Splitting (25 page)

But here was Angel asking in apparent innocence if she could go down and see Rice Court. Why? What was the point of confronting the past? There had been too many shocks, too much trauma. It was best forgotten. If once they had had an ambition to be one person, that was long over. They were, they reckoned, what most women were anyway—divisible into parts, but had, unusually, become conscious of those parts. At first it had caused trouble: no longer.

Or so in their folly they thought.

“Why not?” asked Angel. “Ram can take us down. It will be an outing. Other people go to Heritage Parks, why not us?”

“I’ll tell you why not,” said Lady Rice. “Because it would break my heart. Because I’m still humiliated and ashamed; I just prefer not to think about it. I am a discarded woman; I was mistress of Rice Court, now you want me to go to the Funfair as a punter. Never.”

“I think it would be okay to go,” said Angelica. “I could visit my mother. It’s time I did. We wouldn’t try and see Edwin, or anything like that.”

“Oh no,” said Jelly, with heavy sarcasm. “Of course not!”

“Because that’s all behind us,” said Angelica. “If we wore a wig,” said Jelly, “we could see him and he wouldn’t recognize us. I reckon we should go, but in disguise.”

“He wouldn’t recognize us anyway,” said Lady Rice, and burst into tears, which she hadn’t done for ages. Nor did she any longer sit on the edge of the bed for hours, just staring into space, too preoccupied with her woes even to be bored. As the shocked, the bereaved, and the betrayed so often do sit, arms and hands limp, mouth slightly open, as if they were in a trance.

“T’rific!” cried Angel. “Three against one! We’re going! Next time Ram calls—”

And the very next Saturday there was Angel, lounging on a street corner, waiting for Ram, wearing grunge: that is to say layers of darkish fabric alternating with snatches of lace: men’s socks and heavy boots, the latter bought second-hand on a market stall. A tight satin vest beneath a torn leather jacket compressed and raised her breasts.

Ram’s sleek Volvo turned into Davis Street: there was his client, leaning into a lamp-post, blowing smoke into the air, like Marlene Dietrich. The car slowed, drew in on a no-parking line. “Is that fashion?” he asked her. “Or disguise?”

“Neither,” said Angel.

He held the door open for her. He was not wearing his uniform. Passers-by stared.

“I like a woman of many moods,” he said, as they set off for the North. “Anyone else and I wouldn’t have done it. I like to play football on Saturdays.”

“Women tend to be more than one person,” said Angel, “at the best of times. Men get just to be the one.”

“I like all of yours,” he ventured, but she did not encourage such intimacies. It was his body she cared for. He contented himself with saying that if he were her he wouldn’t go and see an ex-husband dressed like that and she said it was fortunate then he wasn’t her, and they fell silent. And when, at a service station, Angel invited him to join her in the back of the car, he refused, politely. She was clearly under considerable stress. He’d caught sight of her from time to time, reflected in his mirror, gesticulating, mouthing, and murmuring to herself, sometimes slapping her own wrist, though that, these days, happened less often than it used to. She would speak to him in different voices, offering contradictory instructions. He had worked out, but only recently—until then these encounters had quite upset him—that there were four of them. Angel had started things off: now he preferred Angelica: she allowed him more time, in which he could develop and demonstrate simple affection. Though Angel’s instant enthusiasm, instant response, was certainly useful when time was at a premium, and privacy doubtful. He didn’t like leaving his women unsatisfied: the fact was that Angelica frequently was, though she swore she didn’t mind. Jelly induced a kind of guilty, heady excitement which could keep him awake at night thinking about her. Lady Rice required words of love, and he’d oblige, falsely, but then she was being false too. “I love you,” she’d say dreamily and obsessively, but it would only become true, he felt, if he mistreated her in some way. Offer a quarter of the self and you could hardly expect a whole self offered in return. His client could have his body and that was that, and not even that if she looked like freaking out. But he considered them his girlfriend, and had no other. He had developed a taste for the multi-layered. Often girls seemed absurdly single.

Sometimes he felt like some sea creature which had been washed up by a high tide and now lay beached and helpless. The water had receded and left him behind. It would flicker into his awareness that he lived in a state of suspended animation, waiting to be reclaimed. Then he’d tell himself he was having an identity crisis, that was all, and go out and polish the Volvo, put on his chauffeur’s cap and say, “this is me, this is me.”

For once the Rice Quartet seemed interested in something other than his body. He could see it was good to thwart them, sometimes.

“Where do you live?” the sad, posh one asked. He explained that he lived on a houseboat on the Thames, at Chelsea, and garaged the Volvo on Cheyne Walk. An aunt had given the car to him, when he’d been thrown out of the Royal College of Music for insolence. Since then he’d used the vehicle to earn a living while he worked out what to do next.

“How long has that been?” she asked.

“When I come to think of it,” said Ram, shaken, “ten years. I thought it had only just happened.”

She said that once she too had been offered a place at the Royal College. But who could settle down to sing Handel when they could have a recording contract, stardom, and rock and roll? Not she, certainly. Not then. What had his instrument been? He said give him anything and he could play it: he’d been on the conducting course. She was impressed.

“If they threw everyone out for attitude,” she said, consolingly, “they wouldn’t have a pupil left.”

He acknowledged they’d merely suspended him for a week and he’d been offended, said he’d never return, and hadn’t. “We’re nearly there,” he said, annoyed at having revealed so much about himself, “I only hope you know what you’re doing.”

Lady Rice hoped to see desolation and to hear lamentation as the Volvo approached the house, but she did not: The grounds were in good order, dreaming in the summer sun, the horses grazed tranquilly in the fields; nature itself conspired against her, to say “see how well we all get on without you!” Signposts—well painted and placed—now pointed to Rice Stables, Kennels and Cattery, as well as to the Funfair, The Manor House, The Restoration Gardens, The Maze, Gift Shop, Pottery, Theme Park, Exhibition and Toilets. Oh yes, there had been progress, and very fast progress, without her.

Visiting families wandered around the outside of the house; well-behaved children finished their ice creams before entering, and there were enough bins everywhere to take their debris. The glaziers had been called in; cracked panes of fine, crisp glass, saved in Angelica’s day because of their rarity—some being over two hundred years old—had been brutally replaced with young, thick, tough, even glass, but otherwise Lady Rice could find no fault with what had been done to the place, if you liked that kind of thing. She didn’t, and the success of those who did was the more bitter.

Lady Rice introduced herself to the unknown woman at the ticket desk—there had been further staff changes—and noticed that entry prices had doubled. She murmured that she was a friend of the family: could she see Sir Edwin?

“This wasn’t why we came,” said Angelica.

“We can’t possibly see him dressed like this,” said Jelly.

“He’ll see through it to the person beneath,” said Lady Rice, hopefully.

“It just seems the sensible thing to do,” said Angel. “Now we’re here.”

Their heart beat loud, thumping, and raced all over the place.

The receptionist looked doubtful, but lifted the telephone and got through to the private wing and said to whoever answered, “Sir Edwin has a visitor, Lady Anthea,” and Angel thought that is not fair: anyone who didn’t know better would assume that Anthea was Edwin’s wife, and took the title from him. She felt even that singularity had been taken from her.

Lady Rice waited. Visitors looked at her curiously. Lady Rice noticed that the price asked for cream teas had risen, too. The oak floorboards which she had hand-waxed to a deep sheen were now covered with a practical polymer sealant; a little notice even said “Floors at Rice Court sealed by the Polyserve Company”—no doubt the price for the job had been reduced on account of it. Anthea, she had to admit, saved money where she could, spent it where she should.

It was not Sir Edwin who came through the green baize door that separated family quarters from public space, but Anthea. She seemed older than Lady Rice remembered: perhaps the effort of domestic life with Edwin, the intrusions of Mrs. MacArthur, the role of
chatelaine
mixed with bursar had taken its toll over the last year: or perhaps Lady Rice saw more clearly now. Anthea’s complexion, which had seemed so attractively wind-blown, was now riven by a network of fine, tiny wrinkles; the skin stretched over cheekbones was red and blotchy from, Lady Rice assumed, too much alcohol.

“Jesus!” said Angel. “What a mess! Bet she washes her face with soap and water.”

“Look at yourself,” said Jelly. “What do you think we look like?”

“Oh God,” said Lady Rice. “I don’t want her seeing us like this. Can’t we just get out of here?”

“She’s pregnant!” cried Angelica.

And so Anthea was. A clearly defined football-shaped bump, which she carried as if it was nothing to do with her whatsoever, could be seen just below waist level. Unprepared for this, Lady Rice turned to flee. But Anthea caught her arm.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” said Anthea. “What are you doing? You’ve no business here. I’ll call the guards. Leave Edwin alone, you little bitch. He doesn’t want you; why don’t you just go? You’re quite mad. Look at you! If you were a horse I’d shoot you. Put you out of your misery.”

Lady Rice saw herself as others must see her. The broken, contorted face, the peculiar clothes, the lack of inner substance or definition. She tried to wrest herself out of Anthea’s grasp but the other woman’s hands were bony and very strong. Anthea rode to hounds: she knew how to grip on for dear life. Anthea breathed whisky fumes in her face. Lady Rice was scared. So were the others. There wasn’t a sound from them. Anthea’s nails were digging into her arm.

“Security!” called Anthea, in clipped and authoritative tones, as if she were the one under attack.

Lady Rice could see Edwin approaching: he was too fleshy, he looked ill; he was a man no longer charming: just another disgruntled heir bent on self-destruct.

“Edwin, help me!” she called, but he just stood and stared. Anthea seemed beside herself.

“Kinky Virgin,” Anthea sneered. “Kinky Virgin! Edwin told me what kind of virgin you were. Famous for it, every which way but normal. A slut, a whore, a disgrace. If I saw a dog doing it, I’d kick it.

Kill it. He pitied you, more fool him. You and your unperforated hymen!”

“If we have to talk,” said Edwin, “can’t it be in private?”

“I want the whole world to hear,” shrieked Angel.

“I am falsely accused,” yelled Lady Rice.

“He took my life and sucked me dry and spat me out,” snarled Jelly.

“I hate him; he is despicable. He betrayed me and insulted me,” spoke Angelica, in loud but level tones.

“No it can’t!” yelled Lady Rice.

“It’s all behind us now,” said Edwin. “Surely?” He seemed craven, and hardly worth getting excited about.

“Get the crazy bitch out of here,” snapped Anthea, but the male security men just stood by, not wanting to intervene in the drama. “I want my rights, Edwin,” said Lady Rice calmly. “I want a proper divorce settlement and I want it within the week.”

“She has no rights,” said Anthea. Lady Rice spat at Anthea. Anthea drew back, appalled. “She can have whatsoever she wants,” said Edwin. “Christ, Angelica, I’m so sorry. Why did you just back off like that? What was happening to you? We could have sorted it out somehow. Lambert told me everything.”

“You bastard,” shrieked Anthea at Edwin. “You only ever cared about her. You’ve delayed and delayed and delayed this divorce. You’ve no intention of marrying me: you never had. I’m going home. You and that prick Jellico used me to get this place in order. You never loved me. You won’t even marry me. You love the gutter, and everything that crawls in it. This woman spat at me!” Edwin looked baffled and confused. He wasn’t listening to a word Anthea said. He didn’t care. The visitors crept nearer. Was it some kind of pageant put on for their benefit? But they didn’t like the language.

“Angelica?” asked Edwin.

“Too late,” said Angelica.

“Are you sure?” begged Lady Rice.

“Completely sure,” said Angelica. “Shut up.”

Lady Rice shut up.

“I’ll write to you,” said Angelica firmly. “We’ll bypass solicitors. I’ll let you know my terms. And I want my eight hundred thousand pounds back.”

“I’ll put more pressure on Jellico,” said Edwin, “though it’s out of my hands. I hate talking about money. Can we be friends?” He was almost in tears.

“No,” said Angelica.

“Are you sure?” asked Jelly.

“Quite sure,” said Angelica.

“Christ, I miss you,” said Edwin. “Couldn’t we even meet?”

“No,” said Angelica.

“Aw, come on!” said Angel.

“Just shut up,” said Angelica.

Angel did.

“It’s been such a mistake,” said Edwin. “We were happy together.”

Anthea, in her bitterness, lifted her hand to strike Lady Rice’s face. A security guard—a woman, in smart white shirt with braids here and there and a stiff navy skirt—held back the hand. Another propelled Lady Rice to the door. Visitors lining up for admittance stared. Lady Rice half-tumbled, half-stumbled down the steps. Back in the Great Hall Anthea pummelled Edwin with her fists, while he looked distracted and bored.