn't on.

Unless.

Unless, of course, she called for some other reason—not the premonition. What would bring Richard running home? Suppose she was to tell him she might be pregnant? Later, of course, when the danger of the collapsing house was over, she could say it was a false alarm. But he had begged her not to ring him at work on any pretext. It always somehow turned into some alarmist issue.

So she had to ring one of his friends. She rang the estate agency and asked to be put through to Nell. It rang for a while and then she heard a voice saying, “Hold on, darling, I'll get rid of this. Yes? Hello, Nell speaking. Can I help you?”

Immediately Sara thought that this was very unprofessional. Imagine letting a client hear you say you were going to get rid of a call rather than dealing with it. Still, that wasn't important now.

“Oh, Nell, I'm Richard's wife, Sara. I wonder, can I have a word with you?”

Nell sounded very wary. “Um, about what?”

“Well, it's a bit complicated but you would be doing me and Richard a great favor if you were to ask him to come home straightaway. I'll meet him there.”

“Oh, are you ill or something?” Sara thought that Nell sounded awkward, not friendly or helpful or anything.

“No, not ill, but I have some news for him.”

“Couldn't it wait until this evening when he'll be going home anyway?”

“No, it couldn't, actually.”

“Oh.”

“So will you ask him to do that then, Nell?”

“Why don't you call him and ask him yourself?”

“He doesn't like being telephoned at work.”

“But if it's important…”

“Listen, Nell, I'm going to level with you. I think I'm pregnant. He will be so pleased and I just want to share the news with him immediately. Now!”

She ended in a bark of urgency.

“You think you are
what
?” Nell asked.

“Well, I can't be certain, but it looks very like it,” Sara trilled.

And then Nell hung up. Or they were cut off. Hard to know which.

Sara telephoned the estate agency again and said that her call had been cut off. She was reconnected.

The phone was snatched up and thrown on a desk. Sara could hear Nell's voice saying that the damn phone was always ringing when you didn't need it. She was both crying and sniffing as she talked to some man. She had abandoned the phone completely.

Sara shouted “Hello? Hello?” but to no avail.

Nell was sobbing. “You told me that you haven't slept with her for over a year…”

“And it's true, darling Nell, it's true.”

By the time that Nell said the name Richard, Sara already knew. Nell and Richard were having an affair. Those nights that he was late home had a reason. But as she always said later, let nobody tell her that she was wrong about premonitions. She knew something was going to happen that morning.