Splitting (7 page)

Edwin returned. Susan’s cold foot now pressed against his cheek, as he rubbed it with the towel.

“I do so badly need someone to look after me,” said Susan, “especially now.”

“Poor Susan,” said Edwin. “Of course we’ll look after you, won’t we, Angelica?”

“Why especially now?” asked Angelica. “Susan’s pregnant,” said Edwin. “Three months, Angelica,” said Susan.

There was a flurry of voices in Angelica’s head: she tried to make sense of them: they were calling warnings, giggling told-you-so’s; others were swear-wording, fucking and cunting; then out of the cacophony came a silence: then a consensus. “Angelica can’t cope. She’s no use to us. Get rid of her.”

“Angelica, did you hear me?” asked Edwin.

To which Angelica replied, inanely enough, “Don’t call me Angelica any more, call me Lady Rice.”

And having said it, Angelica, that anxious young woman of many parts and an interesting past, fled without warning into the fastnesses of herself, as abruptly and rashly as people flee to escape rocket attack, earthquake, forest fire, in the interest of survival itself, leaving a mere Lady Rice behind, to cope as best she could.

“I’m sorry,” said Lady Rice, the too-sudden transition confusing her as well, “I don’t feel very well.”

Lady Rice was always sorry and seldom well. She was a loving, drooping, companionable creature, but now stood alone, like some eighteenth-century face mask, the kind worn at balls, behind which a series of others hid; some blonde, some dark; some young, some old; all at the moment deathly still, all terrified—only Jelly, perhaps, craning a little this way or that, just visible, showed flickers of life, of intent. None of the other souls had yet, of course, introduced themselves to Lady Rice. She perceived no difference in herself. As did Angelica, she just suffered from voices in the head.

Lady Rice fainted. As she fell into the black and sickly swirl of a consciousness deprived suddenly both of oxygen—for a moment she had stopped breathing—and of familiar identity, she heard Edwin say:

“Poor Susan! But you did the right thing. We all have to try and do the right thing.”

Lady Rice had to ease herself to sit against the edge of the sofa, had to scramble to her feet unaided. Edwin was helping poor, shook-up Susan to the one spare bedroom available, at the top of the house. The decorators were at the time in all but this one.

Thus it was that Angelica’s personality perforated, allowing her to resign, if only temporarily, from life; she was lucky: there was someone pacing about in the wings of her soul, waiting to take over. Angelica could just simply and suddenly resign, subject as she was to too much upset. It could happen in anyone’s head. A trauma, a shock, a faint, a word out of place, evidence of betrayal, a bang on the head, any assault on the identity and who’s to know who you’ll be when you recover? And if you have too many names to begin with, and a title added to confuse others’ views of you, who are you to know who you were in the first place? Too many internal personae in search of a cohesive identity, and not enough body to go round!

Lady Rice went to bed, where Edwin presently followed her. He said he hoped she was feeling better but she should try not to steal Susan’s limelight. It had been absurd, pretending to faint like that. Everyone knew she was as strong as a horse.

Haltingly, Lady Rice apologized and tried to persuade her husband it was simply not so about herself and Humphrey, not so about herself and Lambert, but all Edwin said was do be quiet, what does any of that matter, women always deny everything anyway, you told me that yourself only this evening. Lady Rice thought she’d better be quiet.

“Poor me, poor me, poor me,” sighed Susan, now a house guest, through Rice Court. Poor Susan, all echoed. Locked out of her house, separated from her child. Those few in the Humphrey party—his parents, Rosamund, and a handful of comparative strangers: for example, the man in the Post Office who hated all women, the hedger and ditcher who believed in UFOs—urged Humphrey to go to his rival’s house and beat Clive up, but Humphrey, though he raged against women, against Susan, Natalie, Rosamund and Lady Rice, as all in one way or another party to the legitimization of his wife’s whorishness—they’d encouraged it, sanctioned it—did not ever meet his cuckolder face to face. Even in such circumstances, Rosamund complained, men stick together. The faithless wife gets murdered; her lover is left unharmed, and often unpunished.

“Get that woman out of here,” Mrs. MacArthur implored. “She’s trouble!” but Lady Rice had become so vague in her dealings with the world, and so forgetful—perhaps she’d bumped her head when she fell?—she could envisage only the horrors consequent upon false accusation and looked warily not trustingly at Mrs. MacArthur thereafter. If Lady Rice and Edwin could help Susan in any way, they would.

Susan was being sweet, and tearful, and full of confidences; Lady Rice took her to the Rice lawyers—four weeks later Susan was still locked out, still separated from her little Roland, Humphrey still holed up in Railway Cottage, and if you tried to get him on the phone you heard this terrible, harsh voice saying “Bitch! Cunt!” over and over. He had taken leave of his senses, everyone agreed. He was going through some kind of fugue. It was assumed he would recover. Rosamund said he might if she could keep the psychiatrists off his back. She thought little Roland was in no danger; his grandparents Molly and Jack had moved in to be with Humphrey, sometimes gently removing the receiver from his hand, replacing it, with a “sorry, caller.”

But the Rice lawyers, summoned by Edwin, were clever: injunctions were served, Humphrey was given no time to recover: he was ejected from the home, Susan re-installed, with little Roland back in her care, within six weeks. Clive and Natalie attempted a reconciliation: they stayed under the same roof but Natalie could not stop crying; not even Rosamund’s Prozac helped.

The upset had lost Susan her baby (though Mrs. MacArthur claimed it was too much gin and a purposefully too hot bath that did it). Humphrey was blamed by everyone for his insane jealousy, for murdering the unborn child by so upsetting the mother. No one blamed Susan. It was clear to everyone that Humphrey had driven Susan to infidelity. He was obviously unstable. Susan was too open, too innocent, too charming, too impetuous to have the marriage-breaking instincts which Natalie, Rosamund, and Humphrey claimed she had; these three had come to regard Susan an obsessive hater of wives, rather than a lover of men. Natalie, in the meantime, was said by everyone, except Rosamund (who had access to her medical records but wasn’t in a position to talk about her patient) to have a long history of infidelity, culminating in her current affair with a colleague at work. Clive too was to be pitied, not blamed. If only Clive and Susan could get together! Mad Humphrey, possessive Natalie, the story went, stood in the way of true love.

Before Susan left the shelter of Rice Court, she said to Lady Rice, earnestly, “Don’t ever think Edwin isn’t safe with me: you are my friend, after all,” but there was a look behind a look, a smile behind a smile which made Lady Rice then later say to Edwin, in bed, for once not rolling away from him but towards him—Lady Rice was more obliging than Angelica and had more regard for others’ feelings than her own—

“Did you and Susan ever—?”

And Edwin looked astonished and said, “Good heavens, Susan’s like some kind of sister to me. I’m very fond of her, Angelica. Angelica is such a long word. Couldn’t we shorten it? Anglia, perhaps?” and he laughed heartily and Lady Rice felt bad. It was the kind of name you’d choose for someone at a distance.

It was with distaste that Edwin reported home one day that he’d encountered Humphrey in the street, and that Humphrey had spat at him. Spat! In the circles in which Edwin had been reared, infidelities were commonplace, but no one minded much, no one went around with long faces, everyone kept a stiff upper lip and no one
spat.
Lady Rice felt herself excluded from desirable circles, and indeed responsible for Humphrey’s bad behavior. The friends she had found for her husband turned out to be scarcely worth the candle of his acquaintance. Boffy Dee came over once or twice: Anthea decided the dogs were putting on too much weight, and persuaded Edwin out on long hearty walks. Edwin went so reluctantly Lady Rice did not believe for a moment there was more to it than Anthea’s passion for healthy animals. Not happy animals—Anthea spoke sharply to the dogs and they kept out of kicking distance of her riding boots—but slim, shiny-coated, pleasant-breathed beasts. Edwin certainly was improved by the walks: he’d return flushed and energetic: the presence of Susan in the house had seemed to make him sluggish and moody. But everything was okay, thought Lady Rice. Everything had settled down.

And of course it hadn’t. Once sexual betrayal splits a community of apparently like minds, the evil’s never over. Households fall, writs fly, children and adults weep alike. Sometimes one could almost believe that if a war, an earthquake or a famine doesn’t come along and get in first, people will set out to destroy their own households, their own families, their own communities. As if we build only to break down, as if the human race can’t abide the boredom of happiness. As if truly the devil is in them. The fireworks of Bonfire Night are a burnt offering to the Gods of War, to appease them, but no one really wants those gods appeased for long. Peace is boring, war is fun. Non-event is the most terrible thing of all, to people of a certain disposition.

B
UT THERE WAS SUSAN
living righteously at Railway Cottage, the snows of winter past, the hollyhocks of summer beginning to burst into purples and mauves and pinks. Susan was beginning to look quite pink and healthy again; she had recovered from the miscarriage, though not yet from what was seen by all around—well, almost—as Humphrey’s mistreatment.

Susan herself said very little about the events of the past months, as if by ignoring them they would cease to exist. She lived quietly, though it was known that she had changed her solicitor and her doctor. She was divorcing Humphrey for unreasonable behavior, and Humphrey had decided not to argue about it, for Roland’s sake. She would keep Railway Cottage and live there with Roland and he would manage somehow, though his practice had collapsed about his ears. He seemed unable to concentrate or persist in anything. He would visit Roland as often as possible.

“I suppose I should be grateful,” was all Susan had to say, “but it’s all so typical of poor Humphrey! One day he’s violent and furious, the next day he’s passive and meek. He has these passions but he can never persist in them. Of course Humphrey’s a Gemini. You never know which twin you’re kissing. I hope he doesn’t visit Roland too often. It isn’t good for a child to see too much of a father who’s seriously unstable.”

It was obvious that Clive, so much and so publicly in love with Susan, could hardly handle the legalities of the divorce; and it was understood that Dr. Rosamund Plaidy no longer suited her as a physician. Susan murmured to one or two friends that Rosamund did rather gossip about her patients. And what sort of doctor was she? Had she not treated her own husband for low spirits with pills, and thus tipped him over into real depression? More, had she not stood between Susan’s about-to-be-ex-husband Humphrey and the psychiatrists when it was obvious that Humphrey was raving? Was such behavior ethical? Let alone sensible? No, Dr. Plaidy was not Barley’s best doctor. Faith in Rosamund rapidly declined, and an un-trusted doctor achieves few cures.

One day Natalie came across Clive weeping into his rose bushes when he should have been at work.

“I suppose you’re weeping for love of Susan,” said Natalie, helplessly.

“I am,” said Clive, just as helpless.

“Not for the grief and trouble you’ve caused myself and the children, but for yourself? Because you’d rather be with her, not me?”

“Yes,” said Clive. “I wish it wasn’t true, but it is.”

“In that case,” said Natalie. “That’s the end. I quit trying.”

Natalie went upstairs and threw all Clive’s clothes and papers out of the windows, out of the house, some into the garden, some into the road. Neighbors gathered. There went his school photographs, his early letters to Natalie, his secret porn videos, his cigarette lighters, his compact discs: his socks, his shirts, armfuls from the wardrobes, old shoes he’d never thrown away. It took her an hour. Clive waited till she was done and then packed what she’d forgotten into cardboard boxes and put the boxes neatly in the back of the car. He scavenged amongst what she’d tossed out for anything he really wanted, which he discovered was very little—the old shoes, his address book—and took those, too. The children watched. Daddy was leaving home. They were too stunned to cry, or too riveted by the drama. Then Natalie opened the bonnet of the car and took out spark plugs and threw them into the brook which ran so prettily through the English country garden.

“I want the car,” she said. “It’s mine by right. I need it to take the children to school.”

Clive called a taxi, and left home in that: taking nothing further but his wallet and a clean shirt. It had begun to rain. Taxi tires drove the mementoes of a happier past further into mud. Later Natalie went out and retrieved his cufflinks, which were gold, and a present to Clive from his mother. Then she took the car and drove it into the stream so the water played and gurgled through anything material which could remind her of her husband, and destroyed it. Later she told her insurers she’d been stung by a wasp, and claimed for the car.

Clive went to Susan and said, “I know you don’t love me. But aren’t you lonely in Railway Cottage? You and little Roland need looking after. Let me move in with you. Please?”

“No,” said Susan.

“But I love you,” said Clive. “I’ve given everything up for you. Home, wife, family. All for you! I’m losing my clients; my business is failing. When you left me, so did others. You’re all I have!” It was true that Clive was losing the confident, well-fed look a successful lawyer needs to have. His little moustache had turned grey. One architect, one lawyer, one doctor down. Who would be next?