Perfect Happiness (23 page)

When Zoe came swimming up into the world again the figure beside her bed was not white-gowned but dressed in blue and was smiling. The ward sister said, ‘There you are, back with us.’

Zoe gazed at this face which she had known for twenty-four hours and which seemed more familiar to her than any she had ever known.

‘You're fine. No malignancy. They had to do a hysterectomy so you're going to be feeling a bit sore.’

‘That's all right,’ said Zoe, ‘I have all the children I want.’

‘Well, good,’ said the woman briskly. ‘And now why don't you have a little sleep. You've nothing to worry about any more.’

It was early afternoon. The ward still had that greenish underwater atmosphere, but from somewhere outside there came a murmur of traffic. Feet tapped along a pavement; someone was whistling. Zoe lay quite still. The way she felt reminded her of something and somehow the most immediate thing was to remember what. And then it came to her. In just such a state of transcendental joy had one lain as a very small girl with the knowledge that unseen but quite tangible the Christmas stocking rested plumply against the end of the bed. She laughed, out loud. The woman next to her peered round a magazine, startled. ‘It's all right,’ said Zoe, ‘I just thought of something ridiculous.’

She closed her eyes. If one were religious, she thought, there would be something positive to be done. Prayers of thanksgiving. Candles. Gifts to charity. Implementation of all those vows of virtue if spared. For the agnostic
hoi polloi
there is nothing. Nothing but this amazing sense of being the object of a miracle. That the thunderbolt has fallen elsewhere, again.

She began to drift into sleep. But even as she did so she knew, quite clearly, that despite all that nothing would ever be quite as it was. Even with no-one to be grateful to, the emotion remained. I feel shriven, she thought, I am not the same as I was yesterday, or any of my yesterdays.

Frances, in those early weeks and months of her grief, had found ritual examinations of her state of mind mildly therapeutic. They had not helped much, but they had helped a little. Daily, she had assessed herself; whether she felt worse than the day before, or not. She seized on the occasional tranquil hour as a trophy, entered it on the chart. She logged unflinchingly the days of deterioration. Out of it, something might come.

Now, on a morning in early October, she came downstairs through her house and was pleased with what she saw. She drew back the curtains in the sitting room and early sun flooded in. She opened the french window and stepped out into the small garden. She had cleared and re-planted the beds herself; paving had been laid to make a small terrace, new creepers reached tentatively up the wall of the house. Today she would fill the tubs with bulbs for the spring. Next summer, she would sit out here; a bench must be bought, a table…

She went back through the house into the kitchen. In the sitting room, she tidied a heap of books dumped on the table by Harry last night, plumped up cushions. The photographs on the book-case had been pushed aside by a pile of newspapers; she removed the papers and straightened the photographs: Steven, the children. As she did so she realized that she was performing these small tasks not out of duty but with pleasure. She inhabited, now, this house; it gave her satisfaction to arrange its rooms, to dispose around them the things she had kept from the other house, to add a few more – new curtains, a rug.

In the hall ticked the long-case clock that had been a wedding present from her parents. Steven's desk stood in the sitting room. On the kitchen dresser hung the quirkily-shaped pottery mug made by Tabitha in the school art class. And while these objects had still the power to cause pain, to make her eyes prick at moments of vulnerability, they had taken on also the quality of anchors. Sometimes, she was uncertain which was stronger – their capacity to distress or to reassure. But she knew that she could not do without them.

She went through into the kitchen and began to get breakfast. Harry had arrived back a few days before; he had spent most of the time since asleep, like the survivor of some military campaign. Now, she could hear him moving around overhead and presently he came down. He stood in the doorway, blinking.

‘Where's Tab these days?’

‘Harry! I told you – she went back to Cambridge.’

‘Oh yes, sure. I forgot.’

‘I'm glad you've surfaced. You'd better come with me to see the grandmothers today. It's the last chance before you go. I'm working the rest of this week.’

‘Will do…’ He poured himself a cup of coffee. ‘Is it O.K., this job?’

‘It's all right. In fact I quite enjoy it. I am about to be briefed in the use of some alarming new piece of office machinery. A sort of computer thing.’

‘Ah,’ said Harry. ‘No problem,’ he went on, dismissively. ‘Can I do a fry-up?’

‘Yes. Well, electronics have never been my strong point. Let's hope I manage to come out on top.’

‘No problem,’ repeated Harry, unfurling strips of bacon into the pan. He stood at the stove, frowning slightly as though perturbed by what she had just said. In fact, as Frances guessed, he was thinking of something quite different and, indeed, began in a moment to discuss a logistical problem to do with the transport of his possessions to college later in the week. The self-absorption of the young, she thought with resentful indulgence, is like a perpetual heavy cold, locking out much that goes on beyond the sufferer's head. She watched him, covertly; the dent in the back of his neck that was for some reason so intensely moving in small boys and that even now, in maturity, evoked feelings of tenderness; the vaguely oriental caste to his features that implied confused and mysterious ancestries; the familiar but now gatheringly strange Harry-ness of him. In a year or two, he would be someone quite different; a relative only of the child she had raised.

She said, ‘Harry, there's something I've got to tell you. Now's as good a time as ever. It's about Tab.’

He sat there, eating bacon and eggs, listening, placing eventually his knife and fork neatly together on his plate, looking not at her but steadily at the table.

When she had finished he said, ‘Is that all?’

‘All?’ Frances, shaken, stared at him.

‘I mean. It's just Tab?’

‘Oh, heavens, yes. Not you. No revelations about you. Everything's just as it always was.’

Harry wiped his mouth. ‘Simply that one likes to know where one is.’ He sounded brusque; in fact, as Frances recognized, was assuming the false nonchalance of one glimpsing undreamed-of complexities. After a moment he added, with deliberate casualness, ‘How does Tab feel about it?’

‘It was a bit of a shock, I'm afraid.’

‘Actually,’ said Harry, ‘Tab looks rather like Zoe. It had never occurred to me before.’

‘Yes.’

They sat in silence. The puppy, under the table, whimpered, like a child sensing tension. Harry said, ‘Do you like it?’

‘Like what?’

‘The dog.’

‘Oh,’ said Frances. ‘Him. Yes, of course I do. I've got very fond of him. I've called him Hector, by the way. I needed a name to shout – you know, when he gets out into the street.’

‘Why Hector?’

‘Because I happened to be putting Dad's
Companion to Classical Literature
in the new bookshelves when I was thinking about a name.’

Harry frowned. ‘Actually I'd have thought it was a bit much, for a puppy.’

‘I did wonder,’ said Frances apologetically.

‘Oh well. I expect it'll be all right later on.’

There was a pause. Harry, through a mouthful of richly buttered toast, inquired after Zoe.

‘She's fine. In Rome just now, I think.’

‘I daresay I'll see her before I go. Do I,’ he added, ‘have to say anything about… this?’

‘Not unless you want to.’

Harry considered. ‘I think I won't actually.’ He rose. ‘I'm off now. I'm meeting Nick. See you.’

The subject, she realized, was closed. For now and possibly for ever. And I don't know, she thought, what he feels and thinks about it, if anything, and probably never will. Is he embarrassed? Does he feel excluded? Or is it, simply, a fact that he has digested, like he digested being blown up at Venice airport? Perhaps he is one of those people who are able to go through life step by step, for whom what happens, happens, and that is that. For whom today is uncontaminated by yesterday.

The doorbell rang. Marsha Landon was on the step, standing with her back to the door as though about to depart. Frances's spirits slumped instantly at the sight of her; only the week before she had successfully avoided Philip in the local supermarket.

Marsha turned round. ‘I thought you must be out.’ She sounded aggrieved, almost accusing.

‘I probably didn't hear the bell the first time.’ Marsha, Frances now saw, had a plum-coloured weal across her cheekbone. ‘Oh dear, you've had an accident.’

‘No,’ Marsha walked into the hall. ‘Philip did it.’

I don't want to know about this, Frances thought. I simply do not want to know.

‘Last night.’

They went into the kitchen.

‘He was pissed, of course,’ said Marsha. ‘Not that that makes any difference.’

Frances put the kettle on, in silence.

‘I've been to the doctor. I told him I walked into a door, but I don't imagine he was fooled. He said it's just a bad bruise, it'll go down, there's nothing broken.’ She touched her face, self-consciously; the gesture reminded Frances of children brandishing minor injuries. ‘He's gone off somewhere now. He always does after something like this. He'll be back.’

Frances put the mugs of coffee on the table, and pushed a plate of biscuits towards Marsha.

‘No, thanks. I've just had breakfast. I went round to Chris early, I had to have someone to talk to.’

‘I see.’

‘But she had to go to work, so… I mean it's not that I'm in a terrible state or anything. All this has happened often enough before, for Christ's sake. Just one needs to be with someone, know what I mean…’

‘Marsha,’ said Frances. ‘Why don't you leave Philip?’

Marsha stared. ‘Leave him?’

‘If it's all so awful.’

Marsha shrugged. After a moment she said, ‘I'd be alone, wouldn't I?’

‘And would that be so much worse?’

‘Well…’ Marsha's look, across the mug of coffee, was almost shifty, ‘I suppose he's better than nothing.’

Frances said sharply (surprised at her own tone, as though she heard someone else speaking), ‘If you find living with a man who apparently has made you unhappy for years preferable to living alone, then you have a problem which is quite over and beyond your problems with Philip.’

‘You're alone, and I don't imagine…’

‘Please don't try to imagine anything about me. I am alone, yes, and I think I prefer my condition to yours.’ Frances got up. She took the empty mugs over to the sink and rinsed them out. She dried them and put them back on the hooks. She turned to Marsha, ‘Look, I'm sorry you've had this row, or whatever it was. But I'm not at all sure what help I can be. I don't think sitting around picking it over does anyone much good. If I were you I'd get on and do something. Clean your house up. Anything. And I've got to go out, I'm afraid.’

Marsha said, with a trace of resentment, ‘You're an awfully
positive
person, Frances. I just couldn't be like that. I'd better go anyway. There's no food in the house. God, how I loathe shopping.’

At the front door she paused. ‘Actually, Philip might very well turn up here. He tends to go looking for shoulders to weep on. And he fancies you, I could tell. I don't mind – don't think that. Actually things are often rather better when he's… well, sort of got someone. If you and he are friendly it's quite all right by me, in fact it might…’

Frances, sharply interrupting, said, ‘I've not seen him for several weeks. I'm busy these days. I have a job.’

Marsha gazed. ‘Oh, I see. Well, 'bye then.’

When she had gone Frances felt guilty. I was cruel, she told herself. All right, she is stupid and parasitic and hopeless, but I had no right to be as I was. Uncharitable. There, but for the grace of God or someone or something, go I. She is not, of course, correct in saying that I am a positive person, whatever that may mean. Simply, I have known what it is to be happy and she poor creature probably never has. Even what has gone is sustenance, to have been happy once is a privilege. I am not damned but blessed.

Zoe, coming into the press conference, saw Eric at the far side of the room and beside him the girl, her, she who was now presumably his wife. O.K., she thought, this is it. This was coming, sooner or later. Let's take it now, sooner rather than later, and get it over with.

She crossed the room. ‘Hi, there!’

The girl – the wife, she – jumped and flushed and collected herself and gabbled greetings that were a shade too warm. Eric said, ‘Zoe. Hello. How are you?’

‘I am fine,’ said Zoe. She beamed (noting that amazingly to do so was not so hard after all). ‘As it happens it's rather good to be able to say that. I'm fine.’

‘You're looking,’ said the girl (the wife, her), ‘awfully well.’

‘And so,’ said Zoe, ‘are you. The both of you.’ Beaming still (and noting also that while of course one's natural expression is and ever has been remorselessly cheerful, all the same one was doing really rather well).

‘Frances?’ inquired Eric. ‘Tabitha? Harry?’ Squirming in his chair, looking if ever a man did in manifest discomfort and wishing himself a hundred miles away.

‘Fine,’ said Zoe. ‘All fine.’ Adding, silently: And calm down, love, cool it, this is something we both have to go through. And come on, it was worth it, wasn't it? All those times, good, bad and indifferent. Mostly good. All that love and warmth and yes, anger occasionally. Of course it was worth it.

She looked down at them, and the faces that had had such potency when she came into the room – such power to make the stomach churn and the heart thump – became all of a sudden mundane. Eric's was, simply, familiar: a face known for time out of mind and with, yes, certain emotive force, now and forever. The girl's – hers – was just a face, satisfactorily constructed, pretty indeed (the nose a trifle lumpy, maybe…).