Instances of the Number 3 (12 page)

Frances was sorting tights when the phone rang. Because her clothes were in neutral colours—grey, black or navy in the colder months, taupe and cream in the summer, her tights were these colours too. The different shades were supposed to be kept in different bags but in the period after Peter’s death chaos had seized its opportunity and made confusion.

Opening her drawer that morning, after her shower, Frances, naked on the bed, began to sort things out.

Sitting about stark naked was, Peter had been fond of saying, one of the things Frances might have been ‘made for’. As a matter of fact, she had once been an artists’ model and had achieved minor fame when her nude form had been rendered even flatter in a pink perspex sculpture entitled
Frances Seated
(or was it
Frances Standing
?—she never could remember). The sculpture had been bought by the Tate and the sculptor, a tiny, intensely bearded Dane had, more as a mark of gratitude for their combined achievement than for any real erotic interest, made a pass at her which she had judiciously ignored. Possibly it was
his sense of relief at this—shortly after, he left his solid Danish wife and took up with a vulpine young racing driver—which had prompted the sculptor to introduce her to Painter.

Painter, who had just started his abstract period, had not needed a model, but it was through him she had met Roy, and this was how she had come to manage the Gambit Galleries.

There were times when Frances missed her former occupation—as we miss what we have talent for. She had been a good model, having a capacity for stillness and the kind of body which reflects planes of light. And she had liked, too, the mysterious conjunction between her body and the artist and the way a third entity, the painting, would emerge. When Peter had made it plain that he liked her to do so, Frances began to spend more time in his company without her clothes.

Sitting on the bed Frances, for the first time since her lover’s death, inspected the body reflected variously back to her in the angles of the dressing-table glass. Deprived of Peter’s attentions her once familiar shape had grown into something she didn’t quite recognise. Her breasts, in defiance of the lack of recent interest in them, seemed to have grown fuller; a sign of impending menopause, Frances concluded gloomily.

When the phone rang she considered ignoring it: the bit was between her teeth and almost all the grey and cream tights had been returned in neat balls to the designated bags. But there was a part of Frances which was always half expecting tragedy, it wasn’t safe to leave a phone to ring—and indeed the voice which spoke to her did have a tragic tone.

‘Miss Slater?’ For a minute she didn’t grasp who it was. ‘It is I—Zahin.’

‘Zahin? Where are you?’

‘At a phone box, Miss Slater.’

‘Frances, please. Is Bridget all right?’

She had a fleeting vision of Bridget running into Peter’s arms.

‘She is angry with me, Miss Slater. She has chucked me out.’

So Bridget wasn’t dead—at least she hadn’t cheated her with Peter.

‘Where are you?’ Frances asked again.

‘At the station, at Turnham Green. Forgive me but I could only think of you…’

Climbing into her clothes, Frances lamented the tights abandoned again to anarchy. The child would be here in five minutes. She rushed a brush through her hair and put on lipstick and the kettle.

‘Come in, Zahin. Would you like some coffee? No, you prefer milk, don’t you?’

Twenty minutes later she said, ‘I suppose you can stay here for a night or two but my spare room’s not large.’

‘Anywhere with you would be paradise, Miss Slater.’

‘Frances!’ said Frances, vexed. Zahin’s extraordinary way of talking got on her nerves. He was a self-indulgence of Bridget’s, part of her deliberate, refractory quirkiness for which she, Frances, was now carrying the can. ‘It can’t be for long,’ she said trying to sound businesslike, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not like Mrs Hansome—Bridget,’ she corrected herself. Really, there was something almost hypnotically compelling in the boy’s habits of speech.

He smiled now, radiant, all traces of tragedy dispelled. ‘I will be the best guest you ever had!’

That is not the point, Frances thought. I never wanted a guest at all. More socially adjusted than Bridget, Frances was in some ways more particular; it was not entirely an accident that she had never married.

Zahin unpacked his bag and Frances resumed the sorting out of the tights. But with her clothes on, and her privacy gone, the occupation was no longer fun. She began to hoover the bedroom and was astounded when Zahin burst in.

‘Miss Slater, let me, I am a “dab hand” with the vacuum cleaner.’

‘Dab hand’ is Bridget talk, Frances thought.

‘Zahin, I like to do my own hoovering. And please, if you are to stay with me, we must have some rules. I can’t have you coming into my bedroom.’

To her alarm the blue eyes welled and tears began to course down the golden cheeks.

‘Zahin, please. I didn’t mean to speak sharply…’

‘I know how Mr Hansome loved you, I am so sorry.’

‘Zahin!’ Impotently, Frances sat on the bed while the boy wept.

‘He was my friend too. He told me how he loved you, Miss Slater.’

‘Zahin, can you try to call me Frances? I shan’t feel comfortable with “Miss”.’

‘O Miss Slater, Frances, I meant no disrespect…’

‘Righteous indignation is great for filling a vacuum,’ Sister Mary Eustasia had said. ‘Poor Hamlet doesn’t know what
he feels, then the ghost arrives and look, suddenly he’s a great reason to be angry!’

Bridget was shocked at the force of the hatred which had surged up in her—like a wild, swollen river bursting its banks. But rivers at least leave fertile deposits. Shame made her want to hang on to her outrage, to justify its voluble, satisfying violence. But in the aftertaste of vehemence she knew there was more in this than a petty wrong done to her by some silly, heedless girl.

The outburst was more complicated: it had something to do with the expedition she had made with Stanley Godwit to Ludlow Castle. She felt guilty—but not just because she had behaved badly to Zahin; obscurely, she felt guilty about Peter too.

There had been violets growing in the hedgerow near the castle—violets, which ‘withered all’ when Ophelia’s father died. Was it really her father they had withered for? Violets were for faithfulness…

‘For heaven’s sake, stand and unfold yourself! Or are you just going to skulk in the corner there?’ Bridget asked.

The truth was she was rather scared. The piece of dark which had detached itself from the shadows had plainly become Peter; yet, just as plainly, she had been present as Peter’s body was reduced to ashes. She glanced at the night light where the seahorses climbed and ducked, obedient to the scientific law which held them in thrall. The ‘remains’ of Peter, or whatever it was that had emerged out of the dark place, seemed to be staring at them too. Presumably ‘whatever it was’ was now outside the aegis of ‘scientific’ laws?

‘It’s a night light,’ she explained. ‘I bought it when
you died to keep me company.’ The comparison voiced sounded rather uncomplimentary. ‘To give me something to look at anyway when I couldn’t sleep.’

There was certainly going to be no sleep with the apparition in the room. Bridget wondered whether she should pretend she couldn’t see him and go on reading
Hamlet
. She had got to the bit where the ghost started like a guilty thing upon the crowing of the cock. Maybe this one would go away if she ignored it. But she didn’t want it to go away: she wanted it to make some sign but it—or Peter, and really it looked just like him—merely stood, fixing his eyes first on her and then on the night light.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘if you are my husband Peter there are things only you will know. Forgive me if this sounds like a test but if you can’t speak I presume you can move. Show me where you kept your father’s cufflinks.’

Silently, the apparition moved towards the chest of drawers and gestured to the looking glass which stood upon it. It was a glass with a small drawer at the base, where the cufflinks had lived since the day they had gone missing from Peter’s own drawer. The drama had been such that Bridget had taken charge of them thereafter.

‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘but anyone could guess that. Here’s another. Where’s the key to the clock?’

Again the phantom moved across the room. In ghost stories they glide, Bridget thought. This was more like a private showing in her bedroom of a three-dimensional film.

The figure which looked like Peter stopped and indicated a pot on the other chest of drawers.

‘Very good,’ said Bridget. This exercise was at least having the effect of making her lose her fear. ‘Now one
more. How do we keep the window open when it’s hot?’

But at this the phantom seemed to hover and a sudden sense that it was distressed reached Bridget. She looked towards the window. ‘Sorry, sorry, it wasn’t meant as a trick.’ The old broom with the toothless head which they used to prop the window wide was still under the bed. She didn’t quite like to get out and look but there had been enough questions.

‘So you
are
Peter,’ she said. ‘Or should I say
were
?’ And she knew then, from her tone, that it must be him after all.

By the end of a fortnight Zahin had thoroughly springcleaned Frances’s flat. The carpets had been sprinkled with evil-smelling powder and vacuumed, the parquet floors had been stripped down and repolished, the windows sprayed with a brand new product containing vinegar, the grout round the bathroom tiles cleansed with a toothbrush and denture polish, and the stainless-steel sink scoured. Zahin explained, ‘You use salt—it is a natural…’

‘Abrasive?’ interrupted Frances. Luckily the flat was small and soon there would be nothing left to clean. But then what?

It was the May bank holiday and she was dismayed to learn that Zahin’s college was closed. She thought of ringing Bridget, decided to let sleeping dogs lie a little longer, and instead rang Painter.

‘Patrick, I’m sorry to be a nuisance—’

‘Which you always are…’

‘—but Zahin’s here.’

‘What happened? That Limerick woman turf him out?’
Painter, who had the Corkman’s antipathy to all other natives of his island, sounded almost jolly.

‘I haven’t got to the bottom of it yet,’ Frances spoke cautiously, knowing Painter’s predilection for spiteful gossip. ‘How would you feel if I brought him over? Would it be an imposition?’ She knew that Painter was irrepressibly curious: if he had conceived a dislike for Bridget he would relish the idea of getting to know her lodger.

‘Bring him over, surely. I’ve got Mother in the garden—we can have tea.’

The weather had turned warm; the thought of tea in a garden was pleasing after the prospect of hot streets and a drive during which Frances became, inexplicably—for she knew perfectly well the way to Painter’s—lost. While reversing out of the garage, she scraped the side of the car. Unfairly, she wanted to blame Zahin.

And yet, of course, nothing is wholly self-originated: how we feel at any one time has also to do with who we are with. Negotiating the roundabout where Peter had been killed, it occurred to Frances to wonder whether, if there had not been an actual person in the car with Peter, there might have been instead some distracting presence on his mind.

Zahin sat beside her passing compliments. Without having yet discovered the basis of the row with Bridget it wasn’t hard to see how the child might get on one’s nerves. She was grateful when they reached the cul-de-sac where Painter lived and she could stop searching for polite replies.

‘This is Mother.’

Frances had never actually met Painter’s mother.
Unavoidably aware of her presence from the artist’s frequent references to her, Frances had somehow imagined an invalid, tucked away in bed. Now she saw a small, energetic-looking, red-haired woman, with a face like a pug, sitting upright, apparently in full health, in a deckchair.

Painter’s mother smiled graciously and said, ‘Don’t mind him, dear. You can call me Rita—everyone does.’

‘Lovely Rita, meter maid,’ said Painter and grinned.

Frances thought: He really
is
in love with his mother! ‘This is Zahin,’ she said aloud.

The boy sprang forward and kneeled beside the deckchair. ‘O Mrs Painter, it is a privilege to be in your garden. The English are the best gardeners in the world and I think this one must be best of bests!’ he turned about embracing the air with wide-flung arms.

Frances, who expected Painter to say something scathing, was astonished to see him beam at this extravagance.

‘Not English, Irish. Mother’s garden is a treasure. We have parties come and inspect it.’

This, too, proved not to be a joke: Painter went inside and returned with a booklet titled
London’s Hidden Gardens
. ‘Page 45 is ours,’ he announced proudly and read out, ‘“Specialities,” it says, “snowdrops and polyanthus”.’

‘The snowdrops have long left us,’ remarked Rita. ‘But the polyanthus would bring a song of joy to your heart. What I like best is gardenias, but they won’t grow in this soil.’

They ate ginger nuts and drank Typhoo tea. Zahin gave Painter tips on various cut-price shops. Painter seemed
genuinely taken by him, but then, I suppose he
is
gay, Frances reflected, wandering off to inspect the further reaches of the garden. She had never quite placed Painter’s sexuality but supposed from his devotion to his mother that other women were taboo.

Mrs Painter had apparently also taken a shine to Zahin. He was talking to her animatedly when Frances returned from her stroll among the tulips; and the forget-me-nots, which covered every available patch of ground like a blue scintillating Milky Way…

Frances passed through the garden but never saw the appearance of a man who stood before her, vainly offering the bunch of misty-blue flowers
.

Peter had been driving back to Fulham when he first saw the girl. It was only her back he saw, with the long black hair cascading down it. But it was the slight poke of the shoulder blades which stopped his heart. A split-second after this had registered on his memory, the girl turned off into a side street; he had already passed the entrance to it and had to make a U-turn, causing tremendous uproar among the traffic.

He drove slowly down the road, ignoring hoots from a car behind, but no sight of the girl.

That night in bed Bridget said, ‘Whatever’s got into you?’ which was unlike her: usually she accepted his approaches without comment.

The following day he made an excuse to himself to pass by the road again—and again crawled the car up and down it. No joy. He tried to forget the vision he had seen. But it wouldn’t leave his mind. The girl had not only looked like Veronica—all his responses cried out that it
was
her—and yet cold reason told him that Veronica, by now, must be fifty-five, and, most likely, fat; maybe even
—though he could hardly bear to force such an image upon his imagination—a moustache?

Weeks passed; he had almost persuaded himself the incident was unimportant, when, passing through Shepherd’s Bush from a different direction, he spotted the girl again. It was that distinctive walk—and the shoulder blades. The blood surging in his heart he drew alongside her.

The girl turned her head and smiled at him and he braked too sharply, nearly causing an accident—the face and the demeanour were almost Veronica’s, only just not quite…

The girl smiled again and, mesmerised, he followed her as she turned into another road where she stopped and waited.

‘Please?’

‘I’m so sorry, I thought you were someone I knew.’

‘I am sorry that I am not she.’

There was a pause during which Peter thought: I can’t possibly.

‘Well, nice meeting you!’ Such banal words. He wanted to lay his head down on the steering wheel and howl—for himself, for the girl he had treated so callously all those years ago in Malaya, before he knew better; most of all, he wanted to cry for the desperate, hopeless
uselessness
that lurked inside him, waiting to mess everything up.

‘Would you like me to come in the car with you?’

Peter heard the words but was not sure how he was to take them. Was she offering to come on a date? Or was she a prostitute? He had visited prostitutes but none lately.

‘For a drive?’

‘If that is what sir wants.’

So she was a prostitute. The idea was not erotic—indeed it tarnished the tenderness which had welled up for Veronica.

But there was no denying it—this girl was quite incredibly like Veronica. And if he took her for a spin in the car that wasn’t as if he was ‘going’ with her—even if she expected, which she certainly would, to be paid.

They drove over Hammersmith Bridge and along to Putney and across into Richmond Park. Peter said nothing and the girl seemed content to stare out of the window. It was on the brink of evening and the sun was vividly dropping in the sky. Peter finally stopped the car and in need of something to say suggested, ‘Shall we go for a walk? It looks as if it will be a jolly sunset.’

‘If that is what sir would like.’

He came round and opened the door for her and offered his arm, which she took, tucking a small hand inside his elbow. They promenaded, rather stiffly, he praying that neither Bridget nor Frances, nor anyone who knew him would pass (he was worldly-wise enough to be aware that it is on such occasions that people generally do pass by). Arm in arm—like some elderly couple welded together by years of sedate living, he couldn’t help thinking—together they watched the round disc of sun drop down to another side of the world.

On that occasion, he drove the girl back to where he had picked her up and was astonished, as he fumbled to pay her, when she leaned across and stopped him from opening his wallet. ‘Oh no, please, it was such a pleasant ride. I do not want to be paid.’

Driving away, he thought she had said it not as if she was angry but as if she were giving them both a holiday.

Peter, quite deliberately, had not looked to see which house the girl had entered when she left the car, but, a few days later—impossible to keep her out of his thoughts!—he went back to the street and waited. And this time there was no talk of not accepting money.