Road to Berry Edge, The (8 page)

‘I know one thing. If you don't stop acting like you've gone into a monastery you'll end up marrying some stupid
money-grabbing little bitch just because you can no longer resist putting your hands up her skirt.'

Rob said nothing and for so long that Harry held up both hands in appeal.

‘I can't go into Durham on my own, can I?'

‘I am not going to bed with some woman I don't care about who doesn't care about me, who goes to bed with men for money. It's disgusting.'

‘Christ, Rob, there's a halo forming over your head.'

‘Shut up!'

‘You've never done that, have you?'

‘No, I haven't.'

‘That's because you never needed to. You talk about your brother, about how he never did anything but work, about how dull and religious he was. You're going just like him. We used to have fun—'

‘Sarah's dead!'

‘Two years, Rob. Two bloody years. How much longer are you going to pretend that she's coming back?'

Rob grabbed Harry and slammed him up against the nearest wall.

‘You devious bastard!'

‘Go on then, hit me. You blame everybody. You enjoy knocking people on to the floor. It's the only thing that makes you happy.' And Harry wrenched free and walked out.

He went to his own room. The fire was burning in there too. Every time he thought about his sister a coldness pervaded his heart, sickness hit his stomach, emptiness flooded his brain. He could no longer think that she was there or that she had just gone away and would come back to them as Rob did. He had tried to pretend that there was nothing the matter, that things would go on as they had, but now that he was not in Nottingham it was obvious to him that things would never be normal again. There was a noise at the door. He didn't
even turn around. Rob shut the door and then he said, ‘I'm sorry.'

‘No, you're right. I am a devious bastard.'

‘Let's go out,' Rob said. ‘We'll have a drink.'

*

It was bitterly cold in Durham and Harry soon regretted having insisted on coming here. Rob didn't seem to want a drink, he had nothing to say, he had let himself be talked into it because he felt the debt of bringing Harry north to this place, making him feel obliged to invest time and money. He even felt guilty over his house and family and their inhospitality, Harry knew. After one drink at the pub in the market place Harry suggested moving on. They walked down Silver Street and on to Framwellgate Bridge and there Rob stopped. It was too cold for standing around, Harry thought but he didn't say anything.

‘Don't you want another drink?' he said after a minute or two.

‘This was where John fell in,' Rob said.

‘How do you know?'

‘What?'

‘How do you know? You were in the pub over there.'

‘About here, people said.'

‘We don't have to have another drink, Rob,' Harry said, regretting the whole thing entirely by now. ‘We can go.'

‘I don't want to go to Berry Edge. I wish I'd never come back here. You have no idea how much I hate it. I want to be back in Nottingham with Sarah.'

He spoke so softly that Harry could only just hear him.

‘I miss her every minute, every second. I still can't believe that she's dead. I feel as though nothing in my life is worth having, nothing at all and it's not just … it's not just that I miss her. I want her. I want her so much I think I'm going to die of it sometimes. I can hardly remember what she feels like or tastes like. It's like being locked up and left to starve to death. Nothing
can fill it up, food doesn't or drink, or work or friendship, or anything.'

Harry leaned back against the bridge, partly so that he couldn't see the murky depths when John Berkeley had drowned.

‘Can I say something?'

‘What?'

‘Why don't you go to bed with somebody else?'

‘You think that's the answer to everything.'

‘No, I don't. You can't betray her by doing it and as for betraying a memory, I think that's not possible. You're alive. Don't you sometimes think that it's just another woman's arms around you that you might want?'

‘No.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘No.'

‘Did you think you might find somebody else?'

‘Straight away. I thought I had to, I thought I couldn't bear not to but I didn't. Every woman I meet is just a big disappointment. I can't see them properly any more for want.'

‘But you wouldn't go to a whore?'

‘No.'

‘Not even once.'

‘Harry—'

‘All right. Pretend I didn't suggest it. You nearly broke my head earlier on. I do know when people have had enough.'

‘Do you?'

‘We can go back to Nottingham, any time you like.'

‘Warm bedrooms, good food, wine that makes you think of Paris.'

‘Oh, don't. The beer's good here. Let's go and have another pint.'

Rob hesitated.

‘Where did you say she lives?'

‘What?'

‘This woman.'

‘Just over the river,' Harry said, nodding in the direction of the houses whose lights burned across from the cathedral and castle.

‘Maybe we could go and see. Could we just go and see?'

*

When the doorbell rang Claire was downstairs making some tea.

‘Claire!' Susannah shouted. ‘Answer that, will you?' and she went back to her book. It was a cold, wet late November evening and she was glad to be sitting by the fire. She heard the door opening, she heard voices and then Claire's footsteps on the stairs. She came in with an envelope in her hand.

‘Got two men in the hall and this,' she said, profferring the envelope.

‘Two men? What is this, a railway station? You didn't invite strangers into the house?'

‘One of them had this letter. He wanted you to read it.'

‘They're not stealing the silver while you're up here, are they?'

She opened the letter and read it. It was from a wealthy London businessman. She rarely saw him, but two or three times a year he wrote very politely asking if he could call. He paid well, he brought her expensive presents and he had written now to ask if she would be kind enough … and so on. Susannah sighed.

‘What are they like?'

Claire pulled an approving face.

‘Real class,' she said.

‘Well, I suppose. Old?'

Claire laughed.

‘Fairly decrepit,' she said. ‘One of them's more friendly than the other.'

‘Oh Lord. All right, send me the awkward bastard.'

Claire went off downstairs. Susannah discarded her book and sat by the fire. She listened to his footsteps on the stairs, listened for the slow plodding sound of age and was mystified. She heard him walk into the room, and let him close the door before she looked up. Men always stared and Susannah knew without any immodesty how beautiful she was, so she deliberately didn't look up until they were in front of her. She knew what to expect because they were all alike basically: greedy-eyed, fifty, fleshy, self-important because they were rich successful men who could afford her. They were boring, married and needed nothing from her other than the gratification which her beautiful body could give them. Sometimes they didn't even need that, sometimes they couldn't manage that. Mostly it was pure vanity that sent them to her. They even thought that she liked them and what they did to her.

He said, ‘How do you do?' in a flat, polite voice and Susannah looked up, ready to be whatever he wanted, and then she couldn't remember what she was supposed to say or do. If he was thirty he didn't look it, tall and slender, and she knew immediately that he was very rich because only the very rich would have dared to dress that plainly. He wore no ornament of any kind, not a ring, not a watch, nothing but a very dark suit so expensive that it made Susannah's fingers want to touch it; and a white shirt. Men's eyes gave them away and Susannah had seen greed and lust and want and excitement in them, but his eyes were as cool and grey as the river beyond the window and told her nothing.

She was on her feet now, though she hadn't been conscious of getting up. He was taller than Susannah and she was quite tall for a woman.

‘Good evening. I'm Susannah Seaton.' She held out her hand and he took it and smiled.

‘Robert Berkeley. I hope I'm not intruding.'

His voice didn't betray his origins. Susannah knew how to treat men, they were usually so eager, clumsy, nervous
or over-confident, revealing themselves for what they were, ignorant about women, their needs overwhelming their intelligence. She despised them all, though she had learned not to hate them. She made them pay dearly for what they had. With their money she had rented this big house which overlooked the Wear and furnished it sparingly with beautiful things. She bought clothes and books and wine, the best food, telling herself that she and Claire deserved all those things.

The men she took now she had selected very carefully indeed. She was half inclined to tell this one that he couldn't stay because she had never taken a man her own age into her bed - it worried her - but then Hardisty would be offended and Hardisty was too valuable to lose. She tried to think what young men might be like and couldn't, and then she had a sudden desire to find out what he was like, whether he was just as selfish and uneducated as the others. He would have to be to get so far so young, he would have to be ruthless and dangerous and ready to cut the ground from under other people's feet, and he didn't look anything like that.

‘Come near the fire,' she said. ‘Isn't it a shocking night. Too cold to be outside.'

He drew nearer and Susannah didn't know what to say.

‘Would you like some wine?' she said, escaping across the room.

‘Yes, please.'

Susannah decided to be bold. She gave him the wine, looked straight at him and said, ‘Is it something special that you want?'

‘Special?'

‘Yes.'

‘Yes, you,' he said.

Susannah was rather pleased about that. She led him into the other room, the bedroom which had a huge bay window and looked across the river, and by firelight she lit candles.
It was a plain room with a big bed and good but not heavy oak furniture. She drew the curtains around the windows, reflecting that although she was wearing ordinary everyday clothes, no make up, no perfume, she was wearing the kind of silk and lace frothy underwear which men liked.

Susannah went to him, touched him, just put her fingertips on the front of his shirt to see what he would do and he gathered her into his arms and kissed her very gently on the mouth. Susannah was astonished. Men never did that and she never let them. They came to her to slake their hungers, often without any thought or any preliminaries. They did not come to her to kiss her sweetly on the mouth like that. He sensed her reluctance and stopped.

‘I've got it wrong already,' he said ruefully.

Susannah was completely disarmed. She didn't know what to say.

‘You'd better tell me right now if there are other things I'm not allowed to do. I don't want to be thrown out, it's too cold.'

‘It isn't that, it's just that people don't.'

‘Don't they? And I was so sure that it was the place to start. Forgive me, I'm a beginner.'

There was a carefully controlled hunger in him, but even when she gave herself to him freely and pressed against him it didn't alter anything in the way that she would have imagined. Part of Susannah waited for him to lose control so that she could dislike him. When he didn't she tried to make him do so. The embrace became a battleground to her. Her underclothing was one of Susannah's weapons but although he caught his breath at the sight of her body it still didn't make him grab at her. She began to realise that this was not a battleground to him and never had been. He didn't understand such a thing. She would have bet anything that he had never bedded a woman he didn't love and therefore didn't know how to. He treated her as though they were lovers. Susannah had not been
treated in such a way in her life. It was a kind of respect she had not met. This man knew nothing of whores, he knew nothing of use and rejection. He made love to her. Worse still her body responded to the kisses and caresses of his mouth and hands. Susannah's body went completely out of control as it had never done before. She was horrified. Words formed in her mind which had never been there, soft encouraging lovers' words escaped her lips, and the kind of cries which she silenced for shame. Mindless pleasure was something Susannah had not experienced; her whole being was totally concentrated on what they were doing.

*

Susannah had been a shock to Rob. He had had visions of prostitutes in dirty little side streets, and he had seen others on the streets of various cities. None of them had ever looked anything like Susannah Seaton. To begin with she was beautiful. She was, Rob thought honestly, more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen. Also, she was his type physically, she was like Sarah had been, tall, dark with a neatly rounded figure and intelligent brown eyes. She had worn an expensive white dress, very little jewellery. She looked a woman of taste and breeding. She looked like a lady. He could not believe it.

He had tried to be natural and not to stare, but the idea that she might actually take off her clothes and let him have her seemed totally unreal until she led him into the bedroom which overlooked the river. A fire had burned cosily. She had smiled and talked softly, and as she had done so Rob began to want her as he thought he had never before in his life wanted anybody. He realised then that Harry was right. He was young and needed a woman in his arms. Part of him was sorry to admit it, ashamed to indulge a weakness but she undressed for him, encouraged him, gave herself to him, and even afterwards Rob couldn't be sorry. He had made himself be aware that she was not Sarah, that would have been something he could not have forgiven himself,
but he found that he didn't need to. He even felt happy briefly, not the kind of happiness he had ever known when he was married, just like a pale ray of sunshine on a long rainy day to remind him that there was still something to be gained from life. He had watched her. She had taken down her hair. The bedlinen was white and her hair was black. Her skin was like milk. She had smiled at him and he had known again that feeling of joy: in spite of what had happened he was still alive. He didn't have to feel guilty that he was happy here just for a few moments when she smiled at him, held out her arms to him. Even more important than having her was the way that she put her arms around him. In many wild moments after Sarah had died he thought that nobody would do that again, and that he would never want them to.